FIVE

Those were the days when the money was there for the taking, and a willing man could live off the fat of the land. And everybody was willing. I was and Willie Boy was. And everybody we did business with was, right down to them who ran the Voorhees’ yard.

We moored the Ursula up the canal a little ways past the yard but still on Voorhees’ property. There were plenty of other small boats in the same line of work using the place, too, because on the bank of the canal where the yard stockpiled steel you could load liquor into a truck without trouble from the police. The Voorhees people stood in with the police and with all kinds of politicians. As long as you paid the man in charge enough, and enough of that got up to Voorhees himself, you could do business right out in the open at the mooring, and never a word said. And it was all cash business. A lot of cash, but worth it because boats working out of there had a head start on most others.

From the canal we could clear the harbor and get out to Rum Row in no time, especially with Willie Boy at the tiller. That was his pleasure, running wide-open no matter how it burned up gas. What drink was to another man, moving fast was to him, and once I showed him the course, nothing would do but that he handle the boat himself, the bow busting into rough water so hard that I had to keep at the pump or have the spray coming in enough to swamp us. Times like that I would watch him and swear he had a bucket of liquor in him just from the look in his eye, yet knowing he didn’t have a drop to drink all that day. He didn’t believe in drinking until he had got the boat back safe and sound and all unloaded, because however much he might have liked his bottle he liked that motor of his even more, and he was smart enough to know that making the homeward run through the Coast Guard was no job for a drunk man. It would have killed him if anything happened to that motor, like if the boat was sunk, or was caught and taken away from him. For myself I liked him, motor or no motor. I wouldn’t have traded him for all my brothers lumped together with whatever they had to throw in. He was that kind of man.

We bought our stock mostly from one ship, the Anglesey, out of Liverpool from the lettering on her stern but now working regular between Miquelon and Rum Row. Willie Boy had contacts with her owner, so we headed for her first, and only if she wasn’t at anchor when we got there would we try our luck with some of the ships along the line. It was hard to count how many ships were out there in that line doing business, the small boats around them like hungry fish rising to bait, and they were all shapes and sizes. Fishing smacks stripped down to take cargo, schooners, tugs with cases and sacks of liquor piled on deck, and one tramp after another held together by nothing more than barnacles and rust, all waiting there so that nobody would have to go back to New York empty. All of them at anchor, one after another in a long line, heaving in the swells, a mess of slops so heavy around their hulls you couldn’t bring a small boat up against them without fouling it, the gulls squawking away overhead getting fat on it, and noise and yelling and wickedness going on aboard so that a decent man hated to go up on deck and stand there amongst that crowd. Liquor was what they craved and women, and they had what they wanted of both, the women being brought out from town every few days for the purpose.

The Anglesey was no better than the rest of them. Her hull was as foul as theirs, and her crew even fouler, officers and men alike because you couldn’t tell one from the other. They were a mixed lot but mostly Limeys, and when they talked it was like nothing heard on God’s earth, being a kind of barking and whining like dogs let loose. Only a couple of them talked half human, and one was the captain who wasn’t in sight much, and the other was a supercargo named Nickles who handled the business on board. He was a fat little man with the face of a pig and always dressed in fine clothes with a derby hat on, except with the weather so cold and raw out there he wore an old sheepskin coat that didn’t go much with the rest of him.

He was the one used to be waiting when I came up the Jacob’s ladder on deck, and aside from the ugly look of him he was a mistrustful man. I would give him the roll of money from Willie Boy and tell him what the order was, but before he made a move he would count through the money, wetting his thumb now and again to make sure nothing was stuck together. Then he would pass the order along to the crew about what stock to break out for us. The liquor came some in cases but mostly in sacks, six bottles to a sack, and I would work along with the Limeys lowering it over the side to Willie Boy in the Ursula until it was all stowed away and covered with tarpaulins.

Heading back to port I was the one at the tiller. There was no pleasure in it for Willie Boy if he couldn’t run the boat fullspeed, and since he couldn’t do that when she was loaded so heavy he would just sit there on the engine-housing, hunched into his jacket, his hands in his pockets, and his cap down over his eyes. Now and then when we flushed too much of a sea he would work the pump some, but that was all. Even if it was harder handling the boat when she lay close to the waterline and what with all the patrols around, he let me do it the way I wanted and never mixed in. He knew how I could work a boat, and he trusted to my judgment with never a word.

