Bought and Paid

There are men aboard this vessel that no manifest can name, with their landsman's hands and lanolin, their collars still the same as the day they came aboard us — and a working man can tell when a stranger's never hauled a line or heard a six-hour bell.

And they keep their constant vigil by the hatch of hold No. 4 like the lettered stones of scripture guard the tomb behind the door, and I count them every morning, and I mark them every night, and I write their number nowhere, and I keep my lantern light.

So I asked the captain lightly, in the manner of the sea, where a question's dressed as weather-talk and answers come out free — said "A curious complement of crew we've shipped this run, and strange." He said "They're paid for, same as you." And nothing else would change.

Paid for, same as me — o, what a ledger that implies, what a column of amounts against a column full of eyes. For a wage is absolution when you say it soft enough, and I said it soft. I said it soft. The sea was getting rough.

Paid for, same as you. Paid for, same as you. Keep your eyes on the water, that's all you have to do. Don't ask what you're carrying, don't ask who you're carrying it to. Paid for, same as you. Paid for, same as you.

There's a new brass lock this morning where the old rust used to sit, bright as any tabernacle, and no crewman's key would fit, and the soft-handed apostles neither eat nor sing with us, and their sleeping is a rumor, and their waking's ominous.

And there came a flat calm morning with the words inside my mouth, with the light as good as judgment and the wind gone still and south, and I stood before the asking like a pilgrim at the well — and I turned. And made my rounds. And there is nothing more to tell.

For there is a kind of knowing that a man can hold at bay, if he never lends it language, if he looks the other way — for a thing unsaid's unhappened, in the country of the sea. That's the wisdom of the sailor. That was the ruin of me.

Paid for, same as you. Paid for, same as you. I kept my eyes on the water. It was all I had to do. I didn't ask what we were carrying. I know now. I always knew. Paid for, same as you. Paid for... same as you.