He was sitting with his back toward the stern, looking glum and holding his left hand in his right.
“Well you don’t have to be anymore,” John spoke very quietly. “He’s walking around now.”
“Really?”
“He’s coming out now and he’s carrying a shotgun.”
“I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” Roger said. But his voice was happy again. He sat with his back toward the stern and never turned around to look.
The man came out to the stern this time wearing both a pajama top and trousers, but what you saw was the shotgun. Thomas Hudson looked away from it and to his face and his face was very bad. Someone had worked on it and there was gauze and tape over the cheeks and a lot of Mercurochrome had been used.
They hadn’t been able to do anything about his ear. Thomas Hudson imagined it must have hurt to have anything touch it, and it just stood out looking very taut and swollen and it had become the dominant feature of his face. No one said anything and the man just stood there with his spoiled face and his shotgun. He probably could not see anyone very clearly the way his eyes were puffed tight. He stood there and he did not say anything and neither did anyone else.
Roger turned his head very slowly, saw him, and spoke over his shoulder.
“Go put the gun away and go to bed.”
The man stood there with the gun. His swollen lips were working but he did not say anything.
“You’re mean enough to shoot a man in the back but you haven’t got the guts,” Roger spoke over his shoulder very quietly, “Go put the gun away and go to bed.”
Roger still sat there with his back toward the man. Then he took what Thomas Hudson thought was an awful chance.
“Doesn’t he remind you just a little bit of Lady Macbeth coming out there in his nightclothes?” he asked the three others in the stern.
Thomas Hudson waited for it then. But nothing happened and after a while the man turned and went down into the cabin taking the shotgun with him.
“I feel very, very much better,” Roger said. “I could feel that sweat run clean down from my armpit and onto my leg. Let’s go home, Tom. Man’s OK.”
“Not too awfully OK,” Johnny said.
“OK enough,” Roger said. “What a human being that is.”
“Come on, Roger,” Thomas Hudson said. “Come on up to my place for a while.”
“All right.”
They said good night to John and walked up the King’s Highway toward the house. There was still plenty of celebrating going on.
“Do you want to go into the Ponce?” Thomas Hudson asked.
“Hell no,” Roger said.
“I thought I’d tell Freddy the man’s OK.”
“You tell him. I’ll go on to your house.”
When Thomas Hudson got home Roger was lying face down on a bed in the far up-island end of the screen porch. It was dark and you could just barely hear the noise of the celebrating.
“Sleeping?” Thomas Hudson asked him.
“No.”
“Would you like a drink?”
“I don’t think so. Thanks.”
“How’s the hand?”
“Just swelled and sore. It’s nothing.”
“You feeling low again?”
“Yes. I’ve got it bad.”
“The kids will be here in the morning.”
“That will be fine.”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”
“No, kid. But you have one.”
“I’ll have a whisky and soda to go to sleep on.”
Thomas Hudson went to the icebox, mixed the drink, and came back out to the screened porch and sat there in the dark with Roger lying on the bed.
“You know, there’s an awful lot of real bastards loose,” Roger said. “That guy was no good, Tom.”
“You taught him something.”
“No. I don’t think so. I humiliated him and I ruined him a little. But he’ll take it out on someone else.”
“He brought it on.”
“Sure. But I didn’t finish it.”
“You did everything but kill him.”
“That’s what I mean. He’ll just be worse now.”
“I think maybe you taught him a hell of a lesson.”
“No. I don’t think so. It was the same thing out on the coast.”
“What really happened? You haven’t told me anything since you got back.”
“It was a fight, sort of like this one.”
“Who with?”
He named a man who was very high up in what is known as the industry.
“I didn’t want any part of it,” Roger said. “It was out at the house where I was having some woman trouble and I suppose, technically, I shouldn’t have been there. But that night I took it and took it and took it from this character. Much worse than tonight. Finally I just couldn’t take it any more and I gave it to him, really gave it to him without thinking about anything, and his head hit wrong on the marble steps going down to the pool. This was all by the pool. He came out of it at the Cedars of Lebanon finally about the third day and so I missed manslaughter. But they had it all set. With the witnesses they had I’d have been lucky to get that.”
