“So, this is Rocky Point?” I ask, climbing out of the canoe and onto a haphazardly constructed dock. I watch my step in the gray-blue, predawn light. His analogy suddenly makes a lot more sense.
“Yep,” he says, pulling the canoe onto the dock, and then lifting it high overhead. “Mouth of the river and the Mittlesee. Port town.” He says it simply, as though it explains everything. I try to picture Rocky Point on a map, somewhere along the eastern coast of Nordania, where the river meets the sea, but it’s fuzzy, and I can’t remember which direction the river cuts.
Walking a short way uphill, he lays the dripping canoe in the brush, pulling a long, gnarled branch over the top. It’s clever. If I didn’t know what I was looking for, I wouldn’t notice a thing. He bends over for a minute, letting his arms hang from his body. He must be exhausted. I don’t know how far downstream we went, but I can’t imagine it was easy to keep righting the boat.
“You okay?” I ask, hugging my waist. It’s cooler here, and I’m wet, making for a bad combination. I will the sun to rise faster, but then think better of it. The sun might mean warmth, but it also means we’ll be more visible. He stands up and rolls his shoulders back, tilting his neck around from side to side. Audible cracks pop and crunch in the still morning air, and I cringe.
“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”
He starts up the hill, and I follow, inundated with both the familiar and unfamiliar smells of a port: fishy, briny, with something sharp that I can’t quite place. As we crest the hill, a pretty, if not dilapidated, white clapboard cottage comes into view. Ivy climbs up the sides like a beard, and one window is illuminated. It looks like it’s winking at me.
We turn the corner, and I get my first view of the town itself. Dozens of clapboard houses and stone cottages are peppered across the hillside, sloping down to a village of rough-and-tumble structures built into the steep slope along the piers. The port is just sparking to life as the first blue-pink rays of dawn creep over our heads. It has the feel of a place that’s been forgotten, as if the haze of bad experience has settled over it like a thin dust, and nobody can be bothered to brush it off.
It’s another ten minutes before we see the first person. A gruff, older man with leathery skin and sharp gray eyes, wearing brown leather waders, and carrying a rubber jacket. The man nods as he passes, and Beck returns the curt gesture in kind, placing a firm and equally weathered hand on my back. He guides me downhill, then up an alley between two cottages.
We stop in front of a dingy, shingled hovel. It’s missing three out of its four shutters and has a lewd mermaid for a door knocker. The house is weathered and worn in a way that shows how tough its bones are, like it’s been to war and back.
Beck knocks in an odd pattern. Nothing happens. He clears his throat and does it again. Still nothing. He does it harder, rattling the doorframe, and yells:
“Get yer asses up, yeh lazy fartknuckles.” Low, throaty laughter explodes from behind the door. It swings open, revealing a lanky, scraggly man with wild yellow hair and even wilder clothing.
“Yeh said the magic words!” the man says with a cocky grin.
“Good for nothing, Shazblister!”
“What are you doin’, Rumpledick?” the man—Shazblister—says, wincing as Beck punches his shoulder. He wears an unbuttoned shirt with huge, gray half-moons under the arms, and what looks like a burn mark very close to his right nipple. His faded beige long johns leave very little to the imagination, and I feel my cheeks flush as I try not to stare. Beck pushes past him, disappearing inside. I stay, hesitating in the doorway, until Shazblister notices me. His eyebrows shoot up into his crazy hair, which he scratches in a deep, intense kind of way.
“Who’s the girl?” he asks, pushing his top chin into his bottom chin and staring at me a little too long.
“Let her in,” Beck says, in a voice that yields no further questions. Another man, in an equal state of undress, enters from the back of the room. This man is smaller and slightly hunched, his brown hair matted against his head; it hides most of his square face. His arms hang heavy at his sides. Beck claps him on the shoulder and pushes back through a closed door, leaving me to fend for myself.
The cottage consists of one room, with four cots set up along the walls and a pile of dirty blankets in the middle of the floor. A sloppy hodgepodge of towels and strips of fabric cover the windows, providing little privacy. There’s one light bulb screwed into an ugly outlet in the ceiling, and a tacky lamp on the floor between two of the beds that looks like a frog with three legs. It’s all function, no form. And yet, as I look at the lipstick that’s been drawn on the frog, I wonder if maybe there is a little form to it, after all.
“You guys ready?” Beck asks as he emerges from the back room, changed now into his normal attire of dark work clothes. I try not to miss his dress shirt and tuxedo pants. Another man, all dark shoulders and messy hair, exits the back room behind him, a toothbrush hanging from his mouth.
“You got a job?” Shazblister asks.
“I’ll pay you.”
“Not what I asked.” Beck and Shazblister stare at each other for a minute, and then Beck nods at me.
“Lady needs an escort.”
“She trouble?”
“In trouble.”
“Not what I asked,” Shazblister says again. He and Beck stare each other down for another tense moment, and then something passes between them. Shazblister shrugs and steps toward me, sticking out a grimy hand.
“Shel Shazzer, Rumpledick’s first mate,” he says.
“First mate?” I ask, swearing I’ll wash my hands thoroughly before I eat.
“I told you, job wasn’t available,” Beck says.
“She after my job?” Shel says, scratching his head again. I try to be discreet as I wipe my hand against the back of my pants and hear a grunt from across the room that probably means I failed.
“Your nickname’s Shazblister?” I ask, and he pushes his chin low enough to reveal a second and third one. I’m not sure where the extra folds come from—he’s so tall and wiry—but he has no defined chin to speak of. I think I liked Shazblister better. He looks more like a Shazblister than a Shel.
“This is Kern,” Beck says, thrusting his thumb at the shorter of the trio, “and that ugly mug devoted to dental hygiene is Slick.” Kern shakes his head, and Slick hocks his toothpaste on the floor. I have to look away to keep down the vomit.
“Your name is Slick?”
“You gotta earn that story,” Slick says, his low, bass voice all gristle and minty freshness. Slick leans against the wall, one leg crossed over the other, looking every bit the pirate I imagined from the stories. Well, if I’d imagined him with a toothbrush sticking out of his shirt pocket.
“Nice teh meet’cha,” Kern says with a broad smile, his voice thick and clumsy, as if the words got twisted around his tongue.
“Where’s everyone else?” Beck asks.
“Gummer and Stock are out on a paying job.”
“Damn,” Beck says, shaking his head. “What about Perlman?”
“He’s around,” Slick says with a throaty chuckle.
“Probably liquored up in some charming place of disrepute,” Shel says. He lets out a high-pitched, wheezing laugh.
“We leave in an hour,” Beck says, moving for the door. “With or without him.”
“I recommend with him,” Shel says. Beck stops, placing his hand on the door, and then nods.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You goin’ to find him?” Shel asks, grinning.
“Yeah.” All three men laugh as Beck walks out the door.