Whither Thou Goest

Chapter 1 I found it hard, at times, to believe I was actually sailing the South Seas with Church Chetwood. He’d gotten me aboard the SS August Moon just before she’d sailed out of New York harbor and shown me to a cabin. “This is our cabin,” he’d told me. It wouldn’t last. One day he’d grow tired of having a male lover, and he’d go back to the skirts who’d offer to sleep with him in hopes he’d put them in his moving pictures but who wouldn’t love him the way I— I knew it wouldn’t last. I had no family, no home… I just wasn’t the kind of mug happiness called upon. But he did promise me the adventure of a lifetime, and as long as it was with him, I was willing to settle for whatever that might be. * * * * “We’re fortunate we’ve got that hold full of weapons,” Captain Johansen was telling Mr. Chetwood as I brought the lunch tray up from the galley. I paused in the entryway to watch them, unobserved. The skipper was a tough old bird, in remarkable shape for his age. His hair was salt and pepper, as was the walrus mustache that draped over his upper lip. He was a good captain, his only vice appearing to be the pipe he was never without, and he had accepted my last minute inclusion aboard the August Moon good-naturedly. “There’s always a demand for guns, Jo,” Mr. Chetwood conceded, using the nickname he sometimes called Captain Johansen by. Church Chetwood was some twenty years younger than the skipper. Until a couple of years ago, he had made his living filming travelogues to be shown in the moving picture palaces throughout the hinterlands of America, bringing the wild, the unusual, the breathtaking to small town inhabitants who would never have the opportunity to see them otherwise. Dark hair and eyes, of average height, and physically fit, he was my lover. He was also the only person I truly loved. “We were lucky the ones we never got around to using on the last trip weren’t confiscated.” Mr. Chetwood smiled at me, then turned back to the skipper. “We’ll be able to use them as currency.” “Really lucky.” But the skipper didn’t sound as if he believed that. A lot of men he’d sailed with for years hadn’t come back from that voyage. He smiled sadly as he accepted a bowl of fish stew from me, and a slice of two-week-old bread. “We should be sailing into Selamat datan within a couple of hours.” He peered at the bread and sighed. “It’s a good thing we’re taking on fresh supplies. Charley’s a good cook, but even he can’t do anything with weevily flour.” “It’ll be nice to have something other than fish. Thanks, kid.” Mr. Chetwood took the bowl I handed him and speared a bit of fish onto his fork. He studied it dispassionately before deciding to go ahead and put it in his mouth. “I thought you liked fish, Mr. Chetwood.” I set the tray aside. “Yeah, but not for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” My lover sent me a grin that never failed to make me go weak in the knees. “How are you doing, Johnny?” He hooked his free arm around my waist and pulled me close to his side. Unseen by the skipper, his hand drifted down and stroked over my backside before settling on my hip. “I’m good.” I leaned discreetly into his caress. “No more seasickness?” “Gee whiz, Mr. Chetwood, I haven’t been sick in months.” The first few days out of New York had been a nightmare. We’d been sailing into the tail end of hurricane season, and the Atlantic had been rough. I hadn’t been able to leave the cabin I shared with him, puking my guts up, and I knew for a time he’d been afraid I might not survive the week. Once we’d reached the calmer waters of the Caribbean, though, and began our passage through the locks of the Panama Canal, my stomach had had a chance to settle down. I’d quickly acquired my sea legs, and I hadn’t been sick since. Captain Johansen gave me a smile of approval. “You are doing well, Mr. Smith.” I always blushed at the measure of esteem his calling me that gave me. “After lunch, I’d like you to try plotting a course from Selamat datan to Kupang.” He’d been teaching me how to navigate using charts and instruments. “That would be from Malaya to Dutch Timor. Yes, sir.” I dropped onto the seat beside Mr. Chetwood and began to eat. “Is that where we’ll be going?” “Yes. We’ll take on more coal there, and whatever cargo we can, and then we’ll be