A Flag for Sunrise

Well, he's Gorgeous," the blonde woman said to her companion, "but don't you think he's a thug?"

The man with her was about 50, his face deeply tanned and fine-featured. His haircut made him look like a boy in a magazine ad for a military school, gone gray.

He shrugged and lighted a cigarette.

"They're all sort of the same. If you think he's gorgeous, that's good enough for me."

"Damn it," the woman said. "Whatever happened to the carefree college boy we always dreamed of?"

"I don't want a carefree college boy," the man said. "I want a bad guy I can keep in line."

The woman glanced over at Pablo and worried the lime in her Cuba libre with a candy-striped straw. "But don't you think this cat looks a little demented?"

"Could be he's high on something," the man said, without looking over. "That could be bad. On the other hand--as long as he can work--it could make him easier to handle."

"Are you sober enough to talk to him? I'd like a closer look."

"Sure," the man said. "Let's run him past."

The woman waved her straw languidly until Cecil, the bartender, caught her signal. He walked over to Pablo, who was beginning to fret over his beer.

"OK, bruddah. Front and center for de mon. I tell dem we know each other from New Orleans."

Pablo sighed behind his Benzedrine. He swung off his stool and marched confidently toward the table where the couple sat. He had been watching them, a little greedily. They looked rich and heedless, the lady sexy and loose. They aroused his appetites.

"My name is Callahan," the gray-haired man said when Pablo stood before him. "This is Mrs. Callahan."

"Right pleased to meet you," Pablo said. "Pablo Tabor."

"Well, we're right pleased to meet you, too, Pablo," Deedee Callahan said. "Please have a seat."

Pablo sat down. Mrs. Callahan called for two more rum and Cokes and another beer for Pablo, while he and Callahan looked at each other blankly.

Cecil brought the drinks. He had a smile for everyone.

"Well, the thing is, Pablo," Callahan said, "that the missus and myself have a boat and we're looking for a crewman. She's a powerboat."

Pablo nodded.

"Do you have seagoing experience?"

"Well," Pablo said, "I can steer. I'm pretty handy with engines. I can operate and maintain any kind of radio equipment you got. If you got radar, I can work with that, too."

"You must have been in the Service."

"Coast Guard," Pablo told him, taking the chance.

"Good for you," Callahan said. "Can you navigate?"

"Guess I could get a fix on a radio beacon. I never used a sextant much."

Pablo chewed his thumbnail. "Where is it you and the lady were going to take your boat?"

"Oh," Callahan said, "up and down the coast. Maybe do a little island-hopping. We'd want you for less than a month. You could leave the vessel any number of places."

"Could I ask you about the salary?"

"Well, I usually leave that to my number one. But I can tell you it's higher than customary. Because the work is hard and we have our standards."

"That'd be OK with me," Pablo said.

"I'll tell you what," Callahan said.

"We have a few things to check out before we can give you the OK. If you check back here around five--either we'll be here or we'll leave a message with Cecil."

"Jeez," Pablo said. "I was hoping you could tell me one way or the other."

Callahan smiled sympathetically. "Sorry, sailor. No can do."

When Pablo was on his way, the Callahans drank another round.

"Jesus, it's depressing," Mrs. Callahan said. "They're all such creeps."

"The only question these days," Callahan said, "is, will they turn on you? It's sad, but that's the way things are."

"I think I've just decided," Mrs. Callahan said, glancing toward the bar, "that I don't like him."

"He's a deserter," Callahan said. "Those guys are usually a good bet."

"Maybe we're supposed to think he's a deserter. Maybe he's a Fed."

"He's too fucked up to be a Fed. I mean, they're just not that good."

"Maybe we can get by without him."

"I don't think so," Callahan said.

They sat in silence for a while.

"It's your decision," the woman said.

"I used to like it," Callahan said, "when the baddest thing around these parts was me. These days I'm just another innocent abroad."

Mrs. Callahan waved the cigarette smoke away from their table.

"Don't get me going," she said. "I'll start to cry."

•

Three blocks from the bar was an American-style farmacia with a green cross over its doorway. Pablo visited it to inveigle some speed from the druggist.

"What the fuck's the matter?" he demanded, holding up his Stateside prescription bottle. "I got a scrip for it back home."

The pharmacist ignored the bottle and gave Pablo not so much as a shrug.

"I'm overweight," Pablo said grimly. He was not in the least overweight. "I'm fucking depressed, dig? How about it?"

When the druggist extended a hand to urge Pablo toward the door, Pablo prepared to belt him. Only at the last minute did he realize that the man's attention was focused on the pink bank note he clutched in his left hand.

The druggist was trying to escort Pablo discreetly outside, an urbane effort that Pablo's nature resisted.

"Tiene que volver a la tarde," the man said softly, trying to speak beneath the hearing of his assistants. ?"Más tarde, comprende? Ahorita no."

By the time they reached the street, Pablo was able to understand that he was being dealt with.

"OK," he said. Glancing at his reflection in the drugstore window, Pablo saw that if he did not appear particularly fat and low-spirited, he did look rather like a bad-news gringo who might shortly be in jail.

?"Más tarde, right?" Pablo asked the druggist. The professional man turned hurriedly inside.

•

It was hard to be cool. For one thing, the bird calls were driving him bananas; they kept sounding like someone making fun of him. Pablo reflected that he had been strung out in some shitty places but that none of them seemed quite so shitty as Vizcaya, where even the birds in the trees weirded you out.

•

Grim and frantic, he waited. The druggist came out the door. He had taken off his green smock and was wearing a dark sports coat. He crossed to the shady side of the street.

"Ritalin?" the druggist asked.

"Uh-uh," Pablo said. "Gotta be amphetamine, pure and simple."

"Dexamyl?"

Pablo nearly snarled with exasperation.

"No downers."

"Benzedrina," said the druggist.

It was the most beautiful Spanish word Pablo had ever heard.

"Benzedrina," he said. "Fuckin' A."

"Twenty dollars," the druggist said as they walked.

"Are you kiddin' me? For how many?"

"For cincuenta. Fifty tablets."

"Jesus Christ," Pablo said. "Shit, OK." He was in no mood to bargain.

They turned into a narrow dirt street bounded on both sides by corrugated-iron fencing on which there were a great many posters celebrating the party in power. The druggist gave Pablo an unmarked bottle with the tablets inside. Pablo handed over 20. The pharmacist quickly turned away and walked back toward his drugstore.

Pablo hoped to Christ he had not been taken. He opened the bottle. They were Benzedrina, all right, little pink tablets, 500 migs.

Hot shit, he thought; he swallowed two of them and leaned back in the shade of the corner building.

On his empty stomach, he began to get the rush fairly early and it felt like the real thing.

"Thank you, Jesus," Pablo said.

•

When he returned to the Paris Bar at five o'clock, the Callahans were nowhere in sight. Cecil, still working, paid him no attention. He sat down on a stool, his eyes fixed on Cecil's round, bland face, working himself into a tight-lipped exaltation of rage.

"What the fuck, man?" he demanded of Cecil at length.

"Keep you voice down and you damn head on straight," Cecil said without looking at him. "You been hired."

"Yeah?" Pablo asked. "No kidding?"

"In de mornin', you go to de bus terminal and you get de bus to Palmas. Palmas, you understandin' me?"

"I understand you."

"Dat bus under way at ten in de (continued on page 138)A Flag for Sunrise(continued from page 132) mornin' and you got to be on it, because Callahan say so and you best do it. Dese people don' wait on you desires."

