3 The Yellow One

I

ONCE catching a glimpse of her, they swooped down like a brood of starving hawks. But it was the girl’s first vision of the sea, and the superstitions of a Honduras peasant heritage tightened her grip on the old rusty canister she was dragging with a frantic effort on to the Urubamba’s gangplank.

“Le’ me help yo’, dahtah,” said one.

“Go ‘way, man, yo’ too farrad–‘way!”

“‘Im did got de fastiness fi’ try fi’ jump ahead o’ me again, but mahn if yo’ t’ink yo’ gwine duh me outa a meal yo’ is a dam pitty liar!”

“Wha’ yo’ ah try fi’ do, leggo!” cried the girl, slapping the nearest one. But the shock of her words was enough to paralyze them.

They were a harum scarum lot, hucksters, ex-cable divers and thugs of the coast, bare-footed, brown-faced, raggedly–drifting from every cave and creek of the Spanish Main.

They withdrew, shocked, uncertain of their ears, staring at her; at her whom the peons of the lagoon idealized as la madurita: the yellow one.

Sensing the hostility, but unable to fathom it, she felt guilty of some untoward act, and guardedly lowered her eyes.

Flushed and hot, she seized the canister by the handle and started resuming the journey. It was heavy. More energy was required to move it than she had bargained on. 

In the dilemma rescuing footsteps were heard coming down the gangplank. She was glad to admit she was stumped, and stood back, confronted by one of the crew. He was tall, some six feet and over, and a mestizo like herself. Latin blood bubbled in his veins, and it served at once to establish a ready means of communication between them.

“I’ll take it,” he said, quietly, “you go aboard–“

“Oh, many thanks,” she said, “and do be careful, I’ve got the baby bottle in there and I wouldn’t like to break it.” All this in Spanish, a tongue spontaneously springing up between them.

She struggled up the gangplank, dodging a sling drooping tipsily on to the wharf. “Where are the passengers for Kingston station?” she asked.

“Yonder!” he pointed, speeding past her. Amongst a contortion of machinery, cargo, nets and hatch panels he deposited the trunk.

Gazing at his hardy hulk, two emotions seared her. She wanted to be grateful but he wasn’t the sort of person she could offer a tip to. And he would readily see through her telling him that Alfred was down the dock changing the money.

But he warmed to her rescue. “Oh, that’s all right,” he said, quite illogically, “stay here till they close the hatch, then if I am not around, somebody will help you put it where you want it.”

Noises beat upon her. Vendors of tropical fruits cluttered the wharf, kept up sensuous cries; stir and clamor and screams rose from every corner of the ship. Men swerved about her, the dock hands, the crew, digging cargo off the pier and spinning it into the yawning hatch.

“Wha’ ah lot o’ dem,” she observed, “an’ dem so black and ugly. R–r–!” Her words had the anti-native quality of her Jamaica spouse’s, Alfred St. Xavier Mendez.

The hatch swelled, the bos’n closed it, and the siege commenced. “If Ah did got any sense Ah would Ah wait till dem clean way de rope befo’ me mek de sailor boy put down de trunk. Howsomevah, de Lawd will provide, an’ all me got fi’ do is put me trus’ in Him till Halfred come.”

With startling alacrity, her prayers were answered, for there suddenly appeared a thin moon-faced decker, a coal-black fellow with a red greasy scarf around his neck, his teeth giddy with an ague he had caught in Puerta Tela and which was destined never to leave him. He seized the trunk by one end and helped her hoist it on the hatch. When he had finished, he didn’t wait for her trepid words of thanks but flew to the ship’s rail, convulsively shaking.

She grew restive. “Wha’ dat Halfred, dey, eh,” she cried, “wha’ a man can pacify time dough, eh?”

The stream of amassing deckers overran the Urubamba’s decks. The din of parts being slugged to rights buzzed. An oily strip of canvas screened the hatch. Deckers clamorously crept underneath it. 

