“See you next week, Ralph. Don’t let me hold you up. Thanks very much, boy.”
“I’ll try to have everything next week. Need any money?”
“No. I’m all right from last week.”
“Got plenty of it here if you want it. OK. Now, you, Lucius, what’s your trouble? What you spending money on now?”
Thomas Hudson walked back along the dock where the Negroes were laughing at what the wind was doing to the girls’ and the women’s cotton dresses and then up the coral road to the Ponce de León.
“Tom,” Mr. Bobby said. “Come in and sit down. By God where’ve you been? We’re just swept out and she’s officially open. Come on and have the best one of the day.”
“It’s pretty early.”
“Nonsense. That’s good imported beer. We’ve got Dog’s Head ale too.” He reached into a tub of ice, opened a bottle of Pilsner, and handed it to Thomas Hudson. “You don’t want a glass, do you? Put that down and then decide if you want a drink or not.”
“I won’t work then.”
“Who gives a damn? You work too much as it is. You got a duty to yourself, Tom. Your one and only life. You can’t just paint all the time.”
“We were in the boat yesterday and I didn’t work.”
Thomas Hudson was looking at the big canvas of the waterspouts that hung on the wall at the end of the bar. It was a good painting, Thomas Hudson thought. As good as he could do as of today, he thought.
“I got to hang her higher,” Bobby said. “Some gentleman got excited last night and tried to climb into the skiff. I told him it would cost him ten thousand dollars if he put his foot through her. Constable told him the same. Constable’s got an idea for one he wants you to paint to hang in his home.”
“What is it?”
“Constable wouldn’t say. Just that he had a very valuable idea he had intention to discuss with you.”
Thomas Hudson was looking at the canvas closely. It showed certain signs of wear.
“By God, she sure stands up,” Bobby said proudly. “The other night a gentleman let out a shout and threw a full mug of beer at the column of one of the waterspouts trying to break it down. You wouldn’t have known she’d ever been hit. Never dented her. Beer run off her like water. By God, Tom, you sure painted her solid.”
“She’ll only take about so much though.”
“By God,” said Bobby. “I ain’t seen nothing faze her yet. But I’m going to hang her higher just the same. That gentleman last night worried me.”
He handed Thomas Hudson another bottle of ice-cold Pilsner.
“Tom, I want to tell you how sorry I am about the fish. I know Eddy since we were boys and I never heard him lie. About anything important, I mean. I mean if you asked him to tell you something true.”
“It was a hell of a thing. I’m not going to tell anybody about it.”
“That’s the right way,” Bobby said. “I just wanted you to know how sorry I was. Why don’t you finish that beer and have a drink? We don’t want to start feeling sad this early. What would make you feel good?”
“I feel good enough. I’m going to work this afternoon and I don’t want to get logy.”
“Oh well, if I can’t break you out maybe somebody will come in that I can. Look at that damn yacht. She must have taken a beating coming across with that shallow draft.”
Thomas Hudson looked out the open door and saw the handsome, white, houseboat type craft coming up the channel. She was one of the type that chartered out of a Mainland port to go down through the Florida Keys and on a day such as yesterday, calm and flat, she could have crossed the Gulf Stream without incident. But today she must have taken a beating with her shallow draft and so much superstructure. Thomas Hudson wondered that she had been able to come in over the bar with the sea that was running.
The houseboat ran up the harbor a little further to anchor and Thomas Hudson and Bobby watched her from the doorway, all white and brass and everyone that showed on her in whites.
“Customers,” Mr. Bobby said. “Hope they’re nice people. We haven’t had a full-sized yacht in here since the tuna run was over.”
“Who is she?”
“I never seen her before. Pretty boat, all right. Certainly not built for the Gulf, though.”
“She probably left at midnight when it was calm and this hit her on the way over.”
“That’s about it,” Bobby said. “Must have been some rolling and some crashing. It’s really blowing. Well, we’ll see who they are shortly. Tom, let me make you something, boy. You make me nervous not drinking.”
