XIX

They were all on board the ship now and it was cool in late afternoon wind. The flamingoes were gone from the flat although it was still uncovered. The flat was gray in the afternoon light and there was a flock of willets working over it. Beyond was the shallow water, the channels that could not be seen for the mud, and in the background were the keys.

Thomas Hudson was standing now on the flying bridge, leaning against a corner of it, and Antonio was talking to him.

“We don’t get a high tide until after eleven tonight,” Antonio said. “This wind is emptying the water right out of the bay and the flats and I don’t know what sort of depths we will have.”

“Will it float her or will we have to kedge off?”

“It will float her. But we haven’t any moon.”

“That’s right. That’s why we have these big springs.”

“She only made last night,” Antonio said. “She’s new. We didn’t see her last night because of the squall.”

“That’s right.”

“I sent George and Gil in to cut some brush to stake the channel so we can get out. We can always sound it with the dinghy and get stakes on the points.”

“Look. What I’d like to do when she floats is get in to where I can bring the searchlight and the .50’s to bear on the turtle boat and put somebody on board to blink to us if they come out in the skiff.”

“That would be ideal, Tom. But you can’t get in there in the dark. You could get in there with the searchlight and the dinghy sounding ahead of you and calling the soundings and staking. But nobody would come out then. They’d never come out.”

“I guess so, I’ve been wrong twice today.”

“You were wrong,” Antonio said. “But it was just chances. Like drawing a card.”

“What’s important is that I was wrong. Now tell me what you think.”

“I think that if they haven’t gone and if we make no move to act as though we were not aground they will come out to board the ship tonight. We do not look like anything except a pleasure craft. I’m sure they were inside the keys when it happened. They will feel contempt for us and they will be sure we are weak because they have seen only one man all day in the dinghy if they have watched.”

“We tried to play it that way.”

“Then if they find how things are on the turtle boat what then?”

“Ask Willie to come up here,” he said to Antonio.

Willie came up, still lumpy-looking from the mosquito bites. His scratches looked better, though, and he was wearing only a pair of khaki shorts.

“How are you, jungle man?”

“I’m fine, Tom. Ara put some chloroform on the bites and they’ve stopped itching. Those damn mosquitoes are about a quarter of an inch long and black as ink.”

“We’ve got ourselves pretty well fucked-up, Willie.”

“Hell. We’ve been fucked-up from the start.”

“Peters?”

“We’ve got him sewed up in canvas and some ice on him. He won’t bring anything in the market. But he’ll hold a couple of days.”

“Listen, Willie. I was telling Antonio what I’d like to do was get in to where the .50’s and the searchlight would bear on that hulk. But he says we can’t get in without spooking the whole ocean and that it’s no good.”

“Sure,” Willie said. “He’s right. That’s three times you’ve been wrong today. I’m leading you by one less.”

“Do you think they will come out and try and board the ship?”

“I doubt it like hell,” Willie said.

“But they could.”

“They aren’t crazy. But they could be desperate enough to try it.”

The two of them were sitting on the deck of-the flying bridge leaning back against the stays and the canvas. Willie rubbed the part of his right shoulder that had begun to itch again on the canvas.

“They could come out,” he said. “They did a crazy thing when they made that massacre.”

“Not from their point of view then. You have to remember it was when they had just lost their ship and they were desperate.”

“Well, they lost another ship today as well as a comrade. Maybe they were fond of the son of a bitch.”

“Probably. Or they wouldn’t have let him take up space.”

“He was a pretty good guy,” Willie said. “He took all that surrender talk and a grenade before he even made his play. He must have thought Peters was the captain because of his commanding manner and the way he spreched Kraut.”

“I guess so.”

“You know the frags went off below decks. They might never have heard them. How many rounds did you fire, Tom?”

“Not more than five.”

“The character fired one burp.”

“How loud did it all sound to you, Antonio?”

“It didn’t sound loud,” Antonio said. “We are downwind and to the north of it with the key between. It didn’t sound loud at all. But I could hear it clearly.”

“They might never have heard it,” Thomas Hudson said. “But they must have seen the dinghy running around and their ship careened. They’re sure to think she’s a trap. I don’t think they will go near her.”

