“I’m just feeling low.”
“Do you want to turn in? You better sleep here.”
“Thanks. I will if you don’t mind. But I think I’ll go in the library and read for a while. Where are those Australian stories you had the last time I was here?”
“Henry Lawson’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get them.”
Thomas Hudson went to bed and when he woke in the night the light was still on in the library.
V
When Thomas Hudson woke there was a light east breeze blowing and out across the flats the sand was bone white under the blue sky and the small high clouds that were traveling with the wind made dark moving patches on the green water. The wheel of the wind charger was turning in the breeze and it was a fine fresh-feeling morning.
Roger was gone and Thomas Hudson breakfasted by himself and read the Mainland paper that had come across yesterday. He had put it away without reading it to save it for breakfast.
“What time the boys coming in?” Joseph asked.
“Around noon.”
“They’ll be here for lunch though?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Roger was gone when I came,” Joseph said. “He didn’t have any breakfast.”
“Maybe he’ll be in now.”
“Boy said he see him go off sculling in the dinghy.”
After Thomas Hudson had finished breakfast and the paper he went out on the porch on the ocean side and went to work. He worked well and was nearly finished when he heard Roger come in and come up the stairs.
Roger looked over his shoulder and said, “It’s going to be good.”
“Maybe.”
“Where did you see those waterspouts?”
“I never saw these. These are some I’m doing to order. How’s your hand?”
“Still puffy.”
Roger watched him work and he did not turn around.
“If it wasn’t for the hand that would all seem just like a nasty dream.”
“Pretty nasty one.”
“Do you suppose that guy really did come out with a shotgun?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. “And I don’t care.”
“Sorry,” Roger said. “Want me to go?”
“No. Stick around. I’m about through. I won’t pay any attention to you.”
“They got away at first light,” Roger said. “I saw them go.”
“What were you doing up then?”
“I couldn’t sleep after I stopped reading and I wasn’t very good company for myself so I went down to the docks and sat around with some of the boys. The Ponce never did close up. I saw Joseph.”
“Joseph said you were out sculling.”
“Right-hand sculling. Trying to exercise it out. I did too. Feel fine now.”
“That’s about all I can do now,” Thomas Hudson said and started to clean up and put the gear away. “The kids will be just about taking off now.” He looked at his watch. “Why don’t we just have a quick one?”
“Fine. I could use one.”
“It isn’t quite twelve.”
“I don’t think that makes any difference. You’re through working and I’m on a vacation. But maybe we better wait till twelve if that’s your rule.”
“All right.”
“I’ve been keeping that rule too. It’s an awful nuisance some mornings when a drink would make you feel all right.”
“Let’s break it,” Thomas Hudson said. “I get awfully excited when I know I’m going to see them,” he explained.
“I know.”
“Joe,” Roger called. “Bring the shaker and rig for martinis.”
“Yes sir. I got her rigged now.”
“What did you rig so early for? Do you think we are rummies?”
“No sir, Mr. Roger. I figured that was what you were saving that empty stomach for.”
“Here’s to us and the kids,” Roger said.
“They ought to have fun this year. You better stay up here too. You can always get away to the shack if they get on your nerves.”
“I’ll stay up here part of the time if I don’t bother you.”
“You don’t bother me.”
“It will be wonderful to have them.”
It was too. They were good kids and now they had been at the house for a week. The tuna run was over and there were few boats at the island now and the life was slow and normal again and the weather was early summer.
The boys slept on cots on the screened porch and it is much less lonely sleeping when you can hear children breathing when you wake in the night. The nights were cool from the breeze that came across the banks and when the breeze fell it would be cool from the sea.
The boys had been a little shy when they first came and much neater than they were later. But there was no great neatness problem if you had them rinse the sand from their feet before they came into the house and hang their wet swimming shorts outside and put on dry ones in the house. Joseph aired their pajamas when he made up the cots in the morning and after sunning them folded the pajamas and put them away and there were only the shirts and the sweaters they wore in the evening to be scattered around. That, at least, was how it was in principle. Actually every sort of gear they owned was scattered all over everywhere. Thomas Hudson did not mind it. When a man lives in a house by himself he gets very precise habits and they get to be a pleasure. But it felt good to have some of them broken up. He knew he would have his habits again long after he would no longer have the boys.
Sitting on the sea porch working he could see the biggest one and the middle-sized one and the small one lying on the beach with Roger. They were talking, and digging in the sand, and arguing but he could not hear what they were saying.
The biggest boy was long and dark with Thomas Hudson’s neck and shoulders and the long swimmer’s legs and big feet. He had a rather Indian face and was a happy boy although in repose his face looked almost tragic.
Thomas Hudson had looked at him when his face had that sad look and asked, “What are you thinking about, Schatz?”
“Fly-tying,” the boy would say, his face lighting instantly. It was the eyes and the mouth that made it tragic-looking when he was thinking and, when he spoke, they brought it to life.
