Read Online Cast Off by Eve Yohalem - Free Book Online Page A

She’d have to get some dirt on her face and start leaning back in her chair instead of sitting on the edge with a poker up her shirt. But maybe if she cut off her hair . . .
    â€œBe a boy.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œYou say you can pass for one. Show me how you’ll do it.”
    â€œAll right,” she said, squaring her shoulders.
    â€œWrong,” I said.
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘wrong’? I haven’t said anything yet!”
    â€œIt’s not what you’re saying; it’s what you’re doing. Which is sitting. Which is all wrong.”
    â€œFine, then. Tell me how to do it properly.”
    â€œBoys slouch.”
    She slouched down so low, she almost slouched right off the crate.
    â€œNot like you’re dead. Like you’re comfortable. Like this,” I said, pointing at myself.
    Petra fixed herself. Mostly.
    â€œBetter,” I said. “Now say something.”
    â€œHoay there! How now, mate!”
    â€œIs that a joke?”
    â€œNo, it’s not a joke! It’s what I hear a hundred times a day, sailors shouting at each other like the whole world’s gone deaf.”
    â€œThat’s because it’s a cove on deck calling up to another cove on top of a mast. Try some regular parley. We’re just two coves having a chat. And don’t make your voice so deep. We’re twelve, not twenty.”
    Petra eyed me for a bit. Then she set her knees apart, hawked up a hunk of phlegm, and spit it over her shoulder.
    â€œHow now, mate? That boy enough for you?”
    My mouth dropped open. I shut it.
    â€œYou know, Miss Petra, you just might do.”
    â€œI’m so glad you think so, Mister Broen.”

13
    Helping Jaya the cooper make barrels was a good way for me to catch the captain’s eye. ’Twas hard work and we did it outside in the waist, the open part of the upper deck that was amidships directly in view of De Ridder’s quarterdeck.
    Two weeks at sea, and we was well under way. The weather was cloudy but comfortable. A fresh breeze had come up and we was moving at a good clip.
    Petra’d done a fair job of cutting wood staves for the barrels, and I had a batch over a fire, cooking in a pot of water ’til they got soft enough so Jaya could bend ’em. My job was to keep sponging ’em down, which was hot work and I had the blisters to prove it. Jaya’s job was to winch ’em into the right shape and pound ’em into the iron loop at the bottom of the barrel. We used three dozen staves per barrel, and after four barrels we was running low.
    â€œYou have more staves, my brother?” Jaya asked.
    Jaya was really Mulawarman Wijaya, but no Hogen-Mogen Dutchman could get his mouth around those names. He was a little cove, not much bigger than me, but strong. Like me, he was Indies-born, but not like me, he was full-blooded, which he never let me forget. He didn’t do anything outright, but ’twas there in how he said “my brother.” If you knew what to listen for, you’d know I was no brother of his.
    Jaya didn’t leave the Indies ’til he was full grown, and it showed in how he talked. After I was around him for a while, it showed in how I talked too.
    â€œ Ya, Om, I got more.” Jaya was a good friend of Pa’s, so I called him “uncle.”
    â€œHow much is the number?”
    â€œDon’t know for sure. Plenty plenty.”
    â€œ Plenty plenty , Brammetje,” said Tixfor, one of the ship’s boys. He was servant to Isaac Van Swalme, a gentry cull who repped the VOC in Batavia. As senior merchant, Van Swalme was the highest-up cove on board—higher even than De Ridder, whose cabin he shared. Tixfor thought some of Van Swalme’s clout rubbed off on him. He was probably right. “Oh, yaaaa, you do every ting plenty plenty now. Plenty plenty staves, plenty plenty oakum, plenty plenty paint, plenty plenty sharp sharp, plenty