Wake of the Perdido Star (18 page)

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Authors: Gene Hackman

BOOK: Wake of the Perdido Star
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“Once more, Bob. I'll give ya a better chance. Stand up, man.”
The men roared again. Smithers hauled Bob to his feet.
“Right foot against right foot, Bob. Right hand clasped right hand.”
Bob pulled back.
“Give me your right hand, dammit!”
“He said it wouldn't be much of a game for you.” Jack's sudden interruption shocked the crowd, which quickly fell silent.
“Who's that?” Smithers turned in rage, more than ready to take on the whole ship's company.
The seamen parted, revealing Jack O'Reilly sitting quietly on a mound of sand.
Smithers bared his teeth, a mirthless split in his face. “Shut your young mouth, lad, or I'll stuff it with sand and paddle your pink behind.”
The image of this enraged bully took Jack to a violent road in Cuba. The young man's eyes narrowed into a penetrating force. In a voice chilling in its intensity he said, “I dare you to try it.”
Smithers froze, then looked with amazement at this new, somehow overpowering figure. The rest of the men were silent, equally astonished. Above them on the mound, Jack continued to pierce the man with his stare. Smithers's offensive stance gradually dissipated, and he finally ended the standoff with a grimace and a spit to the ground directly in front of him. “Aagh, a pip-squeak like
you ain't worth the effort.” The other men broke their silence and slowly returned to their task of replenishing the water supply.
The casks all filled and stowed, the crew reluctantly pushed off the Chilean shore. As the men settled into their oars, Smithers dug his elbow into Jack's ribs. “Excuse me, old salt, didn't see ya there.” When the crew pulled themselves up the rope ladder to the
Star,
Jack positioned himself in front of Smithers. Halfway up the side of the ship, Jack grabbed a rung of the boarding ladder with both hands and drove his feet hard into Smithers's face. They both fell back into the boat, Jack landing on top of Smithers, his knee planted firmly in the sailor's chest. The groaning man's lips were split, and a tooth hung loose from his bloody mouth. Jack never spoke but just glared into the sailor's eyes. There was death there, and Smithers saw it.
New Year's Day, January 1, 1806. The
Star
had finally been blessed with good weather; a fair breeze lifted her onto its shoulders and practically skipped her along the waves. Plunging gracefully into soft seas, she averaged nine knots, covering nearly thirty-five hundred miles toward the Society Islands in the thirty days since leaving Chonos Archipelago on the Chilean coast.
The crew were in grand spirits, as they had been given an extra ration of grog to celebrate the new year. The added pleasure left everyone elated and content—with the exception of Jack, who brooded. His brief encounter with Smithers over a month ago had left him depressed and vulnerable, walking around mostly in a state of trance. He couldn't seem to shake his feeling of helplessness. Nor did he want to. He found comfort in his obsession; it kept him striving to be better than the rest of the sailors, but his growing fear of the dark and perpetual nightmares kept him in a constant state of unrest, his inability to express his burden gnawing away at him.
With favorable winds, they would be in Papeete in seven days' time; the old ship seemed to sense this and kept herself upright and proper, like a gallant elderly woman. The decks shone from the pumice, and the rails glistened with a new coat of varnish. The sailors gathered in small groups on the decks, repairing sail, splicing rope, or polishing brass, just for something to do. The sails had been badly beaten by the Cape but were starting to show some style. The brass was pitted but serviceable, and the broken lines were slowly being mended from their long ordeal around the Horn. All in all, the ship was being made into the sailing machine she was meant to be.
Paul and Jack were aloft in the mainmast hauling sail. “Six months ago, we were both in school,” Paul said. “Did you ever dream you would be one hundred feet in the air, swaying in balmy breezes?”
“I don' know,” Jack grunted, continuing to pull in the heavy canvas hand over hand.
“It speaks!” Paul feigned surprise. “Only eighteen years old and words come tumbling from its lips!” Paul called to several of his shipmates dangling on the foot ropes, hauling sail. “Did you hear, lads? It said, ‘don't know' or something like that.” Paul addressed Jack. “There may just be hope for you after all, you talkative little dickens, you.”
Jack cleared his throat. “I want to kill someone or something or smash a belaying pin into a grinning Cuban face or rip off an arm and beat someone to death with it. I can't stop these terrible images from coming into my head. I hate them but at the same time, I can't do without them. I . . . ” Jack stopped to prevent a sob from coming up his throat.
Paul felt ashamed then, to have made a joke of Jack's suffering. But in some ways, it had worked. He continued to pull on the wet sail. “Were you ever happy, Jack?”
“No.”
“I don't believe that.” Paul tried again. “There were times since
I've known you when you were full of jokes and fun. Go on, admit it to yourself. Say to yourself, ‘I was happy once and I will be again.'”
“All right, I guess I was happy once—so?” Jack shot Paul a dirty look.
“So in order to get through each day as best you can, in order to survive this voyage, without becoming a blithering idiot, think of happier times.”
Jack disgustedly turned back to his work.
“Yes, think of happy times and grow stronger, so that you will be healthy of mind and body when you get back to Cuba—
