Pirate Freedom Read online

  It made me mad, too. Mad at her for whacking me, and mad at myself for not grabbing the chicken. I knew it was going to be a lot tougher when I tried it again, so I waited until the sun was nearly down and some of the stands were closing. That made it easier for me to see from a distance when she had a customer, because there were not as many people. For a while I was afraid she would not have any more.

  Finally somebody came, a man. I think he meant to eat his chicken as soon as he got it, because he did not have a basket or anything to carry it in. She got a chicken for him from the wooden cage and showed it to him. He nodded, and she twisted its neck, and plucked and gutted it faster than you would have thought possible.

  While it was cooking, I worked in a little closer. And as soon as she had it off her spit, I had it out of her hand. She got me again with her stick and it hurt pretty bad, but I grabbed her stick with my free hand before she could get it back up and got it away from her.

  She thought I was going to hit her with it then, but I did not. I just dropped it and ran off with her chicken.

  Maybe it tasted as good as the bread. I do not know. All that I remember is how scared I was that I was going to get caught before I finished it. How scared she was too-that short fat woman cowering with her arms up, afraid I was going to brain her with her own stick. When I thought of her just now, that is how I remembered her.

  When I had eaten everything and sucked the bones-it did not seem like much-I found another sleeping place, not so near the market and the docks. And when I was lying there thinking about the chicken and getting hit twice with her stick, it came to me that if the lanky man buying the chicken had grabbed me from behind, it would have been all over. I would be in jail, was what I thought. Now I think they would probably have tied me to a post and beaten the merda out of me, then kicked me out. That is how they usually punished people when I was then.

  After that, I started thinking about the monastery. Really thinking about it, maybe for the first time ever. How peaceful it had been, and how just about everybody there tried to look out for everybody else. I missed my cell, the chapel, and the refectory. I missed some of my teachers, too, and Brother Ignacio. It was funny, but the thing I missed most of all was the work he and I had done outside-helping milk sometimes, herding the pigs, and weeding. Collecting eggs in a basket like the ones I had hoped to steal out of, and carrying them in to Brother Cook. (His name was Jose, but everybody called him Brother Cook anyway.)

  Then I got to thinking again about the rules, and what they had meant. You could not go into anybody else's cell, not ever, and the cells had no doors on them. You got told when to take a bath, three novices at a time, and there would be a monk there watching the whole time, generally Brother Fulgencio. He was older even than the abbot.

  Those were rules I had not thought about at all when I was little. I took them in stride, like I had taken the rules at our school in the States. But when I got older and we learned about being gay and all that, I understood. They had thought we were, and they had not cared as long as we did not actually do anything with another kid. Once I had realized what was going on, it bugged me a lot. I did not want to spend the rest of my life thinking about girls and knowing that the people around me were thinking about boys, and thinking I was, too.

  It was that last part that really got to me. If it had not been for that, if there had been a way I could have proved once and for all that I was no leccacazzi, I think I might have stayed.

  That got me to thinking about how it was outside. It seemed to me Our Lady of Bethlehem had been a good thing, a good idea Saint Dominic had a thousand years ago: a place where people who did not ever want to fall in love or get married-or felt like they could not-could go and live really good lives.

  But it seemed to me, too, that the world outside the monastery ought to be about the same, only with falling in love and maybe having kids, a place where people liked each other and helped each other, and everybody got to do what he was good at.

  That has never changed for me. When you read the rest of this you're not going to believe me, but I am writing the truth. We have to make it like that, and the only way we can do it is for each person to choose it and change. I chose it that night, and if I have slipped up pretty often God knows I am truly sorry about every slip.

  Sometimes I have had to slip. I ought to say that, too.

  2

  The Santa Charita

  I am not going to tell you much about the next few days. They are not important and run together anyway. I asked various people about another Havana, and they all said there was not one. I asked about my father and his casino, but nobody had heard of it. I walked down every last street in town, and I talked to priests at two churches. They both told me to go back to Our Lady of Bethlehem. I did not want to do that, and I did not think I could even if I tried. Now I hope things are different, but then I was sure I could not. I tried to find work, and sometimes I did get a few hours' work for a little money. Mostly it was around the docks.

  Then Senor heard me asking about work. He said, "Pay attention, muchacho. You got a place to sleep?"

  I said no.

  "Bueno. You need someplace to sleep and meals. You come with me. You got to work and work hard, but we'll feed you and give you a hammock and a place to sling it, and when we get home you'll get some money."

  That is how I got to be on the Santa Charita. English sailors talk about signing articles and all that, but I did not really sign anything. The mate I had talked to just talked to the captain, and the captain wrote my name in his book. Then the mate told me to make my mark beside it, so I initialed it and that was all there was to it. I think the mate's name was Gomez, but I have known a lot of people with that name and I may be wrong. We said Senor. He was a little man with big shoulders, and smallpox had given him a really tough time when he was younger. It took me two or three days to get used to the way he looked.

