Islands in the Stream

  “Now, with the dampness, we have to make a daily check, whether anything is fired or not.”

  “I know,” Ara said. “We ought to disembark Willie. But we can’t do it here.”

  “Cayo Francés?”

  “We could. But Havana would be better and have them ship him from there. He’s going to talk, Tom.”

  Thomas Hudson thought of something and regretted it.

  “We never should have taken him after he had a medical discharge and with the bad head,” Ara said.

  “I know. But we did. How many damn mistakes have we made?”

  “Not too many,” Ara said. “Now may I go down and finish the work?”

  “Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “Thank you very much.”

  “A sus órdenes,” Ara said.

  “I wish to hell they were better orders,” Thomas Hudson said.

  Antonio and George were coming out with the dinghy and Antonio came up on the bridge immediately and let George and Henry hoist the motor and the dinghy aboard.

  “Well?” Thomas Hudson said.

  “They must have gone by in the night on the last of the breeze,” Antonio said. “They would have seen them at the light if they came into the cut. The old man who has the skiff and the fish traps hadn’t seen any turtle boat. He talks about everything and he would have mentioned it, the lightkeeper said. Do you think we ought to go back and check with him?”

  “No. I think they’re down at Puerto Coco or else at Guillermo.”

  “That’s about where they would have reached with what wind they had.”

  “You’re sure they couldn’t have gone through the cut at night?”

  “Not with the best pilot that ever lived.”

  “Then we have to find them in the lee of Coco or down by Guillermo. Let’s get the anchor up and go.”

  It was a very dirty coast and he kept outside of everything and ran the edge of the hundred-fathom curve. Inshore there was a low rocky coast and reefs and big patches of banks that came out dry with the low tide. There was a four-man watch and Gil was on Thomas Hudson’s left. Thomas Hudson looked toward the shore and saw the beginning of the green of the mangroves and thought, what a hell of a place to be now in this calm. The clouds were piled high already and he thought the squalls would come out earlier. There are about three places past Puerto Coco that I must search, he thought. I had better hook her up a little more and get in there.

  “Henry,” he said. “Steer 285 will you? I want to go below and see Willie. Sing out if you sight anything. You don’t need to watch inshore, Gil. Take the starboard watch forward. That’s all too shallow inshore for them to be in there.”

  “I’d like to watch inshore,” Gil said. “If you don’t mind, Tom. There’s that crazy channel that makes in almost against the beach and the guide could have taken them there and put them in the mangroves.”

  “Good,” said Thomas Hudson. “I’ll send up Antonio.”

  “I could see her mast in the mangroves with these big glasses.”

  “I doubt it like hell. But you might.”

  “Please, Tom. If you don’t mind.”

  “I agreed already.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom. But I thought a guide might take her in there. We went in there once.”

  “And we had to come out the same way we went in.”

  “I know. But if the wind failed them and they had to hide in a hurry. We don’t want to overrun them.”

  “Right. But we are a long way out for you to see a mast. Besides they would probably cut mangroves to hide the mast from the air.”

  “I know,” Gil said with Spanish stubbornness. “But I have very good eyes and these are twelve-power glasses and it is calm so I see well and—”

  “I said it was OK before.”

  “I know. But I had to explain.”

  “You’ve explained,” Thomas Hudson said. “And if you find a mast you can stick it up my ass with peanuts on it.”

  Gil felt a little hurt at this but he thought it was funny, especially about the peanuts, and he searched the mangroves until the big glasses almost pulled the eyes out of his head.

  Below, Thomas Hudson was talking with Willie and watching the sea and the land. It was always strange how much less you saw when you were down from the bridge, and, as long as things went well below, he felt a fool to be anywhere but at his post. He tried always to keep the necessary contact and avoid the idiocy of the uninspecting inspection. But he had delegated more and more authority to Antonio, who was a much better sailor than he was, and to Ara who was a much better man. They are both better men than I am, he thought, and yet I still should be in command, using their knowledge and talent and their characters.

  “Willie,” he said. “How are you really?”

  “I’m sorry about acting like a fool. But I’m sort of bad, Tom.”

  “You know the rules about drinking,” Thomas Hudson said. “There aren’t any. I don’t want to use chickenshit words like the honor system.”

  “I know,” Willie said. “You know I’m not a rummy.”

  “We don’t ship rummies.”

  “Except Peters.”

  “We didn’t ship him. They gave him to us. He has his problems, too.”

  “Old Angus is his problem,” Willie said. “And his goddam problems get to be our problems too damn fast.”

  “We’ll skip him,” Thomas Hudson said. “You have anything else eating you?”

  “Just in general.”

  “How?”

  “Well I’m half crazy and you’re half crazy and then we’ve got this crew of half saints and desperate men.”

  “It isn’t bad to be half saint and half desperate man.”

  “I know it. It’s wonderful. But I was used to things being more regular.”

  “Willie, there’s nothing eating you really. The sun bothers your head and I’m sure drinking isn’t good for it.”

  “I’m sure, too,” Willie said. “I’m not trying to be a fuck-up, Tom. But did you ever go really crazy?”

