Islands in the Stream (52 page)

He heard the hum of the outboard and turned his head. He saw her coming around the point but he could only see one man in her. It was Ara in the stern. But he noticed she was loaded deep and he realized that Willie and Henry must be lying flat. Willie’s really smart, he thought. Now the people on the key don’t know but that there may be only one man in the dinghy and they will see it is a different man from the one that took her away. I don’t know whether that is smart or not. But Willie must have figured it.

The dinghy came up in the lee of the turtle boat and Thomas Hudson saw Ara’s great chest, his long arms, and his brown face that was serious now, and he could see the nervous twitching of his legs. Henry and Willie lay flat with their heads on their arms.

When the dinghy came into the lee of the turtle boat that was careened away from the key and Ara held the rail, Willie turned on his side and said, “Get aboard, Henry, and crawl up there with Tom. Ara will hand you your junk. You’ve got Peters’ junk too.”

Henry climbed cautiously up the steep deck on his belly. He took one look at Peters as he crawled by him.

“Hi, Tom,” he said.

Thomas Hudson put his hand on Henry’s arm and said softly, “Get up in the bow and keep absolutely flat. Don’t let anything show over the gunwale.”

“Yes, Tom,” the big man said, and began inching down to crawl up to the bow. He had to crawl over Peters’ legs and he picked up his submachine gun and clips and stuck the clips in his belt. He felt in Peters’ pockets for frags and hung them on his belt. He patted Peters on the legs and holding the two submachine guns by the muzzles he crawled up to his post in the bow.

Thomas Hudson saw him look down into the blasted forward hatch as he crawled up the steep deck over the broken mangroves. His face gave no sign of what he saw there. When he was under the lee of the gunwale, he put the two submachine guns by his right hand and then tested the functioning of Peters’ gun and put in a fresh clip. He laid the other clips along the gunwale and unhooked the grenades from his belt and laid them out within reach. When he saw him in position and looking out at the greenness of the key, Thomas Hudson turned his head and spoke to Willie who was lying in the bottom of the dinghy with his good and his bad eye shut against the sun. He was wearing a faded khaki shirt with sleeves and ragged shorts and he had a pair of sneakers on. Ara was sitting in the stern and Thomas Hudson noticed his thatch of black hair and the way his big hands gripped the gunwale. His legs were still jumping but Thomas Hudson had known for a long time how nervous he always was before action and how beautiful he was once things started.

“Willie,” Thomas Hudson said. “You have anything figured?”

Willie opened his good eye and kept his bad eye closed against the sun.

“I ask permission to go in on the far side of the key and see what the hell gives. We can’t let them get out of here.”

“I’ll go in with you.”

“No, Tommy. I know this shit and it’s my trade.”

“I don’t want you to go in alone.”

“That’s the only way on this. You trust me, Tommy. Ara will come back here and back up your play if I flush them. He can come in and pick me up on the beach if there isn’t any trouble.”

He had both eyes open and he was looking hard at Thomas Hudson the way a man looks who is trying to sell an appliance to someone who should really have it if they can afford it.

“I’d rather go in with you.”

“Too fucking much noise, Tom. I tell you truly I know this shit good. I’m a fucking expert. You’ll never find anybody like me.”

“OK. Go in,” Thomas Hudson said. “But bust up their skiff.”

“What the hell you think I’m going to do? Go in there and jerk off?”

“If you’re going in, you better get in.”

“Tom. Now you’ve got two traps set. The ship and here. Ara makes you mobile. You have one expendable, medically discharged Marine to lose. What’s holding you up?”

“You talking so much,” Thomas Hudson said. “Get the hell in and shit bless you.”

“Drop dead,” Willie told him.

“You sound in good shape,” Thomas Hudson said and explained rapidly in Spanish to Ara what they were going to do.

“Don’t bother,” Willie said. “I can talk to him lying down.”

Ara said, “I’ll be right back, Tom.”

Thomas Hudson watched him yank the motor alive and watched the dinghy move out with Ara’s broad back and black head in the stern and Willie lying in the bottom. He had turned around so that his head was close to Ara’s feet and he could talk to him.

