4 The Wharf Rats

I

AMONG the motley crew recruited to dig the Panama Canal were artisans from the four ends of the earth. Down in the Cut drifted hordes of Italians, Greeks, Chinese, Negroes–a hardy, sun-defying set of white, black and yellow men. But the bulk of the actual brawn for the work was supplied by the dusky peons of those coral isles in the Caribbean ruled by Britain, France and Holland.
At the Atlantic end of the Canal the blacks were herded in box car huts buried in the jungles of “Silver City”; in the murky tenements perilously poised on the narrow banks of Faulke’s River; in the low, smelting cabins of Coco Té. The “Silver Quarters” harbored the inky ones, their wives and pickaninnies.

As it grew dark the hewers at the Ditch, exhausted, half-asleep, naked but for wormy singlets, would hum queer creole tunes, play on guitar or piccolo, and jig to the rhythm of the coombia. It was a brujerial chant, for obeah, a heritage of the French colonial, honeycombed the life of the Negro laboring camps. Over smoking pots, on black, death-black nights legends of the bloodiest were recited till they became the essence of a sort of Negro Koran. One refuted them at the price of one’s breath. And to question the verity of the obeah, to dismiss or reject it as the ungodly rite of some lurid, crack-brained Islander was to be an accursed pale-face, dog of a white. And the obeah man, in a fury of rage, would throw a machette at the heretic’s head or–worse–burn on his doorstep at night a pyre of Maubé bark or green Ganja weed.

On the banks of a river beyond Cristobal, Coco Té sheltered a colony of Negroes enslaved to the obeah. Near a roundhouse, daubed with smoke and coal ash, a river, serenely flowed away and into the guava region, at the eastern tip of Monkey Hill. Across the bay from it was a sand bank–a rising out of the sea–where ships stopt for coal.

In the first of the six chinky cabins making up the family quarters of Coco Té lived a stout, pot-bellied St. Lucian, black as the coal hills he mended, by the name of Jean Baptiste. Like a host of the native St. Lucian emigrants, Jean Baptiste forgot where the French in him ended and the English began. His speech was the petulant patois of the unlettered French black. Still, whenever he lapsed into His Majesty’s English, it was with a thick Barbadian bias.

A coal passer at the Dry Dock, Jean Baptiste was a man of intense piety. After work, by the glow of a red, setting sun, he would discard his crusted overalls, get in starched crocus bag, aping the Yankee foreman on the other side of the track in the “Gold Quarters,” and loll on his coffee-vined porch. There, dozing in a bamboo rocker, Celestin, his second wife, a becomingly stout brown beauty from Martinique, chanted gospel hymns to him.

Three sturdy sons Jean Baptiste’s first wife had borne him–Philip, the eldest, a good-looking, black fellow; Ernest, shifty, cunning; and Sandel, aged eight. Another boy, said to be wayward and something of a ne’er-do-well, was sometimes spoken of. But Baptiste, a proud, disdainful man, never once referred to him in the presence of his children. No vagabond son of his could eat from his table or sit at his feet unless he went to “meeting.” In brief, Jean Baptiste was a religious man. It was a thrust at the omnipresent obeah. He went to “meeting.” He made the boys go, too. All hands went, not to the Catholic Church, where Celestin secretly worshiped, but to the English Plymouth Brethren in the Spanish city of Colon.

Stalking about like a ghost in Jean Baptiste’s household was a girl, a black ominous Trinidad girl. Had Jean Baptiste been a man given to curiosity about the nature of women, he would have viewed skeptically Maffi’s adoption by Celestin. But Jean Baptiste was a man of lofty unconcern, and so Maffi remained there, shadowy, obdurate.

And Maffi was such a hardworking patois girl. From the break of day she’d be at the sink, brightening the tinware. It was she who did the chores which Madame congenitally shirked. And towards sundown, when the labor trains had emptied, it was she who scoured the beach for cockles for Jean Baptiste’s epicurean palate.

And as night fell, Maffi, a lone, black figure, would disappear in the dark to dream on top of a canoe hauled up on the mooning beach. An eternity Maffi’d sprawl there, gazing at the frosting of the stars and the glitter of the black sea.

