Wanderer by Sterling Hayden

Author:Sterling Hayden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493035281
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 42

High water. A schooner lies to a wharf. Her sheer is proud as it runs up to her bows from a low point amidships. Old men lounge in late September sunshine, fiddling with pipes and knives, admiring the look of the vessel, spitting and scanning the sky.

Against this sky is a man at work on the mainmasthead. He wears a checked wool shirt, one sleeve ragged. Ninety feet from the deck he works, wearing a rigger’s knife—homemade from the blade of a file—with a bucket of tar dangling near his hands.

Gloucester somnolent and warm. He basks in the glow of the scene—in the crowding of masts, the wheeling of gulls, the lift of a sail in the distance. His world begins and ends with just such things as these. The ship is the Gertrude L. Thebaud, fitting out now for a challenge match against the Canadian Bluenose (best three out of five races, no handicap, no shifting of ballast, plenty of good hard feelings). His job is that of mastheadsman—he on the main, Jack Hackett aloft on the fore. What more could a sailorman ask?

His hands now thick with tar. Gingerly he reaches with careful fingers, wary and tuned to the wind, cups the match and bends his head. And looking up he sees her. Along the dock she comes with a dogged gait, plowing through bystanders and fishermen mixed. He shakes his head slightly, and down from aloft he clomps, slapping his hands on the shrouds, dreading what lies ahead.

“Well—Buzz—how good to see you, my dear.”

“Hello, Mother, how are you?” They move to the lee of a shed.

“So you’re going to be in the race.”

“Seems that way.”

“And afterwards? Any idea—what you’ll do and where you’ll be, once the races are over?”

“Mother, I don’t know. Back to sea, I guess, assuming I find a ship. Nothing for me on shore.”

“Oh Buzz, is it any use my staying in Gloucester? All summer long I was here. We saw each other twice.”

“Mother, I know. And I’m sorry, believe me I am, but—”

He looks around in despair. Busy men everywhere. Men at work—painting, chipping, scrubbing and mending and splicing. Across the harbor lies Rocky Neck. Leaves are turning—reds like rust, golds and browns.

Without a word she is gone. Her head is bowed. She is crying. Farther apart now than when he was halfway across the world. She pauses at the corner, starts to turn around, checks herself. Then out of sight.

He clomps aloft once again.

Out of Gloucester, a week before the first race, forty men and one tall ship bound on a trial run. Pitted against the clock. Against some wind as well—ragged brawling wind blowing a southeast gale. Storm warnings fly beneath a dull gray sky, and leaves skirmish. (Out on the Banks no dories will work this day, and up in Boston girls clutch skirts and hats go tumbling to leeward.)

Half past ten, says a belfry clock. Captain Ben Pine stands by the wheel. You would swear he was part of his ship—in spite of the blue vested suit, the brown felt hat, and a red bow tie.

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