The 42nd Parallel

The Camera Eye (13)

he was a towboat captain and he knew the river blindfold from Indian Head to the Virginia Capes and the bay and the Eastan Shoa up to Baltima’ for that matter and he lived in a redbrick house in Alexandria the pilothouse smelt of a hundred burntout pipes

that’s the Mayflower the president’s yacht and that there’s the Dolphin and that’s the ole monitor Tippecanoe and that there’s the revenoo cutter and we’re just passin’ the po-lice boat

when Cap’n Keen reaches up to pull the whistle on the ceiling of the pilothouse you can see the red and green bracelet tattooed under the black hairs on his wrist

Ma soul an’ body ole Cap’n Gifford used ter be a frien’ o’ mahne many’s the time we been oysterin’ together on the Eastan Shoa an’ oysterpirates used to shanghai young fellers in those days an’ make ’em work all winter you couldn’ git away less you swam ashoa and the water was too damnation cole an’ the ole man used to take the fellers’ clothes away so’s they couldn’t git ashoa when they was anchored up in a crik or near a house or somethin’ boy they was mean customers the oysterpirates ma soul and body onct there was a young feller they worked till he dropped and then they’d just sling him overboard tongin’ for oysters or dredgin’ like them oysterpirates did’s the meanest kinda work in winter with the spray freezin’ on the lines an’ cuttin’ your hands to shreds an’ the dredge foulin’ every minute an’ us havin’ to haul it up an’ fix it with our hands in the icy water hauled up a stiff onct What’s a stiff? Ma soul an’ body a stiff’s a dead man ma boy a young feller it was too without a stitch on him an’ the body looked like it had been beat with a belayin’ pin somethin’ terrible or an’ oar mebbe reckon he wouldn’t work or was sick or somethin’ an’ the ole man jus’ beat him till he died sure couldn’t a been nothin’ but an oysterpirate