“So then what?”
“So then, after he’s back on the job, I get the real frameroo. The full-sized one. Complete with handles.”
“What was it?”
“Everything. In series.”
“Want to tell me?”
“No. It wouldn’t be useful to you. Just take my word for it that it was a frame. It’s so awful nobody mentions it. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Sort of.”
“So I wasn’t feeling so good about tonight. There’s a lot of wickeds at large. Really bads. And hitting them is no solution. I think that’s one reason why they provoke you.” He turned over on the bed and lay face up. “You know evil is a hell of a thing, Tommy. And it’s smart as a pig. You know they had something in the old days about good and evil.”
“Plenty of people wouldn’t classify you as a straight good,” Thomas Hudson told him.
“No. Nor do I claim to be. Nor even good nor anywhere near good. I wish I were though. Being against evil doesn’t make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming in just like a tide.”
“All fights are bad.”
“I know it. But what are you going to do about them?”
“You have to win them when they start.”
“Sure. But I was taking pleasure in it from the minute it started.”
“You would have taken more pleasure if he could have fought.”
“I hope so,” Roger said. “Though I don’t know now. I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you’re fighting.”
“He was an awful type,” Thomas Hudson said.
“He couldn’t have been any worse than the last one on the coast. The trouble is, Tommy, there are so many of them. They have them in all countries and they are getting bigger all the time. Times aren’t good, Tommy.”
“When did you ever see them good?”
“We always had good times.”
“Sure. We had good times in all sorts of good places. But the times weren’t good.”
“I never knew,” Roger said. “Everybody claimed they were good and then everybody was busted. I didn’t have any money when they all had it. Then when I had some was when things were really bad. But people didn’t always seem as goddamned mean and evil though.”
“You’ve been going around with awful people, too.”
“I see some good ones once in a while.”
“Not very many.”
“Sure I do. You don’t know all my friends.”
“You run with a pretty seedy lot.”
“Whose friends were those tonight? Your friends or my friends?”
“Our friends. They’re not so bad. They’re worthless but they’re not really evil.”
“No,” said Roger. “I guess not. Frank is pretty bad. Bad enough. I don’t think he’s evil though. But there’s a lot of stuff I can’t take anymore. And he and Fred eviled up awfully fast.”
“I know about good and evil. I’m not trying to misunderstand nor play dumb.”
“I don’t know much about good because I’ve always been a failure at it. That evil is my dish. I can recognize that old evil.”
“I’m sorry tonight turned out so lousy.”
“I’m just feeling low.”
“Do you want to turn in? You better sleep here.”
“Thanks. I will if you don’t mind. But I think I’ll go in the library and read for a while. Where are those Australian stories you had the last time I was here?”
“Henry Lawson’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get them.”
Thomas Hudson went to bed and when he woke in the night the light was still on in the library.
V
WHEN THOMAS HUDSON WOKE there was a light east breeze blowing and out across the flats the sand was bone white under the blue sky and the small high clouds that were traveling with the wind made dark moving patches on the green water. The wheel of the wind charger was turning in the breeze and it was a fine fresh-feeling morning.
Roger was gone and Thomas Hudson breakfasted by himself and read the Mainland paper that had come across yesterday. He had put it away without reading it to save it for breakfast.
“What time the boys coming in?” Joseph asked.
“Around noon.”
“They’ll be here for lunch though?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Roger was gone when I came,” Joseph said. “He didn’t have any breakfast.”
“Maybe he’ll be in now.”
“Boy said he see him go off sculling in the dinghy.”
After Thomas Hudson had finished breakfast and the paper he went out on the porch on the ocean side and went to work. He worked well and was nearly finished when he heard Roger come in and come up the stairs.
Roger looked over his shoulder and said, “It’s going to be good.”
“Maybe.”
“Where did you see those waterspouts?”
“I never saw these. These are some I’m doing