  I got a hammock in the forecastle, like he promised. The food was not good except when it was, if you know what I mean. I had never drunk wine before, except just a sip of the Precious Blood at mass sometimes, so I did not know how bad the wine was. Or how weak it was, either. We had been loading cargo for Veracruz, a lot of it live pigs and chickens in cages, and the deck was a mess to the big. We would clean up one side, then the other, then back to the first one. We pumped water out of the harbor and squirted it out of a hose, mostly, and when we were not doing that, we pumped the ship. It leaked. Maybe there are wooden ships somewhere that do not leak, but I have never been on one.

  You could go ashore when you were off watch. I did that just like the others, but I could not have gotten drunk or hired a whore even if I had wanted to. (Which I did not.) The Spanish sailors were not nearly as bad about getting drunk as some I have known since, but they were worse about women. The night we sailed they smuggled a battery girl on board and hid her. When we had gotten the anchor up and the pilot was taking us out of the harbor, the captain and Senor pulled her out of the hold and threw her over the side. I had seen something of her by then and had not liked it, but I would never have done that. It was the first thing that made me really understand what kind of a place I had landed in.

  The second thing came three or four nights later. When we got off watch and went below, two guys grabbed my arms and another one pulled my jeans down. I fought-or thought I did-and yelled my head off until somebody about knocked it off. You know what happened after that. So did I, after I woke up. The only good thing that came out of it was that my old jeans got ripped so bad that I had to have new pants, and I found out you could get them from the bosun. He took care of the slop chest. He charged too much against my pay and my new canvas pants were too big, but I was so glad to get rid of those tight jeans I did not care.

  About then I started going aloft, making sail and taking it in. Vasco and Simon told me I would be scared to death and dirty my new pants, but I told them they had better be scared, because I was going to grab them if I fell an
d take them down with me. I meant what I said, too.

  The weather was calm with just a little bit of a breeze, you stood on the foot rope and held on with one hand, and I was not scared at all. Besides, you got a great view from up there. I did my work, but I sneaked looks every chance I got. There was the beautiful blue sea, and above us the beautiful blue sky with a couple of little white clouds, and I kept thinking that the earth was a beautiful woman, and the sky was her eyes-and thinking too how the sea and the sky would be there when everybody on our ship was dead and forgotten. I liked that, and I still do.

  When we were down on the main deck again, I kept hoping the captain would want to take a reef in the topsail, but he did not. Only by then I knew that we furled all sail at night and lay to. (And I thought all ships did.) So I would get my chance for sure before we went off watch.

  Here I ought to say that we were the starboard watch, which meant the one that Senor bossed and the one that did just about all the work. There was a larboard watch, too, which was a lot smaller. The larboard watch could sleep on deck if there was nothing for them to do, and sometimes they shot craps. Our ship was a brig, a bergantin was what we called it. It means that it had two masts the same size, both square-rigged. I was a foremast man then, not that it matters.

  While I am filling you in, let me say too that in those days I knew a lot more Spanish sea talk than English, although all the other sailors knew a whole lot more than I did. They would not tell me what they meant, either, just saying that it was a comb to smooth the water or a dildo for a whale or whatever. I had to figure out everything for myself, and I got laughed at if I was even a little bit wrong.

  Another thing I did not know then was that our handy bergantin was one of the kinds of ships pirates like best. The others are Bermuda sloops and Jamaica sloops. They are both bigger than most sloops, and a lot faster. The hulls are pretty much the same, and the difference is in the rigs. Everybody has his own tastes, but I always liked the Bermuda rig, myself.

  When the sun was on the horizon, we went aloft again and furled the sails, the mainsail first, then the topsail. The stars were coming out and the wind picking up a little, and I remember thinking that sailors were the luckiest people in the world.

  As soon we slid down to the deck, we were dismissed and went below and they jumped me again. This time they did not catch me completely off guard, and I fought. Or anyway, I would have called it fighting if anybody had asked. They beat and kicked me until I passed out and they got what they wanted. I did not know then that it was the last time.

  I would not call what I did that night fighting, or what I did afterward sleeping, either. Sometimes I was conscious and sometimes I was not. I prayed that God would send me back to Our Lady of Bethlehem. I threw up a couple of times, and one time was on the deck. The larboard watch made me clean that up, although I was so bad I fell down two or three times while I was trying to do it.

  The next day el capitan saw how bad I was-both my eyes were swollen just about shut, and I had to hold on to something to keep from falling over-and put me on the larboard watch myself. He did not try to find out who had beaten me or even ask me to tell him. (I think I might have.) He just said I was larboard watch until he changed it, and sent me below. It meant my old watch had to do the same work minus one man, so that was their punishment. When we came on watch about sundown, I made up my mind that they would get some more punishment from me as soon as I felt better.

  (All this comes back to me with a vengeance tonight, because of what happened yesterday evening. I made four of our boys in the Youth Center quiet down, and they waited for me to come out at ten. They were all good-sized and pretty strong. Tough, too, they thought. They got in each other's way, and if there was only one of me, every kick and punch did real damage. They finally knocked me down and knocked my wind out. When they had kicked me a couple of times they beat it, practically carrying Miguel. I caught up with them after about three or four blocks.)

