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 marvelous 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 come 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?”

“I don’t know, Schatz.”

“I wish something would happen beside the names of streets,” Andrew said. “I get tired of the names of streets in a place I’ve never been.”

“Make something happen, then, papa,” young Tom said. “We can talk about streets when we’re alone.”

“Nothing much happened then,” Thomas Hudson said. “We would go on down to the Place Saint-Michel and we would sit on the terrace of the café and Papa would sketch with a café crème on the table and you’d have a beer.”

“Did I like beer then?”

“You were a big beer man. But you liked water with a little red wine in it at meals.”

“I remember. L’eau rougie.”

“Exactement,” Thomas Hudson said. “You were a very strong l’eau rougie man but you liked an occasional bock.”

“I can remember in Austria going on a luge and our dog Schnautz and snow.”

“Can you remember Christmas there?”

“No. Just you and snow and our dog Schnautz and my nurse. She was beautiful. And I remember mother on skis and how beautiful she was. I can remember seeing you and mother coming down skiing through an orchard. I don’t know where it was. But I can remember the Jardin du Luxembourg well. I can remember afternoons with the boats on the lake by the fountain in the big garden with the trees. The paths through the trees were all gravelled and men played bowling games off to the left under the trees as we went down toward the Palace and there was a clock high up on the Palace. In the fall the leaves came down and I can remember the trees bare and the leaves on the gravel. I like to remember the fall best.”

“Why?” David asked.

“Lots of things. The way everything smelled in the fall and the carnivals and the way the gravel was dry on top when everything was damp and the wind on the lake to sail the boats and the wind in the trees that brought the leaves down. I can remember feeling the pigeons by me warm under the blanket when you killed them just before it was dark and how the feathers were smooth and I would stroke them and hold them close and keep my hands warm going home until the pigeons got cold too.”

“Where did you kill the pigeons, papa?” David asked.

“Mostly down by the Medici Fountain just before they shut the gardens. There’s a high iron fence all around the gardens and they shut the gates at dark and everyone has to go out. Guards go through warning people and locking up the gates. After the guards went ahead I used to kill the pigeons with a slingshot when they were on the ground by the fountain. They make wonderful slingshots in France.”

“Didn’t you make your own if you were poor?” Andrew asked.

“Sure. First I had one I made from a forked branch of a sapling I cut down in the Forest of Rambouillet when Tommy’s mother and I were on a walking trip there. I whittled it out and we bought the big rubber bands for it at a stationery store on the Place Saint-Michel and made the leather pouch out of leather from an old glove of Tommy’s mother.”

“What did you shoot in it?”

“Pebbles.”

“How close would you have to get?”

“As close as you could so you could pick them up and get them under the blanket as quick as you could.”

“I remember the time one came alive,” young Tom said. “And I held him quiet and didn’t say anything about it all the way home because I wanted to keep him. He was a very big pigeon, almost purple color with a high neck and a wonderful head and white on his wings, and you let me keep him in the kitchen until we could get a cage for him. You tied him by one leg. But that night the big cat killed him and brought him in to my bed. The big cat was so proud and he carried him just as though he were a tiger carrying a native and he jumped up to the bed with him. That was when I had a square bed after the basket. I can’t remember the basket. You and mother were gone to the café and the big cat and I were alone and I remember the windows were open and there was a big moon over the sawmill and it was winter and I could smell the sawdust. I remember seeing the big cat coming across the floor with his head high up so the pigeon barely dragged on the floor and then he made one jump and just sailed right up and into the bed with him. I felt awfully that he had killed my pigeon but he was so proud and so happy and he was such a good friend of mine I felt proud and happy, too. I remember he played with the pigeon and then he would push his paws up and down on my chest and purr and then play with the pigeon again. Finally I remember he and I and the pigeon all went to sleep together. I had one hand on the pigeon and he had one paw on the pigeon and then in the night I woke up and he was eating him and purring loud like a tiger.”

“That’s a lot better than names of streets,” Andrew said. “Were you scared, Tommy, when he was eating him?”

