Middle Passage, page 9
Cringle could not reply. This list of problems stole the mate’s wind. He looked flustered and put out, his lips pressed in hard. Like that, he spun away. Me, I had business of my own to tend to in the galley, and perforce hurried below, Baleka hanging onto my dripping shirttails like a barge in tow.
By nightfall Squibb and I had the galley in “shipshape,” if you’ll pardon the expression. The steward was feeling pleased with himself. Actually, he was probably squiffy from the genial influence of a tot of rum. Baleka had finally fallen to sleep in a corner, and the cook and I were on our knees, swabbing and squeegeeing when McGaffin, peeling off his oilskin coat, came through the hatch, followed by Cringle and five men as grim as any I’d seen, the terror of the storm still upon them. I saw their boots first as they slid past me, dirtying the floor. Silently, they took seats on the benches as a jury might, or men come for a hanging. I noticed immediately they were armed with cutlasses, knives, ship’s tools easy to convert to bludgeons. McGaffin sat on the edge of the galley dresser, a little higher that way than the rest, his big hands with curly black hair on the backs folded on his hips. Cringle closed the door, the quietest of clicks as wood kissed metal. Squibb dried his hands slowly on his apron, rose up on one knee, then the other, and gave me a glance, his whole air saying Careful! as he filled a mug of tea for each of them. “Illinois, I think mebbe yuh should leave.”
“No,” said Cringle. “We need every man we have here.”
“Do we now?” McGaffin paused with the mug just below his mouth. “Every man, I’ll agree, but this one ain’t no sailor, he’s a stowaway, remember? A workaway. I been watchin’ him since you found him in the longboat. I didn’t see him sign any articles. He ain’t got no stake in all this.”
“In what?” I asked.
“The ship, boy! You come along fer the ride, I reckon. But after you’ve gone back to farmin’ or fogle-huntin’, the rest of us got to think about our future and families, God love ’em, if we live to see land again, which I’m startin’ to doubt more ’n’ more every day.” He set his mug down. “You got a family?”
I thought of my brother and said, “No.”
“You got a gel?”
I thought of Isadora and said nothing.
“See, then? It don’t matter wot happens to you, does it?”
Right then, Cringle’s hand cutting through the air for McGaffin to stop made the candles affixed to the wall behind him flicker, casting his own face in shadow. He coughed, clearing his throat, and said, “Rutherford, we’re here to decide the best way to put this ship back on a steady course. A crew has to trust its captain. Those of us here don’t. We think it’s time to change leadership.”
“You mean mutiny?”
“I didn’t call it that.”
McGaffin frowned. “That bother you?”
Their eyes, full of hardness, bit into and held me to see if it did; stares aimed like shotguns, gazes so steady and critical I felt as if I were on stage or had the square frame of an oil painting around me. To my left, firewood crackled in Squibb’s oven, splashing an eerie coralline light on their faces, and a peculiar warmth on my legs, for my clothes were still damp, except there on my trouser legs, where the heat made the cloth stiff. All this time I stood motionless, unsure what to say. Silence, never doubt it, was equally a sin in their eyes—eyes I had seen before, I realized, under the sun-blackened brows of slaves: men and women who had no more at stake in the fields they worked than these men in the profits of a ship owned by financiers as far away from the dangers at sea as masters from the rows of cotton their bondmen picked. No less than the blacks in the hold these sea-toughened killbucks were chattel. McGaffin’s gaze drifted to my left hand.
“That queer ring he’s wearin’, d’you see it? I only seen one like it afore. It’s on the flipper of the scoundrel who almost sank us this evenin’. You know,” he said to the others, “I think I was wrong. This one ain’t no stowaway, he’s a blinkin’ spy.”
“No! I stole the ring.”
“Oho! Then you hold no brief for Ebenezer Falcon?”
“None at all.”
“You wouldn’t grieve none, or pour ashes on your head if, by some unexpected but nat’ral nautical accident at sea, the Old Man came to a sudden and tragic end?”
“No.”
