Far Tortuga Read Online Free PDF Page A

cook. (
winks
) Dey ain’t nothin dat dis Speedy-Boy can’t do!
    Speedy pushes a plate of food against Vemon’s chest.
    Well, my father he left my mother, and den she went down to de copra plantation. When I were six; I were de oldest one. So I learn to cook: call dat school days, mon. With me it were do or die.
    Where your partner? Don’t he eat? I knowed he didn’t talk, but don’t he eat?
    Brownie? He layin down dere in his bunk. He come when he get hungry.
    Copm say in de ship’s articles dey calls him Smith.
    Sometime Smith. Sometime Brown. I calls him Brownie. He show up dere in Roatán a few years back, after de hurricane. Plenty like Brown down along de Sponnish shores, don’t come from no place—more and more, like, seem to me.
    Dass right. Plenty like dat. No home, no name, got no people anyplace. Just livin along.
    Used to be nobody knew his doddy, but now dere’s plenty dat don’t know dere
mother
. Modern time, mon.
    Dass right. Just livin along.
    So den Brown had no job to speak about, so he come along with me. We learn cotch turtle. And sometimes maybe rig us a few nets, go back to Roatán, cotch couple turtle dere. Green turtle. In de Bay Islands.
    Green turtle! What
you
know about it? Mon know about green turtle got to be a turtler! And de turtler come from Grand Cayman!
    Hush up, Vemon.
    The man called Brown appears on deck; the crew falls silent. He gapes and stretches, then strikes a pose with hands on hips, rocking a little on spread feet, pelvis cocked forward, sombrero tipped down onto his nose. The Captain glares at him.
    Well, come along dere, Brownie!
    Brown saunters over to the galley, and Speedy fixes him a plate; Speedy says something quiet, and after a moment the man shrugs. He flips his sombrero to the back of his dark head and squats down on his heels to eat. He chews slowly for a little while, then raises his head to speak, but since his mouth is full of food, his utterance is lost. Fork at his mouth, he looks slowly from man to man; uncomfortable, they nod and look away, then get up one by one and scrape their plates over the side and dump them into the galvanized tub before moving aft to the stern.

    Brown squats by the galley door, eating alone. In the dark wind overhead, the canvas mutters. The mast rolls.
    Speedy rigs a bucket to a line and drops it into the black sea; it draws a phosphorescent streak through the night plankton. He splashes salt water into a tub and tosses after it a cake of mustard-colored soap.
    Buddy brings Byrum a plate of food and a mug of coffee, and relieves him at the wheel.
    Where de hell de bacon? Don’t we got meat aboard of here?
    Will lights the kerosene lantern in the binnacle. The light dimly illuminates the bunks, which are littered with clothes, sacks, a small duffel and a cardboard suitcase. Vemon has the upper bunk on the port side, Athens the lower; Will and Byrum are upper and lower to starboard. The forward bunks, running transversely across the back wall of the wheelhouse, are occupied by Raib and Buddy. Speedy bunks with Brown down in the engine room.
    Where dat Wodie sleepin? In de fo’c’s’le?
    Yah. Look to me like he some kind of Jonah.
    No, mon. He a very nice fella. Kind of fufu, but he ain’t too fool to work with.

    Athens and Vemon crawl full-clothed into their berths and curl around the litter: Athens does not remove his cap. His cigarette glows in the darkness; he is smoking as he sings.
    I knowed by de way you hold me, darlin
 …
    Don’t all dat smokin make you cough?
    I coughed every day of my life. I used to it. I be coughin in de grave.
    Well, lend me a cigarette—we partners, ain’t we?
    Here, goddom it—
    Never
could
keep money, y’know. Prob’ly you too young to ’member de time when Vemon Dilbert Evers could had bought dat whole stretch of West Bay Beach, from de marl pit in Georgetown to de graveyard in West Bay! I had me dat chance in life and den I lost it. Dat six miles of beach weren’t worth nothin