What Can You Do With a Drunken Sailor

from CHAPTER ONE

Almost Land

When the wind sings over the water far out from the Island it is clear and there is no question of eternity. But only echoes reach the beach, dry and brittle, and they shatter against the dunes and fall in a shower of tiny pings on the sand – when you walk through they shushush, but if you rub some in your fingers you can hear the wind singing out on the sea.

And the surf drumming on the tight shore. And the saw grass rubbing along the flanks of the dunes. And the screech of falling stars, fresh out of the night before the sun thins them. The rock jetties appear to be the only eternals, holding the island in place, and I forget that Geo. Dietz put them down – “Dropped ‘em down and watched ‘em fall buttin’ into the sand and sqinchin’ down, settled you’d say, with a good hold, but then the tide comes in and they sink on in and then they’re outta sight, clean, sunk down clean, and you gotta barge another ’n over and haul it up and drop it in and it goes on down just the same, and you gotta do this ten, twelve times till the bottom ’n holds and the last ’n you drop squinches down and holds, movin’ some and settlin’ but holds, and then on top a’ that you can make a jetty” – enough left of a black tip, smoothed and run through with detonator holes, enough for the mussels to take up housekeeping and there I am, head into a sky not pulled together yet and a singing wind in my ears and the usual nothing-giving sea and the shrilling sand, all uncompromising because, with what?

from CHAPTER EIGHT

Of Fights and Fighting

The day the sky fell, they called it later, no help from, no thanks to, no need for Chicken Little; all of us chicken. Or the day it rained bullets, some said, a nice image if you think about it. Or the day Vicki peed in her pants, Geo. used to say, ever delicate.
Actually, the whole sky didn’t fall; only some of it, in the northeast, and not exactly the sky – some bullets and other stuff, including a leg and, someone said, fingers. The explosion itself was so far off by the time it got to us it wasn’t much more than a muffled pop; that’s the way the whole thing went, in fact, just a series of pops high up in the blue bell of late summer air.

But, yes, Vicki was, briefly, incontinent.

It was after Labor Day so the crowds were gone – just a few stay-laters trying to stretch summer. And a good thing, too; when the stuff started falling all over and you didn’t hear anything until it hit. Then you heard a crunch or a smack and looked up and ducked down in the same moment of heartstop, the realization you could have been hit but weren’t but might catch the next one all blowing at once inside your head, and your heart stopped, awaiting orders. A lot of people, when they realized what was happening, ran right indoors and locked the windows, but some of the stuff fell right through the roof. I mean, there were chunks of metal that weighed maybe a hundred pounds and they fell down over three miles. They hit pretty good.

I don’t know why more of the bullets don’t go off. Both planes were carrying full loads, going target-shooting out over the ocean. I looked at the bullets later and wondered what it might have been like if the planes had been on bombing practice. They did that, too, out over our ocean; you never know when another war’s going to sneak up on you.

from CHAPTER ELEVEN

Harry Has a Picnic

The whore’s picnic of Brownsville was Harry the First’s idea. Pepe went along with it: saved wear and tear on the bedsprings and he got extra money for renting the cars and doing the driving. Pepe had a lot of respect for Harry, who kept things in order. That’s important for a whoremaster.

Harry called Pepe “Pee-pee” because he was small. My memory of him is bones over which had been thrown a wet skin that dried tight and stretched over extrusions of elbow and ankle, clavicle and tarsal. Between these extrusions the skin was pocked like a lemon, but over the knobs it was parchment smooth. His hair peaked out and down his forehead and he had long hairs wrapping his arms and legs, but none on his face. He ran the girls with seeming indifference but they were really barrel-bottoms, even for the Texas coast, and they depended on Pepe completely.

Harry organized everything. He had Limey put away some baby oil with iodine for the sun and flip-flops for the sand. He got some clean blankets from the laundry locker and had them steam-hosed down. “I don’t wanna catch anything from the goddamn blankets.” He had Cookie make up lunches. “No mayonnaise; a half-hour in that sun and all you do is shit.” cookie protested. “What’ll I wet ’em with?” Harry pondered. “Forget sandwiches. We’ll take sausage and beer. And apples. And cunt.” He also got a bottle of disinfectant and swabs. “Goddamn do it right.”

I don’t know why Harry decided to have a picnic. There are several possibilities: Harry the First always liked to be doing something else; Harry the First liked sunshine and open air; Harry the First assumed we liked sunshine and open air; Harry the First thought the whores needed sunshine and open air.

Maybe all of these were true. There were other considerations, too: he did not realize what might happen in the sunshine and open air with beer and sausage and cunt; he realized what might happen and didn’t care; he realized what might happen and that’s why he did it.

Pepe drove an old Buick Special with three holes on each side, and he had a Ford station wagon which had no motor that he towed behind the Buick. The Ford was hollowed out inside – seats, steering wheel, the works – so all the girls fit into it. They were mostly Mexican or mix-Mex, dark hair wound tightly around their heads or rolling off it and many bright but over-washed pieces of clothing. To them we were all “tanks.” We rode in the Buick and on top of the wagon. Pepe drove the Buick, crouched behind the wheel with his chin on the horn button, looking up through the wheel to see out the windshield and stretching for the pedals. His hands on the wheel were about even with his ears. Harry rode beside him, shouting directions. In the wagon behind, the whores were gossiping in sing-song Spanish. On top of the wagon Billy got seasick and Gunner decided to ride in with the whores. By the time we got there he had already been massaged and he slept through the rest of the picnic. “You can’t get the clap from a hand job,” he said.

from CHAPTER 21

And of course it was Billy who hit our storm first. The morning had come suddenly. The sea was smooth and did not move, and the ship trailing its wake was like a running sore on its hide. The sea and the sky were one. It was night, then it was day. Morning, no dawn. The storm came the same way.

Billy was topside to empty the buckets of kerosene slops, our wipings, over the taff-rail. He did this every morning while I checked the engine room for what-else-needs-doing. When the roll came I went topside, too, to look. It was my first real storm.

And there was Billy. Life lines had already been strung from the door by the galley to the taff-rail, and around the catwalks to the main decks. Billy was inching along the line, not looking up, and dragging that bucket of slops. I went to open the door to tell him to forget it and get back inside. But he was almost there and I thought, what the hell. I was watching the storm. I was watching the sea that had not moved now do nothing but move. It didn’t seem that unusual. There were no waves as big as mountains. The ship seemed a blockhouse, sturdy, and safe in a raid. A castle in a siege. But Billy was still outside the walls.

He was at the end of the rope, leaning against the rail. I think he was enjoying it. He put down the bucket. He let go of the line and held the rail, tightly, but looking all about at the rising and falling and moving sea. He was looking like that when the wave as big as a mountain did come. Right out of the bottom of the sea. I felt the front end of the ship rise and push me against the glass hole in the door. Now, I thought. Then I thought, Billy will get it. He better come in. I looked and saw only water against the glass. The end of the ship settled again, slowly, and I saw the wave as big as a mountain fade behind, the slop bucket sitting on top like a crown, and water streaming off the deck as the prop came out of the water and shook the ship until I thought the plates would rattle. And I looked and saw Billy, hat gone, shirt half ripped, wet and wet and wet, and hanging fast to the rail. And I laughed, laughed opening the door, laughed going out to pry his hands free, laughed half-carrying him back, and couldn’t stop until he looked up at me with the light-eye of a man finding God the lifeguard. He didn’t say a thing. Didn’t even change his clothes. Just went below to start work. But he didn’t go topside again, even to eat, until the storm left. And that was a day. It left with the day.

All contents copyright by Larry Savadove