Chapter 3
MY FATHER is an unpredictable man. I finally worked up the nerve to ask him about going out on a trip on Uncle Enoch's boat and maybe getting a summer job. He surprised me by saying I could go. He told me it was time I got off my duff and learned what it was like to earn a dollar with my own sweat.
One morning after sunup I went aboard the Sally Ann. I was in blue jeans, sport shirt and tennis shoes and carried a sea bag over my shoulder. I felt like a sailor boarding a schooner bound for the Spanish Main.
Uncle Enoch was in the galley having a cup of coffee fortified with a slug of whiskey.
"Matey," he greeted me in a cheerful voice.
"Hi, Uncle Enoch. I'm here."
"Fine. Stow your gear in one of the bunks."
I did so and joined him at the table. He shoved a skillet heaped with fried potatoes and sausage across the table at me.
"Have some breakfast."
"Gee, I'm not hungry."
"Eat. You got a hard day's work ahead."
Uncle Enoch was a terrible cook. The potatoes and sausage hit my stomach like lead sinkers.
We left the harbor in a couple of hours. The hold was packed with more than four thousand pounds of ice. The fuel tanks were loaded. I could feel the throb of the big diesel through the deck.
Uncle Enoch was in the wheel house. His cap was shoved to the back of his head. His white hair made a bushy halo. He was singing at the top of his voice and he looked pie-eyed to me. I wondered if he could get through the ship channel without running us aground.
The rig man on board the Sally Ann was named Cootie. He had fierce, red-rimmed eyes. A jagged scar ran through the blue-black stubble on his chin. Most of the words in his vocabulary would make a nice old lady faint.
At first he hated having a green kid underfoot-but before the trip was over we became pretty good friends.
I ran all over the boat when we left the harbor. The blue sky was dotted with puff-ball white clouds. Sea gulls swarmed above our mast.
I felt great until we were out of sight of land and the boat began to ride long swells. Suddenly my breakfast turned into a greasy lump in my stomach.
Cootie looked at me and said, "You little fart, you're turning green."
"I feel kinda funny," I admitted weakly.
"You're gettin' seasick, y' little bastid. Go ask your uncle for some of them pills he keeps-"
The rest of his advice was lost on me as I made a dash for the rail. I had to endure the ignominy of spending most of my first day at sea in my bunk, more dead than alive. Uncle Enoch poked pills into me at intervals. I was able to totter out on deck by late that afternoon.
My education started.
You trawl for white shrimp in shallow water during the day. At night you go out to depths beyond twelve fathoms and trawl for large brown shrimp.
The huge net comes surging up out of the black water, bulging with a wriggling, squirming mass of sea life and dripping sea weeds. The doors that have been holding the net open down below clap together with a loud bang. The boom swings the net over the boat and dumps all the junk in it across the deck. The floodlight atop the cabin plays over a rainbow of bright colors. Next you wade knee deep in bright-colored parrot fish, angel fish with lacy wings, pink and white crabs, striped sergeant majors, sea horses. And the stink gets right into you.
The catch is sorted. Shrimp are put into baskets. The rest of the mess is dumped overboard. The shrimp are headed and packed in ice. The deck is hosed down and the operation starts all over again.
If knocking the heads off shrimp sounds like easy work, try sitting on the deck of a rolling shrimp boat and decapitating a few thousand pounds. The heading knife looks like a weapon designed by Jack the Ripper. After you get good with it you can remove the heads of two or three shrimp at a time. And after you've been doing it for a few hours your back and shoulders turn into one big ache.
But the worst part is that the hand that grabs the shrimp becomes sore. Pretty soon the whole inner circle of your thumb and forefinger is raw. The salt water works into it. Your hand swells up until it looks gangrenous.
"I wish I'd brought gloves," I moaned to Cootie.
He snorted at my misery. "Gloves ain't no good, y' little jerk. You don't see no real header using gloves. They just get in the way. You got to keep at it until your hand gets tough. That's how you can spot a header. They got a big callus all the way around the inside of their hands."
The high adventure of going to sea in a shrimp boat dissolved into plain hard work. I saw an endless procession of nets and baskets of shrimp. Sleep was a luxury with which Uncle Enoch and Cootie dispensed completely.
I tried to keep up with them and I finally went to sleep sitting on the deck with a shrimp in one hand and a heading knife in the other. Uncle Enoch picked me up and packed me into one of the bunks where I dreamed that a thousand shrimp were staring at me from black, accusing eyes.
We headed back to harbor at the end of a week. Three thousand pounds of shrimp were iced down in the hold-a little below average catch for this time of the year.
