6 A Dead Fish and a Squarehead’s Kiss
I was seven years old when I first met Fear, and what happened at the meeting and what followed did more to shape my character and life than anything I can remember. For I learned the important lesson that if I stuck to the code of the sea never to squeal, no matter what happened, but to fight my own battles in my own way—I could win against odds, provided I licked Fear.
It all came about through Stitches teaching me to fish. Of course careful old Stitches had too much sense to start me after deep sea fish, for they are so heavy and powerful that one might have yanked me overboard before help could reach me.
“You can practice gettin’ little ones first, Skipper,” he said, as he baited a line with a cockroach for me. “If you get a pull, take your line in easy.”
I fished every day for weeks, and never got so much as a nibble. As I hadn’t had any luck deep sea fishing, I tried casting my line in the harbor at Sydney. Father was ashore attending to bills of lading, and the crew were cleaning up the ship, painting, chipping paint and reeving on new canvas.
I felt a nibble; the line twitched, and I pulled with all my seven-year-old strength on it. On the hook was a flat fish about six inches long with huge bulging eyes. He wiggled and squirmed, but I got him in my fist and called to anyone who could hear to come and see my catch. Alex Svenson, a Norwegian sailor, who was holystoning the poop deck, came over to look at my fish.
“Ain’t he a whopper?” I asked him, full of pride and enthusiasm. Svenson picked up the fish in his big paw and grunted a negative.
“This is a bloody bullfish. It ain’t no good to eat,” he said, and he ground the fish under his heel and laughed at my tears of disappointment.
No one ever fought my battles except myself, and this insult to my first catch was cause for war.
“That’s my fish, you bloody squarehead,” I shouted at him, as I grabbed my shining treasure and stuck it inside the bib of my overalls next to my skin.
“I’ll kill you for making fun of my fish,” and I kicked Svenson on the shins as hard as I could. But kicking a six foot Scandinavian on the shins with bare feet is not to be recommended. I only stubbed my toes and the more I kicked the more they hurt and the louder Svenson laughed. Ordinarily he was vile-tempered, but now my helpless rage seemed to please him.
“Say, you got a helluva lotta spirit, ain’t you?” he grinned in my face.
“You killed my fish. I’ll kill you, do you hear? You just wait!”
“Now be a nice little girl and don’t get your temper up and I’ll give you a big box of candy.”
I was young enough for the prospect of candy to be a pacifier for any woe. My father never let me have any, and the rare occasions when the sailors sneaked it to me made me regard heaven as the place where you got all the candy you wanted.
Wiping away my tears with a fishy hand I forced a smile.
“I bet you ain’t got any candy,” I challenged him.
“Well, don’t you squeal to Stitches or the Old Man, and I’ll give you a whole box just for yourself.”
I promised him I wouldn’t betray him, and he went forward to get it. I twisted up my fish line in a neat coil while I waited for him. Presently I saw him coming aft with something concealed behind his back.
“Where is it?” I asked, a bit suspicious that he was only fooling me.
Svenson looked up the deck to make sure no one was watching him.
“Come on down in the cabin. Some of these stool pigeons might squeal on you,” he said.
“Hey, sailors ain’t allowed in the after quarters,” I protested.
Svenson snarled something out of the corner of his mouth, and then he shook me by the shoulders.
“Do you want this candy or don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“All right then, shut your trap and come on down below.”
I followed him down into the chartroom. He made no show of giving me any box of candy.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Svenson held out a five pound box of candy wrapped in shiny paper and tied with lots of pink ribbon. I grabbed for it. As I did so he snatched it away just out of my reach.
“Oh no, you don’t! Give me a kiss and you can have it.”
“You said you’d give me the candy because you killed my fish.” I couldn’t understand why he still held the candy as another bait.
“Come on with the kiss or you don’t get it,” he insisted.
I looked at his tobacco-stained mouth and the yellow stubs of teeth that showed when he spoke. He looked horrible to me, but it was a five pound box of candy and it would be all my own and I had never had a whole pound of candy in my life, and I thought it would be worth even kissing Svenson for. I pursed my lips up to kiss him as I had kissed my father, my kittens and sea birds.
“Here’s the kiss,” I said.
He put his face down close to mine and I remember now how hot his breath was in my face. His mouth was twisted and his eyes narrowed and for years after in every horrible dream I ever had I saw Svenson’s yellow teeth and narrowed eyes....
I forgot the candy and turned to run. He made a noise in his throat like a snarling animal and grabbed me up in his arms. His face was against mine. He forced my mouth open and kissed me—horribly! One of his hairy arms nearly crushed my ribs and his big paws patted over my body as I kicked and struggled. With his face against mine I couldn’t make a sound. I managed to get my fingers in his eyes and tried to push them in. Suddenly he dropped me so that I fell to the deck of the cabin and he ran out of the chartroom and up to the deck. I scrambled to my feet and scurried like a rat to my own cabin, slammed the door and threw myself on my bunk. There I beat my hands against the wall and bit into my straw pillow to keep from screaming.
I don’t know how long it was before I felt Father’s hands shaking me.
“For the love of Christ, what’s the matter, Joan?” he kept saying above my muffled sobbing.
“Get out of here, I hate you! Get out of here! Get out!” I screeched at him. I didn’t want to be touched; I just wanted to hide in the dark somewhere to get away from the feeling of Svenson’s kiss.
Then I remembered the fish in my breast. I put my hand down and brought it out. When Father saw it he asked:
“Say, are you bawling over a dead fish?” He was annoyed at what he thought my childish sentiment. I didn’t have time to answer him, for he left my cabin abruptly. I lay down again in the bunk clasping my dead bullfish and shivering with fear. Father came back with a big can of Epsom salts.
