No one has seen the captain in weeks, and there's a rumor he doesn't even exist. I caught sight of him once, shooting into his quarters. Large bandage on the right side of his face reminds me of the Van Gogh self-portrait with mutilated ear. The other rumor is he was a U-boat commander in World War II. He has a torpedo build, but I think it all stops there. The strongest and craziest of all the lunatics on board is Calvin McNaught. Fortunately, he took a liking to me early on. Says he's a fallen Catholic from "Upper Ireland, the Occupied Part." A hurler's build— agile, strong, fast, lady-killer, body of granite, angular-cut face under curling black hair.

Nils is wrecked, blasted out of his socks. He wants me to drink with him. The cycle was starting on me again, the beautiful spiral descent. Booze, sorrow over Pilar, self-pity, night and fog, terror, rats in the hold gnawing on the lines and sniffing around the KoolAid. And we are still in port. At this rate I might be in Chile by next winter. Since it's summer there during our winter, I wanted to see Pilar now. The magic words "Have another drink." Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, and all that bullshit. Christ, the times we had stumbling around San Francisco together. She in a floppy hat, like some Impressionist painter had put her together, or Levi's and socialist meetings. I never understood why she dragged me to so many diff'erent socialist groups and meetings. Pretty soon I think I became the test animal. A real worker, get him, dissect him, find out why he's the backward brute he is. And Pilar with those green eyes, flashing, black, shining hair. Her Spanish mother, Andalusian anarchist; Irish father, longshoreman and veteran of the 1934 general strike. Pilar was tall but still wore the stacked heels like shorter women, and this cast her thin hips and round ass into a sensual waddle. Her skin brown, but not like the beer-bottlebrown of the South Americans and Mexicans who lived near us.

Pilar, if I could be there, I'd take both of us to the Andes, as high up and far away from the sea as possible. Watch the summer color, bring music off the wind through a flute, bring life to both of us. If you wanted, I'd marry you; your slender hips and tall, slim body. Hold on to the earth away from the tides. Let go of my seed. See summer flowering on the plains.

Now you are a memory. Sailing. A thousand ideas turn around you. You are at the center of me. Ideas go slipping through my fingers. You stay. I take you with me in this heartland of the winter.