The good, brave, worthless son of a bitch, Thomas Hudson thought. Old Willie. He made up my mind for me when I was starting to put things off. I would rather have a good Marine, even a ruined Marine, than anything in the world when there are chips down. And we have chips down now. Good luck, Mr. Willie, he thought. And don’t drop dead.

“How are you, Henry?” he asked softly.

“Fine, Tom. It was very gallant of Willie to go in, don’t you think?”

“He never even heard of the word,” Thomas Hudson said. “He just conceived it to be his duty.”

“I’m sorry we haven’t been friends.”

“Everybody is friends when things are bad enough.”

“I’m going to be friends from now on.”

“We’re all going to do a lot of things from now on,” Thomas Hudson said. “I wish from now on would start.”

They were lying on the hot deck
watching the line of the key. The sun was strong on their backs but the wind cooled them. Their backs were nearly as brown as the sea Indian women they had seen this morning on the outer key. That seemed as long ago as all his life, Thomas Hudson thought. That and the open sea and the long breaking reefs and the dark depthless tropic sea beyond were as far away as all of his life was now. We could have just gone up the open sea with this breeze and made Cayo Francés and Peters would have answered their blinker and we all would have had cold beer tonight. Don’t think about it, boy, he thought. This is what you had to do.

“Henry,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Splendidly, Tom,” Henry said very softly. “A frag couldn’t blow up from getting too hot in the sun could it?”

“I’ve never seen it. But it can increase their potency.”

“I hope Ara’s got some water,” Henry said.

“Don’t you remember them putting it in?”

“No, Tom. I was looking after my own equipment and I didn’t notice.”

Then against the wind they heard the noise of the outboard on the dinghy. Thomas Hudson turned his head carefully and saw her round the point. The dinghy was riding high and Ara was in the stern. He could see the width of his shoulders and his black head at this distance. Thomas Hudson turned his head again to watch the key and he saw a night heron rise from the trees in the center and fly away. Then he saw two wood ibis rise and wheel and fly off with quick-flapping, then coasting, then quick-flapping wing beats downwind toward the little key.

Henry had watched them, too, and he said, “Willie must be getting pretty well in.”

“Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “They came off the high ridge in the center of the key.”

“Then nobody else was there.”

“Not if it was Willie who scared them.”

“That’s about where Willie would be by now if he didn’t have too bad going.”

“Keep down low now when Ara comes.”

Ara brought the dinghy along the careened lee of the turtle boat and put the grapnel aboard against the gunwale. He climbed carefully aboard with the ease of a bear. He had a water bottle and a bottle of tea in an old gin bottle each tied to a piece of heavy fishing line that suspended them over his neck. He crawled up to lie beside Thomas Hudson.

“What about some of the damn water?” Henry asked.

Ara laid his stuff down beside Thomas Hudson’s, untied the water bottle from the fish line and crawled carefully along the slanted deck above the two hatches to where Henry was stationed.

“Drink it,” he said. “Don’t try to bathe with it.”

He slapped Henry on the back and crawled back to lie beside Thomas Hudson.

“Tom,” he said, speaking very low. “We saw nothing. I landed Willie on the far side almost directly opposite us and went out to the ship. There I went aboard on the lee side away from the key. I explained everything to Antonio and he understood well. Then I filled the outboard with gas and filled the reserve can and brought out the iced tea and the water.”

“Good,” said Thomas Hudson. He dropped down the deck a little way and took a long pull at the bottle of iced tea.

“Thank you very much for the tea.”

“It was Antonio thought of it. We forgot certain things in our hurry at the start.”

“Move down toward the stern so you can cover it.”

“Yes, Tom,” Ara said.

They lay there in the sun and the wind and each one watched the key. Occasionally a bird, or a pair of birds would fly up, and they knew these birds had been frightened either by Willie or by the others.

“The birds must make Willie angry,” Ara said. “He didn’t think about that when he went in.”

“He might just as well be sending up balloons,” Thomas Hudson answered.

He was thinking and he turned to look over his shoulder.

He did not like any of it now. There were too many birds getting up from the key. And what reason now had they to believe that the others were in there now? Why would they have gone in there in the first place? Lying on the deck he had a hollow feeling in his chest that both he and Willie had been deceived. Maybe they haven’t sucked us in. But it does not look good with so many birds getting up, he thought. Another pair of wood ibis rose not far from the shore and Thomas Hudson turned to Henry and said, “Get down in the forward hatch, Henry, please, and keep watch inland.”

