The boats had drifted apart. Captain Willie went on shouting, “I don’t know where this place is where I seen you. I wouldn’t know how to get back here.”
“O.K.,” came a shout from the booze boat.
“I’m taking this big alphabet man fishing until dark,” Captain Willie shouted.
“O.K.”
“He loves to fish,” Captain Willie yelled, his voice almost breaking. “But the son of a bitch claims you can’t eat ’em.”
“Thanks brother,” came the voice of Harry.
“That chap your brother?” asked the Doctor, his face very red but his love for information still unappeased.
“No sir,” said Captain Willie. “Most everybody goes in boats calls each other brother.”
“We’ll go into Key West,” the Doctor said; but he said it without great conviction.
“No sir,” said Captain Willie. “You gentlemen chartered me for a day. I’m going to see you get your money’s worth. You called me a halfwit but I’ll see you get a full day’s charter.”
“He’s an old man,” said the Doctor to his secretary. “Should we rush him?”
“Don’t you try it,” said Captain Willie. “I’d hit you right over the head with this.”
He showed them a length of iron pipe that he used for clubbing shark.
“Why don’t you gentlemen just put your lines out and enjoy yourselves? You didn’t come down here to get in no trouble. You come down here for a rest. You say you can’t eat sailfish but you won’t catch no sailfish in these channels. You’d be lucky to catch a grouper.”
“What do you think?” asked the Doctor.
“Better leave him alone.” The secretary eyed the iron pipe.
“Besides you made another mistake,” Captain Willie went on. “Sailfish is just as good eating as kingfish. When we used to sell them to Rios for the Havana market we got ten cents a pound same as kings.”
“Oh shut up,” said the Doctor.
“I thought you’d be interested in these things as a Government man. Ain’t you mixed up in the prices of things that we eat or something? Ain’t that it? Making them more costly or something. Making the grits dearer and the grunts cheapter. Fish goin’ down in price all the time.”
“Oh shut up,” said the Doctor.
On the booze boat Harry had the last sack over.
“Get me the fish knife,” he said to the nigger.
“It’s gone.”
Harry pressed the self-starters and started the engines. He got the hatchet and with his left hand chopped the anchor rope through against the bit. It’ll sink and they’ll grapple it when they pick up the load, he thought. I’ll run her up into the Garrison Bight and if they’re going to take her they’ll take her. I got to get to a doctor. I don’t want to lose my arm and the boat both. The load is worth as much as the boat. There wasn’t too much of it smashed. A little smashed can smell plenty.
He shoved the port clutch in and swung out away from the mangroves with the tide. The engines ran smoothly. Captain Willie’s boat was two miles away now headed for Boca Grande. I guess the tide’s high enough to go through the lakes now, Harry thought. He shoved in his starboard clutch and the engines roared as he pushed up the throttle. He could feel her bow rise and the green mangroves coasted swiftly alongside as the boat sucked the water away from their roots. I hope they don’t take her, he thought.
I hope they can fix my arm. How was we to know they’d shoot at us in Mariel after we could go and come there open for six months? That’s Cubans for you. Somebody didn’t pay somebody so we got the shooting. That’s Cubans all right.
“Hey Wesley,” he said, looking back into the cockpit where the nigger lay with the blanket over him. “How you feeling, Boogie?”
“God,” said Wesley. “I couldn’t feel no worse.”
“You’ll feel worse when the old doctor probes for it,” Harry told him.
“You ain’t human,” the nigger said. “You ain’t got human feelings.”
That old Willie is a good skate, Harry was thinking. There’s a good skate, that old Willie. We done better to come in than to wait. It was foolish to wait. I felt so dizzy and sicklike I lost my judgment.
Ahead now he could see the white of the La Concha hotel, the wireless masts, and the houses of town. He could see the car ferries lying at the Trumbo dock where he would go around to head up for the Garrison Bight. That old Willie, he thought. He was giving them hell. Wonder who those buzzards was? Damn if I don’t feel plenty bad right now. I feel plenty dizzy. We done right to come in. We done right not to wait.
“Mr. Harry,” said the nigger. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help dump that stuff.”
“Hell,” said Harry. “Ain’t no nigger any good when he’s shot. You’re a all right nigger, Wesley.”
Above the roar of the motors and the high, slapping rush of the boat through the water he felt a strange hollow singing in his heart. He always felt this way coming home at the end of a trip. I hope they can fix that arm, he thought. I got a lot of use for that arm.
The End
