The Runner (6 page)

“I do,” Bullet answered. “Because I work.”

Patrice went up to the cabin. Bullet rested against the gunwales, with the boat rocking gently under his feet as it drifted with the tide out toward the red road the sun made on the silver water. The temperature rose. It had taken him a while to figure out Patrice. In fact, the first time Patrice had offered him a permanent job he had refused. Skippers who hired kids did it because they could give them much less of the take, and Bullet was then just thirteen. He didn't mind working for Patrice, even then, but he'd learned how things were: Skippers thought they could bully kids around more, because kids were so glad of any job. Kids got all the scut work, too.

Not Bullet, though, he'd never go out more than once with a skipper who kept him busy cleaning up, more than his fair share. He didn't mind being yelled at, up to a point, or blamed because the wind was up and the crabs weren't biting, or the engine broke down. Up to a point. He'd learned, too, just how much talking back he could do, just how far he could go. He kind of enjoyed that, pushing a man just to the exact point and then, when the guy was dying to have you go one step farther so he could really explode at you, stop. He always paced himself, too, in the work; how fast he'd move. These guys, all the guys on the crew, whoever they were, they thought because they were bigger, older, stronger, in command, they could tell him everything and use him as a yelling board when something else went wrong on them.

Patrice had made no sense to Bullet at first. He never got riled, and Bullet couldn't push him at all. He'd shrug things off. When he felt like talking, he'd talk; Bullet could listen or not, depending. When he talked, it wasn't the usual stuff, women or hard luck or boasting. He didn't ask questions either, he'd just start in, about someplace he'd been, or something he liked to eat, or even some old story he'd thought of. Bullet figured, at first, that the guy was a little weird and he steered clear. But after a while, he figured it out: Patrice had nothing to prove, nothing to prove on Bullet, nothing to prove to him. He let Bullet be. So the second time, the summer between seventh and eighth grade, that Patrice asked him to work regularly, Bullet agreed. If nothing else, Patrice always did a fair split of the take, so Bullet could give him a fair day's work without getting cheated, whether he was a kid or not. Patrice worked him like a man, paid him like a man, treated him like a man. From the first.

When Patrice came back, he carried a metal tray on which were a tin coffeepot, two thick white mugs, a slab of butter, and a straw basket covered with a white cloth. Patrice ground his coffee
beans the last thing before they left the dock, because the fresher the grind the better the coffee. The crusty rolls under the cloth had been in the oven when Bullet arrived at five that morning. The missing fingers on Patrice's hand, which made it difficult for him to tie bait onto the line and tiring for him to net crabs, didn't impede him in the kitchen.

They sat down facing one another, cross-legged on the wooden deck. Bullet's stomach felt hollow with a hunger he hadn't felt until just then. He broke a roll apart with his hands and spread it with butter. Patrice poured coffee.

Patrice was missing the thumb on his right hand and the first two joints on the index finger on his left hand. He'd never told Bullet how that happened, but Bullet assumed from the thick, calloused stumps that it must have been long ago, and Patrice no longer remembered that he had lost anything. He never mentioned it, never had.

“Good,” Patrice said, swigging coffee.

“Good,” Bullet agreed, his mouth full of chewy white bread, the mug ready to hand.

Patrice looked at him, his little eyes bright and clever. “Now that your scalp is tanned you don't look so appalling.”

“Did I look appalling?” Bullet hadn't thought about it.

“You didn't think so? You looked like . . . you were wearing a helmet, a leprous helmet. You looked savage, a barbarian.” The eyes studied him. “You still do.”

“I like it,” Bullet said. He didn't think about what he was going to say to Patrice, he just said what he felt like.

“How do you keep the growth down?”

“Shave it every other day.”

“Troublesome, isn't it?”

“Yeah, but it's worth it.”

“To annoy your father?” Patrice guessed.

Bullet smiled. “Besides, what's wrong with being a barbarian?”

“Of course, there's something splended about that. And you do have a good head, my friend, well-shaped. But when you consider the centuries that have gone into the civilizing of the world . . .”