heading northeast to Sorong.” I frowned as I tried to remember my geography. “Isn’t that in New Guinea?” Before the captain could answer, Nick Hendriksen, who operated the wireless, rushed in. He was around my age, although I felt decades older, and one of the few men who had survived the August Moon’s last journey into the seas west of Sumatra. “Here’s the latest, Skipper.” He handed Captain Johansen a slip of paper. “Thank you, Mr. Hendriksen,” the captain murmured absently as he studied what was written on the page. “I don’t like the looks of it. If you don’t mind my saying so.” He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “It does look nasty, doesn’t it? Well, no need for us to worry, since we won’t be sailing into those waters.” “Phew. That makes me happy. I’ll leave you to your lunch then.” Nick went back to his station. “Is something wrong, Skipper?” Mr. Chetwood tried to bite off a chunk of bread, and his expression became irritated when it proved more of a challenge than he’d anticipated. He banged it on the corner of the table, where it made a solid “thunking” sound, but he had no success in breaking off a piece. I pushed a cup of joe toward him so he could dunk the bread and hopefully make it easier to chew. “Not really.” Captain Johansen’s smile was rueful. “It seems there’s been some serious volcanic activity recorded in the region of…” He rattled off coordinates that held no meaning to me but obviously rang a bell with Mr. Chetwood. He raised his head slowly, and there was a faraway look in his eyes. “We aren’t going back there, Chet.” “No, of course not.” “Back where?” I examined my bread carefully to make sure there were no unwelcome additions in it. “Back to Iwi Po’o, Johnny.” “The prehistoric island?” The creatures that lived there had somehow managed to survive the passage of time while their brethren on other continents hadn’t. “How far away is it?” “It could never be far enough away,” Captain Johansen stated flatly. “We left too many good men on that island. I’ll never sail those waters again.” Church Chetwood and Captain Johansen had returned from “those waters” a little more than a year ago with a saber-toothed tiger. Chetwood’s Kitty as she was known, which should have gone extinct ten thousand years ago, had gained her freedom when the dope who’d been hired to guard her opened the door to her cage. He’d starved and tormented her, and she’d taken that opportunity to repay him. From what I was led to understand, there wasn’t much left by the time she was done with him. And then she’d made her way from the basement of the theater to the streets of Manhattan and run amok. A good deal of damage was done. A good many people died. Chetwood’s Kitty had been destroyed by the machine guns carried by the platoon that had spent three days tracking her in Central Park, but Mr. Chetwood saw it differently. “I did it, Johnny. Oh, I may not have fired those guns, but I killed her as surely as if I had,” he always insisted. “I brought her here, took her away from her home and her babies.” Sometimes I thought he regretted that more than the people the sabretooth had slaughtered. He’d been at the point of being indicted, facing a long stretch up the river when Captain Johansen tracked him down at Mrs. Eastman’s rooming house. The authorities were after the skipper as well, since his ship had been used to transport the sabretooth to the States. “She’s mine, free and clear, Chet. I won’t let them take her from me.” He’d told Mr. Chetwood of his plan to sail the August Moon back to the South Seas and invited him along to be his partner. When Church Chetwood left New York, he had taken me with him. I’d been a down-on-his-luck kid who too often had to barter his ass for the price of a meal. My winter coat was so threadbare that a good yank by Mr. Chetwood had torn it in two. But that was after he’d gotten me out of a jam with a saloon keeper who didn’t like my looks, fed me at the Automat, and then taken me back to his rooming house, where he’d shown me the difference between being f****d and making love. I didn’t care if he’d taken me along because he felt sorry for me, or because my curly blond hair and blue eyes reminded him of the woman who had willingly gone into danger for him. All that mattered to me was that I was with him. * * * * I