Islands in the Stream (8 page)

The smallest boy was fair and was built like a pocket battleship. He was a copy of Thomas Hudson, physically, reduced in scale and widened and shortened. His skin freckled when it tanned and he had a humorous face and was born being very old. He was a devil too, and deviled both his older brothers, and he had a dark side to him that nobody except Thomas Hudson could ever understand. Neither of them thought about this except that they recognized it in each other and knew it was bad and the man respected it and understood the boy’s having it. They were very close to each other although Thomas Hudson had never been as much with this boy as with the others. This youngest boy, Andrew, was a precocious excellent athlete and he had been marvelous with horses since he had first ridden. The other boys were very proud of him but they did not want any nonsense from him, either. He was a little unbelievable and anyone could well have doubted his feats except that many people had seen him ride and watched him jump and seen his cold, professional modesty. He was a boy born to be quite wicked who was being very good and he carried his wickedness around with him transmuted into a sort of teasing gaiety. But he was a bad boy and the others knew it and he knew it. He was just being good while his badness grew inside him.

There, below the sea porch, the four of them were lying on the sand with the oldest boy, young Tom, on one side of Roger and the smallest one, Andrew, next to him on the middle side and the middle one, David, stretched out next to Tom on his back with his eyes closed. Thomas Hudson cleaned up his gear and went down to join them.

“Hi, papa,” the oldest boy said. “Did you work well?”

“Are you going to swim, papa?” asked the middle boy.

“The water’s pretty good, papa,” the youngest boy said.

“How are you father?” Roger grinned. “How’s the painting business, Mr. Hudson?”

“Painting business is over for the day, gentlemen.”

“Oh swell,” said David, the middle boy. “Do you think we can go goggle-fishing?”

“Let’s go after lunch.”

“That’s wonderful,” the big boy said.

“Won’t it maybe be too rough?” Andrew, the youngest boy, asked.

“For you, maybe,” his oldest brother, Tom, told him.

“No, Tommy. For anyone.”

“They stay in the rocks when it’s rough,” David said. “They’re afraid of the surge the same way we are. I think it makes them seasick too. Papa, don’t fish get seasick?”

“Sure,” Thomas Hudson said. “Sometimes in the live-well of a smack in rough weather the groupers will get so seasick that they die.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” David asked his older brother.

“They get sick and they die,” young Tom said. “But what proves that it’s seasick?”

“I think you could say they were really seasick,” Thomas Hudson said. “I don’t know whether they would be if they could swim freely, though.”

“But don’t you see that in the reef they can’t swim freely either, papa?” David said. “They have their holes and certain places they move out in. But they have to stay in the holes for fear of bigger fish and the surge bangs them around just the way it would if they were in the well of a smack.”

“Not quite as much,” young Tom disagreed.

“Maybe not quite as much,” David admitted judiciously.

“But enough,” Andrew said. He whispered to his father, “If they keep it up, we won’t have to go.”

“Don’t you like it?”

“I like it wonderful but I’m scared of it.”

“What scares you?”

“Everything underwater. I’m scared as soon as I let my air out. Tommy can swim wonderfully but he’s scared underwater too. David’s the only one of us that isn’t scared underwater.”

“I’m scared lots of times,” Thomas Hudson told him.

“Are you really?”

“Everybody is, I think.”

“David isn’t. No matter where it is. But David’s scared now of horses because they threw him so many times.”

“Listen, punk,” David had heard him. “
How
was I thrown?”

“I don’t know. It was so many times I don’t remember.”

“Well let me tell you. I know how I was thrown so much. When I used to ride Old Paint that year he used to swell himself up when they cinched him and then later the saddle would slip with me.”

“I never had that trouble with him,” Andrew said smartly.

“Oh, the devil,” David said. “Probably he liked you like everybody does. Maybe somebody told him who you were.”

“I used to read out loud to him about me out of the papers,” Andrew said.

“I’ll bet he went off on a dead run then,” Thomas Hudson said. “You know what happened to David was that he started to ride that old broken-down quarter horse that got sound on us and there wasn’t any place for the horse to run. Horses aren’t supposed to go like that across that sort of country.”

“I wasn’t saying I could have ridden him, papa,” Andrew said.

“You better not,” David said. Then, “Oh hell, you probably could have. Sure you could have. But honestly, Andy, you don’t know how he used to be going before I would spook. I was spooked of the saddle horn. Oh the hell with it. I was spooked.”

