Читать книгу The Sand Pebbles - Richard McKenna - Страница 6

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At breakfast Holman talked and tried friendly jokes and after drills he had Clip Clip shave him. The sailors drinking coffee were talking about Red Dog Shanahan, who had just finished two weeks of restriction for getting into a fight with Fleet sailors in Hankow.

“You look pretty rugged,” Farren told Holman, in the barber chair. “You think you and me could take the Reg Dog for a run ashore and keep him out of trouble?”

“Be glad to try,” Holman said.

“One of you can hold his mouth shut and the other one can hold his arms,” Wilsey said. “But who’ll hold his feet?”

“We’ll go to the Hole in the Wall. That’s just up the bank here, beside the dockyard,” Farren told Holman. “We’ll wear shorts, and then we can’t change our minds and go to Hankow. Hankow’s where the Red Dog runs wild.”

The liberty uniform in Hankow was dress whites, because Fleet ships were in port and all sailors ashore had to be dressed alike.

“Sounds good. I’ll go,” Holman said.

“You guys are my elders, if not my betters,” the Red Dog said. “I put myself in your hands.”

“I’ll bet anybody ten dollars you all come back under arrest,” Restorff, the gunner’s mate, said.

“Oh, no, no, no, Gunner!” Farren said. “The gunner always wins his bets,” he explained to Holman. “Don’t bet, Gunner!”

“Can’t pass up easy money,” Restorff said.

Everyone laughed. “I’ll take a dollar of that, Gunner,” Harris said. “I like to see guys get in trouble.”

“Thanks, you kind-hearted shipmates,” Farren said sarcastically. “Harris, you cheap son of a bitch, you could at least of bet him the whole ten dollars.”

“I’ll bet you the other nine, Gunner,” Holman said. He leaned forward out of the barber chair to shake on it.

The Hole in the Wall was a rough, stuffy little board-and-brick leanto and all they had was Horsehead beer served by two dumb and dirty Chinese girls. You could take the girls in back if you wanted to, Farren said. Who the hell wanted to, the Red Dog said. Holman did not talk much. He felt strange, being ashore with two topside sailors, and he knew that being accepted by the crew depended a lot on how he behaved on this first liberty. He would have to be agreeable, spend freely, and be game for anything. The beer was just cool, Limey fashion, and the girls brought chunks of ice to put in the glasses. The Red Dog picked up a chunk of the ice and squinted at it.

“I can see the cholera bugs winking at me,” he said. “They all got slant eyes.”

He began talking about the ice in Hankow. It was clean and cold and crystalline. It tinkled in the glass like the bells of fairyland. The Scotch whisky was smooth as a maiden’s brow and of a flavor so delicate that even the vast vocabulary of Red Dog Shanahan could not do it justice.

“Belay that talk,” Farren said. “We got to make him stop that, Holman. He’s trying to undermine us.”

“Cool, beautiful young Russian princesses. Virgin princesses. Green-eyed and graceful as cats.” The Red Dog sketched them with his hands in the air above the table. “Firm, rose-pointed breasts. Skin like white rose petals. Curly, warm nests.” His voice and face were ecstatic.

“Holman, we just got to put a sack over his head. We got to, or we’re lost,” Farren said. “He’d get Jesus Christ in trouble, if he had him ashore.”

Holman laughed. Farren reminded him of a big St. Bernard and the Red Dog of a fierce, yapping little terrier.

“You know, I’m awash to the gunwales with this damned warm beer,” he said. “I’d like a shot of whisky.”

“If you great, monstrous bastards are awash, how do you think I feel?” the Red Dog said.

Farren stroked his beard. “Maskee, let’s go back to the ship and change into dress whites,” he said. He leaned to Holman’s ear and whispered, “We’ll shackle the little bastard to his bunk and go without him.”