“Now, no more of this nonsense. What’s the matter with you anyway? Are you sick?”
“No, Father, I just—I—” I couldn’t finish for I knew the penalty of squealing on anyone in a fight. Sailors don’t do that; they take their beating and settle with the offender at their leisure. I felt that if I told on Svenson I wouldn’t be fit to be a regular sailor, and it was Father himself who had drilled that code into me.
“Answer me, are you sick, or is this just a show of bad temper?”
“I’m sick,” I wailed in a weak voice. I knew what would follow. Father made me take a big dose of salts and then told me to go to bed.
“You don’t get any supper. You probably been sneaking something to eat that wasn’t good for you, so no food for you until we get your stomach cleaned up.”
I didn’t mind swallowing the salts, for it got Father away from me, and I was afraid I would tell him the truth if he asked me many more questions or accused me of being a blubbering child.
I didn’t come out of my bunk all the next day. I stayed there with my fish. The fish began to smell bad so Father took it away from me and threw it out of the porthole.
That evening we sailed for the Midway Islands. I could hear the scuffling of the crew’s feet on the poop deck above my cabin as they ran about setting the sails. The creak and groan of the rigging and the whistle of the wind through the sails gave me the creeps. Ordinarily the sound of our ship getting under way thrilled me, and I wasn’t content unless I could be on deck helping pull the ropes. But I was afraid to go on deck. I heard Svenson’s voice answering that of the mate’s as he took the helm, and I couldn’t bear to see him again.
When we had been out about a week, I ventured on deck, after I had found out from the cabin-boy that Svenson was on his watch below. I hated him but I was going to repay him in full when I got my courage back. I knew to be a regular sailor I had to cure the sick feeling I got whenever Svenson was near. I had to quit being afraid; I had to get hunk without help. I couldn’t even tell Stitches.
So I schemed and schemed, and I was so eager to get even that gradually I began to stop being afraid. The mate had switched Svenson into the second mate’s watch because he wanted another sailor to fix some sails and Svenson couldn’t sailmake. But he could steer. I found him at the wheel. Here was my chance! Just as I knew better than to squeal on him I was sure he would not dare to squeal on me, no matter what I did. Father had set a course, “Northeast by east, a quarter point east,” and had told Svenson to keep a true course, for we were in the region of some coral reefs, and a quarter of a mile off in navigation would run us aground.
“Keep her full and by and call me if the wind veers a point,” Father instructed him and then went below for a short nap. I knew if Svenson let that ship even get so much as a tenth of a point off the course that he would get hell from Father. Well, I’d help Svenson get his hell!
I climbed on the binnacle box (the box that holds the compass), which was in front of the wheel, and I put my two feet over the compass so that Svenson couldn’t see it to steer by.
“Get the hell out of the way so I can see,” he snarled at me.
“You make me!” I shot back at him. If he took his hands off the helm the rudder would spin around and the ship would be out of control. “Come on, make me get off this binnacle,” I invited him again. Svenson knew I had him. He lost his temper and began cursing me, but he kept to the wheel. I heard the topsails aloft begin to flap. The wind had caught them “aback.” The jibs and mainsails began to luff—and in vain Svenson spun the wheel to get the ship back on her course. Then it was my turn to laugh. I heard the mate, on the fo’c’s’le head where he was fixing a jib, bellow aft at Svenson to pull the goddamned ship back into the wind. The mate ran down the deck to help get her back on course. He wasn’t fast enough though, for Father, who had been watching his telltale compass over his bunk, was leaping up the companionway ladder to the poop. I ran to the windward rail and pretended I was interested in watching some schools of flying fish skim over the water. Father jerked the helm from Svenson’s hand and spun it hard over to leeward. With a slapping crash the booms went over to the port tack, and he got her once more headed up to the wind.
“Joan, take this wheel,” he ordered. I came over and took hold of its big spokes. “Show this cock-eyed so and so sea louse how to steer a course,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, and at that he grabbed Svenson.
“Who in the hell ever told you you were a sailor? What do you mean by letting her run afoul in the wind?” He shouted in Svenson’s face.
“That ain’t my fault, Captain,” whispered back Svenson. “I couldn’t help it.”
“You’ll talk back to me, will you?” and Father sent him flying on the deck with a left uppercut: “Trying to run the goddamned ship on a reef for us, are you?” Svenson jumped to his feet and went for Father.
“Why you white-haired old bastard, I’ll knock the so and so out of you,” and he swung a fierce right to Father’s head. Then the two of them wallowed around the deck, punching and mauling each other in a bloody mess. I’ll never forget the sound of the bones in Svenson’s jaw crunching under Father’s blows.
“I’ve got enough!” cried Svenson, on his back, just as Father’s upraised arm was about to put him to sleep. The mate, who was standing by with a belaying pin in his hand in case of real trouble, lifted the Norwegian to his feet.
“Take him for’ard, and put him in irons,” Father ordered the mate, “and tell any of the crew in the fo’c’s’le that think they can talk back to the captain of this ship that Svenson is only a sample of what’ll happen to them.”
The mate had Svenson by the neck and the seat of his pants marching him forward. Father called after them: “When that piece of ballast gets his eyes open again, I’ll have Joan here show him how to steer a ship.”
Svenson, however, was kept in irons and on rations of bread and water until we reached the Midway Islands, where Father discharged him in disgrace—I hadn’t squealed, but I don’t think Svenson, wherever he is today, feels that he got the best of it.
girl swimming