John Passos - 1919

“Sit down, Slim, and we’ll have a drink and a chat.” The man ran his fingers gently over his forehead as if it ached and through his curly black hair and settled in an armchair. Joe sat down in a straight chair across the room. “My, I think this heat would be the end of me if I stayed a week in this place. I don’t see how you stand it, doing manual work and everything. You must be pretty tough!”

Joe wanted to ask about the newspapers but the man who said his name was Jones was talking again, saying how he wished he was tough, seeing the world like that, meeting all kinds of fellows, going to all kinds of joints, must see some funny sights, must be funny all these fellows bunking together all these days at sea, rough and tumble, hey? and then nights ashore, raising cain, painting the town red, several fellows with one girl. “If I was living like that, I wouldn’t care what I did, no reputation to lose, no danger of somebody trying to blackmail you, only have to be careful to keep out of jail, hay? Why, Slim, I’d like to go along with you and lead a life like that.” “Yare?” said Joe.

The man who said his name was Jones rang for another drink. When the hindoo servant had gone Joe asked again about the papers. “Honestly, Slim, I looked everywhere for them. They must have been thrown out.” “Well, I guess I’ll be gettin’ aboard my bloody limejuicer.” Joe had his hand on the door. The man who said his name was Jones came running over and took his hand and said, “No, you’re not going. You said you’d go on a party with me. You’re an awful nice boy. You won’t be sorry. You can’t go away like this, now that you’ve got me feeling all sort of chummy and you know amorous. Don’t you ever feel that way, Slim? I’ll do the handsome thing. I’ll give you fifty dollars.” Joe shook his head and pulled his hand away.

He had to give him a shove to get the door open; he ran down the white marble steps and out into the street.

It was about dark; Joe walked along fast. The sweat was pouring off him. He was cussing under his breath as he walked along. He felt rotten and sore and he’d wanted real bad to see some papers from home.

He loafed up and down in a little in the sort of park place where he’d sat that afternoon, then he started down towards the wharves. Might as well turn in. The smell of frying from eating joints reminded him he was hungry. He turned into one before he remembered he didn’t have a cent in his pocket. He followed the sound of a mechanical piano and found himself in the red light district. Standing in the doorways of the little shacks there were nigger wenches of all colors and shapes, halfbreed Chinese and Indian women, a few faded fat German or French women; one little mulatto girl who reached her hand out and touched his shoulder as he passed was damn pretty. He stopped to talk to her, but when he said he was broke, she laughed and said, “Go long from here, Mister No-Money Man… no room here for a No-Money Man.”

When he got back on board he couldn’t find the cook to try and beg a little grub off him so he took a chaw and let it go at that. The focastle was like an oven. He went up on deck with only a pair of overalls on and walked up and down with the watchman who was a pinkfaced youngster from Dover everybody called Tiny. Tiny said he’d heard the old man and Mr. McGregor talking in the cabin about how they’d be off tomorrow to St. Luce to load limes and then ’ome to blighty and would ’e be glad to see the tight little hile an’ get off this bleedin’ crahft, not ’arf. Joe said a hell of a lot of good it’d do him, his home was in Washington, D.C. “I want to get out of the c — g life and get a job that pays something. This way every bastardly tourist with a little jack thinks he can hire you for his punk.” Joe told Tiny about the man who said his name was Jones and he laughed like he’d split. “Fifty dollars, that’s ten quid. I’d a ’ad ’arf a mind to let the toff ’ave a go at me for ten quid.”

The night was absolutely airless. The mosquitoes were beginning to get at Joe’s bare neck and arms. A sweet hot haze came up from the slack water round the wharves blurring the lights down the waterfront. They took a couple of turns without saying anything.

“My eye what did ’e want ye to do, Yank?” said Tiny giggling. “Aw to hell with him,” said Joe. “I’m goin’ to get out of this life. Whatever happens, wherever you are, the seaman gets the’s — y end of the stick. Ain’t that true, Tiny?”

“Not ’arf… ten quid! Why, the bleedin’ toff ought to be ashaymed of hisself. Corruptin’ morals, that’s what ’e’s after. Ought to go to ’is ’otel with a couple of shipmytes and myke him pay blackmyl. There’s many an old toff in Dover payin’ blackmyl for doin’ less ’n ’e did. They comes down on a vacaytion and goes after the bath’ouse boys…. Blackmyl ’im, that’s what I’d do, Yank.”

Joe didn’t say anything. After a while he said, “Jeez, an’ when I was a kid I thought I wanted to go to the tropics.”

“This ain’t tropics, it’s a bleedin’ ’ell ’ole, that’s what it is.”

They took another couple of turns. Joe went and leaned over the side looking down into the greasy blackness. God damn these mosquitoes. When he spat out his plug of tobacco it made a light plunk in the water. He went down into the focastle again, crawled into his bunk and pulled the blanket over his head and lay there sweating. “Darn it, I wanted to see the baseball scores.”

Next day they coaled ship and the day after they had Joe painting the officers’ cabins while the Argyle nosed out through the Boca again between the slimegreen ferny islands, and he was sore because he had A.B. papers and here they were still treating him like an ordinary seaman and he was going to England and didn’t know what he’d do when he’d get there, and his shipmates said they’d likely as not run him into a concentraytion camp; bein’ an alien and landin’ in England without a passport, wat wit’ war on and ’un spies everywhere, an’ all; but the breeze had salt in it now and when he peeked out of the porthole he could see blue ocean instead of the puddlewater off Trinidad and flying fish in hundreds skimming away from the ship’s side.

The harbor at St. Luce’s was clean and landlocked, white houses with red roofs under the coconutpalms. It turned out that it was bananas they were going to load; it took them a day and a half knocking up partitions in the afterhold and scantlings for the bananas to hang from. It was dark by the time they’d come alongside the bananawharf and had rigged the two gangplanks and the little derrick for lowering the bunches into the hold. The wharf was crowded with colored women laughing and shrieking and yelling things at the crew, and big buck niggers standing round doing nothing. The women did the loading. After a while they started coming up one gangplank, each one with a huge green bunch of bananas slung on her head and shoulders; there were old black mammies and pretty young mulatto girls; their faces shone with sweat under the big bunchlights, you could see their swinging breasts hanging down through their ragged clothes, brown flesh through a rip in a sleeve. When each woman got to the top of the gangplank two big buck niggers lifted the bunch tenderly off her shoulders, the foreman gave her a slip of paper and she ran down the other gangplank to the wharf again. Except for the donkeyengine men the deck crew had nothing to do. They stood around uneasy, watching the women, the glitter of white teeth and eyeballs, the heavy breasts, the pumping motion of their thighs. They stood around, looking at the women, scratching themselves, shifting their weight from one foot to the other; not even much smut was passed. It was a black still night, the smell of the bananas and the stench of niggerwoman sweat was hot around them; now and then a little freshness came in a whiff off some cases of limes piled on the wharf.