“No. The big cat was the best friend I had then. I mean the closest friend. I think he would have liked me to eat the pigeon too.”

“You ought to have tried it,” Andrew said. “Tel some more about slingshots.”

“Mother gave you the other slingshot for Christmas,” young Tom said. “She saw it in a gun store and she wanted to buy you a shotgun but she never had enough money. She used to look at the shotguns in the window every day when she went past the store to the Epicene and one day she saw the slingshot and she bought it because she was afraid they would sell it to somebody else and she kept it hid until Christmas. She had to falsify the accounts so you wouldn’t know about it. She’s told me about it lots of times. I can remember when you got it for Christmas and you gave me the old one. But I wasn’t strong enough to pull it then.”

“Papa, weren’t we ever poor?” Andrew asked.

“No. I’d gotten over being poor by the time you guys were born. We were broke lots of times but never really poor the way we were with Tom and his mother.”

“Tell us some more about in Paris,” David said. “What else did you and Tommy do?”

“What did we do, Schatz?”

“In the fall? We used to buy roasted chestnuts from a roast chestnut man and I used to keep my hands warm on them too. We went to the circus and saw the crocodiles of Le Capitaine Wahl.”

“Can you remember that?”

“Very well. The Capitaine Wahl wrestled with a crocodile (he pronounced it crowcodeel, the crow as in the bird of that name) and a beautiful girl poked them with a trident. But the biggest crocodiles wouldn’t move. The circus was beautiful and round and red with gold paint and smelled of horses. There was a place in back where you went to drink with Mr. Crosby and the tamer of lions and his wife.”

“Do you remember Mr. Crosby?”

“He never wore a hat nor an overcoat no matter how cold it was and his little girl had hair that hung down her back like Alice in Wonderland. In the illustrations I mean. Mr. Crosby was always very very nervous.”

“Who else do you remember?”

“Mr. Joyce.”

“What was he like?”

“He was tall and thin and he had a moustache and a small beard that grew straight up and down on his chin and he wore thick, thick glasses and walked with his head held very high. I remember him passing us on the street and not speaking and you spoke to him and he stopped and saw us through the glasses like looking out of an aquarium and he said, ‘Ah, Hudson, I was looking for you,’ and we three went to the café and it was cold outside but we sat in a corner with one of those what do you call thems?”

“Braziers.”

“I thought that was what ladies wore,” Andrew said.

“It’s an iron can with holes in it they burn coal or charcoal in to heat any place outside like a café terrace where you sit close to them to keep warm or a race track where you stand around and get warm from them,” young Tom explained. “At this café where papa and I and Mr. Joyce used to go they had them all along the outside and you could be warm and comfortable in the coldest weather.”

“I guess you’ve spent the biggest part of your life in cafés and saloons and hot spots,” the youngest boy said.

“Quite a bit of it,” Tom said. “Haven’t we, papa?”

“And sound asleep in the car outside while papa has just a quick one,” David said. “Boy, I used to hate that word quick one. I guess a quick one is about the slowest thing on earth.”

“What did Mr. Joyce talk about?” Roger asked young Tom.

“Gee, Mr. Davis, I can’t remember much about that time. I think it was about Italian writers and about Mr. Ford. Mr. Joyce couldn’t stand Mr. Ford. Mr. Pound had gotten on his nerves, too. ‘Ezra’s mad, Hudson,’ he said to papa. I can remember that because I thought mad meant mad like a mad dog and I remember sitting there and watching Mr. Joyce’s face, it was sort of red with awfully smooth skin, cold weather skin, and his glasses that had one lens even thicker than the other, and thinking of Mr. Pound with his red hair and his pointed beard and his nice eyes, with white stuff sort of like lather dripping out of his mouth. I thought it was terrible Mr. Pound was mad and I hoped we wouldn’t run into him. Then Mr. Joyce said, ‘Of course Ford’s been mad for years,’ and I saw Mr. Ford with his big, pale, funny face and his pale eyes and his mouth with the teeth loose in it and always about half open and that awful lather dripping down his jaws too.”