A cabin away lived a family of Tortola mulattoes by the name of Boyce. The father was also a man who piously went to “meeting”–gaunt and hollow-cheeked. The eldest boy, Esau, had been a journeyman tailor for ten years; the girl next him, Ora, was plump, dark, freckled; others came–a string of ulcered girls until finally a pretty, opaque one, Maura.

Of the Bantu tribe Maura would have been a person to turn and stare at. Crossing the line into Cristobal or Colon–a city of rarefied gayety–she was often mistaken for a native señorita or an urbanized Cholo Indian girl. Her skin was the reddish yellow of old gold and in her eyes there lurked the glint of mother-of-pearl. Her hair, long as a jungle elf’s was jettish, untethered. And her teeth were whiter than the full-blooded black Philip’s.

Maura was brought up, like the children of Jean Baptiste, in the Plymouth Brethren. But the Plymouth Brethren was a harsh faith to bring hemmed-in peasant children up in, and Maura, besides, was of a gentle romantic nature. Going to the Yankee commissary at the bottom of Eleventh and Front Streets, she usually wore a leghorn hat. With flowers bedecking it, she’d look in it older, much older than she really was. Which was an impression quite flattering to her. For Maura, unknown to Philip, was in love–in love with San Tie, a Chinese half-breed, son of a wealthy canteen proprietor in Colon. But San Tie liked to go fishing and deer hunting up the Monkey Hill lagoon, and the object of his occasional visits to Coco Té was the eldest son of Jean Baptiste. And thus it was through Philip that Maura kept in touch with the young Chinese Maroon.

One afternoon Maura, at her wit’s end, flew to the shed roof to Jean Baptiste’s kitchen.

“Maffi,” she cried, the words smoky on her lips, “Maffi, when Philip come in to-night tell ‘im I want fo’ see ‘im particular, yes?”

“Sacre gache! All de time Philip, Philip!” growled the Trinidad girl, as Maura, in heartaching preoccupation, sped towards the lawn. “Why she no le’ ‘im alone, yes?” And with a spatter she flecked the hunk of lard on Jean Baptiste’s stewing okras.

As the others filed up front after dinner that evening Maffi said to Philip, pointing to the cabin across the way, “She–she want fo’ see yo’.”

Instantly Philip’s eyes widened. Ah, he had good news for Maura! San Tie, after an absence of six days, was coming to Coco Té Saturday to hunt on the lagoon. And he’d relish the joy that’d flood Maura’s face as she glimpsed the idol of her heart, the hero of her dreams! And Philip, a true son of Jean Baptiste, loved to see others happy, ecstatic.

But Maffi’s curious rumination checked him. “All de time, Maura, Maura, me can’t understand it, yes. But no mind, me go stop it, oui, me go stop it, so help me–”

He crept up to her, gently holding her by the shoulders.

“Le’ me go, sacre!” She shook off his hands bitterly. “Le’ me go–yo’ go to yo’ Maura.” And she fled to her room, locking the door behind her.

Philip sighed. He was a generous, good-natured sort. But it was silly to try to enlighten Maffi. It wasn’t any use. He could as well have spoken to the tattered torsos the lazy waves puffed up on the shores of Coco Té.

II

“Philip, come on, a ship is in–let’s go.” Ernest, the wharf rat, seized him by the arm.

“Come,” he said, “let’s go before it’s too late. I want to get some money, yes.”

Dashing out of the house the two boys made for the wharf. It was dusk. Already the Hindus in the bachelor quarters were mixing their rotie and the Negroes in their singlets were smoking and cooling off. Night was rapidly approaching. Sunset, an iridescent bit of molten gold, was enriching the stream with its last faint radiance.

The boys stole across the lawn and made their way to the pier.

“Careful,” cried Philip, as Ernest slid between a prong of oyster-crusted piles to a raft below, “careful, these shells cut wussah’n a knife.”

On the raft the boys untied a rowboat they kept stowed away under the dock, got into it and pushed off. The liner still had two hours to dock. Tourists crowded its decks. Veering away from the barnacled piles the boys eased out into the churning ocean.

