By the time Thanksgiving moved toward Baltimore in 1962, Johnny Wichodek had half-a-load on, a long night of work ahead of him, and a strong taste for the sweet blood of a duck.
He had a hankering for czarnina.
Johnny worked as a deckhand on the tugboats that docked at the Recreation Pier on Thames Street. He was full of himself when he was sober and full of everything else when he wasn't.
And when he got a big idea in his head, like butchering a duck on a tugboat in the middle of the night, he preached about it until no one could stand to be near him.
"Ain'tcha sick of turkey all the time -- turkey, turkey, turkey. Every year turkey. So dry," said Johnny, screwing up his face as he bent the engineer's ear. "We could have us a nice duck, ain't it Chief, a nice, fat Muscovy?"
"You're goofy, John," said the engineer as the Resolute waited for orders to move a sugar ship from a berth at Domino. "Where you gonna get a duck?"
It was almost 11 on Thanksgiving eve and the Resolute had been pushing ships around the channel since early afternoon. She was idle now, tied-up behind the Rec Pier with one last job between the crew and their families, their turkeys and their holiday.
The harbor was dressed in pearl by a late November moon; trimmed in red and green with the lights of buoys and barges; and carpeted in neon by the 113-by-67-foot reflection of the Domino Sugar sign shimmering across the Patapsco.
It felt like Thanksgiving.
Killing time on the stern, Johnny and the Chief stared across the water as bucket cranes dipped down into the belly of the Domino Crystal, scraping the ship's bottom for brown sand to be polished into table sugar, the buckets a moving belt of shadows over the Crystal's white lights.
The Chief was calm, sipping coffee laced with Spanish cognac. He was thankful for overtime that would turn to triple-time when the clock hit 12. Johnny was drinking beer, and had been most of the day. He was covetous of the way things used to be, too worked-up to be thankful for anything.
"The way my grandmother made chi-nina -- outta this world, Chief," said Johnny. "It was our big meal every Sunday after Mass, every Sunday we could get a duck."
"Chi-nina?" said the engineer.
"Duck blood soup," said Johnny. "Something special."
"Not in my neighborhood."
"Some people make it on the sour side, it's a little dry by itself, but Booshie liked hers sweet, with prunes and a nice pear sliced up, some brown sugar," said Johnny. "I can see 'em in that alley house on Binney Street, Pop out back with his fist around the bird's knobby beak, talkin' soft like a baby and comin' up slow with a straight razor . . . zzzzip! -- clean 'cross the top of the head. I wasn't supposed to be watching, but I'd peek down from the back bedroom. He'd hold it over a bowl and bleed it 'til the duck passed out."
"You ever done this, John?"
"Seen it a million times. After Pop died, Uncle Vaju tried it in the stationary tubs downstairs. Said there'd be less mess, wouldn't let nobody down to help. What a racket! We heard all kinda squawking and cussing under the floor. Vaju comes up white as a sheet and makes straight to Aggie Silk's for a belt and this duck is flapping around bleeding on the walls 'til it dropped dead. Hey, you gotta know what you're doing."
"I'm sure," said the engineer, smiling over the top of his mug.
"The old ones knew," said Johnny. "Pop would hang the duck upside down from the kitchen doorknob and let it all drip out. How much blood you think you get from a duck, Chief? You get a cup, you got a lot. Once you got it all, you dip the bird in scalding water and pick the feathers for pillows. Years back, everybody did it."
Years back.
Johnny stared across the water to the sugar sign and in the middle of the mammoth "D" -- above the endless loop of rolling buckets -- a grown man saw a little boy who loved to watch an old woman cook.
Johnny sipped his beer.
"A little vinegar went in so the blood wouldn't curdle, that was the big worry, cuz you could forget it if it did. When Pop was done dressing the duck, Boosh would cut it up and drop it in a pot of hot water. You let it cook awhile and skim the fat. When the meat was almost dropping off the bone, she'd set the duck on the side and run the broth through a strainer. Some of it went in a pan with a chopped onion, a bay leaf, a little more vinegar and then . . . "
Johnny paused.
