Chapter 4: John Silver; A Place of Wages and How They Were Obtained
"You know the old market place down by the ports, nay do you, boy?" The overgrown, red-faced woman asked of John Silver, her young, informal employee.
"Yes, Mrs. Thatcher," rejoined John, in somewhat of a dogged manner, "I do know that market place."
"Just so. And you know the place there where they sell the fresh fish?"
"I do, ma'am, although not as much as the market place itself. My father doesn't have a taste brave 'nough for the market place's fish."
"Nix to your father and his taste buds, boy! No one asked for that remark."
John peered at her with his youthful, sensitive peripheral vision, and ensnared a rather malcontented Mrs. Thatcher, which was not an exotic trait for the woman, in his watchful gaze. John parried quickly, lowering his eyes back to the dry potato he was peeling, "What do you want me to do at the market place by the port?"
The woman's complexion seemed to grow even more sanguine as she turned from John's inquiry, for it seemed that the mere existence of it incensed her profoundly. She did, however, manage to deliver a resolve for him, and, in turn, came back around to face him after drawing forth one goldspecie and four silverpieces from her small purse.
"Go to the place and buy two fat trout fishes—those fish come in all kinds of sizes, so get two big ones—and you can keep whatever's left."
"Whatever's left?"
"Aye, whatever's left of what I give you, and that'll be your money for today."
"But… there'll be almost nothing left."
"Am I to hand over everything I've got, boy?" She asked him wrathfully, but with little gesticulation or change in face. "It is I who must pay for a poor family; you're just lookin' for some sweets at the market!"
John reverted back to being staid. "Yes ma'am…" and then he added charily, "Is there a price limit on how much I am to spend?"
"I'm going t' tell you. Buy the best quality fish you can afford with that… if there's anything left afterward, keep it."
"All of it?"
"All of it; but ask again, and I won't give it to you."
So John took the three money pieces and stole out of the house to purchase Mrs. Thatcher's fish, remarking to himself—however with no outwardly evidence—that she was the worst woman he had ever met indeed, and that no heart inside his chest would be broken if he paid for the least-favorable quality of fish and kept the excess money pieces for himself. This was, also, a deliciously malevolent idea, and as John pursued a zigzag course along the streets of his little town, he smiled impishly at it with increasing admiration for his own spite. His conscience, though, was of a stronger power, and possessed a still fast grip within the little boy, and as John traversed through the dirty streets in his sprightly manner, he could not find the apathetic character within him to execute his execrable scheme, and thusly laid it to rest, compromising with himself to buy a high-quality fish, but buy one low enough to quell his own financial necessities.
John had captured this humble employment under the ungainly Mrs. Thatcher the year before; Mrs. Thatcher being a woman left companionless during working days, since her husband worked three jobs in the expansion of a week, and since she was childless, for she had lost two twin infants after their premature birth.
John was then, accordingly, appointed to be Mrs. Thatcher's odd-job man—running errands, such as this mentioned; helping her with laundry, cleaning, and the occasional gardening—all of which John particularly loathed. All except the jobs when he helped her cook; only then did John muse with slight reverence at how deeply the ungraceful and the corpulent Mrs. Thatcher could suddenly fly on her feet and make the material in her dress twirl about her legs when in the kitchen. Everything was magic at mealtime; her hair would be pulled back and her beady eyes would brighten with an elegant shine that radiated about her small kitchen, and that beamed off her rusted appliances so that they shimmered like gold; and the steam from the pots would dance above, and all the spices would catch the air and blow about until caught by the nose of the impressed little John Silver, who always stood idly by, in silent smiles, until called forth.
The port, to where John was approaching on his quest for the trout, rippled in its own kind of dance and shimmer with its colorful and brilliant shifts of that great tapestry which a city puts on for a general assemble. The people in the port relaxed in application to their various modes of business as the crowds bustled; and all had one hand in their pocket to prevent it from being picked, and another out in front of them to greet and talk with whomever they were accompanied with. Here, it is true, there were the popular appliances of mass merriment that can be found in any crowded area—the inartistic shows of a theatrical nature, the gleeman with his box of music and the little monkey capering at his side, the street magician with his age-old but still effective productions, and the flower girls who sold their blossoms for a copperpiece. Today, all such personnel in correspondence weaved in and out through the inter-twining of the pedestrian traffic, echoed by the cries of mantabirds, and framed by the abyss of the cloudless sky and the towering sails of the docking ships.