“Arf! Arf! Arf! I heard that!” The Red Dog jumped up on his chair and pointed accusing forefingers. “It’s mutiny!” he cried. “Shame on you selfish sons of bitches!”

“I was joking. We’ll take you,” Farren said. “Come on aboard and change uniform.”

“I don’t trust you. You ain’t going to trap me back aboard that ship.” The Red Dog turned to Holman. “You look like an honest man with no crap in your blood, Holman,” he said. “Let’s go up to Hankow and leave this bearded traitor here to founder himself.”

“We’d be out of uniform. How about the shore patrol?”

“We’ll go in a car, to the Green Front,” the Red Dog said. “It’s up an alley, and we can hire a kid to watch for the patrol.”

“Okay, I’m game,” Holman said. He stood up.

“We’ll be sorry,” Farren said, standing up too. “You don’t know this little pint of piss yet, Holman. He’s a devil.”

They each took a beer to drink in the car, and it was cooler in the moving car with their shorts and short-sleeved shirts and their white sun helmets with the ship’s name across the front. The driver cursed and honked his way past brown-legged coolies pushing wheelbarrows and files of coolies with broad bamboo hats and twin baskets of green vegetables slung jouncing from shoulder poles. The road ran along the river bank and into Hankow along the broad, tree-lined bund. To the left, walkways ran down to pontoons with moored steamers and clusters of small craft. Most of the business buildings were of brick, several stories with arcaded verandas, and some had walls around them with gardens inside. It was a big, busy city, and there were many Sikh cops, as in Shanghai. There were five concessions in a row along the river, Farren said, but the German and Russian concessions belonged to the British now, on account of the British won the war. There was a victory monument for the war on the British bund, a lady angel on a pedestal, like the one in Shanghai, and beyond the British bund was the native city. Along the native bund the junks were three and four deep.

The Green Front was a small place with a row of tables along one side and a bar along the other. The floor was damp and it smelled cool and beery. Five sailors in dress whites were eating a meal at one of the tables and no one was at the bar.

“Roll in, you Sand Pebbles!” the bartender yelled when he saw them. “Hi, Farren. Red Dog, who let you out of your cage?”

He was a fat, pink man with thin white hair and a white shirt open at the neck. They introduced him to Holman as Nobby Clarke, a retired machinist’s mate and an old-time river rat. The back bar was stacked with bottles and there was also a stuffed pheasant and a photograph of an old sidewheeler.

“That’s the old Monocacy, first gunboat on the river,” Farren told Holman. “When you see them wheels start to go round, it’s a sign you had enough and it’s time to go back to the ship.”

“I steamed her, when I was a kid,” Nobby said. “She was a man-killing bitch to steam, but she was a home.” He looked fondly at the picture.

The Red Dog was standing between Holman and Farren. He thumped the leather dice cup on the bar and rolled five aces.

“You got the devil on your side, Red Dog,” Nobby said.

“He’s my uncle. When he dies, I’ll inherit hell.”

“What’ll you do with hell?” Farren asked.

“I’ll sell it to the missionaries for a million dollars.”

“You think you’re joking, but I believe you, you Irish peckerhead,” Farren said.

“It’s true,” the Red Dog said. “Roll ’em, boys!”

Holman lost. He called for a new bottle of White Horse and said to leave it on the bar, which meant he was buying the bottle. The white-coated barboy set up the drinks. In China, the white bartenders never mixed or served drinks.

“Sure you’re that flush, Holman?” Farren asked.

“I’m going to win nine Mex from the gunner,” Holman said.

“Ho ho ho!” Farren said. “That’s what you think.”

They drank and talked and laughed, the Red Dog grinning up impishly from under his sun helmet cocked askew. They were all feeling the whisky and it was going to be one of the happy, floating drunks, Holman could tell. Some drunks were wild and jumpy and some were morose and savage and Holman’s drunks by himself were always sad and gloomy ones, but this drunk was floating. It was a knack the Red Dog had, to lift and carry a drunk. The Fleet sailors had finished their chow and were drinking at their table, talking in bursts and then falling silent, with morose faces, as if they could not get their drunk off the ground. They were from the U.S.S. Pigeon, a minesweeper. The Red Dog had taken the spirit of the place away from them, and they did not like it.

