Islands in the Stream (4 page)

He took a very quick one.

“Of what?”

He leaned over the bar so the others could not hear.

“Don’t shear off from it,” Bobby said. “Don’t be shocked by its magnitude. You got to have vision, Tom. We can paint the End of the World,” he paused. “Full size.”

“Hell,” Thomas Hudson said.

“No. Before hell. Hell is just opening. The Rollers are rolling in their church up on the ridge and all speaking in unknown tongues. There’s a devil forking them up with his pitchfork and loading them into a cart. They’re yelling and moaning and calling on Jehovah. Negroes are prostrated everywhere and morays and crawfish and spider crabs are moving around and over their bodies. There’s a big sort of hatch open and devils are carrying Negroes and church people and rollers and everyone into it and they go out of sight. Water’s rising all around the island and hammerheads and mackerel sharks and tiger sharks and shovelnose sharks are swimming round and round and feeding on those who try to swim away to keep from being forked down the big open hatch that has steam rising out of it. Rummies are taking their last swigs and beating on the devils with bottles. But the devils keep forking them down, or else they are engulfed by the rising sea where now there are whale sharks, great white sharks, and killer whales and other outsized fish circling outside of where the big sharks are tearing at those people in the water. The top of the island is covered with dogs and cats and the devils are forking them in, too, and the dogs are cowering and howling and the cats run off and claw the devils and their hair stands on end and finally they go into the sea swimming as good as you want to see. Sometimes a shark will hit one and you’ll see the cat go under. But mostly they swim right off through it.

“Bad heat begins to come out of the hatch and the devils are having to drag the people toward the hatch because they’ve broken their pitching forks trying to fork in some of the church people. You and me are standing in the center of the picture observing all this with calm. You make a few notes and I refresh myself from a bottle and occasionally offer you refreshment. Once in a while a devil all sweating from his work will brush by us hauling on a big churchman that’s trying to dig into the sand with his fingers to keep from being put into the hatch and screaming to Jehovah and the devil will say, ‘Beg pardon, Mr. Tom. Beg pardon, Mr. Bobby. Very busy today.’

“I’ll offer the devil a drink as he passes, sweating and grimed, going back for another churchman and he’ll say, ‘No thank you, Mr. Bobby. I never touch the stuff when I’m working.’

“That could make a hell of a painting, Tom, if we can get all the movement and the grandeur into it.”

“I believe we’ve got about all we can handle outlined for today.”

“By God, I think you’re right,” Bobby said. “Outlining a painting like that makes me thirsty, too.”

“There was a man named Bosch could paint pretty well along those lines.”

“The magneto man?”

“No. Hieronymus Bosch. Very old-timer. Very good. Pieter Brueghel worked on that too.”

“He an old-timer too?”

“Very old-timer. Very good. You’d like him.”

“Oh hell,” said Bobby. “No old-timer will touch us. Besides the world’s never ended yet, so how the hell does he know any more about it than we do?”

“He’d be pretty hard to beat.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” Bobby said. “We’ve got a picture that would put him out of business.”

“What about another one of those?”

“Yes, damn it. I forget this is a bar room. God bless the Queen, Tom. We’re forgetting what day it is, too. Here, have one on me and we’ll drink her health.”

He poured himself a small glass of rum and handed Thomas Hudson the bottle of Booth’s yellow gin, some limes on a plate, a knife, and a bottle of Schweppes’s Indian Tonic Water.

“Fix your own damn drink. The hell with those fancy drinks.”

After Thomas Hudson had made the drink and shaken a few drops of bitters in it from the bottle that had a gull’s quill in the cork, he raised his glass and then looked down the bar.

“What are you two drinking? Name it if it’s simple.”

“Dog’s Head,” one of the sailors said.

“Dog’s Head it is,” Bobby said and reached into the ice tub and handed them the two cold bottles of ale. “The glasses are out. Rummies been throwing the glasses away all day. Everybody got their drinks? Gentlemen, The Queen. I don’t think she’d care much for this island and I’m not sure she’d do extremely well here. But gentlemen, The Queen. God bless her.”

They all drank her health.

