Islands in the Stream (6 page)

“I don’t see why she’s so dissatisfied,” Fred Wilson told him. “Why you’re quite a fine-looking physical specimen. You really look pretty damned good. I’ll bet you’re the terror of the Racquet Club. What does it cost you to keep in that wonderful shape? Look at him, Frank. Did you ever see as expensive a looking top of a man as that?”

“You made a mistake though, governor,” Frank told him. “You’re wearing the wrong end of your pajamas. Frankly I’ve never seen a man wearing that bottom part before. Do you really wear that to bed?”

“Can’t you filthy-mouthed swine let a lady sleep?” the man said.

“Why don’t you just go down below,” Frank said to him. “You’re liable to get in trouble around here using all those epithets. You haven’t got your chauffeur here to look after you. Does your chauffeur always take you to school?”

“He doesn’t go to school, Frank,” Fred Wilson said, putting aside his guitar. “He’s a big grown-up boy. He’s a businessman. Can’t you recognize a big businessman?”

“Are you a businessman, sonny?” Frank asked. “Then you know it’s good business for you to run along down into your cabin. There isn’t any good business for you up here.”

“He’s right,” Fred Wilson said. “You haven’t any future around with us. Just go down to your cabin. You’ll get used to the noise.”

“You filthy swine,” the man said and looked at them all.

“Just take that beautiful body down below, will you?” Wilson said. “I’m sure you’ll get the lady to sleep.”

“You swine,” the man said. “You rotten swine.”

“Can’t you think up any other names?” Frank said. “
Swine’s
getting awfully dull. You better go down below before you catch cold. If I had a wonderful chest like that I wouldn’t risk it out here on a windy night like this.”

The man looked at them all as though he were memorizing them.

“You’ll be able to remember us,” Frank told him. “If not I’ll remind you any time I see you.”

“You filth,” the man said and turned and went below.

“Who is he?” Johnny Goodner asked. “I’ve seen him somewhere.”

“I know him and he knows me,” Frank said. “He’s no good.”

“Can’t you remember who he is?” Johnny asked.

“He’s a jerk,” Frank said. “What difference does it make who he is outside of that?”

“None, I guess,” Thomas Hudson said. “You two certainly swarmed on him.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do with a jerk. Swarm on him. We weren’t really rude to him.”

“I thought you made your lack of sympathy clear,” Thomas Hudson said.

“I heard a dog barking,” Roger said. “The flares probably scared his dog. Let’s cut the flares out. I know you’re having fun, Frank. You’re getting away with murder and nothing bad’s happened. But why terrify the poor bloody dog?”

“That was his wife barking,” Frank said cheerily. “Let’s shoot one into his cabin and illuminate the whole domestic scene.”

“I’m getting the hell out of here,” Roger said. “You joke the way I don’t like. I don’t think jokes with motorcars are funny. I don’t think drunken flying is funny. I don’t think scaring dogs is funny.”

“Nobody’s keeping you,” Frank said. “Lately you’re a pain in the ass to everybody anyway.”

“Yes?”

“Sure. You and Tom christing around. Spoiling any fun. All you reformed bastards. You used to have plenty of fun. Now nobody can have any. You and your brand new social conscience.”

“So it’s social conscience if I think it would be better not to set Brown’s dock on fire?”

“Sure. It’s just a form of it. You’ve got it bad. I heard about you on the coast.”

“Why don’t you take your pistol and go play somewhere else?” Johnny Goodner said to Frank. “We were all having fun till you got so rough.”

“So you’ve got it, too,” Frank said.

“Take it a little easy,” Roger warned him.

“I’m the only guy here still likes to have any fun,” Frank said. “All you big overgrown religious maniacs and social workers and hypocrites—”

“Captain Frank,” Rupert leaned down over the edge of the dock.

“Rupert’s my only friend,” Frank looked up. “Yes, Rupert?”

“Captain Frank, what about Commissioner?”

“We’ll burn him, Rupert old boy.”

“God bless you, Captain Frank,” Rupert said. “Care for any rum?”

“I’m fine, Rupert,” Frank told him. “Everybody down now.”

“Everybody down,” Rupert ordered. “Down flat.”

Frank fired over the edge of the dock and the flare lit on the graveled walk just short of the Commissioner’s porch and burned there. The boys on the dock groaned.