“How come you guys up here out of uniform?” Nobby asked.

“We’re in uniform,” the Red Dog said. “We’re river rats, and this is our proper uniform.”

One of the Pigeons started to sing “Subic” and the others joined hoarsely and they all went flat and false and petered out on the first verse. They were pretty drunk, but it was a heavy, lumpish drunk. The burly shipfitter they called Buffalo slapped the table.

“God damn it!” he roared. “Boy! More drinks, you slant-eyed son of a bitch!”

He was a hulking man with a scarred, beaten-up face, probably a fighter. Holman knew how they were feeling; they would not get drunker, they would just get meaner. One or another of the five kept scowling at the Red Dog. They thought he was too cocky and happy.

“Lynch was in a while back,” Nobby said. “With that Russian.”

“She’s a cow,” the Red Dog said. He hunched his shoulders and squeezed spurts of milk from imaginary breasts.

“Red Dog, where’s them Russian princesses?” Holman asked.

“Right now they’re taking baths in donkey milk,” the Red Dog said. “They’re very special gear, Holman. They’re all directly descended from Ivan the Terrible. They won’t come in till the rabble clears out.”

A chair scraped behind them. “Hey, you guys,” Buffalo said.

The Sand Pebbles swung around. Farren squeezed the Red Dog’s arm and frowned a signal to be quiet.

“Seen any elephants today?” Buffalo asked.

“Not today,” Farren said.

“Wearing them hats, I thought you might be hunting elephants. Want me to tell you how to catch a elephant?”

Holman squeezed the Red Dog’s other arm. “All we’re hunting today is white horses,” he said. “We already caught one.” He motioned his head at the bottle, almost empty now.

“You want to catch a elephant, the first thing is, you show him your pretty white legs,” Buffalo said.

The other Pigeons laughed jeeringly. They meant to start a fight. Nobby Clarke hurried around the bar.

“Hold it, you guys! Have a drink on the house,” he pleaded.

“We’re the experts on elephants,” the Red Dog said. “We know elephants always come back to crap in the same place. So we find five piles of elephant crap and then we wait for the elephant.”

Farren laughed and Holman joined him. They exchanged a look above the Red Dog’s head. We’ll take ’em, the glance agreed. It was a sudden warm bond between them and they turned the Red Dog loose.

“Listen, slow down, take a turn, you guys! Take your God damned argument outside,” Nobby was saying.

“I saw some elephants over in the Jap Concession,” Buffalo said. “I think you better go over there.”

He meant it to be a bluff-out, a forced runout, Holman realized. He set himself to take that Buffalo, when the thing blew. He knew his own quick, terrible strength could take down almost any man, and he feared an angry fight. But this would be a happy fight.

“In case you elephant hunters lost your compasses, I’ll be glad to show you where the door is,” Buffalo said. The other Pigeons laughed nastily again and eased back their chairs. Their faces were ugly.

“Oh, pee on you, John,” the Red Dog said in falsetto.

Farren and Holman roared. It was a masterstroke of wit. The Pigeon’s Fleet nickname was Pea John and the Red Dog had insulted both the men and their ship. It stopped them cold. But, from their faces, in another heartbeat the air was going to be full of flying furniture. Nobby ducked behind the bar. Holman tensed for it.

Footsteps sounded, the door opened, and four British sailors came in. They wore shorts and sun helmets. The Red Dog snatched off his own helmet and swept out a grand bow.

“Dr. Bangerknox, I presume,” he said.

“As I live and breathe, it’s Milord Red Arse Bite-’em-on-the-dog Shanahan!” the foremost Limey said. “Hello, Farren.”

