If they do that they can make for home on a Spanish boat out of Havana. There is a screening at Kingston. But that is an easier chance to take and you know plenty of people have beaten it. That damned Peters with his radio out. FCC, he thought. Frankly Can’t Communicate.
Then we got the beauty big one and it was too much radio for him. I don’t know how he has fucked it. But he couldn’t get Guantánamo last night on our call hour and if he doesn’t get her tonight we are on our own. The hell with it, he thought. There are worse places to be than on your own. Get some sleep now, he said to himself. There is nothing you can do now that is sounder than that.
He moved his shoulders against the sand and went to sleep with the roaring of the surf on the reef.
III
WHILE THOMAS HUDSON WAS ASLEEP he dreamed that his son Tom was not dead and that the other boys were all right and that the war was over. He dreamed that Tom’s mother was sleeping with him and she was sleeping on top of him as she liked to do sometimes. He felt all of this and the tangibility of her legs against his legs and her body against his and her breasts against his chest and her mouth was playing against his mouth.
Her hair hung down and lay heavy and silky on his eyes and on his cheeks and he turned his lips away from her searching ones and took the hair in his mouth and held it. Then with one hand he moistened the .357 Magnum and slipped it easily and sound asleep where it should be. Then he lay under her weight with her silken hair over his face like a curtain and moved slowly and rhythmically.
That was when Henry put the light blanket over him and Thomas Hudson said, asleep, “Thank you for being so moist and lovely and for pressing on me so hard. Thank you for coming back so quickly and for not being too thin.”
“The poor son of a bitch,” Henry said and covered him carefully. He went away carrying two wicker five-gallon demijohns on his shoulders.
“I thought you wanted me thin, Tom,” the woman said in the dream. “You said I felt like a young goat when I was thin and that nothing felt better than a young goat.”
“You,” he said. “Who’s going to make love to who?”
“Both of us,” she said. “Unless you want it differently.”
“You make love to me. I’m tired.”
“You’re just lazy. Let me take the pistol off and put it by your leg. The pistol’s in the way of everything.”
“Lay it by the bed,” he said. “And make everything the way it should be.”
Then it was all the way it should be and she said, “Should I be you or you be me?”
“You have first choice.”
“I’ll be you.”
“I can’t be you. But I can try.”
“It’s fun. You try it. Don’t try to save yourself at all. Try to lose everything and take everything too.”
“All right.”
“Are you doing it?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s wonderful.”
“Do you know now what we have?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes I know. It’s easy to give up.”
“Will you give up everything? Are you glad I brought back the boys and that I come and be a devil in the night?”
“Yes. I’m glad of everything and will you swing your hair across my face and give me your mouth please and hold me so tight it kills me?”
“Of course. And you’ll do it for me?”
When he woke he touched the blanket and he did not know, for an instant, that it was a dream. Then he lay on his side and felt the pistol holster between his legs and how it was really and all the hollownesses in him were twice as hollow and there was a new one from the dream. He saw it was still light and he saw the dinghy carrying water to his ship and he saw the white pounding of the surf on the reef. He turned on his side and tucked the blanket around himself and slept on his arms. He was asleep when they came to wake him and he had not dreamed at all this time.
IV
HE STEERED ALL THAT NIGHT and he had Ara on the flying bridge with him until midnight and then Henry. They were running with a heavy beam sea and steering was like riding a horse downhill, he thought. It is all downhill and sometimes it is across the side of a hill. The sea is many hills and in here it is a broken country like the badlands.
“Talk to me,” he said to Ara.
“What about, Tom?”
“Anything.”
“Peters couldn’t raise Guantánamo again. He has ruined it. The new big one.”
“I know,” Thomas Hudson said and tried to roll her as little as he could, riding the side of the hill. “He’s burnt out something that he can’t repair.”
“He’s listening,” Ara said. “Willie is keeping him awake.”
“Who’s keeping Willie awake?”
“He’s awake good,” Ara said. “He doesn’t sleep any better than you.”
“How about you?”
“I’m good for all night if you want. Don’t you want me to steer?”
“No. I haven’t anything else to do.”
“Tom, how badly do you feel?”
“I don’t know. How badly can you feel?”
“It’s useless,” Ara said. “Would you like the wineskin?”
“No. Bring me up a bottle of cold tea and check on Peters and Willie. Check on everything.”
Ara went down and Thomas Hudson was alone with the night and the sea and he still rode it like a horse going downhill too fast across broken country.
Henry came up with the bottle of cold tea.
“How are we, Tom?” he asked.
“We’re perfect.”
“Peters has the Miami police department on the old radio. All the prowl cars. Willie wants to talk to them. But I told him he couldn’t.”
“Correct.”
“On the UHF, Peters has something squirting in German but he says it is way up with the wolf packs.”
“He couldn’t hear it then.”
“It’s a very funny night, Tom.”
“It’s not that funny.”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you. Give me the course and let me take her and you go down.”
“Has Peters logged it?”
“Of course.”
“Tell Juan to give me a fix and have Peters log it. When was the son of a bitch squirting?”
“When I came up.”
“Tell Juan to get the fix and log it right away.”
“Yes, Tom.”
“How are all the comic characters?”
“Sleeping. Gil, too.”
“Get the rag out and have Peters log the fix.”
“Do you want it?”
“I know too damn well where we are.”
“Yes, Tom,” Henry said. “Take it easy if you can.”
Henry came up but Thomas Hudson did not feel like talking and Henry stood by him on the flying bridge and braced himself against the roll. After an hour he said, “There’s a light, Tom. Off our starboard bow about twenty degrees.”
“That’s right.”
When he was abeam of it he changed the course and the sea was astern.
“Now she is headed home to pasture,” he said to Henry. “We’re in the channel now. Wake Juan and get him up here and really keep your eyes open. You were late on the light.”
“I’m sorry, Tom. I’ll get Juan. Wouldn’t you like a four-man watch?”
“Not until just before daylight,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll give you the word.”
They might have cut across the banks, Thomas Hudson was thinking. But I don’t think they would. They wouldn’t want to cross at night and in daytime the banks wouldn’t look good to deep-water sailors. They’d make their turn where I did. Then they would edge across comfortably the way we are going to do and they would probably hit for the highest part of the Cuban coast that showed. They don’t want to get into any port so they will run with the wind.
They will keep outside of Confites because they know there is a radio station there. But they have to get food and they have to get water. Actually they would do best to try to get as close to Havana as they could to land somewhere around Bacuranao and then infiltrate in from there. I’ll send a signal from Confites. I won’t ask him what to do. That will hold us up if he’s away. I’ll tell him what it is and what I’m doing. He can make his own dispositions. Guantánamo can make theirs and Camagüey can make theirs and La Fe theirs and the FBI theirs and maybe something will happen in a week.
Hell, he thought. I’ll get them this week. They’ve got to stop for water and to cook what they have before the animals starve and rot. There’s a good chance they will run only at nights and lay up daytimes. That would be logical. That’s what I would do if I were them. Try to think like an intelligent German sailor with the problems this undersea boat commander has.
He has problems all right, Thomas Hudson thought. And the worst problem he has is us and he doesn’t even know about us. We don’t look dangerous to him. We look good to him.
Don’t take it in any bloodthirsty way, he thought. Nothing of this is going to bring back anything. Use your head and be glad to have something to do and good people to do it with.
“Juan,” he said. “What do you see, boy?”
“All bloody ocean.”
“You other gentlemen see anything?”
“Bloody nothing,” Gil said.
“My bloody belly sees coffee. But it doesn’t come any closer,” Ara said.
“I see land,” Henry said. He had seen it that instant,