“Must be a great woman,” said Bobby. “Bit on the stiff side for me. Always fancied Queen Alexandra myself. Lovely type. But we will try to give the Queen’s Birthday full honors. This is a small island but a patriotic one. Man from here went to the last war and had his arm shot off. Can’t be more patriotic than that.”

“Whose birthday did he say it was?” one of the sailors asked.

“Queen Mary of England,” Bobby said. “Mother of the present King Emperor.”

“That’s the one the
Queen Mary’s
named after, isn’t it?” the other sailor asked.

“Tom,” said Bobby. “You and I will drink the next toast alone.”

It was dark now
and there was a breeze blowing so that there were no mosquitoes nor sand flies and the boats had all come in, hoisting their outriggers as they came up the channel, and now were lying tied up in the slips of the three docks that projected out from the beach into the harbor. The tide was running out fast and the lights of the boats shone on the water that showed green in the light and moved so fast it sucked at the piling of the docks and swirled at the stern of the big cruiser they were on. Alongside in the water where the light was reflected off the planking of the cruiser toward the unpainted piling of the dock where old motorcar and truck tires were tied as fenders, making dark rings against the darkness under the rock, garfish, attracted by the light, held themselves against the current. Thin and long, shining as green as the water, only their tails moving, they were not feeding, nor playing; only holding themselves there in the fascination of the light.

Johnny Goodner’s cruiser,
Narwhal
, where they were waiting for Roger Davis, was headed into the ebbing tide and astern of her in the same slip, made fast so that the two cabin cruisers lay stern to stern, was the boat of the party that had been at Bobby’s place all day. Johnny Goodner sat in a chair in the stern with his feet on another chair and a Tom Collins in his right hand and a long, green Mexican chile pepper in his left.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “I bite just a little piece and it sets my mouth on fire and I cool it with this.”

He took the first bite, swallowed, blew out, “thew!” through rolled tongue, and took a long swallow of the tall drink. His full lower lip licked his thin Irish upper lip and he smiled with his gray eyes. His mouth was sliced upwards at the corners so it always looked as though he were about to smile, or had just smiled, but his mouth told very little about him unless you noticed the thinness of the upper lip. His eyes were what you needed to watch. He was the size and build of a middleweight gone a little heavy; but he looked in good shape lying there relaxed and that is how a man looks bad who is really out of shape. His face was brown but peeling across the nose and the forehead that went back with his receding hairline. He had a scar on his chin that could have been taken for a dimple if it had been just a little closer to the center and his nose had been just perceptibly flattened across the bridge. It wasn’t a flat nose. It just looked as though it had been done by a modern sculptor who worked directly in the stone and had taken off just the shadow of a chip too many.

“Tom, you worthless character, what have you been doing?”

“Working pretty steadily.”

“You would,” he said and took another bite of the chile. It was a very wrinkled and droopy chile about six niches long.

“Only the first one hurts,” he said. “It’s like love.”

“The hell it is. Chiles can hurt both ways.”

“And love?”

“The hell with love,” Thomas Hudson said.

“What a sentiment. What a way to talk. What are you getting to be? A victim of sheepherder’s madness on this island?”

“No sheep here, Johnny.”

“Stone-crab herder’s madness then,” Johnny said. “We don’t want to have you have to be netted or anything. Try one of these chiles.”

“I have,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Oh I know your past,” he said. “Don’t pull your illustrious past on me. You probably invented them. I know. Probably the man who introduced them into Patagonia on Yak-back. But I represent modern times. Listen Tommy. I have these chiles stuffed with salmon. Stuffed with bacalao. Stuffed with Chilean bonito. Stuffed with Mexican turtledoves’ breasts. Stuffed with turkey meat and mole. They’ll stuff them with anything and I buy them. Makes me feel like a damned potentate. But all that’s a perversion. Just this long, drooping, uninspiring, unstuffed, unpromising old chile with the brown chupango sauce is the best. You bastard,” he blew out through his pursed tongue again, “I got too much of you that time.”

He took a really long pull at the Tom Collins.

“They give me a reason for drinking,” he explained. “Have to cool my damned mouth. What are you having?”

“I might take one more gin and tonic.”

“Boy,” Johnny called. “One more gin and tonic for Bwana M’Kubwa.”

Fred, one of the island boys Johnny’s captain had hired, brought in the drink.

“Here it is, Mr. Tom.”