•

Palmas was a gas station at the end of a dirt street that led past mean wooden shacks to the ocean. Pablo climbed off the bus with his gear and walked the length of it. He paused at the dock-side--there were a few shops and bodegas and the office of the captain of the port. Tied up at the two piers were two dozen local shrimp boats of 90 or 100 feet, their wheelhouses painted in bright tropical colors like the local buses. There was no craft in sight that looked as though it would be the Callahans' powerboat. He put on his Macklin Chain Saw hat, took his sunglasses from the pocket of his shirt and looked from one quarter of the harbor to the other. Nothing but shrimpers. He walked out onto the pier, set his bag down and leaned against a piling, cursing under his breath.

From behind the tinted-glass windscreen of the Cloud, Callahan and Freddy Negus watched Pablo on the pier.

"That's our boy," Callahan said.

"Gawd," Negus said.

"What's wrong with him?" Callahan demanded. Callahan was drinking a rum and soda and the sight of it in his hand at so early an hour made Negus uneasy. "He showed up, didn't he? He's just a deserter, that's all." He saw Negus glancing at the drink in his hand and put it down beside the Fathometer. "I mean, what do you want, for Christ's sake? Billy Budd?"

"You hire these monkeys and then I got to keep them in line. I'll tell you, Jack, I'm getting plumb wore out."

"Hell, Freddy," Callahan said, "you been out in all the weather. An old pirate like you." He stepped unsteadily over the hatchway and into the galley for another drink.

"Maybe that's the problem," Negus said. "We're all getting a little old for piracy." He put his baseball cap on and went out onto the little bridge beside the wheelhouse, squinting into the sun.

"Hey, you!" he called down to Pablo. "Pablo! Come on up here."

Pablo stepped over the rail. The man who had called him was tall and lean, tanned, with lazy faded blue eyes. He indicated a hatchway behind the wheelhouse and followed Pablo through it.

"I'm looking for the Cloud," Pablo explained.

"You're standing in her," the tall man said.

Callahan came forward from the galley, a glass in his hand. "Well done," he said. "Right on time."

Pablo turned from the tall man's steady gaze.

"Christ, Mr. Callahan. You told me you had a powerboat. You didn't say nothing about shrimping." He felt disappointed and betrayed. It was not at all what he had looked forward to.

"You don't see any sails, do you?" the tall man asked him. "This is a powerboat."

"What's happening right now," Callahan said, "is that you're being engaged as a crewman on the shrimp boat Cloud. We're registered out of Marathon, Florida. We're licensed to fish in the territorial waters of the United States, of Mexico, Belize, Compostela and Tecan. Any other questions will have to wait. OK?"

"What am I working for?" Pablo asked bitterly. "A percentage of the catch?"

"That sounds like a question to me," the tall man said.

Pablo looked at the man again. From his accent, Pablo made him out to be a white Bahamian. Hope Town, Spanish Wells, some sorry-ass town like that. A mean redneck.

"Let me introduce Mr. Negus," Callahan said. "My number one."

Pablo nodded. Negus shifted the plug of tobacco in his cheek.

"And let me hasten to assure you that you're not being taken advantage of. If we were looking for cheap labor, there's plenty to come by down here. You'll do fine, but you've got to go by our rules."

"Where you from, son?" Negus asked Pablo.

"Texas."

"Lay out your gear for us." He indicated Pablo's bag and the deck of the passageway in which they stood. For the first time, Pablo noticed that the interior bulkheads were paneled in dark wood, the rubber-matted deck was spotless. He opened his bag and spread his store of worn work clothes, toiletry bag and slickers across it. Negus crouched to rifle through it and motioned him up against the bulkhead. Pablo leaned forward on his palms.

"Sorry," Callahan said.

In a few moments, Negus had an automatic and a diver's knife out on deck. Grimly, he turned out Pablo's pockets one by one.

"What's all that for?" Callahan asked mildly.

"Just for protection."

"You can't keep that pistol while you're aboard," Callahan told him. "You might have an accident. The knife, OK."

Negus gave him his Dacor knife. "Wear it on your belt where a man can see it, sailor."

"Welcome aboard," Callahan said and took his drink aft.

He walked through the galley and into a dark compartment where the forward ice hold should have been, closing a door behind him. Pablo looked from the well-stocked bar in the galley to the tinted glass fronting the pilothouse. At the forward end of the passageway in which he stood was a Modar U.H.F. transmitter and a C.B. There were A and C lorans and what appeared to be a 72-mile-range radar scanner. The wheelhouse had a brand-new recording Fathometer. From the dock, the Cloud had appeared to be a moderately clean 100-foot shrimper. Inside she had the appointments of a cutter.

There were two ice holds, empty and with their hatch covers off. Aft of them, a hatchway led down to an airless lazaret where there was a single bunk and some bales of chafing gear.

"You can sack out for a while, if you like," Negus told Pablo. "But we're going out before sunset and I want every-body standing to."

"Roger," Pablo said.

•

Pablo leaned idly on the rail as they cleared the harbor. His want of a bath was bothering him acutely and he wished that he had asked them about it while the boat was still hooked up to a dock-side water line. If there was a woman aboard, he reasoned, the Cloud must have a head and shower somewhere.

No harm in asking, he thought after a while, there might be enough water from the evaporators or a fresh-water supply somewhere aboard. They seemed to have everything else. He went forward to the wheelhouse and leaned his head through the hatch. Negus and Callahan were in the bridge chairs.

"If we got some time now and there's water enough, could I clean up? I ain't shaved nor showered for a while."

Negus looked from Pablo to Callahan.

"There's enough," Callahan said. "Right behind the galley. Knock first."

He went back to the lazaret to get some fresh clothes and his toilet kit and then up to the galley. Behind it was the door to the dim compartment into which Callahan had earlier disappeared with his drink. He knocked twice on it.

"Hello," called the voice of Mrs. Callahan.

(continued on page 214)A Flag for Sunrise(continued from page 138)

"Sorry," he said.

"Come on in."

The compartment had the same dark paneling as the forward passageway; there was a striped chaise longue, some captain's chairs with brightly colored cushions, even a bookcase. In the center of the stateroom was a round table with metal studs, an electric fan resting on it. Mrs. Callahan was sitting in one of the captain's chairs under a lighted wall lamp, a book on her lap.

"On your right, Pablo," she told him. She pulled the terrycloth robe she was wearing a little farther down over her tanned thighs. It was all she had on, Pablo thought.

"I'll go easy on the water."

"Yes, do," she said.

Pablo had him a shit, a shower and a shave; his thoughts were carnal. Soaping down, he sang to himself.

"I ride an old paint

I lead an old Dan,

I'm goin' to Montana for to throwthe hooley-ann."

The water was warm, hand-pumped out of an overhead pipe through a rubber nozzle. He shaved slowly and deliberately, his shoulder propped against the bulkhead beside the mirror, riding with the slow roll of the boat, still singing.

When he came out, Mrs. Callahan was watching him. She was smiling.

"Do you play the guitar?" she asked him.

"No," Pablo said, feeling surly and put down.

"What a shame," she said.

He climbed out of the fancy compartment, the kit and soiled clothes under his arm, and went out on deck. Low, even seas slid westward under the light wind; over the horizon was a thin line of cloud, nearly pink in the fading light. Big bitch thinks I'm comical, he said to himself. She thinks I'm the fucking entertainment.

•

During the next two days, the Cloud ran the coast of the isthmus. Most of the time, they were out of sight of land, in the seas between the Swan Islands and Serrana Bank. Pablo watched and listened, made himself useful and kept his nature to himself. It was like a shakedown cruise; they were testing the electronics gear and the auxiliary diesels, making plans to which he was not party. Mainly, he realized, it was he himself they were observing. Negus and both of the Callahans would engage him from time to time in strained quiet conversations that varied in nature according to their styles. He made it his business to be pleasant, incurious and resourceful in small matters. He had a turn at the wheel, he replaced a Raytheon tube and sunned himself on the hatches. Once, when they were anchored off Cabo Gracias a Dios, he had a skinny-dip and was confirmed in the conviction that Mrs. Callahan had eyes for him. The swim also gave him a chance to study the boat's dynamics from the business end, and although he was no engineer, he could see that even in basic construction the Cloud was not what she appeared. She had what the Coast Guard would call a false hull; a squat duck of a shrimper at first and even second glance above the water line, her lines were modified to make her capable of formidable speed with the diesels wide open. A contrabander, as he had assumed.

