Islands in the Stream

  “You slob,” he said. “You rotten filthy slob.”

  Roger just looked up at him with a surprised look.

  “You mean me, don’t you?” Frank called to him. “And it’s swine, not slob.”

  The man ignored him and went on at Roger.

  “You big fat slob,” the man almost choked. “You phony. You faker. You cheap phony. You rotten writer and lousy painter.”

  “Who are you talking to and about what?” Roger stood up.

  “You. You slob. You phony you. You coward. Oh you slob. You filthy slob.”

  “You’re crazy,” Roger said quietly.

  “You slob,” the man said across the space of water that separated the two boats the same way someone might speak insultingly to an animal in one of those modern zoos where no bars, but only pits, separate the visitors from the beasts. “You phony.”

  “He means me,” Frank said happily. “Don’t you know me? I’m the swine.”

  “I mean you,” the man pointed his finger at Roger. “You phony.”

  “Look,” Roger said to him. “You’re not talking to me at all. You’re just talking to be able to repeat back in New York what you said to me.”

  He spoke reasonably and patiently as though he really wanted the man to understand and shut up.

  “You slob,” the man shouted, working himself further and further into this hysteria he had even dressed up for. “You rotten filthy phony.”

  “You’re not talking to me,” Roger repeated to him very quietly now and Thomas Hudson saw that he had decided. “So shut up now. If you want to talk to me get up on the dock.”

  Roger started up for the dock and, oddly enough, the man came climbing up on the dock as fast as you please. He had talked himself into it and worked himself up to it. But he was doing it. The Negroes fell back and then closed in around the two of them leaving plenty of room.

  Thomas Hudson didn’t know what the man expected to happen when he got up on the dock. No one said anything and there were all those black faces around him and he took a swing at Roger and Roger hit him in the mouth with a left and his mouth started to bleed. He swung at Roger again and Roger hooked him hard to the right eye twice. He grabbed hold of Roger and Roger’s sweatshirt tore when he dug the man in the belly hard with his right and then pushed him away and slapped him hard across the face backhand with his open left hand.

  None of the Negroes had said a word. They just kept the two men surrounded and gave them plenty of room. Someone, Tom thought it was John’s boy Fred, had turned the dock lights on and you could see well.

  Roger went after the man and hooked him three times fast to the head high up. The man grabbed him and his sweatshirt tore again as he pushed him away and jabbed him twice in the mouth.

  “Cut out those lefts,” Frank yelled. “Throw your right and cool the son of a bitch. Cool him.”

  “Got anything to say to me?” Roger said to the man and hooked him hard on the mouth. The man was bleeding badly from the mouth and the whole right side of his face was coming up and his right eye was almost closed.

  The man grabbed Roger and Roger held him inside and steadied him. The man was breathing hard and he hadn’t said anything. Roger had a thumb on the inside of the man’s two elbows and Tom could see him rubbing the thumbs back and forth over the tendons between the biceps and the forearms.

  “Don’t you bleed on me, you son of a bitch,” Roger said, and brought his left hand up fast and loose and knocked the man’s head back and then backhanded him across the face again.

  “You can get a new nose now,” he said.

  “Cool him, Roger. Cool him,” Frank pled with him.

  “Can’t you see what he’s doing, you dope?” Fred Wilson said. “He’s ruining him.”

  The man grabbed Roger and Roger held him and pushed him away.

  “Hit me,” he said. “Come on. Hit me.”

  The man swung at him and Roger ducked it and grabbed him.

  “What’s your name?” he said to the man.

  The man didn’t answer. All he did was breathe as though he were dying with asthma.

  Roger was holding the man again with his thumbs pressing in on the inside of his elbows. “You’re a strong son of a bitch,” he said to the man. “Who the hell ever told you you could fight?”

  The man swung at him weakly and Roger grabbed him, pulled him forward, spun him a little, and clubbed him twice on the ear with the base of his right fist.

  “You think you’ve learned not to talk to people?” he asked the man.

  “Look at his ear,” Rupert said. “Like a bunch of grapes.”

  Roger was holding the man again with his thumbs pushing in against the tendons at the base of the biceps. Thomas Hudson was watching the man’s face. It had not been frightened at the start; just mean as a pig’s is; a really mean boar. But it was really completely frightened now. He had probably never heard of fights that no one stopped. Probably he thought in some part of his mind about the stories he had read where men were kicked to death if they went down. He still tried to fight. Each time Roger told him to hit him or pushed him away he tried to throw a punch. He hadn’t quit.

  Roger pushed him away. The man stood there and looked at him. When Roger wasn’t holding him in that way that made him feel absolutely helpless the fear drained away a little and the meanness came back. He stood there frightened, badly hurt, his face destroyed, his mouth bleeding, and that ear looking like an overripe fig as the small individual hemorrhages united into one great swelling inside the skin. As he stood there, Roger’s hands off him now, the fear drained and the indestructible meanness welled up.

  “Anything to say?” Roger asked him.

