About this story
Two years gone from Harlem, an army left behind in Europe, and a stoker's berth as the way back: you play Jake, feeding a freighter's furnace westward while the men off watch argue over pork in the common pans and what any of them is returning to. The cook can be argued with, for a price. Near dawn the engines slow, a pilot comes aboard, and New York stands up out of the haze.
Who you’ll meet
The senior stoker of the watch, a North African merchant seaman who keeps the moral scorecard of a westbound freighter, arguing across an open boiler door with the English deckhand who teases the reader about the skyline.
How it opens
Coal dust stiffened your clothes in the freighter's stokehold while the Atlantic rolled west.
Two years after leaving Harlem, you had abandoned the army in Europe and found this hard passage.
Arab StokerJake, your furnace is falling low while you sing to the ship again.
Arab StokerHome will not move nearer because you give the boiler a love song.
English SailorIt might move nearer if his shovel keeps time with it.
Choose
Harlem deserves a song even in this furnace.
The boiler gets my work; the song belongs to me.