But he came up to the studio Thomas Hudson had rented in New York one morning with the back of his left hand covered with cigarette burns. It looked as though someone had been putting butts out by rubbing them against a tabletop; only the tabletop was the back of his hand.
“That’s what she wanted to do last night,” he said. “Have you got any iodine? I didn’t like to take those things into a drugstore.”
“Who’s she?”
“Kathleen. The fresh outdoor type.”
“You had to participate.”
“It seemed to amuse her and we’re supposed to amuse them.”
“You’re burned pretty badly.”
“Not really. But I’m going to get out of this town for a while.”
“You’ll be taking yourself along wherever you go.”
“Yes. But I won’t be taking a lot of other people I know with me.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“Out West for a while.”
“Geography isn’t any cure for what’s the matter with you.”
“No. But a healthy life and plenty of work won’t hurt. Not drinking may not cure me. But drinking sure as hell isn’t helping any now.”
“Well, get the hell out then. Do you want to go to the ranch?”
“Do you still own it?”
“Part of it.”
“Is it all right if I go out there?”
“Sure,” Thomas Hudson had told him. “But it’s rugged from now on until spring and spring isn’t easy.”
“I want it to be rugged,” Roger had said. “I’m going to start new again.”
“How many times is it now you’ve started new?”
“Too many,” Roger had said. “And you don’t have to rub it in.”
So now he was going to start new again and how would it turn out this time? How could he think that wasting his talent and writing to order and following a formula that made money could fit him to write well and truly? Everything that a painter did or that a writer wrote was a part of his training and preparation for what he was to do. Roger had thrown away and abused and spent his talent. But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence so that he could make another start. Any writer of talent should be able to write one good novel if he were honest, Thomas Hudson thought. But all the time that he should be training for it Roger had been misusing his talent and how could you know if his talent still was there?
To say nothing of his métier, he thought. How can anyone think that you can neglect and despise, or have contempt for craftsmanship, however feigned the contempt may be, and then expect it to be at the service of your hands and of your brain when the time comes when you must have it. There is no substitute for it, Thomas Hudson thought. There is no substitute for talent either and you don’t have to keep them in a chalice. The one is inside you. It is in your heart and in your head and in every part of you. So is the other, he thought. It is not just a set of tools that you have learned to work with.
It is luckier to be a painter, he thought, because you have more things to work with. We have the advantage of working with our hands and the métier we have mastered is an actual tangible thing. But Roger must start now to use what he has blunted and perverted and cheapened and all of it is in his head. But au fond he has something fine and sound and beautiful. That is a word I would need to be very careful of if I were a writer, he thought. But he has the thing that is the way he is and if he could write the way he fought on the dock it could be cruel but it would be very good. Then if he could think as soundly as he thought after that fight he would be very good.
The moonlight did not shine on the head of Thomas Hudson’s bed anymore and gradually he stopped thinking about Roger. Thinking about him doesn’t do any good. Either he can do it or he can’t. But it would be wonderful if he could do it. I wish that I could help him. Maybe I can, he thought, and then he was asleep.
IX
WHEN THE SUN WOKE THOMAS HUDSON he went down to the beach and swam and then had breakfast before the rest of them were up. Eddy said he did not think they would have much of a breeze and it might even be a calm. He said the gear was all in good shape on the boat and he had a boy out after bait.
Thomas Hudson asked him if he had tested the lines since the boat had not been out for big fish in quite a while and Eddy said he had tested them and taken off all the line that was rotten. He said they were going to have to get some more thirty-six thread line and plenty more twenty-four thread and Thomas Hudson promised to send for it. In the meantime Eddy had spliced enough good line on to replace the discarded line and both the big reels had all they would hold. He had cleaned and sharpened all of the big hooks and checked all the leaders and swivels.
“When did you do all this?”
“I sat up last night splicing,” he said. “Then I worked on that new cast net. Couldn’t sleep with the goddam moon.”
“Does a full moon bother you for sleeping too?”
“Gives me hell,” Eddy said.
“Eddy do you think it’s really bad for you to sleep with it shining on you?”
“That’s what the old heads say. I don’t know. Always makes me feel bad, anyway.”
“Do you think we’ll do anything today?”
“Never know. There’s some awfully big fish out there this time of year. Are you going clean up to the Isaacs?”
“The boys want to go up there.”
“We ought to get going right after breakfast. I’m not figuring to cook lunch. I’ve got conch salad and potato salad and beer and I’ll make up sandwiches. We’ve got a ham that came over on the last run-boat and I’ve got some lettuce and we can use mustard and that chutney. Mustard doesn’t hurt kids, does it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We never had it when I was a kid. Say, that chutney’s good, too. You ever eat it in a sandwich?”
“No.”
“I didn’t know what it was for when you first got it and I tried some of it like a marmalade. It’s damned good. I use it sometimes on grits.”
“Why don’t we have some curry pretty soon?”
“I got a leg of lamb coming on the next run-boat. Wait till we eat off it a couple of times—once, I guess, with that young Tom and Andrew eating, and we’ll have a curry.”
“Fine. What do you want me to do about getting off?”
“Nothing, Tom. Just get them going. Want me to make you a drink? You aren’t working today. Might as well have one.”
“I’ll drink a cold bottle of beer with breakfast.”
“Good thing. Cut that damn phlegm.”
“Is Joe here yet?”
“No. He went after the boy that’s gone for bait. I’ll put your breakfast out there.”
“No, let me take her.”
“No, go on in and drink a cold bottle of beer and read the paper. I’ve got her all ironed out for you. I’ll bring the breakfast.”
Breakfast was corned-beef hash, browned, with an egg on top of it, coffee and milk, and a big glass of chilled grapefruit juice. Thomas Hudson skipped the coffee and the grapefruit juice and drank a very cold bottle of Heineken beer with the hash.
“I’ll keep the juice cold for the kids,” Eddy said. “That’s some beer, isn’t it, for early in the morning?”
“It would be pretty easy to be a rummy, wouldn’t it, Eddy?”
“You’d never make a rummy. You like to work too well.”
“Drinking in the morning feels awfully good though.”
“You’re damned right it does. Especially something like that beer.”
“I couldn’t do it and work though.”
“Well, you’re not working today so what’s the goddam problem? Drink that one up and I’ll get you another.”
“No. One’s all I want.”
They got off by nine o’clock and went down the channel with the tide. Thomas Hudson was steering on the topside and he headed her out over the bar and ran straight out toward where he could see the dark line of the Gulf. The water was so calm and so very clear that they could see the bottom clearly in thirty fathoms, see that sea fans bent with the tide current, still see it, but cloudily, at forty fathoms, and then it deepened and was dark and they were
