Like most bosuns, this one disdained officers. More, he disdained former able-bodied seamen who became officers—“hawsepipers,” as they were known. Eddie glimpsed these strains of contempt at work in the bosun’s dark, expressive face. “A hawsepiper!” he remarked at last with honeyed mockery. “Congratulations, sir! Would this be your maiden voyage at that rank?”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” Eddie said, his heart accelerating as it always did when he tried to match wits with the bosun. The man discharged words in a way that left Eddie punch-drunk. He’d an imperious accent, something Eddie couldn’t get used to in a Negro. “And you don’t have to ‘sir’ me, Bosun. As I think you know.”
“Oh, I am keenly aware of that fact, Third,” the bosun bellowed merrily. “My ‘sir’ was merely a courtesy intended to acknowledge and salute your breathtaking rise in the maritime hierarchy.”
“Have you a reason to be in the steering engine room?” Eddie asked.
“Naturally, I have, or I would not be spending even a second of my precious time in that place.”
“I’d like to come down and take a look, if you’ll kindly step aside,” Eddie said. “Make sure that reason doesn’t have anything to do with drying laundry.”
The bosun’s nostrils flared. His husky build and violet-dark skin made him seem larger than Eddie, even looking up from below. He did not step aside. “Perhaps this would be an opportune point at which to remind you,” he said, snapping the words like a whip, “that as third mate, and a brand-new one at that, you haven’t the slightest jurisdiction over me. Which is to say, putting it plainly, you may not give me orders.”
He was right, of course. A third mate commanded no one, whereas a bosun commanded a deck crew of some thirteen sailors—six ABs, three ordinaries, three deckhands, and Chips, as the carpenter was always known—and answered directly to the first mate. Eddie knew, having worked under this bosun, that he was an old-school tyrant—the sort shipping companies loved because they wrung the maximum from their deck crews while paying them a minimum of overtime. Like most autocrats, the bosun was solitary, a fanatical reader who read with a riveted attention that suggested physical engagement. While most sailors talked of their reading at chow and exchanged books to stretch their meager libraries, the bosun covered his in oilcloth and turned them facedown when anyone came near. Some theorized that they were dirty; others speculated that he read only one book: the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or perhaps all three. His secrecy had nettled Eddie. He thought of himself as being kind to Negroes, but was accustomed to Negroes who had less than he. The jumbling of races on merchant ships had been a shock at first: it was common for white men to work under Negroes, South Americans, even Chinamen. But this bosun was not just better spoken than Eddie, with palpably more education. He’d also had a contemptuous way of looking at Eddie that brought to mind the phrase “dumb mick.”
On a dare from the other ABs, Eddie had made bold once to approach the bosun and ask—with a smirk he couldn’t fully repress—what he was reading. The bosun had closed his book and walked away without a word. They were crossways of each other after that. The bosun buried Eddie in make-work until his head swam from the fumes of the rust-retardant fish oil, followed by red lead paint, and then battleship gray, that he’d had to apply to every inch of the ship including the masts—normally a deckhand’s job. In high winds, Eddie had swung to and fro, pointlessly plotting his revenge.
“I’ve a feeling, Bosun,” he said now, with mounting frustration at finding his path down the ladder still blocked, “that you think I should be taking orders from you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing,” the bosun protested, “despite knowing that a mere voyage ago, that would have been precisely the case.”
“Well, it isn’t the case anymore. And it won’t be again, unless one of those books you’ve always got your nose in is preparation for the third mate’s exam.”
The bosun gave himself to laughter, a sound somewhere between bells and drums. “With all due respect, Third,” he chortled, “had hawsepiping been my object, I’d have been master of my own bucket long ago.”
Eddie smelled an advantage. The bosun could swagger and verbiate all he wanted, but Eddie had never encountered a Negro captain on any American merchant ship, and he doubted the bosun had, either. An awareness of this seemed to infect both of them at once. “Fine, then,” Eddie said with meaning. “I think we understand each other.”
“We will never understand each other,” the bosun spat with loathing. He continued up the ladder, forcing Eddie backward. Eddie felt as if he’d won by playing dirty—worse than losing. He retreated onto the deck, and the bosun shouldered past him.
When at last Eddie reached the steering engine room, he found no laundry anywhere.
*
Later, through a door behind the galley, he climbed down to the engine room. The temperature rose as he descended through a skein of pipes and catwalks and grates and vents into the gut of the ship, although the three giant pistons that turned the screw were still.
The third engineer, Eddie’s counterpart belowdecks, had an accent at odds with his name. “O’Hillsky?” Eddie asked skeptically. “Irish?”
The engineer laughed. “Polish. O-C-H-Y-L-S-K-I.” He was smoking a pipe, a rarity in the engine room, it being already so hot. “You heard the rumor?” Ochylski said. “Russia.”
Eddie recalled the Cyrillic lettering on the airplane crates. “That doesn’t make geographic sense.”
The third engineer chuckled around his pipe, and Eddie recognized a dour European humor he’d come to appreciate. “A machine can’t think,” Ochylski said, “and the War Shipping Administration is a machine.”
“Murmansk?” Eddie asked, the name feeling strange on his lips.
“Only if they give us the arctic gear. Do you know?”
“I’ll find out,” Eddie said.
*