The sea lay torpid, sizzling. Blue rust flaked off the ship’s sides shone upon it. It dazzled you. It was difficult to divine its true color. Sometimes it was so blue it blinded you. Another time it would turn with the cannon roar of the sun, red. Nor was it the red of fire or of youth, of roses or of red tulips. But a sullen, grizzled red. The red of a North Sea rover’s icicled beard; the red of a red-headed woman’s hair, the red of a red-hot oven. It gave to the water engulfing the ship a dark, copper-colored hue. It left on it jeweled crusts.

A bow-legged old Maroon, with a trunk on his head, explored the deck, smoking a gawky clay pipe of some fiery Jamaica bush and wailing, “Scout bway, scout bway, wha’ yo’ dey? De old man ah look fa’ yo’.” The trunk was beardy and fuzzy with the lashes of much-used rope. It was rapidly dusking, and a woman and an amazing brood of children came on. One pulled, screaming, at her skirt, one was astride a hip, another, an unclothed one, tugged enthusiastically at a full, ripened breast. A hoary old black man, in a long black coat, who had taken the Word, no doubt, to the yellow “heathen” of the fever-hot lagoon, shoeless, his hard white crash pants rolled up above his hairy, veiny calves, with a lone yellow pineapple as his sole earthly reward.

A tar-black Jamaica sister, in a gown of some noisy West Indian silk, her face entirely removed by the shadowy girth of a leghorn hat, waltzed grandly up on the deck. The edge of her skirt in one hand, after the manner of the ladies at Wimbledon, in the other a fluttering macaw, she was twittering, “Hawfissah, hawfissah, wear is de hawfissah, he?” Among the battering hordes there were less brusque folk; a native girl,–a flower, a brown flower–was alone, rejecting the opulent offer of a bunk, quietly vowing to pass two nights of sleepful concern until she got to Santiago. And two Costa Rica maidens, white, dainty, resentful and uncommunicative.

He came swaggering at last. La Madurita said, “Wha’ yo’ been, Halfred, all dis lang time, no?”

“Cho, it wuz de man dem down dey,” he replied, “dem keep me back.” He gave her the sleeping child, and slipped down to doze on the narrow hatch.

In a mood of selfless bluster he was returning to Kingston. He adored Jamaica. He would go on sprees of work and daring, to the jungles of Changuinola or the Cut at Culebra, but such flights, whether for a duration of one or ten years, were uplifted mainly by the traditional deprivations of Hindu coolies or Polish immigrants–sunless, joyless. Similarly up in Cabello; work, sleep, work; day in and day out for six forest-hewing years. And on Sabbaths a Kentucky evangelist, a red-headed hypochondriac, the murky hue of a British buckra from the beat of the tropic sun, tearfully urged the blacks to embrace the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ before the wrath of Satan engulfed them. Then, one day, on a tramp to Salamanca, a fancy struck him. It stung, was unexpected. He was unused to the sensations it set going. It related to a vision–something he had surreptitiously encountered. Behind a planter’s hut he had seen it. He was slowly walking along the street, shaded by a row of plum trees, and there she was, gloriously unaware of him, bathing her feet in ample view of the sky. She was lovely to behold. Her skin was the ripe red gold of the Honduras half-breed. It sent the blood streaming to his head. He paused and wiped the sweat from his face. He looked at her, calculating. Five–six–seven-fifty. Yes, that’d do. With seven hundred and fifty pounds, he’d dazzle the foxy folk of Kingston with the mellow Spanish beauty of her.

In due time, and by ample means, he had been able to bring round the girl’s hitherto chumbo-hating folk.

“Him mus’ be hungry,” she said, gazing intently at the baby’s face.

“Cho’,” replied Alfred, “leave de picknee alone, le’ de gal picknee sleep.” He rolled over, face downwards, and folded his arms under his chin. He wore a dirty khaki shirt, made in the States, dark green corduroy pants and big yellow shoes which he seldom took off.

Upright on the trunk, the woman rocked the baby and nursed it. By this time the hatch was overcrowded with deckers.

Down on the dock, oxen were yoked behind wagons of crated bananas. Gnawing on plugs of hard black tobacco and firing reels of spit to every side of them, New Orleans “crackers” swearingly cursed the leisurely lack of native labor. Scaly ragamuffins darted after boxes of stale cheese and crates of sun-sopped iced apples that were dumped in the sea.

