They run like ghosts
the coyotes
twirling from head
and tail
turning with the swift fury
of the stirred dust devil
and just as quickly
stopping
on a small outcropping
with a sharp stillness
to gaze and make
contact, to let
you know they’ll be
gone in a flash,
just like you, leaving
their markings
in secret places
of the field.
—Stacey Warde
by January Anderson
“Aw, come on, Airy! Tell me the killer whale story? Please?”
“Again?” Ariel loosened her waitress apron and fell onto the couch, tossing her “Capn’s Catch” nametag on the coffee table. She rolled her eyes at 9-year-old Timmy, the neighbor’s kid who visited often. She’d just gotten off the graveyard shift—Timmy’s Saturday morning was her Friday night.
“For Pete’s sake, Timmy! You’ve heard it so many times you gotta know it by heart. Why don’t you tell it?”
“Okay, okay…um…” Timmy squirmed. “You know this guy, and he’s an abalone diver and…I forget. Pleeeeeeeeese, Ariel?” he pleaded.
“If I tell you again, you promise to go outside and pull weeds or something and let me sleep?”
Timmy agreed readily. Ariel sighed and began the tale that an abalone fisherman friend had told her years ago.
“Kenny is an abalone diver who’s been making a living at it since he was about 15. He learned from his father, who learned from his father. When Kenny goes to work, instead of wearing a jacket, he puts on a rubber suit connected to an air hose and basically pokes around the bottom of the ocean for snails—that’s what abs are, just big snails, but really good to eat.
“He’s been in the water with all kinds of things. Seals, dolphins, hammerheads, Great Whites, you name it. He’s seen a lot of killer whales and says they’re really, really smart—smarter than dolphins, maybe as smart as people. Orcas mostly eat fish, not people, even though they could, easy. Kenny says they just seem to have a rule not to eat humans.
“Well, one day, Kenny and Panama Pat had been diving out by Santa Cruz Island from Kenny’s boat, the Sally J. They were done for the day and crossing the channel to Santa Barbara. A ways from the boat a couple of killer whales surfaced, looked at them, and disappeared.
“Kenny and Panama waited for the whales to come back up again close to the boat because killer whales always do that, Kenny says. But instead, the whales surfaced further away.
“‘That’s weird,’ Panama said to Kenny. ‘Maybe they’re gonna go around and come up astern.’
“After a few minutes, the whales surfaced even farther out, looked back, and swam away from the Sally J as fast as Kenny and Panama had ever seen orcas go.
“‘Boy, that’s strange!’ Kenny said. ‘I’ve never seen killer whales act that way.’
“‘Yeah,’ Panama said. ‘They’re acting almost like they was guilty or something….’”
***
Greer Dettins thumbed the stiff plastic laminating on the menu and reviewed the list of hamburger variations. Cheeseburgers. Swiss cheese mushroom burgers. Onion burgers. Hamburgers with bacon, avocado and cheese. Hamburgers with nothing but a scrap of lettuce and a blood-like dab of ketchup.
Anymore, his stomach didn’t squelch at the barbarity of it, but his mind did. It made him, Greer thought, out of place, alien—a familiar feeling most days, but not the kind of thing you got used to. Sure as hell not in a place like this.
It had looked decent enough from the road, a 24-hour converted Denny’s called “Capn’s Catch,” on the freeway’s edge of a wind-bitten California waterfront town. Greer figured the half-dozen customers charging their hands on warm coffee mugs, settled in booths or elbow-propped at the counter, to be garbage workers, commercial fishermen, farmers. It was four o’clock in the morning.
With a businesslike weariness, he caught the waitress’s eye.
“What can I get you?” She leaned against the booth, pen and pad poised.
“The chef’s salad without the meat, cheese, or egg, double tomatoes and avocado. Oil and vinegar, whole wheat rolls, margarine, no butter.”
Her pen twaddled across the pad. “Sounds healthy. Juice to drink?” She nailed him levelly with eyes so blue it was like looking into sky. She was young, a few pounds crowding thin but not quite fat. No wedding ring, maybe five years younger than himself—and nearly pretty, he thought.
“Coffee, and not de-caf,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“What?” Greer was annoyed.
“Nothing.”
“I’m not a health fanatic. I just don’t eat animals, that’s all.”
“S’fine with me,” the waitress shrugged as she left. Vaguely flattered, Greer felt himself blush. By the time she was back with the coffee, he’d willed the heat from his face. He avoided her eye while she leisurely appraised the stream as it poured into the cup.
“You look like a tired working guy in for a quick bite before heading home,” she ventured. “On this shift, you get so you can spot ‘em from the wierdos.”
“That’s me,” he mumbled, wishing he’d brought something to read. He grasped for the coffee. She wasn’t wrong—he was returning home from a month-long road tour of county fairs, and he was tired of hotels. He’d decided to drive straight through the night.
“What do you do?” she persisted.
“I’m an animal trainer. Reinforced behavior specialist. I train parrots.” He said the words dryly.
“Oh! Yeah.” She nodded, as if satisfied. “That’d give you a different perspective on things.”
“It does.” His tone was short. She lifted a brow in acknowledgment of the dismissal as she left. Greer frowned.
It was another five minutes before his salad was up. The waitress announced it by setting on the table a wire-handled holder of oil and vinegar and a saucer of sliced lemon.
“So what made you say that?” Greer asked, allowing a slim smile.
The waitress paused. “Say what?”
“That being an animal trainer would give me a different perspective.”
Mechanically inventorying the table’s contents, she answered, “Probably because you didn’t order the cheeseburger.”
“Of course I didn’t order a cheeseburger. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that. You may think I’m nuts, but I can hear people thinking food. I can be back in the kitchen and hear some guy in booth seven thinking ‘pie.’ No kidding. I’m really good at hearing people think coffee. I thought I heard you thinking cheeseburger, but now I can see why…why not.”
Greer was intrigued. “Dogs can sense when their owners are thinking about going out. Must be the same kind of thing.”
The waitress was all business again. “Might be. Never thought of it that way.” She hurried off to return shortly with his salad.
“You know,” Greer said, leaning back as she set his dinner in front of him, “what you do for a living isn’t all that different from what my birds do.”
“And what’s that?”
“I run a little parrot circus with a macaw and a couple Amazons. We do shows at county fairs and schools, things like that. The birds aren’t pets—I think of them more as business partners. They’re the ones paying for this meal.”
“Smart birds?”
“They’re more intelligent than most people think. They can learn almost anything—how to water ski, paint pictures, drive cars, answer telephones, play basketball, ring bells, shoot cannons…you name it.”