The middle boy always reminded Thomas Hudson of an otter. He had the same color hair as an otter’s fur and it had almost the same texture as that of an underwater animal and he browned all over in a strange dark gold tan. He always reminded his father of the sort of animal that has a sound and humorous life by itself. Otters and bears are the animals that joke most and bears, of course, are very close to men. This boy would never be wide enough and strong enough to be a bear and he would never be an athlete, nor did he want to be; but he had a lovely small-animal quality and he had a good mind and a life of his own. He was affectionate and he had a sense of justice and was good company. He was also a Cartesian doubter and an avid arguer and he teased well and without meanness although sometimes he teased toughly. He had other qualities no one knew about and the other two boys respected him immensely although they tried to tease him and tear him down on any point where he was vulnerable. Naturally they had rows among themselves and they teased each other with considerable malice, but they were well mannered and respectful with grown-ups.
The smallest boy was fair and was built like a pocket battleship. He was a copy of Thomas Hudson, physically, reduced in scale and widened and shortened. His skin freckled when it tanned and he had a humorous face and was born being very old. He was a devil too, and deviled both his older brothers, and he had a dark side to him that nobody except Thomas Hudson could ever understand. Neither of them thought about this except that they recognized it in each other and knew it was bad and the man respected it and understood the boy’s having it. They were very close to each other although Thomas Hudson had never been as much with this boy as with the others. This youngest boy, Andrew, was a precocious excellent athlete and he had been marve
lous with horses since he had first ridden. The other boys were very proud of him but they did not want any nonsense from him, either. He was a little unbelievable and anyone could well have doubted his feats except that many people had seen him ride and watched him jump and seen his cold, professional modesty. He was a boy born to be quite wicked who was being very good and he carried his wickedness around with him transmuted into a sort of teasing gaiety. But he was a bad boy and the others knew it and he knew it. He was just being good while his badness grew inside him.
There, below the sea porch, the four of them were lying on the sand with the oldest boy, young Tom, on one side of Roger and the smallest one, Andrew, next to him on the middle side and the middle one, David, stretched out next to Tom on his back with his eyes closed. Thomas Hudson cleaned up his gear and went down to join them.
“Hi, papa,” the oldest boy said. “Did you work well?”
“Are you going to swim, papa?” asked the middle boy.
“The water’s pretty good, papa,” the youngest boy said.
“How are you father?” Roger grinned. “How’s the painting business, Mr. Hudson?”
“Painting business is over for the day, gentlemen.”
“Oh swell,” said David, the middle boy. “Do you think we can go goggle-fishing?”
“Let’s go after lunch.”
“That’s wonderful,” the big boy said.
“Won’t it maybe be too rough?” Andrew, the youngest boy, asked.
“For you, maybe,” his oldest brother, Tom, told him.
“No, Tommy. For anyone.”
“They stay in the rocks when it’s rough,” David said. “They’re afraid of the surge the same way we are. I think it makes them seasick too. Papa, don’t fish get seasick?”
“Sure,” Thomas Hudson said. “Sometimes in the live-well of a smack in rough weather the groupers will get so seasick that they die.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” David asked his older brother.
“They get sick and they die,” young Tom said. “But what proves that it’s seasick?”
“I think you could say they were really seasick,” Thomas Hudson said. “I don’t know whether they would be if they could swim freely, though.”
“But don’t you see that in the reef they can’t swim freely either, papa?” David said. “They have their holes and certain places they move out in. But they have to stay in the holes for fear of bigger fish and the surge bangs them around just the way it would if they were in the well of a smack.”
“Not quite as much,” young Tom disagreed.
“Maybe not quite as much,” David admitted judiciously.
“But enough,” Andrew said. He whispered to his father, “If they keep it up, we won’t have to go.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“I like it wonderful but I’m scared of it.”
“What scares you?”
“Everything underwater. I’m scared as soon as I let my air out. Tommy can swim wonderfully but he’s scared underwater too. David’s the only one of us that isn’t scared underwater.”
“I’m scared lots of times,” Thomas Hudson told him.
“Are you really?”
“Everybody is, I think.”
“David isn’t. No matter where it is. But David’s scared now of horses because they threw him so many times.”
“Listen, punk,” David had heard him. “How was I thrown?”
“I don’t know. It was so many times I don’t remember.”
“Well let me tell you. I know how I was thrown so much. When I used to ride Old Paint that year he used to swell himself up when they cinched him and then later the saddle would slip with me.”
“I never had that trouble with him,” Andrew said smartly.
“Oh, the devil,” David said. “Probably he liked you like everybody does. Maybe somebody told him who you were.”
“I used to read out loud to him about me out of the papers,” Andrew said.
“I’ll bet he went off on a dead run then,” Thomas Hudson said. “You know what happened to David was that he started to ride that old broken-down quarter horse that got sound on us and there wasn’t any place for the horse to run. Horses aren’t supposed to go like that across that sort of country.”
“I wasn’t saying I could have ridden him, papa,” Andrew said.
