Free The Ordinary Seaman by Francisco Goldman

around the rice pot to scrape up a handful of el raspado, the crunchy rice seared to the bottom—in those months, they sometimes even had sugar to sprinkle over it—and then a bottle suddenly smashing and raining glass from above or hitting the deck, crew members jolted to their feet, covering their heads with crossed arms, Desastres the cat speeding off to hide. It plunged them into miserable silences and tirades of cursing, sent waves of adrenaline coursing through helpless limbs and spirits. The bottles always broke; they couldn’t even pick one up and hurl it back. What should they do, throw wrenches down at them instead? In the engine room they have wrenches as big as tennis racquets. Without even having to discuss it much, the crew knew that shouting, Oye, stop throwing bottles up here! would probably only incite even more bottle throwing. It was a good thing that los blacks usually drank beer by the quart and quickly ran out of bottles.
    One night Tomaso Tostado and Cebo swore they saw a bottle plummet through a small, square hole in the deck, about two feet wide, one of those they hadn’t patched and welded yet, heard it simultaneously break and splash down in the boggy bottom of the hold, the sound so muffled that those who hadn’t seen the bottle fall through the hole didn’t even lift their heads or ask, What was that?
    When los blacks were on the pier the crew avoided standing by the rail and spoke among themselves in near whispers. As far as they could tell, los blacks were unaware that there was anyone onboard, or at least they didn’t seem to care. The ladder was always up, the ship always silent and dark, a dead ship on its way to scrap, a target practiceship, one more waterfront ruin. But there were also nights when los blacks didn’t throw bottles, not up on deck anyway.
    Sometimes they lost themselves in long, nearly serene dance parties, trancing rhythm burning away the pumping, angry vehemence of much of the music like sun a layer of mist. Most of the crew, even Bernardo some nights but never the cook, would climb the nine rungs of the two steel ladders to the foredeck, get down on all fours, and crawl to the gunwales, raising their heads up under the rail just enough to watch. Spidery, beautiful, hypnotic, often wicked-looking dances. Girls slowly rubbing their own crotches to the music and letting everybody see, one arm extended and flapping, the boys taking on one powerful, sexual, or magically robotic pose after another; they looked like bodies endlessly stepping out of their own bodies to become other bodies. And dances that looked almost like extravagant games of hopscotch, dazzling footsteps, hopping sliding hopping and arms flailing. Some of them had amazing haircuts, with designs and even words that looked branded into shaved skulls; girls with hair braided into mop strings and tentacles. They wore big, loose, unbuttoned shirts that billowed like Arabian robes when they danced and sweatsuit tops unzipped over thin, muscular chests and stomachs; some went shirtless, flashes of gold, basketball sneakers like Mark’s, baseball hats worn sideways, backwards; some of the girls wore skintight, sleeveless tops or short dresses, the brown gleam of bare limbs and shoulders against black water and night. Sunglasses in the dark.
    But one night when the crew was watching, a muchacho wearing a tight black T-shirt, fatigue pants, and combat boots suddenly broke away from the others and came silently and exaggeratedly high-stepping on tiptoes like a circus clown down the pier, then stopped directly underneath them and stared up, his muscular arm rigidly pointing. He held that outraged stare and statuelike posture, pointing up at them, for a long time. Some of the crew slid or rolled away backwards, but others, including Esteban, stayed in frozen crouches at the rail. And then this muchacho started to shout, enraged, crazy shouting, as if maybe he was just playing at being