“That’s one way to make a living.”
Greer’s eyes fixed on her face. He was enjoying himself. “One of the first things I teach them is how to retrieve. When they walk a ball or get in a scooter, it’s just a variation on retrieving. Like you retrieved this salad from over there.” He grinned. “And you did it for the same reason.”
“You mean me bringing you food is like a bird doing a trick?”
“They’re not tricks.” Greer bristled. “They’re behaviors. Kids at school assemblies always ask, ‘How does the bird do that trick?’ I tell them, ‘He sees the ball, he picks it up, puts it in the basket, and I give him a sunflower seed. It’s exactly the same thing as your dads when they go to work and get a paycheck.’”
The waitress regarded him solemnly. “That’s why you didn’t order a cheeseburger?”
Disconcerted, Greer dug into his breast pocket for the sunflower seeds he sprinkled on salads to boost the protein—seeds and nuts were vital to a human vegetarian diet, but few restaurant menus reflected it. He was about to say as much to the waitress, but she spoke first.
“Can I bring you anything else?”
“I think I’ve got everything,” he said. She smiled an “okay” and bustled off.
Halfway through his salad, Greer decided to ask for more bread and coffee after all. He was craning his head to spot the waitress when she rounded a corner and headed toward him with a steaming coffee pot and a basket of rolls.
Greer gasped. “That’s incredible! I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a human.”
“No?” She stood with the coffee. “You know, I still could swear I heard you thinking cheeseburger when you first came in.”
“Kind of.” His fork pinned an avocado slice against a chunk of lettuce. “In my business, you come to hate the idea of people eating meat. Working with animals, I’ve come to realize there’s no difference between us and them. They fall in love, get their feelings hurt, feel happy or sad. They even blush when they’re embarrassed, but you can’t see it through their feathers or fur.
“And really, we only do a few things. We push—when you’re writing with your pen, you’re pushing it across a piece of paper. We pull. We walk, run, and retrieve. And that’s about it. Everything else is just a variation.”
He triumphantly lifted a fork-full of salad and planted it in his mouth, crunching loudly.
“I guess this means you’re only going to leave me a sunflower seed for a tip.” She laughed at her own cleverness.
Greer smiled in spite of himself and pointed his fork at her. “You remind me of an Australian shepherd-type dog I used to have. Orca. He was a mind reader with a sense of humor.”
“I know those dogs,” she said. “You named him Orca because he was black and white like a killer whale?”
Greer nodded, mouth full.
“We get killer whales along the coast here.” She pulled her order pad from her apron and tallied his check. “Commercial fishermen say they’re so smart it’s scary. One diver I know says he wants to be reincarnated as one. He says they’re ‘free spirits.’”
“‘Killer whale’ is a misnomer. It’s a myth that they eat humans. I figured you were smarter than that.” He popped a piece of roll into his mouth.
The waitress refilled his coffee cup.
“Mister,” she said sweetly, slipping the check on the table, “orcas eat whatever they want.”
Greer snorted good-naturedly at her retreating back. After he finished his meal, he turned the check over and unhurriedly counted out money from his pocket. He wrapped a couple of dollar bills around some sunflower seeds and, smiling, slid it beneath the plate. She wouldn’t find it until after he was gone.
He was pushing open the front door to leave when he heard her call him.
“Wait,” she said. She held a small paper bag, weighted at the bottom. “I think your old dog Orca would really want this.” She hesitated. “You said there’s no difference between us and them.” She put the bag in his hands and ushered him out the door. “Have a safe drive. Come back again.”
Greer lifted the bag in an awkward salute and walked to a dusty cargo van with “Paradise Parrot Circus” painted on the side. Feeling the waitress’ eyes burning a hole in his back, he drove away.
He’d gone a few miles before he pulled the van to the side of the coast highway. The broad hulk of the Pacific surged darkly in the west. The air was heavy with pre-dawn’s secret, poignant stillness.
After awhile, Greer looked at the bag on the seat. The rich smell wafting from it slammed memories into his gut like softballs. Summer afternoons and riding bikes. The Foster Freeze. Greer rolled down the window and gazed at the sea. The rich salt air infused his head. A hint of dawn made the ocean seem restless…ruthless…waiting….
He opened the bag and gingerly withdrew a cheeseburger with a pretty frill of lettuce and poppy-gold cheese at the corners. It was tucked into silky wax paper, the replica of a thousand cheeseburgers he’d gulped as a boy. Its warmth felt good in his hands.
The birds’ cages were covered and tucked among the circus equipment behind him. Their occupants, perhaps dozing, were silent in their isolation.
She was essentially correct, he knew. Killer whales ate whatever they damned well pleased. And Orca would have wolfed this burger in a heartbeat and grinned from ear to ear.
Slowly, Greer brought the cheeseburger to his nose….
Five minutes later, gravel spurted from the van’s tires as it high-tailed away.
***
“Air-eee!” Timmy cajoled. “What happened next?”
Ariel had paused too long, smiling over sunflower seeds she’d fished from her apron pocket. She hoped the handsome customer who’d left them for her would be back, even if he was cranky. She popped one of the seeds in her mouth.
“You know exactly, Timmy. I’ve told you six million times.”
“Please?” Timmy sat straighter.
“Alright. So the killer whales were high-tailing away from the Sally J like the law was after ‘em. Panama said to Kenny, ‘They’re acting almost guilty, like they done something bad. Like they robbed a bank or something.’
“But Kenny and Panama saw a lot of strange things on the ocean, so by the time they got home they’d forgotten about it.”
Timmy’s eyes were bright. “Then what?”
“So, next day, Kenny saw a story in the paper about how a couple of empty kayaks were found floating off Santa Cruz Island the day before. A guy and his girlfriend were gone, no trace. The Coast Guard figured they’d been attacked by a Great White.
“But Kenny laughed at that theory. There wasn’t any mess, and sharks are so stupid they’ll bite anything—a chunk of Styrofoam, fiberglass, an oar. But killer whales are smart. And neither kayak was scratched, just one floating upside down. The only things gone were the people.
“Kenny said, ‘Something got ‘em alright, but it wasn’t any Great White. I bet it was those two killer whales me ‘n Panama saw lookin’ guilty that day. They tipped those people out of those kayaks and ate ‘em. They were bad boys.’”
As always, Ariel ended the tale with widened eyes and a “spooky” face.
Timmy shivered and grinned. He could hear that story a thousand times. §
January Anderson, a freelance writer and former New Times contributor, grew up in Morro Bay and now lives in Southern California where she writes, swims, and tries to corrupt vegans in her spare time.