“Papa, do we actually have to go goggle-fishing?” Andrew asked.

“Not if it’s too rough.”

“Who decides if it’s too rough?”

“I decide.”

“Good,” Andy said. “It certainly looks too rough to me.”

“Papa, have you still got Old Paint out at the ranch?” Andy asked.

“I believe so,” Thomas Hudson said. “I rented the ranch, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yes. The end of last year.”

“But we can still go there, can’t we?” David asked quickly.

“Oh sure. We have the big cabin on the beach down by the river.”

“The ranch is the best place I was ever at,” Andy said. “Outside of here, of course.”

“I thought you used to like Rochester best,” David teased him. That was where he used to be left with his nurse when she stayed with her family in the summer months when the other boys went west.

“I did, too. Rochester was a wonderful place.”

“Do you remember when we came home that fall the time we killed the three grizzlies and you tried to tell him about it, Dave, and what he said?” Thomas Hudson asked.

“No, papa. I can’t remember exactly that far back.”

“It was in the butler’s pantry where you guys ate and you were having children’s supper and telling him about it and Anna was saying, ‘Oh my gracious, David, that must have been exciting. And what did you do
then
?’ and this wicked old man, he must have been about five or six then, spoke up and said, ‘Well that’s probably very interesting, David, to people who are interested in that sort of thing. But we don’t have grizzlies in Rochester.’ ”

“See, horseman?” David said. “How you were then?”

“All right, papa,” Andrew said. “Tell him about when he would read nothing but the funny papers and read funny papers on the trip through the Everglades and wouldn’t look at anything after he went to that school the fall we were in New York and got to be a heel.”

“I remember it,” David said. “Papa doesn’t have to tell it.”

“You came out of it all right,” Thomas Hudson said.

“I had to, I guess. It certainly would have been something pretty bad to have stayed in.”

“Tell them about when I was little,” young Tom said, rolling over and taking hold of David’s ankle. “I’ll never get to be as good in real life as the stories about me when I was little.”

“I knew you when you were little,” Thomas Hudson said. “You were quite a strange character then.”

“He was just strange because he lived in strange places,” the smallest boy said. “I could have been strange in Paris and Spain and Austria.”

“He’s strange now, horseman,” David said. “He doesn’t need any exotic backgrounds.”

“What’s exotic backgrounds?”

“What you haven’t got.”

“I’ll bet I’ll have them, then.”

“Shut up and let papa tell,” young Tom said. “Tell them about when you and I used to go around together in Paris.”

“You weren’t so strange then,” Thomas Hudson said. “As a baby you were an awfully sound character. Mother and I used to leave you in the crib that was made out of a clothes basket in that flat where we lived over the sawmill and F. Puss the big cat would curl up in the foot of the basket and wouldn’t let anybody come near you. You said your name was G’Ning G’Ning and we used to call you G’Ning G’Ning the Terrible.”

“Where did I get a name like that?”

“Off a street car or an autobus I think. The sound the conductor made.”

“Couldn’t I speak French?”

“Not too well then.”

“Tell me about a little later by the time I could speak French.”

“Later on I used to wheel you in the carriage, it was a cheap, very light, folding carriage, down the street to the Closerie des Lilas where we’d have breakfast and I’d read the paper and you’d watch everything that went past on the boulevard. Then we’d finish breakfast—”

“What would we have?”

“Brioche and café au lait.”

“Me too?”

“You’d just have a taste of coffee in the milk.”

“I can remember. Where would we go then?”

“I’d wheel you across the street from the Closerie des Lilas and past the fountain with the bronze horses and the fish and the mermaids and down between the long
allées
of chestnut trees with the French children playing and their nurses on the benches beside the gravel paths—”

“And the École Alsacienne on the left,” young Tom said.

“And apartment buildings on the right—”

“And apartment buildings and apartments with glass roofs for studios all along the street that goes down to the left and quite triste from the darkness of the stone because that was the shady side,” young Tom said.

“Is it fall or spring or winter?” Thomas Hudson asked.

“Late fall.”

