"Burial at sea 1961" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Hunter S)

BURIAL AT SEA

This short story was published in the December 1961 issue of Rogue magazine, that also featured the breasts of the woman on the cover. The editorial calls this story it's "lead fiction".

"When do we leave?"

"Monday at dawn. Bring your gear aboard tomorrow and we'll get it stowed away."

Laurenson stood up. "Good. We'd better get back to the hotel and pack." He picked up his camera and started toward the hatch, stooping low to keep from banging his head.

His wife was already on the ladder. Halfway up, she turned and looked back. "It's nice of you to take us along, Mr. Maier. I hope we won't be any trouble."

The skipper stood up. "Not at all - and don't call me Mr. Maier. My name's Chick."

Laurenson smiled and helped his wife up the ladder to the deck, where a small fellow with a new growth of beard was patching a sail. He looked up: "You decided to make the trip?"

"Yes," Laurenson replied. "Should be quite an adventure."

The skipper lifted himself through the hatch and stood beside them in the hot Caribbean sun. "You may change your mind before we get there," he said. "Two weeks at sea is a long time."

"I think well love it," said Anne.

Maier shrugged and lit a cigarette.

Laurenson watched him curiously. The skipper was a full head shorter than he was, but probably weighted about the same. He was somewhere in his early thirties, with heavy shoulders and short muscular legs. He wore nothing but a pair of ragged khaki shorts, and the hair on his body was three different colors: a crisp blond on his legs and head, dark brown on his chest and shoulders, and dull red in his beard.

Laurenson was about to step over to the dock when Maier called him back: "Why don't you give me the money now, so I can get the groceries."

Laurenson handed him the checks and Maier counted them. "Okay," he said. "Get here about noon tomorrow. We have some work to do."

Anne smiled impishly. "You want me to work, too?"

Maier looked at her. "I'll put you to work," he said quietly. "You look like you might be good for something."

Laurenson felt his stomach tighten. "Come on," he said. "Let's go."

He followed Anne along the rickety pier. At the end they stopped to look back at Maiers boat. It was an old, fifty-foot sloop with a black hull and the name "Sebastian" painted in gold letters on the stern. It was a little different from the others in the harbor. They were charter-boats, everything from tiny sloops to huge, three-masted schooners, and their naked spars swayed lazily against a background of green hills and bright blue sky.

The Laurensons were taking an island-hopping vacation. They had started in Trinidad and worked their way north to St. Cyr. Now, instead of flying back to Cleveland, where he was in hi last year of medical school, they were going back to the States on the Sebastian.

After breakfast the next day they took their gear aboard the Sebastians and stowed it in lockers below their bunks on either side of the main cabin. Maier and the other crewman, Bill Eble, would sleep in the skippers cabin in the stern.

Maier had gone ashore and Eble told them what had to be done. He was young, slightly pudgy, and obviously working very hard to grow a beard. He told them he'd met Maier through a mutual friend in New York and had flown down several weeks ago to "give Chick a hand" on the trip back to Long Island, where the boat would stay for the summer.

Maier appeared late in the afternoon, still wearing nothing but the khaki shorts. he carried a can of beer and a thick piece of rope that he slapped on the mast, and occasionally on the palm of his hand.

Laurenson suspected he was drunk. Christ, he thought, the little ape carries this skipper act right to the limit - strutting around the deck with a goddamn whip!

Maier tossed the empty beer can into the harbor. "Anne," he said, "go down and fix us a little grub. Theres some ground beef in the icebox. Might as well eat it before it goes bad."