The body is like a dream. When we see this and awake, not a trace remains. How much time is left for the looking?
— The Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master
The preacher man
said this earth suit
will slip away
like a blade
of grass that withers
under the scorching sun
and falls to the ground.
I’m a sinner
like you he said.
I used to beat
my wife [and she
stood there next to him gleaming
saying nothing
with her mouth, nodding]
but I gave
my life to Jesus
and now I’m a sinner
saved by grace who beats
the Devil instead
cutting him down
to size!
When this earth suit
slips away
I’ll put on
a new shinier heavenly
suit that will last
forever and ever, amen!
He shot his wife
a look and they smiled.
Come to the Lord!
Be healed! Be saved!
Glory, hallelujah! he shouted
kicking back a heel
and hopping up off
the other foot as if
struck by lightning.
Shecomeonahonda!
Shecome Onahonda!
She come on a honda!
he said in a babbling tongue
his face contorted
the converted wife beater
channeling his anger
into a strange new
kind of mystical
love logic.
—Stacey Warde
The Delta Queen is a sister ship of the Delta King, which sits on the Sacramento River; both were shipped over here in parts from Scotland and reassembled. The Queen plies the Mississippi. Painting by Rose Franklin.
A RIVERBOAT JOURNAL
by Dell Franklin
February
The cheap whiskey and beer still in my gut after a week of nonstop partying during Mardi Gras, I stand on the quay just off the French Market in New Orleans gazing at the Delta Queen, majestic and freshly painted following two months in dry-dock repair. I am broke, having spent my last $100 on a fleabag hotel across from Lafayette Park and burgers from White Castle and shellfish in Martin’s bar in the French Quarter, where I ran into some Vietnam vet ex-Marines who still owned the 1,000-mile stare and informed me the Queen, last paddle-wheel passenger vessel to ply the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, was hiring.
On the bow of the Queen, a chalkboard is perched with chicken scratches: WANTED: DECK HANDS AND PORTERS. Several black deckhands in blue work shirts lounge or piddle with brooms and mops or chisel away rust on the bow and along railings. They pause to fix me with stares as I try and work up the courage to cross the gangway onto the bow, where a massive barrel of a man, perhaps 60, in black captain’s uniform and cap, his face broad and flat, narrows his already narrow squint on me.
It is mid-morning, breezy, clear, birds swooping and diving around the Jax Brewery like participants in an air war. At the French Market, above the seawall, a man in an apron drops bags of day-old pastries to hobos assembled below him near a deserted box car adjacent the murky sea of a river. A few days back I shared a pint of whiskey with these men but soon left when the whiskey was gone and it became evident they regarded me resentfully as not yet accomplished enough to share their company.
The deckhands pick up their pace from slow-motion to listless, still keeping an eye on me, possibly wondering where this white man came from—he wears his only remnant of a three-year Army hitch, a faded flimsy field jacket, baggy work pants, sneakers, a second-hand Army surplus backpack stuffed with a few changes of underwear, extra flannel shirt, two paperbacks, two pens, a pocket-size writing pad, and a second-hand sleeping bag attached to the pack.
Though broke, I do not fear starving and am exhilarated by my situation because I am free, trekking across the fractured and bleeding carcass of America with thumb out, unencumbered by wife, girlfriend, job, career, ambition. In a way, I feel a smug advantage over all those who possess these rewards, because there are no complications in my life, no burdens or pressures in a country addicted to striving, stress, security, and the stockpiling of what is to me junk.
From the start, I had no idea where I was going, still do not as the black deckhands slow down to a near standstill, keeping a closer eye on me as I try to work up my courage to face the formidable man whose narrow flinty eyes seem to take me in as an intruder. The deckhands are all glinting gold teeth and ropey arms with knots in the middle. One wears a watch cap. They begin to nod at each other and giggle and smirk as the big man folds his enormous arms across his chest and seems to challenge me with those eyes, which say, “Well, boy, you comin’ aboard, or you gonna stand there shittin’ your pants?” Like an old white cracker terrifying the slaves.
I take a deep breath and stride over the gangway as the big man unfolds his arms and stands planted on the bow like a 200-year-old oak. I stop directly before him and unstrap my pack as if I mean to stay.
“I see you need help,” I say. “I’m looking for work. Would you be the captain, sir?”
“Yessuh.” Gruff, guttural growl from deep within, the man seeming to spit the words at me likes he’s trying to dislodge tobacco from his tongue. “We need deckhands.”
“I’ll do that.”
The man refolds his arms across his chest, gazes briefly at the deckhands; then he scrutinizes me with a flicker of interest. He takes in everything, and I look him in the eye, almost grinning—like we’re in a movie. Then his voice suddenly booms at me. “What ah need is a gawdamn sto’keepah!”
Quickly I reply, “I’ll do that, too, captain.”
“What y’all know ‘bout sto’keepin’?” he challenges me.
“I’ve worked in warehouses as a stock boy and order writer, sir.”
“Where y’all work as a stock boy?” he demands to know.
“In Los Angeles, sir, that’s where I’m from.”
He takes in more of me, top to bottom. A sudden yellow-stained horsey grin rips across his meaty face. “Y’all har’d!” he announces and offers his enormous paw, and we shake. “Cap’n Ernest Wagnah.”
“Dell Franklin, sir.”
A spindly, bespectacled, old-time looking black man, whose been lurking in the background since I approached the captain, steps right up. He wears baggy check pants and a white smock and tall toque drooping ludicrously to his ear, lending him a buffoonish air; but then he smiles, and he is a handsome old guy, dark chocolate, not even five-and-a-half-feet tall, no more than 130 pounds, and in his incandescent puppy-friendly eyes is resolution, and when I look into those eyes I feel an instant rush of warmth and trust. I find myself exchanging smiles with the man, whose forearms could belong to a 200-pound blacksmith, his hands as big as those of the captain, who dwarfs him, and now addresses the old man.
“Chef Jawnah, look like we got us a sto’keepah. Say he run a warehouse.” He glances at me. “Chef Jawnah, he yore boss, son.”
His name tag says Henry Joyner. I offer my hand and the old man lunges at me and grips my hand with a vise-like manacle, veins bulging along those forearms. “Playshuh t’ shake yo’ hand,” he says in a slow, rich drawl, and a smile of false teeth blazes across his small oval face, those eyes shining with such genuine sincerity that I am disarmed. “Son, ah sho’ nuff hope y’all the man ah been lookin’ fo’. We gone troo a bunch-a sto’keepahs, and they drunk up mah cookin’ wines, an’ mah vanilla extrack…they sniffin’ up mah sterno, ‘bout druve Jawnah plum lowdown loco.”