II

The dawning sunlight pricked the tarpaulin and fell upon the woman’s tired, sleep-sapped face. Enamel clanged and crashed. A sickly, sour-sweet odor pervaded the hatch. The sea was calm, gulls scuttled low, seizing and ecstatically devouring some reckless, sky-drunk sprat.

“Go, no, Halfred,” cried the woman, the baby in her arms, “an’ beg de backra man fi’ giv’ yo’ a can o’ hot water fi’ mek de baby tea. Go no?”

He rolled over lazily; his loggish yellow bulk, solid, dispirited. “Cho’, de man dem no ha’ no hot water, giv’ she a lemon, no, she na’h cry.” He tossed back again, his chin on his arms, gazing at the glorious procession of the sun.

“Even de man dem, ovah yondah,” she cried, gesticulating, “a hold a kangfarance fi’ get some hot water. Why yo’ don’t get up an’ go, no man? Me can’t handastan’ yo’, sah.”

A conspiration, a pandemonium threatened–the deckers.

“How de bleedy hell dem heckspeck a man fi’ trabble tree days an’ tree whole a nights be-out giv’ him any hot watah fi’ mek even a can o’ tea is somet’ing de hagent at Kingston gwine hav’ fi’ pint out to me w’en de boat dey lan’–“

“Hey, mistah hawfissah, yo’ got any hot watah?”

“Hot watah, mistah?”

“Me will giv’ yo’ a half pint o’ red rum if yo’ giv’ me a quatty wut’ o’ hot watah.”

“Come, no, man, go get de watah, no?”

“Ripe apples mek me t’row up!”

“Green tamarin’ mek me tummack sick!”

“Sahft banana mek me fainty!”

“Fish sweetie giv’ me de dysentery.”

Craving luscious Havana nights the ship’s scullions hid in refuse cans or in grub for the Chinks hot water which they peddled to the miserable deckers.

“Get up, no Halfred, an’ go buy some o’ de watah,” the girl cried, “de baby a cry.”

Of late he didn’t answer her any more. And it was useless to depend upon him. Frantic at the baby’s pawing of the clotted air, at the cold dribbling from its twisted mouth, which turned down a trifle at the ends like Alfred’s, she began conjecturing on the use to which a decker could put a cup of the precious liquid.

Into it one might pour a gill of goat’s milk–a Cuban señora, a decker of several voyages, had fortified herself with a bucket of it–or melt a sprig of peppermint or a lump of clove or a root of ginger. So many tropical things one could do with a cup of hot water.

The child took on the color of its sweltering environs. It refused to be pacified by sugared words. It was hungry and it wished to eat, to feel coursing down its throat something warm and delicious. It kicked out of its mother’s hand the toy engine she locomotioned before it. It cried, it ripped with its naked toes a hole in her blouse. It kept up an irrepressible racket.

The child’s agony drove her to reckless alternatives. “If you don’t go, then I’ll go, yo’ lazy t’ing,” she said, depositing the baby beside him and disappearing down the galley corridor.

Her bare earth-red feet slid on the hot, sizzling deck. The heat came roaring at her. It swirled, enveloping her. It was a dingy corridor and there were pigmy paneled doors every inch along it. It wasn’t clear to her whither she was bound; the vaporing heat dizzied things. But the scent of stewing meat and vegetables lured her on. It sent her scudding in and out of barrels of cold storage, mounds of ash debris of an exotic kind. It shot her into dark twining circles of men, talking. They either paused or grew lecherous at her approach. Some of the doors to the crew’s quarters were open and as she passed white men’d stick out their heads and call, pull, tug at her. Grimy, ash-stained faces; leprous, flesh-crazed hands. Onward she fled, into the roaring, fuming galley.

Heat. Hearths aglow. Stoves aglow. Dishes clattering. Engines, donkey-engines, wheezing. Bright-faced and flame-haired Swedes and Bristol cockneys cursing. Half-nude figures of bronze and crimson shouting, spearing, mending the noisy fire. The wet, clean, brick-colored deck danced to the rhythm of the ship. Darky waiters–white shirt bosoms–black bow ties–black, braided uniforms–spat entire menus at the blond cooks.

