Islands in the Stream Read online

  “You hit him plenty,” Thomas Hudson said. “You hit him wonderfully. I wish I could tell you how you hit him.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Eddy said. “I’ll see that old evil son of a bitch going on his back the rest of my life. Did you ever see anything look more evil?”

  They sat there waiting for the lunch and Thomas Hudson was looking out to sea where Joseph had sculled out to where the shark had gone down. Joseph was looking over the side of the dinghy into a water glass.

  “Can you see anything?” Thomas Hudson called to him.

  “Too deep, Mr. Tom. He went down right over the shelf. He’s laying on the bottom now.”

  “I wish we could have gotten his jaws,” young Tom said. “Wouldn’t you like to have them all bleached and hanging up, papa?”

  “I think they would give me bad dreams,” Andrew said. “I’m just as glad we haven’t got them.”

  “They’d be a wonderful trophy,” young Tom said. “That would be something to take to school.”

  “They’d belong to Dave if we had them,” Andrew said.

  “No. They’d belong to Eddy,” young Tom said. “I believe he’d give them to me if I asked him for them.”

  “He’d give them to Dave,” Andrew said.

  “I don’t think maybe you should go out again so soon, Dave,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “It won’t be till plenty of time after lunch,” David said. “We have to wait for the low tide.”

  “I mean goggle-fish so soon.”

  “Eddy said it was all right.”

  “I know. But I’m still pretty spooked.”

  “But Eddy knows.”

  “You wouldn’t like to just not go as a present to me?”

  “Certainly, papa, if you want. But I love it underwater. I guess I love it more than anything. And if Eddy says—”

  “OK,” said Thomas Hudson. “People aren’t supposed to ask for presents anyway.”

  “Papa, I didn’t mean it like that. I won’t go if you don’t want me to. Only Eddy said—”

  “What about a moray? Eddy mentioned morays.”

  “Papa, there’s always morays. You taught me not to be afraid of morays and how to handle them and how to watch out for them and the kind of holes they live in.”

  “I know. And I let you go out there where that shark came.”

  “Papa, we were all out there. Don’t make yourself some sort of special guilt about it. I just went too far out and I lost that good yellowtail after I’d speared him and he bloodied the water and that called the shark.”

  “Didn’t he come just like a hound though?” Thomas Hudson said. He was trying to get rid of the emotion. “I’ve seen them come at really great speed like that before. There was one that used to live off Signal Rock that used to come that way on the smell of a bait. I’m very ashamed I couldn’t hit him.”

  “You were shooting awfully close to him, papa,” young Tom said.

  “I was doing everything but hit him.”

  “He wasn’t coming for me, papa,” David said. “He was coming for the fish.”

  “He’d have taken you, though,” Eddy said. He was setting the table. “Don’t ever fool yourself he wouldn’t with that fish smell on you and the blood in the water. He’d have hit a horse. He’d have hit anything. Good God, don’t talk about it. I’ll have to have another drink.”

  “Eddy,” David said. “Will it really be safe on the low tide?”

  “Sure. Didn’t I tell you so before?”

  “You aren’t making some sort of a point, are you?” Thomas Hudson asked David. He had stopped looking out across the water and he was all right again. He knew that what David was doing was what he should do no matter why he was doing it and he knew he had been selfish about it.

  “Papa, all I mean is that I love it better than anything else and it’s such a wonderful day for it and we never know when it might blow—”

  “And Eddy says,” Thomas Hudson interrupted.

  “And Eddy says,” David grinned with him.

  “Eddy says the hell with all of you. Come on and eat it up now before I throw it the hell overboard.” He stood there with the bowl of salad, the platter of browned fish, and the mashed potatoes. “Where’s that Joe?”

  “He went to look for the shark.”

  “He’s crazy.”

  When Eddy went below and young Tom was passing the food, Andrew whispered to his father, “Papa, is Eddy a rummy?”

  Thomas Hudson was serving the cold, marinated potato salad covered with rough-ground black pepper. He had shown Eddy how to make it the way they used to make it at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris and it was one of the best things Eddy made on the boat.

  “Did you see him shoot the shark?”

  “I certainly did.”

  “That isn’t the way rummies shoot.”

  He put some salad on Andrew’s plate and took some for himself.

  “The only reason I asked is because from where I’m sitting I can see in the galley and I’ve watched him take about eight drinks out of a bottle since we’ve been sitting here.”

