Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado Read Free Book Online Page A

in the hallway, asked him:
    “What did he say?”
    Cat replied:
    “Sit here,” and he pointed to the bed.
    “This kid…” she murmured.
    “Look, sweety, he’s tied up with another woman, see? I told them both off too. Then I skinned the old whore,” he put his hand into his pocket, took out the money. “Let’s split it.”
    “So he’s with someone else, eh? But my Lord of Bonfim will cripple them both. The Lord of Bonfim is my patron saint.”
    She went over to where she had the religious picture. She made her vow and came back.
    “Keep your money. You earned it fair and square.”
    Cat repeated:
    “Sit down, here.”
    This time she sat down, he grabbed her and put her down on the bed. Then she moaned with love and from the little slaps he gave her, and murmured:
    “This kid is like a man…” He got up, smoothed his pants, went over to where the picture of Gastão the flutist was, and tore it up.
    “I’m going to get a picture taken for you to put up there.”
    The woman laughed and said:
    “Come here, my little devil. What a hoodlum you’re going to be. I’ll teach you lots of things, my little puppy.”
    She closed the door of the room. Cat took his clothes off.
    That’s why Cat leaves every midnight and doesn’t sleep inthe warehouse. He only returns in the morning to go out with the others for the day’s adventures.
    Legless went over and teased him:
    “Now you’ll show me the ring, eh?”
    “What do you care about that?” Cat was smoking a cigarette. “You just wanted to come to see if you could run across a woman who’d love you, crippled the way you are, right?”
    “I don’t go to whorehouses. I know where things worth the trouble are.”
    But Cat wasn’t in a mood for chatting and Legless continued his wandering about the warehouse.
    Legless leaned up against a wall and let time pass. He watched Cat leave around eleven-thirty. He smiled because he’d washed his face, put grease on his hair, and was walking with that sway that hoodlums and sailors have. Then Legless spent a long time looking at the sleeping children. There were fifty of them, more or less, with no father, no mother, no master. All they had for themselves was the freedom to run in the streets. They didn’t always lead an easy life, getting what they needed to eat and wear by carrying baggage, stealing wallets and hats, holding up people, sometimes begging. And the gang was made up of more than a hundred children, because a lot of others didn’t sleep in the warehouse. They spread out in the doorways of the tall buildings, on the docks, in overturned boats on the sands of the Pôrto da Lenha, where the firewood came in. None of them complained. Sometimes one of them would die from an illness they couldn’t treat. When Father José Pedro dropped by at the right time, or the
mãe-de-santo
priestess Don’Aninha, or God’s-Love too, the patient had some relief. Never what a child would have at home, however, Legless was thinking. And he found that the joy of that freedom was slight when compared to the misfortune of that life.
    He turned around because he heard some movement. Someone was getting up in the middle of the building. Legless recognized the little black boy Outrigger, who was stealthily going to the sands outside the warehouse. Legless thought he was going to hide something he’d stolen and didn’t want to showhis comrades. And that was a crime against the laws of the gang. Legless followed Outrigger, crossing over the sleepers. The black boy had already gone through the warehouse door and was turning around the left side of the building. The starry sky was above. Outrigger was walking fast now. Legless noticed that he was going to the other end of the warehouse, where the sand was even finer. He went around the other side then and got there in time to see Outrigger meeting a shape. Then he recognized him: it was Almiro, a gang member, twelve years old, fat, and lazy. They lay down together, the black boy