“I think that’s right,” Willie agreed.

“But do you think they’ll come out here?”

“You and God know just as much about that as I do. Aren’t you the one who’s always thinking in the Germans’ minds?”

“Sure,” Thomas Hudson said. “Sometimes I’m pretty good at it. But I’m not so hot today.”

“You’re thinking all right,” Willie said. “You just ran into a bad streak.”

“We could set a trap over there.”

“You’re just as trapped as you’re trapping on her,” Willie said.

“You go over and booby-trap her while it’s still light.”

“Now you’re talking,” Willie said. “That’s the old Tom. I’ll booby-trap both hatches and that dead Kraut and the lee rail. You’re thinking your way out of it now.”

“Use plenty of stuff. We’ve got lots of stuff.”

“She’ll be booby-trapped till Christ won’t have her.”

“They’re coming in with the dinghy,” Antonio said.

“I’ll get Ara and the necessary and get over there,” Willie said.

“Don’t blow yourself up.”

“Don’t think too much,” Willie said. “Get some rest, Tom. You’re going to be up all night.”

“So are you.”

“The hell I am. When you want me they can wake me.”

“I’ll take the watch,” Thomas Hudson said to Antonio. “When does our tide turn?”

“It’s turned already but it is fighting with the current that the strong east wind blows out from the bay.”

“Put Gil on the .50’s and give George a break. Tell everybody to get a rest for the night.”

“Why don’t you take a drink, Tom?”

“I don’t want one. What are you giving them to eat tonight?”

“A big piece of that wahoo boiled with Spanish sauce and black beans and rice. There aren’t any more canned fruits.”

“There were some on the list at Confites.”

“Yes. But they were crossed off.”

“Do you have any dried fruits?”

“Apricots.”

“Soak some tonight and give them to them for breakfast.”

“Henry won’t eat them for breakfast.”

“Well, give them to him the first meal he eats well. Have you plenty of soup?”

“Plenty.”

“How is ice?”

“We have plenty for a week if we don’t use too much on Peters. Why don’t you bury him at sea, Tom?”

“Maybe I will,” Thomas Hudson said. “He always said he’d like it.”

“He said so many things.”

“Yeah.”

“Tom, why don’t you take a drink?”

“All right,” said Thomas Hudson. “Do you have any gin left?”

“Your bottle is in the locker.”

“Do you have any water coconuts?”

“Yes.”

“Make me a gin and coconut water with some lime in it. If we have limes.”

“We have plenty of limes. Peters has some Scotch of his hidden if I can find it. Would you rather have that?”

“No. Find it and lock it up. We might need it.”

“I’ll make yours and hand it up.”

“Thank you. Maybe we’ll have good luck and they will come out tonight.”

“I can’t believe they will. I am of the school of Willie. But they might.”

“We look awfully tempting. And they need some sort of craft.”

“Yes, Tom. But they are not fools. You would not have been able to think in their heads if they were fools.”

“OK. Get the drink.” Thomas Hudson was glassing the keys with the big binoculars. “I’ll try to think in their heads some more.”

But he did not have any luck thinking in their heads. He was not thinking very well at all. He watched the dinghy, Ara in the stern and Willie out of sight, round the point of the key. He watched the flock of willet fly up finally and turn and head for one of the outer keys. Then he was alone and he sipped the drink that Antonio had made.

He thought how he had promised himself that he would not drink this trip, not even the cool one in the evening, so that he would not think of anything but work. He thought how he had planned to drive himself so he would sleep completely exhausted. But he made no excuses for this drink nor for the broken promise.

I drove myself, he thought. I did that all right. Now I might as well have this drink and think about something besides those other people. If they come out tonight we’ll have everything set for them. If they do not come out, I will go in after them tomorrow morning on the high tide.

So he sipped the drink, which was cold and clean-tasting, and he watched the broken line of the keys straight ahead and to the westward. A drink always unlocked his memory that he kept locked so carefully now and the keys reminded him of the days when they used to troll for tarpon when young Tom was a small boy. Those were different keys and the channels were wider.