He was a square, ruddy man of about Holman’s build and he was half drunk, but his gray eyes went keenly back and forth. He knew something was wrong.

“We been hunting elephants and we caught a buffalo,” the Red Dog said. “What do you bold hunters know about buffaloes?”

“They’re vicious brutes. They charge with their eyes open,” the ruddy man said.

“This buffalo’s up a stump. We can’t make him charge.”

“Not sporting to shoot unless he charges.” The Limeys were spreading out and balancing on their toes, siding with the Sand Pebbles without question. “Might take a reef in his tail,” the ruddy man said.

“I’ll spit in his ear.” The Red Dog began hawking his throat.

They all chimed in with unprintable suggestions. The big shipfitter’s lips were working and he was ready to go it blind mad. His shipmates could not face the sudden change in odds. “No, Martin. The hell with it, Martin,” they said, getting up. They did not call him Buffalo any more. They got him moving toward the door. “Come on, Martin,” they said. “Let’s find an honest American place to drink.”

“Arf! Arf! Arf!” the Red Dog barked after them. All the river sailors laughed.

They were all at the bar with fresh drinks and the drunk was floating higher than ever. The ruddy man was Banger Knox, an engineer, and they were from H.M.S. Woodcock, which also cruised in Hunan Province. That made a bond between the two ships and they would always stand together against any Fleet ship or even a main river gunboat. The Hunan Chinese were much tougher and fiercer than the tame main river Chinese, they explained to Holman. The Woodcock’s, nickname was Timber Dick, and the sailors were Timber Dicks, and in any main river port the Timber Dicks and Sand Pebbles always stood together. Farren told about the Red Dog’s stroke of wit against the Pea Johns and he had to explain it before the Limeys could laugh.

“Fair baffles me how you blokes can twist a name into an insult,” Banger said. “You’ve a low, nasty sort of talent for it.”

They shouted each other down telling Holman about a fight last winter in Changsha. The Red Dog had begun calling the Limeys Limber Dicks, and after it had been explained to them they had all had a very good fight in a place called the Red Candle.

“We tried for a fortnight after to hit on a good insult for Sand Pebble,” Banger said. “The best we could do was simple apple.” He looked pleadingly at Farren. “I hope you find that just a wee bit insulting?”

“I’ve heard of bad apples and horse apples.” Farren stroked his beard judicially. “I don’t know about simple apples.”

“We’ll consider it a mortal insult, just to be friendly,” the Red Dog said. “Nobody but our fellow Hunanese can call us that.”

Banger raised his glass. “Thank you, Milord Red Arse.”

“But the Hunanese are the natives,” an English sailor said.

“All right, we’re Hunaneers,” Holman said.

“Us Hunaneers, we got no fears,” the Red Dog said. He began to sing, in a clear Irish tenor:

Us Hunaneers, we got no fears,

We do not stop at trifles;

We hang our balls upon the walls

And shoot at them with rifles.

The Limeys thought that was very good. They explained that what made it so funny was that you could not really hang them upon the walls, you know.

Holman began blanking out and coming back. Things were disconnected. They did a lot of singing. The Limeys had a good song about the old barstard from Kent. Two more bottles of White Horse were on the bar and Nobby Clarke floated around back there like a pink balloon with sparse white hair. It was a very happy, high-floating drunk. Holman talked very earnestly to Banger Knox. He had a profound new idea. Some men composed poems and some composed music, he explained to Banger, but Red Dog Shanahan was the world’s finest artist at composing drunks. It was a shame the world did not know that about him. Too bloody right, Banger agreed. The Red Dog should be buried in Westminster Abbey. They decided solemnly to crown him drunkard laureate and they pulled tail feathers from the stuffed pheasant to stick in his helmet band as a crown. But the Red Dog thought that made him an Indian and he climbed on the bar and warwhooped and wardanced the length of it.

