Free Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) by Ferenc Máté Page B

sank a few steps from the shore, but there was no one strong enough to help.
    The kid had sense enough to untie my line and I sailed the hell out of there and didn’t even look back until I cleared the point. The dawn had spread and there they were all along the rocks: some standing, some kneeling, some leaning on each other, each one of them bowed as low as their last strength let them.
     
     
    W HEN I GOT back to town, neither the papers nor the beer parlor gossip had anything to say about the wreck. Some weeks later I was crossing Chinatown with a handcart of lumber to build some berths when a Chinaman politely touched my arm and asked me if I could step into his shop. What the hell? I thought. Might be a customer. We waited. A frail old Chinaman came in and up to me. I thought he’d give me hell for drowning some of his kin, but instead he looked at me and quick tears filled his eyes. “Grandson,” he managed finally; then bowed. The door opened and in walked the kid, looking a lot better-fed now. He stopped beside the old man, who said more strongly, “Grandson,” and they bowed.
    Next Monday a horse cart pulled up to the head of the alley with a load of the best damned boat lumber I’d ever seen—mahogany and teak boards, some a good foot wide—and asked where to unload it because it was all mine, no charge. And next morning down came a couple of pigtailed Charlies with boxes of the weirdest saws and chisels. One of them spoke some English and said they came to build my boat. I told him to turn back around because I couldn’t pay them. He smiled his worn-toothed smile and shook his head. “No pay,” he said. “Honorable family.”
    That’s how I knew I could count on Mr. Chow.

    8
     
C HARLIE
     

     
    T here is such an abundance of animal life in the sea that the Indians live almost solely upon seals, sea lions, various species of salmon, the halibut, cod and herring.
The oil of the eulachon, a herring-like fish containing iodine and many vitamins, is most prized. Caught in the spring—a lone fisherman can bring in 10 canoe loads—they are left to “ripen” in pits covered with logs. In a great bent-wood box or canoe, water is made to boil by putting in fire-heated stones, then the rotted fish is added and stirred until the rendered oil rises, then is skimmed off and stored in long tube-kelp. It is used year-round, poured over dried salmon or clams, or dried berries pressed into cakes.
    —F RANZ B OAS
     

    S o I went and asked Mr. Chow for a sea cook, then left a note for Hopkins telling him I was sailing the next day. At Palotai’s I bought a string of hard-dried smoked sausages that lasted a month at sea if you wrapped them in brown paper; then I stopped at the purveyor for a small keg of rum.
    When I got back to the ketch and stepped into the cockpit I almost squashed him. I was about to give him the back of my hand for sneaking aboard my boat when he cried out, “No hit, no hit! No hit cookie!”
    Jesus. He couldn’t have been a day over fifteen. Small-boned, with those mischievous eyes only kids have before they grow old and dull. “You good cookie?” I asked.
    “Charlie best cookie whole world,” he said, and beamed so brightly that I would have kept him just as long as he could flip a flapjack. I was making a list for provisioning the galley when someone knocked on the hull. It was Hopkins, all smiles, wishing me a safe trip and handing me another stuffed envelope. Then he was gone. Charlie was polishing the brass binnacle so hard I thought he’d start a fire.
    I asked him if he knew Sam Ling at Sunshine Market. “Yessir, Captain,” he said. “Sam Ling uncle.” I should have guessed. I told him to provision for a month and he wrote while I rattled off the list: tinned biscuits, eggs, slab of bacon, tea, syrup, jam, lemons, apples, sugar, flower, rice, onions, cabbage, carrots, prunes, tinned beef, lentils, beans, lard, and he repeated everything so clearly I almost understood