Bill Pronzini - The Crimes of Jordan Wise

"Where can I find him?"

"He rents a slip at the Sub Base harbor marina. Ask anybody over there. They all know him."

"Bone," I said. "His last name?"

"His only name, far as I know. Just Bone."

The Sub Base harbor area, west of Frenchtown and named for the submarine base that had operated there during the Second World War, wasn't half as picturesque as the Charlotte Amalie or Frenchtown harbors. The Water Island ferry was located there, but for the most part what you saw were tramp steamers and charter fishing boats and sloops and schooners and ketches of various sizes and condition. Bone's boat was a forty-foot gaff-rigged ketch, old but well-maintained, humorlessly named Conch Out. C-o-n-c-h, like the shellfish. That was where I found him, on his ketch, giving the deck a coat of gray nonskid paint.

I don't know why I was surprised when I first saw him. His name, maybe. A bone is white, and I guess I expected a white man. He was black. The color of milk chocolate, actually. A Bahamian native, I found out later, from Nassau Island. Big man, not so much tall as broad and solid, beefy through the shoulders and torso and across the hips, with short legs and heavy thighs, like a tree split at the crotch into a pair of thick boles. There were flecks of gray in the grizzled beard he wore; otherwise you wouldn't have had a clue as to his age. His skin was smooth and unlined except for a few sun wrinkles around his eyes. He had two gold-crowned teeth, one upper and one lower, that glinted whenever he smiled. Which wasn't often, and not at all on our first meeting. Mostly his expression was flat and unreadable. I took this to be the usual stoic native reserve until I got to know him. In fact, he was neither stoic nor reserved; the expression masked an almost fierce dignity. Bone was an intensely proud man, and smarter than ninety-nine percent of the white men circumstances now and then forced him to serve.

I introduced myself, told him that Marsten had referred me and why I was there. He studied me for half a minute, squinting in the sun glare, taking my measure, before he said in his lilting Bahamian accent, "Where you come from, mon?"

"Chicago," I said. "But I live here now."

"St. Thomas?"

"Yes."

"Own a boat?" He pronounced it "bow-ut."

"Not yet. I intend to buy one, but not until I'm ready for the responsibility—not until I'm a good enough sailor."

Bone studied me again. Then he said, "Come over in the shade," and went ahead without waiting for me. He sat down on the mushroom bitt that the ketch's bow was tied to, took out a stubby briar and a cracked oilskin pouch, and loaded the bowl with tobacco as black as tar. The aroma, when he set fire to the shag, had a molasseslike sweetness. His movements were deliberate, economical, efficient. He used words the same way, as if he had a limited supply stored up and was parceling them out a few at a time.

"How much you been on sailboats?" he asked.

"Not much. Taking private lessons the past two months."

"Who from?"

"A couple of boatmen at Red Hook." I named them.

"Why you want somebody else?"

"They weren't teaching me what I want to know."

"What you want to know?"

"All there is about boats and the sea," I said. "I told you the kind of sailor I want to be."

"Let me hear what you learned so far."

"Everything?"

"Everything you know."

I told him that, too. I thought it would take some time; I thought I was crammed full of basic knowledge. But when I laid it all out, it sounded pretty thin. Just the bare rudiments.

"I know I've got a lot to learn," I admitted. "That's why I'm here. I'm serious about this, Mr. Bone."

"Not Mister," he said. "Just Bone."

"Will you work with me?"

"This ketch," he said, "she's a fussy old woman, sometimes. Hard to get along with. Some say the same about her cap'n."

"I'm not looking for an easy time of it. When I buy a boat of my own, it won't be new and it won't be fancy."

"So you say now."

"I mean it, Bone. What do you say?"

"You take orders from a black mon, no argument?"

"You're the master, I'm the new hand. I know my place."

He sucked on his pipe, thinking about it.

"I'll pay you well," I said. "More than whatever you usually charge for lessons."

"What I charge depends."

"On what?"

"How hard you want to work."

"As hard as I know how, for as long as it takes."

"Might take a long time," Bone said. "Might take more time than you or I got."

"Meaning I might never be a sailor?"

"Some men born to it, some not."

"It's in my blood, Bone. I honestly believe that. I just never had the opportunity until now."

He almost smiled. "We'll find out," he said.

I could not have hooked up with a better sailor or better man than Bone.

He didn't just live on that ketch of his; he treated her the way I tried to treat Annalise, as a friend, a lover, an extension of himself. He pampered her, handled her with great care and gentleness. Growled at her now and then when she didn't cooperate, but never with any real anger. He knew more about sailing and the sea than any man I've ever met; now and then he'd surprise me with such obscure facts as the origin of the term starboard (a corruption of the Norse word steerboard, from the days when Viking dragon ships had right-side rudders). And he had an aptitude for practical instruction. He taught me more in a week than the others had in two months.

I spent full days with him once or twice a week when he was in port and not working at one of his other sources of income. Every now and then he'd sail off by himself—"going out," he called it, the real meaning of the ketch's name—and stay away for a week or two, one time for more than a month. He never said where he'd been or what he'd done on these trips. Long, solitary cruises, probably, and visits to his native Nassau. But I never asked him. It was his business, not mine or anybody else's. His own man, Dick Marsten had said. That was Bone in a nutshell.

Some days we'd go out on a sail. Short practice runs around some of the little islands like Thatch Cay and Hans-Lollik Island that surround St. Thomas; longer trips to Great Tobago or Jost Van Dyke or around St. John. In all kinds of conditions except for heavy-weather seas. Other days we'd stay in the harbor and work on the ketch—sanding, painting, reeving new main and mizzen halyards, cleaning the head and the bilge, checking oil, gas, and water lines, doing a hundred other small chores that go into the maintenance and smooth operation of a sailboat—

He was doing what? Using me as a workhorse and taking pay for it?

No. Hell, no. You couldn't be more wrong.

After the first couple of weeks he wouldn't accept a dime for the dockside days, even though I kept offering—and he did most of the chores himself, with little enough help from me. He let me pay him the going rate for lessons on sail days, and buy gasoline and other provisions, but that was all. Money didn't mean much to Bone. Almost all of what he got from me or from his other labors went into the ketch, and what was left over into the few small creature comforts he allowed himself.

Mostly, he taught by example rather than words. He'd perform this or that task, or series of tasks, and he expected me to watch carefully and internalize what I was seeing and understand the reasons for it and be able to perform the same task on my own when the time came. The Red Hook boatmen had insulted my intelligence; Bone accepted it and counted on it. He didn't talk down to me, or look through me. From the first he treated me with the same respect I accorded him.

Over a period of several months I learned the proper way to rig and trim sails and the fine points of docking and anchoring. How to read geodesic charts and tide tables, how to use compass roses and track a course—easy for me because of my mathematical turn of mind. How to read water depth and gauge the weather and navigate by shooting sun and stars and by dead reckoning. How to whip the ends of manila line to prevent raveling, make an eye splice, tie a clove hitch. The right and wrong ways to dock a boat under power and under sail. All the running rules and safety rules. All the little things that could go wrong on a boat and how to safeguard against them. What to do in this or that type of emergency. What essential tools and repair materials to keep on board. These and a hundred, a thousand more.