Newly Seven
Havighurst, Walter
NEWLY SEVEN By WALTER HAVIGHURST 1 SHOULD never have wondered about Olsen if I had not changed bunks one morning after a stormy night off Dixon Entrance. We upbraided the weather at the time,...
...Cold and weary, I came off watch that morning at eight o'clock, when the long northern night was breaking to a grey dawn that dimly revealed the ghostly, snow-wrapped mountains of British Columbia...
...You want your gear...
...Olsen may turn up again," he continued...
...As I feigned sleep, Olsen stirred in the bunk beneath me and leaned into the feeble foc'sle light...
...How can I kiss her now...
...You can sign on in the morning...
...With a cupped hand he held a fresh match to it and sucked noisily at the bitter smoke...
...He chuckled to himself this time, as though the memory were of deep inward delight...
...Doubtless this was a cargo of coconuts, leisurely carried up the coast from Mexico...
...He's been holding well inside...
...I took care to let Olsen precede me to the foc'sle by several minutes...
...How d'you know...
...He picked a fight at the inlet, over some Siwash woman...
...Yes," I repeated, "you got a wife...
...In the darkness I felt his startled gaze upon me...
...His deep voice was quieter than before...
...The Camano carried but four men, and that was not number enough to break up the loneliness of a lofty schooner, her masts bare, her sails in disuse, her decks echoing to solitary footfalls...
...I climbed into the dingy foc'sle to find it half filled with water, as a port-hole had been stove in by a sea...
...Yaa...
...There was nothing to read...
...Here Olsen smoked his pipe incessantly, and in these intimate quarters I gradually pried into his confidence...
...but he may turn up again...
...We were not a social ship, anyway...
...Then he puffed at his pipe and turned away...
...Warmed by this suggestion of tropic seas, I pulled my oilskins under my chin to sleep, when at the head of the bunk I caught sight of a fresh inscription: otto olsen, Seattle to Skagway...
...On the outer side, penciled roughly over the printed text, were the initials O. O. More curiously I unfolded the paper...
...The upper bunks on the weather side were in a clammy confusion...
...Did she laugh...
...He gave his usual greeting: "Well, son, can't you keep off shore any farther, or do you want to scrape her bottom on those rocks...
...You never see her, I guess...
...Presently I heard the captain coming up from his cabin...
...Eight bells went soon afterward...
...Yes, Olsen was here last trip...
...Prob'ly got drunk and couldn't think what ship he was in...
...Blankets were soaked, pillows lay soggy and cold, the straw from the sparse mattresses gave off a rank sickening smell...
...After the name of Leguoix came two words that made me forget the cold and desolation of Dixon Entrance: Honolulu— Tahiti...
...He left his gear behind at Seattle...
...Then he went on...
...The huge seaman's gaze wandered off vaguely through the drizzle...
...We upbraided the weather at the time, for bad weather was uncommonly unpleasant on the rotting old fourmaster Camano, but it passed soon enough, and I had already formed a mental picture, a strangely accurate one, of Olsen...
...Captain Johansen stepped across the deckload to meet him...
...he questioned...
...Who...
...Two books, which I had thrust beneath the pillow at midnight, lay in a shapeless mass on the sodden blankets...
...When we headed north again, I managed to share the watch with Olsen...
...Then after a pause, "Was he a good man...
...Yaa, I see her...
...Me...
...I knew you were drunk all the time," declared Captain Johansen conclusively...
...I go see her last trip...
...Following the tug, sir...
...Well, where you been then, all this time...
...The mouth held a smile in which was question as well as gladness...
...I spank her like hal...
...so I lay in my damp bunk gazing wide-eyed at the paneled ceiling a foot overhead...
...She have birt'day, one time...
...To Montana...
...When I came in, I saw that my hazard was correct...
...Finally I came out flat-footed with a question...
...This time Olsen's voice was but a mutter...
...I had to keep him aboard after that...
...TUCKER JOE LEGUOIX Beside their names were records of their voyages, showing that the Camano had long raced with the wind on the open sea before she was reduced to the ignominy of towing with lumber from a desolate sawmill settlement in Alaska...
...Drunk, were you, so you couldn't get your ship when we sailed...
...It was a folded page, apparently torn from a magazine...
...Yaa...
...I go to birt'day party...
...asked the Old Man...
...He stopped and smoked earnestly at his pipe, as if seeking support after this undue confession...
...After Pedersen's name was the laconic legend: San Francisco to Callao...
...We made little progress during the day...
...At this he laughed hugely...
...I asked, after a pause...
...More soberly he went on: "Then the ol' lady, my wife, she git mad...
...The pipe made little watery wheezes as he sucked...
...I've got his bag below...
...How old was she...
...Knocked out two sawmill hands and a cruiser...
...His pipe had gone out...
...But wan day I catch her an' I say, 'You be good girl,' an' I spank her seven times...
...I want my yob," he said...
...What for to Montana...
...There's little enough in it...
