Читать книгу Back where I came from - A. J. Liebling - Страница 6

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The story of the sea cow is Captain Bob Forsythe’s masterpiece—the choicest fruit of a long experience in steam navigation, and well he knows it.

Captain Forsythe is a limber and lean-faced towboater from Kingston on the Hudson, “which has produced more steamboat men than I daresay any town in the United States.” (“Canawler,” snorts Tom Wilson.) But he has plied the waters of the Harbor and the Sound so long that he feels at home in the office of the Kennedy Line.

“It was during prohibition,” ” Captain Forsythe always begins, as one who would say, “it was during the civil war.”

“We was lying at the foot of Sackett Street, Brooklyn, when I seed the man that owned the boat coming along with what I thought was a big Newfoundland dog, and then I made out this bull, whatever t’hell he was—a cow.”

Captain Forsythe pronounced “cow” with a quality of bitterness such as towboat men generally reserve for the pilots of ferryboats, and he also got into his tone a suggestion that he had moved all his life in a different social sphere from cows, that he hardly knew what a cow was, and that he would feel himself degraded by the acquisition of such knowledge.

“We had a big open lighter that had belonged to the Navy,” he said, “and we had it loaded with provisions and coal and slops that we was to take out to a rum boat at sea east of Block Island, and bring back 4,000 cases of booze.

“Well, all would have been well, but the bootlegger conceived the idea to send this cow out to the ship so he would give the boys fresh milk, and then when they wanted meat they would kill him. The minute the cow seed me he let a roar out of him, and we had a big time making him walk down a plank into the lighter. Then when we got him aboard he liked to kick our brains out, but we made his legs fast and stowed him by the rail.

“We even shipped a bale of hay, which is fuel for them damn animals.

“We cast and went out by Hell Gate, and there was a fog in the Sound that you couldn’t see a hundred yards in front of you, it was perfect. She was so deep in the water with coal, and no deck onto her, just an open lighter, the sharks come swimming right up on the side to visit with the cow. If we had good sense we would have thrown him overboard. But we amused ourselves feeding loaves of bread to the sharks instead. She shipped some water, but everything would have been all right if it wasn’t for this cow.

“He began to beller so we didn’t need no fog horn. I bet you could hear him in Boston. And sure enough we get a hail—one of those Coast Guard four stackers out of New London. They send an officer aboard and I give him a line that I am taking provisions to an Isthmian Line boat at Boston, but he says the Isthmian does not run any boats to Boston.

“ ‘Turn her around and folly us into New London,’ he says.

“ ‘You’re only a public servant,’ I says, ‘this is piracy and damn impudence, and if you want to take her into New London you can run her yourself.’ So I called up my engineer and the firemen, and we sat with our arms folded on top of the canned goods, and cursed the cow who continued his impersonation of a whistle buoy. They put the crew aboard, but so much water came over the side that they couldn’t keep steam on her. The steering gear locked, and she nearly rammed the destroyer.

“They had to tow her into New London, and the further they towed the madder they got, until by the time they docked her the only one in the party that was pleased with himself was the cow.

“Of course they didn’t really have anything on us, because we had not been out there to get the rum yet, and there wasn’t a drop aboard, but still and all nobody would acknowledge ownership, fearing some kind of a tangle with the law, and meanwhile me and my crew was stranded. The bootlegger that owned the boat wouldn’t send us a penny. The Coast Guard wouldn’t release the boat until some owner turned up, and we stayed aboard hoping to collect our pay.

“To keep going I sold the coal off her, and then the provisions, and at last there was nothing left but this here bull, whatever it was, a cow, and I hated him more every time I looked at him. We were tied up at a dock in the Thames River, a high dock, and it was low water, and we were way below level. I goes ashore and looks for a farmer, and sure enough, the second field I look into I find one.”

Captain Forsythe pronounced “farmer” in much the same manner as “cow,” but with slightly less acerbity.

“ ‘Do you want to buy a cow?’ I asks him.

“ ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Where is it?’

“ ‘Come with me,’ I says. He follies me onto the dock and I show him the cow in the lighter.

“ ‘How much do you want for him?’ he says.

“ ‘Fifty dollars,’ I asks him, guessing at the value.

“ ‘I’ll give you fifty dollars for him,’ he says, ‘delivered on the dock.’

“I says, ‘Give me the fifty and I’ll have him on the dock in five minutes.’ So he gives me the fifty and I went aboard and we made a couple of belly bands and put them around the cow and lifted him with the steam hoist, meaning to put him down on the dock, but when I got the cow up and started to lower away, the power stopped, and there was the cow dangling a good fifteen feet above the dock. Up comes my engineer. “ ‘I stopped her,’ he says, ‘because there’s no more rope on the drum. She’s block to block. How will we get rid of the cow?’ he says. ‘I’ll show you,’ I says.

“With that I grabbed an axe and cut through the cable with one wallop. The bull, whatever t’hell he was, a cow, came flying through the air and landed on his four feet like a cat, and up the hill into New London, making a good eighteen knots, and the farmer after him. And that was the last I seed of either one.”