DRAFT ONLY
The pier, it seemed to Rosie, was a logical place to start searching for information about an old seaman.
Rosie was too old to be a girl, and too young to be a woman. Now as she walked the waterfront, she carefully avoided seagull droppings and the bits of decayed bait, dropped by yesterday’s pier fishers.
Gulls, annoyed with her intrusion, lifted off and circled impatiently. Some flew with their orange beaks open, eager to return to scavenging as she made her way along the wharf. Others cried and squealed in alarm.
Belatedly, she wanted to reconstruct something of her grandfather's past, to get the feel of things, how it must have been back then, in the good old days.
"These piers undoubtedly looked just the same when Grandpa walked here, she mused."
Following his death, she had realized how little she knew about her granddad's history, and wished that she had probed more deeply while he loved.
"Oh, the questions I wish I had asked him!"
Those questions had never seemed urgent until … she shuddered ... until his cabin was destroyed, and he along with it.
REMEMBERING THE ESTATE SALE
Before T.J.W. died, his doctor had advised the family: “I am afraid the old feller won’t live though this."
Doctor Cowell had known Thomas for decades; knew of his life at sea, his work on the American transatlantic railroad, knew of his stormy marriage, of his bleakly on-again off-again work history and more.
"I am afraid Tom is about to depart on his final cruise,” Dr. Cowell said sadly.
At 9 AM the next day, T.J. died, precisely three weeks before the estate sale.
At the sale, Rosie had been shaken when someone asked, “Will you take a quarter for this chair?”
It was a favorite chair of his. Though it was a cheap, wooden chair with peeling paint, she could hardly imagine strangers sitting in it.
She bartered until she got five bucks for the chair, then returned to her reveries, trying to remember bits and pieces of conversation, reconstructing what she knew of her grandad.
T.J. took his first employment on a sailing vessel at the age of fourteen. That much she knew.
Rosie's thoughts were interrupted again.
“How much for this watch?” someone asked.
It was his great pocket watch, the one with a long chain. They let it go for two dollars. A boy tugged at a woman’s dress. “Mom, can I have that pocket knife?
“You are too young for a knife," the woman said.
The boy howled, unheeded, for a half hour. When she apparently thought no one was looking, she reached beyond the roped off area, pillaging the family's keepsakes, and pulled out what happened to be T.J.’s old sea compass. Noting that the cover was professionally hand-engraved, and that a red stone graced the center of the dial, she placed the treasure inside her purse.
A man asked, “Three dollars for this hand saw?”
Rosie and stared as her mother ignored the question and blocked the thief's exit.
"You can pay for the watch over at the door, but the compass is not for sale," Ruby said.
After the woman left, Ruby gave the compass to Rosie.
"Take good care of this," she said. "It will be a keepsake for you. It meant a lot to Grandpa."
At first she objected. "But, it's just an old compass."
"It's symbolic," Ruby said. "Grandpa would want you to find your way. He would probably say that you need to find a compass for your life, and this will remind you of that fact at the same time it reminds you of him."
Rosie must have looked skeptical.
"There is more to it," her mother said. "Grandpa always told me that the compass was special. It has ... powers of some kind."
"Powers!" Rosie laughed outright. "What kind of powers?"
"I don't know, but he said that the compass was some kind of guide to a great treasure. Who knows, maybe he buried something in a treasure chest!" And this time it was Ruby who laughed.
Thus it was, that Rosie ended up with this compass, white elephant, albeit an old one.
The compass was, perhaps, the only vanity item amongst T.J.'s stuff. This was before the popularization of electrical hand tools. Having been, among other things, a ship’s carpenter since before the turn of the century, he had owned hand drills and bits, hand planes, pliers, wood clamps, two squares, plumb lines, folding measuring sticks, a claw hammer and a peen hammer, a variety of chisels and all else that a carpenter of he early 1900’s required. At the estate sale, Rosie had watched as the gentle carpenter’s history disappeared, piece by piece.
