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.”
XX
HENRY PASSED THE TWO DRINKS UP and swung up himself after them. He stood beside Thomas Hudson and leaned forward to look at the shadow of the far keys. There was a thin moon in the first quarter of the sky to the westward.
“Here’s to your good health, Tom,” Henry said. “I didn’t look at the moon over my left shoulder.”
“She’s not new. She was new last night.”
“Of course. And we didn’t see her for the squall.”
“That’s right. How’s everything below?”
“Excellent, Tom. Everybody’s working and cheerful.”
“How are Willie and Ara?”
“They drank a little rum, Tom, and it made them very cheerful. But they’re not drinking now.”
“No. They wouldn’t.”
“I look forward to this very much,” Henry said. “So does Willie.”
“I don’t. But it’s what we are here to do. You see, we want prisoners, Henry.”
“I know.”
“Because they made that mistake on the massacre key they don’t want to be taken prisoner.”
“I think that’s putting it mildly,” Henry said. “Do you think they will try to jump us tonight?”
“No. But we have to be alerted in case they do.”
“We will be. But what do you really think they are going to do, Tom?”
“I can’t figure it, Henry. If they are really desperate they will try for the ship. If they have a radio operator left, he could fix our radio up and they could go across to Anguilas and just call a taxi and wait for it to take them home. They have every reason to try for the ship. Somebody could always have talked around Havana and they might know what we are.”
“Who would talk?”
“Never speak ill of the deads,” Thomas Hudson said. “But I’m afraid he might have when he was drinking.”
“Willie is sure he did.”
“Does he know anything?”
“No. He’s just sure.”
“It’s a possibility. But they could also just try to make the mainland and make their way overland to Havana and get a Spanish ship out. Or an Argentine ship. But they don’t want to be picked up on account of the massacre business. So I think they’ll try something desperate.”
“I hope so.”
“If we can set it up,” Thomas Hudson said.
But nothing happened all night long except the movement of the stars and the steady blowing of the east wind and the sucking of the currents past the ship. There was much phosphorescence in the water from the weed that the big tides and the sea made by the wind had torn up from the bottom, and it floated in and out and in again like cold strips and patches of white, unhealthy fire in the water.
The wind dropped a little before dawn and when it was light Thomas Hudson lay down and slept on the deck, lying en his belly with his face against a corner of the canvas. Antonio covered him and his weapon with a piece of canvas but Thomas Hudson was asleep and did not feel it.
Antonio took over the watch and when the tide was high so they swung free, he woke Thomas Hudson. They got the anchors in and started in with the dinghy going ahead and sounding and staking any dubious points. The water on this flood tide was clean and clear by now and the piloting was difficult but not as it had been the day before. They had staked a branch of a tree in the channel where they had grounded the day before and Thomas Hudson looked back and saw its green leaves moving in the current.
Thomas Hudson looked ahead and followed the dinghy closely as she worked out the channel. They passed a long green key that had looked like a small round key when they had been head on to it. Then ahead in what looked like an unbroken but indented line of mangrove keys Gil, who had the glasses, said, “Stake, Tom. Dead ahead of the dinghy against the mangroves.”
“Check,” Thomas Hudson said. “Is