  “No. I always missed it.”

  “It’s a lot of bother,” Willie said. “And however long it lasts, it lasts too long. But I’ll stop drinking.”

  “No. Just drink easy like you always did.”

  “I was using the drinking to stave it off.”

  “We’re always using drinking for something.”

  “Sure. But this wasn’t any gag. Do you think I’d lie to you, Tom?”

  “We all lie. But I don’t think you’d lie on purpose.”

  “Go on up on your bridge,” Willie said. “I see you watching the water all the time like it was some girl that was going to get away from you. I won’t drink anything except sea water maybe and I’ll help Ara break them to pieces and put them together again.”

  “Don’t drink, Willie.”

  “If I said I won’t, I won’t.”

  “I know.”

  “Listen, Tom. Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “How bad is it with you?”

  “I guess pretty bad.”

  “Can you sleep?”

  “Not much.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was from walking the beach,” Willie said. “Go on up and forget about me. I’ll be working with Ara at our trade.”

  XIII

  They had searched the beach for tracks at Puerto Coco and they searched the mangroves beyond with the dinghy. There were some really good places for a turtle boat to hide. But they found nothing and the squalls came out earlier with heavy rain that made the sea look as though it were leaping into the air in white, spurting jets.

  Thomas Hudson had walked the beach and gone back inland behind the lagoon. He had found the place where the flamingoes came at high tide and he had seen many wood ibis, the cocos that gave the key its name, and a pair of roseate spoon-bills working in the marl of the edge of the lagoon. They were beautiful with the sharp rose of their color against the
gray marl and their delicate, quick, forward-running movements, and they had the dreadful, hunger-ridden impersonality of certain wading birds. He could not watch them long because he wanted to check in case the people they were looking for had left the boat in the mangroves and camped in the high ground to be clear of the mosquitoes.

  He found nothing but the site of an old charcoal-burning and he came out onto the beach after the first squall hit and Ara had picked him up in the dinghy.

  Ara loved running the outboard in the rain and a bad squall and he had told Thomas Hudson none of the searchers had found anything. Everybody was on board but Willie who had taken the furthest stretch of beach beyond the mangroves.

  “And you?” Ara asked.

  “Me, nothing.”

  “This rain will cool off Willie. I’m going to get him when I put you on board. Where do you think they are, Tom?”

  “At Guillermo. That’s where I’d be.”

  “Me too. That’s what Willie thinks, too.”

  “How was he?”

  “He’s trying hard, Tom. You know Willie.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas Hudson. They came alongside and he climbed aboard.

  Thomas Hudson watched Ara pivot the dinghy on her stern and go off into the white squall. Then he called down for a towel and dried himself off on the stern.

  Henry said, “Don’t you want a drink, Tom? You were really wet.”

  “I’d like one.”

  “Do you want straight rum?”

  “That’s nice,” Thomas Hudson answered. He went below to get a sweatshirt and shorts and he saw that they were all cheerful.

  “We all had a straight rum,” Henry said and brought him a glass half-full. “I don’t think that way if you dry off quickly anyone can catch cold. Do you?”

  “Hi, Tom,” said Peters. “Have you joined our little group of health drinkers?”

  “When did you wake up?” Thomas Hudson asked him.

  “When I heard a gurgling noise.”

  “I’ll make a gurgling noise some night and see if that wakes you up.”

  “Don’t worry, Tom. Willie does that for me every night.”

  Thomas Hudson decided not to drink the rum. Then, seeing them all having had a drink and being cheerful and happy on an uncheerful errand, he thought it would be pompous and priggish not to take it. He wanted it, too.

  “Split this with me,” he said to Peters. “You are the only son of a bitch I ever knew that could sleep better with earphones on than without them.”

  “That split’s nothing,” Peters said, entrenching himself in the retreat from formal discipline. “That split doesn’t give either of us anything.”

  “Get one of your own, then,” Thomas Hudson said. “I like the goddam stuff as well as you do.”

  The others were watching and Thomas Hudson could see Henry’s jaw muscles twitching.

  “Drink it up,” Thomas Hudson said. “And run all your mysterious machines tonight as well as you can. For yourself and for the rest of us.”

  “For all of us,” Peters said. “Who is the hardest-working man on this ship?”

  “Ara,” Thomas Hudson said and sipped the rum for the first time as he looked around. “And every fucking body else on board.”

  “Here’s to you, Tom,” Peters said.

  “Here’s to you,” Thomas Hudson said and felt the words die cold and stale in his mouth. “To the earphone king,” he said, in order to recover something he had lost. “To all gurgling noises,” he added, being now a long way ahead as he should have been at the start.

  “To my commander,” Peters said, running his string out too far.

  “Any way you want to take it,” Thomas Hudson said. “There are no articles that cover that with us. But I’ll settle for that. Say it again.”

  “To you, Tom.”

  “Thanks,” Thomas Hudson said. “But I will be a sad son of a bitch before I drink to you until all your radios and you are functioning.”