When we got to the mooring there would be two trucks waiting for us. They were made out to be laundry trucks and had some sacks of wash in them, but they were meant for liquor, and once we had the load divided between them and the sacks thrown over it the job was done. After that the only thing left was to go into New York and spend our money. We would take a walk down the canal bank to an old warehouse where Willie Boy kept his car parked—a fine big Marmon—and then drive into town. He was cautious about that car. The rest of the crowd using the mooring kept their cars parked right in the street outside Voorhees’ yard, but he said he didn’t want the car where people might ask questions about it. So we would walk to it, and he’d drive into New York, dropping me off near the fish market, where I had a room, and then going off by himself wherever he went. As for me, I’d go to my room and get cleaned up and dressed in my good suit and then head over to a house I found on Catherine Street near the Bowery, where the girls were mostly big, nice-looking Polacks out of Pennsylvania and the prices were reasonable. And after I got done there I would head along the Bowery into places where the liquor was fit to drink and there might be a woman who’d be glad to come along back to my room with me for the price of a bottle. All my money went that way. I was like a young bull, and anything big and healthy that went by in a skirt was a heifer to my fancy.

So, outside of working with him on the job, I never saw Willie Boy or had anything to do with him. A couple of times I came close to saying something about it, saying something to him about the kind of fun we might have going on the town together, but I never did get it out. I didn’t know the women he went with or the friends he had, but I had an idea what they must be like, and I had the feeling that amongst them I would be two left feet and a tongue hinged at the wrong end. He was a long cut above me, and I knew that without anybody having to say it out loud.

But there came a day when I found out he thought more about me than if I was just someone handy to have on the job with him. And I was glad of that even if it was a hard day for both of us. Up to that time the Ursula was a lucky boat. We moved in and out of the canal tending our business with never a whisper of trouble from the Coast Guard or police boats or the hijackers in speedboats that were showing up on the water now like sharks. And it was only luck, because every week we’d hear of this rumrunner or that being caught and towed back to port by the law, or being run down and robbed by hijackers of their whole bankroll and maybe shot up and sunk if they tried to do something about it.

So it was plain luck, and it was Willie Boy blew it up the time he answered me back for telling him that. “Luck?” he said. “We make our own luck, you dummy. We’ve got the right boat and the right crew for it, we steer a smart course, and we’re not afraid to go out in dirty weather when nobody could find you if he was on top of you. That’s what luck is, knowing how to take care of yourself. You think I’ve got you along for luck like some kind of Kewpie doll? You think there’s an angel up there takes care of bootleggers? Why, you goddam dummy,” he said, and he was laughing at me, making me out to be a big fool, “when you’ve got brains enough to know what to do and hands to do it with, you don’t call it luck.”

And there was no use trying to tell him different, because he could turn anything I said upside down and make a joke of it. But I knew it was the worst thing he could have done, talking down luck like that, and when he wasn’t looking I spit three times overboard trying to fix it up. And could have saved my spit, for all the good it did.

That day we pulled away from the Anglesey into the kind of weather that favored us. There was a mist low on the water, and a heavy sea running so that a patrol boat would have a hard time sighting anything small like the Ursula. Yet, when we were close on the twelve-mile limit a searchlight suddenly came out of nowhere and swung back and forth on the sea right across us. There was only one kind of ship in those waters had a light like that and the kind of engines I could hear pounding up on our tail, and I knew then and there that our luck had been twisted clean around and that Willie Boy had been too loose-lipped for his own good.

I didn’t even look around. I opened up wide so that the Ursula pushed ahead as hard as she could, and I swung the tiller a little, trying to keep my distance but figuring to head into shallow water where we couldn’t be followed. The searchlight swung over us once or twice more, and then steadied down and fixed on us like a long, shiny pin sticking into a bug. And from the angle of it I could tell the chaser was inching up on the starboard side, working in between us and landward to keep us away from it, and knowing if we tried to head out to sea he had us sure because we’d run out of gas that way. Then I couldn’t help looking, even with that light full in my face so that I had to shade my eyes against it, and at first I couldn’t see anything, and then I did see it coming out of the mist like a shadow and then sharp and clear, a destroyer with the black smoke boiling out of her stacks, and men running forward, and a couple of them pulling the jacket off the one-pounder gun there. And while I was looking, an officer on the bridge put a megaphone to his mouth and hailed us, and my heart went down like lead. Up to then I knew what I was seeing but I couldn’t believe it. Not deep down I couldn’t. But when I heard that hail, it came through to me. It sounded like the Last Trump, and I froze to the tiller when I heard it.