Another black man, in uniform and cap, perhaps 35, tall, erect, with a neat mustache, ambles up. His name tag reads FRANKLIN MYLES, STEWARD.
“Franklin,” says the captain. “We got us a new sto’keepah name of Franklin.” He chortles at the coincidence.
The steward shakes my hand weakly, gazes past me. “Well, cap’n,” he says in a squeaky falsetto. “Ah sho nuff hope he work out better’n them jive turkeys been roonin’ the chef’s sto’rooms.”
The chef smiles at me in a manner indicating we’re already on amiable terms. “Franklin, ah ‘speck this young man be jes’ fine. Ah got a good feelin’ ‘bout him.” The trust in his eyes is fathomless. He nods. “He gwin be jes’ fine.”
I figure I got no choice not to be. Old Joyner, he’s hooked me like a trout.
+++
Myles, the steward, leads me through the Queen on a bit of a tour—a floating antique. An articulate man, he explains that the Queen is a sister ship of the Delta King, which sits on the Sacramento River; both were shipped over here in parts from Scotland and reassembled. The King passed through the Panama Canal. The stairway leading to the passenger dining room is composed of the finest woods, brass and chandeliers. He takes me below to the laundry room which is stacked with a mountain of linen and uniforms, and working atop it is a familiar looking person, a gangly fellow around my age with a hatchet face that seems to have been hastily reconstructed after severe damage. His dark hair sprouts straight up like a woodpecker’s mane. Where have I seen this character?
Then I remember—on Canal Street. The hood of a battered ’51 Ford coupe was up, and this guy was working on the engine. Later he was beneath the car, tinkering. Then the Ford was gone and I saw him wobbling drunkenly down Bourbon Street, Dixie beer in hand, clad in mismatching over-sized plaid attire, mere rags, grinning goofily. He now wears a blue work shirt and white checked kitchen pants.
Myles introduces him to me as Kachefski, Laundry Man. He issues me a tentative shake, looking sheepishly away, and he might be wall-eyed. He hands me linen, Army blanket, two blue short-sleeve work shirts. “That’s a nice jacket,” he says shyly. “You been in the Army?” When I nod, he says, “They wouldn’t take me. I got pins in my legs from a car wreck. Hit a tree going ninety miles an hour. Half the guys I went to school with are dead—from car crashes and Vietnam.”
“What happened to your ‘51 Ford?”
He’s surprised. “How’d you know about my Ford?”
“Saw you working on it on Canal.”
“Yeh, that was my all-time favorite jalopy. It really had guts. It’s dead now. They towed it away and I woke up in the back seat in the junk yard. I had to sell the jalopy and my tools to pay for towing, or they were gonna put me in jail for vagrancy. I had just enough money left to do some drinking, but I sure am glad I got this job. What’s your job?”
“Sto’keepah.” Myles is looking back and forth at us like, what we got HERE? These white folks! I do declare! “Where you from, Kachefski?”
“Hart, Michigan. Where you from?”
“L.A. Where the hell’s Hart, Michigan?”
“Near Lake Michigan, by the giant dunes, south of Luddington, north of Muskegon. We’re pretty small.”
Myles has me by the arm. “Come on, Mr. Sto’keepah, I show you where you gonna live.”
+++
Myles leads me to a warren of rooms below deck—cramped, four to a room, a faint whiff of musk reminiscent of barracks life. My quarters are at the end of the hallway directly under the bow, farthest from the shower area. There is a porthole and two Army-like cots, and the one away from the door is covered neatly with a colorful comforter. A simple wooden dresser is in a far corner, and atop it, lined up in perfect juxtaposition beside a toilet kit are brush, hair pick, baby powder, witch hazel, bicarbonate of soda, peroxide, tiny scissors. Above the dresser, tacked to the wall, is a small, gleaming mirror. No dust anywhere. Three rows of leather shoes, variously colored, stuffed with trees, polished to a high gloss, are arranged under the cot beside foot powder. Two flawlessly pressed white shirts and black waiter jackets rest on wooden hangers on pegs in the wall. Beside the cot is a single plastic milk crate on which stands an alarm clock, goose-neck reading lamp, and a book—“The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. Name tags on the waiter jackets read, JEROME DAVIS. I drop my bedding and shirts on the narrow mattress. A fresh fragrance and slight breeze from the porthole offsets the mustiness of the hallway.
The steward says, “Most-a these rooms are noisy, four to a room. Davis, he likes to be alone. He won’t like this. Most waiters are two to a room. Now Davis, he’s quiet, and he won’t stand for no jive. You seem like a mature young man. I think you’ll like Davis.” He flashes an uncertain and mischievous smile. “Once y’all get to know him.”
+++
Myles takes me down to the storeroom, which borders the crew dining room, where the chef awaits me, ants in his pants, raring to go. He opens the main storeroom—the size of a large bedroom and looking like a tornado swept through it. I stand outside the doorway while he confides how a steady stream of no-accounts wrecked the storeroom, the meat locker, bakery, cold storage, and produce room. He had to come down and scavenge through the mess for items to send up to the galley on the dumbwaiter in the crew dining room so they could cook.
“Day’uhl, it hard t’ find a good man nowadays. Young men, they ain’t hongry. When ah’z a young man wuzn’t nobody keep up with Jawnah, an’ ‘at’s why ah got har’d. These young folks, they don’t wanna work.”
Two men stand near the serving counter in the dining room and observe me. There are three long tables parallel to one another, a small card table off by itself, a smaller condiment table, all on a linoleum floor. One of the observers, slender, charcoal-colored and sleepy-looking, sporting a crushed, shapeless hat, slouches against a wall as if he has no spine, cigarette dangling from his lips, broom in hand. Behind the serving table, busying himself in a noisy huff, is a black man around 40 with a huge solid belly, broad shoulders, square head, and a short neck with a hump at the base. His face and nose are flat, nostrils like holes in a double-barrel shotgun, lips pursed in a severe pout, hooded eyes lifting to appraise me with unmasked suspicion and disapproval, as if I am a stray dog in HIS backyard. The chef introduces him to me as Jessie, the man in charge of the crew dining room. The other, low-key man is his assistant, Emmet. While Jessie continues scowling at me, Emmet nods, almost smirking, like he knows something I don’t know that will not turn out well.
“Ain’t nothin’ but no-accounts and thieves been in these sto’rooms, boy,” Jessie snaps at me in a nasal singsong. “I done stick-whupped ‘em til they bleedin’ half t’ death. Y’all don’t take good care mah chef, y’all git the same, boy.”
