Islands in the Stream (34 page)

“You’re a lady,” Willie said. “You shouldn’t says things like that. Vile is a bad word. It’s like spit on the end of your cigar.”

Thomas Hudson put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Drink up, Willie. Nobody’s feeling too good.”

“Henry’s feeling good. I could tell him what you told me and then he’d feel awful.”

“You asked me.”

“That isn’t what I mean. Why don’t you split your goddam grief? Why did you keep that by yourself the last two weeks?”

“Grief doesn’t split.”

“A grief hoarder,” Willie said. “I never thought you’d be a goddamned grief hoarder.”

“I don’t need any of this, Willie,” Thomas Hudson said to him. “Thank you very much, though. You don’t have to work on me.”

“OK. Hoard it. But it’ll do you no damn good. I tell you I was brought up on the goddamned stuff.”

“So was I,” Thomas Hudson said. “No shit.”

“Were you really? Then maybe your own system’s best. You were getting to look pretty screwy, though.”

“That’s just from drinking and being tired and not relaxed yet.”

“You hear from your woman?”

“Sure. Three letters.”

“How’s that going?”

“Couldn’t be worse.”

“Well,” Willie said. “There we are. You might as well hoard it so as to have something.”

“I’ve got something.”

“Sure. Your cat Boise loves you. I know that. I’ve seen that. How is the screwy old bastard?”

“Just as screwy.”

“He beats the shit out of me,” Willie said. “He does.”

“He certainly sweats things out.”

“Doesn’t he, though? • If I suffered like that cat does I’d be nuts. What are you drinking, Thomas?”

“Another one of those.”

Willie put his arm around Honest Lil’s ample waist. “Listen, Lilly,” he said. “You’re a good girl. I didn’t mean to get you sore. It was my fault. I was feeling emotional.”

“You won’t talk that way any more?”

“No. Not unless I get emotional.”

“Here’s yours,” Thomas Hudson said to him. “Here’s to you, you son of a bitch.”

“Now you’re talking,” Willie said. “Now you’ve got the old pecker pointed north. We ought to have that cat Boise here. He’d be proud of you. See what I meant by sharing it?”

“Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “I see.”

“All right,” Willie said. “We’ll drop it. Put out your can, here comes the garbage man. Look at that damn Henry. Get a load of him. What do you suppose makes him sweat like that on a cold day like today?”

“Girls,” Honest Lil said. “He is obsessed with them.”

“Obsessed,” Willie said. “You bore a hole in his head anywhere you want with a half-inch bit and women would run out. Obsessed. Why don’t you get a word that would fit it?”

“Obsessed is a strong word in Spanish anyway.”

“Obsessed? Obsessed is nothing. If I get time this afternoon I’ll think up the word.”

“Tom, come down to the other end of the bar where we can talk and I can be comfortable. Will you buy me a sandwich? I’ve been out all morning with Henry.”

“I’m going to the Basque Bar,” Willie said. “Bring him over there, Lil.”

“All right,” Honest Lil said. “Or I’ll send him.”

She made her stately progress to the far end of the bar, speaking to many of the men she passed and smiling at others. Everyone treated her with respect. Nearly everyone she spoke to had loved her at some time in the last twenty-five years. Thomas Hudson went down to the far end of the bar, taking his bar checks with him, as soon as Honest Lil had seated herself and smiled at him. She had a beautiful smile and wonderful dark eyes and lovely black hair. When it would begin to show white at the roots along the line of her forehead and along the line of her part, she would ask Thomas Hudson for money to have it fixed and when she came back from having it dyed it was as glossy and natural-looking and lovely as a young girl’s hair. She had a skin that was as smooth as olive-colored ivory, if there were olive-covered ivory, with a slightly smoky roselike cast. Actually, the color always reminded Thomas Hudson of well-seasoned
mahagua
lumber when it is freshly cut, then simply sanded smooth and waxed lightly. Nowhere else had he ever seen that smoky almost greenish color. But the
mahagua
did not have the rose tint. The rose tint was just the color that she used but it was almost as smooth as a Chinese girl’s. There was this lovely face looking down the bar at him, lovelier all the time as he came closer. Then he was beside her and there was the big body and the rose color was artificial now and there was no mystery about any of it, although it was still a lovely face.

