Ed Lacy - Blonde Bait

What I enjoyed about it was the constantly changing picture, the various new shades of color. Rose was that way: there were so many sides to her mind. Sometimes she'd be so moody and low I figured she was fed up with me, ready to take off. Then for days on end she'd be a ball of fire, full of her own pep as we ran along the beach, rowed, or took long swims. She could be as simple and gentle as a young girl, and most times hardened and tough. I liked the hardboiled times best, for that was the real Rose. And in this very cove I'd learned how tough she could be.

A tiny girl on skinny legs, and a belly swollen from a steady fruit diet, had stopped to squat on the sand and solemnly watch us digging canals in the sand like mad. We were “busy” letting water out of a deep tide pool high up on the beach. A dark-skinned child of about six dressed in a ragged, white flour sack, she watched without a single smile, refused to join us. Rose got very motherly, took the kid out to the boat for a decent feed and a tin of candy. She played with the child all afternoon and at night the kid simply disappeared, only to be waiting on the beach again next morning at the first crack of sun.

For the few days we anchored here, Rose was a busy mama. She and the girl played house in the dink or cooked supper with a beach fire. Rose seemed to enjoy it more than the kid. One hot night as we were trying to sleep on deck I asked, “You ever think about having a kid?”

Her short, harsh laughter chilled the humid night. “Me? That motherhood bit is for the birds. This isn't the best of worlds to ask any kid into.”

“I've never had any desire to make a kid, either. You know, fish and crabs—most sea animals—they spawn thousands of eggs and perhaps five per cent of them survive. Sometimes I think it's getting to be like that with us humans. All this sickness in the air, kids cutting each other up, increase in accidents—”

“Cut the damn lecture! My kid will be sixteen years old this August 25th.”

I turned to stare at her in the moonlight. “Your kid?”

“What's the matter, don't you think I can have a baby? Well, I had one and I gave it away!”

“Boy or girl?” I asked like a cluck, as though it mattered to me.

“I had a boy and he was a beautiful big baby. I was a real dumb broad then, didn't know how to take care of myself. I was three months gone before I knew it. I was dancing in a flea-bag club and started growing big as a house, so they bounced me. I managed to work as a sales girl for a few months, then it got rough. You never saw anybody as big as I was—a regular sideshow character. But no jobs. I was going to a clinic for medical care and a sweet doc there got talking to me, arranged everything. Some couple I never saw paid my room and board, then the hospital bills, and gave me five hundred dollars. I took a bus to Hollywood, did some movie work.”

I counted stars and didn't say anything.

Rose suddenly sat up and cursed me. “Don't be so goddamn smug about it! I did the right thing!”

“What? Look, honey, it was your business so whatever you did was the right thing.”

“I agreed with the doc, what could I offer the child? I'd seen too many dumb babes who in the name of 'mother-hood,' or 'love,' or some other phony tag, dragged their kids around with them. It doesn't do a child any good to be alone, live out of a damn suitcase. This couple that took him, they had everything to offer, money, a regular home. If I dragged the kid around with me, he'd only grow up knowing his mother is a tramp. I did the right things by.... Oh, Mickey, why am I lying to you? The true reason was I thought the boy would interfere with my lousy 'career.'”

“And the poppa?”

She faced me, said fiercely, talking right into my eyes, “What about him? I didn't even give that miserable male bastard the satisfaction of knowing he had a child!”

Grabbing her shoulders I told her, “Now take it easy, Rose.”

“Keep your hands off me!”

I held her shoulders down. She tried to twist out of my hands, brought up her knee. I pinned her legs with mine, pushed her down to the sleeping mat; pushed hard. “Cut it out. I wasn't a part of any of that. I didn't even ask you about this. Let's forget it.”

She relaxed suddenly. “Of course, Mickey, you didn't ask.” She was silent for a long time and I went back to examining the stars. “I was certainly a simple tomato then. I wasn't even sure who the poppa was.”

I toweled myself down and started supper. The Sea Princess was bouncing pretty bad. I always carry a big cinder block—a hangover from my old man who insisted a rock was the best anchor ever made. I tied about sixty feet of rope to this, pulled the dink around and rowed out, dropped it ahead of the anchor. It cut the bouncing a lot.

I had some eggs and watched a beat up old boat about fifteen feet long and with a wide beam come into the cove.

It had a single sail of patched sacks and the mast was the trunk of a young sapling which had never grown exactly straight. An old black man with kinky white hair was at the tiller. His pants and shirt were ragged and he was in good shape for a guy his age. He came alongside, asked if I wanted to buy any bananas. I didn't but gave him a BWI dollar for a handful. As an afterthought I invited him aboard to share my dinner. He was quite pleased and when he sailed he gave me some coco plums, and fresh water prawns the Cubans call langostinos.

After listening to the radio for a while, I checked the anchor chain and stretched out on my bunk. I was tired but I didn't sleep: I thought about Hal and the greasy rooking he'd given me.

I suppose it was rough after being an ensign to return to being another hustler, working the docks. Hal was on this college kick and steamed because his papers had somehow become fouled-up and by the time they were straight, it was too late for that college term. Maybe the fact I'd been to college for a couple of months and then didn't bother using my G.I. Bill steamed Hal all the more. As I told him, I only wanted to live calmly and happily, and they can't teach you that in any school.

While I'd known Hal since we were kids, we weren't pals. For one thing I was a couple of years older. We met at the “Y” and later Hal worked out with me at times. He was a dancer, cute and fast with his mitts, but he had no stomach for the ring. He must have known I was going into the tank. He never said a thing about it except after one bout when I'd gone down from a left hook which wouldn't have busted a wet paper tissue, he told me, “I lost a buck on you last night.” He said it as if I owed him the dollar.

But he was handy with motors and the Essex was about breaking even—she was on the fritz as often as she ran. Also he was good at selling. Hal didn't mind scouting the bars and hotels, drumming up trade. Without saying it we became kind of partners on the Sea Princess. Not legally; I mean, no papers or anything signed. Slobs who had hidden folding money during the war were flying down to Florida for a whack at big game fishing. For a short time we did okay. We were getting a hundred a day and could have made real money except I couldn't take most of our clients. Aside from being uncomfortable with jerks who looked upon me as a servant, I don't buy “sport” fishing. Having been around the sea all my life I only fish to eat. I suppose I drove Hal nuts by either insulting the customers, or when I didn't feel like going out, saying the hell with it. He was trying to scrape a few bucks together for college, but if I had a gut-full, I liked to sleep.

We put our money back into fishing gear and by the time we were completely equipped, the Coast Guard was releasing some of the fancy cabin cruisers and even PT boats, so our tub only picked up the crumbs. We couldn't be a party boat and take out a dozen guys at ten dollars a head because the Sea Princess didn't have a walk-around deck. In fact the mast and boom left so little room the best we could do was crowd four or five into the cockpit— and it became quite a crowd when a dame or guy took sick. But we slept on the boat, ate plenty of fish, and managed on very few bucks a week.