The chef sags. “Jess, ah got a good feelin’ ‘bout this young man.”
Jessie huffs while Emmet smiles to himself. The chef and I enter the storeroom. I shed my field jacket. There is hardly an item on the unmarked shelves. Boxes and sacks are strewn about, cans, large and small, in scattered heaps. It is hard to move through the mess. I hoist a case and hurl it out into the dining room, where a snooping Jessie jumps out of the way. He and the chef exchange glances. Emmet puts down his broom, pours himself a cup of coffee, sits down at one of the tables and turns on a small transistor radio to some scratchy blues and watches me heave more cases and sacks out into the dining room as the chef and Jessie back away. The chef says he has work in the galley and moves up the winding stairway to the galley like he’s in a race, arms pumping, cap flopping back and forth.
Sweating, I clear the floor, sweep and mop it, and ask Jessie for masking tape. He hands me some as Emmet rolls a cigarette and lights up. After taping and marking shelves I begin stacking cases and sacks against a wall, open certain cases and stack shelves, finding room for every small and gallon can in the room. The chef scampers in, skids to a halt, does a double-take, and grins. “Why, y’all one workin’ sonofagun.”
“I’ve put in a system, chef, simplified the inventory. I’ll need my own key.”
He nods quickly. “Ain’t nobody gwin have a key but y’all and me.” He peers around. “Ah’m so pleased, son. Y’all sho is the man ah been lookin’ fo.’”
Then he shows me my other storerooms down the hall from the dining room, near quarters for waiters, cooks and engineers. Jessie stands in the doorway of the main storeroom, hands on hips, peering in. The other rooms are in disarray. I vow to the chef I will have them ship-shape by evening. He smacks my arm, grins, scampers up the stairway. Jessie steps out of my way as I return to my storerooms. Suddenly, the captain tramps up, halts abruptly at the doorway, peers around.
“Look pretty good,” he concedes with a grunt.
Jessie says, “He done worked like no man, cap’n.”
The captain continues appraising; then walks to a corner where I’ve stacked empty boxes. “No room fo’ these,” he snaps. There is a half-door opening and he grabs a box and flings it through the opening into the Mississippi. He starts to grab another and I snatch it away from him as Jessie recoils in mock-horror.
“What the hell you think you doin’?” snaps the captain, flustered.
“I need those boxes, sir. They’re part of my new system.”
“Part-a yore system? Hell!”
“I use ‘em to send supplies up to the galley, and I need ‘em for inventory, ordering, stocking. Everything in this room has a purpose, sir, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t pitch my boxes into the river.”
Jessie backs away from the door. Emmet perks up as the captain’s face and neck flush. Uh oh. His squinty eyes flash. “This mah gawdamn ship!” he bellows. “Y’all been on this yere ship two hours and you tellin’ me how t’ run mah sto’rooms!”
“Cap’n, sir, I’m the storekeeper. These are MY storerooms. I gotta run things my way, or you’ll have to find more worthless no-accounts to make a mess like I found here, if that’s what you want.”
Jessie shakes his head at me and rolls his eyes. Emmet grins. The captain sputters. “This mah goddam ship! Ev-a thing on this ship mine! These sto’rooms, they mine…”
“Then why’d you hire me if YOU wanna run ‘em? I’m busy, sir, tryna get things ship-shape for the chef, and you’re in here interfering with my system.”
He looks around for help, but Jessie and Emmet turn away. “Now he kickin’ me out mah sto’rooms,” he growls at them. “Ah jes’ har’d the sumbitch…ah’m talkin’ to mah chef ‘bout this crazy sumbitch.”
He tromps out, huffing up the stairs. I gaze at Jessie and Emmet with my best imitation of the ghetto-glare. “Sometimes,” I tell them, “these white folks jes’ gotta be put in their proper place.” I turn and re-stack my empty boxes, then feel Jessie in the doorway.
“Mistah sto’keepah,” he oozes, very polite. “May ah puh-leeeeze have fo’ cans a sterno, so’s we-all can keep the chef’s vittles warm fo’ mah boys?”
I find four cans of sterno and hand them over.
“Thank Y’ALL, mistah sto’keepah.” He half bows and returns to his area behind the serving table, beaming a smile at me, as if he’s seen the light, while Emmet hums to his radio, nodding at me. I go back into my storerooms.
+++
A few minutes later the chef storms into my storeroom, eyes ablaze. “Ah done kick the cap’n out mah kitchen,” he announces. “Y’all done good, kickin’ him out. He got no bizness meddlin’…ah got t’ kick him out mah kitchen half the time.” He flashes a smile. “Don’t let him meddle no mo’. Y’all a good man. Ah gwin talk to that ole cap’n an’ git y’all a raise. Ah got me a good man, an ah don’t aim t’ lose him nohow!”
He turns and scampers up those stairs. Jessie and Emmet are unloading steaming pots of food from the dumbwaiter and setting them up under sterno on the serving table. Jessie catches my eye.
“Chef Joyner, he cook the best peas ‘n ham in the South, mistah sto’keepah. Man work hard as y’all, he need to eat. Y’all lookin’ too skinny fo’ mah taste, though you got them man’s arms.” He winks. “Sit down now, chile, we goin’ feed y’all some soul food, put some meat on them bones.”
Crew members, mostly deck hands and porters, trickle in, line up at the serving counter, plates in hand, waiting for Jessie, who takes his time fussing over his pots of food, the aromas heady and heart-breaking. One of the bigger deckhands grouses at Jessie to hurry up, and Jessie fixes him with a stare of such chilling malevolence the man lowers his eyes, and now Jessie moves even slower, sulky. I drift to the rear of the room, and a few crew members glance at me as I lean arms-folded against a wall, trying to act comfortable with my newness.
When the line begins moving, Jessie appears rankled while he plops food on their plates, much like the surly, desultory Army cooks during basic training. “Do move along,” he chides in a whiny nasal voice rising to a strident singsong. “I say, DO move along.”
A tall, skinny, buck-toothed deckhand complains mildly about his portions, and Jessie stiffens, halts. “No sass from you-all, youngblood, or I stick-whup yo’ ugly black ass til it ain’t black no mo’.” There is grumbling among the men, but they are mostly resigned. “I say, DO move along. Y’all GIT seconds. Don’t wanna hear no cryin’ an’ whinin’ from no lazy ass niggers.”
The captain enters, followed by a small white-uniformed officer, perhaps 30, preppie, boyish-looking. Behind him is another officer, a thickset 40-year-old with a chiseled face and dark, engaging eyes; he smiles and nods at everybody, like an experienced social leader. The three men hang their hats on a rack and sit down. Jessie allows Emmet to take over the serving and flutters to these men, pouring ice teas as Franklin Myles joins them.
