Readers: If terms used escape you, see notes at the end.

The night fog was a blanket laid over Adeline Street and the harbor district. Even with my collar up and hat pulled down, it collected on my eyebrows, lashes and clothes. Feeling my way down the middle of the slippery, unfamiliar pavement, gloved hands in my seaman’s coat pockets, I stayed well clear of the darkened store fronts and the trash-strewn gutters. My ears were open for anyone else about.

The street lights were not helpful, each one only a dim glow when I was close enough to see it. There were no shadows and the hundred yards between them were lost to the dark.

Closing the pierside, I could smell the harbor more strongly. All of the trash, garbage and sewage had collected there to remain until the tide turned and flushed it into the bay.

I still had a little time before the cops passed by on their closing hours enforcement patrols. I didn’t want to meet those worthless pricks again.

I had watched them operate during this last couple of days. They would cadge a couple of drinks, promote a blow job, or parlay it into a freebie poke from one of the drabs, the ones still there and desperate for an all-nighter. The women knew that a quickie might make the screws more pleasant on the next waterfront clean up sweep.

The stink of the dive came through the moist air as I closed on it. Stale beer, remnants of voided bellies and bladders, the wastes dropped into the spaces between the buildings, all melded with the rotting garbage in the gutter to become a nauseating stench.

Well, I did not expect to be here long.

The letters on the lighted sign, MAGDA’S - Honest Drinks, Good Food, were barely legible, faded over the years in the weather and the salt air.

The door opened easily after pushing down on the thumb-levered latch. Closing it, I looked over the dimly-lighted room. There were the typical greasy spoon odors of congealed grease and burned food.

The bar’s counter was to the right; a few tables were on my left. They were empty, chairs upended on the tops.

Someone’s grandmother was sitting at the bar’s counter, sizing me up as I came in. The mouth split her face and somehow the teeth stayed in place as she grimaced a smile. The dress was tight on her hips, loose on her chest. A leg slithered past the hem when she swiveled toward me, dark hose clipped to a garter.

The guy, who must have been the bartender, was leaning against the far end of the counter, smoking a blackened and misshapen stick. Surely, a Crookes, like the Master’s, rum soaked, and evil smelling.

He was shorter than me, older, heavier, a round, tooth-brush-mustached face, short hair. His sleeves were bloused, held tight on his forearms with the garters above his elbows.

He watched me for a couple of steps before he smiled, showing a mouth full of gold-capped teeth.

“Evenin’ sailor, kitchen’s closed. What’ll you have?”

“Seven and seven?”

“Smart ass.” He laughed, the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of liquor, even if it was not against the law to buy it. Regardless, he pulled a bottle from below the counter. Tipping a couple of fingers into a glass, he passed it to me when I settled onto the stool midway down the counter. It smelled like turpentine. Dark enough, maybe a little creosote for color with a touch of cayenne for flavor, real bootleg rot gut. It must have been a challenge, or he had a clientele with main drums for stomachs.

I spun a quarter off my thumb, arcing it across the counter and into his shirt pocket. He nodded his approval at my little trick. With a smile, he fished it out and dropped it into a drawer. He started to hand a dime back. I shook my head and he winked, sweeping it back into the drawer.

“You’re not from around here are you, sailor?”

I heard the woman walking slowly toward us and the scrape of the stool as she found the seat next to me.

“Yeah, Maritimes,” I answered.

He nodded, grinning. “Blue-noser, eh?”

“Uh, huh.”

The woman put her hand on my arm, trying for my attention. I looked at her, and she ran that ghastly smile again.

My appraisal was quick and unflattering.

Her hair was thinning, and dyed a faded, blotchy henna. Maybe not a grandmother, more of an age that my mother could have been. She might have been pretty … once. At about five feet, she would have been petite. I always wondered how they came to this.

I looked back at my glass. She took her hand away.

“You’re not from around here, either, are you? You sound like a Kraut.”

“Close.” He smiled. “Netherlands, I sailed for Lloyds. Nitrates,” he added.

