The Ordinary Seaman (4 page)

The Island of Skyscrapers and lights in the sky like fireflies before dusk and the behemoth bridges hanging in a sudden openness of ocean and sky. Tugs, barges, traffic streaming alongside the river. A gleaming white freighter berthed by a neat row of rectangular, blue warehouses down there, but that wasn’t where they were going: the expressway bent downwards and away, soon pulling them through an endless row of iron girders supporting traffic overhead, the van filling with shadows. Industrial buildings, a row of narrow, dilapidated houses, a gasoline station, a pink sign with the black silhouette of a naked woman kneeling like a mermaid, hands clasped behind her head. Morenos in sleeveless T-shirts and hats on a corner, children on bicycles; a long row of dull brown brick buildings, trees growing between them. They turned down a street lined with immense old brick warehouses. They drove along the long brick marine terminal yard wall.

El Pelos handed an envelope to a uniformed man in a booth, who waved them through, into the stilled complexity of the port. Here and there masts, derricks, and the bristling tops of monumental ships’ superstructures protruded over the roofs of numbered terminal buildings. Motionless cargo cranes against the sky. Parked truck cabs. Sheds and warehouses with aluminum siding. A man driving an empty forklift out from behind a long row of containers. It was Sunday evening;
perhaps that was why there didn’t seem to be much going on. But El Pelos kept on driving for a surprisingly long time, deep into what seemed to be a deserted and apparently defunct end of the port, where the buildings were much older, abandoned looking, made of crumbling brick and concrete. Sandy wastes of weeds and built-up earthworks suddenly opening on a patch of beachfront fronting a long, broken pier. A smashed, hollowed-out car chassis in a rubble-filled lot. They passed a small, listing old freighter apparently resting in eternal dry dock inside a fenced in, overgrown, scraggly-treed yard, leafy squirrel nests in the conning tower and a squat black dog barking at them from the bridge, an inner tube hung with rope from a bridge wing. An elephantine warehouse built of tattered gray wood, an emptiness of darkening sky and water glowing like a movie screen through huge, gaping doorways.

Esteban was conscious of Bernardo’s breathing next to him in the now quieted van, his emphatic, almost rhythmic exhalations. They came to a pothole-ripped parking lot partially enclosed by brick wall, a rusted chicken-wire fence lying on its side all the way across it like the undulating spine of a long-dead dragon. At the far end was a cluster of sheds and low buildings with smashed and boarded-up windows, a ruin that looked like a row of concrete-encased rolls of toilet paper that had been pounded down with a giant sledgehammer, and in front, a tall, concrete, rectangular structure—an old grain elevator—towering against the bands of coloring sky low on the horizon behind it: “Ve? Ahí está, el Watchtower,” said the twittering electrician, but now no one laughed. They drove over a flattened portion of the fence and around the front of the grain elevator and onto a paved finger pier with a freighter berthed on one side, blocking most of the covelike basin from view.

The crew got out of the van and stood on the pier with their suitcases, looking up at the darkened and silent ship looming over them like a cold canyon wall, breathing the familiar stench of stagnant waterfront rot. The immense, rust-smeared hull seemed suffused with an almost lavender glow against the hot dusk’s powdery blue sky streaked crimson and orange. Around Esteban his crewmates’ faces all seemed to be glowing too, their eyes and teeth, their short-sleeved shirts and white guayaberas.

El Pelos had stayed in the van’s driver’s seat, his long, hairy legs protruding from the open door, smoking and listening to rock music on the radio. They were waiting for el Capitán.

“Bueno, es un barquito, no?” said Tomaso Tostado after a moment, sounding quietly elated, his gold tooth flashing. Some brought out cigarettes and passed them around, smiling. Well, it
is
a ship, thought Esteban, surprised he felt so relieved to have arrived, at the end of this long day, to at least this certainty of a ship. He held cigarette smoke inside himself and looked up at the ship, feeling tired and satisfied. He slapped a mosquito away. A perfectly regular-looking ship, sturdy and capable, and he was going to work on it. Who cared that it was berthed in the middle of desolation? What difference would that make in a few days, when they’d be out to sea?

It may have been a modest-size freighter by modern standards, 400 feet long, floating well above its load lines, but it looked enormous to Esteban. Three derrick-rigged King masts protruding over the long main deck.
Urus
painted high up on the prow against a dark smear covering up what must have been its previous name;
Urus, Panama City
on the stern. But there were no lights onboard; everything looked painted with shadows. The deckhouse, whitish, speckled with dark gashes, was back near the stern; two rows of black portholes visible beneath the bridge and wing; a smokestack. The ship’s ladder was up. Water rustled heavily against ship and pier, slapped pilings. The heat still held itself over everything like someone at the very end of holding his breath.

