The Line Between

But Henry Lee's up with me, catching ahold of me arm like an octopus, and he's saying, «No, no, Ben, you don't understand. I need you, you have to help me, sit down and listen.» And he pulls and pushes me back down, and leans right over me, so close I can see the scar as cuts into his hairline, where the third mate of the Boston Annie got him with a marlinspike, happened off the Azores. He says, «I can make it, the salt wine, but I need a partner to market it for me. I've got no head for business — I don't know the first thing about selling. You've got to ship it, travel with it, be my factor. Because I can't do this without you, d'you see, Ben?»

«No, I don't see a frigging thing," I says in his face. «I'm no more a factor than you're a bloody nun. What I am's a seacook, and it's past time I was back aboard me ship, so by your leave — "

Henry Lee's still gripping me arm so it hurts, and I can't pry his fingers loose. «Ben, listen!» he fair bellows again. «This is Goa, not the City of London — the Indians won't ever deal honestly with a Britisher who doesn't have an army behind him — why should they? — and the Portuguese bankers don't trust me any more than I'd trust a single one of them not to steal the spots off a leopard and come back later for the whiskers. There's a few British financiers, but they don't trust anyone who didn't go to Eton or Harrow. Now you're a lot more fly than you ever let on, I've always known that — "

«Too kind," I says, but he don't hear. He goes on, «You're the one who always knew when we were being cheated — by the captain, by the company, by the lady of the house, didn't matter. Any souk in the world, any marketplace, I always let you do the bargaining — always. You'd haggle forever over a penny, a peseta, a single anna — and you'd get your price every time. Remember? I surely remember.»

«Ain't nothing like running a business," I tell him. «What you're talking about is responsibility, and I never been responsible for nowt but the job I were paid to do right. I like it that way, Henry Lee, it suits me. What you're talking about — "

«I'm talking about a future, Ben. Spend your whole life going from berth to berth, ship to ship — where are you at the end of it? Another rotting hulk, like all the rest, careened on the beach, and no tide ever coming again to float you off. I'm offering you the security of a decent roof over your head, good meals on your table, and a few teeth left in your mouth to chew them with.» He lets go of me then, but his blue eyes don't. He says, «I'd outfit you, I'd pay your way, and I'd give you one–third of the profits — ah, hell, make it forty, forty percent, what do you say? It'll be worth it to me to sleep snug a'nights, knowing my old shipmate's minding the shop and putting the cat out. What do you say, Ben? Will you do it for me?»

I look at him for a good while, not saying nowt. I remember him one time, talking a

drunken gang of Yankee sailors out of dropping us into New York harbor for British spies — wound up buying us drinks, they did, which bloody near killed us anyway. And Piraeus — God's teeth, Piraeus — when the fool put the comehither on the right woman at the wrong time, and there we was, locked in a cellar for two days and nights, while her husband and his mates went on and on, just upstairs, about how to slaughter us so we'd remember it. Henry Lee, he finally got them persuaded that I were carrying some sort of horrible disease, rot your cods off, you leave it long enough, make your nose fall into your soup. They pushed the cellar key under the door and was likely in Istanbul, time we got out of that house. Me, I didn't stop feeling me nose for another two days.

So I know what Henry Lee can do, talking, and I sniff all around his words, like a fox who smells the bait and knows the trap's there, somewhere, underneath. I keep telling him, over and over, «Henry Lee, I never been no better than you with figures — I'd likely run you bankrupt inside of a month.» Never stops him — he just grins and answers back, «I'm bankrupt already, Ben. I'm not swimming in boodle, like you thought — I've gone and sunk all I own into a thousand cases of salt wine. Nothing more to lose, you see — there's no way you can make anything any the worse. So what do you say now?»