“All right. I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
“No tonic water. Joe took the last case up to the house.”
“A whisky sour then.”
“With Irish whisky and no sugar,” Bobby said. “Three of them. Here comes Roger.” Thomas Hudson saw him through the open door.
Roger came in. He was barefooted, wore a faded pair of dungarees, and an old striped fisherman’s shirt that was shrunken from washings. You could see the back muscles move under it as he leaned forward and put his arms on the bar. In the dim light of Bobby’s, his skin showed very dark and his hair was salt- and sun-streaked.
“They’re still sleeping,” he said to Thomas Hudson. “Somebody beat up Eddy. Did you see?”
“He was having fights all last night,” Bobby told him. “They didn’t amount to anything.”
“I don’t like things to happen to Eddy,” Roger said.
“Wasn’t anything bad, Roger,” Bobby assured him. “He was drinking and fighting people who wouldn’t believe him. Nobody did anything wrong to him.”
“I feel bad about David,” Roger said to Thomas Hudson. “We shouldn’t have ever let him do it.”
“He’s probably all right,” Thomas Hudson said. “He was sleeping well. But it was my responsibility. I was the one to call it off.”
“No. You trusted me.”
“The father has the responsibility,” Thomas Hudson said. “And I turned it over to you when I had no right to. It isn’t anything to delegate.”
“But I took it,” Roger said. “I didn’t think it was harming him. Neither did Eddy.”
“I know,” Thomas Hudson said. “I didn’t think it was either. I thought something else was at stake.”
“So did I,” Roger said. “But now I feel selfish and guilty as hell.”
“I’m his father,” Thomas Hudson said. “It was my fault.”
“Damn bad thing about that fish,” Bobby said, handing them the whisky sours and taking one himself. “Let’s drink to a bigger one.”
“No,” Roger said. “I don’t want to ever see a bigger one.”
“What’s the matter with you, Roger?” Bobby asked.
“Nothing,” Roger said.
“I’m going to paint a couple of pictures of him for David.”
“That’s wonderful. Do you think you can get it?”
“With luck, maybe. I can see it and I think I know how to do it.”
“You can do it all right. You can do anything. I wonder who’s on the yacht?”
“Look, Roger, you’ve been walking your remorse all over the island—”
“Barefooted,” he said.
“I just brought mine down here by way of Captain Ralph’s run-boat.”
“I couldn’t walk mine out and I’m certainly not going to try to drink it out,” Roger said. “This is a mighty nice drink though, Bobby.”
“Yes sir,” Bobby said. “I’ll make you another one. Get that old remorse on the run.”
“I had no business gambling with a kid,” Roger said. “Somebody else’s boy.”
“It depends on what you were gambling for.”
“No, it doesn’t. You shouldn’t gamble with kids.”
“I know. I know what I was gambling for. It wasn’t a fish, either.”
“Sure,” Roger said. “But it was the one you didn’t need to do it to. The one you didn’t need to ever let anything like th
at happen to.”
“He’ll be fine when he wakes up. You’ll see. He’s a very intact boy.”
“He’s my goddamed hero,” Roger said.
“That’s a damned sight better than when you used to be your own goddamed hero.”
“Isn’t it?” Roger said. “He’s yours, too.”
“I know it,” Thomas Hudson said. “He’s good for both of us.”
“Roger,” Mr. Bobby said. “Are you and Tom any sort of kin?”
“Why?”
“I thought you were. You don’t look too different.”
“Thanks,” Thomas Hudson said. “Thank him yourself, Roger.”
“Thank you very much, Bobby,” Roger said. “Do you really think I look like this combination man and painter?”
“You look like quarter brothers and the boys look like both of you.”
“We’re no kin,” Thomas Hudson said. “We just used to live in the same town and make some of the same mistakes.”