Then Esteban heard Bernardo whispering in his ear that the ship was nothing but a broken eggshell, chavalo. Esteban stared straight ahead into the iron hull. What made the viejo think of an eggshell?

“No lights,” whispered Bernardo. “No electricity. It’s a broken eggshell, chavalo.”

Esteban looked at him: Bernardo was holding his cigarette between two fingers as if it were some fine Cuban cigar, seemingly studying it even as he said, “The mooring lines don’t even have rat guards, ve?”

It was nearly dark when a car, headlights on like cat’s eyes, came around the grain elevator and onto the pier. A sleek black Mazda. El Capitán, pues. They could see the back of his head inside the car, a strikingly oblong head with small, close ears. The door opened, and the man who unfolded himself from the driver’s seat was so tall, skinny, and angular he looked like an elongated shadow of himself rising on a wall. His head was shaved nearly bald; he wore neat jeans, a black belt, and a white T-shirt, shiny black rubber-soled shoes. He stepped back and gently closed the door, turned and looked at them with tender sheep’s eyes. In his thirties, probably. A high forehead and a prominent nose and small, thin lips puckered as if they were scornfully kneading a mouthful of thread even as he looked them over with his spurned lover’s eyes. He looks like a priest, thought Esteban. Some young Spanish Jesuit who shaved his beard off yesterday.

“Hola, bienvenido,” called out el Capitán. “Espero que no fue demasiado cansado el viaje.” His voice had a youthful, slightly querulous timbre. He stood with one hand thrust straight down into his front pocket, elbow tucked against his side. Then he said, “Momento,” and walked slowly over to the van, one long arm loosely dangling. Well, he speaks Spanish anyway. He wasn’t what Esteban had imagined a capitán would look like, but he seemed formidable enough, no? A certain gravity. Educated seeming. Carries himself well enough. Esteban glanced at Bernardo—was the viejo going to call el Capitán chavalo and cipote too? But Bernardo was staring up at the shadowy deck, his expression rapt and sardonic, lower lip curled. Poor viejito, thought Esteban, he’s let all his frantic good hope collapse over nothing because he’s so used to everything always going wrong, all that grateful mierda about good luck just a desperate hoax.

El Pelos had turned his radio off and sat listening, mouth open, to el Capitán. And then el Capitán pulled his wallet from his back pocket and paid Pelos without counting the bills and slid the wallet back into his pocket just like that. Esteban liked the way el Capitán pushed the door closed for Pelos and then stepped back, watching as Pelos started
the van and lifted his hand in a wave—el Capitán merely nodded—and backed off the pier, waving again at the crew as he went past, his pallid face looking swollen and ghostly.

There was someone onboard, maybe that was what Bernardo had been watching. They heard a sudden clanking and, looking way up, saw that a man in white pants and untucked shirt had just stepped out through the gangway, onto the still-raised aluminum accommodation ladder running parallel to the bulwark and rail. The man walked out along the ladder’s length almost like a tightrope walker, with careful, emphatic steps, his weight slowly sinking it. But when he reached the end of the ladder, he was still high above the pier, the ladder only slightly slanted downwards—then they heard him laugh; it must have been a laugh, but it sounded like some faraway bird squawk or monkey shriek, coming from up there in the dark. Clasping both railings, the man on the ladder bent at the knees and began vigorously jolting himself up and down, over and over, stomping-jerking the ladder down in an uproar of quaking aluminum, screeching hinges and winch cables, stomping it all the way down until the bottom step was just a foot above the pier. They could see him clearly now—black, curly hair, big smile, lively eyes, about the same age as el Capitán. He kicked at the platform folded up against the ladder’s railing until it was horizontal, but instead of stepping down onto it, the man glanced at the crew on the pier and called something out to them in English and then started immediately back up the ladder. What had he said?—they were words Esteban knew, it had sounded as if he’d said,
I love
and then something else … not
you,
it couldn’t have been
you,
some other word, no?
I love you?
It had been some other word. Watching the man hurry back up the ladder, Esteban suddenly saw a dog, eyes glinting through the dark, crouched as if frozen in midyawn-stretch near the top, forepaws extended down over two steps.

When the crew carried their luggage up on deck, the grinning man was waiting for them, and the dog, a German shepherd, was standing by his leg, the second German shepherd Esteban had seen that day. For the second time that day Esteban was suddenly and sickeningly reminded of Ana, the East German tracking dog his company had spent
an experimental few days following through the jungles of the Río Coco region along the Honduran border; Ana had led a point squad right into a fatal ambush and had just had the time to tear out an already wounded contra’s throat before being torn apart by bullets herself. Though the German shepherd at Miami Airport, leashed to a uniformed officer, padding around the baggage carousels sniffing, as if with feigned nonchalance, at everyone’s luggage, had seemed much more Ana-like. This German shepherd stood panting loudly, long tongue hanging down, dripping silvery filaments of drool into a puddle between its paws.

