Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘No,’ Thomas admitted.

The spray coming over the bow sprinkled the photograph. ‘You better put the picture away,’ he said. ‘The water’ll ruin it.’

Dwyer took put a handkerchief and dried the snapshot and put it back in his wallet. ‘I just wanted you to know,’ he said, ‘that if I like to talk to you from time to time it’s nothing like that.’

‘Okay,’ Thomas said. ‘Now I know it.’

‘As long as we have matters on a firm basis,’ Dwyer said, almost belligerently. ‘That’s all.’ Abruptly, he turned away and made his way along the temporary wooden cat track built over the oil drums stowed as deck cargo forward.

Thomas shook his head, feeling the sting of spray on his

face. Everybody has his troubles. A boatload of troubles. If everybody on the whole goddamn ship came up and told you what was bothering him, you’d want to jump overboard there and then.

He crouched in the bow, to escape the direct blows of spray, only occasionally lifting his head to do his job, which was to see what was ahead of the Elga Andersen on his watch.

Mate’s papers, he thought. If you were going to make your living out of the sea, why not? He’d ask Dwyer, offhandedly, later, how you went about getting them. Fag or no fag.

They were in the Mediterranean, passing Gibraltar, but the weather, if anything was worse. The captain no doubt was still praying to God and Adolf Hitler on the bridge. None of the officers had gotten drunk and fallen overboard and Dwyer still hadn’t moved up top. He and Thomas were in the old naval gun crew’s quarters at the stern, seated at the steel table riveted to the deck in the common room. The anti-aircraft guns had long been dismounted, but nobody had bothered to dismantle the crew’s quarters. There were at least ten urinals in the head. The kids of the gun crew must have pissed like mad, Thomas thought, every time they heard a plane overhead.

The sea was so rough that on every plunge the screw came out of the water and the entire stern shuddered and roared and Dwyer and Thomas had to grab for the papers and books and charts spread on the table to keep them from sliding off. But the gun crew’s quarters was the only place they could get off alone and work together. They got in at least a couple of hours a day and Thomas, who had never paid any attention at school, was surprised to see how quickly he learned from Dwyer about navigation, sextant reading, star charts, loading, all the subjects he would have to have at his fingertips when he took the examination for third mate’s papers. He was also surprised how much he enjoyed the sessions. Thinking about it in his bunk, when he was off watch, listening to the other two men in the cabin with him snore away, he felt he knew why the change had come about. It wasn’t only age. He still didn’t read anything else, not even the newspapers, not even the sporting pages. The charts, the pamphlets, the drawings of engines, the formulas, were a way out. Finally, away out.

Dwyer had worked in the engine rooms of ships, as well as on deck, and he had a rough but adequate grasp of engineering problems and Thomas’s experience around garages made it easier to understand what Dwyer was talking about.

Dwyer had grown up on the shores of Lake Superior and had sailed small boats ever since, he was a kid and as soon as he had finished high school he had hitchhiked to New York, gone down to the Battery to see the snips passing in and out of port, and had got himself signed on a coastal oil tanker as a deckhand. Nothing that had happened to him since that day had diminished his enthusiasm for the sea.

He didn’t ask any questions about Thomas’s past and Thomas didn’t volunteer any information. Out of gratitude for what Dwyer was teaching him, Thomas was almost beginning to like the little man.

‘Some day,’ Dwyer said, grabbing for a chart that was sliding forward, ‘you and I will both have our own ships. Captain Jordache, Captain Dwyer presents his compliments and asks if you will honour him and come aboard.’

‘Yeah,’ Thomas said. ‘I can just see it’

‘Especially if there’s a war,’ Dwyer said. ‘I don’t mean a great big one, like World War II, where if you could sail a rowboat across Central Park Lake, you could get to be skipper of some kind of ship. I mean even a little one like Korea. You have no idea how much money guys come home with, with combat zone pay, stuff like that. And how many guys who didn’t know their ass from starboard came out masters of their own ships. Hell, the United States has got to be fighting somewhere soon and if we’re ready, there’s no telling how high we can go.’

‘Save your dreams for the sack,’ Thomas said. ‘Let’s get back to work.’

They bent over the chart

It was in Marseilles that the idea hit Thomas. It was nearly midnight and he and Dwyer had had dinner together at a seafood place in the Vieux Port. Thomas remembered that this was the south coast of France and they had drunk three bottles of vin rose between them because they were on the south coast of France, even though Marseilles hardly could be considered a tourist resort. The Elga Andersen was due to lift anchor at 5 a.m. and as long as they got back on board before that, they were okay.

After dinner they had walked around, stopping in several bars and now they were at what was going to be their last stop, a small dark bar off the Canebiere. A juke box was playing and a few fat whores at the bar were waiting to be asked if they wanted a drink. Thomas wouldn’t have minded having a girl, but the whores were sleazy and probably had the clap and didn’t go with his idea of the kind of lady you ought to have on the south coast of France.

Drinking, a little Wearily, at a table along the wall, looking at the girls, fat legs showing under loud, imitation silk dresses, Thomas remembered the ten of the best days in his life, the time in Cannes with the wild English girl who liked jewellery.

‘Say,’ he said to Dwyer, sitting across from him, drinking beer, ‘I got an idea.’

‘What’s that?’ Dwyer was keeping a wary eye on the girls, fearful that one of them would come over and sit down next to him and put her hand on his knee. He had offered earlier in the evening to pick up a prostitute to prove, once and for all, to Thomas that he wasn’t a fag, but Thomas had said it wasn’t necessary, he didn’t care whether he was a fag or not and anyway it wouldn’t prove anything because he knew plenty of fags who also screwed.

“What’s what?’ Thomas asked.

‘You said you had an idea.’

‘An idea. Yeah. An idea. Let’s skip the fucking ship.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Dwyer said. ‘What the hell’ll we do in Marseilles without a ship? They’ll put us in jail.’

‘Nobody’ll put us in jail,’ Thomas said. ‘I didn’t say for good. Where’s the next port she puts into? Genoa. Am I right?’

‘Okay. Genoa,’ Dwyer said reluctantly.

‘We pick her up in Genoa,’ Thomas said. ‘We say we got drunk and we didn’t wake up until she was out of the harbour. Then we pick her up in Genoa. What can they do to us? Dock us a few days’ pay, that’s all. They’re shorthanded as it is. After Genoa, the ship goes straight back to Hoboken, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So we don’t lose any shore time, them keeping us on board in a port. I don’t want to sail on that lousy tub any more, anyway. We can always pick up something better in New York.’

‘But what’ll we do between now and Genoa?’ Dwyer asked worriedly.

‘We tour. We make the grand tour,’ Thomas said. ‘We get on the train and we go to Cannes. Haunt of millionaires like they say in the papers. I been there. Time of my life. We lay on the beach, we find ourselves some dames. We got our pay in our pocket___’