Traveling through Ports that Begin with "M"s
|
|
Mobile 1930 (Shrimp) |
Jack scrubs the smell of hemp and tar from his hands and weaves his way along the waterfront. He's picking up Pearl. She doesn't want to go. Sure, they were childhood sweethearts, but now she's a platinum blond selling her body to merchant marines and shrimpers. Finally, he visits "Seven Sister," the conjure woman in Hogansville. She tells him to swab sweat from his right armpit, mix it with cologne, and dab it on the desired lady. He had to hold Pearl down to do that. Later she says, "It was your desperation, not spells, that won me.". |
|
Maracaibo 1935 (Snapper) |
Sweat rolls down Jack's face as he climbs over a derrick. It's 82 degrees and almost time for siesta. Schools of yellowtail snapper leave the ocean to dart in and around the lake. Mosquitoes thrive in spite of the fish. At first, Jack's body is strong. Then malaria flattens him. Beside a lone orange hibiscus, Pearls sets a chair. She clips the hair of oil riggers and with her intimate touch she earns enough to book passage on a coffee boat to Marseilles. Her Uncle Leon de Lesseps has offered his aid once they land. |
|
Marseilles 1940 (Octopus) |
In a hospital near the quai, Jack tosses with an afternoon fever. A storm rumbles through the harbor. Pearl's bedroom chandelier sways and tinkles in the wind. In a dream she watches the light turn into an octopus. Tentacles unfurl and squeeze her. She wakes in Leon's sleep-laden embrace. "Men's sex organs are so much alike," she muses. Something she'd forgotten. She pats his haunch, slips on her robe and walks into the garden to plant basil and mint for Jack's tea. He's almost well. Pearl considers joining the French Resistance. |
|
Manila 1945 (Shark) |
Jack enters the city by crashing through a wall in a U.S. tank. He stays to help Filipinos clean up the rubble. Pearl didn't' think she could have children, but here she is suckling a war baby. With Jacqueline on her hip, she works for the Red Cross -- bathing and barbering the wounded. One day on the way home, she swoons against a shop. The facade crumbles. She and Jacqueline barely escape. Meanwhile, Jack lends a hand to a guy hoisting a catch and loses three fingers to a requiem shark. |
|
Mazatlan 1950 (Sailfish) |
Glazed sailfish stud the wall of the yacht club. Jack finishes a Cuba Libre and climbs aboard his sleek cruiser. A "billfishing" expert, he's taking out a couple of rich Texans for a rodeo. Jack tugs at his cap's bill with its scrambled eggs and secures a shirt-button over his tan stomach, protruding above bermudas. Nearby in his backyard, Jackie, now five, says, "Get back in there!" as she pokes at a scorpion in a jar. In the house Pearl stirs iced tea for Jack's dinner. She adds a sprig of mint and bruises the leaves lightly against the rim of the glass. |