On the morning of the third day out, they dropped the hook off Palmas and set about getting drunk. Their intemperance worried Pablo, who thought it unbusinesslike. They smoked a great deal of grass as well and tried to press it on him. Pablo had settled himself into three Benzedrines a day and he did not care for marijuana; it made him feel turned around.

After siesta, on the same day, the three of them held a conference in their improbable saloon space. Pablo was not invited.

When the afternoon passed and he was not summoned, he felt confident that they were satisfied with him. In the evening, he and Negus lifted anchor and lowered the stabilizers. Mrs. Callahan cleaned the galley. It seemed he was in.

•

The dark came down quickly after sunset. The lights of the coastal fishing boats grew dimmer and more distant abaft; westward, the evening star was rising, the wind steady. The Cloud plowed into its faint resistance making seven or eight knots. From the galley came the smell of frying steak.

Pablo sat beside the afterhatch, watching the wake in starlight. Negus came out on deck and called him forward for chow.

Mrs. Callahan was leaning over the galley stove, a rum and tonic secured on a rack beside her. Strips of sirloin were warming in the pan, there was a huge pot of boiled greens.

Pablo was cheerful.

"Get yourself a drink and go sit down," Mrs. Callahan said.

Pablo helped himself to a measure of light rum and took it down to the fancy paneled compartment. The crew's lounge. At opposite quarters of the mahogany table, drinks set before them, were Negus and Callahan. Pablo picked himself a chair and sat down. Callahan looked boozy and affable. Negus, scratching his ear, looked unhappy.

"What do you think, Pablo?" Callahan asked.

Pablo smiled. "What do I think about what, Mr. Callahan? You got a nice boat here. I ain't hardly done any work yet."

Mrs. Callahan, in the galley, was humming Amazing Grace.

"You'll do more, though," Callahan said. "For example, can you handle an M-16?"

"I don't see 'em every day. But I'm familiar with the weapon."

"We may be dealing with unpleasant people and we may have to defend ourselves. How's that grab you?"

"That's how it always is," Pablo said. After a moment, he said, "I hope you're not talking about the U. S. Coast Guard."

"Christ," Negus said to him, "you think we plan to shoot it out with the goddamn U. S. Coast Guard? I was hoping you had more sense than that."

"We won't be dealing with any U. S. authorities. We're not working in their jurisdiction and it's unlikely we'll even see them. So don't worry about that."

"Local-type cops, maybe?"

"Not too likely, either. If we have that kind of problem, we tend to run. We're a lot faster than we look. It's thieves I'm thinking about. We have a few exchanges to make with various parties that we'd like to see secure. Just so everybody keeps his side of the bargain."

Pablo sipped his rum with satisfaction. It was everything he might have hoped.

"You got the right man, no shit, Mr. Callahan. I never backed out of a hassle in my life and I never let my people down, neither."

"We your people?" Negus asked him.

"You treat me right, you're my people. Anybody that knows me knows that."

"We don't let our people down, either, Pablo," Callahan told him solemnly, "and we've been in business a long time."

Pablo raised his hands, palms up. "Good enough!"

Deedee called from the galley, "Want to help me out, Pablo?"

"Sure," Pablo said.

In the galley, a soft merengue was coming in over a short-wave radio; Pablo watched Mrs. Callahan's lower body, encased in the tightest of faded denim jeans, sway mellifluously to its beat. She was gathering metal plates from an overhead dish rack. For the first time, he noticed a printed sign posted over the stove that read, You Better Belize it. When she turned to him, he was laughing at the sign.

"What's funny, pardner?" She smiled and brushed the damp hair from around her eyes. He could not tell how old she was--40, more or less. Her face was lean, creased around the eyes, sun-cured. When she set the dishes clown on the counter beside the stove, he felt her breast brush his bare arm, the nipple distinct and distended under the soft cotton of her sweat shirt.

"Just feelin' good," Pablo said.

"Feelin' good is easy," Mrs. Callahan said. She said it with such gravity that he felt compelled to reflection.

"No," he said after a moment. "Not so easy."

They watched each other; she was looking at him with wary amusement, still easing to the merengue.

"Funny kind of boat this is," Pablo said.

"Yes," Deedee assured him. "This is your basic funny boat. Now do something for me, Pablo. Give the boys their vittles."

She took the steak from the pan and placed a strip on each of the four dishes. On each dish she spooned out some of the greens from the stewpot, then handed two of the plates to Pablo. She winked at him and motioned with her head toward the dining compartment.

I goddamn well got her, Pablo was thinking. Any old damn time.

He did not chafe under his servitude. He served Negus and Callahan graciously, setting the steaming plates before them.

Negus gave Pablo a brief bad eye in return. Pablo smiled. The man must know, he thought, what was passing between himself and Mrs. Callahan.

There was a plate for him steaming in the galley; he took it down to the table and seated himself across from Negus and Callahan. Mrs. Callahan joined them presently, carrying her own plate and some salsa, salt and pepper on a tray. The Cloud took the gentle seas with a slow fore-and-aft pitch.

"Beats shrimping," Pablo said, breaking the silence that had settled over the dinner table. He assaulted his tenderized steak with concentration.

"We'll do some shrimping by-and-by," Callahan told him. "But--as you have undoubtedly surmised--shrimping is not how we make our way through life."

"Yeah," Pablo said. "I surmised that."

"What else you surmised?" Negus asked him.

"You told me not to ask questions, Cap," Pablo said, "so I didn't ask you any." He looked around the table. "I'm easy to get along with."

"Fred," Callahan said to Negus, "you're the best seaman in the world, but you're a balls of a politician." He turned his soft look on Pablo. "What we're wondering, fella--you being lately in the Coast Guard and all that--is what you make of us. We're interested in your educated guess."

"OK," Pablo said. "You're running something. I would have said dope, but I don't think so now. If you were going up to the States from a Dutch place like St. Joost, I'd say diamonds. But you say you're not messing with the States." He cut himself another piece of steak. "Computer parts, maybe. Calculators, like that. Only this boat's not big enough for a high-scoring run with that kind of weight. And the whole deal feels sort of heavy-duty. Between one thing and another--guns. That's a good old-time trade."

"Let me give you the word on a need-to-know basis, as it were," Callahan said. "You don't need to know where we're going. In a day or two, we'll be in Nieuw Utrecht on St. Joost, taking on ice and groceries. After dark, we're loading cargo on the other side of the island. What we want from you is a little help with the groceries and what we especially want is you standing by while we take on the cargo. Also when we deliver it, because that's the moment of truth, hombre. You'll get to do some shrimping tomorrow night, too, in case you're interested. You can figure on at least five hundred a day for the next few days. It'll beat your Coast Guard pay."

"I guess so," Pablo said.

"Think that'll keep you happy?" Negus said. "Because we have to keep you happy. We insist on it."

"I think everybody's gonna do all right," Pablo said.

Everyone in the cabin laughed; Pablo found it disconcerting.

When dinner was over, Negus and Callahan took their coffee to a small compartment aft of the central cabin and closed the teak door behind them. Pablo found himself on mess duty with the lady once again.

She was smoking grass. It was the strongest grass Pablo had ever drawn of and she seemed to take joint after joint of it. After two or three tokes, the enveloping papers grew moist and tarry with resin. Pablo declined. When the washing up was finished, they went back to the cleared table.