“Don’t say any more,” Andrew said. “I’ll dream about it.”

“Go on please,” David said. “It’s like werewolves. Mother locked up the werewolf book because Andrew had such bad dreams.”

“Did Mr. Pound ever bite anybody?” Andrew asked.

“No, horseman,” David told him. “It’s just a way of talking. He means mad out of his head mad. Not hydrophobia mad. Why did he think they were mad?”

“I can’t tell you,” young Tom said. “I wasn’t as young then as when we used to shoot pigeons in the gardens. But I was too young to remember everything and the idea of Mr. Pound and Mr. Ford with that dreadful slaver coming out of their mouths all ready to bite, drove everything out of my head. Did you know Mr. Joyce, Mr. Davis?”

“Yes. He and your father and I were very good friends.”

“Papa was much younger than Mr. Joyce.”

“Papa was younger than anybody, then.”

“Not than me,” young Tom said proudly. “I figure I was probably about Mr. Joyce’s youngest friend.”

“I’ll bet he misses you a lot,” Andrew said.

“It certainly is a shame he never could have met you,” David said to Andrew. “If you hadn’t been hanging around Rochester all the time he could have had the privilege.”

“Mr. Joyce was a great man,” young Tom said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with you two punks.”

“That’s your opinion,” Andrew said. “Mr. Joyce and David might have been pals. David writes for the paper at school.”

“Papa, tell us some more about when you and Tommy and Tommy’s mother were poor. How poor did you ever get?”

“They were pretty poor,” Roger said. “I can remember when your father used to make up all young Tom’s bottles in the morning and go to the market to buy the best and the cheapest vegetables. I’d meet him coming back from the market when I would be going out for breakfast.”

“I was the finest judge of poireaux in the sixth arrondissement,” Thomas Hudson told the boys.

“What’s poireaux?”

“Leeks.”

“It looks like long, green, quite big onions,” young Tom said. “Only it’s not bright shiny like onions. It’s dull shiny. The leaves are green and the ends are white. You boil it and eat it cold with olive oil and vinegar mixed with salt and pepper. You eat the whole thing, top and all. It’s delicious. I believe I’ve eaten as much of it as maybe anyone in the world.”

“What’s the sixth whatever it is?” Andrew asked.

“You certainly hold up conversation,” David told him.

“If I don’t know French I have to ask.”

“Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements or city districts. We lived in the sixth.”

“Papa, can we skip the arrondissements and you tell us something else?” Andrew asked.

“You can’t stand to learn anything, you athlete,” David said.

“I want to learn,” Andrew said. “But arrondissements is too old for me. You’re always telling me things are too old for me. I admit that is too old for me. I can’t follow it.”

“What’s Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average?” David asked him.

“Three sixty-seven.”

“That’s not too old for you.”

“Cut it out, David. Some people like baseball and you like arrondissements.”

“I suppose we don’t have arrondissements in Rochester.”

“Oh cut it out. I just thought papa and Mr. Davis knew things that would be more interesting to everybody than those damn—Oh hell, I can’t even remember the name of them.”

“You’re not supposed to swear when we are around,” Thomas Hudson corrected.

“I’m sorry, papa,” the small boy said. “I can’t help it that I’m so damn young. I’m sorry again. I mean so young.”

He was upset and hurt. David could tease him pretty successfully.

“You’ll get over being young,” Thomas Hudson told him. “I know it’s hard not to swear when your feelings get working. Only don’t swear in front of grown people. I don’t care what you say by yourselves.”

“Please, papa. I said I was sorry.”

“I know,” Thomas Hudson said. “I wasn’t bawling you out. I was just explaining. I see you guys so seldom it makes a lot of explaining.”

“Not much really, papa,” David said.

“No,” Thomas Hudson said. “It isn’t much.”

“Andrew never swears in front of mother,” David said.

“Leave me out, David. It’s over, isn’t it, papa?”

“If you boys want to really know how to swear,” young Tom said, “you ought to read Mr. Joyce.”

