Apprentice To The Sorcerer

I didn’t sleep a wink. All night long I writhed in a cold sweat, haunted by the exchange on the deck and the aftermath of dealing with my father. So many men in my life wanted to be first. They forced me to choose between a life I wanted and a life that crushed my spirit. I felt angry, sad, disillusioned, and ultimately, alone.

The day brought me to my clumsiest behavior ever on a ship. I fell twice out of the rigging. I stumbled over a loose coil of rope and pitched face first into the mizzenmast. Gihr, a superstitious Persian, started a fight with me in the galley for my ham-fisted behavior. I gave as good as I got but I still suffered having both my eyes blackened. Glad I could not see myself, I poked around on my face, making notes of sore spots.

Ragetti took my mind off of my problems for nearly an hour at evening. He’d dropped his eye into a half-heated vat of spiced rum. Since he couldn’t remember what I’d told him about his eye and dirt, he came to me for advice. I washed his eye socket out again and cleaned his wooden eye, resolving not to drink any spiced rum on ship for awhile.

Soon, Ragetti’s companion, Pintel, joined us. He wanted his head shaved and no one else had a razor. It amazed me he didn’t worry about my day’s awkwardness combined with a straight razor. I cut his greasy hair short, lathered his head and shaved him. Ragetti sat at his feet, playing liar’s dice with him. They were up to an imaginary pot of three thousand doubloons before Pintel got tired of Ragetti’s philosophizing and kicked the dice.

Mokulu noticed us in the corner and came over. His dark eyes swept across the scene. Pintel sitting in a pile of long, greasy hairs, his head lathered up, and Ragetti, crawling around in search of his dice. “You can make de locks?” he asked.

I didn’t know what he meant and it must have showed. Mokulu tossed his head impatiently. “Like de natives, like de captain,” he explained, running a hand over his bushy head.

“Hair ropes,” Pintel grunted. “It’s easy. You need honey and wax.”

“Not easy,” Mokulu argued. “Good ones, dey take long time.”

“I can try,” I said. “Maybe I could look at the captain’s head and see how to do it.”

“You can do dis, I owe you favor,” Mokulu offered. “Wanted de hair ropes long time.”

I finished Pintel’s shave-job and wiped my razor, putting it in my pocket. “Sounds fair,” I replied. “We go together to see the captain.”

“He is on helm.” Mokulu gestured for me to precede him. Pintel shoved the apple he owed me into my pocket and wandered to his hammock. Ragetti found his last missing die and rattled them all with a happy expression on his face.

Jack’s expression changed from introspective to alert when we approached him. Mokulu pointed at me. “De boy say he do my hair like yours, captain,” he said respectfully, “If you not care and he see your head.”

The corner of Jack’s mouth drew up. “Gibbs,” he called out. “Take the helm.”

Jack motioned for us to follow him into his cabin. He took off his hat and untied his bandana. Sitting, he poured a mug of grog and looked at us. His eyes slid over my face, turning hard as he looked at my injuries. “What happened to your face, lad?” he asked softly.

I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble or to draw attention to myself. Only rats told on each other. Apparently, Mokulu didn’t share my view. “Gihr angry over boy not working well today,” Mokulu said, adulterating my noble silence on the subject.

“It isn’t all Gihr,” I defended. “I fell against the mizzen this morning.” I twitched my hands. “May I look at your hair, captain?”

“I sat down, didn’t I?” Jack answered, sighing.

I stood behind him and took his mass of hair in my hands. It felt soft, even the knotted ropes were springy. I followed them to his scalp to see the pattern of division used. It didn’t look too complicated. I didn’t know how the honey and wax figured into the process, however.

Really, Jack’s hair was a complicated sculpture. The middle section, though tangled, wasn’t knotted. The ropes took up equal measures of the sides of his head. A fat braid ran through the middle of the back, meant to lie over his bandana. A small section of hair he had pulled up to the right of the braid. His beads and trinkets jingled together pleasingly as I pulled his mane this way and that. The scent of him made my belly clench.

“I can do it,” I announced, having an epiphany. “One must roll the hair in their palms and use the honey and wax to stick it all together.”