“How’s mah cap’n?” Jessie oozes.
“Jes’ fine, Jessuh.”
Jessie gushes over the officers, brings their food, then returns to wait on the last person in line, me, on whose plate he drops extra portions of rice, black-eyed peas, and collared greens, smiling at me as if we’re in cahoots. Emmet places a large wedge of cornbread on the mountain of food and the other crew members glance up to observe my outrageous bounty as I sit at the end of one of the deserted tables, away from the crowd.
I hear Jessie, “Cap’n…,” as he hands the officers linen napkins. “We got us a new sto’keepah, and he done OWN them sto’rooms, suh!”
The captain tucks his napkin at his throat. “Kick me out mah gawdamn sto’rooms!” he bleats, turning to his officers. “Been on the rivah all mah life, and nobody kick me out-a no sto’room befo’. Now this new sto’keepah tell me t’ git out his sto’rooms, cuz them sto’rooms HIS!”
The 40ish man smiles at me and winks. I taste my food, and an elixir moves immediately through my system like a natural high. I eat, and eat, mopping up gravy with cornbread. Jessie smiles at me like an adoring matriarch as deckhands straggle up for seconds. “Aint nobody cook peas ‘n ham like our chef,” he chirps, simpering.
“Now this new sto’keepah say he gon quit he don’t get a raise…after he kick me out HIS sto’rooms! He think this gawdamn ship HIS. Gawdammit, ah guess ah ain’t got a damn thing t’ say “bout nothin’ no mo’.”
Myles giggles and the officers grin as Jessie refills their glasses of tea, the steward last, of course. He moseys by and fills my glass and returns to his station in prim, mincing steps. The crew shuffles along for seconds, and Jessie suddenly seems resigned and too depleted to scowl and wheedle, just plops food into their plates as if he’s got a dirty job and sees no way out but to trudge on, long-suffering, sweat streaming down his molten face and dripping from his chin and nose, saturating his neck.
+++
My storerooms are squared away by mid-evening and I feel like celebrating my new job. Chef Joyner is only too happy to dig into his cigar box and loan me $20 when I ask for $10, a spot against my wage, which is to be $75 a week instead of $65 when the captain agrees to my raise. Damn, I found a home!
Kachefski comes along, and we manage to wedge into Martin’s, finding the Marines, who buy round after round of shots to toast my job. We get pretty smashed, say our goodbyes, and straggle back to the Queen. Kachefski eschews a cot in one of the rooms and rigs up a blanket/pallet atop the 15-foot-high mound of linen. It is dark in my quarters and I stand by my cot waiting for a little starlight to outline the room through the porthole. A long hump is under the covers of the other bunk. I’m sticky and rank, need a shower. I try to make my cot as quietly as possible so as not to awaken the sleeping hump, but bang around while doing so. I creep down to the shower room, where, alone, I soap up and rinse off and return to the room, where my room mate reads, his lamp shining.
Davis sits under his blanket, bifocals in place. He could be 50, hair neatly parted on one side and specked with gray. He is not as dark chocolate as the chef but with similar refined, handsome features, and his neatly clipped mustache is also graying. He glances at me with only his eyes, not moving his head as I stand like a lump, towel around my waist.
“If you’re going to get drunk,” Davis says, enunciating his words carefully like a college professor, which he resembles. “Please do not destroy the room.” His voice is strong, resonant, like a blues singer.
“Sorry. I couldn’t see. Didn’t mean to awaken you, sir.”
He shifts his eyes back to the book. I quickly rummage through my pack and change into briefs and climb under covers. I take out my current bible, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and stare at a page.
After a silence, I ask, “Do you like the porthole open?”
“Always, unless there’s a hurricane.”
“Good. I like the fresh air.”
Davis continues reading.
“Listen,” I find myself saying. “I hate to interrupt your reading, but I’m the new storekeeper, Franklin.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard, Mr. Franklin.”
“Well, I know you’re Mr.Davis. Just wanted to introduce myself.”
“Very well, Mr. Franklin. We are now formally introduced. I will be reading for a short time, until I feel sleep return. Then I will turn off my lamp. If it is your desire to read at night, I suggest you find a low-wattage lamp. You can plug it in my outlet.”
“Thanks, Mr. Davis. I appreciate that. Glad to meet you.”
He keeps his eyes on his book, turns a page with exceptionally long fingers, nails immaculate. His wrists are thick, and, like the chef, there is a natural bulge to his forearms. I turn back to my book. Very softly, the river laps against the hull below our porthole, and I feel safe and secure and adrift from the turbulence of the outside world. I am so tired. The book falls out of my hand. I curl up, turn away; a delicious cool draft from the porthole wafts over me. The reveling down town is finally expiring in the distance. §
Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his chocolate lab, Wilbur, a rescue dog. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad who played professionally in the early days of baseball, The Ball Player’s Son.
I jumped out
of the car to pee
where we pulled over on Highway 17
on our way to Santa Cruz.
I breathed in
the fresh wet ferns
and dripping redwood trees
that formed a winter canopy over the side of the road.
She came up behind
me and wrapped her arms
around me and grabbed me firmly
and commanded, “Let go! I want to do it.”
She waved me in wild wintry patterns
at the orange, brown and red
dampened leaf fall,
the litter of redwood limbs already wet from the rain.
—Stacey Warde
CAYUCOS COWGIRLS—If you ever have doubts, as we sometimes do, that we live in paradise, you just gotta know where to look, as these ladies discovered recently on an outing not far from home. Featured: Yakelin Pizano, Emelyn Reyes, Liz Herrera, Jessika Lee, and Betsy Ball. Photo courtesy of Betsy Ball
by Stacey Warde
My whole life has been a search for belonging, finding a place to call “home.”
The closest I’ve come to feeling this way is here in this peculiar beachside throwback of a community called Cayucos, a throwback to sparsely populated seaside villages along California’s rugged, magnificent coastline, a throwback to my earliest childhood memories of Laguna Beach, where my great-grandfather, Joseph Smith Thurston, and his Morman family found a homestead, settling in Aliso Canyon in 1871, before there was water, before there were multi-million dollar palaces on beachfront property that once cost $25 a lot, Old Laguna, which my cousin, Kelly Boyd, a two-time mayor there, likes to remind us, “doesn’t exist any more.”
Cayucos, when I moved here nearly 30 years ago, reminded me of Laguna Beach, a seaside hamlet tucked among the hills rising above the ocean, safe from development and money grubbers and golden boys in hot cars, at least for a while. The people here, ranchers, surfers, loners and drifters, were friendly and regular. Houses were of reasonable size and most had gardens where it was easy to strike up conversations with the neighbors.
