“Don’t big shot me,” Harry told him.
“I want to talk to you, big shot.”
“Where? Back in your office?” Harry asked him.
“Yes, back there. Anybody back there, Freddy?”
“Not since that law. Say, how long are they going to have that six o’clock business?”
“Why don’t you retain me to do something about it?” Bee-lips says.
“Retain you hell,” Freddy tells him. And the two of them go back there where the booths and the cases with the empty bottles are.
There was one electric light on in the ceiling and Harry looked in all the booths where it was dark and saw there was no one.
“Well,” he said.
“They want it for late day after tomorrow afternoon,” Bee-lips told him.
“What they going to do?”
“You speak Spanish,” Bee-lips said.
“You didn’t tell them that though?”
“No. I’m your pal. You know that.”
“You’d rat on your own mother.”
“Cut it out. Look at what I’m letting you in on.”
“When did you get tough?”
“Listen, I need the money. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m all washed up here. You know that, Harry.”
“Who don’t know that?”
“You know how they’ve been financing this revolution with kidnapping and the rest of it.”
“I know.”
“This is the same sort of thing. They’re doing it for a good cause.”
“Yeah. But this is here. This is where you were born. You know everybody works there.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to anybody.”
“With those guys?”
“I thought you had cojones.”
“I got cojones. Don’t you worry about my cojones. But I’m figuring on keeping on living here.”
“I’m not,” Bee-lips said.
Jesus, thought Harry. He’s said it himself.
“I’m going to get out,” Bee-lips said.
“When are you going to get the boat out?”
“Tonight.”
“Who’s going to help you?”
“You.”
“Where you going to put her?”
“Where I always put her.”
There was nothing difficult about getting the boat out. It was as simple as Harry had figured it. The night watchman made his rounds on the hour and the rest of the time he was at the outer gate of the old Navy Yard. They came into the basin in a skiff, cut her loose on the ebb tide and she went out herself with the skiff towing her. Outside, while she drifted in the channel, Harry checked the motors and found all they had done was disconnect the distributor heads. He checked the gas and found she had close to a hundred and fifty gallons.
They hadn’t syphoned any out of the tanks and she had what he had left coming across that last time. He had filled her up before they started and she had burned very little because they had to come across so slow in the heavy seas.
“I’ve got gas at the house in the tank,” he told Bee-lips. “I can take one load of demijohns out with me in the car and Albert can bring another if we need it. I’m going to put her up in the creek right where it crosses the road. They can come out in a car.”
“They wanted you to be right at the Porter Dock.”
“How can I lay there with this boat?”
“You can’t. But I don’t think they’ll want to do any car driving.”
“Well, we’ll put her there tonight and I can fill and do what needs to be done and then shift her. You can hire a speed boat to bring them out. I got to put her up there now. I got plenty to do. You scull in and drive out to the bridge and pick me up. I’ll be on the road there in about two hours. I’ll leave her and come out to the road.”
“I’ll pick you up,” Bee-lips told him, and Harry with the motors throttled down so that she moved quietly through the water, swung her around and towed the skiff close in to where the riding light of the cable schooner showed. He threw the clutches out and held the skiff while Bee-lips got in.
“In about two hours,” he said.
“All right,” said Bee-lips.
Sitting on the steering seat, moving ahead slowly in the dark, keeping well out from the lights at the head of the docks, Harry thought, Bee-lips is doing some work for his money all right. Wonder how much he thinks he is going to get? I wonder how he ever hooked up with those guys. There’s a smart kid who had a good chance once. He’s a good lawyer, too. But it made me cold to hear him say it himself. He put his mouth on his own self all right. It’s funny how a man can mouth something. When I heard him mouth himself it scared me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When he came in the house he did not turn on the light but took off his shoes in the hall and went up the bare stairs in his stocking feet. He undressed and got into bed wearing only his undershirt, before his wife woke. In the dark she said, “Harry?” and he said, “Go to sleep, old woman.”
“Harry, what’s the matter?”
“Going to make a trip.”
“Who with?”
“Nobody. Albert maybe.”
“Whose boat?”