“Or mebbe”—he leaned forward, touching flame to Kentucky burley in his potbowl pipe—“if you was the cause of that?”
“Hold your tongue,” sighed Cringle. “We must keep our heads. Rutherford is on our side.”
“Yes,” I said quickly. “How can I help?”
“Right, how kin you help? He’s driftwood, this one. A fugitive and a vagabond. He’s got nothin’ to lose. If we poach this ship, you, Mr. Cringle, or Fletcher there, or that bedswerver Josiah who got more wives than a Mormon elder—it’s plain we’ll swing for piracy. The brokers Falcon works for will have us hunted from Chesapeake Bay to the South China Sea. Our wives’ll be widowed. Our sisters, poor darlin’s, will have to go out on the twang to turn a coin. And our wee li’l ones? They’ll be orphaned, I tell you, or sold to the workhouse. But suppose he done it? Suppose we tell ’em a stowaway done in the skipper? Well, what abaht that? Huh? Once we reach New Orleans the rest of us kin sign on to other ships, and Calhoun’ll go his own way, like he’s always done, believin’ in nothin’, belongin’ to nobody, driftin’ here and there and dyin’, probably, in a ditch without so much as leavin’ a mark on the world—or as much of a mark as you get from writin’ on water.”
I said, “Now, just a minute—”
But the others were nodding. One said, “That could work, Mr. Cringle, if you’d take the helm—”
“And,” said another, “maybe the captain’s share of the cargo’d be spread amongst alla us. You could see to that, couldn’t you, sir, seein’ as you’d be captain when we got home?”
“Yes, I’d see to that.” He was rubbing his forehead, breathing deep through his nose. One nostril whistled, clogged by something best left unsaid. He took out his handkerchief, pressed a finger to one side of his nose, and blew. “But what about Calhoun?”
“What abaht him?” said McGaffin.
“Does he get a share?”
“Aye, if he does like I said. It’d prove where his loyalties lie. For once in his life he’d be doin’ somethin’ useful.” He looked sideways at me. “You ever cut a man’s throat, Calhoun?”
“Oh, all the time.”
“Leave him be.” Cringle blew again. “Nothing says we have to harm the captain. I’m not a bold man, but I despise him as much as all of you do. Mutiny”—he turned to the boatswain—“doesn’t bother me either. God knows, to be a Yank is to be mutinous. The goddamn country was born out of rebellion. But, to be fair, Falcon’s carried us this far safely.” He paused bleakly, folding his handkerchief. “That counts for something.”
“Give him a launch, then.” Fletcher stroked his long-chinned face. “I say put the bugger and a few provisions in a gig when we go by an island. Most likely he’ll land on his feet thataway, knowing him.”
“That’s what I was thinkin’ meself,” said a boy in the back, a carpenter’s mate generally quiet who brought this out only after stoking up the courage to speak. Their eyes coming his way made him color. More softly, as if taking back what he’d just said, he added, “Maroon him?”
McGaffin made a contemptuous snort. “Aye, and knowin’ the Old Man, he’ll come through, raise another crew, hoist the Jolly Roger, and track every one of us down. Naw, I don’t like it.”
“But it’s fair,” said Cringle. “At least he’ll have a chance. That much we owe him.”
The boatswain disagreed, but saw each man shift to Cringle’s side. “All right. If that’s how you want it. But I don’t see nobody volunterin’ to put him in that launch.”
Fletcher turned his head away; a few others looked at the floor.
Quietly, a catch in his voice, Squibb said, “There are seven of yuh.”
“Sure, Josiah, and twice as many blokes who’ll take his side, like Meadows, once the shit hits the orlop ceilin’.” McGaffin bent his brows deeply. “You’d have to disarm the bugger first, or draw him away from the rest, get him alone somehow, or when he’s sleepin’. Trouble is, he sleeps light. You all know that. And his cabin’s got more fykes and infernal traps than I seen red men lay down. Naw, he ain’t got this old and ugly and evil by bein’ stupid, not on your life.” For a few moments he sucked his pipe, blowing columns of smoke that collected in layers on the floor at his feet. Then: “Calhoun?”
