Peter S. Beagle - Salt Wine.pdf - Peter S. Beagle - margozap

Salt Wine

by Peter S. Beagle

If my business manager and I hadn't been schlepping ourselves and a

carload of books from the Bay Area to Las Vegas for a Star Trek convention,

this story would not exist. It's a very long drive, and extremely boring, and

the night sky was crackling with heat lightning, and we'd run out of

Sondheim songs. For conversation's sake, we turned to discussing a

possible title for this collection, and after a series of remarkably lame

sug-gestions, the phrase Salt Wine and Secrets suddenly popped up like a

slice of fresh toast. Evocative and curiously haunting, obviously it would

only work if there were a story called "Salt Wine" in the book. And I hadn't

a notion of what salt wine might be, nor what secrets it might engender. I

said I'd think about it.

On the way home, a few days later, slogging through a pounding rainstorm,

I announced that I just maybe had the beginning of a mini-hint of a story

idea. "It's some-thing about merrows , that's all I know."

I usually get one clue like that per story—the rest is strictly up for grabs. If

the Muse is late for work, you start without her.

Looking back at "Salt Wine," I realize that almost every story I've ever

written from a first-person point of view has been completely improvised

according to the narrator's voice. It's a matter of trusting the source; of

assuming that the storyteller knows what he or she is doing, even if I

don't, and that the tale will structure itself and tell me when it's done. It's

a form of possession, I suppose, but generally a benign one.

So here's Ben Hazeltine, stepping from wherever those voices that visit me

live, to tell you a story. There's a secret in it.

* * *

All right, then. First off, this ain't a story about some seagoing candy-trews

dandy Captain Jack, or whatever you want to call him, who falls in love with

a mermaid and breaks his troth to a mortal woman to live with his fish-lady

under the sea. None of that in this story, I can promise you; and our man's

no captain, but a plain blue-eyed sailorman named Henry Lee, AB, who

starts out good for nowt much but reeling a sail, holyston-ing a deck,

taking a turn in the crow's-nest, talking his way out of a tight spot, and

lending his weight to the turning of a capstan and his voice to the

bellowing of a chanty. He drank some, and most often when he drank it

ended with him going at it with one or another of his mates. Lost part of an

ear that way off Panama, he did, and even got flogged once for pouring

grog on the captain. But there was never no harm in Henry Lee, not in them

days. Anybody remembers him'll tell you that.

Me name's Ben Hazeltine. I remember Henry Lee, and I'll tell you why.

I met Henry Lee when we was both green hands on the Mary Brannum , out

of Cardiff, and we stayed messmates on and off, depending. Didn't always

ship out together, nowt like that—just seemed to happen so. Any road,

come one rainy spring, we was on the beach together, out of work. Too

many hands, not enough ships—you get that, some seasons. Captains can

take their pick those times, and Henry Lee and I weren't neither one

anybody's first pick. Isle of Pines, just south of Cuba—devil of a place to be

stranded, I'll tell you. Knew we'd land a berth sooner or later—always had

before—only we'd no idea when, and both of us hungry enough to eat a

seagull, but too weak to grab one. I'll tell you the God's truth, we'd gotten

to where we was looking at bloody starfish and those Portygee man-o'-war

jellies and wondering ... well, there you are, that's how bad it were. I've

been in worse spots, but not many.

Now back then, there was mermaids all over the place, like you don't see

so much today. Partial to warm waters, they are—the Caribbean,

Mediterranean, the Gulf Stream—but I've seen them off the Orkneys, and

even off Greenland a time or two, that's a fact. What's not a fact is the

singing. Combing their hair, yes; they're women, after all, and that's what

women do, and how you going to comb your hair out underwater? But I

never heard one mermaid sing, not once.

And they ain't all beautiful—stop a clock, some of them would.

Now, what you didn't see much of in the old times, and don't hardly be

seeing at all these days, was mer men . Merrows, some folk call them. Ugly

as fried sin, the lot: not a one but's got a runny red nose, nasty straggly

hair—red too, mostly, I don't know why—stumpy green teeth sticking up

and out every which way, skin like a crocodile's arse. You get a look at one

of those, it don't take much to figure why your mermaid takes to hanging

around sailors. Put me up against a merrow, happen even I start looking

decent enough, by and by.

Any road, like I told you, Henry Lee and I was pretty well down to eat-ing

our boots—or we would have been if we'd had any. We was stum-bling

along the beach one morning, guts too empty to growl, looking for someone

to beg or borrow from—or maybe just chew up on the spot, either

way—when there's a sudden commotion out in the water, and someone

screaming for help. Well, I knew it were a merrow straight-away, and so did

Henry Lee—you can't ever mistake a merrow's creaky, squawky voice, once

you've heard it—and when we ran to look, we saw he had a real reason to

scream. Big hammerhead had him cornered against the reef, curding and

circling him, the way they do when they're working up to a strike. No, I tell

a lie, I misremember—it were a bull shark, not a hammerhead. Hammer, he

swims in big packs, he'll stay out in the deep water, but your bull, they'll

come right in close, right into the shallows. And they'll leave salmon or

tuna to go after a merrow. Just how they are.

