The Line Between

Because I never knew him lie to me. Might take his time getting around to telling me some things, but he wouldn't never lie outright. But he just shook his head again, and looked down, and he heaved a sigh sounded more like a death rattle. Says, «It could be. It could be. I don't know, Ben.»

«You know," I says. «How long?» He don't answer, don't say nowt for a while — he just turns and turns in a little tight circle, this way and that, like a bear at a baiting. Finally he goes on, mumbling now, like he'd as soon I didn't hear. «The Tagus, last year, that time I took Julia Caterina to Lisbon. A man on the riverbank, he just tumbled … I didn't get a really good look, I couldn't be sure what I was seeing, I swear, Ben.» I can't make no sound. Henry Lee grabs me hands, wrings them between his until they hurt. «Ben, it's like you said, maybe Gorblimey didn't know himself — "

I pull me hands free, and for a minute I have to close me eyes, 'acos if I was on a ship I'd be seasick. I hear meself saying, «Maybe he didn't. But we do. We know now.»

«No, we don't! It still mightn't be the wine — it could be any number of things.» He takes a deep, deep breath, plunges on. «Even if — even if that's so, obviously it's just a few, a very few, not one in a thousand, if even … I mean, you don't see it happening everywhere, it's just — it's like the way some folk can't abide shellfish, the way cheese gripes your gut, Ben, every time. It's got to be so with the salt wine.»

«Even one," I says. It catches in me throat and comes out a whisper, so I can't tell if he's heard. We stand there, looking at each other, like we're waiting to be introduced. Henry Lee reaches for me hand again, but I step away. Henry Lee starts to say summat, but then he don't. There's blood in me mouth, I can taste it.

«I done bad things, Henry Lee," I says at last. «I know where I'm going when I go, and none to blame but me. I know who's waiting for me there, too — some nights I see their faces all around the room, plain as I now see you. But in me life I never done nothing, nothing … I got to get out of your house, Henry Lee.»

And I'm for the door, because I can't look at him no more. He calls after me — once, twice — and I think he's bound sure to try and drag me back, maybe to gull me into seeing things his way, maybe just not to be alone. But he don't, and I walk on home along the seafront, a deal slower than I came. And when I get there — it were a plain little house, nobbut the one servant, and him not living in, because I can't abide folk around me when I rise — when I got there, I drank meself to sleep with me whole stock of good Christian rum. And in the morning I went to see Henry Lee's lawyer— our lawyer — Portygee–Goan, he were, name of Andres Furtado, near enough — and I started working an old fool name of Ben Hazeltine loose from the salt wine business. It took me some while.

Cost me a few bob, too, I don't mind saying. We'd made an agreement long back, Henry Lee and me, that if ever I wanted to sell me forty percent, he'd have to buy me out, will–he, nil–he. But I didn't want no more of that salt wine money — couldn't swallow the notion, no more than I could have swallowed a single mouthful of the stuff ever again after that second time.

So by and by, all what you call the legalities was taken care of, and there was I, on the beach again, in a manner of speaking. But at least I'd saved a bit — wouldn't last forever, but leastways I could bide me time finding other work, and not before the mast, neither. Too old to climb the rigging, too used to proper dining to go back to cooking in burned pots and rusty pannikins in some Grand Banks trawler's galley — aye, and far too fast–set in me ways of doing things to be taking orders from no captain hadn't seen what I've seen in this world. «Best bide ashore awhile, Ben Hazeltine," I says to meself, «and see who might be needing what you yet can do. There'll be someone," I says, «as there always is," and I'd believe it, too, days on end. But I'd been used to a lot of things regular, not only me meals. Henry Lee, he were one of them, him and his bloody salt wine. Not that I'd have gone back working for the fool — over the side meself first, and I can't swim no better than poor old Monkey Sucker. But still.