The market was so proud as to be the core of this merriment, and grinned almost too broadly as it overlapped with peasants and their minimal money pieces, come to buy their food and clothing, and other basic human urgencies.
John Silver pushed lightly through the crowd, feeling the heat of the bright midday sun on his back. He stood a moment aside from the current of people to catch his breath and find his bearings, and to locate the foul-smelling fish side of the market of which he was destined. The light aroma of fresh bread drifted passed him, intermingled with the yellow smell of new apples, and the heavy, earthy smell of raw meat. John looked about him, his eyes squinting in the sun, and then continued to pursue the fish, for at last he'd found it.
"Two big trout fishes please, Sir," John requested from the Arcturian at one outpost of the fish market, and, placing the coins Mrs. Thatcher had given him on the table, save the goldspecie, added, "In whatever quality these will buy."
The Arcturian slid the coins into his hand and counted them, and then looked at John with one eyebrow raised. "These'll buy ye a-trouts like them," he answered strangely but confidently, gesturing loosely to a size of trout half the length of John's arm, which looked about thirty minutes old. The goldspecie John had withheld suddenly burned in his pocket like a handful of fire, but John replied obdurately, "Fine. I'll buy those two."
The trout were pulled down and wrapped in paper to protect them from flies, and the Arcturian presented John with a sack so the boy would not have to toil with the fish over his shoulder or under his arm, but in his hand like groceries. The exchange done, John swerved away and ran down the slope of the westward dip to the main docks—Jonas's workplace at the navy pay office was located easterly, and John was intelligent enough to avoid the eastern port—and flew down to the lines of ships exporting and importing goods.
Such a wonder John engaged himself in as he thirstily drank in this unfamiliar and breathtaking site; the hulls so mighty with their dark, concaved shapes; their scuppers watching John like eyes as he caprioled passed them in awe. The masts creaked with a surge of unleashed power, and the gentle sails billowed and pitched, resembling heavenly white angels drifting against the immortal blue of the Etherium.
The swarthy, coarsely-faced personages of those who sailed these ships and the Etherium were most impressive, however; as John watched them in a terrified pleasure as they hauled crates of goods from far-away planets in and out of ships, and sang brisk songs of space in a tune of gaiety, but in voices almost sounding devilish.
Many times John would be smiled at by one of them as he observed them in their work, and at previous times John's awe-stricken horror of their mysterious savagery would make him leap with adrenaline and he would fly from the man in a wild and panicked elation. Now, however, John was older, and although his petrified veneration still swelled within him, the boy's surges of adrenaline urged him to respond somehow opposed to fleeing as he did. He particularly felt this exigency to seize any opportunity that presented itself to correspond with one of these space fiends as he flitted about on nervous feet around them, his sack of fish bouncing after him in his quick jolts.
That very opportunity presented itself almost illusory, as if John, in his rattled movements while he watched them along the docks, had entered a new dimension—the strange spacers' own, esoteric orbit of blue space that stretched and survived in their minds as the land so lived in John. The young sailor—a human, although John knew him as part of the Terran species—had been watching with a marvel of his own at the little Ursid with the sack of trout, who was gazing with a longing fright at the ships and the spacers, and he at length decided to wave the boy toward him and ask him if he was lost.
"Hello, there!" was the first thing the young man called to the perplexed little creature, but, when the boy flinched at his voice and danced oddly and clumsily a little way from him, the sailor furrowed his brow with a light chuckle of confusion. "Hello, there, I said!" the man tried again, "Why don't you come over here? Have you lost your way?"
The inner struggle, if any took place, need not be described in John's horrified but curious little heart, and even as part of him drew back in fear, another, stronger magnet pulled him in the direction of the sailor summoning him, and these contradictory emotions intermixed, making John's approach crooked and hesitant.
"I don't bite," the Sailor assured in an amused manner as he studied John near him. Presently, the boy did indeed come closer, but it seemed as though an obscure and bizarre gravitational field prevented the boy from extending himself any further than that of a circuit of yards. Thusly, the young man perceived himself in an impenetrable aura—or the boy himself possessed one—which inhibited the usual space between another person and himself when he conversed with someone.
"I know, sir, that you don't bite; and I'm not lost, either." John answered him with a small simper breaking across his lips.