“Beeswax by itself works fine,” Jack said. “I started my knots twenty years ago or more and that’s all I used.” He tied his bandana back on, donned his hat, and smiled at us. “Better start in the morning,” he said. “It’s going to take at least six hours.”

“What abou’ our duties?” Mokulu said doubtfully.

“You’ll be on second shift instead of first. Gihr and Faraday will go to evening. Pintel and Ragetti go to first shift.” Jack tilted his head this way and that, brown eyes rolling thoughtfully. “Scratch that. Faraday and Palma go to evening shift. Gihr won’t have shifts tomorrow.”

“What did he mean by that?” I asked Mokulu as we watched Jack strut back to the helm.

“I not know Captain’s mind, to my regret,” Mokulu answered. “He like weasel in henhouse while dog sleeps. He do mos’ damage when quiet.”

We went to the crew’s flop and fell into my hammock. I fell asleep listening to the familiar sounds of snoring, Ragetti and Pintel conversing, and Gibbs complaining about the deck under his back.

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Four hours into Mokulu’s hairstyle and I felt exhausted. Separate, re-separate, pull, twist, roll, apply wax, roll, roll, apply wax, roll, twist and roll. Each rope took at least ten minutes. I still had about nine sections left.

We’d gathered a crowd. The crew watched us like we were the most interesting things in the world. No one dared to make a negative comment, not with Mokulu’s size and temper. This unusual solicitation proved advantageous to the amount of business our partner sideshow provided. Jack had strapped Gihr to the mizzenmast, hands tied in front of him. Everyone that walked by was obligated to kick him in the pants. By now the kicks were less mean.

I mused over Jack’s little speech as I finished hair rope thirty-one. “We stand together,” he’d said. “We stand together or we get picked off. We don’t steal from each other, we don’t fight with each other, and we don’t sleep with another man’s woman, savvy?”

When we’d loudly agreed, Jack nodded. “The Code says death to the man who steals from his brother, humiliation for the man who strikes his brother, and emasculation for those who sleep with their brother’s woman.” He turned to Gibbs. “Mr. Gibbs, tie Mr. Gihr to the middle mast.”

Of course, the morning had certainly been active from that point on.

“Two more,” I said to Mokulu, having to wake him up. “I think you’ll like it.”

Mokulu drifted off asleep the moment I stopped talking. I finished the job and left him sitting on the deck. Jack intercepted me as I went to wash my hands. “He has to see it,” he said, smiling, brandishing a glass. “You did well. I know who to go to when mine need tightened.”

Even Jack’s most innocent remarks sounded perverted. Double talk and double entendres meshed in his mouth with startling alacrity. I stared at his arse as he glided along in front of me.

“Wake up, you dog,” Jack said, kicking Mokulu’s chair. Mokulu snorted awake, arms already out, thrashing. Jack slapped him on top of his head and shoved the glass in his face. “The lad made you handsome,” he joked, causing his audience to laugh. “We’ll be the best looking, best stitched-together pirates on the seven.”

Mokulu hadn’t heard a word after seeing himself. His hands traced the ropes, pulled them forward and caressed them with startling gentleness. The look in his eyes made me wonder if I’d fulfilled some dream of his. He couldn’t stop looking in the glass.

Jack finally reached down, took Mokulu’s hand, and wrapped it around the handle of his mirror. “Keep it,” he said, chuckling. “I’ll get another one in Madagascar. Maybe we should all get one, since we’ll be beautiful.”

Suddenly, I was enveloped in big, sweaty man. Mokulu’s embrace threatened to pop my eyeballs out. “You do it right,” he shouted. “Just like my uncle!”

“Glad you like it,” I gasped.

“I love it!” Mokulu tossed his head. “What do the rest think?”

Most everyone made an approving noise, and those who didn’t, didn’t make noise at all.

I had to admit it improved Mokulu’s appearance by ninety percent. He no longer looked like a wild bush man. The uniform ropes of black gave him a sleeker look, softened out the width of his brow somehow.

“Little lad, a favor be yours,” Mokulu said, releasing me.

“I don’t need anything yet,” I answered.

“You tell me when,” he said.

We went to our duties thereafter. Mokulu flitted through the lines like a butterfly, watching his hair fall over his shoulders when he could. I grinned. Men could be every bit as vain as women, even pirate men.