“Slap it on dey, Dutch, don’t starve de man.”

“Hey, Hubigon, tightenin’ up on any mo’ hoss flesh to-day?”

“Come on fellahs, let’s go–“

“There’s my boy Porto Rico again Hubigon, Ah tell yo’ he is a sheik, tryin’ to git nex’ to dat hot yallah mama.”

On entering she had turned, agonized and confused, to a lone yellow figure by the port hole.

“Oh, it’s you,” she exclaimed, and smiled wanly.

He was sourly sweeping dishes, forks, egg-stained things into a mossy wooden basket which he hoisted and dropped into a cesspool of puttering water.

He paused, blinking uncomprehendingly. “You,” she was catching at mementoes, “you remember–you helped me–my trunk–“

“Oh, yes, I remember,” he said slowly. He was a Cuban, mix-blooded, soft-haired, and to him, as she stood there, a bare, primitive soul, her beauty and her sex seemed to be in utmost contrast to his mechanical surroundings.

“Can you,” she said, in that half-hesitant way of hers, “can you give me some hot watah fo’ my baby?”

He was briefly attired; overalls, a dirty, pink singlet. His reddish yellow face, chest and neck shone with the grease and sweat. His face was buttered with it.

“Sure,” he replied, seizing an empty date can on the ledge of the port hole and filling it. “Be careful,” he cautioned, handing it back to her.

She took it and their eyes meeting, fell.

She started to go, but a burning touch of his hand possessed her.

“Wait,” he said, “I almost forgot something.” From beneath the machine he exhumed an old moist gold dust box. Inside it he had pummeled, by some ornate instinct, odds and ends–echoes of the breakfast table. He gave the box to her, saying, “If any one should ask you where you got it, just say Jota Arosemena gave it to you.”

“Hey, Porto Rico, wha’ the hell yo’ git dat stuff at, hotting stuff fo’ decks?”

Both of them turned, and the Cuban paled at the jaunty mug of the cook’s Negro mate.

“You speak to me?” he said, ice cool.

Hate shone on the black boy’s face. “Yo’ heard me!” he growled. “Yo’ ain’t cock-eyed.” Ugly, grim, black, his face wore an uneasy leer. He was squat and bleary-eyed.

A son of the Florida Gulf, he hated “Porto Rico” for reasons planted deep in the Latin’s past. He envied him the gentle texture of his hair. On mornings in the galley where they both did their toilet he would poke fun at the Cuban’s meticulous care in parting it. “Yo’ ain’t gwine sho,” Hubigon’d growl. “Yo’ don’t have to dress up like no lady’s man.” And Jota, failing to comprehend the point of view, would question, “What’s the matter with you, mang, you mek too much noise, mang.” Hubigon despised him because he was yellow-skinned; one night in Havana he had spied him and the chef cook, a nifty, freckle-faced Carolina “cracker” for whom the cook’s mate had no earthly use, and the baker’s assistant, a New Orleans creole,–although the Negro waiters aboard were sure he was a “yallah” nigger–drinking anee in a high-hat café on the prado which barred jet-black American Negroes. He loathed the Latin for his good looks and once at a port on the Buenaventura River they had gone ashore and met two native girls. One was white, her lips pure as the petals of a water lily; the other was a flaming mulatto. That night, on the steps of an adobe hut, a great, low moon in the sky, both forgot the presence of the cook’s mate and pledged tear-stained love to Jota. “An’ me standin’ right by him, doin’ a fadeaway.” He envied Jota his Cuban nationality for over and over again he had observed that the Latin was the nearest thing to a white man the ofay men aboard had yet met. They’d play cards with him–something they never did with the Negro crew–they’d gang with him in foreign ports, they’d listen in a “natural” sort of way to all the bosh he had to say.

Now all the mate’s pent-up wrath came foaming to the front.

He came up, the girl having tarried, a cocky, chesty air about him. He made deft, telling jabs at the vapors enmeshing him. “Yo’ can’t do that,” he said, indicating the victuals, “like hell yo’ kin! Who de hell yo’ t’ink yo’ is anyhow? Yo’ ain’t bettah’n nobody else. Put it back, big boy, befo’ Ah starts whisperin’ to de man. Wha’ yo’ t’ink yo’ is at, anyhow, in Porto Rico, where yo’ come fum at? Com’ handin’ out poke chops an’ cawn muffins, like yo’ is any steward. Yo’ cain’t do dat, ole man.”