There was shouting outside in the street and a barboy went out to check and came in to say there was trouble.

“Hey, you guys! Hey, you guys!” Nobby was saying. “If there’s trouble, you better go down to the bund and stand by.”

“Let these main river people look after their own trouble,” Farren said. “We love everybody.”

“We’re Hunaneers,” the Red Dog said. “We’re just visiting up here.”

The thing about a floating drunk was that you were detached. You did not have to care about rules. You were floating so high and happy that the sad, serious people only laughed at whatever you did. It made them a little bit happy just to watch you and know how you were feeling and nobody wanted to shoot down a floating drunk.

Far off a power plant siren let go in short, fast hoots, on and on and on. Suddenly Nobby was wearing one of the washbasin British steel helmets and he was banging on the bar with a rifle butt.

“Come on! Come on! That’s the emergency signal for the Volunteers!” he was saying. “Come on, sailors! Shove off down to the river!”

They were following the Red Dog down a wide street and Chinese in blue gowns and rags were running both ways. The store windows were all broken and so much torn white paper was on the street that it looked like snow. Two coolies were smashing a heavy iron grating edgewise down on new bicycles. Holman and Banger took the grating. They were much stronger men than the coolies and they could bring the grating thundering down like a Nevada stamp mill and bend a new bicycle almost double. The coolies kept pulling away the smashed bicycles and feeding in new ones.

The crowd was thicker and it blocked them. The shaven Chinese heads were close together like cobbles in a pavement that also surged and heaved like a sea and a trapped rickshaw was like an island in it, shafts high, the fat Chinese passenger leaning forward onto the puller’s skinny brown shoulders. The Red Dog still had his feathered helmet and they followed it through the packed crowd. Veins throbbed and swelled in the temples of the shaven heads and the mouths were open, screeching, and showing teeth and fluttering tongues. They pushed through into an open space and Farren still clutched a bottle of White Horse. It was about one-third full. He beckoned grandly with the bottle.

“All hanje,” he said. “Time for lil drinkee.”

It was a half-circle open space around the entrance to a cross street, and across the entrance was a line of Sikh cops and helmeted white civilians with rifles. They were yelling and motioning. One white man stepped forward.

“Come inside, you drunken fools!” he said. “They’ll kill you!”

“Not ush,” Farren said. “We’re Hooney—we’re Hunaneers.”

“Come inside! That’s an order!”

The man pulled at Banger’s arm. Banger jerked away and looked very dignified.

“You talk like a bloody Yank, chum,” he said. “You can’t give orders to a Hunaneer, you know.”

The Red Dog began to sing.

Us Hunaneers, we shed no tears,

We give no damn for riches;

We prong our wives with butcher knives,

Us hardy sons of bitches.

More men came out and pushed and tugged them singing inside the line. Come on, you buccaneers, your officers are going to hear about this, the men said. Come on, for Christ’s sweet sake, before we all get killed! They went along the street, staggering and stumbling, and firemen in red helmets were running past them the other way, unreeling white hose. They were going along beside a brick wall covered with stucco that had fallen off from big, scabby patches and a file of British sailors came by on the run and somehow carried off the Timber Dicks in their wake. Holman stopped.

“You know, thish serious,” he said.

They all stopped and looked back. Their drunk was coming down to earth. The yelling at the head of the street was louder, a great screeching, and white plumes of water shot up there. Further back, the British sailors were making a barricade of planks and a dismounted gate. The wall beside the barricade had sharpened bamboo stakes along the top and a big tree bushed greenly out over the wall. A woman with a pad and pencil came up from somewhere. She was not very young, and she looked frightened.

“I’m a reporter,” she said. “Do you think they’ll try to storm the armory?”

“Oh yes. They always storm the armory,” the Red Dog said.

“Oh, you’re drunk!” she said. She sounded disgusted.