That was when Willie Boy grabbed the tiller and shoved me away from it. “What the hell are you standing there for?” he yelled. “Get on that pump, you dummy. Get on that pump and work it!”

“What for?” I said. “We ain’t shipping water. And we can’t outrun that thing loaded down this way.” And all that with the destroyer bearing down on us, and the officer yelling his head off through the megaphone to heave to, and that big gun swiveling our way.

“Get on that pump!” said Willie Boy, and I started to, but before I got to it he shoved the tiller over so hard I almost fell flat. The Ursula turned, heeling and shipping plenty of water now, and then she ran right along the trough of the seas while I pumped hard as I could and Willie Boy hung on to the tiller, trying to get us around the rest of the way seaward. It was something to watch the way he handled that boat. We rode up a comber, the Ursula yawing like a crazy thing, and then she came around and headed straight for the destroyer. There was no time for the destroyer to change course even one notch. We drove right at her and past her bow and along her whole length at full speed, so close I could have reached out and touched her plates with my hand when we went by, and I could hear the men on deck yelling down at me. Then we were in her wake and headed fast the other way, but the searchlight swung around after us, and I knew from the way the destroyer started to come about that she wasn’t giving up so easy. In the middle of the turn she fell out of sight in the mist, so I thought for sure that Willie Boy would head for shore now and we would lay low in shallow water. The one bad thing was that the destroyer might send out small boats to search up and down for us, but I figured it was a chance we’d have to take.

I was wrong about that. Without saying a word to let me know what he was up to, Willie Boy swung the tiller hard over again so that the Ursula would be finishing an S turn and heading right back on the course to New York. As long as our gas held out he could try that kind of trick, because the Ursula could turn ten times sharper than the destroyer, and any time the destroyer showed it was coming about we could head the other way again. It was too big a ship to be chasing anything as small as us in the first place.

But Willie Boy should have told me. This way, all I knew was that the Ursula suddenly heaved up under me and lifted so fast that I could tell we were hit by a wave as big as a mountain. I felt the water closing over me and pulling me up, and then the green of water in my eyes got lighter so that I knew the wave had gone by, but when I set my feet down on the deck again it wasn’t there. There was nothing but a mile of water under me, and I went down choking on it and swallowing it and feeling the ice cold of it cut into me like a million knives.

I was scared then. So scared I lost my head for good and didn’t even think of getting out of my coat and the boots that were weighting me down. All I could think of was Fred Duane and the way he said I’d end up like this, and all I could feel aside of being scared to die was hate for him because he wished this on me by saying it.

Then I broke surface, kicking and paddling like a dog in a mill-stream. I didn’t expect to see the Ursula there when I sang out for her. I was sure that if she hadn’t been sunk by the wave, Willie Boy would take care of her rather than me. But she was there. As soon as I went overboard he must have cut down the motor and headed for me, and the next minute he had me by the hair and then by the coat collar so I could be pulled on board, and I lay there with all those knives sticking me, and my teeth chattering so I couldn’t stop them, and the smell and taste of salt water in my nose and mouth. Then I got on my knees and pulled the tarpaulin off those bottles. I could have drunk a whole bottle that minute without taking breath.

Before I could get a bottle out Willie Boy said, “Heave that sack overboard! Dump those things overboard as fast as you can.”

“I’m dying of cold,” I told him. “One drink won’t hurt.”

“You goddam fool,” he said. “The pump’s busted, and look at the shape we’re in! Get this load overboard or you’ll drown for keeps this time.”

Then I got my wits about me and saw the shape we were in. The boat was knee-deep in water, and she rode so sluggish that every time we went up a swell and down the other side you’d think we’d keep going all the way to the bottom. Willie Boy had the motor hardly turning over, just enough to keep the stern to the swells, but it wasn’t much help. The stern was too low already and we kept shipping water over it. So he was right about getting the load overboard. You couldn’t bail by hand as fast as the water was coming in, but every one of those sacks cleared out of the boat would bring her that much higher in the water.

I started pitching them out, using both hands, and Willie Boy said, “Easy, easy, goddam it,” and pointed his finger to show me the destroyer’s light, pale and watery in the mist, but still poking this way and that. Whoever ran that ship knew his business. He was lying close by and due north now, right between us and the shore, and he wasn’t giving up. He figured we might still be around, and as soon as he heard our motor pick up he would be on us like a cat on a mouse. So I tried to put the bottles overboard without too much of a splash, and I found that hard work is near as good as liquor for warming up a man. By the time I had pretty well cleared the boat I was running a sweat even inside my wet clothes. We weren’t shipping any more water then, but we were still knee-deep in it, and Willie Boy let me spell him at the tiller while he used a bucket to bail out some. Then we just sat there looking at each other with that searchlight moving around and around and the horn on the destroyer whooping off now and then to let us know we were still in trouble.