The curly haired man was shorter, paler, and stockier than el Capitán, with a full mouth, a short neck, and restless, sharp, brightly dark eyes. His pants were baggy, frayed at the hems over dirty white sneakers, his untucked, short-sleeved shirt mostly unbuttoned over his hairless chest. He held a long, yellow-rubber-encased flashlight in two hands in front of his waist.

El Capitán introduced him as Mark, el primero oficial, or first mate. Then el Capitán did a strange thing; he told them the dog’s name before he’d told them his own: Miracle, which he even translated, milagro. Mark stood smiling at them, his eyes beaming cheerfully.

“Y yo me llamo Elias,” said el Capitán. “Y soy tu capitán.”

Probably Greek, thought Bernardo bitterly. Claro. Scavengers and perverts of all the oceans. The crew stood in a group by the portside rail, backs to the collapsed skeletons of piers and smashed terminals, Capitán Elias, el primero Mark, and Miracle facing them from the gap between plank-battened holds. There were no lights; ship and cove were like a blacked out city, the deck a long expanse of, to Esteban, mainly indistinguishable shapes.

“Be very careful where you walk, muchachos,” Capitán Elias said, leading them across the beam. He was so tall, skinny, and erect that in the darkness he looked a part of the ship itself, a long piece of spar that had detached itself and come to life. “There are still some unrepaired spots on deck you can fall through, all the way down to where we won’t even be able to hear you calling for help,” he said, and for the first time, he laughed, a brief, low titter rising from his chest, fluttering out through his teeth.

Behind the stern, past the grain elevator, and over the port, looking much closer than they could possibly be, Manhattan’s clustered skyscrapers glowed, giant rectangles of refrigerated light in the hot sky.

Capitán Elias said, “I’m afraid I have to apologize about the lack of lights and plumbing.” There’d been, he said, an accident when the ship, purchased by its new owner, was en route to Brooklyn from a place called New Brunswick, in Canada. A small explosion in the crankcase, causing a fuel line fracture, sprayed fuel, hitting a hot exhaust pipe, which had started a fire. Capitán Elias said the fire had done a
wonderful
job on the ship’s electrical wiring and cables. The cables and wiring were connected to the ship’s generators, which were connected to the switchboard, which distributed power to the ship’s circuit breakers, radar, winch controls, steering gear, plumbing, ventilation, to the hydraulic pumps driving the diesel engine and everything else, nearly all of which, he said, was perfectly shipshape otherwise. So it wasn’t really as bad as it sounded. They were still waiting for some spare parts, new circuit breakers, due to arrive any day now from Japan, isn’t that right, Mark? In other words, hombres, until the wiring was repaired and the ship was brought up to class and could be newly insured, they would be delayed in port. Lots of deck work to be done too, rust removal, painting, welding, nothing out of the ordinary, it wouldn’t take long.

Capitán Elias spoke in a calm, straightforward way, explaining everything meticulously, a man who wore his authority lightly, who wanted to be trusted rather than feared—he reminded Esteban of a certain kind of army officer soldiers trust because they know he’s careful, telling them what they need to know instead of trying to inspire them with noisy heroics. But Bernardo was aghast, couldn’t believe his ears, because he’d detected a clipped, subdued echo of Capitán J. P. Osbourne’s British accent in Elias’s perfect nautical Spanish, of a jovial but restrained condescension that inspires respect and obedience rather than resentment—unlike the cynical disdain of Greeks, their boorish capitanes no better than truck drivers. Impossible that this skinny gargoyle dressed like an adolescent could be an English shipmaster! It must be a trick, a nostalgic hallucination summoned by the billowing dread
fogging his eyes and ears … But in the coming weeks the rest of the crew would realize that Capitán Elias spoke the way he did, saying “Nicara-goo-wah” and “Mana-goo-wah,” because his accent
was
British, though tempered by years of living amidst other languages and accents; and his Spanish, especially when he was excited, they would notice, was often peppered with odd bits of slang, mainly Mexican, though soon el Capitán would be adopting theirs’ too.
Güey
was a word he would use a lot.
Way-y-y.
“Pinche güeyes.” José Mateo, the cook, would say that he’d often heard younger Mexican seamen use that word, which usually didn’t seem to mean anything more particular than “you” or “you guys,” though sometimes el Capitán would also say, “Don’t be such
a güey.”