“Then you were cold in the face, and your cheeks and your nose were red and we would go into the Luxembourg through the iron gate at the upper end and down toward the lake and around the lake once and then turn to the right toward the Medici Fountain and the statues and out of the gate in front of the Odéon and down a couple of side streets to the Boulevard Saint-Michel—”

“The Boul’ Mich’—”

“And down the Boul’ Mich’ past the Cluny—”

“On our right—”

“That was very dark and gloomy looking and across the Boulevard Saint-Germain—”

“That was the most exciting street with the most traffic. It’s strange how exciting and dangerous seeming it was there. And down by the Rue de Rennes it always seemed perfectly safe—between the Deux Magots and Lipp’s crossing I mean. Why was that, Papa?”

“I don’t know, Schatz.”

“I wish something would happen beside the names of streets,” Andrew said. “I get tired of the names of streets in a place I’ve never been.”

“Make something happen, then, papa,” young Tom said. “We can talk about streets when we’re alone.”

“Nothing much happened then,” Thomas Hudson said. “We would go on down to the Place Saint-Michel and we would sit on the terrace of the café and Papa would sketch with a
café crème
on the table and you’d have a beer.”

“Did I like beer then?”

“You were a big beer man. But you liked water with a little red wine in it at meals.”

“I remember.
L’eau rougie
.”

“
Exactement
,” Thomas Hudson said. “You were a very strong
l’eau rougie
man but you liked an occasional
bock
.”

“I can remember in Austria going on a
luge
and our dog Schnautz and snow.”

“Can you remember Christmas there?”

“No. Just you and snow and our dog Schnautz and my nurse. She was beautiful. And I remember mother on skis and how beautiful she was. I can remember seeing you and mother coming down skiing through an orchard. I don’t know where it was. But I can remember the Jardin du Luxembourg well. I can remember afternoons with the boats on the lake by the fountain in the big garden with the trees. The paths through the trees were all gravelled and men played bowling games off to the left under the trees as we went down toward the Palace and there was a clock high up on the Palace. In the fall the leaves came down and I can remember the trees bare and the leaves on the gravel. I like to remember the fall best.”

“Why?” David asked.

“Lots of things. The way everything smelled in the fall and the carnivals and the way the gravel was dry on top when everything was damp and the wind on the lake to sail the boats and the wind in the trees that brought the leaves down. I can remember feeling the pigeons by me warm under the blanket when you killed them just before it was dark and how the feathers were smooth and I would stroke them and hold them close and keep my hands warm going home until the pigeons got cold too.”

“Where did you kill the pigeons, papa?” David asked.

“Mostly down by the Medici Fountain just before they shut the gardens. There’s a high iron fence all around the gardens and they shut the gates at dark and everyone has to go out. Guards go through warning people and locking up the gates. After the guards went ahead I used to kill the pigeons with a slingshot when they were on the ground by the fountain. They make wonderful slingshots in France.”

“Didn’t you make your own if you were poor?” Andrew asked.

“Sure. First I had one I made from a forked branch of a sapling I cut down in the Forest of Rambouillet when Tommy’s mother and I were on a walking trip there. I whittled it out and we bought the big rubber bands for it at a stationery store on the Place Saint-Michel and made the leather pouch out of leather from an old glove of Tommy’s mother.”

“What did you shoot in it?”

“Pebbles.”

“How close would you have to get?”

“As close as you could so you could pick them up and get them under the blanket as quick as you could.”

“I remember the time one came alive,” young Tom said. “And I held him quiet and didn’t say anything about it all the way home because I wanted to keep him. He was a very big pigeon, almost purple color with a high neck and a wonderful head and white on his wings, and you let me keep him in the kitchen until we could get a cage for him. You tied him by one leg. But that night the big cat killed him and brought him in to my bed. The big cat was so proud and he carried him just as though he were a tiger carrying a native and he jumped up to the bed with him. That was when I had a square bed after the basket. I can’t remember the basket. You and mother were gone to the café and the big cat and I were alone and I remember the windows were open and there was a big moon over the sawmill and it was winter and I could smell the sawdust. I remember seeing the big cat coming across the floor with his head high up so the pigeon barely dragged on the floor and then he made one jump and just sailed right up and into the bed with him. I felt awfully that he had killed my pigeon but he was so proud and so happy and he was such a good friend of mine I felt proud and happy, too. I remember he played with the pigeon and then he would push his paws up and down on my chest and purr and then play with the pigeon again. Finally I remember he and I and the pigeon all went to sleep together. I had one hand on the pigeon and he had one paw on the pigeon and then in the night I woke up and he was eating him and purring loud like a tiger.”