"What brought you down here, Pablo?"

"Just wandering around," he said. He was thinking that they were all the same.

"You're kind of a throwback, aren't you? In the jet age?"

"I been on plenty of jets," Pablo told her.

"Didn't you like the Coast Guard?"

"I liked it all right until they started turning me around."

"I thought that was what they were all about."

"Some guys will sit still for anything." Pablo explained. "They got no self-respect. Any kind of militaristic trash, they don't object to it."

Pablo had picked up the antimilitaristic angle working at the Coast Guard district headquarters in Boston and incorporated it into his line. It had worked fairly well with the girls around there, and Mrs. Callahan, though not so young and tenderhearted, seemed to be a little like them.

"So you got radicalized, is that it?"

Pablo felt as though he had been softly counterpunched. He rolled with it.

"I had this c.p.o. on my case who was like a fascist-type guy. He kept at it, so I coldcocked him. Broke his jaw. I was looking at time, see what I mean? So I skipped."

"Is that a literal story, Pablo," Mrs. Callahan asked sympathetically, "or is it kind of symbolic?"

"What?" Pablo asked. He did not necessarily insist that women believe everything that they were told, but he was not used to their calling him a liar.

She put her joint down and looked sincerely thoughtful.

"The thing is," she said, "when you hear the same kind of story from a lot of different people, you wonder about the little details. Because no two things ever happen the same way, do they, Pablo?"

"I guess not," he said.

"Of course they don't. So you tell me that story and right away I want to know--because I'm a curious sort--what's special about Pablo Tabor. As opposed to all the other guys who broke the c.p.o.'s jaw, and so forth."

Smart, he thought. But smart or not, they were all the same.

"A jaw got broke," Pablo told her, "and it wasn't mine. Somebody tried to fuck with me. So I'm over the hill and on this boat and that's my story."

"And they call you Pablo. Is that a nickname or what?"

"It's my name," he told her.

"But it's Spanish."

"My mother was Indian," Pablo said. It was true to an extent, but to what extent was a question lost in centuries.

"I knew it," Mrs. Callahan said quietly.

That's what she goes for, Pablo thought. He had run across it before. He was aware that she had eased her chair against his and he felt her body again, her long leg in smooth, clean denim.

"This funny boat where you live?" he asked her.

"So it would seem," she said. "It just goes on and on."

"Maybe you don't like it too much."

"It has its moments."

When he put his hand against her soft sheathed thigh, she was suddenly somber.

"Goodness," she said.

He slid his hand down to her knee and back up, fingering an inner seam and the flesh it lined. With Callahan and Negus on the other side of a door, there was nothing more he dared do.

"You take your pleasures where you find them, do you, Pablo?"

"My kind of life you do."

"Mine, too," she said.

She turned her head to look at him and he saw that under the weathered skin, the various set wrinkles and the small boozy sacs below her eyes, there was something like a kid about her.

"Hey," he said after a moment, "we're gonna get in trouble." He was embarrassed at the standoff and his palms were beginning to sweat.

The woman laughed silently. "Trouble?"

"Ain't we?"

"What's a little more trouble," she asked, "on this funny boat?"

The small teak door to the inner compartment opened and Negus put his head out. In the moment, Pablo decided, Negus had seen all there was to see.

"Jack would like you with us for a while, Deedee. If you don't mind."

She rose slowly from under Pablo's hand; her own hand touched his shoulder. "Right you are."

Negus was watching Pablo as he held the compartment door for Mrs. Callahan.

"Why don't you get some sleep, son?"

"Thought you might want me to take the wheel."

"We're all right."

"Well, OK, then." He stood up and stretched. "Guess I'll go back aft, then."

Negus nodded and they exchanged good nights.

Ambling back to the lazaret, Orion ablaze over the starboard quarter and the sea rolling easy under the boards, Pablo paused to lean over the rail. He was flushed and horny with his conquest of the soft rich lady. As he lounged, scheming in the starry darkness, he became aware of voices sounding from somewhere in the innards of the boat. He was standing over the forward ice hold. The voices were those of Negus and Callahan.

Pablo took a look around and lowered himself into the half-covered hold; its interior still smelled of shrimp. There was a half inch of water on the flooring.

Moving to the bulkhead closest to the compartment in which he had taken dinner, he pressed his ear against the damp boards. It was almost completely dark where he stood, except for the scattering of stars visible beyond the edge of the hatch cover overhead.

"Speaking of punks--" Negus began saying--but Callahan cut him off.

"Speaking of punks--stay off the kid's back. I don't want him getting all disgruntled and paranoid. We don't have to live with him long and he's going to come in handy."

"Handy for what?" Negus asked. "For playing kneesies with Dee is all."

"You playing kneesies with him, Dee?"

"I confess," Pablo heard her say; he was startled. "I was playing hot kneesies with him. I dig him."

"If you fuck him," Callahan said, "that rather makes him one of the family. I think that's going too far."

Negus uttered a series of low cautioning obscenities. "I wish the governance around here would put its socks up. We're doing serious business and the whole vessel's stoned, drunk or sopered."

There was a brief silence and then laughter.

"Pablo's all right," Callahan said. "For our purposes."

"He's a hard-ass," Negus admitted, "and that's good, if he knows his place in things."

"I think he does," said Mrs. Callahan. "Pablo Tabor is one of life's little yo-yos. He wants to please and he'll do just fine."

His ear pressed against the cold, sweating woodwork, Pablo's mind beheld the picture of a red yo-yo on a red, white and blue string with a store sticker on it that said, Made in Japan. He had forgotten that he was high; he was more puzzled than angry. I'm gonna fuck her brains out, he thought.

Negus was swearing again. "You see the fucking weaponry he had on him? He was armed to the goddamn teeth. Shit!"

Another silence and Negus said, "I just don't like him."

•

At Serrano, on the windward shore of St. Joost, the frayed ends of a norther whipped the winch chains against the stabilizers and set the mooring lines to groaning. The dock lights showed soiled whitecaps speckling the milky harbor. Pablo worked the fuel line with one of the pier hands.

Within an hour of tying up, they were almost clear. The crates of weapons, greased in creosote, were loaded in the holds on a waterproof tarp; the tarpaulin's ends were tucked down and the holds half-filled with 16-pound blocks of ice.

When the loading was nearly complete, Pablo made his way into the galley and tried the locker in which his gun had been secured. It was still fast. He could hear the Callahans out on deck; Negus was at the dockside overseeing cargo. Glancing about him, Pablo stepped silently into the pilothouse and had a look around. Beside the Modar he found two U. S. Coast Guard code books, laminated and stamped Secret, and a Coast Guard frequency chart. Along with those were code books for the Tecanecan and Compostelan navies, all current, and so similar in type face and binding to the U. S. charts that it was apparent they had been put together by the same outfit. Beneath the frequency chart was a bulky unsealed envelope with a Florida address penciled across it. There were papers of some sort inside and some sealed white packets that felt to Pablo's imaginative touch as though they might contain cash. He picked up the envelope and went back to the galley.

He was at the point of easing the seal off one of the small packets, when he heard footsteps approaching; there was only time for him to tuck the whole envelope beneath his shirt. As casually as he could, he turned to draw a beer from the galley cooler. He took it along with him through the hatch and onto the pier.

Without looking back, Pablo strolled away from the boat, out of the light, following a dirt road. Across the bay, the lights of an oil refinery glowed like the lights of a phantom city. Above them, on a cactus-covered hillside deep in darkness, were the dim scattered lights of Serrano.

