Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet: On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas

Chapter Seven: Enough Beer to Float the Titanic

UWP: Kendall: Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet page 131 one line long 131 Enough Beer to Float the Titanic B y morning the worst of the storm had passed. The rain thinned and finally eased off, leaving a thick fog; the waves chopped against the sides of the ship, rough but no longer threatening. Delighted to be still alive, I went out on deck for my morning walk. Heading aft, I came across the paint locker. About six feet high, standing at the top of an exterior ladder, the once-white cabinet now bore gaudy streaks of orange, black, and brown. Apparently the cans had crashed around inside, burst the doors open, and tumbled out. Strands of latex paint looped from the cabinet and all over the stairs. The deck was an inch deep in encrusted puddles, partly congealed, partly still open, like wounds. More colors had dripped and splattered down the ladder like a giant Jackson Pollack painting, pooling and spreading at the bottom into hideous puddles. Someone had stepped through the mess and tracked orange goo down the stairs; multicolored footprints now walked across the lower deck, disappeared into the general smear of paint, and then reappeared and led to an aft hatch. To preserve what was left of my Rockports, I went back the way I had come, forward around my stateroom and down the ladder on the other side. The main aft deck, which we’d seen from the galley the night before, was a swamp of paint. The same orange that the hull was painted in now covered the metal deck in swipes and streaks, lashed and interlaced with flung blotches of black, brown, and red. The fending-off tire—a huge tractor tire that was tied outside the ship when she was docked—shone in its new decoration. The sun pierced the fog, sending Jesus rays down into the ocean, and through the black and orange tire I could see streaks of light turning the gray clouds silver. Sodden, newly painted ropes draped around the tire, glistening like tinsel. Stalactites of white paint dripped down, sticky, swaying in the breeze. The whole effect was disturbing. On a Navy vessel, such devastation could never have happened—paint was stored in marked cartons on designated shelves in a special paint storage room, fireproof and locked with strong bolts. Like everything else, paint was ordered, tracked, maintained, and controlled. But even if something did spill, anywhere on the ship—spinach, for example, or radioactive waste— lower-echelon sailors were sent immediately to scrub it up. I’d never seen a line uncoiled on a Navy ship, nor a surface that was not shining clean. My staterooms had been sterile when I moved in, and I tried to keep them so, because even in officers’ country, we’d had to endure inspections. The first time the inspectors came, I was lying in my rack, reading . I had my robe on, my books were everywhere, and stacks of student papers littered the floor. When the first officer opened the door, I thought it was a social call, and invited her to sit down. Then I saw that she was flanked by six male officers and chiefs, as grim as riot police. Each person had had a mission—to check the lighting, UWP: Kendall: Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet page 132 132 Enough Beer to Float the Titanic UWP: Kendall: Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet page 133 133 the fan, the electrical outlets, the plumbing, the general level of tidiness , and so on. I think one person was examining the dust. The of- ficer ticked off on her list that my bed was not made, and confiscated my blow-dryer for not having been registered with the ship’s safety officer. Here on the Tan Suo Zhe, I thought, the spilled paint would probably stay forever. She would become known internationally as the amazing Technicolored seismic vessel, whose crew never cleaned the deck. But since my job description didn’t include paint scraping, I headed up to the bridge. I liked to check the latitude and longitude every day, so I could record our progress on my own map. As I climbed up the ladder, the bridge seemed unusually quiet. Only the chief mate was on watch, lying at full length on the captain’s chair, his feet propped on the controls. When...