U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [189]
Next day they coaled ship and the day after they had Joe painting the officers' cabins while the Argyle nosed out through the Boca again between the slimegreen ferny islands, and he was sore because he had A.B. papers and
-27-here they were stil treating him like an ordinary sea-man and he was going to England and didn't know what held do when he'd get there, and his shipmates said they'd likely as not run him into a concentraytion camp; bein' an alien and landin' in England without a passport, war wit' war on and 'un spies everywhere, an' al ; but the breeze had salt in it now and when he peeked out of the porthole he could see blue ocean instead of the pud-dlewater off Trinidad and flying fish in hundreds skim-ming away from the ship's side. The harbor at St. Luce's was clean and landlocked, white houses with red roofs under the coconutpalms. It turned out that it was bananas they were going to load; it took them a day and a half knocking up partitions in the afterhold and scantlings for the bananas to hang from. It was dark by the time they'd come alongside the banana-wharf and had rigged the two gangplanks and the little derrick for lowering the bunches into the hold. The wharf was crowded with colored women laughing and shrieking and yel ing things at the crew, and big buck niggers stand-ing round doing nothing. The women did the loading. After a while they started coming up one gangplank, each one with a huge green bunch of bananas slung on her head and shoulders; there were old black mammies and pretty young mulatto girls; their faces shone with sweat under the big bunchlights, you could see their swinging breasts hanging down through their ragged clothes, brown flesh through a rip in a sleeve. When each woman got to the top of the gangplank two big buck niggers lifted the bunch tenderly off her shoulders, the foreman gave her a slip of paper and she ran down the other gangplank to the wharf again. Except for the donkeyengine men the deck crew had nothing to do. They stood around uneasy, watching the women, the glitter of white teeth and eye-bal s, the heavy breasts, the pumping motion of their thighs. They stood around, looking at the women, scratch--28-ing themselves, shifting their weight from one foot to the otheri not even much smut was passed. It was a black stil night, the smel of the bananas and the stench of nigger-woman sweat was hot around them; now and then a little freshness came in a whiff off some cases of limes piled on the wharf. Joe caught on that Tiny was waving to him to come
somewhere. He fol owed him into the shadow. Tiny put his mouth against his ear,
"There's bleedin' tarts 'ere, Yank, come along." They went up the bow and slid down a rope to the wharf. The rope scorched their hands. Tiny spat into his hands and rubbed them together. Joe did the same. Then they ducked into the warehouse. A rat scuttled past their feet. It was a guano warehouse and stank of fertilizer. Outside a little door in the back it was pitch black, sandy underfoot. A little glow from street-lights hit the upper part of the warehouse. There were women's voices, a little laugh. Tiny had disappeared. Joe had his hand on a woman's bare shoulder. "But first you must give me a shil ing," said a sweet cockney West India woman's voice. His voice had gone hoarse, "Sure, cutie, sure I wil ."
cutie, sure I wil ."
When his eyes got used to the dark he could see that they weren't the only ones. There were giggles, hoarse breathing al round them. From the ship came the inter-mittent whir of the winches, and a mixedup noise of voices from the women loading bananas. The woman was asking for money. "Come on now,
white boy, do like you say." Tiny was standing beside him buttoning up his pants. "Be back in a jiff, girls."
"Sure, we left our jack on board the boat." They ran back through the warehouse with the girls
after them, up the jacobsladder somebody had let down over the side of the ship and landed on deck out of breath and doubled up with laughing. When they looked over the side the women