Squalor and filth! Even though he was seventeen, just out of high school, he had had sense enough to take good care of his young wife. It was none of his doing that everything went wrong; Edna, at sixteen, was a wild little cuss. That night at the garage when the hospital called and informed him his wife had been seriously injured in an automobile accident near the New York-Vermont state line . . . was it his fault she went on drunken parties with a bunch of high school kids while he worked his hide off in Charley’s garage? Mangled in a smashup with the baby five months along. And the crowning glory of all! . . . her family had her taken to a swanky hospital in New York and that old sonofabitch of an uncle of hers breezing up to the house and starting to raise a row. Charley just pushed him out the door and told him to go run up a tree.
Wesley glanced fondly toward his father who stood shaking a mixer and talking with the customers. Charley Martin, the greatest dad a guy ever had! He pushed Edna’s old sonofabitch of an uncle out the door and told him to go run up a tree while Ma bawled and he had sat in the big chair, crushed and stunned by the accident, by the false accusals, by everything. Charley was the guy who pulled him through that one . . .
Ten years. He had worked a few extra weeks in the garage, crawling around in a trance, until Edna’s first letters began to come from the New York hospital. She would recover and they would start all over again, she still loved him so much, she missed him, why didn’t he come down to see her? Sure!—her rich folks would have loved that. Sure!—she loved him, she loved him so much she went wolfing around with high school kids while he worked in the garage nights.
Bah! He had done the right thing by just blowing. In the middle of the night, he had gotten up and walked through the streets, where the dark swishing summer trees seemed to be singing him a farewell song, and he had hopped the freight for Albany. That had been the start of it—ten years of wandering; Canada, Mexico, forty-three states, jobs in garages, lunchcarts, construction gangs, Florida hotels, truck driving in George, barkeep in New Orleans, spare hand around racing stables, going West with the big circus, touting at Santa Anita, bookie in Salem, Oregon, and finally shipping out on his first cruise from San Francisco. Then it had been those lazy days in the Pacific, around the Horn, all over the whole shooting match, from Japan to Dutch Guiana. Ten years . . . Meeting up with guys like Nick Meade and rioting for the poor Indian stiffs in Calcutta; getting jailed in Shanghai for following Nick around—he was the Communist, all right . . . but he himself had done it for a good time and general principles where Nick believe in it; well, Wesley Martin would just as soon believe in nothing if it meant all the Goddamned fuss he’d been through; Nick was a good kid, he’d fought for the poor Spanish stiff and got lead for it; for his own taste, just going to sea was enough, was everything, to hell with riots and drinking and marriage and the whole shooting match. It was a matter of not giving a hoot in hell—the sea was enough, was everything. Just let him alone, he would go to sea and be in a world to his liking, a just, reasonable, and sensible world where a guy could mind his own business and do his equal share of the work.
And so what the hell was she after now? He’d seen her once before, in a New York night club, but she missed him when he beat it. To hell with her! He was through with the beach and anything connected with it . . .
Wesley refilled his glass, drank down, refilled it again, and drank down a second time. He would be so soused when she arrived he wouldn’t recognize her . . . what did she look like now? Shuckall! . . . he was pretty drunk already. Maybe she looked like an old hag now, a half-smooched debutante with cocktail rings around her eyes. In that New York night club, she’d looked a bit older, of course, but she still had the same figure, the same eager laugh . . . she was with a tall blond guy who kept fixing his black tie all the time: that was five years ago.
Wesley turned around and glanced toward the screen-door entrance . . . was she really coming? Had she really been waiting two months for him in Boston?
Wesley poured himself another drink; the quart was almost empty, so he refilled his two comrades’ glasses—they were now discussing music—and emptied the bottle altogether of its contents; once more, he felt like smashing the empty bottle, as he had always done to this symbol of futility—after each surrender to its unfulfilled promises. He would like to smash it against all of the bottles in his father’s bar and then pay him for the damage—perhaps he should have done just that in New York when he had eight hundred dollars, he should have gone down to the gayest bar in the city and smashed all the bottles, mirrors, and chandeliers, all the tables and trays and . . .