BACK AT THE WATERFRONT
Rosie stood before the Sow Tavern, taking in the scent of rotting seaweed and the calls of gulls. She had arrived at the wharf early, gathered her coat tightly around her shivering body and seated herself on a bench outside the old tavern.
The cool wood pressed against her warm fanny just as it had against the bottoms of fishermen, seamen, and longshoremen of yesteryear. She fondled the bench’s surface, rippled but smooth.
Grandpa sat in this very place!
She imagined him amongst others, all in sea-going garb, smoking pipes and waiting for the tavern doors to open.
Rosie had sometimes dabbled in spiritualism, and now, sitting on the waterfront bench, she tried to call up any remnant of her grandfather’s presence, but all she felt was the cold, damp air and the smooth but hard lumber resisting the pressure of her bones. At about nine AM the fog cleared and by ten the sun was shining.
At 10:15 AM the tavern keeper unlocked the door. Little by little, pier walkers, winos, displaced workers, and retired seamen emerged from narrow alleys or spaces between the hodgepodge of shops, and Rosie began to question them.
"Did you ever know this man?" she asked, showing them a photo of him as a young seaman, and another as an old man. Eventually she would produce the compass too, and sometimes they would look at it with great interest or curiosity.
Each was eager to please the young lady, trying to outdo the others in creating fantastic tales. They all embellished freely. The young lady, however, was desperate for concrete facts upon which to build her her own personal legends, for she, like all humans, felt a need to reconstruct the past in a way that glamorized her ancestors.
She soon heard all of the lies, idle rumors, and malicious tales that the scoundrels at the water’s edge could invent.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” she thought, but she wrote it down anyway. Later, she could also fill in the gaps with details from her own imagination. Her “Legends of The Sow,” written “by one of our own” was sure to entertain the local crowd, for she was intent upon becoming a professional writer.
What better way to break into writing than to start with my own family history?
Or so she thought.
Rosie appreciated even the lies and insults of the bums along the beach, but she had hoped for more, hoped to understand T.J.’s dreams, for example. Dreams and visions ran in the family, yet she puzzled about the nightmares that had tormented him. And they were many, as she knew from his infamous fitfulness and occasional sleepwalking.
As the sun fell, a fog bank rolled in and covered the pier in an ethereal mist. Alcoholics had sidled up to her and, wrapped in heavy, second-hand cloaks; they all fell asleep until at last, Rosie careful not to disturb the others, rose to leave, but not quickly enough.
From within an alley, a bony hand extended and grasped her wrist. She gasped and recoiled, but she found her strength much too inferior. As Rosie’s eyes adjusted to the dimly lit alley, she saw that her captor appeared old and weak.
I could easily escape, she mistakenly thought, but she soon realized that she was no match for him. How can such an old man be so strong?
Rosie panicked then, remembering the purse she had slung across her shoulder, and tucked it tightly beneath her armpit.
“Aw now, Missy, I don’t plan to rob you. But please try to understand, I have taken a little wine for the stomach’s sake you know.” And he laughed, which set him to coughing.
She drew back a leg to kick him, when something stopped her. An intuition, perhaps.
“Aye, Missy, that’s better. You don’t want to kick old Ike do you?”
She tried to stammer an answer, but the old man interrupted. “Of course not! Not when he can tell you something authentic about your grandpa.”
He pulled her by the hand, but not so hard as before, coaxing her along rather than moving her by force now.
“Come over here and let's talk a little. I will tell you something interesting about your grandfather, Missy.”
Frightened and knowing better, but curious, Rosie allowed him to pull her a little deeper in amongst the decrepit booths, sheds and storage shacks. Just then, the door to a run-down shack opened behind her, and a half dozen old men streamed out and surrounded her, many of them were, dirty, creepy (so she thought), and smelled of the alley filth and fish and alcohol.
“The Missy here wants to see what happened to her old’ grandfather,” Ike said.
A taller old man now brushed past the others and they yielded, making way for him.
“Madam, please excuse this rather informal introduction. I’m Peacoat. Odd name for an old salt, don’t you think?”