“You better not,” David said. Then, “Oh hell, you probably could have. Sure you could have. But honestly, Andy, you don’t know how he used to be going before I would spook. I was spooked of the saddle horn. Oh the hell with it. I was spooked.”
“Papa, do we actually have to go goggle-fishing?” Andrew asked.
“Not if it’s too rough.”
“Who decides if it’s too rough?”
“I decide.”
“Good,” Andy said. “It certainly looks too rough to me.”
“Papa, have you still got Old Paint out at the ranch?” Andy asked.
“I believe so,” Thomas Hudson said. “I rented the ranch, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The end of last year.”
“But we can still go there, can’t we?” David asked quickly.
“Oh sure. We have the big cabin on the beach down by the river.”
“The ranch is the best place I was ever at,” Andy said. “Outside of here, of course.”
“I thought you used to like Rochester best,” David teased him. That was where he used to be left with his nurse when she stayed with her family in the summer months when the other boys went west.
“I did, too. Rochester was a wonderful place.”
“Do you remember when we came home that fall the time we killed the three grizzlies and you tried to tell him about it, Dave, and what he said?” Thomas Hudson asked.
“No, papa. I can’t remember exactly that far back.”
“It was in the butler’s pantry where you guys ate and you were having children’s supper and telling him about it and Anna was saying, ‘Oh my gracious, David, that must have been exciting. And what did you do then?’ and this wicked old man, he must have been about five or six then, spoke up and said, ‘Well that’s probably very interesting, David, to people who are interested in that sort of thing. But we don’t have grizzlies in Rochester.’ ”
“See, horseman?” David said. “How you were then?”
“All right, papa,” Andrew said. “Tell him about when he would read nothing but the funny papers and read funny papers on the trip through the Everglades and wouldn’t look at anything after he went to that school the fall we were in New York and got to be a heel.”
“I remember it,” David said. “Papa doesn’t have to tell it.”
“You came out of it all right,” Thomas Hudson said.
“I had to, I guess. It certainly would have been something pretty bad to have stayed in.”
“Tell them about when I was little,” young Tom said, rolling over and taking hold of David’s ankle. “I’ll never get to be as good in real life as the stories about me when I was little.”
“I knew you when you were little,” Thomas Hudson said. “You were quite a strange character then.”
“He was just strange because he lived in strange places,” the smallest boy said. “I could have been strange in Paris and Spain and Austria.”
“He’s strange now, horseman,” David said. “He doesn’t need any exotic backgrounds.”
“What’s exotic backgrounds?”
“What you haven’t got.”
“I’ll bet I’ll have them, then.”
“Shut up and let papa tell,” young Tom said. “Tell them about when you and I used to go around together in Paris.”
“You weren’t so strange then,” Thomas Hudson said. “As a baby you were an awfully sound character. Mother and I used to leave you in the crib that was made out of a clothes basket in that flat where we lived over the sawmill and F. Puss the big cat would curl up in the foot of the basket and wouldn’t let anybody co
me near you. You said your name was G’Ning G’Ning and we used to call you G’Ning G’Ning the Terrible.”
“Where did I get a name like that?”
“Off a street car or an autobus I think. The sound the conductor made.”
“Couldn’t I speak French?”
“Not too well then.”
“Tell me about a little later by the time I could speak French.”
“Later on I used to wheel you in the carriage, it was a cheap, very light, folding carriage, down the street to the Closerie des Lilas where we’d have breakfast and I’d read the paper and you’d watch everything that went past on the boulevard. Then we’d finish breakfast—”
“What would we have?”
“Brioche and café au lait.”
“Me too?”
“You’d just have a taste of coffee in the milk.”
“I can remember. Where would we go then?”
“I’d wheel you across the street from the Closerie des Lilas and past the fountain with the bronze horses and the fish and the mermaids and down between the long allées of chestnut trees with the French children playing and their nurses on the benches beside the gravel paths—”
“And the École Alsacienne on the left,” young Tom said.
“And apartment buildings on the right—”
“And apartment buildings and apartments with glass roofs for studios all along the street that goes down to the left and quite triste from the darkness of the stone because that was the shady side,” young Tom said.
“Is it fall or spring or winter?” Thomas Hudson asked.
“Late fall.”
“Then you were cold in the face, and your cheeks and your nose were red and we would go into the Luxembourg through the iron gate at the upper end and down toward the lake and around the lake once and then turn to the right toward the Medici Fountain and the statues and out of the gate in front of the Odéon and down a couple of side streets to the Boulevard Saint-Michel—”
“The Boul’ Mich’—”
“And down the Boul’ Mich’ past the Cluny—”
“On our right—”
“That was very dark and gloomy looking and across the Boulevard Saint-Germain—”
“That was the most exciting street with the most traffic. It’s strange how exciting and dangerous seeming it was there. And down by the Rue de Rennes it always seemed perfectly safe—between the Deux Magots and Lipp’s crossing I mean. Why was that, Papa?”