The char-colored young man crossed his arms over his chest, heedful of the boy's timidity, and smiling benignly. "Then what're you doing down by these docks?" and then lifting a lanate eyebrow, "With a couple of fish in a sack, too?"
At this John started with a jolt—Mrs. Thatcher's trout! Bought thirty minutes old, and now they were already an hour ancient!
"Oh, these," John rejoined quietly, "they're for Mrs. Thatcher."
The spacer cocked his young, dark head in a manner that made John's skin crawl with strange admiration. "Mrs. Thatcher? The… person you berth with?"
"Oh, no—no; she's just my neighbor. I work for her for money pieces."
"Aye? How much money did ye make for this errand?"
"One goldspecie, sir."
The Terran laughed loudly but sympathetically. "One goldspecie? One and nothin' else?"
John pursed his lips at the man's amusement. Had it not been for John's immoralities, he would have received much less, and yet this sailor laughed at the more expensive amount. In fact, the goldspecie he had earned today had been the largest sum of money he had ever earned in a day during the whole year he had worked for Mrs. Thatcher. His curiosity then peaked; could he somehow obtain even more than one goldspecie in one place? "Well, she can't afford to pay me a lot…"
"Ye could get a job."
John shook his head, his morbid fright gradually subsiding with the gentle kindness of the young sailor. "I can't—my father won't let me."
The young man raised his opposite eyebrow this time. "Then how did ye get this one, for yer…?"
"Mrs. Thatcher? Well, this isn't really much of a job, sir, and I can keep it from him better than if I got a real one."
"Oh, I think it's a real one if you're earning some money, to be sure. And you can hide a real job… you could work at the docks; it's not hard t' get one unloading ships, and they like young males like you—they figure they've got more strength."
"A job here?"
The man laughed again. "Aye. Here—" and he proceeded to rise from where he sat, "I'll show you. It's simple."
John's terror seized him again, but the power of his curiosity and—we shall no longer deny it—underlying greed for a higher quantity of money compelled him to follow, although always remaining hesitant.
As they strode together down the wooden streets of the docks, other spacers in the same manner of dress as the one John hastened after greeted the man and John pleasantly, and some also whistled teasingly at the young man, and inquired upon John's presence, but the Terran responded only slightly to all of these salutations. Presently, John noticed a corpulent man—a man belonging to a species he did not recognize—at the end of a pier where a great galleon had ported. The Terran addressed this man colloquially, although, in response, the man of the unknown species seemed to disagree with it.
"G'afternoon, Tubby!" the Terran called, in a voice remarkably different than the one John had been spoken to with during their conversation, "I got a boy 'ere for ye who needs a job in exporting!"
With that said, John's fear caught in his throat as he suddenly found himself in front of the fleshy man, who also seemed surprised to suddenly behold him. Eyeing John with a disinterest, he asked, "What name have ye, boy?"
The wheels in John's head spun. He was suddenly made piercingly aware of where he was and with the type of people he had feared so terribly, and who had seemed so mysteriously and majestically fiendish and evil. He also wondered with an excited horror if he should give the keeper a false name; Jacob, Jerry, Jeffery—and why should the name keep the original first letter? It could be Isaiah, like Dr. Welling's, or Scott, Tyler, or William! William Hamilton!
"William…Hamilton."
John's heart stopped altogether as the keeper looked at him with an air of dissatisfaction; as if he disagreed with something new.
Then, however, the man spoke again, unsuspicious and still disinterested, "And how old be ye, young Mr. William Hamilton?"
"Twelve."
"Twelve?"
John swallowed and shifted his weight. "Yes, sir… I'm twelve years old."
The man looked up from John and threw a glance at the Terran who had lead John to him, where a pregnant silence ensued as the two engaged in a conversation of looks and expressions. Finally, the fat keeper looked at John again, and told him what seemed to John as harshly, "You're thirteen when you work here, and remember that."
John watched the man write something on a clipboard he had thus been carrying with a feeling of his body being dropped, and that he no longer existed.
"Have I got a job now, sir?" John asked brokenly.
"Aye—a job and a new age, to be sure, for here, at least. Today's no good; come tomorrow and you'll export crates."
When John returned with the trout to Mrs. Thatcher, he grandly presented her with the two-hour old fish, and informed her that she must find a new boy to be her odd-job man, for he would no longer be at her dispense.