“I can swear as much as I need,” David said. “At least for now.”

“My friend Mr. Joyce has words and expressions I’d never even heard of. I’ll bet nobody could outswear him in any language.”

“Then after that he made up a whole new language,” Roger said. He was lying on his back on the beach with his eyes closed.

“I can’t understand that new language,” young Tom said. “I guess I’m not old enough for it. But wait until you boys read Ulysses.”

“That’s not for boys,” Thomas Hudson said. “It isn’t really. You couldn’t understand it and you shouldn’t try to. Really. You have to wait till you’re older.”

“I read it all,” young Tom said. “I couldn’t understand practically any of it when I first read it, papa, just as you say. But I kept on reading it and now there’s part of it I really understand and I can explain it to people. It’s certainly made me proud that I was one of Mr. Joyce’s friends.”

“Was he really a friend of Mr. Joyce, papa?” Andrew asked.

“Mr. Joyce always used to ask about him.”

“You’re damn right I was a friend of Mr. Joyce,” young Tom said. “He was one of the best friends I ever had.”

“I don’t think you better explain the book much yet,” Thomas Hudson said. “Not quite yet. What part is it that you explain?”

“The last part. The part where the lady talks out loud to herself.”

“The soliloquy,” David said.

“Have you read it?”

“Oh sure,” David said. “Tommy read it to me.”

“Did he explain it?”

“As well as he could. Some of it’s a little old for both of us.”

“Where did you get hold of it?”

“In the books at home. I borrowed it and took it to school.”

“You what?”

“I used to read passages of it out loud to the boys and tell them how Mr. Joyce was my friend and how much time we used to spend together.”

“How did the boys like it?”

“Some of the more devout boys thought it was a little strong.”

“Did they find out about it at school?”

“Sure. Didn’t you hear, papa? No, I guess that was when you were in Abyssinia. The headmaster was going to expel me but I explained Mr. Joyce was a great writer and a personal friend of mine so finally the headmaster said he’d keep the book and sent it home and I promised I’d consult him before I read anything else to the boys or attempted to explain any classics. First, when he was going to expel me, he thought I had a dirty mind. But I haven’t got a dirty mind, papa. That is, not any dirtier than anybody else’s.”

“Oh yes. He was going to confiscate it but I explained it was a first edition and that Mr. Joyce had written in it for you and that he couldn’t confiscate it because it wasn’t mine. I think he was very disappointed not to confiscate it.”

“When can I read that book by Mr. Joyce, papa?” Andrew asked.

“Not for a long time.”

“But Tommy read it.”

“Tommy is a friend of Mr. Joyce.”

“Boy, I’ll say I am,” said young Tom. “Papa, we never knew Balzac, did we?”

“No. He was before our time.”

“Nor Gautier? I found two swell ones by them at home too. The Droll Stories and Mademoiselle de Maupin. I don’t understand Mademoiselle de Maupin at all yet but I am reading it over to try to and it’s great. But if they weren’t friends of ours I think they would expel me sure if I read them to the boys.”

“How are they, Tommy?” David asked.

“Wonderful. You’ll like them both.”

“Why don’t you consult the headmaster as to whether you can read them to the boys?” Roger said. “They’re better than what the boys will dig up for themselves.”

“No, Mr. Davis. I don’t think I’d better. He might get that dirty-mind idea again. Anyway, with the boys it wouldn’t be the same as though they were friends of mine like Mr. Joyce. Anyway I don’t understand Mademoiselle de Maupin well enough to explain it and I wouldn’t have the same authority explaining it as when I had Mr. Joyce’s friendship to back me up.”

“I’d like to have heard that explanation,” Roger said.

“Shucks, Mr. Davis. It was very rudimentary. It wouldn’t have interested you. You understand that part perfectly well, don’t you?”

“Pretty well.”

“I wish we would have known Balzac and Gautier, though, as friends the way we knew Mr. Joyce.”

“So do I,” said Thomas Hudson.

“We knew some good writers, though, didn’t we?”