  Peters looked at him and into his face there came the discipline and into his body, which was in bad shape, the carriage of a man who had served three hitches in something that he had believed in and left for something else, as Willie had, and he said, automatically and without reservations, “Yes sir.”

  “Drink to you,” Thomas Hudson said. “And crank up all your fucking miracles.”

  “Yes, Tom,” Peters said, without any cheating and without reservations.

  Well, I guess that is enough of that, Thomas Hudson thought. I better leave it as it lays and go back to the stern and watch my other problem child come aboard. I can never feel about Peters the way the rest of them all feel. I hope I know as well as they do what his defects are. But he has something. He is like the false carried so far that it is made true. It is certain that he is not up to handling what we have. But maybe he is up to much better things.

  Willie’s the same, he thought. One is as bad one way as the other. They ought to be in now.

  He saw the dinghy coming through the rain and the white drifted water that curled and blew under the lash of the wind. They were both thoroughly wet when they came aboard. They had not used their raincoats but had kept them wrapped around their niños.

  “Hi, Tom,” Willie said. “Nothing but a wet ass and a hungry gut.”

  “Take these children,” Ara said and handed the wrapped submachine guns aboard.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing multiplied by ten,” Willie said. He was standing on the stern dripping and Thomas Hudson called to Gil to bring two towels.

  Ara pulled the dinghy in by her painter and climbed aboard.

  “Nothing of nothing of nothing,” he said. “Tom, do we get overtime for rain?”

  “We ought to clean those weapons right away,” Willie said.

  “We’ll get dry first,” Ara said. “I’m wet enough. First I could never get wet and now I have gooseflesh even on my ass.”

  “Tom,” Willie said. “You know those sons of bitches can sail in these squalls if they reef down and have the balls to.”

  “I thought of that too.”

  “I think they lay up in the daytime with the calm and then run with these afternoon squalls.”

  “Where do you put them?”

  “I don’t put them past Guillermo. But they could be.”

  “We’ll start at daylight and catch them at Guillermo tomorrow.”

  “Maybe we’ll find them and maybe they’ll be gone.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why the hell haven’t we got radar?”

  “What good would it do us right now? What do you see in the screen, Willie?”

  “I’ll pipe the hell down,” Willie said. “Excuse me, Tom. But chasing something with UHF that hasn’t got a radio ... ?”

  “I know,” said Thomas Hudson. “But do you want to chase any better than we’ve been chasing?”

  “Yes. Is that OK?”

  “OK.”

  “I want to catch the sons of bitches and kill every one of them.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “You don’t remember the massacre?”

  “Don’t give me any of that massacre shit, Willie. You’ve been around too long for that.”

  “OK. I just want to kill them. Is that all right?”

  “It’s better than the massacre thing. But I want prisoners from a U-boat operating in these waters who can talk.”

  “That last one you had didn’t talk much.”

  “No. Neither would you if you were up the creek like he was.”

  “OK,” Willie said. “Can I draw a slug of the legal?”

  “Sure. Get on dry shorts and a shirt and don’t make trouble.”

  “With nobody?”

  “Grow up,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Drop dead,” Willie said and grinned.

  “That’s the way I like you,” Thomas Hudson told him. “Keep it that way.”

  XIV

  That night there was heavy lightning and thunder and i
t rained until about three o’clock in the morning. Peters could get nothing on the radio and they all slept hot and muggy until the sand flies came out after the rain stopped and wakened them, one after the other. Thomas Hudson pumped Flit down below and there was coughing and then less restless moving and slapping.

  He waked Peters by Flitting him thoroughly and Peters shook his head with the earphones on and said softly, “I’ve been trying hard, Tom, all the time. But there’s nothing.”

  Thomas Hudson looked at the glass with a torch and it was rising. That will give them a breeze, he thought. Well, they can’t say they haven’t had luck again. Now I must figure that.

  He went back to the stern and sprayed all the Flit he could into the cabin without waking the people.

  He sat in the stern and watched the night clear and flitted himself occasionally. They were short of repellent but had plenty of Flit. It burned where a man had been sweating but it was better than sand flies. Their effect differed from mosquitoes in that you could not hear them before they hit and there was an instant itching from the bite. The bites made a swelling about the size of a very small pea. In some places on the coast and on the keys, they were more virulent than in others. At least their bites seemed to be much more annoying. But, he thought, that could be the condition that our hides are in and how much they are burned and toughened. I do not know how the natives stand them. They have to be hardy people to live on this coast and in the Bahamas when the trades aren’t blowing.

  He sat in the stern watching and listening. There were two planes, high in the sky, and he listened to the throbbing of the motors until they no longer could be heard.

  Big bombers going to Camagüey on the way to Africa or going straight through to somewhere and nothing to do with us. Well, he thought, they are not bothered by sand flies. Neither am I. The hell with them. The hell with them and the hell I’m not. But I’d like to get some daylight and get out of here. We’ve checked all the way up to the end of the point, thanks to Willie, and I’ll run the little channel right along the edge of the bank. There’s only one bad place and with the morning light I can see it OK even in a calm. Then we’ll be at Guillermo.