The quaint little beach cottages have mostly succumbed to the bulldozer to make way for grotesque stucco monstrosities with little thought to impact or design, their form artless and dull, much like their owners. There are a few exceptions but the rule for development here the last three decades appears only to have been “make it ugly, make it fast and make it big.”
Gone are the gardens with fruit trees and flowers, and friendly neighbors, who actually talked to one another from their yards. Most of the homes that have been built here in the last 30 years don’t have yards. They’re all house. Ugly boxes with tinted windows, where conversation can easily be avoided, and the world, the place we call paradise, can be shut out.
To put a spin on cousin Kelly’s comment, “It’s not Old Cayucos any more.” Yet, while much has changed here, it still feels like home, even if it’s not exactly paradise.
I’ve realized over the years, however, that home is more than a place, more than what we might like to call “paradise”; it’s really what we bring to our living spaces and the ground we keep, as well as the company we keep; it’s where we feel most safe to be our selves, whole and fractured—all of it—and rest, if even for only a moment, from the the world’s troubles, of which there are plenty.
You don’t have to turn on the TV to witness another Islamic State beheading to know “the world’s a mess” right now, as so many people have said to me recently. 
All you have to do is make an appearance at the local watering hole to know that there are plenty of messy situations right here at home: Addictions, feuds, excessive drug use, overdoses, suicides, and the occasional racist comment. Addictions and feuds seem reasonable; drug use and overdoses, indulgent; suicide, pardonable; but racism, why? All it does is prove how mean you are, not intelligent or reasonable.
Author Dell Franklin, in his recent powerful account of confronting a local young man for revealing his ignorance about blacks, Obama and the “N” Word, reminds us that we gain much by setting aside our prejudices in the interest of pursuing a common goal, of learning from someone with a different value system or experience or skin color. We’re all in the same boat—as Dell was when he signed on as the only white crew member on the Delta Queen—and we really do need to learn how to get along.
We’ve ripped on the notion, commonplace in this town, that we live in paradise, among the bigots who like to say bad things about blacks and Mexicans, and the intolerant who throw newspapers and magazines in the trash because they don’t like what’s in them, but we do an injustice to our fair haven by not recognizing the elements that really do make this paradise, and there are plenty of them.
You just have to know where to look, like the women in the photo at the top of this page who have found their little weekend slice of heaven during a recent outing somewhere in the hills not far from our town. What more do you need than a place to park above the ocean with guns and beer and a thirst for adventure? We like to be reminded of what really does make this paradise. Thank you, ladies, for showing us the way. Oh, and the gal with the gun, I don’t believe her name really is Jessika Lee with a “K,” but what do I know?
Meanwhile, Hoppe’s restaurant and the little bistro in back of the Way Station mysteriously shut down recently, putting a dozen or so employees out of work and leaving the town without the world-class fare we’d grown to expect.
Way Station owners Henry and Mary Ellen Eisemann lamented the situation by posting a note on the door that informs potential patrons that for the first time in 41 years they will not have a restaurant at the location, at least until they can find a “suitable operator.”
It goes along with what I’ve said earlier, things change, even the place we call home. §
Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.com
I don’t know how we got on this subject on such a pleasant summer evening with the sun going down just over the pier. Photo by Stacey Warde
by Dell Franklin
“I hate Obama. I can’t stomach that goddamn nigger as our president.”
These words are jolting, coming beside me as I sit on a stool in a restaurant bar talking to a man around 28, 29, whom I’ve seen grow up in Cayucos, Calif., a little beach town with less than one percent African American. He’s a good kid, a little rough around the edges, used to surf and brawl but got married and buckled down and has a good gig on a construction crew in San Luis Obispo County that is always busy. His reputation now is of a hard worker and family man with a job dog in the back of his pickup, a grown up—at last.
“You don’t mean that,” I say. “And you shouldn’t use the ‘N’ word.”
“I can use it any time I want. I live out in Paso Robles now and they got gangs, and those niggers fuck with my family; I’ll blow the motherfuckers away.”
What’s this got to do with Obama? I ask myself. I don’t know how we got on this subject on such a pleasant summer evening with the sun going down just over the pier and turning cloud cover into brilliant shards of copper/gold and crimson.
“How many black folks do you know?” I ask him.
“What’s that got to do with it? I know how I feel.”
I thought about telling him how when I was about 8 or 9 and growing up in Compton, Calif., I used the word nigger unwittingly around my mother, and for the first and only time this gentle, educated, highly sensitive woman, described by my dad as a “bleeding-heart Eleanor Roosevelt liberal,” slapped my face so hard my ears rang. She dragged me into the bathroom and began washing my mouth out with soap. She was crying hysterically and then I began crying and when she was finished she sat me down and explained how the word nigger was the ugliest word in the English language, how it was about meanness and cruelty and ignorance and the oppression of a people, and how hearing that word from her son broke her heart and made her feel a pain so awful she could not bear it.
I thought about telling him how as a sophomore at Compton High, a huge school, I made varsity shortstop in baseball and my best friend on the team was a black second-baseman named Loman Young, a junior mature beyond his years and who calmed me down and humbled me when I lost my temper and kicked at things and swore maniacally, and who counseled me when I felt close to cracking up from the pressure of being an ex-major leaguer’s son. He seemed to always put other people’s concerns before his own—rare in a teenager.
I thought about telling how when I was a medic in the Army, I spent a year on the graveyard shift in an emergency room out in the boondocks with Alvin Callock, an 18-year-old from one of the toughest ghettos in the country, Hough, in Cleveland, and who had to join the army at 17 to stay out of jail. In that year, we learned everything about each other, good and bad. During a racial brawl in the Enlisted Man’s Club started by some rednecks, I got caught up in the middle and it was Alvin who stepped into the melee as I was getting pummeled by three men and dragged me down to the dispensary for medical care, grinning the whole time, complimenting me on my boxing skills. Uneducated, raw, he lay on his bunk laughing out loud at Joseph Heller’s humor, mesmerized by his narratives, reading a copy of Catch-22 that I’d given him. Some of our graveyard conversations went on for hours, and from Alvin I learned the street, while from me he learned the discovery of knowledge via literature.
After my discharge, and a few menial jobs, I hitchhiked across country for New Orleans and Mardi Gras in 1969, searching for what I did not know, during a time of great social upheaval and racial tension in the U.S. After spending my last dime, I managed to luck into a gig as storekeeper on the Delta Queen riverboat, last steamship to carry passengers up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. And, besides the captain and his officers, engineers and pilots, I was the only white employee among deckhands, porters, waiters, the entire kitchen crew, bartenders and maids.
