Was every night going to be like this? With the heat and the sweat and the memories, over and over again? If he hadn’t come into the bedroom just then…. Billy groaned, then cut off the sound before it left his throat. He sat up and put his palms to his eyes, pressing hard until the jagged redness of their pressure filled the darkness before him. What about the dirt, should he use it now? He had bought it for a time like this, it had cost two D’s, maybe now was the right time. They said you couldn’t get hooked on it, but everybody lied.
Feeling his way in the darkness, he ran his hand up the armored cable on the steel wall to the disused junction box. The dirt was still there; his fingers pressed against the scrap of polythene it was wrapped in. Should he use it now? The whistle throbbed through the heat again and he found that he had dug his fingernails into the sides of his legs. His shorts were against the wall where he had thrown them and he pulled them on and reached down the little packet and went and opened the passageway door as quietly as he could. His bare feet were silent on the warm metal deck.
All of the portholes and windows were open, blind black eyes in the rust-streaked walls. People were sleeping there, on all sides, in every cabin and compartment. Billy climbed to the top deck and the blind eyes still gaped at him. The last ladder led up to the bridge, once sealed and inviolate before two generations of children had patiently picked away at the covers and shattered the locks. Now the door was gone, the frames and glass long vanished from the windows. During the day this was a favorite playground for the swarming children of the Columbia Victory, but it was deserted and silent now, the only reminder of their presence the sharp smell of urine in the corners. Billy went in.
Only the most solid of the nautical fittings remained: a steel chart table welded to one wall, the ship’s telegraph, the steering wheel with half of its spokes missing. Billy carefully opened the packet of dirt on the chart table and poked his finger into the gray dust that was barely visible in the starlight. What did they call it? LSD? It was cut anyway, whatever it was, that’s why they called it dirt. They mixed dirt or something with it to stretch it. You had to take all of it, dirt and all, to get enough LSD into you so you could feel it. He had watched Sam-Sam and some of the other Tigers sniff it, but he had never done it himself. How had they done it? He lifted the crumpled plastic and held it to his nose, sealing one nostril with his thumb, then inhaled strongly. The only sensation was an outrageous tickling and he pinched his nose shut tightly so he wouldn’t sneeze all the stuff away. When the irritation died down he snuffed the remaining powder into his other nostril and threw the scrap of thin plastic to the floor.
There was no sensation, nothing at all, the world was the same and Billy knew that he had been cheated. Two D’s shot, gone for nothing. He leaned out of the glassless, frameless window and tears mixed with the perspiration on his face. He cried and thought about that for a while and thought how glad he was it was dark and no one could see him crying, not him, eighteen years old. Under his fingers the rough metal of the window opening had the feel of miniature mountain peaks and valleys. Jagged, smooth, soft, hard. He leaned close and stroked with his fingertips and the pleasure of the touch sent shivers of love running the length of his spine. Why had he never noticed this before? Bending, he put out his tongue and the sweet-sour-iron-dirt taste was so wonderful, and when he let the sharp front edges of his teeth touch the metal it felt as though he had bitten off a piece of steel half as big as the bridge.
A ship’s whistle filled the world with its sound, somewhere out on the river or close by, and he knew that it was more than a whistle, it was music, high, low and all around him and he opened his mouth wide so that he could taste it better. Was it his ship that had sounded the whistle? The dark outlines of spars, masts, wires, funnels, aerials, guys, stays, boats, moved on all sides of him, dancing black patterns against the other blackness of the sky. They were all sailing, of course, he had always known they would and this was the time. He signaled the engine room and grabbed the wheel—the wood of the handles so filling and round as tumescent organs, one for each hand!—turning and steering and sending the ship through the heaving forest of black skeletons.
And the crew worked too, good crew. He whispered orders to them because they were so good they could hear his orders even if he only thought them, not said them, and he wiped at his streaming nose. They were down below on the decks doing all the good things a good crew did while he guided the ship up here for all of them. They whispered as they toiled and two of them just below the bridge leaned together and he heard one ask “Everyone in position?” which was good to hear, and another said “Yes, sir,” which was good to hear and he could see some of his men moving on the decks and others at the gangplanks and others going below. In his hands the wheel felt strong and big and he kept it turning slowly back and forth guiding his ship through the other ships.