IT SEEMED AS though, all Joe’s life, he had consulted Will Roche. More than anyone else, it was Will who had been there when Joe had needed advice or counsel. It hadn’t, as it turned out, always been wise advice or timely counsel. But old habits die hard, so Joe found himself back at his mess and talking to the bunk below.
‘Do you even know the story, Will?’ Joe realized he sounded exasperated.
‘Only what you told me. Never had much time for books, myself. Got to kinda relyin’ on you to tell me things if I really need to know ’em.’
‘Well, you need to know this. I’m playing Juliet, and in Act One, Scene Five she gets kissed by Romeo.’
‘I assumed. You did say it’s ’bout love an’ all.’
‘And you don’t have a problem with that?’
‘What’s to have a problem with?’
‘Habs Snow is playing Romeo, Will. I’d be kissing a coloured man. On stage.’
Roche was out of his bunk in seconds. He appeared inches from Joe’s face, shock written into every feature, surrounded by a cloud of liquor and tobacco fug.
‘Have you lost your mind, sailor? Taken leave of your senses?’
‘It’s the play, Will. It’s just acting,’ said Joe, realizing he was already parroting King Dick’s arguments.
‘Well, you’ll have to act your way out of a lynchin’ then, and I won’t be able to do nothin’ to stop it.’
Joe had known what Roche would say but was annoyed to hear him say it all the same. ‘Won’t be able or won’t want to?’ he asked, and saw that his words had stung.
‘You gotta know where to draw the line,’ Roche snapped, dropping his voice to an urgent whisper, ‘and kissin’ Negroes on a stage is way, way across that line. By God’s truth. That’s what your mother would say if she were here beside me now, and you know it.’
Stung to sudden anger, Joe swung himself to the edge of the hammock.
‘You’ve no idea what my mother would say. You’re just mentioning her because you think it might make me do what you say. Hell, Will Roche, that was unfair, and you know it. I’m telling you ’cos I always tell you, but maybe I just need to decide everything for myself now.’
Roche stepped back, pained by the force of Joe’s reply.
Joe took a deep breath. ‘It’s a play, Will,’ he said. ‘I don’t live in Verona, I’m not a fourteen-year-old girl and I’m not getting married. And after that, I’m not going to die. Happy so far?’
Roche nodded.
‘The man who falls in love with Juliet is called Romeo – Habs Snow’s playing him, like I said. He isn’t a sixteen-year-old Italian, Will, he’s a dumbass sailor just like me, pretending to be something he’s not.’
‘But when you kiss,’ said Roche, his finger raised, ‘that ain’t pretendin’, is it? That’s goin’ to be happenin’ right in front of everyone.’
Joe felt his skin prickle. ‘But we’re telling a story …’
Roche had hung his head then retreated to his berth. Joe jumped down and balanced himself on the end of his hammock. Roche lay with his hands behind his head, eyes fixed on a spot somewhere above him.
‘I hear what you’re sayin’, Joe Hill, I really do. I understand it ain’t real, but I also understand men. These men.’ He pointed around at the other occupants of the prison. ‘And whether you like it or not, most of ’em will not have it. Maybe all of ’em, for all I know. They’re not gonna pay sixpence to see a fine young white man like you kissin’ the likes o’ him. And if you think they’ll just sit there and take it, well, you’re not as smart as I took you for. This ain’t somethin’ you need to think about, this is jus’ somethin’ you know.’
Neither of them moved for a long time. Roche was on his back, looking at the hammock canvas above him; Joe was perched on the edge, his feet on the floor and his head in his hands. He knew that, whatever happened next, things wouldn’t be the same again. He was no clearer about the kiss, only that the person he wanted to talk to was Habs. Not Roche.
Joe felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up to see the ginger-haired tarp-man Toker Johnson, looking agitated. ‘Hurry, boy, you gotta hurry!’ he said. ‘Or we’ll be late and that’ll be noted.’ He moved on to Roche, who got a shaking. ‘C’mon, old man, stir yourself.’ He scurried off to round up a few more stragglers.
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to be “noted”, would I?’ said Joe. He’d said it to himself more than anything, but it seemed to galvanize Roche. The old sailor hauled himself from the hammock, then pulled Joe to his feet. ‘C’mon. You should see this,’ he said.
They joined a stream of men walking up the stairs, most chatting or calling out to shipmates, but Joe and Roche walked in silence. Joe’s head was so full of the argument, the play and the kiss, he gave no thought to where he was heading or what he was doing. He was just following Roche because he had asked him to. As he had so many times in the past. As he might not do again in the future.
What would his mother say, anyway? Their last conversation seemed so long ago he wasn’t even sure he could summon her voice, never mind what words she would say. Then, unbidden, his father came to mind. Joe hadn’t thought of him for an age but now the force of the memory left him reeling. He might not know what his mother would say but, even after all these years, he felt certain he understood his father. The thought of him in the theatre, his delight in watching the dubious Polly hiding her highwayman husband in The Beggar’s Opera, how he had applauded the courting of Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew.
When Joe came out of his reverie, he was in the cockloft. On a makeshift stage at the far end, a man was about to be flogged. Stripped to the waist and hands tied to two metal rings that had been knocked into the ceiling, he was already in distress. Whether he was sobbing or merely trembling, Joe couldn’t tell.
‘What the …’
He turned to go but Roche held him back. ‘You should see this – this is what happens.’
‘Really?’ Joe’s eyes blazed. ‘We didn’t witness enough floggings at sea? You think I’ve forgotten mine? The scars haven’t just gone away, Will, and you think I need to see this again?’
‘It’s Larson,’ said Roche, nodding in the direction of the stage. ‘He was buggerin’ one of the New York crew. Caught him in Seven. Fifty lashes. The Brits’d hang ’im.’
As he spoke, the flogging began. The prison’s master-at-arms, also stripped to the waist, let fly with his adapted hammock rope. The knotted cords whistled through the air, followed swiftly by the rip of tearing flesh. Joe winced at the memory, but he still hadn’t taken his eyes off Roche. Larson screamed as the master lined up again. When the thongs hit him a second time, the sound changed: a duller, wetter sound. This master knew his art; by hitting Larson in the same place the pain would be deeper, the wounds more terrible.
Joe forced himself to speak. ‘Fifty will kill him,’ he muttered.
Roche nodded silently.
‘Are you … enjoying this?’ Joe asked him. ‘Is this good for you?’
‘This,’ said Roche, ‘is good for them.’ He indicated the crowd around them. ‘It’s their justice. Not British justice, not officers’ justice, but their justice. Our justice.’
Amidst the infernal noise around them, Joe took Roche’s head between his hands and waited until the old man could do nothing but stare at him. ‘Well, I’m telling you,’ he breathed, ‘as Christ is my witness, it sure as hell isn’t my justice.’
Joe made it to Block Four just as the turnkeys arrived.