  Larboard watch was easy, and it was a good thing it was, because I was still coughing a little blood now and then. I just rested, and slept when I could, and when we were off I stayed awake most of the time, keeping quiet in my hammock. It was nice, just a gentle rocking like a cradle, and I got to thinking I would kill everyone on board and have the whole ship to myself with nobody around anymore to do what they had done. I knew I would not really do it, and that I could not have managed the ship alone. But it was nice to think about, and I did. Later that helped me understand Jaime.

  One of the things I did on larboard watch was be lookout. That was the same as starboard watch, but I had never gotten to do it on starboard watch. After I had been on larboard watch for a couple of days and my eyes were not so swollen I got tagged for it. It meant I climbed up the foremast and stood on the topsail yard, holding on to the masthead. It was a job nobody wanted, because it meant you had to stand or squat there for hours, and the roll was a lot worse at the top of the mast.

  I loved it. One of the great things about my life has been that every so often I have really enjoyed something everybody else hated, and that was one of them. First off, I was all alone up there with nobody to hassle me. Another was that I could look up at the sky and way, way out to the horizon as much as I wanted. It was what I was supposed to be doing. That night there was no chop at all, just a greasy swell, and a million stars looked down at me. I saw the Angel of Death one time. (Maybe I will tell about all that later.) His robe is black, just like they say. But it is spangled all over with real stars, and when I saw it I knew that dying is really not as bad as everybody thinks. I still did not want to die, but I knew that if I did it would not be the worst thing that ever happened to me, and that afterward I would not have to worry about it anymore, ever again.

  One of the pigs had died that day, so we had roast pork at supper. Whenever one of the animals died, we ate it. It was warm where we were, just like Cuba, so we ate it ASAP. Probably we would have eaten it fast anyway. The captain and the mate got the best cuts, and the rest of us got the rest. I do not think we ate the guts, but I know we ate the stomach and the head. And the heart and the liver, and all that. And hollered for more, and cussed the cook for holding out on us.

  So I was a little bit sleepy up there, but naturally I could not sleep and would have fallen if I had. I would shut my eyes just for a minute, and feel myself starting to go, and grab on and wake up. About the third or fourth time I saw something way off to starboard when I woke up. There was no moon that night, but I thought I saw something white above the black bulk of it, and a dark line going up that might have been a mast. I yelled down that there was a vessel out there with no lights, and the rest of the watch woke the mate.

  I expected him to be mad, and maybe he was. He asked where it was, and when I had told him, he asked eight or ten questions I could not answer. Eventually they unshipped the boat and rowed over for a look. It was a long time before they came back, and when they did they would not tell me anything, not even when we went off watch. I still felt bad, and I was pretty tired by then, so I just slung my hammock and turned in.

  Pretty soon the rumble of our guns woke me. I got up and went up on deck to see what was happening. There was a little breeze, and we were making maybe two knots. The captain had the whole starboard watch pretending they were loading the guns, then running them out for real. That had made the noise. Once they were out they pretended to shoot them, ran them back in (more noise), and did the same thing all over again: the wet swab, the imaginary powder charge, the imaginary ball, run them out, and slow match to the touchhole.

  We mounted five guns a side. They were small-four-pounders I found out later-but I had never paid much attention to them, and I had never seen slow match. So I found it all pretty interesting.

  After a while the boat went out with a big empty box. It floated pretty well when they dropped it off, one corner up and maybe two-thirds underwater. Then each gun was loaded for real, one at a time, and the slow match lit from the gall
ey fire, and each gun crew on the starboard side got to take a shot at the box.

  I watched the whole thing, knowing I would not be able to sleep anyway, and when the boat went out again with an empty keg for the port guns to shoot at, I was pulling one of the oars.

  3

  Veracruz

  It took me longer than it should have to connect the dark ship I had seen with the guns, but eventually I did. It was in the air, if you know what I mean. I overheard people talking and so forth. Everybody on that ship had been dead, and their ship drifting. Maybe Spain was at war with England again. Maybe not. Nobody knew, but they might know in Veracruz.

  It means "true cross"-you probably know. It was bigger than I had expected, and rawer than I had expected. Once we had unloaded all the cargo, the captain let us leave the ship if we wanted to go. Our ship was tied to a pier, and the mate stayed on board with a couple of other men. We had to promise to come back that night, each of us promising before we set foot on the gangplank. Everybody except me wanted to sit around in cantinas, tell jokes and lies, pinch girls, and maybe get laid. I wanted to get out where I would not have to look at their ugly faces, stretch my legs, and see the town.

  And I have got to say that there was a lot to see. They were building a fort to defend the harbor, plus three churches-all four going up at the same time. It was about noon and really hot by the time we got the Santa Charita unloaded, and just about everybody was having a siesta. The big stones kept moving just the same, one after another lifted up, swung carefully around, and set down on the mortar, then pried until it was lined up just right. It was done slowly, you bet it was. But it was always slow.