“That’s his bottle,” Thomas Hudson explained and helped Andrew to some more salad. Andrew was the fastest eater he had ever seen. He said he had learned it at school. “Try and eat a little slower, Andy. Eddy always brings his own bottle on board. Nearly all good cooks drink a little. Some drink quite a lot.”
“I know he had eight. Wait. He’s taking nine now.”
“Damn you, Andrew,” David said.
“Cut it out,” Thomas Hudson said to both of them.
Young Tom broke in. “Here’s a fine wonderful man saves your brother’s life and he just takes a drink, or a few drinks, and you call him a rummy. You aren’t fit to associate with human beings.”
“I didn’t call him one. I just asked papa, to know if he is one. I’m not against rummies. I just like to know if a man is or not.”
“I’m going to buy Eddy a bottle of whatever it is he drinks with the very first money I get and I’m going to drink it with him,” young Tom said grandly.
“What’s that?” Eddy’s head showed in the companion-way with the old felt hat pushed onto the back of it showing the white above the sunburnt part of his face and a cigar sticking out of the corner of his Mercurochromed mouth. “Let me catch you drink anything but beer I beat the hell out of you. All three of you. Don’t you talk about drinking. Do you want more mashed potatoes?”
“Please, Eddy,” young Tom said and Eddy went below.
“That makes ten,” Andrew said, looking down the companionway.
“Oh shut up, horseman,” young Tom said to him. “Can’t you respect a great man?”
“Eat some more fish, David,” Thomas Hudson said.
“Which is that big yellowtail?”
“I don’t believe he’s cooked yet.”
“I’ll take a yellow grunt then.”
“They’re awfully sweet.”
“I think spearing makes them even better if you eat them right away because it bleeds them.”
“Papa, can I ask Eddy to have a drink with us?” young Tom asked.
“Sure,” Thomas Hudson said.
“He had one. Don’t you remember?” Andrew interrupted. “When we first came in he had one. You remember.”
“Papa, can I ask him to have another one with us now and to eat with us?”
“Of course,” Thomas Hudson said.
Young Tom went down below and Thomas Hudson heard him say, “Eddy, papa says would you please make a drink for yourself and come up and have it with us and eat with us.”
“Hell, Tommy,” Eddy said. “I never eat at noon. I just eat breakfast and at night.”
“What about having a drink with us?”
“I had a couple, Tommy.”
“Will you take one with me now and let me drink a bottle of beer with you?”
“Hell yes,” said Eddy. Thomas Hudson heard the icebox open and close. “Here’s to you, Tommy.”
Thomas Hudson heard the two bottles clink. He looked at Roger but Roger was looking out at the ocean.
“Here’s to you, Eddy,” he heard young Tom say. “It’s a great honor to drink with you.”
“Hell, Tommy,” Eddy told him. “It’s an honor to drink with you. I feel wonderful, Tommy. You see me shoot that old shark?”
“I certainly did, Eddy. Don’t you want to eat just a little something with us?”
“No, Tommy. True.”
“Would you like me to stay down here with you so you wouldn’t have to drink alone?”
“Hell no, Tommy. You aren’t getting mixed up on anything, are you? I don’t have to drink. I don’t have to do anything except cook a little and earn my goddam living. I just feel good, Tommy. Did you see me shoot him? True?”
“Eddy, it was the greatest thing I ever saw. I just asked you if you wanted somebody so as not to be lonesome.”
“I never been lonesome in my life,” Eddy told him. “I’m happy and I got here what makes me happier.”
“Eddy, I’d like to stay with you, anyway.”
“No, Tommy. Take this other platter of fish up and go up there where you belong.”
“I’d like to come back and stay.”
“I ain’t sick, Tommy. If I was ever sick I’d be happy to have you sit up with me. I’m just feeling the goddam best I ever felt ever.”
“Eddy, are you sure you’ve got enough of that bottle?”
“Hell yes. If I ever run out I’ll borrow some of Roger’s and your old man’s.”
“Well, then, I’ll take the fish up,” young Tom said. “I’m awfully glad you feel so good, Eddy. I think it’s wonderful.”
Young Tom brought the platter of yellowtail, yellow and white grunts, and rock hind up into the cockpit. They were scored deep in triangular cuts across their flanks so the white meat showed, and fried crisp and brown, and he started to pass them around the table.
“Eddy said to thank you very much but he’d had a drink,” he said. “And he doesn’t eat lunch. Is this fish all right?”
“It’s excellent,” Thomas Hudson told him.
“Please eat,” he said to Roger.
“All right,” Roger said. “I’ll try.”
“Haven’t you eaten anything, Mr. Davis?” Andrew asked.
“No, Andy. But I’m going to eat now.”
VIII
IN THE NIGHT THOMAS HUDSON would wake and hear the boys asleep and breathing quietly and in the moonlight he could see them all and see Roger sleeping too. He slept well now and almost without stirring.
Thomas Hudson was happy to have them there and he did not want to think about them ever going away. He had been happy before they came and for a long time he had learned how to live and do his work without ever being more lonely than he could bear; but the boys’ coming had broken up all the protective routine of life he had built and now he was used to its being broken. It had been a pleasant routine of working hard; of hours for doing things; places where things were kept and well-cared for; of meals and drinks to look forward to and new books to read and many old books to reread.
It was a routine where the daily paper was an event when it arrived, but where it did not come so regularly that its nonarrival was a disappointment. It had many of the inventions that lonely people use to save themselves and even achieve unloneliness with and he had made the rules and kept the customs and used them consciously and unconsciously. But since the boys were here it had come as a great relief not to have to use them.
It would be bad, though, he thought, when he started all that again. He knew very well how it would be. For a part of a day it would be pleasant to have the house neat and to think alone and read without hearing other people talk and look at things without speaking of them and work properly without interruption and then he knew the loneliness would start. The three boys had moved into a big part of him again that, when they moved out, would be empty and it would be very bad for a while.
His life was built solidly on work and on the living by the Gulf Stream and on the island and it would stand up all right. The aids and the habits and the customs were all to handle the loneliness and by now he knew he had opened a whole new country for the loneliness to move into once the boys were gone. There was nothing to do about that, though. That would all come later and if it was coming there was no good derived from any fearing of it now.
The summer, so far, had been a very lucky and good one. Everything had turned out well that could have turned out badly. He did not mean just spectacular things like Roger and the man on the dock, which could have come out very badly; nor David and the shark; but all sorts of small things had come out well. Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable.
He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away.
He knew almost what there is to know about living alone and he had known what it is to live with someone that you loved and that loved you. He had always loved his children but he had never before realized how much he loved them and how bad it was that he did not live with them. He wished that he had them always and that he was married to Tom’s mother.
Then he thought that was as silly as wishing you had the wealth of the world to use as intelligently as you could; to be able to draw like Leonardo or paint as well as Pieter Brueghel; to have an absolute veto power against all wickedness and be able to detect it infallibly and always justly when it starts and stop it with something as simple as pressing a button and while doing all this to be always healthy and to live forever and not decay in mind nor body. That was what he thought tonight would