  “Slob,” the man said. As he said it, he pulled his chin in and put his hands up and turned half away in a gesture an incorrigible child might make.

  “Now it comes,” Rupert shouted. “Now it’s going to roll.”

  But it was nothing dramatic nor scientific. Roger stepped quickly over to where the man stood and raised his left shoulder and dropped his right fist down and swung it up so it smashed against the side of the man’s head. He went down on his hands and knees, his forehead resting on the dock. He knelt there a little while with his forehead against the planking and then he went gently over on his side. Roger looked at him and then came over to the edge of the dock and swung down into the cockpit.

  The crew of the man’s yacht were carrying him on board. They had not intervened in what had happened on the dock and they had picked him up from where he lay on his side on the dock and carried him sagging heavily. Some of the Negroes had helped them lower him down to the stern and take him below. They shut the door after they took him in.

  “He ought to have a doctor,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “He didn’t hit hard on the dock,” Roger said. “I thought about the dock.”

  “I don’t think that last crack alongside the ear did him a lot of good,” Johnny Goodner said.

  “You ruined his face,” Frank said. “And the ear. I never saw an ear come up so fast. First it was like a bunch of grapes and then it was as full as an orange.”

  “Bare hands are a bad thing,” Roger said. “People don’t have any idea what they’ll do. I wish I’d never seen him.”

  “Well, you’ll never see him again without being able to recognize him.”

  “I hope he’ll come around,” Roger said.

  “It was a beautiful fight, Mr. Roger,” Fred said.

  “Fight, hell,” Roger said. “Why the hell did that have to happen?”

  “The gentleman certainly brought it on himself,” Fred said.

  “Cut out worrying, will you?” Frank said to Roger. “I’ve seen hundreds of guys cooled and that guy is OK.”

  Up on the dock the boys were drifting away commenting on the fight. There had been something about the way the white man had looked when he was carried aboard that they did not like and all the bravery about burning the Commissioner’s house was evaporating. r />
  “Well, good night, Captain Frank,” Rupert said.

  “Going, Rupert?” Frank asked him.

  “Thought we might all go up see what’s going on at Mr. Bobby’s.”

  “Good night, Rupert,” said Roger. “See you tomorrow.”

  Roger was feeling very low and his left hand was swollen as big as a grapefruit. His right was puffed too but not as badly. There was nothing else to show he had been in a fight except that the neck of his sweatshirt was ripped open and flapped down on his chest. The man had hit him once high up on his head and there was a small bump there. John put some Mercurochrome on the places where his knuckles were skinned and cut. Roger didn’t even look at his hands.

  “Let’s go up to Bobby’s place and see if there’s any fun,” Frank said.

  “Don’t worry about anything, Roge,” Fred Wilson said and climbed up on the dock. “Only suckers worry.”

  They went on along the dock carrying their guitar and banjo toward where the light and the singing were coming out of the open door of the Ponce de León.

  “Freddy is a pretty good joe,” John said to Thomas Hudson.

  “He always was,” Thomas Hudson said. “But he and Frank are bad together.”

  Roger did not say anything and Thomas Hudson was worried about him; about him and about other things.

  “Don’t you think we might turn in?” he said to him.

  “I’m still spooked about that character,” Roger said.

  He was sitting with his back toward the stern, looking glum and holding his left hand in his right.

  “Well you don’t have to be anymore,” John spoke very quietly. “He’s walking around now.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s coming out now and he’s carrying a shotgun.”

  “I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” Roger said. But his voice was happy again. He sat with his back toward the stern and never turned around to look.

  The man came out to the stern this time wearing both a pajama top and trousers, but what you saw was the shotgun. Thomas Hudson looked away from it and to his face and his face was very bad. Someone had worked on it and there was gauze and tape over the cheeks and a lot of Mercurochrome had been used. They hadn’t been able to do anything about his ear. Thomas Hudson imagined it must have hurt to have anything touch it, and it just stood out looking very taut and swollen and it had become the dominant feature of his face. No one said anything and the man just stood there with his spoiled face and his shotgun. He probably could not see anyone very clearly the way his eyes were puffed tight. He stood there and he did not say anything and neither did anyone else.

  Roger turned his head very slowly, saw him, and spoke over his shoulder.

  “Go put the gun away and go to bed.”

  The man stood there with the gun. His swollen lips were working but he did not say anything.

  “You’re mean enough to shoot a man in the back but you haven’t got the guts,” Roger spoke over his shoulder very quietly, “Go put the gun away and go to bed.”

  Roger still sat there with his back toward the man. Then he took what Thomas Hudson thought was an awful chance.

  “Doesn’t he remind you just a little bit of Lady Macbeth coming out there in his nightclothes?” he asked the three others in the stern.

  Thomas Hudson waited for it then. But nothing happened and after a while the man turned and went down into the cabin taking the shotgun with him.

  “I feel very, very much better,” Roger said. “I could feel that sweat run clean down from my armpit and onto my leg. Let’s go home, Tom. Man’s OK.”