“It’s awfully messy in there.”

“I know.”

“All right, Tom.”

“Leave your frags and clips. Just take a frag in your pocket and the
niño
.”

Henry eased himself down into the hatch and looked out toward the inside keys that masked the channel. His expression had not changed. But he was tight-lipped keeping it in order.

“I’m sorry about it, Henry,” Thomas Hudson said to him. “It’s just the way it has to be for a while.”

“I don’t mind it,” Henry said. Then the studied severity of his face cracked and he smiled his wonderful good smile. “It’s that it isn’t exactly the way I would plan to spend a summer.”

“Me either. But things don’t look so open and shut right now.”

A bittern came out from the mangroves and Thomas Hudson heard it squawk and watched its nervous swooping flight downwind. Then he settled down to trace Willie’s progress along the mangroves by the rising and the flight of the birds. When the birds stopped rising he was sure he was headed back. Then after a time they were being put up again and he knew Willie was working out the windward curve of the key. After three-quarters of an hour he saw a great white heron rise in panic and start its slow heavy wing-beats to windward and he said to Ara, “He’ll be out now. Better go down to the point and pick him up.”

“I see him,” Ara said in a moment. “He just waved. He’s lying down just in from the beach.”

“Go get him and bring him back lying down.”

Ara slid back down to the dinghy with his weapon and with a couple of frags in his pockets. He got into the stern of the dinghy and cast her off.

“Toss me the tea bottle, will you, Tom?”

Ara caught it using both hands for surety instead of the one-hand catch he would usually have made. He enjoyed catching frags one-handed and the hardest way possible just as he enjoyed crimping detonator caps with his teeth. But this tea was for Willie and he appreciated what Willie had been through, even though there were no results and he placed the bottle carefully under the stern and hoped it was still cool.

“What do you think, Tom?” Henry asked.

“We’re fucked. For the moment.”

In a little while the dinghy was alongside and Willie was lying in the bottom with the bottle of tea in both hands. His hands and face were scratched and bloody, although he had washed them with sea water, and one sleeve was torn off his shirt. His face was bulging with mosquito bites and there were lumps from mosquito bites wherever his flesh was bare.

“There’s not a goddam thing, Tom,” he said. “They never were on that key. You and I weren’t too damned smart.”

“No.”

“What do you think?”

“They went inside after they grounded. Whether for keeps or to make a recon of the channels I don’t know.”

“Do you think they saw us board?”

“They could have seen everything or nothing. They’re pretty low in the water to see.”

“They ought to have heard it downwind.”

“They should have.”

“So now?”

“You get out to the ship and send Ara back for Henry and me. They might still be back.”

“What about Peters? We can take him.”

“Take him now.”

“Tommy, you’re parapeted up on the wrong side,” Willie said. “We’ve both been wrong and I’m not offering any advice.”

“I know it. I’m going down in the afterhatch as soon as Ara loads Peters.”

“He better load him by himself,” Willie said. “They could see silhouettes. But they couldn’t make out an object flat on the deck without glasses.”

Thomas Hudson explained to Ara and Ara climbed up and handled Peters quite easily and impersonally but he knotted the cloth behind his head. He was neither tender nor rough and all he said as he lifted him and slid him head first into the dinghy was, “He is very rigid.”

“That’s why they call them stiffs,” Willie said. “Didn’t you ever hear?”

“Yes,” Ara said. “We call them
fiambres
which means cold meats as in a restaurant when you can have fish or cold meats. But I was thinking of Peters. He was always so limber.”

“I’ll get him right back, Tom. Do you need anything?”

“Luck,” Thomas Hudson said. “Thank you for the recon, Willie.”

“Just the usual shit,” Willie said.

“Have Gil put Merthiolate on the scratches.”

“Fuck the scratches,” Willie said. “I’m going to run as a jungle man.”

Thomas Hudson and Henry were looking out from the two hatches toward the broken and indented line of keys that lay between them and the long bay that formed the inland channel. They spoke in a normal tone of voice since they knew the others could not be closer than those small green islands.