There were no flamingoes but the other birds had been nearly all the same except for the flocks of big golden plover. He remembered the seasons when the plover were gray and the others when the black feathers had the golden tinge and he remembered young Tom’s pride at the first one he had ever brought home when he had his first single barrel twenty-gauge. He remembered how Tom had stroked the plump white breast and touched the lovely black under-markings and how he had found the boy asleep that night in his bed with his arms around the bird. He had taken the bird away very softly hoping he would not wake the boy. The boy did not wake. His arms just closed up tightly and he rolled onto his back.

As he had taken the golden plover into the back room where the icebox was, he felt he had robbed the boy of it. But he had smoothed its plumage carefully and laid it on one of the grilled shelves of the icebox. The next day he had painted young Tom a picture of the golden plover and the boy had taken it with him when he went off to school that year. In the picture he had tried to get the fast, running quality of the bird and the background was a long beach with coconut palms.

Then he remembered one time when they were in a tourist camp. He had wakened early and Tom was still asleep. He lay on his back with his arms crossed and he looked like the sculpture of a young knight lying on his tomb. Thomas Hudson had sketched him that way using a tomb that he remembered from Salisbury Cathedral. He was going to paint a canvas of it later but he did not do it because he thought it could be bad luck. A lot of good that did, he thought.

He looked Into the sun that was low now and he could see Tom high up in the sun in a Spitfire. The aircraft was very high and very tiny and it shone like a fragment of broken mirror. He liked it up there, he said to himself. And it was a good rule you made about not drinking.

But over half of the drink was still in the paper-wrapped glass and there was still ice in it.

Courtesy of Peters, he thought. Then he remembered when they lived on the island in the old days and how Tom had read about the ice age at school and he was afraid it would come again.

“Papa,” he had said. “That is my only worry.”

“It can’t hit here,” Thomas Hudson had said.

“I know. But I can’t stand to think what it will do to all those people in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan. Even Illinois and Indiana.”

“I don’t think we really have to worry about it,” Thomas Hudson had said. “It’s a dreadfully slow process if it comes.”

“I know,” young Tom had said. “But that’s the only thing I every really worry about. That and the extinction of the passenger pigeon.”

That Tom, he thought, and put the drink into one of the empty frag holes and glassed the keys carefully. He saw nothing that might be a sailing skiff and he put the glasses down.

The best times they had, he thought, were on the island and out West. Except Europe, of course, and if I think about that I’ll think about the girl and it will be worse. I wonder where she is now. Sleeping with some general, I suppose. Well, I hope she gets a good one.

She looked awfully well and very beautiful when I saw her in Havana. I could think about her all night. But I won’t. It is indulgence enough to think about Tom. I wouldn’t do that without the drink. I’m glad I took it, though. There is a time to break all your rules. Maybe not all. I will think about him for a while and then I will work out our small problem for tonight when Willie and Ara get back. They’re a wonderful team. Willie learned that awful Spanish in the Philippines but they understand each other perfectly. Some of that is because Ara is a Basque and speaks bad Spanish, too. Christ, I’d hate to go aboard that hulk after Willie and Ara rig her.

Go ahead and drink the rest of your drink and think about something good. Tom’s dead and it’s all right to think about him. You’ll never get over it. But you are solid on it now. Remember some good happy times. You had plenty.

What were the happiest times? he thought. They were all happy, really, in the time of innocence and the lack of useless money and still being able to work and eat. A bicycle was more fun than a motorcar. You saw things better and it kept you in good shape and coming home after you had ridden in the Bois you could coast down the Champs Élysees well past the Rond-Point and when you looked back to see what was behind you there, with the traffic moving in two streams, there rose the high gray of the great arch against the dusk. The horse chestnuts would be in bloom now. The trees would be black in the dusk as he pedalled now toward the Place de la Concorde and the upstanding blooms would be white and waxen. He would get off the racing bicycle to push it along the gravel path and see the horse chestnut trees slowly, and feel them overhead as he pushed the bicycle and felt the gravel under the thin soles of his shoes. He had bought this pair of racing shoes second-hand from a waiter he knew at the Select who had been an Olympic champion and he had paid for them by painting a canvas of the proprietor the way the proprietor had wished to be painted.