Pablo leaned against the fender of one of the parked trucks and took the envelope from beneath his shirt. It was filled with bills and invoices; the white packet he had opened contained not money but rolls of form slips bound with rubber bands; in the darkness, he could make out none of it. No help. Dumbness--he was losing his judgment. Now he would have to get the whole business back under the chart before it was missed or he was caught with it. He put the envelope under his arm, leaned against the truck and closed his eyes. Homesickness and suspicion oppressed him.

These people, he thought--he had misread them. They had seemed so soft at first, so easy. In fact, he was fallen among tricksters whose every word had 20 meanings and who had power over him. They were turning him around.

He reached into his shirt pocket and took out his Benzedrine; it seemed to him that he would need a little more this time, an extra jolt to get straight. He put down three tablets with a swallow of beer.

"Gimme a rush, Jesus," Pablo said into the darkness. "If you want me for a sunbeam."

The refinery lights danced before his eyes, his rush came up dappled, crackling in his brain. Old rages rose in his throat.

Turning from the lights, he saw that Negus was standing at the edge of the road, watching him. He had no idea how long the man had been there.

"What you doin', Tabor?" Negus asked him softly. "What you got under your arm there?"

Pablo twisted his mouth into a kind of smile. Neither man could see the other's face.

"Drinking a brew here," Pablo said.

Negus went up and slid the envelope from under the grip of Pablo's elbow.

"Get yourself back aboard, son."

Pablo let his beer can fall and started toward the dock. After a step, he whirled on the man behind him.

"You're turnin' me around, man."

"Get on back, Tabor. Go ahead, now."

Pablo drew himself upright, his fists were clenched.

"Motherfucker," he said. "You and your plans ... shit be cut a couple of ways, man, you think you can turn me around."

Negus stood motionless, holding the envelope, waiting for him to move.

Pablo held his ground for a moment and then eased off in the direction of the boat.

•

In the pilothouse, Callahan was setting his Rolex to the time signals from Corn Island. Negus went in and put the envelope he had taken from Pablo down beside the Modar.

"We got real trouble with our boy, Jack. I just took this off him. He's been going through our papers."

Callahan looked at the envelope. "Nothing in there of any consequence."

Negus Hushed. "Well, that ain't hardly the point, is it, for Christ's sake? He's snooping around. And some ration he give me when I took it off him. The son of a bitch was out there taking pills and reading our mail, Jack."

"He's an idiot. Probably thought there was money in it."

"Now, how," Negus demanded, "how in hell we gonna go up against that coast with a wrongo like him?"

"By keeping him in line as long as we want him, that's how. I think we're up to it. We need him for the shore run and that's that. He can't pull any stunts on that part of the operation, he'll be too out of his depth."

"Ah, Jack," Negus said, "I don't know, boss."

"Here we are," Callahan told him. "We've paid and we've loaded cargo. We can't quit now. I bet the ranch on this run. We've got to go, Freddy. We must."

Callahan closed his eyes, rested an elbow on the chart table and put his hand over his eyes. "Listen to me, Freddy. We won't have money on board until we deliver. Pablo wants to do us, it's the money he's after. We can keep him in line until then."

"Maybe. What about then?"

"Then," Callahan said, "kill him. In fact, he's yours for the whole run. If you seriously feel he's more trouble than he's worth, deep-six him. I'll leave it to your discretion."

Negus was silent for a while. Callahan turned in his seat to read the tide tables.

When Deedee came back, Negus turned on her.

"Where's the kid?"

"He's up forward," she said. "He's in some kind of sulk. You ever see a speed freak trying really hard not to talk? That's how he is. You know something, Jack, baby? I don't like this too well."

"You could have fooled me."

"He is bad news. He is, he is."

"Then we'll kill him," Callahan said. "Stay close to him. We'll want to know what's on his mind."

"So this time it's me who gets to drink, if I'm supposed to stay close to him. And it's you that stays sober. Because he's not dumb and you better be on top of things."

"You're right, of course."

"Damn straight," Deedee said. "Some fun, hey, boss?"

"That's what we're here for," Callahan said.

•

All night they steamed with the stabilizers down, rolling almost dangerously before a dying northeast swell. At dawn, a roseate raft of clouds was massed over a solitary mountain to southward. Clouds there seemed to slip away reluctantly on the wind and were replaced by others that, singly or in packs, came over the flat far horizon and made straight for the veined slopes that were brightening to green. It was San Ignacio, once English, then Colombian and Panamanian by turns, now its own, or anyone's, island.

In the wheelhouse, Negus maneuvered the dial on the Cloud's V.H.F. receiver; the cabin hummed with submarine static and faint Spanish voices. He and Callahan looked at each other and sat back to wait. Callahan glanced at his watch.

Quite shortly, what might well have been an American voice came in loud and clear.

"Waterbrothers, this is Marie Truman, you copy? Over."

"Well, well," Callahan said. "There he is now." He picked up the mike.

"Marie Truman, Waterbrothers. Copy real well. What kind of night you have up there?"

"Waterbrothers, Marie Truman. Slow night. Scraping the rocks. We got us a sawfish bill. Over."

Callahan grinned at Negus.

"Marie Truman, Waterbrothers. Don't throw that away, hear? It's worth forty bucks on the beach, over."

"Waterbrothers, Marie Truman. We'll see you all up to Gracias a Dios tomorrow. Have a nice day, over."

"Marie Truman," Callahan said, "this is Waterbrothers. You have a good one, too. Out."

"Isn't he a darling?" he asked Negus. "He's playing he's a Texas boat. And he's got what we want and we have what he wants."

"That guy speaks gringo awful good," Negus said. "God help us if that's the guardia we're talking to. You know, they got a lot of Yankee know-how behind them."

"Ah, Fred," Callahan sighed, "you do a thing or you don't. Now we are doing this thing, so let's carry on and do it without bitching all the time."

"Goddamn that guy," Negus said.

•

With the sun below the green saw-toothed ridges of the coast, darkness gathered quickly. Venus was the evening star. She hung low over the western horizon and the unbroken sea beneath her transit was dulled to the color of lead. The wind rose in that quarter, setting a roll beneath the Cloud's counterfeit boards but nowhere breaking the skin of the sea's expanse. Across the sky, Deneb and Vega twinkled beyond a calligrapher's stroke of purple nimbus.

Negus, holding to the wheel, had pulled the nightshade down behind the wheelhouse. Callahan, a drink in one hand, stood at the chart table. "Let me get a quick line of sight here," he said.

"There's an aviation beacon on that mountain," Negus said, shielding his eyes from the glow of the deck lights. "It's on your loran chart."

"I got it," Callahan said. He marked the coordinates from the radar on his line-of-sight chart and X'd in the aviation beacon. They were waiting for the boat to swing full around on its chain.

"Two dock lights at sixty degrees off the beacon. Over them there's a building with a cross on it. Let's hope those dock lights are on all night." Negus said. "But whoever they are must be using a generator, because there's no electricity out here."

"They'll be on," Callahan said. "We were told they'd be on."

He marked the dock lights on his handmade chart and put it under the Bowditch.

"Now," he said, "it's time to talk to the customer."

The C.B. was silent as Negus dialed in.

"Jose," Negus said into the night, "you get those pumps for me?"

"Absolutely, Mr. Fry." It was a different voice but relaxed, easy with English.

"That's just fine," Negus said and hung up the receiver. "Think he sees us?" he asked Callahan.

"No question about it," Callahan said. Callahan called for Deedee and Pablo. They came in slightly breathless.

"Hi, kids," Callahan said. "Now we're going to open up the arms locker."

Pablo watched Callahan unlock the gear locker in which his automatic had been stowed. There were half a dozen other pistols beside it and a small automatic rifle of foreign make. Seeing his weapon, Pablo took a step toward it.

"Leave it where it is," Negus snapped at him.