Now merrows are tough as they're unsightly, you don't never want to be

disputing a fish or a female with a merrow. But to a bull shark, a mer-row's

a nice bit of Cornish pasty. This one were flapping his arms at the bull,

hitting out with his tail—worst thing he could have done; they'll go for the

tail first thing, that's the good part. I says to Henry Lee, I says, "Look

sharp, mate—might be summat over for us." Sharks is real slap-dash about

their meals, and we was hungry .

But Henry Lee, he gives me just the one look, with his eyes all big and

strange—and then rot me if he ain't off like a pistol shot, diving into the

surf and heading straight for the reef and that screaming merrow. Ain't too

many sailors can really swim, you know, but Henry Lee, he were a Devon

man, and he used to say he swam before he could walk. He had a knife in

his belt—won it playing euchre with a Malay pirate—and I could see it

glinting between his teeth as he slipped through them waves like a dolphin,

which is a shark's mortal enemy, you know. Butt 'em in the side, what they

do, in the belly, knock 'em right out of the water. I've seen it done.

That bull shark never knew Henry Lee were coming till he were on its back,

hanging on like a jockey and stabbing everywhere he could reach. Blood

enough in the water, I couldn't hardly see anything—I could just hear that

merrow, still screeching his ugly head off. Time I caught sight of Henry Lee

again, he were halfway back to shore, grinning at me around that bloody

knife, and a few fins already slicing in to finish off their mate, ta ever so. I

practically dragged Henry Lee out of the water, 'acos of he were bleeding

too—shark's hide'll take your own skin off, and his thighs looked like he'd

been buggering a hedgehog.

"Barking mad," I told him. "Barking, roaring, howling mad! God's frig-ging

teeth , you ought to be put somewhere you can't hurt yourself—aye, nor

nobody else. What in frigging Jesus' frigging name possessed you, you

louse-ridden get?"

See, it weren't that we was all such mates back then, me and Henry Lee, it

were more that I thought I knew him—knew what he'd do when, and what

he wouldn't; knew what I could trust him for, and what I'd better see to

meself. There's times your life can depend on that kind of knowing—weren't

for that, I wouldn't be here, telling this. I says it again, "What the Christ

possessed you, Henry bleeding Lee?"

But he'd already got his back to me, looking out toward the reef, water still

roiling with the sharks fighting for leftovers. "Where's that merrow gone?"

he wanted to know. "He was just there—where's he got to?" He was set to

swim right back out there, if I hadn't grabbed him again.

"Panama by now, if he's got the sense of a weevil," says I. "More sense

than you, anyway. What kind of bloody idiot risks his life for a bloody

merrow?"

"An idiot who knows how a merrow can reward you!" Henry Lee turned back

around to face me, and I swear his blue eyes had gone black and wild as

the sea off Halifax. "Didn't you never hear about that? You save a merrow's

life, he's bound to give you all his treasure, all the plun-der he's ever

gathered from shipwrecks, sea fights—everything he's got in his cave, it's

the rule. He don't have no choice, it's the rule !"

I couldn't help it, I were laughing before he got halfway through. "Aye,

Henry Lee," I says. "Aye, I've heard that story, and you know where I heard

it? At me mam's tit, that's where, and at every tit since, and every mess

where I ever put me feet under the table. Pull the other one, chum, that

tale's got long white whiskers on it." Wouldn't laugh at him so today, but

there you are. I were younger then.

Well, Henry Lee just gave me that look, one more time, and after that he

didn't speak no more about merrows and treasures. But he were up all that

night—we slept on the beach, y'see, and every time I roused, the fool were

pacing the water's edge, this way and that, gaping out into the bloody

black, plain waiting for that grateful merrow to show up with his arms full

of gold and jewels and I don't know what, all for him, along of being saved

from the sharks. " Rule ," thinks I. "Rule, me royal pink bum," and went back

to sleep.

But there's treasure and there's treasure—depends how you look at it, I

reckon. Very next day, Henry Lee found himself a berth aboard a whaler

bound home for Boston and short a foremast hand. He tried to get me

signed on too, but ... well, I knew the captain, and the captain

remem-bered me, so that were the end of that. You'd not believe the

grudges some of them hold.