...Spools of thread, pencils, scissors, buttons and a dozen other things had receded to all corners of the bunk...
...No, I yoost stay on shore," Olsen repeated...
...I got a kid...
...But this proved to be different...
...Yaa," he said impassively...
...The cold night watches we spent together in the pilot house, a rude shelter that enclosed the wheel and gave some protection from the icy winds that blew down from the Bering Sea...
...Certainly then the Camano had fled before the southern trades with sails that brushed the sky...
...There, in the soft tones of a mezzotint, was the strangely sweet face of a child, with Gouverneur Morris's birthday verses beneath: "Come, let us kiss you, Newly Seven, Seven times and one to grow on...
...This, I thought, must represent a recent voyage of the Camano, towing to Alaska for fir...
...A little girl...
...While I lay looking idly upon the freshly carved name, I noticed that one of the panels of the bulkhead was slightly warped and that from behind it there showed a corner of paper...
...Not very curiously I drew it forth, thinking to find one of the pictures that seafaring men carry with them and often tack alongside their bunks to provide a suggestion of delights ashore and tide them over the harsh discipline of great waters...
...Well, go along forrad...
...I yoost go 'shore a while...
...Well, Olsen, you're back again," he observed...
...The face of the child held a strange and unforgettable quality, a sweetness deepened almost to sorrow by the wistfulness of childhood...
...A heavy drizzle darkened the pierhead and half obscured a group of figures along the wharf...
...In the days that followed I found Olsen a moody fellow who could sit for hours silently smoking a black and violent tobacco...
...Endeavoring to be casual, I asked: "Did you kiss her seven times...
...No, by gar, I a'int never kiss her...
...As I stood at the wheel in the winter dusk, snow was falling thickly and the changing flashes of the Shaggard light were dim across the tossing waters...
...and with a flourish of his knife this beachcomber of the Pacific had carved a miniature topsail schooner between the magic names...
...Captain Johansen walked over to the rail, called to the lookout on the fol'sle-head to set the riding lights, then came back...
...I had been occupying an upper bunk on the weather side, and my bed was a sadly uninviting refuge...
...For they had recorded that monotonous vigil by carving their names on the faded panel...
...I can't kiss her if I try for t'ree mont...
...Yes, good enough man, but a wild fellow, ugly...
...It was apparent that many another sailor had lain just so, perhaps too tired and cold for sleep, staring idly at the bulkhead...
...Beside Jensen's name was neatly carved: San Pedro to Salina Cruz...
...No, she cry like hal...
...He took the pipe from his mouth...
...I go to Montana," the giant answered...
...Laff...
...She say, 'Git out, an' don't never be back here no more.' So I cum back to sea," he finished...
...As beauty is the gift of heaven, So yours, child, too, is godly-given, For it does seem to me that even Thus Jesus looked when he was seven...
...Saw his name on my bunk...
...I cum back," boomed a deep but quiet voice...
...This time his voice held a hint of interest...
...Well," said the Captain, "I guess we'll have a berth for you...
...I got a wife, all right...
...Olsen," I said, "you got a wife...
...Presently I ventured a question: "Was there an Olsen aboard last trip...
...My ditty-box, a little chest of camphorwood bought in Hongkong a the price of two days' hunger, had been burst open...
...The lower bunks were awash...
...The paper was gone from the warped panel above my bunk...
...Three weeks later the Camano, her weathered hull swollen with a high deckload of yellow fir, slipped into the Smith Cove lumber docks at Seattle...
...She iss seven year...
...You got a family...
...Olsen disdained the question...
...But where you been, Olsen, since last trip...
...One night while the Shaggard light threw its alternating red and white fingers over the water, I began a chain of remarks on domestic matters...
...He opened the folded paper and stroked the wistful face with a huge and calloused hand...
...Oh," I said...
...He smoked on like a wooden Indian with no tongue in his stolid head...
...In the eyes was a tenderness that verged on tears...
...Went ashore one night before we sailed and never came back...
...I gathered them up, wrung the salt water out of the blankets, and spread my bed in an unused bunk on the lee side...
...When we had swung a gangway over the side, a huge and hulking figure emerged from the mist and mounted the steep incline...
...He gazed at the deck like a rebuked schoolboy...
...When he did speak, which happened occasionally, it was only to deliver a ponderous monosyllable, after which his blunted teeth clamped back tightly on the pipe stem...
...After I folded the page and replaced it behind the warped bulkhead, the face seemed still to linger there, misty, clouded with dim things, and half suggestive of loss...
...He advanced with long strides and disdained to steady his huge frame by holding to the rail...
...No, I don't kiss her," he said...
...Ringlets of auburn hair fell across the shoulders and framed the half-sad, half-smiling face in a cloud of shadowed gold...
...For the new year may not go on Till the lucky kiss be given, Child of heaven, newly seven...
...Here was the toiling succession of the sea: JAMES HEALY GUSTAV OCHS P. PEDERSEN CARL JENSEN WM...
...Maybe I gave it away already...
...He looked up...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 22