“We certainly did,” Thomas Hudson said. It was pleasant and hot on the sand and he felt lazy after working and happy, too. It made him very happy to hear the boys talk.

“Let’s go in and swim and then have lunch,” Roger said. “It’s getting hot.”

Thomas Hudson watched them. Swimming slowly, the four of them swam out in the green water, their bodies making shadows over the clear white sand, bodies forging along, shadows projected on the sand by the slight angle of the sun, the brown arms lifting and pushing forward, the hands slicing in, taking hold of the water and pulling it back, legs beating along steadily, heads turning for air, breathing easily and smoothly. Thomas Hudson stood there and watched them swimming out with the wind and he was very fond of the four of them. He thought he ought to paint them swimming, although it would be very difficult. He would try it, though, during the summer.

He was too lazy to swim although he knew he should and finally he walked out feeling the breeze-cooled water fresh and cool on his sun-warmed legs, feeling it cool around his crotch and then, slipping forward into the ocean river, he swam out to meet them as they came in. With his head on the same level theirs were on, it was a different picture, now, changed too because they were swimming against the breeze coming in and the chop was bothering both Andrew and David, who were swimming raggedly. The illusion of them being four sea animals was gone. They had gone out so smoothly and handsomely but now the two younger boys were having difficulty against the wind and the sea. It was not real difficulty. It was just enough to take away any illusion of being at home in the water as they had looked going out. They made two different pictures and perhaps the second was the better one. The five swimmers came out on the beach and walked up to the house.

“That’s why I like it better underwater,” David said. “You don’t have to worry about breathing.”

“Why don’t you goggle-fish with papa and Tommy this aft,” Andrew said to him. “I’ll stay ashore with Mr. Davis.”

“Don’t you want to go, Mr. Davis?”

“I might stay ashore.”

“Don’t stay in on account of me,” Andrew said. “I’ve got plenty to do. I just thought maybe you were staying in.”

“I think I’ll stay in,” Roger said. “I may lie around and read.”

“Don’t let him maneuver you, Mr. Davis. Don’t let him charm you.”

“I feel like staying in,” Roger said.

They were up on the porch now and everyone had changed to dry shorts. Joseph had brought out a bowl of conch salad. All the boys were eating it, and young Tom was drinking a bottle of beer. Thomas Hudson was sitting back in a chair and Roger was standing with the shaker.

“I get sleepy after lunch,” he said.

“Well, we’ll miss you,” young Tom said. “I’d just as soon stay in, too.”

“Come on, you stay in, too, Tom,” Andrew said. “Let Papa and David go.”

“I won’t catch you,” young Tom told him.

“I don’t want you to catch me. There’s a Negro boy that will catch me.”

“What do you want to be a pitcher for, anyway?” Tommy said. “You’ll never be big enough.”

“I’ll be as big as Dick Rudolph and Dick Kerr.”

“Whoever they were,” young Tom said.

“What’s some jockey’s name?” David whispered to Roger.

“Earl Sande.”

“You’ll be as big as Earl Sande,” David told him.

“Oh, go and goggle-fish,” Andrew said. “I’m going to be a friend of Mr. Davis like Tom was of Mr. Joyce. Can I, Mr. Davis? Then at school I can say, ‘When Mr. Davis and I spent that summer together on that tropical island writing all those vicious stories while my own father was painting those pictures you’ve all seen of ladies in the nude.’ You paint them in the nude, don’t you papa?”

“Sometimes. They’re quite dark though.”

“Oh boy,” Andrew said. “I don’t care about the color. Tom can have Mr. Joyce.”

“You’d be too shy to look at them,” David said.

“Maybe I would. But I’d learn.”

“A nude by papa would be nothing like that chapter by Mr. Joyce,” young Tom said. “It’s only because you’re a little boy that there seems to be anything extraordinary about a nude at all.”

“OK. Just the same I’ll take Mr. Davis, with illustrations by papa. Somebody said at school Mr. Davis’s stories were truly vicious.”

“All right. I’ll take Mr. Davis, too. I’m an old, old friend of Mr. Davis.”

