The Ordinary Seaman by Francisco Goldman

what you’re used to was nothing new to them, their postures seemed to say. I feel like drinking eighteen, thought Esteban. He imagined himself home in Corinto, drinking with his friends on the beach, savoring the memory more than the beer. But then, the last time, they’d gone from the beach to that burdel—where she’d rolled over on her belly and thrust her smooth little nalgas up at him, looking at him over her shoulder, and right there he’d hallucinated that she’d turned into a fiendishly grinning dog, and now a heavy sigh poured out of him, he stared down sadly at the can in his hand, told himself, Fuck it, ni verga, it was right for him to be trapped on a broken ship with fourteen other males.
    There was enough beer for each member of the crew to have two. When José Mateo reached into the cooler for another, Tomaso Tostado announced that he was saving
his
second beer for after dinner. El Faro said that was a good idea. And Pínpoyo said, “Why not?” And everyone looked at the cook crouched over the cooler. Mesmerized as they were by the pleasure of that first beer, the second loomed as an immense problem—suddenly it seemed terrible to have no more beer left if they had two so quickly, a beerless barbecue, meeting, and night stretching ahead—which Tomaso Tostado had just solved. He’s smart, always knows just what to say, Tomaso Tostado; with jowly cheeks and solemn Indian eyes in a square head he looks like a pensive rabbit, one with a daffy smile now, gold tooth over missing teeth. José Mateo grunted, dropped the can back into the cooler, and trudged back into the mess, where Bernardo was husking corn and taking small sips from his beer,letting it chill and then slowly warm his mouth before swallowing. The water in the battered aluminum pot on the little two-burner butane stove was taking a long time to boil. José Mateo picked up Bernardo’s can and took a long, greedy drink.
    “You can have the rest,” said Bernardo. “But I get one of your ears of corn.”
    The cook drank down the rest of the beer without even answering.
    Outside, on the horizon, clouds were massed into the shape of a long, opaquely black bow tie, half a mottled moon protruding over the knot in the yellowish gray sky. A breeze, faint and odorless, strained through the brackish harbor heat, the new smell of burning charcoal, like a ghost stepping through a wall.
    Capitán Elias said to let the charcoal cook for another twenty minutes or so; each taking a beer, their first, the officers went inside to the corridor, climbed the switchback stairs to the bridge. The crew stood around the barbecue grill anticipating steak as if deliciously seared, crunchy steak fat was already melting down to nothing inside their salivating mouths, empty stomachs growling and crumpling. So they didn’t even notice the first slow dollops of rain. José Mateo came out of the mess for another beer just as the rain began pelting down faster. He glanced at the others with slit-eyed disbelief, wheeled the grill into the passage under the deckhouse’s second level, went for his “second” beer. Then the hungry daydreamers woke up, hurrying for cover and into the mess. Thunder rumbled low in the sky, and as if this was the signal for all the dancers in the chorus to charge out from the wings at once, stiff and steady rain swept over the ship, clattering against the deck, steaming off the jumping water in the cove.
    When the officers came down from the bridge, Capitán Elias was carrying the Coleman lamp and Mark the radio-cassette player that they usually kept locked up in the wheelhouse; encased in black plastic, this music box wasn’t as large as the ones los blacks brought to the pier at night. Mark set the music box down on the floor in a corner of the mess, tuned it to a Spanish-language station, stood up and smiled, looking around as if he wanted to say something. All eyes focused on the musicbox, its beady red light glowing, as Spanish, so