“Wesley?”
Wesley’s heart leaped; his father, down at the end of the bar, was staring at the person behind him who had spoken. It was Edna . . . it was her voice.
Wesley turned slowly. A girl was standing behind him, a pale girl in a dark brown summer suit; a scar ran from her forehead down to her left eyebrow. She was a woman, a full-grown woman and not the little Eddy he had married . . . ten years ago . . . no, it was another woman.
Wesley could say nothing—he gazed into the searching blue eyes.
“It is Wesley!” she said, half to herself.
Wesley couldn’t think of anything to say; he sat, head turned around, gazing dumfoundedly at her.
“Aren’t you going to say hello?”
“You’re Edna,” he mumbled hypnotically.
“Yes!”
Wesley disengaged himself slowly from the bar stool and stood facing the girl, still holding the empty quart bottle. His hands were trembling. He could not tear his astonished gaze from her face.
“How have you been, Wesley?” she asked, straining to be formal as best she could.
Wesley said nothing for a few seconds, his eyes wide with stupefaction; he swayed slightly on his feet.
“Me?” he whispered.
The girl moved her feet nervously.
“Yes, how have you been?” she repeated.
Wesley glanced quickly toward Bill Everhart and Nick Meade, but they were so engrossed in their discourses, and so drunk, they hadn’t even noticed the presence of the girl. His father was watching from the other end of the bar, frowning his bushy white eyebrows together in what seemed to Wesley an expression of embarrassed anxiety.
Wesley turned to the girl.
“I’m fine,” he managed to stammer.
They were silent, facing each other uncertainly in the middle of the sawdust floor.
“Please,” said Edna at length, “will you . . . would you care to . . . take me outside?”
Wesley nodded slowly. As they walked out, he stubbed his toe and almost fell—he was drunker than he had figured—drunk as hell.
They were out on the sea-smelling night street; an elevated roared a few blocks down, fading in the distance. The music and a rush of warm beer wind emptied into the night from the tavern.
“Let’s walk,” suggested Edna. “you’re not feeling too well.”
Wesley found himself strolling down a side street with Edna, her brown hair glistening beneath the lamps, her heels clicking primly in the soft silence.
“I’ll be damned!” he muttered.
“Yes?”
“I’ll be damned.”
Suddenly Edna laughed, the same eager little laugh he had almost forgotten.
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked brightly.
Wesley realized he was still holding the empty quart, but he only studied it foolishly.
“What will people think?” laughed Edna. “A man and a woman walking down the street with a whisky bottle!”
He placed the bottle in his other hand and said nothing.
“Here, let me put it down,” said Edna. She put her hand over his and gently took the bottle . . . her touch startled him. She placed it carefully in the gutter as he gazed down at her stooped figure. When she straightened up, she was standing very close [to] him.
Wesley felt suddenly very drunk—the pavement began to slide from beneath h
im.
“You’re going to fall!” she cried, clutching his arm. “My God, how much did you drink?”
He put his hand to his brow and realized he was streaming with cold perspiration. His jaw was trembling.
“You’re sick,” cried Edna anxiously.
“I drunk quick,” grunted Wesley.
Edna dragged his shuffling figure to a doorstep: “Sit down here.” He dropped heavily and put his hands to his face; she sat down beside him quietly and began to stroke his hair with strange, tender fingers.
They said nothing for a good many minutes while Wesley kept his hands to his face. He heard an auto roll by.
Then she spoke.
“You’ve been going to sea?”
“Yeah.”
“I wrote to your brother years ago and he told me. He’s married now.”
“Yeah.”
“He told me your father had opened a business in Boston and that you went to see him once in a while.”
Silence.
“Wesley, I’ve been looking for you ever since. . .”
