Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“I wish someone would tell me what I stood to get paid,” Pablo said.

“When we figure our costs,” Negus said, “we’ll tell you.”

“It’s a reasonable question,” Callahan said equitably. “You can figure on at least five hundred a day for the next few days. It’ll beat your Coast Guard pay.”

“I guess so,” Pablo said.

“Think that’ll keep you happy?” Negus said. “Because we have to keep you happy. We insist on it.”

“I think everybody’s gonna do all right,” Pablo said.

Everyone in the cabin laughed; Pablo found it disconcerting.

When dinner was over, Negus and Mr. Callahan took their coffee to a small compartment aft of the central cabin and closed the teak door behind them. Pablo found himself on mess duty with the lady once again. The radio in the cockpit was tuned to one of the missionary stations that broadcast Jesus messages — the Baptist missionaries had the most powerful transmitters in the islands.

“Whereunto shall I liken the Kingdom of God?” a youthful Nebraskan voice inquired over the UHF, “it is like leaven …” Tino was making notations on his Loran chart.

She had gone back to smoking grass. It was the strongest grass Pablo had ever drawn of and she seemed to take joint after joint of it. After two or three tokes, the enveloping papers grew moist and tarry with deep green resin. Pablo declined. When the washing up was finished they went back to the cleared table.

“What brought you down here, Pablo?”

“Just wandering around,” Pablo said. He was thinking that they were all the same.

“You’re kind of a throwback, aren’t you? In the jet age?”

“I been on plenty of jets,” Pablo told her.

“Didn’t you like the Coast Guard?”

“I liked it all right until they started turning me around.”

“I thought that was what they were all about.”

“Some guys will sit still for anything,” Pablo explained. “They got no self-respect. Any kind of militaristic trash, they don’t object to it.”

Pablo had picked up the anti-militaristic angle working at the Coast Guard district headquarters in Boston and incorporated it into his line. It had worked fairly well with the girls around there, and Mrs. Callahan, although not so young and tenderhearted, seemed to be a little like them.

“So you got radicalized, is that it?”

Pablo felt as though he had been softly counterpunched. He rolled with it.

“I had this CPO on my case who was like a Fascist-type guy. He kept at it, so I cold-cocked him. Broke his jaw. I was looking at time, see what I mean? So I skipped.”

“Is that a literal story, Pablo,” Mrs. Callahan asked sympathetically, “or is it kind of symbolic?”

“What?” Pablo asked. He did not necessarily insist that women believe everything that they were told, but he was not used to their calling him a liar.

She put her joint down and looked sincerely thoughtful.

“The thing is,” she said, “when you hear the same kind of story from a lot of different people you wonder about the little details. Because no two things ever happen the same way, do they, Pablo?”

“I guess not,” he said.

“Of course, they don’t. So you tell me that story and right away I want to know — because I’m a curious sort — what’s special about Pablo Tabor. As opposed to all the other guys who broke the CPO’s jaw and so forth.”

Smart, he thought. But smart or not they were all the same.

“A jaw got broke,” Pablo told her, “and it wasn’t mine. Somebody tried to fuck with me. So I’m over the hill and on this boat and that’s my story.”

“And they call you Pablo. Is that a nickname or what?”

“It’s my name,” he told her.

“But it’s Spanish.”

“My mother was Indian,” Pablo said. It was true to an extent, but to what extent was a question lost in centuries.

“I knew it,” Mrs. Callahan said quietly.

That’s what she goes for, Pablo thought. He had run across it before. He was aware that she had eased her chair against his and he felt her body again, her long leg in smooth clean denim.

“This funny boat where you live?” he asked her.

“So it would seem,” she said. “It just goes on and on.”

“Maybe you don’t like it too much.”

“It has its moments.”

When he put his hand against her soft sheathed thigh, she was suddenly somber.

“Goodness,” she said.

He slid his hand down to her knee and back up, fingering an inner seam and the flesh it lined. Then he closed his fist and rested the back of his hand on the film of denim. It was a physical stalemate. With Tino in the cockpit, Callahan and Negus on the other side of a door, there was nothing more he dared do.

“You take your pleasures where you find them, do you, Pablo?”

“My kind of life you do.”

“Mine too,” she said.

She turned her head to look at him and he saw that under the weathered skin, the various set wrinkles and the small boozy sacs below her eyes — there was something like a kid about her.

“Hey,” he said after a moment, “we’re gonna get in trouble.” He was embarrassed at the standoff and his palms were beginning to sweat.

The woman laughed silently. “Trouble?”

“Ain’t we?”

“What’s a little more trouble,” she asked, “on this funny boat?”

The small teak door to the inner compartment opened and Freddy Negus put his head out. In the moment, Pablo decided, Negus had seen all there was to see.

“Jack would like you with us for a while, Deedee. If you don’t mind.”

She rose slowly from under Pablo’s hand, her own hand touched his shoulder. “Right you are.”

Negus was watching Pablo as he held the compartment door for Mrs. Callahan.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, son?”

“Thought you might want me to take the wheel from Tino.”

“Tino’s all right. If he wants a few zees we can go on automatic for three or four hours.”

“Well, O.K, then.” He stood up and stretched. “Guess I’ll go back aft then.”

Negus nodded and they exchanged good-nights.

Ambling back to the lazaret, Orion ablaze over the starboard quarter and the sea rolling easy under the boards, Pablo paused to lean over the rail. He was flushed and horny with his conquest of the soft rich lady. As he lounged, scheming in the starry darkness, he became aware of voices sounding from somewhere in the innards of the boat. He was standing over the forward ice hold. The voices were those of Negus and Mr. Callahan.

Pablo took a look around and lowered himself into the halfcovered hold; its interior still smelled of shrimp and of another substance, vaguely familiar but beyond his recall. There was a half inch of water on the flooring.

Moving to the bulkhead closest to the compartment in which he had taken dinner, he pressed his ear against the damp boards. It was almost completely dark where he stood, except for the scattering of stars visible beyond the edge of the hatch cover overhead.

“The old Jew’s losing his grip,” Callahan was saying in his whiskey-confident voice. “He’s hitting the sauce. There’s a certain vacancy there.”

“I wouldn’t attempt to exploit that,” Negus replied. “I think it would be unwise.”

“It would be plumb fatal,” Callahan said. “Even half out of it old Naftali’s worth ten of the punks you see around now.”

“Speaking of punks …” Negus began — but Callahan cut him off.

“Speaking of punks — stay off the kid’s back. I don’t want him getting all disgruntled and paranoid. We don’t have to live with him long and he’s going to come in handy.”

“Handy for what?” Negus asked. “For playing kneesies with Dee is all.”