“What?”
“You nicked that ring, you say?”
“That I did.”
“From where’d you nick it?”
“The Old Man’s cabin.”
There was silence, a collective shock commingled with suspicion, as though maybe they thought I was lying. Which I was. As a general principle and mode of operation during my days as a slave, I always lied, and sometimes just to see the comic results when a listener based his beliefs and behavior on things that were Not. But don’t judge me harshly; it was one of the few forms of entertainment bondmen had. However, if I’d known where this lie would lead, I’d not have said a word.
Cringle leaned forward. “You were inside? You got past all those locks? All those latches?”
“Yessir.” That much at least was true.
“So,” said McGaffin, “if he broached cargo once, he kin do it again. This time, though, let him unload grape from the captain’s guns when he’s out, dampen his powder, disconnect all them security wires, and our lads kin slip in as easy as you please. Mebbe Squibb kin put a li’l somethin’ in his dinner.”
“No.” The cook shook his head. “I believe in what you’re doin’, but don’t ask me that.”
McGaffin spat a string of tobacco onto the floor. “Josiah, you make me sick. You know that?”
“Say what yuh want. I ain’t doin’ it.”
“Half a mo’, guvnuh. Wot day we talkin’ ’bout?” asked Fletcher. “Needs to be soon, I’d say.”
“Tomorrow at six bells,” said McGaffin. “See, we find some bothersome task to keep Falcon aft, somethin’ he’ll need to supervise, like overseein’ the blacks when they’re brought up to give ’em air—he’s allas there fer that—then Calhoun has the time he needs. We kin put Falcon over the side that night. Cringle kin make sure we’re the ones on evenin’ watch tomorrow.”
Fletcher’s lips burst open in a goatish laugh. “Tell the others he fell overboard.”
“Drunk as the parson’s wife, eh?” McGaffin slapped his leg. “I like that. What say you, Mr. Cringle? Are you in this?”
“I’m in. But if Rutherford is caught . . .”
“Aw, he’s a thief,” said McGaffin. “Nobody’ll think nothin’ if he’s caught. It’s his nature to be in places he ain’t supposed to be. Worst come to worst, he’ll get a few stripes, that’s all.”
Cringle’s eyes softened, the most sympathetic I’d seen them in days. Unlike the others, he did not drink, but moved among them with a mug in his hand, so as not to offend, lifting it to his mouth occasionally but never taking a sip. “Can you do it, lad?”
In a narrow room filled with grizzled, desperate sea rovers, all in agreement (and armed), except for Josiah Squibb, standing a little off to one side and behind the others, pulling at his fingers and swinging his head side to side for only me to see—encircled by conspirators such as these with the nerve tips of my index finger throbbing where I’d nervously torn off a nail, I could only do as they wished and say, “ ’Tis done.”
Thus things stood when the meeting ended. Each sailor cut a notch in his thumb, dripped blood into McGaffin’s mug, and drank from this, sealing the bond. Did I sip from this cup? Aye. Once they were gone, their lips and teeth stained crimson, Squibb and I set to fixing mess. We worked in silence. One thing I liked about the cook was that he knew when to shut up even when he was mubblefubbled and dying to talk. Occasionally, I felt his eyes, like fishhooks, try to catch mine as we squeezed past one another in the narrow galley, but he kept his thoughts untongued. Personally, I was too pitchkettled to trust my own speech. My eyes began to sting and steam a little; I wiped a sleeve across them, and kept my back toward Squibb, more than a little ashamed for not standing my ground earlier. But here, let it be said, that in waters strange as these, where any allegiance looked misplaced, I could no longer find my loyalties. All bonds, landside or on ships, between masters and mates, women and men, it struck me, were a lie forged briefly in the name of convenience and just as quickly broken when they no longer served one’s interests. But what were my interests? No question that since my manumission I’d brought a world of grief on myself but, hang it, I wished like hell I had someone to blame—my parents, the Jackson administration, or white people in general—for this new tangle of predicaments.
