This afternoon, I went down to the marina, and stood on one of the docks. Plodding along the dock came a tall, strong, heavy man with a tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, muttering under his breath and occasionally breaking out into song:
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,
Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum…
He sang in a high, old tottering voice that sounded like it had been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. As he came closer, I could see a scar across one cheek, an old sabre cut that now showed a dirty, livid white on his nut-brown face. Continue reading “Down by the docks”