Islands in the Stream (54 page)

As he had taken the golden plover into the back room where the icebox was, he felt he had robbed the boy of it. But he had smoothed its plumage carefully and laid it on one of the grilled shelves of the icebox. The next day he had painted young Tom a picture of the golden plover and the boy had taken it with him when he went off to school that year. In the picture he had tried to get the fast, running quality of the bird and the background was a long beach with coconut palms.

Then he remembered one time when they were in a tourist camp. He had wakened early and Tom was still asleep. He lay on his back with his arms crossed and he looked like the sculpture of a young knight lying on his tomb. Thomas Hudson had sketched him that way using a tomb that he remembered from Salisbury Cathedral. He was going to paint a canvas of it later but he did not do it because he thought it could be bad luck. A lot of good that did, he thought.

He looked Into the sun that was low now and he could see Tom high up in the sun in a Spitfire. The aircraft was very high and very tiny and it shone like a fragment of broken mirror. He liked it up there, he said to himself. And it was a good rule you made about not drinking.

But over half of the drink was still in the paper-wrapped glass and there was still ice in it.

Courtesy of Peters, he thought. Then he remembered when they lived on the island in the old days and how Tom had read about the ice age at school and he was afraid it would come again.

“Papa,” he had said. “That is my only worry.”

“It can’t hit here,” Thomas Hudson had said.

“I know. But I can’t stand to think what it will do to all those people in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan. Even Illinois and Indiana.”

“I don’t think we really have to worry about it,” Thomas Hudson had said. “It’s a dreadfully slow process if it comes.”

“I know,” young Tom had said. “But that’s the only thing I every really worry about. That and the extinction of the passenger pigeon.”

That Tom, he thought, and put the drink into one of the empty frag holes and glassed the keys carefully. He saw nothing that might be a sailing skiff and he put the glasses down.

The best times they had, he thought, were on the island and out West. Except Europe, of course, and if I think about that I’ll think about the girl and it will be worse. I wonder where she is now. Sleeping with some general, I suppose. Well, I hope she gets a good one.

She looked awfully well and very beautiful when I saw her in Havana. I could think about her all night. But I won’t. It is indulgence enough to think about Tom. I wouldn’t do that without the drink. I’m glad I took it, though. There is a time to break all your rules. Maybe not all. I will think about him for a while and then I will work out our small problem for tonight when Willie and Ara get back. They’re a wonderful team. Willie learned that awful Spanish in the Philippines but they understand each other perfectly. Some of that is because Ara is a Basque and speaks bad Spanish, too. Christ, I’d hate to go aboard that hulk after Willie and Ara rig her.

Go ahead and drink the rest of your drink and think about something good. Tom’s dead and it’s all right to think about him. You’ll never get over it. But you are solid on it now. Remember some good happy times. You had plenty.

What were the happiest times? he thought. They were all happy, really, in the time of innocence and the lack of useless money and still being able to work and eat. A bicycle was more fun than a motorcar. You saw things better and it kept you in good shape and coming home after you had ridden in the Bois you could coast down the Champs Élysees well past the Rond-Point and when you looked back to see what was behind you there, with the traffic moving in two streams, there rose the high gray of the great arch against the dusk. 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.”

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 it the canal?”

“It looks to be but I can’t see the opening.”

“It is very narrow on the chart. We will just about brush the mangroves on each side.”

Then he remembered something. How could I be so stupid? he thought. But we had better go on now, anyway, and out through the channel. Then I can send them back. He had forgotten to tell Willie and Ara to detrap the hulk of the turtle boat. That is a hell of a thing to leave around if some poor fisherman comes onto it. Well, they can go back and detrap it.

The dinghy was signalling him now to keep hard over to the right of the three tiny spots of key and close against the mangroves. Then, as if to make sure he understood, they wheeled and came up. “The channel’s right in along the mangroves,” Willie shouted. “Leave the stake on your left. We’re going ahead through. As long as you don’t hear from us keep on steaming. It’s just a deep creek.”

“We forgot to detrap that turtle boat.”

“I know,” Willie shouted. “We’ll go back after.” Ara grinned and spun the dinghy around and they went on ahead, Willie signalling that it was OK. They turned left and right and went out of sight into the green.

Thomas Hudson steered in their wake. There was plenty of water although no such water showed on the chart. This old channel must have been scoured out by a hurricane, he thought. Many things have happened since the U.S.S.
Nokomis
had boats sounding in here.