The woman went up to the barricade. The British sailors were lining out kneeling and they had a machine gun on a tripod and a young officer stood behind them with a sword. The plumes of water were falling back along the street and they wavered and stopped and the firemen fell back through the barricade. After them came the Sikhs and Volunteers, all soaked with water, and they all went inside the compound. The woman went in with them. She turned in the gate to look back at the Sand Pebbles and the Red Dog threw her a kiss.

“Krishe! Gotta heave!” Farren said. His eyes were bulged and glassy.

The waving arms and shaven heads came down the street slowly as a tide makes and their frantic screeching filled the street. The young British officer walked back and forth slapping his leg with his sword. Above the shaven heads was a big sign for Three Castles cigarettes and the sudden crackling, volleying fire chopped through it and down into the crowd. The tripod danced and the machine gun throttled off the screeching like hands around a throat. The crowd was gone except for flopping, lumpish bundles criss-crossing each other on the street, and the firing ceased with a few after-pops.

Farren was heaving and strangling, bent over, hands on stomach, his beard all foul. The sight and smell of it made Holman’s stomach knot and rise. He was not drunk any more.

“Red Dog, take his other arm,” he ordered. “We got to get the hell out of here.”

Around the second corner they ran into the American shore patrol.

The drunk ended officially next day on the quarterdeck. Everyone not concerned with mast kept clear, but the ragged coolies on the pontoon watched it without understanding, as they watched everything on the San Pablo. The three prisoners stood in line, hats in hand, facing the log desk, which had been moved across to stand right against the foot of the boat deck ladder. On the back of the log desk, ordinarily hidden, was a weather-stained card lettered: Shame on you bastards. It was an old San Pablo joke, but the three prisoners and the three chiefs standing in line inboard were very quiet and solemn. Lt. Collins came down the ladder and the chiefs saluted him. The prisoners did not have the privilege of saluting.

Lt. Collins stood on the bottom step, where he could look down on the prisoners across the log desk. He gave them each in turn a cold, sharp stare. Then he turned his thin, dark face down to the paper on the desk before him.

“You men are all charged with being drunk and out of uniform and with insolence to the shore patrol,” he said quietly. “Have you anything to say?”

Farren spoke for all three. “We just had too much to drink, sir, and we’re sorry now.”

Franks stepped forward. “Farren is a good man, Captain,” he said. “He’s always clean and sober aboard and attentive to duty and very reliable.”

In turn, Lynch and Welbeck stepped forward to say the same things about Holman and Shanahan. Lt. Collins turned his eyes back to the bareheaded prisoners and they were very cold eyes.

“You are not specifically charged with what I consider your most serious offense,” he said. “There was a dangerous riot in progress. You should have placed yourselves under the first military command you encountered. Drunk or sick or asleep, no matter what, you are fundamentally on duty every minute you draw breath.” His voice rapped harsh and cold at them: “There is no relief and no escape from your military duty!” He slapped the desk for each no. “Do you clearly understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” they all said humbly.

“Very well, then.” His voice lost its edge. “Holman, I am sorry to have to spoil your clean record so soon. Farren, your record already leaves much to be desired.” He looked at the Red Dog, dwarfed between Farren and Holman, and a twinkle came into his eye. “Shanahan, it is impossible for you to shock me any more, but I continue to be mildly disappointed in you,” he said. “I have no doubt whatever that, if the truth were known, you started that riot all by yourself.” He paused. “Stay aboard three weeks, all three of you.” A shadowy smile crossed his face, but he quickly hardened it and snapped, “Mast dismissed!” and went back up the ladder.

A few minutes later, drinking coffee in the compartment, Holman knew he was in. They were all calling him “Jake” and wanting to hear the story of the big drunk again and what the captain said at mast. A well-composed drunk like that one always became a sea story, to be told and retold for years, and Jake Holman was already solidly a part of San Pablo folklore. He was a true Sand Pebble and there would be no more question of the captain swapping him back to the Fleet.