“Long time ‘way from home.”

“True enough.” He polished the counter with a towel, and waited.

“Long way from home, now, too.”

He leaned back, arms straight and looked directly at me.

“I jumped ship in Mexico when the war broke out in ‘14. Knew we couldn’t make it home. Made my way here after the Armistice.”

“Tough times!”

“Too true, too often, sailor.”.

We were quiet for a minute, studying each other.

“Signed on?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Ticket?”

“First Engineer.” His face changed, apparently impressed..

“Ordinary,” he said.

“Steam?”

He laughed, then turned his head. He touched his left ear and the single gold ear ring, curious to see if I knew.

“Brandenburger?”

“Yeah.” Then he grinned.

“Have one, barkeep. You earned it. Not many left who can claim that.” I set a half-dollar quietly on the counter for him.

“Thank you, sir. Don’t mind if I do. Here,” and pulled another bottle up with a pair of glasses. He poured out the two of them from the Red Label before recorking it. He took my original and pushed it over to the woman.

“Say, ‘Thank you,” to the man, Lettie.”

She took the glass and gulped half of it down before looking at us, in tears, and croaked out her thanks.

I started to take a sip of the scotch when the Westminster chimes from the clock on the mirrored wall behind the bar, caught, and held my attention. Two bells of the midwatch. Nothing here, time to go.

As if on cue, at the last note struck, an old timer came gimping through a door next to the bar. It struck me as a mimic of a Swarzwalde clock.

Not a word came from him as he put the bucket down close to us. Lifting the mop to wring it out by hand, he began swamping out the room.

This close, I saw his full-length peg-leg.

It was crudely formed from rough-sawn planks and held together with screws. He needed a man’s leather belt and suspenders to hold it in place. Well, that explained the thump when he walked. A bit of a tire’s tread was nailed to the end of it.

Working, he came close by us as I watched. Stooping to lift the bucket, the end of the wooden peg slipped on the wet floor. He fell, sprawling, flat on his face, and overturning the bucket. He was scuttling about trying to regain his footing in the spreading pool of dirty water.

Leaning over, his hands on the outside edge of the counter, the barkeep disgustedly growled, “Jeezus, you clumsy old fart. Clean that mess up. I want to get out of here sometime this morning.”

He grinned at me, shaking his head while holding up his glass to me in a salute.

I let go of mine and stepped off my stool to take the old man’s arms. I helped him stand. He was wet and slippery as I lifted him, and I had to step carefully. We were face-to-whiskery face for an instant before I released him and straightened.

“Thank ya’, sir, sorry.” He pulled a towel out and began wiping off my coat, cowering as he glanced at the barkeep.

“Enough, old timer. Belay. It’s right enough, let be.” I gently pushed him away.

Standing there, I saw his miraculous medal that had come out from under his shirt.

“Really nice,” I said as I fingered it, and went on instant alert.

He snatched it away. I stood back with my hands open and backed away, watching the barkeep and the woman. I shrugged and sat back on my stool.

The barkeep hadn’t taken a sip yet. He was watching me with a different expression now.

I tipped my visored hat back, and looked at him. Seeing my face fully in the light for the first time, he rushed to reach under the counter. Before he could, I had his arm, and yanked him over the counter with a grip on his trouser’s belt. He was screaming in pain from the dislocated shoulder as I slid him off the top and into the ancient swinging the mop at me. They went down in a heap.

The woman came off her stool with a banshee’s screech, a narrow-bladed skinner’s knife in hand. She slashed at me, easily warded off by a forearm blow that knocked her off balance.

I swept her off her feet and kicked her in the jaw as she fell, breaking it and her neck. Turning, the two men were still on the floor when I kicked the barkeep’s head hard enough to feel the skull give under the steel toe of my boot.

The old-timer tried to run.

I had him by the neck, holding him down on the floor, my knee in his stomach. Gibbering as I leaned over him, he was too terrified to say anything after he saw me. Then he was screaming until I put my hand over his mouth, pressing his lips against the toothless gums.

