“He didn’t bring me back. I ran away.” I didn’t even ask Stitches not to tell. He hid me in the lazarette in a bed of old canvas. The Jap cook brought me some bread and a big can of soup. Fred Nelson was the only one of the crew who didn’t volunteer to help deceive my father about me. He came down to speak to me, but I guess he forgot what he wanted to say because his only words were:
“It ain’t much company for you, kid, these rats what live down here,” and so saying he turned on his heel and went back on deck. I stayed down in the dark hold all day, but I would have stayed there forever rather than go back to the land where everything I did was wrong. Along about six o’clock I heard Father’s voice on the poop deck above me.
“I’ll break every goddamned one of your necks if you don’t tell me where she is,” he said.
I heard Swede and Stitches and the Jap cook stalling.
“I know she came back here. She wouldn’t go no place else, so out with it. Where is she hiding?” he demanded. I heard each of the crew deny over and over that they knew anything about me, then I heard a scuffle. Father was beating some one of them up. I might just as well give up, I concluded, so I climbed out of the lazarette on deck. I faced an angry father.
“What the hell’s the idea?” he shouted at me, but somehow I didn’t feel he was as mad as he looked.
“If I let you give me a good licking, can I stay?” I asked. I would rather have died on that ship than give up. The crew gave me a look with one accord that seemed to say: “You’ve made liars of us.” But strangely enough, Father didn’t try to punish them.
“Get forrard about your duties. What are you loafin’ around here for?” he roared at them. Father gave me a licking with a rope’s end and I swear it felt good. It was like old times again, but when he had finished he took me ashore. My mother was very silent that night. I ate my supper in the kitchen and went to bed without speaking to her.
I was up at daylight the next morning, but I wasn’t soon enough for Father. He had left for the ship an hour before. I went outside and a strong wind was blowing. The sky was clear and I could see the blue water of the bay from our front porch. In the backyard was a giant eucalyptus tree. I climbed it with as much ease as I could scale the rigging on the ship. The higher I climbed the farther I could see out the Golden Gate. From my perch on the peak of the tree, I saw the ships at anchor in the bay. One of them was my ship. That wind meant Father would set sail. He was going without me! I found myself crying inside-like and I kept saying:
“Don’t leave me on land, Father! Come back and get me! Please, oh, please don’t let me die of loneliness here on land.”