dry dock inside a fenced in, overgrown, scraggly-treed yard, leafy squirrel nests in the conning tower and a squat black dog barking at them from the bridge, an inner tube hung with rope from a bridge wing. An elephantine warehouse built of tattered gray wood, an emptiness of darkening sky and water glowing like a movie screen through huge, gaping doorways.
Esteban was conscious of Bernardo’s breathing next to him in the now quieted van, his emphatic, almost rhythmic exhalations. They came to a pothole-ripped parking lot partially enclosed by brick wall, a rusted chicken-wire fence lying on its side all the way across it like the undulating spine of a long-dead dragon. At the far end was a cluster of sheds and low buildings with smashed and boarded-up windows, a ruin that looked like a row of concrete-encased rolls of toilet paper that had been pounded down with a giant sledgehammer, and in front, a tall, concrete, rectangular structure—an old grain elevator—towering against the bands of coloring sky low on the horizon behind it: “Ve? Ahí está, el Watchtower,” said the twittering electrician, but now no one laughed. They drove over a flattened portion of the fence and around the front of the grain elevator and onto a paved finger pier with a freighter berthed on one side, blocking most of the covelike basin from view.
The crew got out of the van and stood on the pier with their suitcases, looking up at the darkened and silent ship looming over them like a cold canyon wall, breathing the familiar stench of stagnant waterfront rot. The immense, rust-smeared hull seemed suffused with an almost lavender glow against the hot dusk’s powdery blue sky streaked crimson and orange. Around Esteban his crewmates’ faces all seemed to be glowing too, their eyes and teeth, their short-sleeved shirts and white guayaberas.
El Pelos had stayed in the van’s driver’s seat, his long, hairy legs protruding from the open door, smoking and listening to rock music on the radio. They were waiting for el Capitán.
“Bueno, es un barquito, no?” said Tomaso Tostado after a moment, sounding quietly elated, his gold tooth flashing. Some brought out cigarettes and passed them around, smiling. Well, it
is
a ship, thought Esteban, surprised he felt so relieved to have arrived, at the end of this long day, to at least this certainty of a ship. He held cigarette smoke inside himself and looked up at the ship, feeling tired and satisfied. He slapped a mosquito away. A perfectly regular-looking ship, sturdy and capable, and he was going to work on it. Who cared that it was berthed in the middle of desolation? What difference would that make in a few days, when they’d be out to sea?
It may have been a modest-size freighter by modern standards, 400 feet long, floating well above its load lines, but it looked enormous to Esteban. Three derrick-rigged King masts protruding over the long main deck.
Urus
painted high up on the prow against a dark smear covering up what must have been its previous name;
Urus, Panama City
on the stern. But there were no lights onboard; everything looked painted with shadows. The deckhouse, whitish, speckled with dark gashes, was back near the stern; two rows of black portholes visible beneath the bridge and wing; a smokestack. The ship’s ladder was up. Water rustled heavily against ship and pier, slapped pilings. The heat still held itself over everything like someone at the very end of holding his breath.
Then Esteban heard Bernardo whispering in his ear that the ship was nothing but a broken eggshell, chavalo. Esteban stared straight ahead into the iron hull. What made the viejo think of an eggshell?
“No lights,” whispered Bernardo. “No electricity. It’s a broken eggshell, chavalo.”
Esteban looked at him: Bernardo was holding his cigarette between two fingers as if it were some fine Cuban cigar, seemingly studying it even as he said, “The mooring lines don’t even have rat guards,