The Meq

own captain would probably have him flogged for doing it. After that, the Spider Boy — what did you say her name was?”

“I didn’t say, but her name is Geaxi,” I said.

“Yes, well,” he went on, “she looked down at me and, I swear by Neptune, she knew I had been listening and watching, but we never spoke of it and I delivered her safely to Bogy in Biloxi.”

He looked down at his pipe, saw that it had burned out, and tapped it again on the table. Whether it was the circumstances or he could just handle his liquor, I didn’t know, but he now seemed completely sober. He was a patient man, I could tell, and he was going to wait until doomsday for a response.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

He looked me squarely in the face and leaned forward.

“Can I speak openly in front of her?” he said, nodding toward Carolina.

“Yes.”

“I want to hire you, boy. I want you to come and work for me. I will take you on as an apprentice, so you don’t have to bunk with the crew and you can do what you do, however you do it, when I need it. I need your power, or whatever it is, to protect me. There are a great many scoundrels in my profession, let me tell you. I will show you the high seas and a fine life of adventure. You will not regret it.”

I looked at Carolina. A million things were going through my mind. Was this it? Was this my chance to do what Mama said and find Sailor? Carolina was tight-lipped, but she was nodding, as if to say, “Yes, yes, do it. This is your chance.”

I looked back at this odd man in his tam-o’-shanter, holding his long-stemmed pipe. He wasn’t going to say another word or persuade me in any way and, in that respect, reminded me of Solomon. I liked him for that.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll go with you and I’ll do what you said when it’s needed, but I’ve got to tell you now, I’m going for another reason.”

“And what would that be?” he asked.

“There’s someone I’ve got to find; another one like me named Sailor.”

“Aye, that would be the one you asked about. Well, not to discourage you, boy, but almost every man at sea has, at one time or another, been called Sailor.”

“I know,” I said, “I’ve thought about that.”

“Well, never mind, we will find what we can find, that I promise you. I expect to leave for the Gulf bright and early in the morning. Can you be ready?”

“Yes,” I said.

He got up to leave and stopped at the door.

“By the way, what is your name, lad?”

“Zianno,” I said. “Call me Z.”

He tipped his cap to Carolina and said, “In the morning then, Z.” And he left, leaving Carolina and me sitting by the light of a single candle, staring at each other.

We sat like that until dawn, talking and trying to imagine what my life was going to be like. Carolina saw it as the adventure of a lifetime and I did too, but I couldn’t escape another feeling; I felt guilty about leaving and not “watching over Mrs. Bennings” as Solomon had asked; and I felt guilty about leaving the girls alone after Geaxi’s warning. Carolina said Mrs. Bennings would be fine, she’d see to it and she would always be there for Georgia. I said, “Yes, but who’s there for you?”

She said not to worry, everything would be fine, and we both acted as if I’d be back in a few weeks. It was a lie. We both knew that too.

I stopped by Mrs. Bennings’s room before I left. Natalie and Georgia were asleep in chairs, but Georgia had pulled hers next to the bed. Mrs. Bennings was curled up on her side in the center of her bed with the sheets tucked all around her. Her right hand was at an odd angle beside her cheek. She was snoring. She had something clutched in her hand and I bent over to see what it was. I recognized it immediately, but I hadn’t seen it in a long time; I thought I’d lost it. It was Solomon’s cap, the one he’d tossed to me when he left.

I walked out of the boardinghouse into a pale gold dawn light. It was the winter of 1883. It was cold. Carolina and I stood shivering in it.

“You know that when I come back it will be completely different between us, don’t you?” I said.

“Why is that?” she asked.

“Because you’ll be older. different. a woman. ”

She just laughed and turned to run back inside. She got to the door and as she went in, leaned her head back out.

“Well?” I said.

She laughed again. “What difference does that make?” she asked, and closed the door.

Two weeks later I was at sea, after traveling with Captain Woodget, as he now liked to be called, down the Mississippi by steamer to New Orleans and then to Biloxi by train. We slipped out in the dark of night by longboat and met the Clover, anchored in the Gulf about a mile out. We set sail for points south by southeast, headed for Key West, Nassau, and ports unknown.

The Clover was one of the last of its kind, nearly ninety yards long with miles of rigging and a well-drilled crew. Steamships were beginning to vie for trade with the clippers and the days of the great merchant sailing ships were numbered. Captain Woodget didn’t agree with this fact and never backed down from a challenge to race with one of the “tin crates,” as he called them.

He made sure that everyone on board understood I was his apprentice and not a cabin boy. No one ever doubted him and I was given free rein on the ship. He was a good captain, hard but fair, and he was an expert in sail-making, rigging, and navigation. He had the respect of every seaman on board and each one knew that things would be done one way — Captain Woodget’s — no matter how trivial it might seem.

I got my sea legs early and never got seasick, even crossing the Gulf Stream, which was rough. I made friends with many of the crew and most called me Z, but I also got a nickname from our Portuguese cook, who called me “Pequeno Basque,” or “Little Basque.”

Captain Woodget became a friend and helped me search for Sailor in every port, as long as I remembered my primary task, “watching his back.”

I loved the life at sea; the wind and the smell of the constant spray and the stars at night, ten million more than I’d seen when I woke up to the Milky Way in Colorado. I was kept busy most of the time, but I also had endless hours to think about Mama and Papa, Solomon, Ray, Georgia, and Carolina; people I had loved and somehow lost, much too quickly.

Time has a different pace at sea. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months so easily. It rolls under you and you sail through it as you would the sea itself. It is vast and broken only by the light, the weather, the next harbor, a memory of lost things. Sailor, if he existed, must have felt this way a thousand times, I thought.

I hadn’t found a trace of him. After Captain Woodget had taught me how and where to look, I talked to seamen of all colors and nations. I stopped and hounded dockworkers, barmaids, whores, kitchen cooks, anyone and everyone. Months went by, then a year, then two. My Meq blood and sensibilities concerning Time didn’t seem to notice; only my obsession with finding Sailor mattered. We took on cargoes of tea, wool, coal, jute, redwood, brown sugar, dyes; hundreds of different goods from hundreds of different ports. We anchored off West Africa, Brazil, Madagascar, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, the whole rim of the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Most of our cargoes were legal, but the Clover always had one hold, or at least part of one, filled with contraband, and a cabin was always available to the occasional revolutionary or murderer at a price. Holidays and birthdays were never celebrated; smuggling is mainly business and the demands on the men who do it are relentless and never romantic. Two years became four and four became eight. I saw Captain Woodget and most of his crew through two separate cholera outbreaks, where dozens died. I learned to speak bits of French, Spanish, and Portuguese, enough to ask, “Do you know a boy named Sailor?” But no one did. Twelve years passed and I was as lost as I’d been when I first went to sea; twelve years of searching I felt were wasted. I still wore the Stones, though I hadn’t had to use them, not once. Captain Woodget and the crew never mentioned how I looked the same. I was just “Little Basque,” another unexplained mystery of the sea.

Then we anchored in a cove on the coast of Bermuda, not in the main harbor, but near it. It was New Year’s Day 1896, and twelve years were about to feel like twelve seconds.