He shot a quick glance in the other direction and then resumed a fixed study of the warehouse across the dark street.
“You never left a trace, not even in the Union hall. I wrote you many etters . . . did you receive them?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?”
“I never bothered to ask,” he muttered.
“Why you must have dozens of letters waiting for you in the New York hall.”
He was silent.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“A little fresh air. . . .”
A cat prowled by, a lean rangy cat. Wesley remembered the little kitten he had found on Broadway a few nights before, this cat was older, more abused, hardened, starved: he was not helpless . . . like the kitten.
“Do you want to know why I’ve been looking for you?” Edna suddenly asked.
Wesley turned his dark eyes on her: “Why?”
Before he knew what had happened, her lips were pressed against his mouth, her arm had clasped around his neck. Dimly, he recognized the taste of her mouth, a fragrant tang that swooned his senses with a recollection of things he had not known for eras in his life, and which now returned to him in a tremulous wave of loss. It was Eddy again! . . . it was 1932 again! . . . it was Bennington again, and the swishing trees outside their bedroom window again, and the mild Spring breeze sighing into the garage again, and a youth in love again!
“I still love you, Wes, and you know damned well I always will!” she was whispering huskily, angrily in his ear.
Her husky whisper again! The sun, the songs again!
“I do! I do, Wes!” her savage whisper was saying.
Wesley clutched her yielding shoulder and kissed her. What was this ghost returning from the hollow corridors of time? Was this little Eddy, beautiful little Eddy he had taken for his wife in another time, the ill-starred little tourists’ daughter he had met at a summer dance and loved on the shores of his boyhood pond, on the sands beneath a long ago moon—a strange, secret, happy moon?
Her lips were fragrant, moving; he tore his mouth away and sank it in the cool waves of her hair. The same sweet hair! The same sweet hair!
Edna was weeping . . . the tears were rolling down the back of Wesley’s hand. He turned up her face and gazed at it in the somber darkness, a pale visage gemmed with tears, a strange face that tore his heart with a tragic, irrefragable sense of change. This was not she! Once more she had drawn his face to hers; a wet mouth was kissing his chin. His cheek, pressed against her feverish brow, could feel a dull throbbing in the furrow of her scar. Who was this woman?
A deep ache sank into Wesley’s breast, an intolerable ache that crept to his throat. It was Eddy of course! She had weaved back into that part of him that was still young, and now she stunned that part of him that was old, she stole into it, a stranger haunting his life. He jumped to his feet with an angry cry; half snarl, half sob.
“What the hell do you want?” he quavered.
“You!” she sobbed.
He put his hand to his eyes.
“Don’t give me that!” he cried.
She was sobbing on the steps, alone. Wesley took out his cigarettes and tried to extract one from the deck. He couldn’t. He flung the pack away.
“I want you!” she wailed.
“Go back to your rich boyfriends!” he snarled. “They got everything. I ain’t got nothing. I’m a seaman.”
Edna looked up angrily: “You fool!”
Wesley didn’t move.
“I don’t want them, I want you!” cried Edna. “I’ve had dozens of proposals . . . I waited for you!”
Wesley was silent.
“I’m glad you’re a seaman! I’m proud!” Edna cried. “I don’t want anybody but you—you’re my husband!”
Wesley wheeled around; “I’m not stoppin’ you—get a divorce!”
“I don’t want a divorce, I love you!” she cried desperately.
Wesley looked down and saw the empty quart bottle at his feet. He picked it up and hurled it away; it shattered explosively against the warehouse wall across the street, popping like a light bulb. Edna screamed sobbingly.
“That’s what I think about the whole thing!” shouted Wesley.
A window opened above, a woman in a sleeping gown thrusting her head out adamantly: “What’s going on down there?” she shrilled suspiciously.
Wesley wheeled about and faced up.
“Close that Goddamned window before I pop it!” he howled at the lady.
She shrieked and disappeared.