was taking the tray with the empty bowls back to the galley when I was waylaid by a wharf rat known as Whitey. He’d gotten in wrong with a gang that ran bootleg hooch and dealt in white slavery on the side, and I had the feeling he’d been closer than he realized to wearing cement overshoes. And the only reason he was on the August Moon was because Dutch, the first mate, knew him and had gotten him aboard just before she’d set sail. The way Whitey looked at me always gave me the heebie-jeebies. “C’mere, kid.” “Don’t call me that.” “Why not? It’s what the landlubber calls you.” “He’s the only one who calls me that.” Whitey leered at me. “Yeah, an’ I wonder why.” He blocked the passage that led down to the galley. “You two sleep in the same cabin. What else d’ you do in that cabin?” “Look, I have to get this tray back to Charley, or he’ll skin me.” “You a-scared of that c***k, Johnny?” His use of my first name was almost as bad as him calling me ‘kid’. I wasn’t afraid of the Chinese cook, who had always been kind to me, but I was leery of Whitey. I’d known men like him back before I met Mr. Chetwood. “Get out of my way. Please.” I forced the last word out, trying to placate him. “I bet you beg real good, Johnny.” He took a step closer, and I backed away, only to find the bulkhead preventing any further retreat. I used the tray as a barrier between us, but he knocked it aside, leaning against me. He pulled a lock of hair free of the tie I used to restrain it and rubbed it between his fingers, making a hungry sound. His breath was sour in my face, and his erection pushed insistently at the notch of my thighs. I wondered wildly if his aim was to have me in plain sight of everyone on the ship. I fumbled in my pocket, and closed my hand on the shiv I always kept handy. I had since the day my headmaster at school gave it to me after he’d told me I had to leave. “Whitey, ain’t you got some work to do?” Dutch growled from across the deck. Whitey recoiled as if he’d been jabbed with an electric wire. Dutch kept order among his men with his fists and a truncheon, and even though Whitey claimed he was a good friend of Dutch’s, he didn’t dare disobey. The look Whitey sent me promised vile things if he ever caught me alone, and he clearly had every intention of catching me alone. He disappeared down the gangway. “Thanks, Dutch.” I let out a shaky breath. “He was getting a little pushy.” “Yeah, well, what can you expect when you shake that ass of yours around my men? Stay away from ‘em, Smith, or I ain’t gonna be responsible for what happens.” A hard flush crept up my cheeks. It wouldn’t matter if I told him I hadn’t been shaking anything around any of the men. Whitey wasn’t the only one who believed I could be had for the taking. So far the only thing that kept them in line was the fact that Mr. Chetwood had winged one of the crew when he’d tried to jump me, and the skipper had put the man off at the next port. Avoiding Dutch’s contemptuous gaze, I gathered up the tray and broken bits of crockery, then edged past him and went down to the galley. “Johnny, where you been? I need you help me.” Charley looked up from the pan of mealy potatoes he’d been peeling and swore in Chinese when he caught sight of the tension in my face. “You aw right? What happen?” “I’m fine, Charley. Please don’t tell Mr. Chetwood. Whitey just got a little too enthusiastic.” I dropped the broken bowls into the bin Charley used for the trash, then tidied my hair. “Stay ‘way from him, Johnny. He bad man who hurt you just ‘cause he can.” “I know. The world is full of men like that.” I pushed the worry from my mind. “We’ll be sailing into Selamat datan soon, and I think the skipper is giving most of the men shore leave. You won’t have to cook tonight.” His yellow face lit up with a grin. “That sound good to me, Johnny.” He took the pan of potatoes and tossed them out the porthole. “I gonna find place with good Chinnee cooking, you bet! I got make list of supplies we need, but then you want play mahjong with me?” “Thanks, Charley, another time, oke? Captain Johansen wants me to practice my navigation.” Charley nodded, but he was already poking through the larder, muttering to himself. I slid my hand into my pocket and idly caressed the handle of my shiv, and then I shivered and went back up to the bridge.