“Well, the hell with it,” Mister Bobby said. “Drink up and quit all this remorse talk. It don’t sound good this time of day in a bar. I got remorse from Negroes, mates on charter boats, cooks off yachts, millionaires and their wives, big rum runners, grocery store people, one-eyed men off turtle boats, sons of bitches, anybody. Don’t let’s have no morning remorse. A big wind is the time to drink. We’re through with remorse. That remorse is old stuff anyway. Since they got the radio everybody just listens to the BBC. There ain’t no time and no room for remorse.”
“Do you listen to it, Bobby?”
“Just to Big Ben. The rest of it makes me restless.”
“Bobby,” Roger said. “You’re a great and good man.”
“Neither. But I’m certainly pleased to see you looking more cheerful.”
“I am,” said Roger. “What sort of people do you think we’ll get off that yacht?”
“Customers,” said Bobby. “Let’s drink one more so I’ll feel like serving them, however they are.”
While Bobby was squeezing the limes and making the drinks Roger said to Thomas Hudson, “I didn’t mean to be wet about Davy.”
“You weren’t.”
“What I meant was. Oh hell, I’ll try to work it out simply. That was a sound crack you made about when I was my own hero.”
“I’ve got no business making cracks.”
“You have as far as I’m concerned. The trouble is there hasn’t been anything in life that was simple for such a damn long time and I try to make it simple all the time.”
“You’re going to write straight and simple and good now. That’s the start.”
“What if I’m not straight and simple and good? Do you think I can write that way?”
“Write how you are but make it straight.”
“I’ve got to try to understand it better, Tom.”
“You are. Remember last time I saw you before this summer was in New York with that cigarette-butt bitch.”
“She killed herself,” Roger said.
“When?”
“While I was up in the hills. Before I went on to the Coast and wrote that picture.”
“I’m sorry,” Thomas Hudson said.
“She was headed for it all the time,” Roger said. “I’m glad I stepped out in time.”
“You wouldn’t ever do that.”
“I don’t know,” Roger said. “I’ve seen it look very logical.”
“One reason you wouldn’t do it is because it would be a hell of an example for the boys. How would Dave feel?”
“He’d probably understand. Anyway when you get into that business that far you don’t think much about examples.”
“Now you are talking wet.”
Bobby pushed over the drinks. “Roger, you talk that kind of stuff you get even me depressed. I’m paid to listen to anything people say. But I don’t want to hear my friends talk that way. Roger, you stop it.”
“I’ve stopped it.”
“Good,” Bobby said. “Drink up. We had a gentleman here from New York lived down at the Inn and he used to come here and drink most of the day. All he used to talk about was how he was going to kill himself. Made everybody nervous half the winter. Constable warned him it was an illegal act. I tried to get Constable to warn him that talking about it was an illegal act. But Constable said he’d have to get an opinion on that from Nassau. After a while people sort of got used to his project and then a lot of the drinkers started siding with him. Especially one day he was talking to Big Harry and he told Big Harry he was thinking of killing himself and he wanted to take somebody with him.
“ ‘I’m your man,’ Big Harry told him. ‘I’m who you’ve been looking for.’ So then Big Harry tries to encourage him that they should go to New York City and really pitch one and stay drunk until they couldn’t stand it and then jump off of the highest part of the city straight into oblivion. I think Big Harry figured oblivion was some sort of a suburb. Probably an Irish neighborhood.
“Well, the suicide gentleman took kindly to this idea and they’d talk it over every day. Others tried to get in on it and proposed they form an excursion of death seekers and just go as far as Nassau for the preliminaries. But Big Harry, he held out for New York City and finally he confided to the suicide gentleman that he couldn’t stand this life no longer and he was ready to go.
“Big Harry, he had to go out for a couple days crawfishing on a order he had from Captain Ralph and while he was gone the suicide gentleman took to drinking too much. Then he’d take some kind of ammonia from up north that would seem to sober him up and he’d come down to drink here again. But it was accumulating in him some way.
“We all called him Suicides by then so I said to him, ‘Suicides, you better lay off or you’ll never live to reach oblivion.’