“Yeah, but has that worked?” Bullet asked. He drained the last of his coffee.

“No, perhaps not. Ah, well.” Patrice poured him another half cup and refilled his own. “But you are young, and there is hope for you yet.”

Bullet didn't answer. Patrice often teased him this way and there wasn't anything he needed to say in answer. It was just the way Patrice got around to talking about something he wanted to talk about.

“You know, traditionally, the barbarian has swept over the civilized world,” Patrice said now. “Goths—or Visigoths—or Ostrogoths—and the Vandals, and the Huns. Poor old Rome, like a kitchen floor, swept and swept, don't you think? The Achaians at Troy. The Vikings along the coasts of Ireland and England and France.”

“Are there any barbarians left?” Bullet wondered.

Patrice shrugged. “Can a man tell about the history he lives in? The enemy is always the barbarian, just as God is always on my side. The blacks in Africa, perhaps they are.”

“Come off it.”

“Tall, strong and splendid—warrior races? You are thinking too narrowly, you must look out for that. Picture him, his dark skin gleaming, bare feet, and his body hung with jewelry made out of the bones of his prey, he moves through the long grass. A spear held high, only a skin shield to protect him. He stands before an elephant. If he kills the beast, he is a hero. If he dies—
all a man asks is to die well, to die in good battle and bravely; he is a hero.”

“You're prettying it up,” Bullet said.

“But of course, this is speculative thought.”

“You ought to come to school and see what they're really like.”

“If I did, I might not agree with you about what they're really like. And there's you—you're a barbarian—out of your time. But you will have trouble, being only one. It is hard for one to overrun.”

Bullet guessed he knew what Patrice meant, and he didn't mind it. He'd always known how different he was, and he'd never minded.

“You're pleased,” Patrice observed. “I have paid you a compliment?” The gnome face looked as if it wanted to laugh.

“You have,” Bullet told him. “You know, you don't
talk
like you're uneducated.”

“But why should I. I have been to school. I was even going to go on, in school.”

“What happened?”

Patrice shrugged. “The Germans came.”

“And?”

“I no longer went to school. Finish your coffee and get on with your work. I'll save the last roll for you.”

Bullet did as he was told, he never minded doing what Patrice told him. He'd learned that Patrice only told him what was necessary. Bullet stood up to get the tongs. He lifted the lid of the basket and looked down at the quiet mass of crabs. He tonged one out and turned it over, to see by the apron whether it was male or female. They sold females to the packing houses, the different sizes all jumbled in together. It was the jimmies, the males over six inches from point to point, that they were really after,
but as long as a crab was of the legal size they could use it. This one was a male, barely five inches, and he tossed it into the basket for the small males.

Behind him he heard Patrice move to stand in the small shaded rectangle made by the cabin. He knew how his employer would look, leaning against the cabin wall, a mug in his hand, his eyes watching Bullet cull the catch. He'd always let Bullet do the culling and never griped at any mistakes. A couple of times, at first, Bullet had tossed big jimmies overboard, watching them arc out over the water, listening for any sound from behind him that Patrice had seen the loss. Finally, getting no reaction, he had flipped one that must have been seven and a half inches, maybe even eight, really big. He'd waited, to see what the explosion would be like. But he'd heard only a chuckle, and then Patrice had spoken behind him. “I cannot bear to watch, you are on your own.” Bullet had turned around, angry at the laughter in the man's voice; but Patrice was already walking away, to lift the cover up and take a look at the engine.

Sometimes Bullet wondered why Patrice had put up with him at first, but he never asked. He just kept coming to work, feeling himself ease up as soon as he stepped over the picket fence into Patrice's yard. He didn't mind Patrice, and Patrice didn't mind him; they did all right together.