"What then, John?"
"Then the blood."
Maroon mercury in a mayonnaise jar, its treacly sheen carried light over the lip of the jar as it covered the deep bottom of a black skillet.
"She'd stir in a half-dozen spoons of flour and whip it up good, real smooth," said Johnny, remembering how the flour lightened the color. "A little more vinegar, maybe some broth to warm it up, and then you add your meat. Boosh simbered this all together, maybe 45 minutes. She'd add some sugar if it was too sour, more flour if it was too loose, taking out the bones. The rest of the broth went in and the prunes and pears last, not too soon or they'd melt on you."
"Somebody write this down for you?"
"I was Booshie's taster," said Johnny. "Bet I wasn't tall as the stove. She'd ladle some with a wooden spoon and have me taste it maybe a half-dozen times while it was bubbling. Wasn't done 'til Johnny said it was done. That's what they said anyway. Delicious, Chief -- outta this world. And noodles! Homemade egg noodles! How could I forget the noodles?"
"How could you forget the noodles, John?"
"You make 'em from scratch, you know, eggs cracked inside a circle of flour, you beat 'em up with a fork. Oh, man -- chi-nina with them good noodles. Why shouldn't we treat ourselves, Chief? Huh? Tell me why we shouldn't. It's Thanksgiving."
The bucket cranes hadn't even slowed down.
"Wise up, Ace," said the engineer, turning away. "Where're you gonna get a duck at this hour?"
Johnny Wichodek threw his beer can in the water and leaped from the Resolute to the pier in a -- for Thames Street.
"SMUTEK'S!" he shouted.
Between the time Johnny jumped ashore and the time he finagled his heart's desire from Smutek's Poultry at Fleet and Ann streets, the buckets stopped moving at the sugar house.
Wheels were turning, and if Johnny didn't hurry, they would turn without him.
The Resolute was blowing its whistles as Johnny downed a victory shot of Wild Turkey at Zeppie's Saloon; inching away from the pier as the errant deckhand raced across Thames into the Rec Pier and bounded aboard the tug like a man running the high hurdles.
"Go to . . . ," said the captain, sticking his head out of the wheelhouse.
"Yez-us," said a deckhand doing his work and Johnny's, barking down into the hole: "Chief, you gotta see this."
The Chief peeped up from the engine room, marveling: "That goof got a duck."
"Ain't it!" crowed Johnny, triumphant, holding the squirming, frightened animal high above his head, dancing a jig as brown water churned beneath the Resolute. "The goof got a duck."
Johnny ignored the hawser lines being coiled fore and aft as the tug moved south across the channel to Locust Point. He was pleased with himself, exuberant, and thankful -- finally thankful -- as midnight delivered Thanksgiving to Baltimore and the Resolute chugged toward the Domino Crystal.
He could taste it.
When the Resolute sidled up to the big ship, Filipino deckhands waiting to take lines from the tug spotted the brown and white duck under Wichodek's arm. They crowded the rail, pointing down and jabbering in a language he didn't understand.
Johnny knew what they wanted.
He tightened his grip on the quivering bird, squinted up at the sailors and cackled: "Eat your hearts out!"
With the duck plump and warm under his arm, Johnny started for the galley to find a knife. As he turned, the wake from a trio of tugs pulling a tanker out of the Key Highway shipyard banged the Resolute against the Domino Crystal.
The drunken feet that had spirited him over the cobblestones of Thames Street faltered on the steel deck of the tug; and as he fell backward -- his rear-end landing in a coil of rope, his ears stinging with laughter -- Johnny Wichodek felt his misfortune fanned by a flapping of wings.
He stretched out his arms, but they only reached as far as his fingertips.
Johnny rubbed his bleary eyes to see his childhood cut a frantic swath through the dark harbor sky, soaring, one neon letter at a time, across the length of the Domino Sugar sign; free and in flight to Curtis Bay, the great Chesapeake and the Eastern Shore beyond that.
RAFAEL ALVAREZ is a reporter for The Sun and the winner o the 1994 Artscape award for fiction.