“Damn,” Rupert said. “You nearly made her. Bad luck. Reload, Captain Frank.”

The lights went on in the cockpit of the cruiser astern of them and the man was out there again. This time he had a white shirt and white duck trousers on and he wore sneakers. His hair was combed and his face was red with white patches. The nearest man to him in the stern was John, who had his back to him, and next to John was Roger who was just sitting there looking gloomy. There was about three feet of water between the two sterns and the man stood there and pointed his finger at Roger.

“You slob,” he said. “You rotten filthy slob.”

Roger just looked up at him with a surprised look.

“You mean me, don’t you?” Frank called to him. “And it’s swine, not slob.”

The man ignored him and went on at Roger.

“You big fat slob,” the man almost choked. “You phony. You faker. You cheap phony. You rotten writer and lousy painter.”

“Who are you talking to and about what?” Roger stood up.

“You. You slob. You phony you. You coward. Oh you slob. You filthy slob.”

“You’re crazy,” Roger said quietly.

“You slob,” the man said across the space of water that separated the two boats the same way someone might speak insultingly to an animal in one of those modern zoos where no bars, but only pits, separate the visitors from the beasts. “You phony.”

“He means me,” Frank said happily. “Don’t you know me? I’m the swine.”

“I mean you,” the man pointed his finger at Roger. “You phony.”

“Look,” Roger said to him. “You’re not talking to me at all. You’re just talking to be able to repeat back in New York what you said to me.”

He spoke reasonably and patiently as though he really wanted the man to understand and shut up.

“You slob,” the man shouted, working himself further and further into this hysteria he had even dressed up for. “You rotten filthy phony.”

“You’re not talking to me,” Roger repeated to him very quietly now and Thomas Hudson saw that he had decided. “So shut up now. If you want to talk to me get up on the dock.”

Roger started up for the dock and, oddly enough, the man came climbing up on the dock as fast as you please. He had talked himself into it and worked himself up to it. But he was doing it. The Negroes fell back and then closed in around the two of them leaving plenty of room.

Thomas Hudson didn’t know what the man expected to happen when he got up on the dock. No one said anything and there were all those black faces around him and he took a swing at Roger and Roger hit him in the mouth with a left and his mouth started to bleed. He swung at Roger again and Roger hooked him hard to the right eye twice. He grabbed hold of Roger and Roger’s sweatshirt tore when he dug the man in the belly hard with his right and then pushed him away and slapped him hard across the face backhand with his open left hand.

None of the Negroes had said a word. They just kept the two men surrounded and gave them plenty of room. Someone, Tom thought it was John’s boy Fred, had turned the dock lights on and you could see well.

Roger went after the man and hooked him three times fast to the head high up. The man grabbed him and his sweatshirt tore again as he pushed him away and jabbed him twice in the mouth.

“Cut out those lefts,” Frank yelled. “Throw your right and cool the son of a bitch. Cool him.”

“Got anything to say to me?” Roger said to the man and hooked him hard on the mouth. The man was bleeding badly from the mouth and the whole right side of his face was coming up and his right eye was almost closed.

The man grabbed Roger and Roger held him inside and steadied him. The man was breathing hard and he hadn’t said anything. Roger had a thumb on the inside of the man’s two elbows and Tom could see him rubbing the thumbs back and forth over the tendons between the biceps and the forearms.

“Don’t you bleed on me, you son of a bitch,” Roger said, and brought his left hand up fast and loose and knocked the man’s head back and then backhanded him across the face again.

“You can get a new nose now,” he said.

“Cool him, Roger. Cool him,” Frank pled with him.

“Can’t you see what he’s doing, you dope?” Fred Wilson said. “He’s ruining him.”

The man grabbed Roger and Roger held him and pushed him away.

“Hit me,” he said. “Come on. Hit me.”

The man swung at him and Roger ducked it and grabbed him.

“What’s your name?” he said to the man.

The man didn’t answer. All he did was breathe as though he were dying with asthma.

Roger was holding the man again with his thumbs pressing in on the inside of his elbows. “You’re a strong son of a bitch,” he said to the man. “Who the hell ever told you you could fight?”

The man swung at him weakly and Roger grabbed him, pulled him forward, spun him a little, and clubbed him twice on the ear with the base of his right fist.

