Islands in the Stream (18 page)

“He’s coming up,” Roger told David. “Keep on him steady and good.”

David went to work like a machine, or like a very tired boy performing as a machine.

“This is the time,” Roger said. “He’s really coming up. Put her ahead just a touch, Tom. We want to take him on the port side if we can.”

“Ahead just a touch,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Use your own judgment on it,” Roger said. “We want to bring him up easy where Eddy can gaff him and we can get a noose over him. I’ll handle the leader. Tommy, you come down here to handle the chair and see the line doesn’t foul on the rod when I take the leader. Keep the line clear all the time in case I have to turn him loose. Andy, you help Eddy with anything he asks for and give him the noose and the club when he asks for them.”

The fish was coming up steadily now and David was not breaking the rhythm of his pumping.

“Tom, you better come down and take the wheel below,” Roger called up.

“I was just coming down,” Thomas Hudson told him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Davy, remember if he runs and I have to turn him loose keep your rod up and everything clear. Slack off your drag as soon as I take hold of the leader.”

“Keep her spooled even,” Eddy said. “Don’t let her jam up now, Davy.”

Thomas Hudson swung down from the flying bridge into the cockpit and took the wheel and the controls there. It was not as easy to see into the water as it was on the flying bridge but it was handier in case of any emergency and communication was easier. It was strange to be on the same level as the action after having looked down on it for so many hours, he thought. It was like moving down from a box seat onto the stage or to the ringside or close against the railing of the track. Everyone looked bigger and closer and they were all taller and not foreshortened.

He could see David’s bloody hands and lacquered-looking oozing feet and he saw the welts the harness had made across his back and the almost hopeless expression on his face as he turned his head at the last finish of a pull. He looked in the cabin and the brass clock showed that it was ten minutes to six. The sea looked different to him now that he was so close to it, and looking at it from the shade and from David’s bent rod, the white line slanted into the dark water and the rod lowered and rose steadily. Eddy knelt on the stern with the gaff in his sun-spotted freckled hands and looked down into the almost purple water trying to see the fish. Thomas Hudson noticed the rope hitches around the haft of the gaff and the rope made fast to the Samson post in the stern and then he looked again at David’s back, his outstretched legs, and his long arms holding the rod.

“Can you see him, Eddy?” Roger asked from where he was holding the chair.

“Not yet. Stay on him, Davy, steady and good.”

David kept on his same raising, lowering, and reeling; the reel heavy with line now; bringing in a sweep of line each time he swung it around.

Once the fish held steady for a moment and the rod doubled toward the water and line started to go out.

“No. He can’t be,” David said.

“He might,” Eddy said. “You can’t ever know.”

But then David lifted slowly, suffering against the weight and, after the first slow lift, the line started to come again as easily and steadily as before.

“He just held for a minute,” Eddy said. His old felt hat on the back of his head, he was peering down into the clear, dark purple water.

“There he is,” he said.

Thomas Hudson slipped back quickly from the wheel to look over the stern. The fish showed, deep astern, looking tiny and foreshortened in the depth but in the small time Thomas Hudson looked at him he grew steadily in size. It was not as rapidly as a plane grows as it comes in toward you but it was as steady.

Thomas Hudson put his arm on David’s shoulder and went back to the wheel. Then he heard Andrew say, “Oh look at him,” and this time he could see him from the wheel deep in the water and well astern, showing brown now and grown greatly in length and bulk.

“Keep her just as she is,” Roger said without looking back and Thomas Hudson answered, “Just as she is.”

“Oh God look at him,” young Tom said.

Now he was really huge, bigger than any swordfish Thomas Hudson had ever seen. All the great length of him was purple blue now instead of brown and he was swimming slowly and steadily in the same direction the boat was going; astern of the boat and on David’s right.

“Keep him coming all the time, Davy,” Roger said. “He’s coming in just right.”

“Go ahead just a touch,” Roger said, watching the fish.

“Ahead just a touch,” Thomas Hudson answered.

“Keep it spooled,” Eddy told David. Thomas Hudson could see the swivel of the leader now out of water.

“Ahead just a little more,” Roger said.