“I got the boat again.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“You’ll go to jail, Harry.”
“Nobody knows I’ve got her.”
“Where is she?”
“Hid.”
Lying still in the bed he felt her lips on his face and searching for him and then her hand on him and he rolled over against her close.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes. Now.”
“I was asleep. Do you remember when we’d do it asleep?”
“Listen, do you mind the arm? Don’t it make you feel funny?”
“You’re silly. I like it. Any that’s you I like. Put it across there. Put it along there. Go on. I like it, true.”
“It’s like a flipper on a loggerhead.”
“You ain’t no loggerhead. Do they really do it three days? Coot for three days?”
“Sure. Listen, be quiet. We’ll wake the girls.”
“They don’t know what I’ve got. They won’t never know what I’ve got. Ah, Harry. That’s it. Ah, you honey.”
“Wait.”
“I don’t want no wait. Come on. That’s it. That’s where. Listen, did you ever do it with a nigger wench?”
“Sure.”
“What’s it like?”
“Like nurse shark.”
“You’re funny. Harry, I wish you didn’t have to go. I wish you didn’t ever have to go. Who’s the best you ever did it with?”
“You.”
“You lie. You always lie to me. There. There. There.”
“No. You’re the best.”
“I’m old.”
“You’ll never be old.”
“I’ve had that thing.”
“That don’t make no difference when a woman’s any good.”
“Go ahead. Go ahead now. Put the stump there. Hold it there. Hold it. Hold it now. Hold it.”
“We’re making too much noise.”
“We’re whispering.”
“I got to get out before it’s daylight.”
“You go to sleep. I’ll get you up. When you come back we’ll have a time. We’ll go to a hotel up in Miami like we used to. Just like we used to. Some place where they never seen either of us. Why couldn’t we go to New Orleans?”
“Maybe,” Harry said. “Listen Marie, I got to go to sleep now.”
“We’ll go to New Orleans?”
“Why not? Only I got to go to sleep.”
“Go to sleep. You’re my big honey. Go on to sleep. I’ll wake you. Don’t you worry.”
He went to sleep with the stump of his arm out wide on the pillow, and she lay for a long time looking at him. She could see his face in the street light through the window. I’m lucky, she was thinking. Those girls. They don’t know what they’ll get. I know what I’ve got and what I’ve had. I’ve been a lucky woman. Him saying like a loggerhead. I’m glad it was a arm and not a leg. I wouldn’t like him to have lost a leg. Why’d he have to lose that arm? It’s funny though, I don’t mind it.
Anything about him I don’t mind. I’ve been a lucky woman. There ain’t no other men like that. People ain’t never tried them don’t know. I’ve had plenty of them. I’ve been lucky to have him. Do you suppose those turtles feel like we do? Do you suppose all that time they feel like that? Or do you suppose it hurts the she? I think of the damndest things. Look at him, sleeping just like a baby. I better stay awake so as to call him. Christ, I could do that all night if a man was built that way.
I’d like to do it and never sleep. Never, never, no, never. No, never, never, never. Well, think of that, will you. Me at my age. I ain’t old. He said I was still good. Forty-five ain’t old. I’m two years older than him. Look at him sleep. Look at him asleep there like a kid.
Two hours before it was daylight they were out at the gas tank in the garage filling and corking demijohns and putting them in the back of the car. Harry wore a hook strapped to his right arm and shifted and lifted the wicker-covered demijohns handily.
“You don’t want no breakfast?”
“When I come back.”
“Don’t you want your coffee?”
“You got it?”
“Sure. I put it on when we came out.”
“Bring it out.”
She brought it out and he drank it in the dark sitting at the wheel of the car. She took the cup and put it on the shelf in the garage.
“I’m coming with you to help you handle the jugs,” she said.
“All right,” he told her and she got in beside him, a big woman, long legged, big handed, big hipped, still handsome, a hat pulled down over her bleached-blonde hair. In the dark and the cold of the morning they drove out the county road through the mist that hung heavy over the flat.
“What you worried about, Harry?”
“I don’t know. I’m just worried. Listen, are you letting your hair grow out?”
“I thought I would. The girls have been
