23.2.16

In For A Penny - Part 4

   If you have not already, please start here!

...Previous 

   One hour, six minutes, and forty-eight seconds. That’s how long, after he’d been stolen away, that the child started to cry.
   Richard Weatherdecker had never married. He had kids - somewhere. Most likely. He’d never met one to his knowledge. If he’d ever so much as held a child before, he didn’t remember it. This left him unprepared for the snot and screams from the damp little demon in his arms.
   He knew two things about babies already; they ate, and after that they had to be changed. He didn’t know what they ate, or how to change them. He wasn’t even entirely sure what about them was supposed to change. After a short interlude in the mess hall, he learned another thing about babies: they didn’t like food. He tried sardines, he tried salt beef; he tried pickled onions and cucumbers; he tried ship’s biscuits and hard, pungent cheeses.
   “Fuck’s sake,” he swore. “You ain’t even tried it. How d’you know you don’t like it?”
   The baby whined at him in response. It slapped away another offer of brined fish. Weatherdecker felt a wave of hot anger surge up inside him.
   “Would y’throw that thing in the fuckin’ ocean, already?” snapped a snaggle-toothed bilge rat. He sat across from the captain, hunched over a plate of pickled onions. “Can’t take much more o’ that goddamn noise.”
   “Throw you in the fuckin’ ocean if you talk to yer cap’n that way again,” growled Weatherdecker. Normally, that was a perfectly fine way to address a pirate captain, but he wasn’t in the mood for it today.
   “Why don’ we cook it up?” asked the bearded man of seemingly astronomical age beside him. “Fresh meat an’ a quiet ship!”
   “I tole you, it’s money onna bet. Gotta take care of it to get what’s mine. No good to me dead.”
   The child provided ambient wailing to their conversation. Eventually, the bilge rat stuck his onions in his pockets and headed below to the bunks. Most of the mess hall had already done something similar. Weatherdecker was left almost alone with the long-bearded man, gnawing at what he hoped was salt beef, and Mr. Tiller, who sat beside his captain, silently contemplating a mug of ale. He looked up, worried, as Weatherdecker tried to get a rock-hard chunk of ship’s biscuit into the child’s mouth. The kid turned his head away with a squeal of displeasure.
   “C’mon, you idiot! Wouldja try one bite?”
   Mr. Tiller cleared his throat, ever so quietly.
   “Uh, cap’n…babies don’t really have teeth…”
   Weatherdecker looked up, straight ahead. Then he shot a glare at Mr. Tiller, who shied back.
   “What?” demanded the captain.
   “Sorry, I mean, they have teeth, a bit, haha, at that age, but they aren’t, y’know, proper teeth. They can’t really eat hard stuff. Y’may have to soften up that biscuit a lil’.”
   “Huh,” grunted the captain. He took the chunk of biscuit and dunked it in his own mug of ale.
   “Oh, but, uh…” said Mr. Tiller. “See, maybe not booze. Th-that’s not great for kids.”
   “What, then?” demanded Weatherdecker. He stared the boatswain down. Mr. Tiller started to regret getting involved, but the baby’s cries had gotten to him, as well.
   “A-anything but booze, I guess. Maybe you could borrow some milk from Mr. Airedale’s tea boys? Babies mostly drink milk anyway. That should work.”
   “How the fuck d’you know so much about babies, Tiller?”
   “Oh, I don’t know much, no sir, not much at all. I just picked up a few things from my mum. She was a midwife.”
   “You don’t say,” said Weatherdecker. His eyes narrowed. “Seems like you’re more’n fit to look after a kid.”
   “Really, though, I’m not,” insisted the boatswain. “I don’t know much beyond diapers!”
   “That’s more’n I do. Listen, Tiller - howsabout I cut you in to this poker pot, eh? You look after the kid, and you can have Vesco’s cut, seein’ as he’s blackballed all my offers. He don’t wanna help, he don’t get paid. But, if you wanna help…”
   “It’s nice of you to offer, cap’n, but, really, I couldn’t take care of a kid better’n anyone else here. You’d have a better chance with—“
   The boatswain fumbled awkwardly with the squirming child thrust into his arms.