“And of Mr. Picasso and Mr. Braque and Mr. Miro and Mr. Masson and Mr. Pascin,” Thomas Hudson said. “You knew them all.”

“And of Mr. Waldo Peirce,” young Tom said. “You see, Andy boy, you can’t win. You started too late. You can’t win. While you were up in Rochester and for years before you were born papa and I were out in the great world. I probably knew most of the greatest painters alive. Many of them were my very good friends.”

“I have to start sometime,” Andrew said. “And I take Mr. Davis. You don’t have to write vicious stories either, Mr. Davis. I’ll make all that up the way Tommy does. You just tell me anything awful you ever did and I’ll say I was here when it happened.”

“The hell I do make things up that way,” young Tom said. “Sometimes papa and Mr. Davis refresh my memory for me. But I figured in and took part in a whole epoch in painting and in literature and if I had to I could write my memoirs right now as far as that goes.”

“You’re getting crazy, Tommy,” Andrew said. “You better watch yourself.”

“Don’t tell him a thing, Mr. Davis,” young Tom said. “Make him start from scratch like we did.”

“You leave it to me and Mr. Davis,” Andrew said. “You stay out of this.”

“Tell me about some more of those friends of mine, papa,” young Tom said. “I know I knew them and I know we used to be around cafés together but I’d like to know some more definite things about them. The sort of things I know about Mr. Joyce, say.”

“Can you remember Mr. Pascin?”

“No. Not really. What was he like?”

“You can’t claim him as a friend if you don’t even remember him,” Andrew said. “Do you think I won’t be able to remember what Mr. Davis was like a few years from now?”

“Shut up,” young Tom said. “Tell me about him please, papa.”

“Mr. Pascin used to make some drawings that could illustrate the parts you like of Mr. Joyce very well.”

“Really? Gee, that would be something.”

“You used to sit with him at the café and he used to draw pictures of you sometimes on napkins. He was small and very tough and very strange. He used to wear a derby hat most of the time and he was a beautiful painter. He always acted as though he knew a great secret, as though he had just heard it and it amused him. It made him very happy sometimes and sometimes it made him sad. But you could always tell he knew it and it amused him very much.”

“What was the secret?”

“Oh drunkenness and drugs and the secret Mr. Joyce knew all about in that last chapter and how to paint beautifully. He could paint more beautifully than anybody then and that was his secret, too, and he didn’t care. He thought he didn’t care about anything but he did really.”

“Was he bad?”

“Oh yes. He was really bad and that was part of his secret. He liked being bad and he didn’t have remorse.”

“Were he and I good friends?”

“Very. He used to call you The Monster.”

“Gee,” said young Tom, happily. “The Monster.”

“Have we got any pictures of Mr. Pascin’s, papa?” David asked.

“A couple.”

“Did he ever paint Tommy?”

“No. He used to draw Tommy mostly on napkins and on the marble top of café tables. He called him the horrible, beer-swilling monster of the Left Bank.”

“Get that tide down, Tom,” David said.

“Did Mr. Pascin have a dirty mind?” young Tom asked.

“I believe so.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I believe you could say he had. I think that was part of his secret.”

“But Mr. Joyce didn’t.”

“No.”

“And you haven’t.”

“No,” Thomas Hudson said. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you have a dirty mind, Mr. Davis?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s good,” young Tom said. “I told the headmaster neither papa nor Mr. Joyce had dirty minds and now I can tell him about Mr. Davis if he asks me. He was pretty set on it that I had a dirty mind. But I wasn’t worried. There’s a boy at school that really has one and you can tell the difference all right. What was Mr. Pascin’s first name?”

“Jules.”

“How do you spell it?” David asked. Thomas Hudson told him.

“What ever became of Mr. Pascin?” young Tom asked.

“He hanged himself,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Oh gee,” Andrew said.

“Poor Mr. Pascin,” young Tom said in benediction. “I’ll pray for him tonight.”

“I’m going to pray for Mr. Davis,” Andrew said.

“And do it often,” Roger said.