“A little in the style of Manet, Monsieur Hudson. If you can do it.”

It was not a Manet that Manet would have signed but it looked more like Manet than it did like Hudson and it looked exactly like the proprietor. Thomas Hudson got the money for the bicycle shoes from it and for a long time they could have drinks on the house as well. Finally one night when he offered to pay for a drink, the offer was accepted and Thomas Hudson knew that payment on the portrait had been finished.

There was a waiter at the Closerie des Lilas who liked them and always gave them double-sized drinks so that by adding water they needed only one for the evening. So they moved down there. They would put Tom to bed and sit there together in the evenings at the old café, completely happy to be with each other. Then they would take a walk through the dark streets of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève where the old houses had not yet been torn down and try to come home some different way each night. They would go to bed and hear Tom breathing in his cot and the purring of the big cat that slept with him.

Thomas Hudson remembered how people were horrified that they let the cat sleep with the small boy and that they left him alone when they went out. But Tom always slept well and if he woke up, there was the cat, who was his best friend. The cat would let no one near the bed and he and Tom loved each other very much.

Now Tom was—the hell with that, he said to himself. It is something that happens to everybody. I should know about that by now. It is the only thing that is really final, though.

How do you know that? he asked himself. Going away can be final. Walking out the door can be final. Any form of real betrayal can be final. Dishonesty can be final. Selling out is final. But you are just talking now. Death is what is really final. I wish Ara and Willie would get back. They must be rigging that hulk up like a chamber of horrors. I’ve never liked to kill, ever. But Willie loves it. He is a strange boy and very good, too. He is just never satisfied that a thing cannot be done better.

He saw the dinghy coining. Then he heard her purring hum and then he watched her get clearer and bigger and then she was alongside.

Willie came up. He looked worse than ever and his bad eye was showing too much white. He drew himself up, saluted smartly, and said, “Permission to speak to the captain, sir?”

“Are you drunk?”

“No, Tommy. Enthusiastic.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Sure, Tom. We took a little rum with us for working around that cadaver. And then when we got through Ara urinated in the bottle and then booby-trapped the bottle. It’s double booby-trapped.”

“Did you rig her good?”

“Tommy, a little tiny gnome no bigger than a man’s hand couldn’t get on her without being blown clean back to gnome land. A cockroach couldn’t crawl on her. Ara was afraid the flies on the cadaver would set her off. We trapped her beautifully and delicately.”

“What’s Ara doing?”

“He’s disassembling and cleaning everything in a frenzy of enthusiasm.”

“How much rum did you guys take?”

“Less than half a bottle. It was my idea. It wasn’t Ara’s.”

“OK. Get the hell down with him and clean the weapons and check the .50’s.”

“You can’t check them really without firing them.”

“I know. But you check them completely without firing them. Throw away the ammo that’s been in the breeches.”

“That’s smart.”

“Tell Henry to come up here and bring me a small glass of this and tell him to bring a drink for himself. Antonio knows what this drink is.”

“I’m glad you’re drinking a little again, Tom.”

“For Christ’s sake, don’t be glad or sad about whether I’m drinking or not drinking.”

“OK, Tom. But I don’t like to see you ride yourself like a horse riding on a horse’s back. Why don’t you be like a centaur?”

“Where did you learn about centaurs?”

“I read it in a book, Tommy. I’m educated. I’m educated far beyond my years.”

“You’re a good old son of a bitch,” Thomas Hudson told him. “Now get the hell down and do what I told you.”

“Yes sir. Tommy, when we finish this cruise will you let me buy one of the sea paintings out at the joint?”

“Don’t shit me.”

“I’m not doing that. Maybe the hell you don’t understand all the time.”

“That could be. Maybe all my life.”

“Tommy, I kid a lot. But you chased pretty.”

“We’ll see tomorrow. Tell Henry to bring a drink up. But I don’t want any.”

“No, Tommy. All we have tonight is a simple fight and I don’t think we’ll have it.”

“All right,” said Thomas Hudson. “Send it up. And get down off this fucking bridge and get to work.”