“Going ahead just a little more,” Thomas Hudson repeated. He was watching the fish and easing the stern onto the course that he was swimming. He could see the whole great purple length of him now, the great broad sword forward, the slicing dorsal fin set in his wide shoulders, and his huge tail that drove him almost without a motion.

“Just a touch more ahead,” Roger said.

“Going ahead a touch more.”

David had the leader within reach now.

“Are you ready for him, Eddy?” Roger asked.

“Sure,” Eddy said.

“Watch him, Tom,” Roger said and leaned over and took hold of the cable leader.

“Slack off on your drag,” he said to David and began slowly raising the fish, holding and lifting on the heavy cable to bring him within reach of the gaff.

The fish was coming up looking as long and as broad as a big log in the water. David was watching him and glancing up at his rod tip to make sure it was not fouled. For the first time in six hours he had no strain on his back and his arms and legs and Thomas Hudson saw the muscles in his legs twitching and quivering. Eddy was bending over the side with the gaff and Roger was lifting slowly and steadily.

“He’d go over a thousand,” Eddy said. Then he said, very quietly, “Roger, hook’s only holding by a thread.”

“Can you reach him?” Roger asked.

“Not yet,” Eddy said. “Keep him coming easy, easy.”

Roger kept lifting on the wire cable and the great fish rose steadily toward the boat.

“It’s been cutting,” Eddy said. “It’s just holding by nothing.”

“Can you reach him now?” Roger asked. His tone had not changed.

“Not quite yet,” Eddy said as quietly. Roger was lifting as gently and as softly as he could. Then, from lifting, he straightened, all strain gone, holding the slack leader in his two hands.

“No. No. No. Please God, no,” young Tom said.

Eddy lunged down into the water with the gaff and then went overboard to try to get the gaff into the fish if he could reach him.

It was no good. The great fish hung there in the depth of water where he was like a huge dark purple bird and then settled slowly. They all watched him go down, getting smaller and smaller until he was out of sight.

Eddy’s hat was floating on the calm sea and he was holding onto the gaff handle. The gaff was on the line that was fast to the Samson post in the stern. Roger put his arms around David and Thomas Hudson could see David’s shoulders shaking. But he left David to Roger. “Get the ladder out for Eddy to come aboard,” he said to young Tom. “Take Davy’s rod, Andy. Unhook it.”

Roger lifted the boy out of the chair and carried him over to the bunk at the starboard side of the cockpit and laid him down in it. Roger’s arms were around David and the boy lay flat on his face on the bunk.

Eddy came on board soaked and dripping, and started to undress. Andrew fished out his hat with the gaff and Thomas Hudson went below to get Eddy a shirt and a pair of dungarees and a shirt and shorts for David. He was surprised that he had no feeling at all except pity and love for David. All other feeling had been drained out of him in the fight.

When he came up David was lying, naked, face-down on the bunk and Roger was rubbing him down with alcohol.

“It hurts across the shoulders and my tail,” David said. “Watch out, Mr. Davis, please.”

“It’s where it’s chafed,” Eddy told him. “Your father’s going to fix your hands and feet with Mercurochrome. That won’t hurt.”

“Get this shirt on, Davy,” Thomas Hudson said. “So you won’t get cold. Go get one of the lightest blankets for him, Tom.”

Thomas Hudson touched the places where the harness had chafed the boy’s back with Mercurochrome and helped him into the shirt.

“I’m all right,” David said in a toneless voice. “Can I have a Coke, papa?”

“Sure,” Thomas Hudson told him. “Eddy will get you some soup in a little while.”

“I’m not hungry,” David said. “I couldn’t eat yet.”

“We’ll wait a while,” Thomas Hudson said.

“I know how you feel, Dave,” Andrew said when he brought the Coke.

“Nobody knows how I feel,” David said.

Thomas Hudson gave his oldest boy a compass course to steer back to the island.

“Synchronize your motors at three hundred, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll be in sight of the light by dark and then I’ll give you a correction.”

“You check me every once in a while will you please, papa. Do you feel as awful as I do?”

“There’s nothing to do about it.”

“Eddy certainly tried,” young Tom said. “Not everybody would jump in this ocean after a fish.”

“Eddy nearly made it,” his father told him. “It could have been a hell of a thing with him in the water with a gaff in that fish.”

“Eddy would have got out all right,” young Tom said. “Are they synchronized all right?”