Me, I lucked onto a Spanish ship, a week or ten days later—she'd stopped

to take on water, and I got talking with the cook, who needed another

messboy. I've had better berths, but it got me to Malaga—and after that,

one thing led to another, and I didn't see Henry Lee again for six or seven

years, must have been, the way it happens with seamen. I thought about

him often enough, riding that bull shark to rescue that merrow who were

going to make him rich, and I asked after him any time I met an English

hand, or a Yankee, but never a word could anyone tell me—not until I

rounded a fruitstall in the marketplace at Velha Goa, and almost ran over

him!

How I got there's no great matter—I were a cook meself by then, on a

wallowing scow of an East Indiaman, and trying to get some greens and

fresh fruit into the crew's hardtack diet, if just to sweeten the farts in the

fo'c'sle. As for why I were running, with a box of mangoes in me arms ...

well, that don't figure in this story neither, so never you mind.

Henry Lee looked the same as I remembered him—still not shaving more

than every three days, I'd warrant, still as blue-eyed an innocent as ever

cracked a bos'un's head with a beer bottle. Only change in him I could see,

he didn't look like a sailor no more. Hard to explain; he were dressing just

the same as ever—singlet, blue canvas pants, same rope-sole shoes, even

the very same dirty white cap he always wore—but summat was different

about him. Might have been the way he walked—he'd lost that little roll we

all have, walked like he'd not been to sea in his life. Aye, might have been

that.

Well, he give a great whoop to see me, and he grabbed hold of me,

mangoes and all, and dragged me off into a dark little Portygee

tavern—smelled of dried fish and fried onions, I remember, and cloves

under it all. They knew him there—landlord patted his back, kissed him on

the cheek, brought us some kind of mulled ale, and left us alone. And

Henry Lee sat there with his arms folded and grinned at me, not saying a

word, until I finally told him he looked like a blasted old hen, squatting

over one solitary egg, and it likely rotten at that. "Talk or be damned to

you," I says. "The drink's not good enough to keep me from walking out of

this fleapit."

Henry Lee burst out laughing then, and he grabbed both me hands across

the table, saying, "Ah, it's just so grand to see you, old Ben, I don't know

what to say first, I swear I don't."

"Tell about the money, mate," I says, and didn't he stare then ? I says,

"Your clothes are for shite, right enough, but you're walking like a man with

money in every pocket—you talk like your mouth's full of money, and you're

scared it'll all spill out if you open your lips too wide. Now, last time I saw

you, you hadn't a farthing to bless yourself with, so let's talk about that,

hey? That merrow turn up with his life savings, after all?" And I laughed,

because I'd meant it as a joke. I did.

Henry Lee didn't laugh. He looked startled, and then he leaned so close I

could see where he'd lost a side tooth and picked up a scar right by his left

eyebrow—made him look younger, somehow, those things did along with

that missing bit of ear—and he dropped his voice almost to a whisper, no

matter there wasn't a soul near us. "No," says he, "no, Ben, he did better

than that, a deal better than that. He taught me the making of salt wine."

Aye, that's how I looked at him—exactly the way you're eyeing me now.

Like I'm barking mad, and Jesus and the saints wouldn't have me. And the

way you mumbled, "Salt wine?" —I said it just the same as you, tucking me

head down like that, getting me legs under me, in case things turned ugly.

I did it true. But Henry Lee only sat back and grinned again. "You heard me,

Ben," he says. "You heard me clear enough."

"Salt wine," I says, and different this time, slowly. "Salt wine ... that'd be

like pickled beer? Oysters in honey, that kind of thing, is it? How about

bloody fried marmalade, then?" Takes me a bit of time to get prop-erly

worked up, mind, but foolery will do it. "Whale blubber curry," I says.

"Boiled nor'easter."

For answer, Henry Lee reaches into those dirty canvas pants and comes up

with a cheap pewter flask, two for sixpence in any chandlery. Doesn't say

one word—just hands it to me, folds his hands on the table and waits. I

take me time, study the flask—got a naked lady and a six-point buck on

one side, and somebody in a flying chariot looks like it's caught fire on the

other. I start to say how I don't drink much wine—never did, not Spanish

sherry, nor even port, nor none of that Frenchy slop—but Henry Lee flicks

one finger to tell me I'm to shut me gob and taste. So that's what I did.

All right, this is the hard part to explain. Nor about merrows, nor nei-ther

the part about some bloody fool jumping on the back of a bull shark—the

part about the wine. Because it were wine in that flask, and it were salty,

and right there's where I run aground on a lee shore, trying to make you

taste and see summat you never will, if your luck holds. Salt wine —not red

nor neither white, but gray-green, like the deep sea, and smell-ing like the

sea, filling your head with the sea, but wine all the same. Salt wine...

Peter S. Beagle - Salt Wine.pdf

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