"Let him take it," Callahan said patiently. "Just don't wave it at passing shipping. It's very frustrating," he explained, "to look for keys and guns when you're in a hurry. In the meantime, let's everyone remember that we're a few miles offshore with all our lights blazing like Christmas. So let's preserve our workaday respectability and demeanor and don't use this stuff until we need to. Which, of course, we all hope we will not."

"You're so right," Deedee said.

Callahan picked up the glass of rum he had been drinking. "Now," he said to Pablo, "you and Deedee are going shrimping."

"I don't follow you there," Pablo said.

"Mrs. Callahan will explain." He put his hand beside his wife's ear; it was a caress of sorts. "And while you're out on deck, Dee, put a watch cap over your hair, OK? So you'll look like a gringo shrimper and not a Rhine maiden?"

She went into her quarters and came out in work gloves and white shrimper's boots, a black watch cap pulled down to her eyebrows. She took the rum bottle and a handful of joints down from the shelf.

"Hey, man," she said, eying the level of the bottle, "I thought it was you staying sober tonight. I thought it was me could get snackered."

"You may get as snackered as you see the need of," Callahan told her.

Pablo went up on deck and Callahan raised an eyebrow at her. "What's the Pablo situation?"

"He's quiet," she said.

"Well," Callahan said thoughtfully, "tell him a little about things and make him feel important. But don't let him get drunk and lose his splendid air of authority. Keep him otherwise occupied."

"I'll massage his cock while he heads shrimp, how's that?"

They passed the bottle around again.

•

Pablo and Deedee sat under the work lights aft of the ice hatches, mounted on upturned shrimp baskets. Before them, under the bright lights, was a living creeping jambalaya, a rapine of darkness and depth. In thousands, creatures of delirium--shelled, hooded, 50-legged and six-eyed--clawed, writhed, flapped or devoured their way through the mass of their fellow captives, the predators and the prey together, overthrown and blinded, scuttling after their lost accustomed world.

"Dig in, Pablo, buddy," Deedee said. "I guess you know a shrimp when you see one, right?"

Pablo stared silently into the mass of struggling life at his feet. He leaned forward, picked up a shrimp and looked at it in his palm.

"There you go," Deedee said, "that's one right there. When you have a basket full of those little fellas, you stick it down in the hold. If we were the honest folk we pretend to be, we'd take their heads and legs off. But we're not, so we won't."

He did not care for the way she watched him. She was smiling and high, but there was a guilty wariness beneath her chatter and high spirits. Pablo knew little about shrimping, but he believed he knew rather a lot about female anxiety. How they looked when they were turning you around. How they smiled when they were scared.

He crushed the shrimp he was holding in his right fist and with the fingers of his left hand, pulled its head off. The gesture of petty violence seemed in no way to alarm her. She went on looking him happily in the eye, but he knew she had seen and interpreted his vague threat. She was very tough, he thought, she was different from other women. He kept his gaze fastened on her and she looked back at him until he felt foolish. He was beginning to hate her. He was beginning to be afraid of her, of her more than the others. He could not be sure whether she was only teasing him or really coming on now. It was like it kept changing. Confused and increasingly angry, he could think of only one strategy and that was to listen and wait and sound her.

"You gotta be crazy," he said. "I mean, you gotta be crazy, a good-looking woman like you out here on this turkey."

"That makes two of us," she said. "At least."

"Yeah," Pablo said. "But I'm just passing through." So saying, he shuddered. He felt a nearly prayerful hope it might be true.

"'Cast a cold eye,'" Deedee said, "'on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!'" She was weirdness itself.

Within 45 minutes, they had enough filled baskets to cover the ice completely in one hold and to cover half of it in the second. Pablo stood on the ice blocks, receiving the baskets from Deedee as she passed them down. When the shrimp were stowed, she got the stabilizer engines going and he helped her spread the dragline again. They sat down on their baskets and drank some rum. It was good light Puerto Rican rum, better than the stuff they usually brought out.

"A very fine place for shrimping," Deedee said. "If we're ever in that line again, we'll have to remember it."

Pablo looked out at the surrounding ocean. There were other boats in sight now, four or five of them, lit and working.

"Could be the fisheries patrol come down on us any minute," Pablo said. He said it to have something to say, bitching to bring her down and to make himself feel better.

"I wouldn't worry about that, Pab, we've never been boarded, ever. They check out the numeral and the colors. When they're close enough to see you're gringo, they leave you alone. Unless, of course, they're looking for you."

"But that won't happen, will it?"

She took a drink of rum and passed him the bottle.

"Well, I haven't said anything. And the boss hasn't and Freddy hasn't. Have you?"

"That's a joke, ain't it?"

"Yes," she said, "ain't it?"

"They don't trust me," he said sullenly, nodding toward the wheelhouse, "I know that."

"If they don't trust you, they must have a reason. What would the reason be?"

"You playin' cop or somethin', Mrs. Callahan?"

"We're playing pirate," she said. "I have to trust you. So do they. Otherwise, you'd be walking the plank. That's how it is in pirate."

While he was thinking of an answer, Callahan came aft and looked at the catch in the holds. "Real good, shrimp people," he said. "Now let's bring the nets up again. We're running out of time."

There were not so many shrimp in the second catch and they had to pad the baskets with chipped ice and junk fish to get the second hold covered. Negus came out and worked with them until the nets were secured and the hatches tight over the holds. Pablo observed that Callahan was drunk again. Even Negus in his silent dispatch did not seem altogether sober.

When Callahan and Negus went back to the wheelhouse, Deedee stayed where she was, cuddled against Pablo. Pablo reached into his pocket and swallowed the last of his Benzedrine.

The drug's action when it came was disappointing and curious. For a fraction of a second, he could not remember where he was and he was overcome with fear. But the rush passed, and then hewas better. He asked her for more rum and while he drank it, she held to his arm. For a while, he was calm and sad and grateful to have her beside him.

"You're a good man," she told him soothingly. "You're OK and you're going to be even better."

"I like the sound of that," Pablo told her, and then he laughed. Almost giggled. She seemed sympathetic; she laughed with him.

"How long you been with that man?" he asked her.

"Forever," she said, and they both laughed again.

She rolled a joint and they drank a little more.

"If you been with him forever," Pablo asked, "how come you're coming on to me?"

"Heavens to Betsy," she said, "I thought you'd never ask. I didn't think you noticed."

They laughed at that, too. They were smoking her heavy Jamaican weed.

"Thing is," Pablo said, "I don't understand. Things been happening and I don't understand. Like something was going on."

"Something's always going on," she said. And while he was trying to read her look, all the lights went out. Only the instrument lights in the wheelhouse showed, reflected in the windshield and the faint glow of the interior lights from between the louvered shutters over the saloon housing. The Cloud shifted course again and someone--Negus--came out on deck and opened the engine panel. When he slammed it shut again, the boat began to pick up speed. The whole frame of the vessel shuddered, a wind picked up where there had been little more than a steady breeze--the Cloud was running like a crash boat.

"Away we go," Deedee said.

The sensation of moving at such speed in what seemed an ordinary shrimp boat was dreamlike, almost comical. Pablo stared down at the white water that rushed under their bow.

Deedee sat on a basket near the lazaret hatch, hugging herself, a knit bag on her lap.

"Sit down before you fall over, Pablo," she said. "We're going faster than you think. Let's get out of this wind and Momma will tell you how it is."

When she sat herself down on the chafing gear in the lazaret, he sat beside her. It was the first close touch he had of her since the night in the galley that seemed so long before. He was fighting to hold Pablo now, to hold within himself thethinking, calculating Pablo--because even as he sat with her, that self was being crowded out by lust and a shadow.

She pushed his cap off and brought his head against her shoulder and put her chin on top of his head.