Uncle Enoch referred to the catch as a thirty-box haul. Shrimpers reckon the catch by the boxes that the sheds pack the shrimp in. A hundred pounds of shrimp makes a box at the sheds.
Uncle Enoch explained that the average going price for shrimp right now was sixty cents a pound. He had a gross pay load of about eighteen hundred dollars. The owners of the boat got sixty percent-which would leave roughly seven hundred and twenty dollars to divide up between him and Cootie and me.
The header's normal share is three cents a pound of the total catch. However, since I was what Uncle Enoch diplomatically referred to as an apprentice, he based my share on the amount he estimated I actually headed-a thousand pounds. He gave me thirty dollars.
He asked me if that was all right and I said sure.
When Cootie swung off the boat he said, "See y' around, y' little fart," and did not look back. But when I got home and unpacked my sea bag I found a handful of Mexican coins that he had hidden there for me to remember him by.
I was a sorry sight when I limped to our summer cottage. The skin was peeling in raw shreds off my sunburned nose. My left hand looked as if it would require amputation. I reeked of dead shrimp.
My mother took one look at me and almost fainted. Debbie shrieked. I wanted to discuss nothing. I just wanted to take a hot bath and collapse into bed. Those clean sheets were the most delicious experience I had known. I thought I could sleep for a week.
Late that afternoon my mother brought a tray of food into my bedroom. I regained consciousness long enough to wolf down a meal. I went back to sleep again.
I woke up when my father came in. He said little. He asked how I was feeling. I said okay.
Then he said, "Well, I guess that cured you from going out on any more shrimp boats-" and left.
The way he said it irritated me. My father and I had a i strained and uneasy relationship. I don't remember his ever having shown me affection. He never had time.
My earliest memories are of a stern, tyrannical man towering over me and threatening me with hellfire and damnation if I misbehaved. The whole family was scared of him. I seemed to have a knack for irritating him.
My first trip on a shrimp boat had made a profound psychological change in me. In my trouser pocket, carefully folded, were thirty dollars. The sum was small. But this particular thirty dollars I had earned myself. It was not an allowance doled out by my father, along with ad-I vice about how it should be spent. It was my own money, earned by the sweat of my brow. The thirty dollars had brought me a sense of dignity my father had failed to recognize.
I went back to sleep after my father left. This time I dreamed about NeU. Nell was my girl now. We had shared a secret at the old shack that nobody else in the world knew about-including Nell's ostensible boy friend, Paul Edwards.
The next morning I felt a little stiff, otherwise fine. My mother insisted on taking me down to the doctor after breakfast to have my hand looked at. I rode my bike over to Nell's after I escaped from that humiliating ordeal.
She lived in a small frame house at the end of a lane covered with white shell. The house was dilapidated. Most of its paint had peeled off. In the yard lurked the hull of an old cabin cruiser that Uncle Enoch had salvaged somewhere. A jagged hole in its prow was large enough to drive a calf through. Uncle Enoch had propped the boat up on a platform of two-by-fours, planning to repair it one day.
Like most seagoing men, Uncle Enoch figured yard work was beneath his dignity. Consequently the place was grown over with weeds. Nell's little brothers had made cow trails running in all directions through the undergrowth.
I could feel eyes on me as I pushed my bike into the yard, and I knew members of the tribe of little Phillipses were peering at me from places of concealment under the house and in the weeds.
I saw Nell's bike on the porch. I parked mine against the porch steps, opened the sagging screen door and went into the house. Nell's mother, Aunt Bertha, was doing her ironing in the living room while she watched a soap opera on TV. She was thin, had scraggly hair and brown, dry skin.
"Hello, Mark," she said, raising her voice over a tearful passage in the melodrama. "How did you like your first trip on a shrimp boat?"
"It was fine, Aunt Bertha. Is Nell home?"
"She's changing Susie," Aunt Bertha said, nodding toward a bedroom.
She kept her gaze riveted on the television while her iron moved busily over one of Uncle Enoch's shirts. I guess she was doing the ironing by instinct.
I went to the bedroom. Nell had her youngest sister down on the bed. She was dusting talcum powder on the baby's bare bottom when I walked in. Susie was howling at the top of her lungs.
Nell smiled past a mouthful of safety pins.
"Hi, Mark."
"Hi, Nell."
She was too busy with Susie at the moment to give me more than a glance. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
I leaned over the foot of the bed, watching her. Nell wore a pair of ragged shorts and an old shirt. She was barefooted. I could tell she was wearing nothing under the shirt because of the way her breasts quivered as she worked over Susie. Some of the buttons on the shirt were missing and I caught glimpses of the pink and white mounds underneath. A compelling warmth stirred inside me.
"Want to go ride into town for a milkshake?" I asked.