“You look beautiful, Honest,” he said to her.

“Oh, Tom, I am so big now. I am ashamed.”

He put his hand on her great haunches and said, “You’re a nice big.”

“I’m ashamed to walk down the bar.”

“You do it beautifully. Like a ship.”

“How is our friend?”

“He’s fine.”

“When am I going to see him?”

“Any time. Now?”

“Oh no. Tom, what was Willie talking about? The part I couldn’t understand?”

“He was just being crazy.”

“No, he wasn’t. It was about you and a sorrow Was it about you and your señora.”

“No. Fuck my señora.”

“I wish you could. But you can’t when she is away.”

“Yeah. I found that out.”

“What is the sorrow, then?”

“Nothing. Just a sorrow.”

“Tell me about it. Please.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“You can tell me, you know. Henry tells me about his sorrows and cries in the night. Willie tells me dreadful things. They are not sorrows, so much as terrible things. You can tell me. Everyone tells me. Only you don’t tell me.”

“Telling never did me any good. Telling is worse for me than not telling.”

“Tom, Willie says such bad things. Doesn’t he know it hurts me to hear such words? Doesn’t he know I’ve never used those words and have never done a piglike thing nor a perverted thing?”

“That’s why we call you Honest Lil.”

“If I could be rich doing perverted things and be poor doing normal things, I would be poor.”

“I know. What about the sandwich?”

“I’m not hungry just yet.”

“Do you want another drink?”

“Yes. Please, Tom. Tell me. Willie said there was a cat in love with you. That isn’t true, is it?”

“Yes. It’s true.”

“I think it’s dreadful.”

“No. It’s not. I’m in love with the cat, too.”

“That’s terrible to say. Don’t tease me, Tom, please, Willie teased me and made me cry.”

“I love the cat,” Thomas Hudson said.

“I don’t want to hear about it. Tom, when will you take me out to the bar of the crazies?”

“One of these days.”

“Do the crazies really come there just like ordinary people come here to meet and have drinks?”

“That’s right. The only difference is they wear shirts and trousers made out of sugar sacks.”

“Did you really play on the ball team of the crazies against the lepers?”

“Sure. I was the best knuckle-ball pitcher the crazies ever had.”

“How did you get to know them?”

“I just stopped there one time on the way back from Rancho Boyeros and liked the place.”

“Will you really take me out to the bar of the crazies?”

“Sure. If you won’t be scared.”

“I’ll be scared. But I won’t be too scared if I’m with you. That’s why I want to go out there. To be scared.”

“There’s some wonderful crazies out there. You’ll like them.”

“My first husband was a crazy. But he was the difficult kind.”

“Do you think Willie is crazy?”

“Oh no. He just has a difficult character.”

“He’s suffered very much.”

“Who hasn’t? Willie presumes on his suffering.”

“I don’t think so. I know about it. I promise you.”

“Let’s talk about something else, then. Do you see that man down there at the bar talking to Henry?”

“Yes.”

“All he likes in bed are piglike things.”

“Poor man.”

“He’s not poor. He’s rich. But all he cares for is
porquerías
.”

“Didn’t you ever like
porquerías
?”

“Never. You can ask anyone. And I’ve never done anything with girls in my life.”

“Honest Lil,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Wouldn’t you rather have me that way? You don’t like
porquerías.
You like to make love and be happy and go to sleep. I know you.”

“
Todo el mundo me conoce
.”

“No, they don’t. They have all sorts of different ideas about you. But I know you.”

He was drinking another of the frozen daiquiris with no sugar in it and as he lifted it, heavy and the glass frost-rimmed, he looked at the clear part below the trapped top and it reminded him of the sea. The frappéd part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.

“I wish they had a drink the color of sea water when you have a depth of eight hundred fathoms and there is a dead calm with the sun straight up and down and the sea full of plankton,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s drink this shallow water drink.”

