Chapter 50: A Wee Bit of Local Rumors
By the time James finally admitted that cards and rum had lost their charm, Sawyer’s hammer kept the same steady rhythm day after day.
James had emptied the crew’s pockets at the card tables, drunk two taverns down to their last respectable barrel, and been mistaken for an honest, respectable gentleman exactly once. That misunderstanding lasted until the man’s wife leaned out an upstairs window and set both of them straight.
Pensacola, seen up close and with a clear head, proved every bit the miserable stretch of coastline it had seemed from the bay. Maybe worse, especially once the wind carried the smell from the tanning pits.
Still, even a town this poor had its own stories. Places with nothing else worth always had them. Stories never cost a thing, and from what James could tell, Pensacola had been passing around the same handful of tales for generations.
Finding someone to translate had turned out to be the easiest part. The mission boy, Tomás, couldn’t have been more than eighteen. His English was stitched together from scraps he’d picked up listening to Carolina traders buying deerskins through the panhandle. It worked well enough for haggling over prices. Anything more delicate was another matter. One coin and a friendly clap on the shoulder had won him over faster than either of them had expected.
The house stood a little back from the main track, built from weathered timber beneath a palm-thatched roof bleached silver by years of salt air.
A middle-aged woman named Catalina sat in the yard plucking a hen over a basin, her hands never slowing. Around her, her three daughters kept busy with their own work.
The eldest, Inés, nearly twenty, quietly shelled dried beans into her lap without looking up. Josefa, nineteen, leaned over a hand quern, grinding maize with the calm patience of a task repeated a thousand times. The youngest, Lucía, eighteen, rested in the shadows with a fan, and the way she watched James made it clear the heat wasn’t the only thing holding her attention.
She looked away at once, her cheeks turning bright red. Inés and Josefa exchanged the sort of knowing glance that suggested their little sister had been caught this way before.
"Tell the lady good day," James said to Tomás. "And let her know I mean no trouble. I’m just a curious man with too much time on his hands."
Tomás repeated the greeting, stumbling through half the words.
Catalina never stopped plucking as she looked James over from his boots to his jaw. Feathers drifted across her skirts.
"¿Y éste qué quiere, con esa cara de que nunca ha trabajado un día en su vida?"
Tomás’s ears turned scarlet.
"She says... good day, señor. She asks your business."
"That isn’t what she said, lad."
James laughed. "There was something about working in there, unless every bit of Spanish I’ve learned has fled my head."
"She is a very direct woman, Captain."
James glanced past Catalina to Lucía, who was suddenly finding every other corner of the yard fascinating.
"Tell the wee lass she’s flatterin’ me, fannin’ herself so hard on my account. She doesn’t need to wear her arm out just for me."
Tomás went pale.
"Captain... I truly do not think that is wise."
"Just say it, lad."
Tomás muttered a short, badly mangled version that felt more like an apology than a translation.
Lucía froze halfway through a sweep of her fan. Her face turned the very color of some dried peppers hanging beneath the eaves, and she hid a burst of laughter behind both hands. Without lifting her eyes from the beans, Inés murmured something that made Josefa snort over the grinding stone.
Catalina’s head snapped up. She set the hen aside, wiped one hand on her apron, and leveled the plucking knife at James.
"Escúchame bien, marinero. Le sonríes así a mi hija otra vez y te voy a cortar algo que seguro echarás de menos más que la mano."
Tomás’s translation came barely above a whisper.
"She says... please be careful, Captain. With the knife. While she is holding it."
"You skipped a bit, lad."
"I skipped the part about which piece of you she intends to cut off."
James lifted both hands, grinning despite himself.
"Tell her I’ve a great deal of respect for a mother who threatens a man with a knife still covered in chicken."
Tomás passed it along.
Catalina’s mouth twitched, almost becoming a smile, before she attacked the bird again with renewed determination.
"What’s the poor thing done to deserve all that?" James nodded toward the basin.
Without missing a stroke, Catalina answered.
"Mi marido, que Dios lo tenga donde más falta le hace, se pasa el día bajo ese árbol fingiendo que reza cuando lo que hace es dormir la mona, y esta gallina fue la única con el valor de darle una coz."
Tomás cleared his throat.
"She says... her husband prays. Very much. Under a tree."
"Aye. I’m certain that’s the full story."
James caught marido and árbol, and little else, but Catalina’s expression filled in the rest.
A goat wandered through a gap in the fence. It looked like a close cousin to the fruit-stealing devils that plagued Nassau and headed straight for the beans in Inés’s lap.
Without even turning her head, Catalina flung a fistful of wet feathers. She missed the goat entirely and struck Tomás square in the face instead.
He sputtered while she went on as though nothing unusual had happened.
"Y no solo el marido."
She pointed her knife toward the fort. "El sargento gordo le trajo a mi Josefa una cesta de naranjas más podridas que sus intenciones, como si una fruta pasada fuera a comprarle el corazón a una muchacha decente."
Josefa stopped grinding. She pressed her lips together while her cheeks reddened, and Inés laughed without trying to hide it.
"The sergeant," Tomás said, struggling to keep pace, "brought oranges. For Josefa. They were... old."
"Rotten, ye mean."
"Yes, Captain. Rotten."
"Ask her if there’s any strange talk around here."
James rested an elbow on the fence post. "The sort of thing folk whisper about after dark."
Catalina gave him a look somewhere between amusement and scorn.
"¿Un marinero pidiendo cuentos de fantasmas? Con esa espada al cinto, cualquiera diría que le teme más a una historia que a un cañonazo."
"She asks... if you truly fear stories, Captain, when you carry a sword like that."
"Tell her I’ve stood against cannons and a naked Frenchman carryin’ a whip, both in the same night. A ghost’s the least frightenin’ thing I’ve ever met."
Tomás repeated it, stumbling over the word whip just as a rooster crowed somewhere behind the house. The noise swallowed the last word.
Lucía nearly slipped off her stool laughing into her hand, and even Inés looked up from her beans long enough to smile.
James only smiled wider. Once he committed himself to something worth doing, he never did it halfway.
Catalina let out a short huff, plucked away the last few feathers, and set the cleaned hen aside.
"Hay una que llora, cerca del fuerte. Por las noches. Ya nadie le hace caso."
Tomás’s voice dropped before he finished. His own uneasiness crept into every word.
"She says... there is one. A woman. She cries near the fort at night."
James’s eyes narrowed with interest.
Now there was something worth hearing. The story caught him like the first tug on a fishing line, that familiar moment when a man knew he’d found something worth following.