  “Not too awfully OK,” Johnny said.

  “OK enough,” Roger said. “What a human being that is.”

  “Come on, Roger,” Thomas Hudson said. “Come on up to my place for a while.”

  “All right.”

  They said good night to John and walked up the King’s Highway toward the house. There was still plenty of celebrating going on.

  “Do you want to go into the Ponce?” Thomas Hudson asked.

  “Hell no,” Roger said.

  “I thought I’d tell Freddy the man’s OK.”

  “You tell him. I’ll go on to your house.”

  When Thomas Hudson got home Roger was lying face down on a bed in the far up-island end of the screen porch. It was dark and you could just barely hear the noise of the celebrating.

  “Sleeping?” Thomas Hudson asked him.

  “No.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “I don’t think so. Thanks.”

  “How’s the hand?”

  “Just swelled and sore. It’s nothing.”

  “You feeling low again?”

  “Yes. I’ve got it bad.”

  “The kids will be here in the morning.”

  “That will be fine.”

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”

  “No, kid. But you have one.”

  “I’ll have a whisky and soda to go to sleep on.”

  Thomas Hudson went to the icebox, mixed the drink, and came back out to the screened porch and sat there in the dark with Roger lying on the bed.

  “You know, there’s an awful lot of real bastards loose,” Roger said. “That guy was no good, Tom.”

  “You taught him something.”

  “No. I don’t think so. I humiliated him and I ruined him a little. But he’ll take it out on someone else.”

  “He brought it on.”

  “Sure. But I didn’t finish it.”

  “You did everything but kill him.”

  “That’s what I mean. He’ll just be worse now.”

  “I think maybe you taught him a hell of a lesson.”

  “No. I don’t think so. It was the same thing out on the coast.”

  “What really happened? You haven’t told me anything since you got back.”

  “It was a fight, sort of like this one.”

  “Who with?”

  He named a man who was very high up in what is known as the industry.

  “I didn’t want any part of it,” Roger said. “It was out at the house where I was having some woman trouble and I suppose, technically, I shouldn’t have been there. But that night I took it and took it and took it from this character. Much worse than tonight. Finally I just couldn’t take it any more and I gave it to him, really gave it to him without thinking about anything, and his head hit wrong on the marble steps going down to the pool. This was all by the pool. He came out of it at the Cedars of Lebanon finally about the third day and so I missed manslaughter. But they had it all set. With the witnesses they had I’d have been lucky to get that.”

  “So then what?”

  “So then, after he’s back on the job, I get the real frameroo. The full-sized one. Complete with handles.”

  “What was it?”

  “Everything. In series.”

  “Want to tell me?”

  “No. It wouldn’t be useful to you. Just take my word for it that it was a frame. It’s so awful nobody mentions it. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “Sort of.”

  “So I wasn’t feeling so good about tonight. There’s a lot of wickeds at large. Really bads. And hitting them is no solution. I think that’s one reason why they provoke you.” He turned over on the bed and lay face up. “You know evil is a hell of a thing, Tommy. And it’s smart as a pig. You know they had something in the old days about good and evil.”

  “Plenty of people wouldn’t classify you as a straight good,” Thomas Hudson told him.

  “No. Nor do I claim to be. Nor even good nor anywhere near good. I wish I were though. Being against evil doesn’t make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming in just like a tide.”

  “All fights are bad.”

  “I know it. But what are you going to do about them?”

  “You have to win them when they start.”

  “Sure. But I was taking pleasure in it from the minute
it started.”

  “You would have taken more pleasure if he could have fought.”

  “I hope so,” Roger said. “Though I don’t know now. I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you’re fighting.”

  “He was an awful type,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “He couldn’t have been any worse than the last one on the coast. The trouble is, Tommy, there are so many of them. They have them in all countries and they are getting bigger all the time. Times aren’t good, Tommy.”

  “When did you ever see them good?”

  “We always had good times.”

  “Sure. We had good times in all sorts of good places. But the times weren’t good.”

  “I never knew,” Roger said. “Everybody claimed they were good and then everybody was busted. I didn’t have any money when they all had it. Then when I had some was when things were really bad. But people didn’t always seem as goddamned mean and evil though.”

  “You’ve been going around with awful people, too.”

  “I see some good ones once in a while.”

  “Not very many.”

  “Sure I do. You don’t know all my friends.”

  “You run with a pretty seedy lot.”

  “Whose friends were those tonight? Your friends or my friends?”

  “Our friends. They’re not so bad. They’re worthless but they’re not really evil.”

  “No,” said Roger. “I guess not. Frank is pretty bad. Bad enough. I don’t think he’s evil though. But there’s a lot of stuff I can’t take anymore. And he and Fred eviled up awfully fast.”

  “I know about good and evil. I’m not trying to misunderstand nor play dumb.”

  “I don’t know much about good because I’ve always been a failure at it. That evil is my dish. I can recognize that old evil.”

  “I’m sorry tonight turned out so lousy.”