"Thanks, Mark, but I can't. I have to help with the housework." She straightened, her face flushed from bending over the bed. Her mop of golden red hair was piled atop her head. The morning heat had brought out a fine beading of perspiration on her upper lip. "How did you like working on Pop's ship? He said you did pretty well for your first time out."
I wondered fleetingly what it would be like to be able to call your father Pop.
"It was okay," I said.
"Are you going out with him again?"
"I don't know. I might."
I hung around for a while, tailing Nell about the house as she worked.
Finally I left and rode my bike around the harbor and up the beach. The tour was no fun without Nell.
At lunch I heard Mother and Debbie talking about driving across the causeway to the city to shop. The thirty dollars were burning a hole in my pocket. I had already decided what I was going to do with part of the money. I was going to buy a present for Nell.
So I went with my mother and sister. I managed to get separated from them in the city. I went into a dress shop and a lady came to wait on me. It took a lot of nerve to tell her I wanted to buy a dress. I said it was for my sister. She wanted to know what size my sister wore. She had me stumped. Women's clothes sizes never had made any sense to me. I glanced about the shop and I saw one of the clerks who looked about Nell's size and we picked out a size to fit her.
The lady showed me a bunch of dresses on a rack. My eyes fell on one, a candy-striped green and white sun back job with a full skirt that I thought would look real keen on Nell. It was on sale for twenty dollars. The lady said my sister could exchange it if it failed to fit.
I said okay. She wrapped it up for me, took my twenty dollars, rang it up and gave me a sales slip.
I carried the dress back to where the car was parked and hid it in the trunk behind the spare tire. Then I went to a hobby shop and spent the remaining ten dollars on a flying model of a World War Two Spitfire.
The next day I sneaked the dress out of the car trunk and carried it over to Nell's on my bike.
Aunt, Bertha had gone to visit a neighbor and had taken Susie with her. The rest of the kids were scattered over the neighborhood. The house was quiet for a change and deserted, except for Nell, whom I found in the bedroom. All she had on was a white cotton bra and shorts. She had just finished painting her toenails a bright red and was lying across her bed, her feet propped on the foot, so the nail polish could dry in a breeze from a window. She was wriggling her toes in rhythm to music coming from a little white plastic radio on a table near the top of the bed.
"Hi, Nell," I said from the doorway.
She turned her head slightly. "Oh, hello, Mark. I didn't hear you come in. You should have knocked."
But she did not seem very embarrassed about my catching her partly undressed. She reached for her shirt and casually pulled it over her chest.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Oh, fixing my hair and nails. Paul is taking me dancing at a ritzy place in the city tonight."
I felt a stab of jealousy.
"What's in the package, Mark?"
I remembered the gift.
"I brought you something," I said awkwardly, holding it out. "I hope you like it. I mean-if it doesn't fit they said you could exchange it."
Nell's eyes brightened. She sat up.
"Mark-you're the sweetest thing. Why did you buy me a present?"
"Well-"
How could I tell her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, that I would rather be with her than with anyone else, that she played the role of heroine, temptress or saint, in every daydream I had? These were all facts:-but facts that were locked in my inarticulate heart.
I could only hold out the present and blush. "What is it?" Nell asked. She swung her long legs from the bed. "Open it and see."
She came over to me, her shirt draped around her shoulders, walking gingerly, her toes raised off the floor.
She opened the bag and looked inside. Her lips parted. She sucked in her breath sharply. She squealed my name. She shook with excitement. She took out the dress, ran over to a mirror and held it up before her.
I felt proud and self-conscious.
"You can take it back if it doesn't fit," I repeated. "I want to try it on. May I?"
"Sure," I said, my ears growing hot. "You can stay there but close your eyes." I closed my eyes-almost.
Nell tossed her shirt to the bed. She pulled down the zipper of her shorts and stepped out of them. My breath began to catch and tighten.
She drew the skirt down over her head, tugged the zipper up the left side to her armpit.
"Okay, you can look," she said. She pirouetted before the mirror. "Mark, it's cute-I just love it." She ran over and kissed me. "You're the sweetest boy." She gazed into my eyes. Tears glistened on her lashes. "Thank you, Mark."
"Oh, that's okay," I said, tasting her lipstick.
She went back to the mirror.
"Let's see," she murmured in that preoccupied voice women use when they're studying themselves in a mirror. "I just have to take it in a little at the waist. Otherwise it's a perfect fit-"
She opened the zipper and slipped out of the dress. This time she forgot to say anything about my keeping my eyes closed. So I watched. She glanced over her bare shoulder in my direction. Her gaze traveled down and that teasing look came into her eyes.
"Mark," she said, shaking her head. "You're being a bad boy again."