"This is how it is, Pablo," she began. Pablo closed his eyes to listen.

"We have some boys to deal with on the coast here and we don't know who they are. It could occur to them to take our goods, our boat, everything--and pitch us over the side. It's happened. So we need a little display of sincerity. We need a crazy old boy like you who's so mean and nasty-looking they think he might feed them a few just to hear the funny noises they'd make. Then look at it from their side. Everything's C.O.D. Maybe it's a little old-fashioned, but that's us, see, that's the way we do it. They've got money for us. Now, we might just take theirmoney and do them in--that's happened, too."

She ran her fingers along the back of his neck.

"So. So, honey"--cuddling him--"so they come out in their boat and we load the stuff. You go along so everybody feels all right. They usually have to make more than one trip and going in they'll feel better, because even if they don't have all of their delivery, they have you. And you'll be riding along looking so bad and crazy that whatever they'd like to do--they'll decide it makes more sense to stick to the deal. So they bring you back with the last load. We take our money. Buenu suerle and viva la causa, that's it. It's not a desperate situation even today. It's got rules. You're riding shotgun."

He began to laugh or by now it was the shadow. He listened to her laugh as well.

Then he peeled the sweat shirt off her and licked her breasts, the nipples, above them, below and around, the nipples themselves again.

"Crazy stuff," she said. "Crazy stuff."

Her watch cap had fallen off and her hair spread out among the strands of chafing gear. She was thrusting her ass against him--soft, round, damp under the wet film of denim--unzipping his fly. She forced him back against the bale; she, him!

"No need you holdin' me down," he said. It was the shadow talking.

But by answer, she bent and put her teeth against his penis. Then she raised herself on her hands and feet like a cat stretching and kicked off her shrimping boots, then peeled down the jeans that encased her. Naked, she lay facing him against the bale. Pablo took off his shirt and undid his belt until his dungarees were down around his ankles.

She was laughing still.

"Don't you take off your boots when you have a lady, Tex?"

"Never you fuckin' mind."

She answered him by taking his right hand and putting it between her thighs and the skin there was as smooth as the surface of a glass of buttermilk on a summer's day. She closed his handover her, his thumb in the cleft of her buttocks, his fingers playing over the down and labia. He put his face into her neck, and then, wanting it without delay, put his face between the thighs and with his mouth and tongue, took all such pleasures there as he could see or imagine. She had wriggled part way up the heaped bale until her body was above his, and with her posture strangely erect, her head thrown back, slipped down on him time after time, impaling herself, until they both had come.

Deedee was still moaning softly when he saw that the hatch at the top of the ladder was pried open. He could make out the stars.

"The hatch," he said.

She reached out for her bag and the bottle.

"Scared of trouble?"

From the way she said it, he could not tell if it was challenge or consolation, so he did not answer.

"We're not having trouble on this boat," she told him, "not about you and me. And the reasons for that I cannot tell but in another day."

So, warily, he settled down, and though he did not like the way she had spoken to him, presently he was hard again. Or it might have been the shadow's lust. He took her once more, trying now to hurt her--but she could not be hurt in that way; every thrust he made she somehow met, met yielding, as though she were ready for every moment. So he could not hurt her, could not gentle or humiliate her. And when he started to come and to pull out, she held him, letting go little by little as it pleased her, until he was seeing lights on the overhead and he thought he would pass out cold.

He was very high, higher than he had ever been. His thoughts twisted off into spools, arabesques, snatches of music.

Deedee was putting her clothes on. Automatically, he buckled his trousers.

"Don't you have any gentleness in you, boy?" she asked.

He looked toward her unseen face. Fear sat on his chest, its talons in the muscles of his breast. He had seen a shadow pass the hatch. He was certain.

"You mustn't be afraid," she told him softly.

Hearing her say it was a terrible thing for him.

"Someone's up there," he said.

"That could be, Pablo. It's all right."

All right. And he was in a rank-smelling trap at a loss to understand how he had got there. Beside him in the darkness, his soft-bodied enemy soothed him in a voice like gold wire.

"Hey, hey," she said, nudging him slightly, "it's all right, my man."

All right. But they were going to kill him. He had been through the question before and that was the way it had come out.

"You set me up," he told her.

"Don't be silly," she said firmly.

As she said it, he stopped trembling. She had set him up and there was no more to it. He was among crazy people, in an empty landscape tasting of salt rubber, smelling of scale and death. They were about killing him. He sat very still, waiting for her to move, listening for sounds on the deck above.

"Settle down, now," she said, as though she were talking to a horse.

He was quite settled down now. There was no more reality to him than to the blossoming bougainvillaea he thought to see in the darkness or to the music that he heard. Things were inside out, but he was strong.

He made a loop of the chafing line and by a blind stroke caught her around the throat. One of her hands came up to struggle with the noose, but the other was reaching into darkness. Pablo, twisting the line with all his strength, his mind serene, took a moment to react. Deedee brought up the butt of the pistol she had taken from her bag and cracked him hard across the upper lip, nearly getting the underside of his nose. He let go of the line and went after the pistol; he could not see what had hit him, but he knew it must be one.

She was shouting now, shouting for her husband in a choked nightmare voice. When he had forced the pistol from her right hand, he pressed his head down against her chest to keep it low and took his own Nambu from beneath his seabag.

There was true light in the space now. On the ladder, someone with a flashlight was searching out the darkness. Pablo rolled her across his body--it was as though they were making love again--her teeth were sunk in his arm. As she passed over him, he jammed the barrel of the Nambu under her sweat shirt and fired. He felt her teeth release him, she was flung onto her knees beside the bale. Two shots came from the ladder, at least one of them striking the woman. She rolled over on her side, her knees still together. The compartment was spinning with illuminations; Pablo thought of fireflies, wet sparkplugs. His ears were hammered shut. Against the flat lower section of the bulkhead, he was unhurt. When he fired at the man who was on the ladder, he did so with confidence, as though he had nothing but time. And in a second, even though the man there had thought to turn off his flashlight, he knew he had been on target. He heard the shuffle, the groan, the gun strike the ladder's bottom step and slide across the deck. As the man fell, his flashlight clicked on and he lay behind its beam invisible and motionless. Pablo sat panting in the darkness, waiting for the figure behind the light to move. The moment he started to his feet, there was another flash; Pablo's leg went out from under him and his head struck the slanting bulkhead. He knelt and fired two shots into the space behind the light's beam. There was a groan and a man spoke--it was Callahan--but Pablo could not make out what he said. Then Pablo discovered himself to be shot; there was a bleeding wound in the thick part of his calf, in the back. He ran his finger along the shinbone and found it unbroken. The bullet might only have cut him and passed through, but it hurt. He would be all right, he thought. He had power enough to fox them all and live. There was another one.

From the open deck above, he heard Negus' voice calling the Callahans by name. He began to go up the ladder backward, sitting for a while on each step. Negus' voice sounded far away, carried off by the wind. At last, Pablo was sitting framed in the hatchway. There was no sign of a light. His head bent low, he glanced around his shoulder and saw Negus, holding a shotgun and crouching anxiously beside the after-hatch.

"Jack?" Negus asked, and reached for a light he had set down on the hatch cover.

As Negus reached for it, Pablo turned full around, got off a shot, then flung himself out of the hatchway and scuttled across the slimy deck like one of the creatures that had swarmed there during the evening. His shot, he knew, had missed. His leg throbbing, he crawled for darkness, his steelhearted killer's trance deserting him. Negus was after him, rounding the hatch for a shot. Pablo, terrified now, cowered alongside the scuppers; he had three shots in the Nambu and the light was bad. Then he saw Negus stumble backward, make two little capering backward steps and fall back against the hatch cover. The shotgun discharged heavenward.

