“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