It slowly entered the other’s brain–all this edgy, snappy, darky talk. But the essence of it was aggressively reflected in the mate’s behavior. Hubigon made slow measured steps forward, and the men came flocking to the corner.

“Go to it, Silver King, step on his corns.”

“Stick him with a ice pick!”

“Easy fellahs, the steward’s comin’.”

All of them suddenly fell away. The steward, initiating some fruit baron into the mysteries of the galley, came through, giving them time to speed back to their posts unobserved. The tension subsided, and Jota once more fed the hardware to the dish machine.

As she flew through the corridor all sorts of faces, white ones, black ones, brown ones, leered sensually at her. Like tongues of flame, hands sped after her. Her steps quickened, her heart beat faster and faster till she left behind her the droning of the galley, and safely ascending the hatch, felt on her face the soft, cool breezes of the Caribbean ocean.

Alfred was sitting up, the unpacified baby in his arms.

“‘Im cry all de time yo’ went ‘way,” he said, “wha’ yo t’ink is de mattah wi’ ‘im, he? Yo’ t’ink him tummack a hut ‘im?”

“Him is hungry, dat is wha’ is de mattah wit’ ‘im! Move, man! ‘Fo Ah knock yo’, yah! Giv’ me ‘im, an’ get outa me way! Yo’ is only a dyam noosant!”

“Well, what is de mattah, now?” he cried in unfeigned surprise.

“Stid o’ gwine fo’ de watah yo’self yo’ tan’ back yah an’ giv’ hawdahs an’ worryin’ wha’ is de mattah wit’ de picknee.”

“Cho, keep quiet, woman, an’ le’ me lie down.” Satisfied, he rolled back on the hatch, fatuously staring at the sun sweeping the tropic blue sea.

. . . . . . .

“T’un ovah, Halfred, an’ lif’ yo’ big able self awf de baby, yo’ Ah crush ‘im to debt,” she said, awake at last. The baby was awake and ravenous before dawn and refused to be quieted by the witty protestations of the Jamaica laborers scrubbing down the deck. But it was only after the sun, stealing a passage through a crack in the canvas, had warmed a spot on the girl’s mouth, that she was constrained to respond to his zestful rantings. “Hey, yo’ heah de picknee ah bawl all de time an’ yo’ won’t even tek heed–move yah man!” She thrust the sleeping leg aside and drawing the child to her, stuck a breast in his mouth.

The boat had encountered a sultry sea, and was dipping badly. Water flooded her decks. Getting wet, dozing deckers crawled higher on top of each other. The sea was blue as indigo and white reels of foam swirled past as the ship dove ahead.

It was a disgusting spectacle. There was the sea, drumming on the tinsel sides of the ship, and on top of the terror thus resulting rose a wretched wail from the hatch, “Watah! Hot Watah!”

The galley was the Bastille. Questioning none, the Yellow One, giving the baby to Alfred rushed to the door, and flung herself through it. Once in the corridor, the energy of a dynamo possessed her. Heated mist drenched her. She slid on grimy, sticky deck.

He was hanging up the rag on a brace of iron over the port hole. His jaws were firm, grim, together.

The rest of the galley was a foetic blur to her.

He swung around, and his restless eyes met her. He was for the moment paralyzed. His eyes bore into hers. He itched to toss at her words, words, words! He wanted to say, “Oh, why couldn’t you stay away–ashore–down there–at the end of the world–anywhere but on this ship.”

“Some water,” she said with that gentle half-hesitant smile of hers, “can I get some hot water for my little baby?” And she extended the skillet.

He took it to the sink, his eyes still on hers. The water rained into it like bullets and he

brought it to her.

But a sound polluted the lovely quiet.

“Hey, Porto Rico, snap into it! Dis ain’t no time to git foolin’ wit’ no monkey jane. Get a move on dey, fellah, an’ fill dis pail full o’ water.”