Pablo, uncertain of what he was seeing, came to realize that Negus had slipped on the deck. It was a miracle of God. He hesitated for a moment, saw Negus try to bring the gun to bear and shot him. It seemed to him that he had missed again. Negus dropped the shotgun on the deck and was looking down at it, cursing softly. He turned toward Pablo.

"You stop, you hear? Just stop it!" There was a catch in his voice. He was hurt.

Pablo lowered his gun.

"Don't yell at me no more, Mr. Negus. Get back there against the rail."

When Negus stood clear, Pablo lowered himself on his good leg and picked up the shotgun.

"Oh, you dirty monkey," Negus said. "You little son of a bitch. What'd you do?"

He seemed furious. Pablo felt as though he had done something wrong.

"They're down there," Pablo said, pointing to the lazaret hatchway. "You look down there, you'll see them."

Negus walked stiffly to the flashlight on the hatch cover, took it and went to the top of the lazaret ladder. Pablo stood behind him, keeping him on the top step as he played the beam over the silent space.

"You dirty fucking monkey," Negus said.

"They were turning me around," Pablo explained. "You was, too."

"Well, they ain't turnin' you around no more, bucky," Negus said. "They're dead. You killed them."

"Well, they were," Pablo said. He felt remorse and disgust.

Negus sat down on the hatch, his arms folded over his stomach. "Now what we got, kid, is a Mexican standoff. You know what I mean?"

"No," Pablo said. But he was intrigued and encouraged to hear things put that way.

"I'm hurting. I got a slug in my gut. I don't know but that. . . ." He let it go. "But you're hurting, too, kid. You can't get nowhere from here. Nothing on that coast for you now. You'll pile her up or the guardia'll get you or the pirates will. You're bleeding, boy, you're drawing sharks, you see what I mean, now?"

Negus stood up and leaned on the rail a few feet away from him.

"I can take this vessel anywhere. I can get us anywhere. Clear."

"How?" Pablo asked.

Negus grew enthusiastic.

"Oh, by Jesus Christ, boy, why, plenty of places. San Ignacio. Colombia. One of the islands there. I got friends in all them places. I can get us a doctor. We can sell our goods, man. Emeralds. We can get them." He was trying to see Pablo's face in the faint light that came from the cockpit. He was smiling.

"What would you tell them there? If we got to Colombia--one of them places?"

"Well, a thousand things. A thousand things, hell. . . ." He was talking faster and he began to laugh. "They don't give a goddamn what you done or where you been if you got cash or goods. We'd have it made."

Pablo was straining toward hope. That it might all be true. There were moments when they both believed it all.

Negus drew his breath painfully and, encouraged, went on.

"Listen, Pablo. You're using twenty gallons an hour out here. More than that. More. You gon' to be sailing in circles."

When Pablo did not reply, he grew more heated.

"You be out here, boy, you'll see things day and night. Stuff that ain't there. I know what I'm talking about. You don't ever want to be alone out here, because the stuff you'll see, sometimes it ain't there and sometimes it is. When it is, it's worser. I know. I'm the one that knows. And me takin' us in, old shoe, we'll be home free. Home. Free. They know me, man. They don't care." He laughed and ran out of breath, and Pablo saw that the man was lying to him, talking for his life as though to a child. Turning him around.

Pablo looked at his weary enemy and was sorry.

"Well, Ok," he said. "Let's do it."

Negus' delight was so great that, sorry as he was, Pablo couldn't keep from laughing. The old dude was whooping and shouting like the drunkard he was, going on about emeralds and cocaine and private villas, and his face was happy as Christmas morning when Pablo blew him away.

•

He missed them, that was it. A crazy way to feel, because they were low-down people, they were just shit as people, and they had certainly been turning him around.

Then he thought of speed and how that would be the ticket. On his way to the sleeping quarters, he stopped in the pilothouse and looked over the navigational gear. The compass bearing was set for zero zero zero and the constant null tone signified that this was where it should be. On the chart table, he found Callahan's rough line-of-sight chart; in one corner, Callahan had written the loran digits he had noted at the spot. For the moment, things were all right, but later, up near the reef, he would have to do his own steering and find the marker in darkness. And there would be the men on the coast.

He took a light and went into the head where the shower was and found an unlocked cabinet under the small sink. Up front there were first-aid kits and soap and every kind of downer, aspirin, aloe powder, ginseng, exotic shampoos. Not until he was on the edge of despair did he find a small bottle containing six Desoxyn and a jar of painkilling tablets. He bent his head against the shelf in gratitude. He sat on deck of the head, swallowed two Desoxyn and one of the painkillers and made a bandage for his wounded leg. There were no exit or entry holes, only a scythe-cut wound along the back. It did not seem serious; there was not much blood. He would do.

The Callahans would have to go over with Negus now.

Pablo hobbled up on deck, taking two stationary flashlights with him. Scanning the night horizon, he saw no lights in view; he would have to risk some light of his own to get the thing done. He seized an end of chain and, grasping it under his arm, eased himself painfully down the ladder, pulling a web of coiled line behind him.

He came to Callahan first and linked two sections of chain under the dead man's fleshy shoulders. When he thought the links were secured, he went topside and set the tri-net bar to hauling upright. The coils and chain with their burden rattled up the hatchway like a receding tide. With Callahan netted and swinging above the deck, Pablo loosened the chain from under his shoulders, swung the bar outboard and Callahan rolled off into the quiet ocean and disappeared.

A second time, like a diver, Pablo descended into the lazaret compartment, dragging chain behind him. He found her easily enough and pulled her into the coils. Her death's darkness smelled of suntan oil.

She did not go readily as her husband had. The colorless hair, almost phosphorescent over the water, spread itself among the coils, her sweat shirt was caught on a cross wire, her legs were wrapped in the chains. In the end, he had to take his light to the rail and cut her free from the webbing. The chains snapped loose and then, upright, her hair held at its ends by the coils that enshrouded her like a veil, she fell. Wide-eyed, as though eight fathoms held some new curiosity--like a figurehead, dolorous, an image of the destiny--feet first into the water.

Eventually, Pablo made himself stand up and, looking ahead, found that he could make out a line of mountains above the horizon. One tiny light glowed steadily between the dark curve of the ridge and the field of stars. It would be the aviation beacon. Within minutes, he could see the dock lights that were marked on Callahan's chart.

Reefs, he thought in sudden panic, the bottom was marbles.

Staggering, his mouth dry, he made his way to the wheelhouse and decreased running speed; the Fathometer reading had plunged to ten feet. Instincts of mindless flight possessed him and he began to pray. At every heading, the knife-spined bottom rose to destroy him. At last, he cut the engine and dropped the hook.

"Ave Maria Purisima," Pablo whispered, and the Cloud rose on the incoming swell and slowly turned her prow toward open ocean. Then, step by throbbing step, he went out and lay downon the fouled boards beside the forward hatch, gathering Negus' shotgun to his side.

In a little while, he heard engines, far off but closing fast. They were coming, the dreaded, the expected.

A feather of spray struck his face and shoulders and he began to shiver, until the spasms convulsed him totally. He clutched the shotgun and clenched his teeth. Waiting. Like he was back home in a blind in the cold before dawn. Deep in the brake, where there was no one to turn him around.

He listened to the engines growing louder. When he looked up, he saw Polaris and the attendant Dipper. Coldest of stars.

He had made himself a world, he thought, a world of empty ocean and cold stars. In it he was finally free.

As he waited, his finger on the trigger, he thought how, in that world, he himself and the swarming creatures in the holds were all that was alive.

"From the dock, the Cloud appeared to be a shimper. Inside she had the appointements of a cutter."

Pablo watched and listened, made himself useful and kept his nature to himself."