I worked immediately under the ship’s chef, a 69-year-old named Henry Joyner, who’d grown up the oldest in a family of eighteen sharecroppers outside Tupelo, Mississippi, and came to Memphis at 29 in his first pair of real shoes, dead broke, facing the Depression. He ended up working two jobs—head chef at the Jewish country club and at the veterans hospital—for forty years and raising eleven kids who eventually became splendid citizens, and moving his entire family to Memphis. During the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., he was one of the powerful figures who took the podium and kept the riots out of Memphis. He was a deeply religious man who had no problem with my being agnostic. His fierce work ethic and disdain for slackers was tempered by a shrewd and easy going sense of humor. He became my instant best friend and mentor and to this day the most extraordinary and beloved person I’ve ever had the privilege to know, a person I hark back to whenever I become disheartened or negative and begin to lose my sense of humor.
Another friend was Mr. Davis, a waiter, an ex-professional baseball player in the Negro Leagues, a renaissance man who could cook, build and repair just about anything, a ladies’ man who moved with an unmatched elegance and fluidity and could carry on a conversation with the aplomb and erudition of a college professor. He was hard on me, always testing me, expecting much. I had to ASK him for advice. He had lived in Paris for years to escape the racism in America and hitchhiked throughout Western Europe in a sport coat and slacks. He made sure to give me an excellent haircut and beard trim and loaned me his shirt, slacks and sport coat before taking me to blues joints and chicken-shacks in Memphis and along the Delta where I became educated in a music I had been previously ignorant of. One of the black maids came along, and when I danced with her, and asked how all these black people dancing around us could be so joyous in the face of such tragic, heartbreaking music, she told me, “Chile, that’s how us black folk forget our sorrow.”
It wasn’t all easy sailing on the Queen. My real trouble was with the porters and deckhands my age, who were bitterly resentful of my presence, and as a carefree white boy who automatically latched onto one of the best gigs aboard ship on a lark and seemed to be “the chef’s pet.” It was a time of militant black power and combustible anger among young people and the burning down of our black ghettos in nearly every big city in America. Willie Hobdy, the top deckhand, a tireless, nonstop worker, a man around my size and built like a light heavyweight boxer, who wore a stocking cap and scowled continuously, stole blatantly from my pallets of stock on the bow while fellow deckhands looked on and snickered. He made comments demeaning my manhood. He snarled at me, goaded me. Davis told me I’d have to fight him eventually and warned me that Willie would try and get in the first punch, because I, too, was built like a light heavyweight boxer and posed a threat.
Sure enough, while finally having heated words when I confronted him on the bow, he hit me so hard I saw green and yellow flashes, my left eye immediately gushing blood as I retaliated with a right hand that crushed his nose and busted his lip. If the captain hadn’t come along we might have killed each other. Sad and shaken, I retreated to the bar at the King Cotton Hotel on the main drag in Memphis in my work shirt, eye swollen shut and bruised, a violent headache pulsing. A row of post-graduates from down the road at the U of Mississippi in Oxford, whom I’d run into before, lectured me on my stupidity in making friends with and trusting “nigras.” They lectured me very sternly about my “Yankee naivety,” explaining that nigras were an inferior species given to thievery, filthiness, laziness, a total lack of morals, all of whom not only belonged where they’d been for centuries, but that they WANTED it that way, because they had no initiative. While listening to this garbage, it dawned on me very slowly and with a bludgeon that because of my white skin, and only my white skin, I represented to Willie and his fellow deckhands everything they hated in this world.
I left. Back on the Queen, despondent, I ran into Willie, lurking in an alcove along the engine room, sitting alone. He was almost always noisy and with fellow deckhands. His face was pulpy and swollen. He wouldn’t look at me as I halted before him. I asked him if he still wanted to fight. He shook his head and told me, “It’s all outta me.”
“It’s all outta me, too,” I said, though there was nothing in me compared to what was in Willie. I’d merely defended myself against something I was beginning to understand.
I was starving, hadn’t eaten a thing. I had access to the galley through the chef. I asked Willie if he was hungry. He nodded. I invited him to join me in the galley. It was late, and dark, and I turned on the lights and the grill and slapped down two huge filet mignons that were reserved for our 100 percent white wealthy passengers and heated up a pot of black-eyed peas. We still hadn’t talked. Willie sat at the card table where cooks and the chef and our dishwasher and I liked to drink coffee and munch pastries and eat, and I plopped down a pitcher of ice cold milk. We ate silently, ravenously, two brutalized young men, and when we finished Willie said thank you in an almost inaudible voice, and the next day instead of stealing from my pallets he helped me stock, and he became my friend, telling me his life story of growing up in some tiny town on a river a few miles north of Mobile, Alabama, and explained why he never left the ship—all of his pay ($65 a week) went to his mother and his wife and kid, whom he only saw when the Delta Queen dry-docked in winter and he returned to Alabama for two weeks.
Almost immediately the resentment among my former enemies evaporated. Willie shouted, “The Beard!” as a greeting. Other deckhands referred to me as “Moses,” and “Mistah Sto-keepah.” I became immersed in black culture to such an extent that the chef paused one day and accused me of being black in a former life and coming back the same way only with a white skin. I have never been happier. It was a joy to be among people who’d started life with nothing, or in some cases less than nothing, continued to get the short end of the stick, faced police harassment, served time, missed meals, and never even conceived of achieving dreams (I wanted to be a writer), yet seemed to celebrate what little was left of their lot and complained far less about the state of things than the old men I see hanging around Cayucos listening to Rush Limbaugh and grousing with perennial scowls about that goddamn black bastard, or the men and women I overhear at the gym who, although far better off financially than they were in 2008, growl about Obama being “that black socialist giving those lazy welfare niggers their precious money.”
I’d like to explain a few things to this lad beside me, who was never, to me, a mean-spirited person, and who seems happy with HIS lot and his young family; I’d like to tell him how ugly it sounds to use the word nigger, and especially in reference to a man in the White House who is not corrupt, not a liar, not a born-rich economic boob or a draft-dodging war-mongering neo-con blowhard, is a good family man who seems to have a little compassion like all liberals for the underclasses. I’d like to ask him to try and step into a black person’s shoes and have to listen to the cruelty and ignorance spewing from his mouth.
Finally I say, “Kid, you expose yourself to be an ugly, mean-spirited person when you talk that way about black folks. You embarrass yourself.”
“I don’t give a shit,” he says. §
Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.