“ ‘I’m bound for it now,’ he says. ‘I’m en route. I’m headed for it. Take the money for these drinks. I’ve made my dread decision.’
“ ‘Here’s your change,’ I said to him.
“ ‘I don’t want no change. Keep it for Big Harry so he can have a drink before he joins me.’
“So he goes out in a rush and he dives off of Johnny Black’s dock into the channel with the tide going out and it’s dark and no moon and nobody sees him any more until he washes up on the point in two days. Everybody looked for him good that night, too. I figured he must have struck his head on some old concrete and went out with the tide. Big Harry come in and he mourned him until the change was all drunk up. It was change from a twenty-dollar bill too. Then Big Harry said to me, ‘You know, Bobby, I think old Suicides was crazy.’ He was right, too, because when his family sent for him the man who came explained to Commissioner old Suicides had suffered from a thing called Mechanic’s Depressive. You never had that, did you, Roger?”
“No,” said Roger. “And now I think I never will.”
“That’s the stuff,” Mr. Bobby said. “And don’t you ever fool with that old oblivion stuff.”
“Fuck oblivion,” said Roger.
XI
Lunch was excellent, the steak was browned outside and striped by the grill. A knife slipped through the outer part and inside the meat was tender and juicy. They all dipped up juice from their plates and put it on the mashed potatoes and the juice made a lake in their creamy whiteness. The lima beans, cooked in butter, were firm; the cabbage lettuce was crisp and cold and the grapefruit was chilly cold.
Everyone was hungry with the wind and Eddy came up and looked in while they were eating. His face looked very bad and he said, “What the hell do you think of meat like that?”
“It’s wonderful,” young Tom said.
“Chew it good,” Eddy said. “Don’t waste that eating it fast.”
“You can’t chew it much or it’s gone,” young Tom told him.
“Have we got dessert, Eddy?” David asked.
“Sure. Pie and ice cream.”
“Oh boy,” Andrew said. “Two pieces?”
“Enough to founder you. Ice cream’
s as hard as a rock.”
“What kind of pie?”
“Loganberry pie.”
“What kind of ice cream?”
“Coconut.”
“Where’d we get it?”
“Run-boat brought it.”
They drank iced tea with the meal and Roger and Thomas Hudson had coffee after the dessert.
“Eddy’s a wonderful cook,” Roger said.
“Some of it’s appetite.”
“That steak wasn’t appetite. Nor that salad. Nor that pie.”
“He is a fine cook,” Thomas Hudson agreed. “Is the coffee all right?”
“Excellent.”
“Papa,” young Tom asked, “if the people on the yacht go to Mr. Bobby’s can we go down and practice Andy being a rummy on them?”
“Mr. Bobby might not like it. He might get in bad with Constable.”
“I’ll go down and tell Mr. Bobby and I’ll speak to Constable. He’s a friend of ours.”
“All right. You tell Mr. Bobby and keep a look out for when the yacht people show up. What will we do about Dave?”
“Can’t we carry him? He’d look good that way.”
“I’ll put on Tom’s sneakers and walk,” David said. “Have you got it worked out, Tommy?”
“We can make it up as we go along,” young Tom said. “Can you still turn your eyelids inside out?”
“Oh sure,” said David.
“Don’t do it now, please,” Andrew said. “I don’t want to be sick right after lunch.”
“For a dime I’d make you throw up now, horseman.”
“No please don’t. Later on I won’t mind.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Roger asked young Tom.
“I’d love it,” young Tom said. “We can work it out together.”
“Let’s go then,” Roger said. “Why don’t you take a nap, Davy?”
“I might,” said David. “I’ll read till I go to sleep. What are you going to do, papa?”
“I’m going to work in the lee out on the porch.”
“I’ll lie out there on the cot and watch you work. Will you mind?”
“No. Make me work better.”
“We’ll be back,” Roger said. “What about you, Andy?”