Peter Beagle - The Line Between

Aye, that's how I looked at him — exactly the way you're eyeing me now. Like I'm barking mad, and Jesus and the saints wouldn't have me. And the way you mumbled, «Salt wine?» — I said it just the same as you, tucking me head down like that, getting me legs under me, in case things turned ugly. I did it true. But Henry Lee only sat back and grinned again. «You heard me, Ben," he says. «You heard me clear enough.»

«Salt wine," I says, and different this time, slowly. «Salt wine … that'd be like pickled beer? Oysters in honey, that kind of thing, is it? How about bloody fried marmalade, then?» Takes me a bit of time to get properly worked up, mind, but foolery will do it. «Whale blubber curry," I says. «Boiled nor'easter.»

For answer, Henry Lee reaches into those dirty canvas pants and comes up with a cheap pewter flask, two for sixpence in any chandlery. Doesn't say one word — just hands it to me, folds his hands on the table and waits. I take me time, study the flask — got a naked lady and a six–point buck on one side, and somebody in a flying chariot looks like it's caught fire on the other. I start to say how I don't drink much wine — never did, not Spanish sherry, nor even port, nor none of that Frenchy slop — but Henry Lee flicks one finger to tell me I'm to shut me gob and taste. So that's what I did.

All right, this is the hard part to explain. Nor about merrows, nor neither the part about some bloody fool jumping on the back of a bull shark — the part about the wine. Because it were wine in that flask, and it were salty, and right there's where I run aground on a lee shore, trying to make you taste and see summat you never will, if your luck holds. Salt wine —not red nor neither white, but gray–green, like the deep sea, and smelling like the sea, filling your head with the sea, but wine all the same. Salt wine…

First swallow, I lost meself. I didn't think I were ever coming back.

Weren't nothing like being drunk. I've downed enough rum, enough brandy, dropped off to sleep in enough jolly company and wakened in enough stinking alleys behind enough shebeens to know the difference. This were more … this were like I'd fallen overboard from me, from meself, and not a single boat lowered to find me. But it didn't matter none, because summat were bearing me up, summat were surging under me, big and fast and wild, as it might have been a dolphin between me legs, tearing along through the sea — or the air, might be we were flying, I'd not have known — carrying somebody off to somewhere, and who it was I can't tell you now no more than I could have then. But it weren't me, I'll take me affydavy on that. I weren't there. I weren't anywhere or anybody, and just then that were just where I wanted to be.

Just then … Aye, you give me a choice just then, happen I might have chosen … But I'd just had that one swallow, after all, so in a bit there I were, me as ever was, back at that tavern table with Henry Lee, and him still grinning like a dog with two tails, and he says to me, «Well, Ben?»

When I can talk, I ask him, «You can make this swill yourself?» and when he nods, «Then I'd say your merrow earned his keep. Not half bad.»

«Best you ever turned into piss," Henry says. I don't say nowt back, and after a bit, he leans forward, drops his voice way down again, and says, «It's our fortune, Ben. Yours and mine. I'm swearing on my mother's grave.»

«If the dollymop's even got one," I says, because of course he don't know who his mam was, no more than I know mine. They just dropped us both and went their mortal ways, good luck to us all. I tell him, «Never mind the swearing, just lay out what you mean by our fortune. I didn't save no merrow — fact, I halfway tried to

save you from trying to save him. He don't owe me nowt, and nor do you.» And I'm on me feet and ready to scarper — just grab up those mangoes and walk. Ain't a living soul thinks I've got no pride, but I bloody do.

But Henry Lee's up with me, catching ahold of me arm like an octopus, and he's saying, «No, no, Ben, you don't understand. I need you, you have to help me, sit down and listen.» And he pulls and pushes me back down, and leans right over me, so close I can see the scar as cuts into his hairline, where the third mate of the Boston Annie got him with a marlinspike, happened off the Azores. He says, «I can make it, the salt wine, but I need a partner to market it for me. I've got no head for business — I don't know the first thing about selling. You've got to ship it, travel with it, be my factor. Because I can't do this without you, d'you see, Ben?»

«No, I don't see a frigging thing," I says in his face. «I'm no more a factor than you're a bloody nun. What I am's a seacook, and it's past time I was back aboard me ship, so by your leave — "

Henry Lee's still gripping me arm so it hurts, and I can't pry his fingers loose. «Ben, listen!» he fair bellows again. «This is Goa, not the City of London — the Indians won't ever deal honestly with a Britisher who doesn't have an army behind him — why should they? — and the Portuguese bankers don't trust me any more than I'd trust a single one of them not to steal the spots off a leopard and come back later for the whiskers. There's a few British financiers, but they don't trust anyone who didn't go to Eton or Harrow. Now you're a lot more fly than you ever let on, I've always known that — "

«Too kind," I says, but he don't hear. He goes on, «You're the one who always knew when we were being cheated — by the captain, by the company, by the lady of the house, didn't matter. Any souk in the world, any marketplace, I always let you do the bargaining — always. You'd haggle forever over a penny, a peseta, a single anna — and you'd get your price every time. Remember? I surely remember.»

«Ain't nothing like running a business," I tell him. «What you're talking about is responsibility, and I never been responsible for nowt but the job I were paid to do right. I like it that way, Henry Lee, it suits me. What you're talking about — "

«I'm talking about a future, Ben. Spend your whole life going from berth to berth, ship to ship — where are you at the end of it? Another rotting hulk, like all the rest, careened on the beach, and no tide ever coming again to float you off. I'm offering you the security of a decent roof over your head, good meals on your table, and a few teeth left in your mouth to chew them with.» He lets go of me then, but his blue eyes don't. He says, «I'd outfit you, I'd pay your way, and I'd give you one–third of the profits — ah, hell, make it forty, forty percent, what do you say? It'll be worth it to me to sleep snug a'nights, knowing my old shipmate's minding the shop and putting the cat out. What do you say, Ben? Will you do it for me?»

I look at him for a good while, not saying nowt. I remember him one time, talking a

drunken gang of Yankee sailors out of dropping us into New York harbor for British spies — wound up buying us drinks, they did, which bloody near killed us anyway. And Piraeus — God's teeth, Piraeus — when the fool put the comehither on the right woman at the wrong time, and there we was, locked in a cellar for two days and nights, while her husband and his mates went on and on, just upstairs, about how to slaughter us so we'd remember it. Henry Lee, he finally got them persuaded that I were carrying some sort of horrible disease, rot your cods off, you leave it long enough, make your nose fall into your soup. They pushed the cellar key under the door and was likely in Istanbul, time we got out of that house. Me, I didn't stop feeling me nose for another two days.

So I know what Henry Lee can do, talking, and I sniff all around his words, like a fox who smells the bait and knows the trap's there, somewhere, underneath. I keep telling him, over and over, «Henry Lee, I never been no better than you with figures — I'd likely run you bankrupt inside of a month.» Never stops him — he just grins and answers back, «I'm bankrupt already, Ben. I'm not swimming in boodle, like you thought — I've gone and sunk all I own into a thousand cases of salt wine. Nothing more to lose, you see — there's no way you can make anything any the worse. So what do you say now?»