   “Weren’t an offer, Tiller. It was an order. You take ‘em better than Airedale an’ Vesco, I know you do.” The captain stood from the bench, leaving his ale and biscuit behind. “Just keep the kid alive, an’ you’ll get my money AND my thanks. Not a bad deal, eh?”
   Tiller leapt up after his captain, daintily cradling the child.
   “But, wait, cap’n, I can’t!” he cried. “I really don’t know much about kids!”
   “You don’t know much about bein’ a cap’n either, so ya better leave that to those that do!”
   Weatherdecker didn’t turn to look at him once. He disappeared up the steps into the sunshine, free at last to see to his captaining. Mr. Tiller still pursued him.
   “But, cap’n, I - AH!”
   Tiller stopped in his tracks, wincing and holding a hand to his ear. The child’s siren scream was broken by a giggle at Tiller’s teary-eyed grimace. When the boy reached for the pirate’s gold earring again, Mr. Tiller gently guided his hand away.
   “No,” he said firmly. “None o’that!”
   He hurried up to the deck, looking around for his captain; but he was already gone. The toddler started a high-pitched whine again, ready for a second round of tears and flailing fists. Tiller leapt into a dead run at the sound. He ducked and weaved between the men on deck towards his cabin. It was a small room; not big enough for two men, but one man and a baby fit alright.
   The second the door was shut and locked, Tiller gingerly set the wailing boy on the floor and backed away into a corner. He sat down cautiously on the lid of a trunk and watched the toddler scream. A primal instinct buried deep in his brain told Tiller he should be holding the boy, trying to calm him down; most of the rest of him didn’t have any idea how to do that. The babies he had seen his mother tend to were quiet, and they didn’t do much. They hardly moved. They barely opened their eyes.
   He quickly surveyed the room for inspiration; as he turned his head, a bolt of sunlight from the dingy window flashed off his gold hoop. The crying stopped for a moment. The toddler looked entranced by something across the room…and then started wailing again before Tiller could see what it was. But, it gave him an idea. He stood abruptly and tore open the lid of the trunk, digging through a potpourri of junk inside. Some clothes, some coins, a bottle of good rum…aha! A painted wooden horse. A woven doll. And Mr. Tiggles, a stuffed tiger that he did not remember getting but had always had. He sat cross-legged before the baby, to present his findings.
   “Hey! Look!” He trotted the horse over on four stiff legs. “A little horsey! Hm?”
   The child looked at the horse, but did not stop sniffling. Instead of reaching out for it, he whined and reached up towards Tiller.
   “No? A dolly, then, eh?” He waggled the limp lady in front of the child’s face. The child smacked it out of his hand with a squeal, and started to cry in earnest again.
   “Hey, it’s alright!” insisted Tiller. “It’s alright. What about Mr. Tiggles, huh? D’you like Mr. Tiggles?”
   The little boy kept screaming, his tiny fists opening and closing on the air. Tiller sighed, letting the stuffed tiger fall from his hands. He leant in closer, bending forward on his knees.
   “What do you want?” he groaned. “What can I do to make you stop cryin’?”
   Damian looked up at the kindly face peering into his, and reached out for it. A tiny hand closed on Tiller’s long nose.
   “My nothe? Izzat whatAH!” he cried, as the boy used it as a hold to pull himself up off the floor. The other tiny hand grabbed his gold earring. The boatswain ignored the pain; he preferred it to nonstop screaming. The baby giggled with delight as he pulled at the ring.
   “You want my hoop?” asked Tiller. He could only assume that tugs meant yes.
   “But, I got it from—OW! Fer cronch’s sake, take it, then!”
   The baby fell backwards as Tiller’s hands crowded him away from the shiny treasure. He was about to burst into tears again when the earring was shoved into his waiting hands.
   He squealed and started to suck on the gold-coated brass. Tiller sighed with relief at the blissful silence in the cabin. Carefully, slowly, he picked the baby up off the floor. It didn’t seem to mind, not with something properly disgusting in its mouth.
   “Say, now, that’s a good gir…boy…er, baby,” said Tiller. “You ready to try some sardines?”

Next...