“Listen for it,” his father told him. “Don’t just watch the tachometers.”

Thomas Hudson went over to the bunk and sat down by David. He was rolled up in the light blanket and Eddy was fixing his hands and Roger his feet.

“Hi, papa,” he said and looked at Thomas Hudson and then looked away.

“I’m awfully sorry, Davy,” his father said. “You made the best fight on him I ever saw anyone make. Roger or any man ever.”

“Thank you very much, papa. Please don’t talk about it.”

“Can I get you anything, Davy?”

“I’d like another Coke, please,” David said.

Thomas Hudson found a cold bottle of Coca-Cola in the ice of the bait box and opened it. He sat by David and the boy drank the Coke with the hand Eddy had fixed.

“I’ll have some soup ready right away. It’s heating now,” Eddy said. “Should I heat some chile, Tom? We’ve got some conch salad.”

“Let’s heat some chile,” Thomas Hudson said. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast. Roger hasn’t had a drink all day.”

“I had a bottle of beer just now,” Roger said.

“Eddy,” David said. “What would he really weigh?”

“Over a thousand,” Eddy told him.

“Thank you very much for going overboard,” David said. “Thank you very much, Eddy.”

“Hell,” Eddy said. “What else was there to do?”

“Would he really have weighed a thousand, papa?” David asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Thomas Hudson answered. “I’ve never seen a bigger fish, either broadbill or marlin, ever.”

The sun had gone down and the boat was driving through the calm sea, the boat alive with the engines, pushing fast through the same water they had moved so slowly through for all those hours.

Andrew was sitting on the edge of the wide bunk now, too.

“Hello, horseman,” David said to him.

“If you’d have caught him,” Andrew said, “you’d have been probably the most famous young boy in the world.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” David said. “You can be famous.”

“We’d have been famous as your brothers,” Andrew said. “I mean really.”

“I’d have been famous as your friend,” Roger told him.

“I’d have been famous because I steered,” Thomas Hudson said. “And Eddy because he gaffed him.”

“Eddy ought to be famous anyway,” Andrew said. “Tommy would be famous because he brought so many drinks. All through the terrific battle Tommy kept them supplied.”

“What about the fish? Wouldn’t he be famous?” David asked. He was all right, now. Or, at least, he was talking all right.

“He’d be the most famous of all,” Andrew said. “He’d be immortal.”

“I hope nothing happened to him,” David said. “I hope he’s all right.”

“I know he’s all right,” Roger told him. “The way he was hooked and the way he fought I know he was all right.”

“I’ll tell you sometime how it was,” David said.

“Tell now,” Andy urged him.

“I’m tired now and besides it sounds crazy.”

“Tell now. Tell a little bit,” Andrew said.

“I don’t know whether I better. Should I, papa?”

“Go ahead,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Well,” David said with his eyes tight shut. “In the worst parts, when I was the tiredest I couldn’t tell which was him and which was me.”

“I understand,” Roger said.

“Then I began to love him more than anything on earth.”

“You mean really love him?” Andrew asked.

“Yeah. Really love him.”

“Gee,” said Andrew. “I can’t understand that.”

“I loved him so much when I saw him coming up that I couldn’t stand it,” David said, his eyes still shut. “All I wanted was to see him closer.”

“I know,” Roger said.

“Now I don’t give a shit I lost him,” David said. “I don’t care about records. I just thought I did. I’m glad that he’s all right and that I’m all right. We aren’t enemies.”

“I’m glad you told us,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Davis, for what you said when I first lost him,” David said with his eyes still shut.

Thomas Hudson never knew what it was that Roger had said to him.

That night in the heavy calm
before the wind rose Thomas Hudson sat in his chair and tried to read. The others were all in bed but he knew he could not sleep and he wanted to read until he was sleepy. He could not read and he thought about the day. He thought about it from the beginning until the end and it seemed as though all of his children except Tom had gone a long way away from him or he had gone away from them.

David had gone with Roger. He wanted David to get everything he could from Roger, who was as beautiful and sound in action as he was unbeautiful and unsound in his life and in his work. David was always a mystery to Thomas Hudson. He was a well-loved mystery. But Roger understood him better than his own father did. He was happy they did understand each other so well but tonight he felt lonely in some way about it.