“I’m goin’ to call the police!” threatened another voice from a newly opened window.
“Call ’em, you old tub!” shouted Wesley. “Call out the Marines . . .”
“Oh Wes you’ll be arrested!” Edna was pleading in his ear. “Let’s get away from here!”
“I don’t give a hootin’ hollerin’ hell!” he cried, addressing the whole street in general.
“Wesley!” pleaded Edna. “Please! You’ll be arrested . . . They’ll call the police!”
He spun toward her: “What do you care?”
Edna clutched his shoulders firmly and spoke directly in his face: “I do care.”
Wesley tried to free himself from her grasp.
“It’s too late!” he snarled. “Let me go!”
“It’s not too late,” she persisted. “We can make it just the same again . . .”
Wesley shook his head savagely as though he were trying to rid himself of confusions.
“Can’t! Can’t!” he quavered. “I know!”
“Can!” hissed Edna.
“No!” he shouted again. “I’m not that same anymore . . . I changed!”
“I don’t care!”
Wesley was still shaking his head.
“Please, Wes, let’s go away from here,” Edna cried, her voice breaking in a voluptuous sob.
“Can’t!” he repeated.
“Oh you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing,” wailed Edna. “Please, please come away . . .”
All along the street, windows were open and people were jeering down at them. When the police car rounded the corner, a man called: “Jail the bums!” and all his neighbors took up the cry as the car pulled up below.
CHAPTER SIX
When Everhart awoke the next day, the first thing he was conscious of was a weird song being chanted from somewhere above. Then he opened his eyes and saw the white steel plates. Of course! . . . The S.S. Westminster: he had signed on a ship. But what of the song?
Everhart vaulted down from the bunk, clad simply in his shorts, and poked his head out of the porthole. It was a hot, hazy day, the sun bearing down in shimmering rays on the mellifluous waters of a steaming harbor.
Bill peered up but could see nothing save the sweeping bulge of the ship’s hull and the underside of a lifeboat. The strange singer was still chanting, per
haps from the next deck, chanting, it seemed to Bill, a song of the Far East—yet definitely not Chinese.
Bill pulled his head in and groaned: he had a big head from drinking too much and arguing too much with Meade the night before. He turned to Eathington, who lay reading the Sunday funnies in his bunk.
“Haven’t you a hangover from last night?” asked Bill with a trace of hopeful anticipation.
“Nah.”
“Who the hell is singing upstairs? It makes my flesh creep . . .”
“Up above,” corrected Eathington.
“Well who is it?”
Eathington folded his paper back: “The third cook.”
“Tell me, haven’t you a headache? You were with us last night!” persisted Bill.
“Nah.”
“Who is the third cook? Is he Korean? Burmese?”
“He’s a Moro,” corrected Eathington. “When he gets mad he throws knives. A Moro tribesman.”
“Throws knives? I don’t believe it!”
“Just wait,” observed the young seaman. “He’s a Moro from the Philippines. They go around with knives between their teeth.” And with this, he went back to his Sunday comics.
Bill dressed leisurely. He went back to the porthole and watched the seagulls swoop above the wharves. The water beneath the dock piles lapped quietly against the cool, mossy timbers. From somewhere in the ship, deep in its vaulted structure, he heard the muffled idling boom of a great engine.
He went down the cool gangway, acrid with the smell of fresh paint, and climbed up to the poop deck. Several seamen were calmly reading the Sunday papers in the shade. The deck was littered with newspapers, great coiled cables of hemp, pillows, abandoned folding chairs, cans of paint, and two or three empty liquor bottles. He knew none of the seamen.
He walked forward along the deck, marveling at the sweep of its superstructure curving toward the bow in a massive coordination of timber. At the bow, he peered down the side at the oily waters far below. Directly beneath him hung a gigantic anchor, drawn to the side of the ship by a super chain leading through an opening in the port bow. The seamen, thought Bill with a smile, were prone to call this huge mass of steel “The hook.”