“Tom, what’s the matter? Do you have some problem?”

“No.”

“You’re awfully sad and you’re a little bit old today.”

“It’s the norther.”

“But you always used to say a norther gave you pep and cheered you up. How many times have we made love because there was a norther?”

“Plenty.”

“You always liked a norther and you bought me this coat to wear when we have them.”

“It’s a pretty coat, too.”

“I could have sold it half a dozen times,” Honest Lil said. “More people were crazy for this coat than you can imagine.”

“This is a fine norther for it.”

“Be happy, Tom. You always get happy when you drink. Drink that drink and have another one.”

“If I drink it too fast it hurts across the front of my forehead.”

“Well just drink slow and steady, then. I’m going to have another
highbalito
.”

She made it herself from the bottle Serafín had left in front of her on the bar and Thomas Hudson looked at it and said, “That’s a fresh water drink. That is the color of the water in the Firehole River before it joins the Gibbon to become the Madison. If you put a little more whisky in it you could make it the color of a stream that comes out of a cedar swamp to flow into the Bear River at a place called Wab-Me-Me.”

“Wab-Me-Me is funny,” she said. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It is an Indian place-name. I ought to know what it means but I’ve forgotten. It’s Ojibway.”

“Tell me about Indians,” Honest Lil said. “I like to hear about the Indians even more than about the crazies.”

“There are quite a few Indians down the coast. They are sea Indians and they fish and dry the fish and are charcoal burners.”

“I don’t want to hear about Cuban Indians. They’re all
mulatos
.”

“No, they’re not. Some are real Indians. But they may have captured them in the early days and brought them over from Yucatan.”

“I don’t like
yucatecos
.”

“I do. Very much.”

“Tell me about Wabmimi. Is it in the Far West?”

“No, it’s up north. In the part that’s near Canada.”

“I know Canada. I came into Montreal up the river once on a Princess ship. But it was raining and we could see nothing and we left that same evening for New York on the train.”

“Did it rain all the time on the river?”

“All the time. And outside, before we came into the river there was fog and part of the time it snowed. You can have Canada. Tell me about Wabmimi.”

“It was just a village where there was a sawmill on the river and the train ran through it. There were always great piles of sawdust beside the railroad tracks. They had booms across the river to hold the logs and they were almost solid across the river. The river was covered with logs a long way above the town. One time I had been fishing and I wanted to cross the river and I crawled across on the logs. One rolled with me and I went into the water.

When I came up it was all logs above me and I could not get through between them. It was dark under them and all I could feel with my hands was their bark. I could not spread two of them apart to get up to the air.”

“What did you do?”

“I drowned.”

“Oh,” she said. “Don’t say it. Tell me quick what you did?”

“I thought very hard and I knew I had to get through very quickly. I felt carefully around the bottom of a log until I came to where it was pushed against another log. Then I put my two hands together and pushed up and the logs spread apart just a little. Then I got my hands through and then my forearms and elbows through and then I spread the two logs apart with my elbows until I got my head up and I had an arm over each log. I loved each log very much and I lay there like that a long time between them. That water was brown from the logs in it. The water that’s like your drink was in a little stream that flowed into that river.”

“I don’t think I could ever have come up between the logs.”

“I didn’t think I could for a long time.”

“How long were you underwater?”

“I don’t know. I know I rested a long time with my arms on the logs before I tried to do anything else.”

“I like that story. But it will make me have bad dreams. Tell me something happy, Tom.”

“All right,” he said. “Let me think.”

“No. Tell one right away without thinking.”

“All right,” Thomas Hudson said. “When young Tom was a little baby—”

“¡Qué muchacho más guapo!”
Honest Lil interrupted.
“¿Qué noticias tienes de él?”

“Muy buenas.”

“Me alegro,”
said Honest Lil, tears coming into her eyes at the thought of young Tom the flyer.
“Siempre tengo su fotografía en uniforme con el sagrado corazón de Jesús arriba de la fotografía y al lado la virgen del Cobre.”

“You have great faith in the Virgen del Cobre?”

“Absolutely blind faith.”

“You must keep it.”