It was dusk. Night would soon be upon them. Philip took the oars while Ernest stripped down to loin cloth.

“Come, Philip, let me paddle–” Ernest took the oars. Afar on the dusky sea a whistle echoed. It was the pilot’s signal to the captain of port. The ship would soon dock.

The passengers on deck glimpsed the boys. It piqued their curiosity to see two black boys in a boat amid stream.

“All right, mistah,” cried Ernest, “a penny, mistah.”

He sprang at the guilder as it twisted and turned through a streak of silver dust to the bottom of the sea. Only the tips of his crimson toes–a sherbet-like foam–and up he came with the coin between his teeth.

Deep sea gamin, Philip off yonder, his mouth noisy with coppers, gargled, “This way, sah, as far as yo’ like, mistah.”

An old red-bearded Scot, in spats and mufti, presumably a lover of the exotic in sport, held aloft a sovereign. A sovereign! Already red, and sore by virtue of the leaps and plunges in the briny swirl, Philip’s eyes bulged at its yellow gleam.

“Ovah yah, sah–”

Off in a whirlpool the man tossed it. And like a garfish Philip took after it, a falling arrow in the stream. His body, once in the water, tore ahead. For a spell the crowd on the ship held its breath. “Where is he?” “Where is the nigger swimmer gone to?” Even Ernest, driven to the boat by the race for such an ornate prize, cold, shivering, his teeth chattering–even he watched with trembling and anxiety. But Ernest’s concern was of a deeper kind. For there, where Philip had leaped, was Deathpool–a spawning place for sharks, for baracoudas!

But Philip rose–a brief gurgling sputter–a ripple on the sea–and the Negro’s crinkled head was above the water.

“Hey!” shouted Ernest, “there, Philip! Down!”

And down Philip plunged. One–two–minutes. God, how long they seemed! And Ernest anxiously waited. But the bubble on the water boiled, kept on boiling–a sign that life still lasted! It comforted Ernest.

Suddenly Philip, panting, spitting, pawing, dashed through the water like a streak of lightning.

“Shark!” cried a voice aboard ship. “Shark! There he is, a great big one! Run, boy! Run for your life!”

From the edge of the boat Philip saw the monster as twice, thrice it circled the boat. Several times the shark made a dash for it endeavoring to strike it with its murderous tail.

The boys quietly made off. But the shark still followed the boat. It was a pale green monster. In the glittering dusk it seemed black to Philip. Fattened on the swill of the abattoir nearby and the beef tossed from the decks of countless ships in port it had become used to the taste of flesh and the smell of blood.

“Yo’ know, Ernest,” said Philip, as he made the boat fast to a raft, “one time I thought he wuz rubbin’ ‘gainst me belly. He wuz such a big able one. But it wuz wuth it, Ernie, it wuz wuth it–”

In his palm there was a flicker of gold. Ernest emptied his loin cloth and together they counted the money, dressed, and trudged back to the cabin.

On the lawn Philip met Maura. Ernest tipped his cap, left his brother, and went into the house. As he entered Maffi, pretending to be scouring a pan, was flushed and mute as a statue. And Ernest, starved, went in the dining room and for a long time stayed there. Unable to bear it any longer, Maffi sang out, “Ernest, whey Philip dey?”

“Outside–some whey–ah talk to Maura–”

“Yo’ sure yo’ no lie, Ernest?” she asked, suspended.

“Yes, up cose, I jes’ lef’ ‘im ‘tandin’ out dey–why?”

“Nutton–”

He suspected nothing. He went on eating while Maffi tiptoed to the shed roof. Yes, confound it, there he was, near the stand-pipe, talking to Maura!

“Go stop ee, oui,” she hissed impishly. “Go ‘top ee, yes.”

III

Low, shadowy, the sky painted Maura’s face bronze. The sea, noisy, enraged, sent a blob of wind about her black, wavy hair. And with her back to the sea, her hair blew loosely about her face.

“D’ye think, d’ye think he really likes me, Philip?”

“I’m positive he do, Maura,” vowed the youth.