She nodded.
“So,” he continued, “you want to know something that happened to your old’ granddad?”
Doubtful, she nodded nonetheless.
“Close your eyes.”
Several hands now held her, tied a dirty rag over her eyes, turned her around, and shoved her along the rough boards of the pier. Shortly they stopped her, removed the bandana and, standing now at the very edge of the pier she gazed into the black, swirling waters below.
“Your grandfather was once shoved to the fantail of a ship, and pushed overboard.”
Peacoat pushed her out until she thought surely she would fall, but then he pulled her back.
“Of course, we would never do that to you, but he once was punished that way. Good thing he could swim.”
The others all laughed. "Even so, he was luck to live through that," Peacoat said.
She had completely forgotten about her purse by then, and suddenly with a surprisingly deft movement, Peacoat pulled the purse from off her shoulder. She instinctively reached for it but he held out a long, well muscled arm and stopped her with the palm of his hand resting firmly on her chest.
"Don't worry, you will get the purse back; I just want to have a look-see in here. We wouldn't want any surprises, such as a little snub nosed pistol."
There was no gun, of course, but Peacoat pulled the compass from her purse and held it up for all to see.
"Ah-ha, what have we here?” And thy all oohed and awed.
“I tell you what, Rosie. Let's make a deal! How's about I tell you more of what I know about T.J., and you lend us this little compass for a day or two in return?"
She cried out in alarm, however. "You can't have that! My mother ..."
The drunken laughter of the crowd drowned her out, and seeing an opportunity, she snatched the compass from Peacoat's hand and he did not resist..
As soon as she had the compass, however, another man grabbed her wrist and yet another snatched the compass away from him. Suddenly the compass was flying from one drunk ex-sailor to the next. Around and around the compass went in this rambunctious game until the drunkest of them all, the one farthest away from the edge of pier, tripped and fell, and as he fell, he knocked over another, who in turned fell against another, and so on. Complicating things, their feet became entangled in a piece of two-inch rope that had been coiled upon the deck, and so they all fell down.
Rosie might have had the opportunity to escape then, but for one thing: She was the person closest to the water's edge. She felt herself knocked off balance, and when her toe caught on a protruding plank, over she went, into the drink.
She felt several of the wrinkled, boney, hands grasping at her, but over the side she went nonetheless, straight into the sea.
She fell some twenty feet before the cold water enfolded her body; the momentum plunged her beneath the surface, and as she held her breath she prayed desperately. The water is way over my head! Oh, Jesus, help me!
Gradually the momentum slowed and she began rising upwards, but not fast enough.
Too far, she thought. I can't make it to the top.
She struggled, holding her breath. When her hand finally broke the surface, she gasped, taking in both air and water. Alarmed but alive, alone in the water at last, she looked upward.
Peacoat waved, as if he were trying to tell her something, but she could not hear what he said, and then he disappeared and all of the other men scurried away too.
In a few seconds they came back and tossed her a line of four-inch rope, but she refused it. She felt safer, somehow, in the water now. Safer than up amongst those rowdy and somewhat unstable old men. Surprisingly, even her purse now floated beside her. She swam from piling to piling, clutching at at them for rest but cutting her hands and feet on the barnacles.
Reaching the beach beneath the pier she was drenched, scared, and exhausted, but also felt energized. She ran the dark streets to her studio, fumbled in the purse and to her amazement the keys were still there. She slung open the door, and flipped on the light. Then, stripping off her wet clothes, she left them in a heap at the doorstep and, trembling from the shock of her experience as much as from the cold, took a hot bath to warm herself back up.
Afterward she sat at a small desk considered her options. She should call the police. She should buy a hand gun. She should ... she absently pushed a button and the light on the front of her electric typewriter turned green. It was an impulse perhaps, but instead of doing any of those other things that she had considered., she began typing, and was soon lost in her novel; it was the story, as only she could imagine it, of her great grandfather T.J.'s life.
Posts
