Shanghaied

by Collins, David Paul

• ISBN13: 9781462031832
• ISBN10: 1462031838
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-09-28
• Publisher: Author Solutions

Summary

When Jack Sligo runs away from his loving Boston-Irish family, he hopes to get a summer job on a cruise ship. His dream becomes a nightmare when he meets two strangers who give him mysterious drinks in a waterfront saloon. Jack wakes up, far at sea, shanghaied aboard the African freighter, SS Iron Prince. The ship's first call is a remote jungle port in Venezuela where there's plenty of rum, women, and thieves, but no opportunity for escape.

Excerpts

A rumor circulated that the pilot carried an important message for the captain. Winston and I heard about it from Chebbang, the cook. We were leaning against a hatch cover talking when he wobbled by coming from the wheelhouse and the officers deck. Seamen never got special treatment from the officers. Cooks did because they had something to offer. They traded cakes and sandwiches for whiskey, information, and time off in port. Chebbang could not be relied on to provide good food to anyone, but the stories he overheard eavesdropping on the officers gave him some authority and power. "You ain't goin' home," he growled at Winston. "Sure am. Gettin' off in Mobile," said Winston sounding aggressive. His contract was up and he was absolutely certain that he would be off the ship soon as the line hit the dock. Winston would be off to see his Momma in Jamaica before she went to heaven. I would head home then too and figure out what to tell my mother. Chebbang smiled, then swelled up as he bellowed, "We ain't goin' to Mobile." Sweat shivered off the hairline of Winston's neck as he shook his head. He stood eyeing the cook, searching for a hint of a smile or a faint wink from Chebbang's droopy, bloodshot eyes. I dreaded that there would not be one. "What you talkin' bout, you fat, ugly mess?" "You ain't goin' home, Winston, and don't get mad at me, it ain't my fault. I heard the Second saying we takes on extra bunkers when we fuel up in Port O' Spain, 'nuff to make it to Odessa. You be stuck on this ship another three months, you dumbass." Irish people get red faced and sweaty when their blood boils. Winston was far from Irish, but his cacao skinned darkness was changing color as his red blood boiled. Seventeen year old Winston looked like a volcano about to erupt. He took a warrior's stance, skin tightened across his shirtless body as a mighty scream erupted that would surely be heard around the world. The scream must have begun at the end of his toes then, gathered power from the wiry muscles in his legs, moving up to his thighs to the mid section muscles where those muscles came together to meet below his belly button, then mushroomed like demons unleashed, rising up through the depths of his stomach, gathering more strength through the massive muscles of his chest. The scream roared up, with broadening mass and volume to lunge from Winston's wind pipes into an enormous, viscous sphere of rage, venom, desperation, spit and sweat. So loud was Winston's cry that I expected fish to rise from the darkest depths of the South Atlantic startled by the Rastafarian wrath wrenting their placid peacefulness. The awful sound departed Winston's body carried on over a bed of spittle aimed directly at the large, flat forehead of the quivering cook. Bulkhead doors banging noisily behind us paled in the wake of Winston's magnificent roar. Two men lost it all that bad day. Chebbang became a fatter, flabbier mess and kept his stories from the officers' deck to himself from then on. No longer would the cook tell the crew of any news from the bridge. He vowed he would get off this God forsaken black scow when next it docked in any port, civilized or not, and he would not take anymore punishment from anyone. But until he rolled up dead on a beach somewhere he would remember the explosion incited by his news from the bridge. Winston could not forget. His mother was dying, his sister's letter said. I had read it for him and he had it still in his pocket. "She call out for you every day, Winston. No one can console her. She be saying her pains getting worse but she won't die till she see you, Winston. Momma want say she take you beautiful brown face in her hands one more time sos' the tears from your eyes will set her free. Brother, you must come home just now. She maybe last couple more weeks but she no make it to August. Come on home brother, dear sweet brother Winston. See the spots on the bottom of this letter paper? They be from your Momma's eyes, Winston, n' she drip them for you to see how she be crying' all day and all night. You don't come back soon, you don't need come back here at all and someday you going die dead and alone on a boat to hell. You brothers tell Momma you take up godless, carnal life, whoring around 'n you won't never come see you Momma. I knows better. I know you will come, fast, Winston. We be waitin' on you, Lillian." Twenty six days to Odessa, three days to unload, twenty six more to return to Puerto Ordaz, two days to load, another week or two to get to Mobile. Winston knew that in two more months grass would be growing over his Momma's grave and Lillian and his brothers would not forgive him. He could never go home again. Winston shared his memories about trying to grow up right in a house with a loving Momma and a hateful sister who lied to her brothers that Winston was a tattletale and responsible for all their troubles. He carried bad dreams of being beat up by his brothers and nightmares about his father who left when Winston was born and never came back. People said he did come back to live with a woman in Frenchtown. Winston knew they were lying. Winston ran away from Jamaica for a job on a ship, get some money for his Momma. For five years he sent money home every month. Now he had a little more safe in his pocket but no way to get home. He felt as helpless on this sixty thousand ton ship as he had been when his Momma left him at home, alone with the boys and Lillian. Winston's scream was still rippling over the ocean waves in rills of echoes and the sounds would surely reach his village in the green Jamaican hills. It would whoosh past the little white church dedicated to Ebenezer, around the old cemetery at the back, and just beyond the cluster of small banyans, his plaintiff sounds would arrive, its roughness transformed into a spiritual silence to enter the tiny room where his Momma lay alone. The sound would have become a song, a hymn that his Momma would hear and feel as it softly caressed her furrowed beautiful old brown face as if it were Winston's warm hands cupped over her washer board brow. She would meet his eyes with love, abandoning her wasting body to flow into his so that he would never ever be alone. The whispered softness of her fading voice one last time would say, "I love you, my son." Her everlasting mothers love would overcome the echoes of her boys lost and desperate screams, now faintly rippling somewhere on the sea.