Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“The rest of these beasties — the non-shrimp — just let them lie. We’ll hose them off the deck later.”

He kept his gaze fastened on her and she looked back at him until he felt foolish. She was better at games than he was. He was beginning to hate her. He was beginning to be afraid of her, of her more than the others.

“The first time I ever did this,” she told him as they filled their baskets, “a man threw a barracuda at me.” She took the joint from between her lips and let it die on the wet deck.

“Huh,” Pablo said, keeping his eyes on his work

“I was going to throw that one at you. But then I thought better of it — indeed I did.”

“It might have bit me,” he said.

“It might have. And then where would I be?”

What he wanted, he realized, was to fuck and to kill her. The realization made him even gloomier because he believed that such impulses were particular to him alone. It touched his self-respect. Moreover, he could not be sure whether she was only teasing him or really coming on now. It was like it kept changing. Confused and increasingly angry, he could think of only one strategy and that was to listen and wait and sound her.

“You gotta be crazy,” he said. “I mean you gotta be crazy, a good-looking woman like you out here on this turkey.”

“That makes two of us,” she said. “At least.”

“Yeah,” Pablo said. “But I’m just passing through.” So saying, he shuddered. He felt a nearly prayerful hope it might be true.

“Cast a cold eye,” Deedee said, “on life, on death. Horseman, pass by.” She was weirdness itself.

Within forty-five minutes they had enough filled baskets to cover the ice completely in one hold and to cover half of it in the second. Pablo stood on the ice bars receiving the baskets from Deedee as she passed them down. When the shrimp were stowed, she got the stabilizer engines going and he helped her spread the drag line again. They sat down on their baskets and drank some rum. It was good light Puerto Rican rum, better than the stuff they usually brought out.

“A very fine place for shrimping,” Deedee Callahan said. “If we’re ever in that line again well have to remember it.”

Pablo looked out at the surrounding ocean. There were other boats in sight now, four or five of them, lit and working.

“Could be the fisheries patrol come down on us any minute,” Pablo said. He said it to have something to say, bitching to bring her down and to make himself feel better.

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Pab, we’ve never been boarded, ever. They check out the numeral and the colors. When they’re close enough to see you’re gringo they leave you alone. Unless of course they’re looking for you.”

“But that won’t happen, will it?”

She took a drink of rum and passed him the bottle.

“Well, I haven’t said anything. And the boss hasn’t and Freddy hasn’t. Have you?”

“That’s a joke, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, “ain’t it?”

“They don’t trust me,” he said sullenly, nodding toward the wheelhouse, “I know that.”

“If they don’t trust you they must have a reason. What would the reason be?”

“You playin’ cop or somethin’, Missus Callahan?”

“We’re playing Pirate,” she said. “I have to trust you. So do they. Otherwise you’d be walking the plank. That’s how it is in Pirate.”

“What about that nigger stayed back in St. Joost?”

“You mean Tino?” He was trying to stare her down again; she was looking back at him, easy-natured. “We don’t usually refer to Tino as a nigger,” she told him pleasantly. “He’s an old friend of ours. We’re a little concerned that he’s not with us but we’re quite sure he won’t talk to anyone.”

“Everybody’s a snitch sometime.”

“That’s a word I don’t like,” she said. “I dislike it and I dislike the way you say it. It makes you sound like a punk.”

Pablo was genuinely surprised.

“Nobody never called me punk,” he said savagely when he had mustered the force.

She smiled and sighed. “Nobody never? In your whole life?” In the next moment she was coming on. “You’re a fine figure of a man,” she told him. “Cultivate your higher qualities.”

While he was thinking of an answer, by the time he had decided to say he guessed he was quality enough for her, Mr. Callahan came aft and looked at the catch in the holds.

“Real good, shrimp people,” Mr. Callahan said. “Now let’s bring the nets up again. We’re running out of time.”

There were not so many shrimp in the second catch and they had to pad the baskets with chipped ice and junk fish to get the second hold covered. Negus came out and worked with them until the nets were secured and the hatches tight over the holds. Pablo observed that Callahan was drunk again. Even Negus in his silent dispatch did not seem altogether sober.

“We’re gonna lose these other boats,” Callahan told them. “Then we’re going in without lights and fast.”

“And he’ll be there,” Deedee said.

“I like it,” Callahan declared, “it’s going well.” He smiled at Tabor. “Is it going well for you, Pablo?”

“Sure,” Pablo said.

Deedee leaned on his shoulder.

“We’re happy back here. We’re a team.”

When Callahan and Negus went back to the cockpit, Deedee stayed where she was, cuddled against Tabor. They both watched as Callahan made his way forward, a little more unsteadily than the roll of the Cloud demanded. Pablo reached in his pocket and swallowed the last of his Benzedrine.

The drug’s action when it came was disappointing and curious. For a fraction of a second he could not remember where he was and he was overcome with fear. But the rush passed and then he was better. He asked her for more rum and while he drank it she held to his arm. For a while he was calm and sad and grateful to have her beside him.

“You’re a good man,” she told him soothingly. “You’re O.K. and you’re going to be even better.”

“I like the sound of that,” Pablo told her, and then he laughed. Almost giggled. She seemed sympathetic; she laughed with him.

“How long you been with that man?” he asked her.

“Forever,” she said, and they both laughed again.

She rolled a joint and they drank a little more.

“If you been with him forever,” Pablo asked, “how come you’re coming on to me?”

“Heavens to Betsy,” she said, “I thought you’d never ask. I didn’t think you noticed.”

They laughed at that too. They were smoking her heavy Jamaican weed. But then he decided there was something wrong with what she had said or the way she had said it. Things got tricky for him again.

In the cockpit, Negus put the wheel on manual and they steered north, the compass needle over the Raytheon fluttered. The other boats fell away southward.

“God grant it goes easy,” Negus said. “It’s been such a damn …”

“Gonna stay ashore now, Freddy?”

“Oh, crikey,” Negus said heartily, “you’d best believe it. I’m too old and brittle for this sort of thing anymore. You said a true thing when you said that.”

“I will grant you,” Callahan said, “that this one was difficult. Without Tino and with Tabor. I will grant you that. But I told Deedee … I told her I need a bad guy I can keep in line.”

“I been telling you for years, Jack, you can’t just pick up any dingbat these days for something like this. You’re bound to get wrong ones. Must say I think you drink too damn much for a man of business.”

Callahan did not dispute him.

“What you got Deedee to aft yonder?”

“Taking care of him. She’s a smart girl.”