“You think you’ve learned not to talk to people?” he asked the man.

“Look at his ear,” Rupert said. “Like a bunch of grapes.”

Roger was holding the man again with his thumbs pushing in against the tendons at the base of the biceps. Thomas Hudson was watching the man’s face. It had not been frightened at the start; just mean as a pig’s is; a really mean boar. But it was really completely frightened now. He had probably never heard of fights that no one stopped. Probably he thought in some part of his mind about the stories he had read where men were kicked to death if they went down. He still tried to fight. Each time Roger told him to hit him or pushed him away he tried to throw a punch. He hadn’t quit.

Roger pushed him away. The man stood there and looked at him. When Roger wasn’t holding him in that way that made him feel absolutely helpless the fear drained away a little and the meanness came back. He stood there frightened, badly hurt, his face destroyed, his mouth bleeding, and that ear looking like an overripe fig as the small individual hemorrhages united into one great swelling inside the skin. As he stood there, Roger’s hands off him now, the fear drained and the indestructible meanness welled up.

“Anything to say?” Roger asked him.

“Slob,” the man said. As he said it, he pulled his chin in and put his hands up and turned half away in a gesture an incorrigible child might make.

“Now it comes,” Rupert shouted. “Now it’s going to roll.”

But it was nothing dramatic nor scientific. Roger stepped quickly over to where the man stood and raised his left shoulder and dropped his right fist down and swung it up so it smashed against the side of the man’s head. He went down on his hands and knees, his forehead resting on the dock. He knelt there a little while with his forehead against the planking and then he went gently over on his side. Roger looked at him and then came over to the edge of the dock and swung down into the cockpit.

The crew of the man’s yacht were carrying him on board. They had not intervened in what had happened on the dock and they had picked him up from where he lay on his side on the dock and carried him sagging heavily. Some of the Negroes had helped them lower him down to the stern and take him below. They shut the door after they took him in.

“He ought to have a doctor,” Thomas Hudson said.

“He didn’t hit hard on the dock,” Roger said. “I thought about the dock.”

“I don’t think that last crack alongside the ear did him a lot of good,” Johnny Goodner said.

“You ruined his face,” Frank said. “And the ear. I never saw an ear come up so fast. First it was like a bunch of grapes and then it was as full as an orange.”

“Bare hands are a bad thing,” Roger said. “People don’t have any idea what they’ll do. I wish I’d never seen him.”

“Well, you’ll never see him again without being able to recognize him.”

“I hope he’ll come around,” Roger said.

“It was a beautiful fight, Mr. Roger,” Fred said.

“Fight, hell,” Roger said. “Why the hell did that have to happen?”

“The gentleman certainly brought it on himself,” Fred said.

“Cut out worrying, will you?” Frank said to Roger. “I’ve seen hundreds of guys cooled and that guy is OK.”

Up on the dock the boys were drifting away commenting on the fight. There had been something about the way the white man had looked when he was carried aboard that they did not like and all the bravery about burning the Commissioner’s house was evaporating.

“Well, good night, Captain Frank,” Rupert said.

“Going, Rupert?” Frank asked him.

“Thought we might all go up see what’s going on at Mr. Bobby’s.”

“Good night, Rupert,” said Roger. “See you tomorrow.”

Roger was feeling very low and his left hand was swollen as big as a grapefruit. His right was puffed too but not as badly. There was nothing else to show he had been in a fight except that the neck of his sweatshirt was ripped open and flapped down on his chest. The man had hit him once high up on his head and there was a small bump there. John put some Mercurochrome on the places where his knuckles were skinned and cut. Roger didn’t even look at his hands.

“Let’s go up to Bobby’s place and see if there’s any fun,” Frank said.

“Don’t worry about anything, Roge,” Fred Wilson said and climbed up on the dock. “Only suckers worry.”

They went on along the dock carrying their guitar and banjo toward where the light and the singing were coming out of the open door of the Ponce de León.

“Freddy is a pretty good joe,” John said to Thomas Hudson.

“He always was,” Thomas Hudson said. “But he and Frank are bad together.”

Roger did not say anything and Thomas Hudson was worried about him; about him and about other things.

“Don’t you think we might turn in?” he said to him.