And an ageing faith shone in Maura’s eyes. No longer was she a silly, insipid girl. Something holy, reverent had touched her. And in so doing it could not fail to leave an impress of beauty. It was worshipful. And it mellowed, ripened her.

Weeks she had waited for word of San Tie. And the springs of Maura’s life took on a noble ecstasy. Late at night, after the others had retired, she’d sit up in bed, dreaming. Sometimes they were dreams of envy. For Mama began to look with eyes of comparison upon the happiness of the Italian wife of the boss riveter at the Dry Dock–the lady on the other side of the railroad tracks in the “Gold Quarters” for whom she sewed–who got a fresh baby every year and who danced in a world of silks and satins. Yes, Maura had dreams, love dreams of San Tie, the flashy half-breed, son of a Chinese beer seller and a Jamaica Maroon, who had swept her off her feet by a playful wink of the eye.

“Tell me, Philip, does he work? Or does he play the lottery–what does he do, tell me!”

“I dunno,” Philip replied with mock lassitude, “I dunno myself–”

“But it doesn’t matter, Philip. I don’t want to be nosy, see? I’m simply curious about everything that concerns him, see?”

Ah, but Philip wished to cherish Maura, to shield her, be kind to her. And so he lied to her. He did not tell her he had first met San Tie behind the counter of his father’s saloon in the Colon tenderloin, for he would have had to tell, besides, why he, Philip, had gone there. And that would have led him, a youth of meager guile, to Celestin Baptiste’s mulish regard for anisette which he procured her. He dared not tell her, well-meaning fellow that he was, what San Tie, a fiery comet in the night life of the district, had said to him the day before. “She sick in de head, yes,” he had said. “Ah, me no dat saht o’ man–don’t she know no bettah, egh, Philip?” But Philip desired to be kindly, and hid it from Maura.

“What is to-day?” she cogitated, aloud, “Tuesday. You say he’s comin’ fo’ hunt Saturday, Philip? Wednesday–four more days. I can wait. I can wait. I’d wait a million years fo’ ‘im, Philip.”

But Saturday came and Maura, very properly, was shy as a duck. Other girls, like Hilda Long, a Jamaica brunette, the flower of a bawdy cabin up by the abattoir, would have been less genteel. Hilda would have caught San Tie by the lapels of his coat and in no time would have got him told.

But Maura was lowly, trepid, shy. To her he was a dream–a luxury to be distantly enjoyed. He was not to be touched. And she’d wait till he decided to come to her. And there was no fear, either, of his ever failing to come. Philip had seen to that. Had not he been the intermediary between them? And all Maura needed now was to sit back, and wait till San Tie came to her.

And besides, who knows, brooded Maura, San Tie might be a bashful fellow.

But when, after an exciting hunt, the Chinese mulatto returned from the lagoon, nodded stiffly to her, said good-by to Philip and kept on to the scarlet city, Maura was frantic.

“Maffi,” she said, “tell Philip to come here quick–”

It was the same as touching a match to the patois girl’s dynamite. “Yo’ mek me sick,” she said. “Go call he yo’self, yo’ ole hag, yo’ ole fire hag yo’.” But Maura, flighty in despair, had gone on past the lawn.

“Ah go stop ee, oui,” she muttered diabolically, “Ah go stop it, yes. This very night.”

Soon as she got through lathering the dishes she tidied up and came out on the front porch.

It was a humid dusk, and the glowering sky sent a species of fly–bloody as a tick–buzzing about Jean Baptiste’s porch. There he sat, rotund, and sleepy-eyed, rocking and languidly brushing the darting imps away.

“Wha’ yo’ gwine, Maffi?” asked Celestin Baptiste, fearing to wake the old man.

“Ovah to de Jahn Chinaman shop, mum,” answered Maffi unheeding.

“Fi’ what?”

“Fi’ buy some wash blue, mum.”

And she kept on down the road past the Hindu kiosk to the Negro mess house.

IV

“Oh, Philip,” cried Maura, “I am so unhappy. Didn’t he ask about me at all? Didn’t he say he’d like to visit me–didn’t he giv’ yo’ any message fo’ me, Philip?”

The boy toyed with a blade of grass. His eyes were downcast. Sighing heavily he at last spoke. “No, Maura, he didn’t ask about you.”

