The Ordinary Seaman Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    It was nearly dark when a car, headlights on like cat’s eyes, came around the grain elevator and onto the pier. A sleek black Mazda. El Capitán, pues. They could see the back of his head inside the car, a strikingly oblong head with small, close ears. The door opened, and the man who unfolded himself from the driver’s seat was so tall, skinny, and angular he looked like an elongated shadow of himself rising on a wall. His head was shaved nearly bald; he wore neat jeans, a black belt, and a white T-shirt, shiny black rubber-soled shoes. He stepped back and gently closed the door, turned and looked at them with tender sheep’s eyes. In his thirties, probably. A high forehead and a prominent nose and small, thin lips puckered as if they were scornfully kneading a mouthful of thread even as he looked them over with his spurned lover’s eyes. He looks like a priest, thought Esteban. Some young Spanish Jesuit who shaved his beard off yesterday.
    “Hola, bienvenido,” called out el Capitán. “Espero que no fue demasiado cansado el viaje.” His voice had a youthful, slightly querulous timbre. He stood with one hand thrust straight down into his front pocket, elbow tucked against his side. Then he said, “Momento,” and walked slowly over to the van, one long arm loosely dangling. Well, he speaks Spanish anyway. He wasn’t what Esteban had imagined a capitán would look like, but he seemed formidable enough, no? A certain gravity. Educated seeming. Carries himself well enough. Esteban glanced at Bernardo—was the viejo going to call el Capitán chavalo and cipote too? But Bernardo was staring up at the shadowy deck, his expression rapt and sardonic, lower lip curled. Poor viejito, thought Esteban, he’s let all his frantic good hope collapse over nothing because he’s so used to everything always going wrong, all that grateful mierda about good luck just a desperate hoax.
    El Pelos had turned his radio off and sat listening, mouth open, to el Capitán. And then el Capitán pulled his wallet from his back pocket and paid Pelos without counting the bills and slid the wallet back into his pocket just like that. Esteban liked the way el Capitán pushed the door closed for Pelos and then stepped back, watching as Pelos startedthe van and lifted his hand in a wave—el Capitán merely nodded—and backed off the pier, waving again at the crew as he went past, his pallid face looking swollen and ghostly.
    There was someone onboard, maybe that was what Bernardo had been watching. They heard a sudden clanking and, looking way up, saw that a man in white pants and untucked shirt had just stepped out through the gangway, onto the still-raised aluminum accommodation ladder running parallel to the bulwark and rail. The man walked out along the ladder’s length almost like a tightrope walker, with careful, emphatic steps, his weight slowly sinking it. But when he reached the end of the ladder, he was still high above the pier, the ladder only slightly slanted downwards—then they heard him laugh; it must have been a laugh, but it sounded like some faraway bird squawk or monkey shriek, coming from up there in the dark. Clasping both railings, the man on the ladder bent at the knees and began vigorously jolting himself up and down, over and over, stomping-jerking the ladder down in an uproar of quaking aluminum, screeching hinges and winch cables, stomping it all the way down until the bottom step was just a foot above the pier. They could see him clearly now—black, curly hair, big smile, lively eyes, about the same age as el Capitán. He kicked at the platform folded up against the ladder’s railing until it was horizontal, but instead of stepping down onto it, the man glanced at the crew on the pier and called something out to them in English and then started immediately back up the ladder. What had he said?—they were words Esteban knew, it had sounded as if he’d said,
I love
and then something else … not
you,
it