“Thank you, Fred,” Thomas Hudson said. “The Queen, God bless her,” and they drank.

“Where’s the old whoremaster?”

“Up at his house. He’ll be down.”

He ate some more of the chile without commenting on it, finished his drink, and said, “How are you really, old Tom?”

“OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ve learned how to live by myself pretty well and I work hard.”

“Do you like it here? I mean for all the time.”

“Yes. I got sick of moving around with it. I’d rather have it here. I get along well enough here, Johnny. Pretty damn well.”

“It’s a good place,” said Johnny. “It’s a good place for a guy like you that’s got some sort of inner resources. Hell of a place for a guy like me that keeps chasing it or running away from it. Is it true that Roger’s gone Red on us?”

“So they’re saying that already.”

“That’s what I heard on the coast.”

“What happened to him out there?”

“I don’t know all of it. But it was something pretty bad.”

“Really bad?”

“They’ve got different ideas of what’s bad out there. It wasn’t St. Quentin quail if that’s what you mean. Anyway out there with that climate and the fresh vegetables and everything it’s like the size of their football players. Hell, girls fifteen look twenty-four. At twenty-four they’re Dame May Whitty. If you’re not a marrying man you better look at their teeth pretty close. And of course you can’t tell a damn thing from their teeth. And they’ve all got mothers and fathers or one or the other and they’re all hungry. Climate gives them appetite, too, of course. Trouble is, people get enthusiastic sometimes and don’t ask for their driving licenses or their social security cards. I think they ought to measure it by size and weight and general capabilities and not just by age. Wreaks too many injustices just going by age. All around. Precocity isn’t penalized in any other sport. Other way around. Apprentice allowance claimed would be the fairest. Same as racing. They had me pretty well boxed on that rap. But that wasn’t what they got old Roger on.”

“What did they get me on?” Roger Davis asked.

He had dropped down from the dock onto the deck in his rope-soled shoes without making any noise and he stood there looking awfully big in a sweatshirt three sizes too large for him and a pair of tight old dungarees.

“Hi,” said Johnny. “Didn’t hear you ring. I was telling Tom I didn’t know what they got you on but that it wasn’t jailbait.”

“Good,” said Roger. “Let’s drop the subject.”

“Don’t be so powerful,” Johnny said.

“I’m not being powerful,” Roger said. “I asked politely. Do you drink on this boat?” He looked at the cabin cruiser that lay with her stern toward them. “Who’s that?”

“The people at the Ponce. Didn’t you hear?”

“Oh,” said Roger. “Well, let’s have a drink anyway even though they have set us a bad example.”

“Boy,” Johnny called. Fred came out of the cabin. “Yes sir,” he said.

“Enquire what the pleasure of these Sahibs is.”

“Gentlemen?” Fred asked.

“I’ll take whatever Mr. Tom is drinking,” Roger said. “He’s my guide and counselor.”

“Many boys at camp this year?” Johnny asked.

“Just two so far,” Roger said. “My counselor and I.”

“My counselor and me,” Johnny said. “How the hell do you write books?”

“I can always hire someone to put in the grammar.”

“Or get someone free,” Johnny said. “I’ve been talking with your counselor.”

“Counselor says he’s quite happy and contented here. He’s hit the beach for good.”

“You ought to see the place,” Tom told him. “He lets me come in for a drink once in a while.”

“Womens?”

“No womens.”

“What do you boys do?”

“I’ve been doing it all day.”

“But you were here before. What did you do then?”

“Swim, eat, drink. Tom works, read, talk, read, fish, fish, swim, drink, sleep—”

“No womens?”

“Still no womens.”

“Sounds unhealthy to me. Sort of unwholesome atmosphere. You boys smoke much opium?”

“Tom?” Roger asked.

“Only the best,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Got a nice stand of marijuana planted?”

“Any planted, Tom?” Roger asked.

“Was a bad year,” Thomas Hudson said. “Rain gave the crop hell.”

“Whole thing sounds unwholesome,” Johnny drank. “Only saving aspect is you still take a drink. You boys gone in for religion? Has Tom Seen The Light?”

“Tom?” Roger asked.

“Relations with the Deity about the same,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Cordial?”

“We are tolerant,” Thomas Hudson said. “Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice.”