“What, he didn’t ask about me? Philip? I don’t believe it! Oh, my God!”

She clung to Philip, mutely; her face, her breath coming warm and fast.

“I wish to God I’d never seen either of you,” cried Philip.

“Ah, but wasn’t he your friend, Philip? Didn’t yo’ tell me that?” And the boy bowed his head sadly.

“Answer me!” she screamed, shaking him. “Weren’t you his friend?”

“Yes, Maura–”

“But you lied to me, Philip, you lied to me! You took messages from me–you brought back–lies!” Two pearls, large as pigeon’s eggs, shone in Maura’s burnished face.

“To think,” she cried in a hollow sepulchral voice, “that I dreamed about a ghost, a man who didn’t exist. Oh, God, why should I suffer like this? Why was I ever born? What did I do, what did my people do, to deserve such misery as this?”

She rose, leaving Philip with his head buried in his hands. She went into the night, tearing her hair, scratching her face, raving.

“Oh, how happy I was! I was a happy girl! I was so young and I had such merry dreams! And I wanted so little! I was carefree–”

Down to the shore of the sea she staggered, the wind behind her, the night obscuring her.

“Maura!” cried Philip, running after her. “Maura! come back!”

Great sheaves of clouds buried the moon, and the wind bearing up from the sea bowed the cypress and palm lining the beach.

“Maura–Maura–”

He bumped into some one, a girl, black, part of the dense pattern of the tropical night.

“Maffi,” cried Philip, “have you seen Maura down yondah?”

The girl quietly stared at him. Had Philip lost his mind?

“Talk, no!” he cried, exasperated.

And his quick tones sharpened Maffi’s vocal anger. Thrusting him aside, she thundered, “Think I’m she keeper! Go’n look fo’ she yo’self. I is not she keeper! Le’ me pass, move!”

Towards the end of the track he found Maura, heartrendingly weeping.

“Oh, don’t cry, Maura! Never mind, Maura!”

He helped her to her feet, took her to the stand-pipe on the lawn, bathed her temples and sat soothingly, uninterruptingly, beside her.

V

At daybreak the next morning Ernest rose and woke Philip.

He yawned, put on the loin cloth, seized a “cracked licker” skillet, and stole cautiously out of the house. Of late Jean Baptiste had put his foot down on his sons’ copper-diving proclivities. And he kept at the head of his bed a greased cat-o’-nine-tails which he would use on Philip himself if the occasion warranted.

“Come on, Philip, let’s go–”

Yawning and scratching Philip followed. The grass on the lawn was bright and icy with the dew. On the railroad tracks the six o’clock labor trains were coupling. A rosy mist flooded the dawn. Out in the stream the tug Exotic snorted in a heavy fog.

On the wharf Philip led the way to the rafters below.

“Look out fo’ that crapeau, Ernest, don’t step on him, he’ll spit on you.”

The frog splashed into the water. Prickle-backed crabs and oysters and myriad other shells spawned on the rotting piles. The boys paddled the boat. Out in the dawn ahead of them the tug puffed a path through the foggy mist. The water was chilly. Mist glistened on top of it. Far out, beyond the buoys, Philip encountered a placid, untroubled sea. The liner, a German tourist boat, was loaded to the bridge. The water was as still as a lake of ice.

“All right, Ernest, let’s hurry–”

Philip drew in the oars. The Kron Prinz Wilhelm came near. Huddled in thick European coats, the passengers viewed from their lofty estate the spectacle of two naked Negro boys peeping up at them from a wiggly bateau.

“Penny, mistah, penny, mistah!”

Somebody dropped a quarter. Ernest, like a shot, flew after it. Half a foot down he caught it as it twisted and turned in the gleaming sea. Vivified by the icy dip, Ernest was a raving wolf and the folk aboard dealt a lavish hand.

“Ovah, yah, mistah,” cried Philip, “ovah, yah.”

For a Dutch guilder Philip gave an exhibition of “cork.” Under something of a ledge on the side of the boat he had stuck a piece of cork. Now, after his and Ernest’s mouths were full of coins, he could afford to be extravagant and treat the Europeans to a game of West Indian “cork.”