She hung the dress over a chair, came over and kissed me. She reached down and rubbed me.
I made a strangled sound.
We sat on the edge of the bed, our arms around one another, and kissed. My burning face pressed her cool, bare shoulder. I plucked at her bra.
"I can't take it off, honey. Somebody might come in and catch us." Then: "Oh, well, I guess we'd hear the front door."
She unhooked her bra and slipped it from her arms. Her breasts popped out at me. We stretched across the bed. My heart was pounding, threatening to choke me. Blood hammered through my head.
My burning face was buried in the throbbing, sweet-scented world of Nell's flesh. She was making soft, crooning sounds in her throat. Her hand opened my belt.
She sucked in her breath and shivered.
"Oh, Mark, honey," she breathed. "You're getting me all hot."
She started kissing me. A lot of what followed felt to me like that day by the deserted shack down the beach-but a lot was new. The first time much of my excitement had come from curiosity and fooling around with something neither of us was supposed to be doing. And there had been all the good sensations and the feel of Nell's body. This time something important was added-something sweet and good about being with Nell and loving her touch and her body and the way she kissed me and ran her fingers through my hair and crooned in my ears.
I mean-none of this was dirty any more, or anything we were doing just because it was forbidden. I sensed a boy-girl feeling that involved us both and made me want to keep Nell very close to me.
She was breathing hard and squeezing up against me and giving little shivers of pleasure at the way our bodies were touching.
"Oh, let's do it again, Mark," she whispered into my ear. "I guess it's wrong and we'll go to hell for it-but I want it so bad. You do, too-don't you, honey? I can tell."
I nodded, my arms tightening about her.
This time I was not so inept. I knew what to do. Nell made little whimpers and grunts of pleasure and the old bed creaked under us.
I felt a white-hot explosion inside me. Nell was going frantic in my arms. She writhed, gave a hoarse gasp, shuddered against me and then was still.
We were like that for a while, tangled up in the sheets, both of us limp and practically knocked out. Nell was breathing softly now, stroking and patting my back.
Abruptly she screamed and fought away from me.
Jolted rudely back to reality, I sat up and spun around. Through horrified eyes I stared at Nell's boy friend, Paul Edwards, standing in the doorway. His face was a mask of shock. Then it turned purple with rage. He let out a squeal like a stuck pig and came stomping into the room. Nell frantically tried to cover herself with the sheet. She was making whimpering sounds of fright All the blood had drained from her face.
"You tramp," Paul yelled at Nell in an outraged howl of wounded pride. He leveled an accusing finger at her. "You act like you're too good to give me any-and the whole time you're doing it with this kid."
I finally managed to get my clothes in order. I jumped to my feet and was trying to collect my wits when Paul swung on me.
His eyes were glassy with homicide. He stared at me for a tense moment.
He informed me with deadly earnestness, "I'm going to kill you, fellah."
I got a feeling in the pit of my stomach like I had that first morning out on the shrimp boat. Paul Edwards loomed over me like a giant in towering rage.
"Paul, no!" Nell yelled.
But Paul's fury had found an outlet in me. He swung his fist into my stomach. My eyes almost popped from their sockets.
I heard Nell scream.
Paul's next blow spun me against the bedside table. The table, plastic radio and I crashed to the floor. My nose spurted blood all over my shirt.
The sting of pain from my throbbing nose awoke fury in me. I had hated Paul Edwards all summer. Now he had confirmed his villainy by attacking me, a kid half his size.
I crawled to my feet. In one hand I clutched the electric cord of the plastic radio. With murderous inspiration I swung the radio by the cord. It smashed against the side of Paul's head, sending pieces of broken plastic and glass tubes flying about the room.
The blow knocked Paul to the floor. He clutched at his head, rolling over and yelping with pain. I stood rooted to the spot, frozen with amazement and horror at what I had done. Until this moment I had led a life of nonviolence.
Nell was equally shocked. We both stood helplessly while Paul rolled and bled on the floor. Finally he was able to stagger to his feet.
He unleashed some parting curses at me and ran out of the house.
Nell was wringing her hands and crying. I told her I was sorry about lousing her up with Paul.
"Oh, I don't care." She sobbed. "I hate him-sneaking in here like that-"
She grabbed the thin gold chain at her neck, snapped it and threw Paul's school ring across the room.
Seeing Nell's engagement so dramatically broken compensated for the pain of my wounds.
Still crying, half angry and half frightened by what had happened, Nell put on her shirt, got a wet towel, cleaned me up and stopped my nosebleed.
The moment would have been good for me to tell her that I loved her. But I had no words.
A week later we closed up the vacation house for the summer and went back north. The summer ended without my having told Nell how I felt about her.