“Be quiet!” Quaking under my grasp, he tried to stay still.

“You’re dead,” he squealed, when I took my hand away.

“Does this feel dead?” I asked. I pinched his nose hard enough to make it bleed. He choked on the blood. It bubbled from his nostrils when he coughed. He swallowed a couple of times, and stared at me.

“What’s this?” I asked, tearing the heavy chain from around his neck and over his head. He yelped as the links caught and tore bits of hair from his tonsure.

“Tweren’t me.” He began blubbering. Slapping him hard a couple of times stopped the distracting noise.

“You’ve got it.” I held it in my fist, shaking it in his face. “What happened?”

“It was him,” jerking his head toward the barkeep’s body. “And, her.”

Gathering his shirt in a fist, I raised his face to mine.

“Tell me.”

**********

Stripped bare, I turned off the tap of my stateroom’s sink and toweled myself dry. I had carefully rinsed off his medal first, before laying it on a towel. Now, I patted it dry. Finished, I pulled mine around from my back, placed there while washing off the remnants of the tussle.

Lifting Lars’, I read the engraved Confirmation dates on each, 25 September 1907. Save for the names, they were otherwise identical, as we were.

My half-hour-younger, little brother had been murdered for everything he had on his person. After nearly two years, this was all that was left from when he went missing.

“Jumped ship,” they said, and closed the case.

Less careful than I, he had come to a violent end. They had slaughtered him like a hog. Finished with their bloody deed, they had dropped his gutted and weighted body into the Alameda Channel through a trap door in the bar’s storeroom.

Now, the three of them were food for the crabs, laid amidst the others they had preyed upon over the years. Ripped open from chin to crotch, their guts cut to ribbons, I had ballasted them with the canned goods from the larder and dropped them through the same portal.

Knowing that hope was gone, there came anguish. Dry-eyed and burning, unable to weep, I leaned against the bulkhead and prayed for my brother.

“Saint Nicholas, patron of mariners and those souls in Purgatory, hear me, please.”

Notes:

Closed it - Nautical term for approaching something, as in closing the distance

Master - Title of the captain of a merchant vessel

Seven and Seven - Mixed drink, Seagram’s Seven and 7-Up

Main Drums - Steam boiler drum that contains water and generates the steam for the engines.

Maritimes - The Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada on the Atlantic coast

Blue Nose - A native of Nova Scotia

Signed on - Signature on contract to sail on a ship for the specific voyage

Ticket - Merchant Seaman’s License to perform specific duties aboard ship

First Engineer - First Assistant to the Chief Engineer of the ship

Ordinary [Seaman] - Deck hand of lowest rank and responsibility

Steam - In this instance, steam or sail-driven vessel

Left ear ring - Worn by men who rounded Cape Horn under sail - Mark of bravery and competence.

Brandenburger - Iron-hulled sailing ships in the grain and wool trade, Australia to Europe, in late 19th, early 20th centuries. Later, hauling guano from Pacific islands to Europe for fertilizer, the “nitrates trade”.

Two Bells of the Mid-Watch - Old style of timekeeping aboard ships under sail. They marked four hour watches beginning at midnight with eight bells, the end of the First Watch, and the beginning of the Mid Watch, at 12:00 pm or 0000.

12:30 am or 0030, was one bell, 1:00 am or 0100, was two bells, a progression continuing until the end of the watch at 4:00 am or 0400 and eight bells, the end of the Mid-Watch and the beginning of the next four hour watch.

Sailing ship’s lacked ship’s clocks, other than the navigator’s chronometer. Time was kept by a pair of half-hour glasses at the helm. When the navigator identified the local zenith, the glasses were turned and eight bells of the Forenoon Watch was rung. The glasses were turned every half hour after that, for each watch and the appropriate number of bells were rung.

Scwarzwalde - German “Black Forest” - noted for the animated clocks with figures of animals popping out of the clock and marking the hours.