Roughly ramming the cork down in the water, Philip, after the fifteenth ram or so, let it go, and flew back, upwards, having thus “lost” it. It was Ernest’s turn now, as a sort of end-man, to scramble forward to the spot where Philip had dug it down and “find” it; the first one to do so, having the prerogative, which he jealously guarded, of raining on the other a series of thundering leg blows. As boys in the West Indies Philip and Ernest had played it. Of a Sunday the Negro fishermen on the Barbadoes coast made a pagan rite of it. Many a Bluetown dandy got his spine cracked in a game of “cork.”

With a passive interest the passengers viewed the proceedings. In a game of “cork,” the cork after a succession of “rammings” is likely to drift many feet away whence it was first “lost.” One had to be an expert, quick, alert, to spy and promptly seize it as it popped up on the rolling waves. Once Ernest got it and endeavored to make much of the possession. But Philip, besides being two feet taller than he, was slippery as an eel, and Ernest, despite all the artful ingenuity at his command, was able to do no more than ineffectively beat the water about him. Again and again he tried, but to no purpose.

Becoming reckless, he let the cork drift too far away from him and Philip seized it.

He twirled it in the air like a crap shooter, and dug deep down in the water with it, “lost” it, then leaped back, briskly waiting for it to rise.

About them the water, due to the ramming and beating, grew restive. Billows sprang up; soaring, swelling waves sent the skiff nearer the shore. Anxiously Philip and Ernest watched for the cork to make its ascent.

It was all a bit vague to the whites on the deck, and an amused chuckle floated down to the boys.
And still the cork failed to come up.

“I’ll go after it,” said Philip at last, “I’ll go and fetch it.” And, from the edge of the boat he leaped, his body long and resplendent in the rising tropic sun.

It was a suction sea, and down in it Philip plunged. And it was lazy, too, and willful–the water. Ebony-black, it tugged and mocked. Old brass staves–junk dumped there by the retiring French–thick, yawping mud, barrel hoops, tons of obsolete brass, a wealth of slimy steel faced him. Did a “rammed” cork ever go that deep?

And the water, stirring, rising, drew a haze over Philip’s eyes. Had a cuttlefish, an octopus, a nest of eels been routed? It seemed so to Philip, blindly diving, pawing. And the sea, the tide–touching the roots of Deathpool–tugged and tugged. His gathering hands stuck in mud. Iron staves bruised his shins. It was black down there. Impenetrable.

Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, a vision blew across Philip’s brow. It was a soaring shark’s belly. Drunk on the nectar of the deep, it soared above Philip–rolling, tumbling, rolling. It had followed the boy’s scent with the accuracy of a diver’s rope.

Scrambling to the surface, Philip struck out for the boat. But the sea, the depths of it wrested out of an æon’s slumber, had sent it a mile from his diving point. And now, as his strength ebbed, a shark was at his heels.

“Shark! Shark!” was the cry that went up from the ship.

Hewing a lane through the hostile sea Philip forgot the cunning of the doddering beast and swam noisier than he needed to. Faster grew his strokes. His line was a straight, dead one. Fancy strokes and dives–giraffe leaps … he summoned into play. He shot out recklessly. One time he suddenly paused–and floated for a stretch. Another time he swam on his back, gazing at the chalky sky. He dived for whole lengths.

But the shark, a bloaty, stone-colored man-killer, took a shorter cut. Circumnavigating the swimmer it bore down upon him with the speed of a hurricane. Within adequate reach it turned, showed its gleaming belly, seizing its prey.

A fiendish gargle–the gnashing of bones–as the sea once more closed its jaws on Philip.

Some one aboard ship screamed. Women fainted. There was talk of a gun. Ernest, an oar upraised, capsized the boat as he tried to inflict a blow on the coursing, chop-licking man-eater.

And again the fish turned. It scraped the waters with its deadly fins.

. . . . . . .

At Coco Té, at the fledging of the dawn, Maffi, polishing the tinware, hummed an obeah melody

Trinidad is a damn fine place
But obeah down dey. … [slightly smaller font on these lines]

Peace had come to her at last.