Bullet worked fast, tonging, turning, tossing either into a basket or overboard. The crabs were stirred up now, moving around over one another, spitting, clacking their claws. As he held each up, it swam with its legs in unresponsive air. He tonged in and sorted, ignoring the most aggressive ones for a while. These backed away from the tongs, pincers upraised, legs scurrying for footholds on the wet and moving mass beneath. He gave them time to settle down while he picked out another. Once they had settled down, folding their claws in together, he picked one out
quickly. They would take the jimmies down to the dock to sell by the bushel at whatever the day's price was. Buyers from the small crab houses all over the eastern shore came to the docks at about lunchtime; Patrice preferred to sell to them because he got a better price. At this time of year, however, he would probably have to sell to the wholesalers, and they would make less.

Bullet bent to dip into the basket, straightened to toss the crab overboard, bent again to dip again. There was a rhythm to this job, governed by the movement of his arm, like scything through a field of hay. Behind him, Patrice stood watching, watching Bullet do the job right. Until the culling was done, they couldn't tell what the harvest of the catch actually was.

“Looks like a couple dozen,” Bullet reported. “Not too terrific.” He corroborated the expression on Patrice's face.

Patrice handed him the roll, slathered with butter. Bullet bit into it, hungry again. “It is early days. We'll see how the runs go. Maybe it's time to start for oysters.”

“It's pretty warm still.”

“You prefer when we oyster in the winter?” Patrice raised his eyebrows.

Bullet knew he was teasing. “Frankly, I prefer crabbing. Oystering is hard work.”

“It's all hard work. You're young and strong. I'm old and wily. Hard work doesn't hurt us.”

“I didn't say it did,” Bullet pointed out.

“No, you didn't,” Patrice agreed. “Ready now?”

A
fter all, it was a fair catch for the seven hours of work: three bushels of big jimmies and five for the canning firms, which they sold at the town dock just after noon. Bullet's share came to fifty dollars, a quarter of the take. It was after one by the time they had berthed
Fraternité
at the dock in front of Patrice's house, hosed her down, checked gas and oil in the engine, rebaited the trotline, and coiled it into the plastic garbage can at the stern. Once, Bullet had asked Patrice why he had named his boat
Fraternité
. Most of the workboats had women's names,
Loralee, Helen, Polly, Zena.
Patrice had just smiled like some old gnome who had lived a hundred years and shrugged. “And you spelled it wrong,” Bullet pointed out. Patrice laughed and explained about the old motto. “
Liberté
and
egalité
,” he said, teasing, “they are the ideal. But
Fraternité
is humanly possible. I make my statement,” he said.

It was weird, but Bullet didn't mind. Patrice played with ideas, speculative thought, he called it. He was always thinking about something, and he liked it when Bullet listened, but he didn't try to make him pay attention. Patrice didn't even care about being right. He didn't, Bullet thought, following his employer down the long dock, care about much of anything. About thinking, and he liked to eat, he cared about food, and he liked Bullet, liked having him around. Patrice was free, which meant he made his own rules and followed them. Bullet admired him.

Besides, Patrice didn't think like anybody else, he always had some odd angle. Once, a few years ago—it was right after Liza left, that was when it was—Bullet had been working away, doing something, and brought down a stack of baskets so hard half of them were smashed. He felt better, for a few minutes, less burned up. Then he wondered if Patrice had seen and turned around to catch the anxious eyes looking at him.
Go ahead, fire me, you'll never get anyone who can work as hard as I can,
Bullet had thought, bracing himself. But Patrice wasn't angry. He wasn't frightened either, or threatened. “You are so angry, my friend,” he had said.

“So what?” Bullet demanded.

“What makes you so angry?”

“None of your business,” Bullet had said.

“Granted. But when someone like you is angry, I am interested in what causes it.”

“I'm angry most of the time,” Bullet told Patrice.

“Yes? Why?”

“People, the way they act. Things, the way they are.”

Patrice nodded his head once, on an ah-sound, and turned back to the motor.

“I'll fix the baskets,” Bullet told him.

“Do you know how?”

“No, but I can figure it out.”

“I'll show you. Later. Now we have work to do.”

“You're a real slave driver, Patrice,” Bullet had said.

His employer laughed out loud. “Me? I think not. I can't be. If I am, you're the worst slave in the history of man's injustice to man.”