He was sober, afar, as he swept a pale, tortured face at Hubigon. As if it were the song of a lark, he swung back to the girl, murmuring, “Ah, but you didn’t tell me,” he said, “you didn’t tell me what the baby is, a boy or girl?” For answer, the girl’s eyes widened in terror at something slowly forming behind him.

But it was not without a shadow, and Jota swiftly ducked. The mallet went galloping under the machine. He rose and faced the cook’s mate. But Hubigon was not near enough to objectify the jab, sent as fast as the fangs of a striking snake, and Jota fell, cursing, to the hushed cries of the woman. For secretly easing over to the fireplace Hubigon had taken advantage of the opening to grasp a spear and as the other was about to rise brought it thundering down on the tip of his left shoulder. It sent him thudding to the deck in a pool of claret. The cook’s mate, his red, red tongue licking his mouth after the manner of a collie in from a strenuous run, pounced on the emaciated figure in the corner, and kicked and kicked it murderously. He kicked him in the head, in the mouth, in the ribs. When he struggled to rise, he sent him back to the floor, dizzy from short, telling jabs with the tip of his boot.

Pale, impassive, the men were prone to take sides. Unconsciously forming a ring, the line was kept taut. Sometimes it surged; once an Atlanta mulatto had to wrest a fiery spear from Foot Works, Hubigon’s side kick, and thrust it back in its place. “Keep outa this, if you don’t want to get your goddam head mashed in,” he said. A woman, a crystal panel in the gray, ugly pattern, tore, fought, had to be kept sane by raw, meaty hands.

Gasping, Hubigon stood by, his eyes shining at the other’s languid effort to rise. “Stan’ back, fellahs, an’ don’t interfere. Let ‘im come!” With one shoulder jaunty and a jaw risen, claret-drenched, redolent of the stench and grime of Hubigon’s boot, parts of it clinging to him, the Cuban rose. A cruel scowl was on his face.

The crowd stood back, and there was sufficient room for them. Hubigon was ripping off his shirt, and licking his red, bleeding lips. He circled the ring like a snarling jungle beast. “Hol’ at fuh me, Foot Works, I’m gwine sho’ dis monkey wheh he get off at.” He was dancing round, jabbing, tapping at ghosts, awaiting the other’s beastly pleasure.

As one cowed he came, his jaw swollen. Then with the vigor of a maniac he straightened, facing the mate. He shot out his left. It had the wings of a dart and juggled the mate on the chin. Hubigon’s ears tingled distantly. For the particle of a second he was groggy, and the Cuban moored in with the right, flush on the chin. Down the cook’s mate went. Leaping like a tiger cat, Jota was upon him, burying his claws in the other’s bared, palpitating throat. His eyes gleamed like a tiger cat’s. He held him by the throat and squeezed him till his tongue came out. He racked him till the blood seeped through his ears. Then, in a frenzy of frustration, he lifted him up, and pounded with his head on the bared deck. He pounded till the shirt on his back split into ribbons.

“Jesus, take him awf o’ him–he’s white orready.”

“Now, boys, this won’t do,” cried the baker, a family man. “Come.”

And some half dozen of them, running counter to the traditions of the coast, ventured to slug them apart. It was a gruesome job, and Hubigon, once freed, his head and chest smeared with blood, black, was ready to peg at a lancing La Barrie snake.

In the scuffle the woman collapsed, fell under the feet of the milling crew.

“Here,” some one cried, “take hold o’ her, Butch, she’s your kind–she’s a decker–hatch four–call the doctor somebody, will ya?”

They took her on a stretcher to the surgeon’s room.

. . . . . . .

The sun had leaped ahead. A sizzling luminosity drenched the sea. Aft the deckers were singing hosannas to Jesus and preparing to walk the gorgeous earth.

Only Alfred St. Xavier Mendez was standing with the baby in his arms, now on its third hunger-nap, gazing with a bewildered look at the deserted door to the galley. “Me wondah wha’ mek she ‘tan’ so lang,” he whispered anxiously.

Imperceptibly shedding their drapery of mist, there rose above the prow of the Urubamba the dead blue hills of Jamaica.