“Blame for what?” Squibb stared at me.
“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”
“Oh.”
He was very quiet, was Squibb. He finished carefully arranging a plate of fresh prawns, earthapples, and kale he’d bought special for Captain Falcon in Bangalang. No French chef could have better composed the meal to seduce a hungry man’s eye and mind. To my way of thinking, that’s pretty much what you paid for in fancy-dress New Orleans restaurants anyway: a skimpy meal that left you famished hours later but laid out oh so beautifully, as Tintoretto might prepare a still life in eye-catching colors and forms. Added to that, Falcon insisted on the best silver and a freshly lighted candle with his supper. The funny thing was that while he demanded, like the rich, meals served in ever more inventive aesthetic configurations that took the poor steward hours to prepare, the skipper, after a second of appreciation, approached the act of eating like a task, falling to it with silent, single-minded determination, seldom looking up from the table, glopping it down with efficient, steady forklifts that favored a farmer baling hay. In a trice he was finished, sprang up from the table, throwing down his soiled napkin, and was off to see to some shipboard chore.
“Yuh wanna carry this fish ‘n’ tayters over to him?” Squibb wiped his fingers down the front of his apron. “If yuh’re in with them others now, I guess bringin’ his chow’d give yuh a chance to look his cabin over a little. Better wipe that stain off yuh mouth first.”
I took Falcon’s meal and climbed through the hatchway, a clean napkin draped over my forearm. At his door, feeling like a waiter, I rapped three times on wood with my knuckles, the keel and bottom planks beneath me swaying on waves pulsing to the pull of the moon. I heard chair legs scrape on wood. Latches were thrown, a key turned in the lock, and when the door whipped open the Old Man stood before me naked except for his gunbelt and steel-toed boots. Instinctively, I swung my head away and took a step backward.
“Sorry, sir!”
“Don’t stand there, man.” He sniffed at his food. “Bring it in.”
I stayed in the doorway as he went, boat-necked and tattooed over half his body, back to his chart table, his quill, and his logbook. There was meat on this man. It dawned on me, as I waited outside, watching his bare, freckled shoulders hunched over whatever he was writing, that he threw off his habiliments and wrote naked as the newborn for purely literary reasons. I had known a poet in New Orleans who told me he did the same. Rumor had it that Benjamin Franklin was a nudist too. Something to do with inspiration and freeing themselves up. That sort of thing. Naturally, I understood nothing about these matters; I only knew that I had no interest in seeing an empire builder in the raw, and so I stayed in the doorway. Falcon saw my bewilderment, growled something under his breath, a barely audible oath about philistines; then he opened a bureau with swinging brass handles and lifted out a Tyrian robe of Chinese design. He fumbled into it, rolled the sleeves to his elbows, then came tripping back to me.
“Well, now will you come in?” His voice was crisp. “Close and lock the door as you do, Mr. Calhoun.”
I did as he bade me. “I’ve brought your dinner.”
“And a report, I hope.” He uncovered the food I set on his chart table beside a most curious glass container I’d not noticed before. Inside it was a 45-caliber ball flattened on one side. Falcon spread the napkin over his knees, used his fingertips to tweeze a strand of hair off a potato, and handed his fork to me.
“You first, Mr. Calhoun.”
“You want me to eat some?”
“Eat a little of everythin’, if you will.”
Actually, I was happy to oblige. I hurried from one item to another, then back again, trying to stuff myself before the skipper snatched the fork from me and said, “At ease.” He squinted at me for several moments to make sure I didn’t gag or change color or collapse face down on the floor, at last seemed satisfied and sat back, his head bent in prayer, then poured himself coffee. At some time in his childhood, I suspected, he’d learned to drink hot coffee the same way he ate soup, with a spoon, slurping up the black stuff like broth. So he did now; his father’s habit, most likely. In between steaming spoonfuls he asked:
“D’you think I’m overly cautious?”
“Well—a wee bit, yes.”
“I gather you trust, even like, other people, don’t you?”