“What the hell,” said Willie Boy. “We’ll wait him out.”

“Can’t wait him out long with the motor turning over,” I said. “We don’t have that much gas.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “What do you want me to do, cut the motor and drift right into that frigging battleship? A four piper, for Christ sake! A destroyer chasing down a lousy dory. Next Sunday they’ll have the Marines out in the park to make sure nobody’s fooling around in the bushes.” He picked up a piece of waste rag and flung it at me. “You goddam farmer, if it wasn’t for you we’d be out of here by now. You don’t belong in a boat, you ought to be picking potatoes. I should have let you drown.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but long as you didn’t I’m much beholden to you.”

“For what? Why, you dummy, I’d have done the same for a cat in a sewer. I’m weak-minded that way. You don’t owe me anything for being weak-minded except a kick in the tail. Here, have your drink now. You look like you could use it.”

He opened up two of the bottles we had left and gave me one for myself. It was fine French brandy, and it went down so smooth you couldn’t feel it until it settled in your belly. We kept drinking away, the first time we ever did that on the job, and even with that searchlight moving around and the horn whooping I felt better.

“Five thousand dollars’ worth of stuff gone to the bottom,” Willie Boy said. “Frigging Coast Guard. And all farm boys like you. Down from the hills to join the Coast Guard because they get a free pair of shoes that way, and they never had on shoes before. And their daddies say, ‘Good-bye, son, do a good job for your old Uncle Sam,’ and then go back to making booze in the family still. Goddam farmers are crazy about Prohibition. Stop Prohibition and they’d have to quit making moonshine and starve to death.” Then he started laughing. “You see the look on their faces when we ran by them?”

“Well,” I said, “it was a mighty pretty trick. I guess they never did see it before.”

“And politicians,” he said. “Ah, Jesus, give me the chance and I’d be in politics so fast you wouldn’t be able to see my smoke. I’d sit in that little old backroom drinking out of my bottle with one hand and signing laws against it with the other and collecting from one and all. Honest Willie they’d call me, and I’d ream ’em one and all. You know how many thirsty politicians there’ll be now with all our stuff gone to the bottom like that?”

“That the kind of people your man deals with?” I said. “Only politicians?”

“He deals with the best. Politicians, bankers, brokers, and the cream of high society. Only the best. Any thief with money is on the select list.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but there’s honest people around like a drink now and then, too.”

“Name one.”

“Me,” I said.

“All right,” said Willie Boy, “we’ll drink to that,” and we did, a long drink bottoms up. And then he said, “And you know why you’re honest? Because you’re slow, kiddo. So help me Jesus, you’re the slowest alive man I ever met. That’s what I hate about you. You think slow and you talk slow and you move slow, and some day I’m going to pull out this gun and start shooting at you just to watch you make some speed for once. A turtle is honest, too, and what does it get him? You’re the human turtle, you drunk clamdigger, and I’m the one to teach you how to move fast. You see in the papers about that man flew an airplane two hundred forty miles an hour? You know what that must feel like?”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Do you?”

“Oh, I was up there once chasing the gulls around. And next week you and I’ll go over to the flying field and try it together. That’ll teach you how to make speed. Day by day in every way you’ll get better and better until, hell, you’re well. You leave it to me, kiddo.” And then for all he was half drunk and not even seeming to take notice, he put his hand back of his ear and said, “Is that the government going away?”

I listened, and sure enough I heard the destroyer’s engines starting to thump hard and smelled the smoke from her stacks blowing windward into my face. Then I could tell she was moving away from us. The smoke cleared and the searchlight got paler and paler until it was gone and finally you couldn’t hear the engines at all. So we were out of trouble, but a long way from New York and not enough gas to get us there.

When I told that to Willie Boy he said, “Where do you figure we are?”

“Couple of miles off Fire Island Light, I reckon.”

“You think we can get from here to that clamdigging dock of yours on the gas we’ve got?”

“You mean Tippietown?”

“That’s what I mean. We’ll head in there and trade the few bottles we’ve got left for some gas and dry clothes and maybe a couple of beds with women in them, and then tomorrow we’ll run back to town. You think you can find us a couple of pretty girls around those clam flats?”

“Well,” I told him, “maybe not so pretty, but sure enough willing.”

And next day back in New York he had to admit that was the truth.