then
you can rip off someone's arm and beat them to death.”
T
HE
STAR
LAY ANCHORED in the harbor of Papeete. Both watches had been allowed to go ashore and the ship was practically deserted. The only men aboard were Jack, Hansumbob, and a couple of the cooks.
Hansumbob sat on the top deck, his back against the main mast carving on a small piece of bone. Jack liked the old sailor, but each time Bob attempted to speak to him, he felt himself withdraw. He had not exactly been rude, but he tried to discourage any contact. Nevertheless, Bob persisted.
If ya need a soul to talk to
and ya doesn't know how to start,
just let your poor heart wonder,
you'll look and feel right smart.
I've sailed the seven seas by gar
and I've seen and done it all
,
but I never met a sailor man
who failed a supper's call
.
They fight and drink and make one fret,
‘tis awful sometimes to see,
but I never met a sailor man who was late
for a cook's entreee.
Bob giggled and tapped his feet, but the harder he tried to get a response from Jack, the more distant Jack felt. Finally, Bob settled back silently against the mast and resumed his carving.
I oughta dive into these waters and swim to shore, Jack thought. Laugh, drink, and forget my troubles. I'm sure everyone on board is tired of me. Better yet, maybe I should say good-bye to this old fool Bob and head out of the bay, see how far I could get toward Cuba. If I swam two miles in one hour and rested every three hours, in twenty-four hours I would cover about forty miles. If I kept that up for ten days that would be four hundred miles. About then, I would just call it quits. And take Paul's advice and die happy.
Jack reveled in these thoughts. It seemed his troubles were his only companions these days. Loyal and readily available.
He had smelled something cooking for quite some time. The wood smoke, mixed with the fragrance of the tropical flowers, eased his mind. But the afternoon stillness was quickly shattered by a scream from the bowels of the ship.
Bob leapt from his position and raced to the companionway hatch. Throwing it open, a cloud of dense smoke billowed out and, choking on the fumes, he backed away.
The outcry startled Jack out of his brooding. A sailor stumbled on deck, coughing and vomiting. When Jack reached the companionway, he found the man's clothes smoking and badly burned.
“The cook's down there! Get him out! Oh Christ, get him out!”
Jack grabbed a piece of sailcloth and covered his head, not knowing what he was going to do but realizing he had to do something. He plunged down the narrow stairs, his view limited by the smoke, and crawled toward the galley. As he reached the cook, flames were licking violently against the overhead, wanting
to consume everything in sight. The cook lay on the deck kicking desperately, trying to extinguish the fire burning him alive. A large kettle lay overturned on the floor and grease bubbled around his head.
Jack reached under the cook and lifted him, the oil searing his arms. A hazy light guided him as he made his way up the companionway ladder with his hollering bundle. On deck, the cook's clothes seemed to ignite in Jack's face when the air hit. They were both ablaze.
Jack took three quick strides and cleared the starboard rail, his burning shipmate in his arms. He caught a glimpse of the astonished faces of the men in the longboat as he passed just inches over their heads. The sailors on shore had seen the smoke even before Bob and Jack and had been on their way back to the ship.
The two men were quickly fished from the water and hauled aboard. Jack bathed his own burns with cold water and watched as Cookietwo sat with his back to the port rail, trembling. After several hours, he could hear only an occasional moan. Cook's eyes, when they were open, fixed on some distant unattainable salvation. Jack dipped a cloth in the cool water and laid it gently on the man's forehead.
“You may not 'ave done me a right good turn, young Jack,” he whispered, his voice shaky.
Jack nodded and continued to cool the reddened face and limbs of the suffering cook, the older man lost in a mumbled prayer.
In the weeks to come, Jack's burns healed without a trace, while Cookietwo's face and arms were horribly scarred, the raw skin angry and full of infection. But it appeared that the cook would live.
Several of his shipmates tried to thank Jack for his attempt to save the cook, but he remained resolute in his determination to keep to himself.
The officers eventually took the longboat into the settlement to hire a new cook and returned with a small dapper Chinese gentleman named Quen-Li. Jack stood on the foredeck, watching the Oriental swing effortlessly up to the rail, glance around, and vault to the deck, as graceful a move as Jack had ever seen.
Jack observed this slim Chinaman for several days; he was fascinating in that there was a physical strength about him that belied his years. He moved as if gliding, his head never bounced, and most intriguing were his eyes; they were penetrating and yet kind.
“Methinks this fellow may be a man of many parts,” Paul told Jack, who nodded assent as the pair watched the Chinaman chop vegetables. It was apparent he had many years of experience with a knife in his hand and not just in a galley.
T
EMPERS WERE GROWING increasingly short as the weeks passed. The starboard crew had just finished a grueling watch, and several hands shouted around the mess table as another serving of tasteless hardtack was passed around with a half pint of rationed grog. For two days they had labored without a hot meal, the weather too rough to light fires in the recently repaired galley.

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