shadow of the police, we opened oysters and fed them to them with
squirts of pepper sauce, and rushed the growler or got stronger
stuff in bottles.
Drink as I would, I couldn’t come to like John Barleycorn. I
valued him extremely well for his associations, but not for the
taste of him. All the time I was striving to be a man amongst
men, and all the time I nursed secret and shameful desires for
candy. But I would have died before I’d let anybody guess it. I
used to indulge in lonely debauches, on nights when I knew my crew
was going to sleep ashore. I would go up to the Free Library,
exchange my books, buy a quarter’s worth of all sorts of candy
that chewed and lasted, sneak aboard the Razzle Dazzle, lock
myself in the cabin, go to bed, and lie there long hours of bliss,
reading and chewing candy. And those were the only times I felt
that I got my real money’s worth. Dollars and dollars, across the
bar, couldn’t buy the satisfaction that twenty-five cents did in a
candy store.
As my drinking grew heavier, I began to note more and more that it
was in the drinking bouts the purple passages occurred. Drunks
were always memorable. At such times things happened. Men like
Joe Goose dated existence from drunk to drunk. The longshoremen
all looked forward to their Saturday night drunk. We of the
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35
oyster boats waited until we had disposed of our cargoes before we
got really started, though a scattering of drinks and a meeting of
a chance friend sometimes precipitated an accidental drunk.
In ways, the accidental drunks were the best. Stranger and more
exciting things happened at such times. As, for instance, the
Sunday when Nelson and French Frank and Captain Spink stole the
stolen salmon boat from Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek. Changes
had taken place in the personnel of the oyster boats. Nelson had
got into a fight with Bill Kelley on the Annie and was carrying a
bullet-hole through his left hand. Also, having quarrelled with
Clam and broken partnership, Nelson had sailed the Reindeer, his
arm in a sling, with a crew of two deep-water sailors, and he had
sailed so madly as to frighten them ashore. Such was the tale of
his recklessness they spread, that no one on the water-front would
go out with Nelson. So the
Reindeer, crewless, lay across the estuary at the sandspit.
Beside her lay the Razzle Dazzle with a burned mainsail and Scotty
and me on board. Whisky Bob had fallen out with French Frank and
gone on a raid “up river” with Nicky the Greek.
The result of this raid was a brand-new Columbia River salmon
boat, stolen from an Italian fisherman. We oyster pirates were
all visited by the searching Italian, and we were convinced, from
what we knew of their movements, that Whisky Bob and Nicky the
Greek were the guilty parties. But where was the salmon boat?
Hundreds of Greek and Italian fishermen, up river and down bay,
had searched every slough and tule patch for it. When the owner
despairingly offered a reward of fifty dollars, our interest
increased and the mystery deepened.
One Sunday morning old Captain Spink paid me a visit. The
conversation was confidential. He had just been fishing in his
skiff in the old Alameda ferry slip. As the tide went down, he
had noticed a rope tied to a pile under water and leading
downward. In vain he had tried to heave up what was fast on the
other end. Farther along, to another pile, was a similar rope,
leading downward and unheavable. Without doubt, it was the
missing salmon boat. If we restored it to its rightful owner
there was fifty dollars in it for us. But I had queer ethical
notions about honour amongst thieves, and declined to have
anything to do with the affair.
But French Frank had quarrelled with Whisky Bob, and Nelson was
also an enemy. (Poor Whisky Bob!–without viciousness, good-
natured, generous, born weak, raised poorly, with an irresistible
chemical demand for alcohol, still prosecuting his vocation of bay
pirate, his body was picked up, not long afterward, beside a dock
where it had sunk full of gunshot wounds.) Within an hour after I
had rejected Captain Spink’s proposal, I saw him sail down the
estuary on board the Reindeer with Nelson. Also, French Frank
went by on his schooner.
It was not long ere they sailed back up the estuary, curiously
side by side. As they headed in for the sandspit, the submerged
salmon boat could be seen, gunwales awash and held up from sinking
by ropes fast to the schooner and the sloop. The tide was half
John Barleycorn
36
out, and they sailed squarely in on the sand, grounding in a row,
with the salmon boat in the middle.
Immediately Hans, one of French Frank’s sailors, was into a skiff
and pulling rapidly for the north shore. The big demijohn in the
stern-sheets told his errand. They couldn’t wait a moment to
celebrate the fifty dollars they had so easily earned. It is the
way of the devotees of John Barleycorn. When good fortune comes,
they drink. When they have no fortune, they drink to the hope of
good fortune. If fortune be ill, they drink to forget it. If
they meet a friend, they drink. If they quarrel with a friend and
lose him, they drink. If their love-making be crowned with
success, they are so happy they needs must drink. If they be
jilted, they drink for the contrary reason. And if they haven’t
anything to do at all, why, they take a drink, secure in the
knowledge that when they have taken a sufficient number of drinks
the maggots will start crawling in their brains and they will have
their hands full with things to do. When they are sober they want
to drink; and when they have drunk they want to drink more.
Of course, as fellow comrades, Scotty and I were called in for the
drinking. We helped to make a hole in that fifty dollars not yet
received. The afternoon, from just an ordinary common summer
Sunday afternoon, became a gorgeous, purple afternoon. We all
talked and sang and ranted and bragged, and ever French Frank and
Nelson sent more drinks around. We lay in full sight of the
Oakland water-front, and the noise of our revels attracted
friends. Skiff after skiff crossed the estuary and hauled up on
the sandspit, while Hans’ work was cut out for him–ever to row
back and forth for more supplies of booze.
Then Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek arrived, sober, indignant,
outraged in that their fellow pirates had raised their plant.
French Frank, aided by John Barleycorn, orated hypocritically
about virtue and honesty, and, despite his fifty years, got Whisky
Bob out on the sand and proceeded to lick him. When Nicky the
Greek jumped in with a short-handled shovel to Whisky Bob’s
assistance, short work was made of him by Hans. And of course,
when the bleeding remnants of Bob and Nicky were sent packing in
their skiff, the event must needs be celebrated in further
carousal.
By this time, our visitors being numerous, we were a large crowd
compounded of many nationalities and diverse temperaments, all
aroused by John Barleycorn, all restraints cast off. Old quarrels
revived, ancient hates flared up. Fight was in the air. And
whenever a longshoreman remembered something against a scow-
schooner sailor, or vice versa, or an oyster pirate remembered or
was remembered, a fist shot out and another fight was on. And
every fight was made up in more rounds of drinks, wherein the
combatants, aided and abetted by the rest of us, embraced each
other and pledged undying friendship.
And, of all times, Soup Kennedy selected this time to come and
retrieve an old shirt of his, left aboard the Reindeer from the
trip he sailed with Clam. He had espoused Clam’s side of the
quarrel with Nelson. Also, he had been drinking in the St. Louis
John Barleycorn
37
House, so that it was John Barleycorn who led him to the sandspit
in quest of his old shirt. Few words started the fray. He locked
with Nelson in the cockpit of the Reindeer, and in the mix-up
barely escaped being brained by an iron bar wielded by irate
French Frank–irate because a two-handed man had attacked a one-
handed man. (If the Reindeer still floats, the dent of the iron
bar remains in the hard-wood rail of her cockpit.)
But Nelson pulled his bandaged hand, bullet-perforated, out of its
sling, and, held by us, wept and roared his Berserker belief that
he could lick Soup Kennedy one-handed. And we let them loose on
the sand. Once, when it looked as if Nelson were getting the
worst of it, French Frank and John Barleycorn sprang unfairly into