  “That’s his bottle,” Thomas Hudson explained and helped Andrew to some more salad. Andrew was the fastest eater he had ever seen. He said he had learned it at school. “Try and eat a little slower, Andy. Eddy always brings his own bottle on board. Nearly all good cooks drink a little. Some drink quite a lot.”

  “I know he had eight. Wait. He’s taking nine now.”

  “Damn you, Andrew,” David said.

  “Cut it out,” Thomas Hudson said to both of them.

  Young Tom broke in. “Here’s a fine wonderful man saves your brother’s life and he just takes a drink, or a few drinks, and you call him a rummy. You aren’t fit to associate with human beings.”

  “I didn’t call him one. I just asked papa, to know if he is one. I’m not against rummies. I just like to know if a man is or not.”

  “I’m going to buy Eddy a bottle of whatever it is he drinks with the very first money I get and I’m going to drink it with him,” young Tom said grandly.

  “What’s that?” Eddy’s head showed in the companion-way with the old felt hat pushed onto the back of it showing the white above the sunburnt part of his face and a cigar sticking out of the corner of his Mercurochromed mouth. “Let me catch you drink anything but beer I beat the hell out of you. All three of you. Don’t you talk about drinking. Do you want more mashed potatoes?”

  “Please, Eddy,” young Tom said and Eddy went below.

  “That makes ten,” Andrew said, looking down the companionway.

  “Oh shut up, horseman,” young Tom said to him. “Can’t you respect a great man?”

  “Eat some more fish, David,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Which is that big yellowtail?”

  “I don’t believe he’s cooked yet.”

  “I’ll take a yellow grunt then.”

  “They’re awfully sweet.”

  “I think spearing makes them even better if you eat them right away because it bleeds them.”

  “Papa, can I ask Eddy to have a drink with us?” young Tom asked.

  “Sure,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “He had one. Don’t you remember?” Andrew interrupted. “When we first came in he had one. You remember.”

  “Papa, can I ask him to have another one with us now and to eat with us?”

  “Of course,” Thomas Hudson said.

  Young Tom went down below and Thomas Hudson heard him say, “Eddy, papa says would you please make a drink for yourself and come up and have it with us and eat with us.”

  “Hell, Tommy,” Eddy said. “I never eat at noon. I just eat breakfast and at night.”

  “What about having a drink with us?”

  “I had a couple, Tommy.”

  “Will you take one with me now and let me drink a bottle of beer with you?”

  “Hell yes,” said Eddy. Thomas Hudson heard the icebox open and close. “Here’s to you, Tommy.”
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  Thomas Hudson heard the two bottles clink. He looked at Roger but Roger was looking out at the ocean.

  “Here’s to you, Eddy,” he heard young Tom say. “It’s a great honor to drink with you.”

  “Hell, Tommy,” Eddy told him. “It’s an honor to drink with you. I feel wonderful, Tommy. You see me shoot that old shark?”

  “I certainly did, Eddy. Don’t you want to eat just a little something with us?”

  “No, Tommy. True.”

  “Would you like me to stay down here with you so you wouldn’t have to drink alone?”

  “Hell no, Tommy. You aren’t getting mixed up on anything, are you? I don’t have to drink. I don’t have to do anything except cook a little and earn my goddam living. I just feel good, Tommy. Did you see me shoot him? True?”

  “Eddy, it was the greatest thing I ever saw. I just asked you if you wanted somebody so as not to be lonesome.”

  “I never been lonesome in my life,” Eddy told him. “I’m happy and I got here what makes me happier.”

  “Eddy, I’d like to stay with you, anyway.”

  “No, Tommy. Take this other platter of fish up and go up there where you belong.”

  “I’d like to come back and stay.”

  “I ain’t sick, Tommy. If I was ever sick I’d be happy to have you sit up with me. I’m just feeling the goddam best I ever felt ever.”

  “Eddy, are you sure you’ve got enough of that bottle?”

  “Hell yes. If I ever run out I’ll borrow some of Roger’s and your old man’s.”

  “Well, then, I’ll take the fish up,” young Tom said. “I’m awfully glad you feel so good, Eddy. I think it’s wonderful.”

  Young Tom brought the platter of yellowtail, yellow and white grunts, and rock hind up into the cockpit. They were scored deep in triangular cuts across their flanks so the white meat showed, and fried crisp and brown, and he started to pass them around the table.

  “Eddy said to thank you very much but he’d had a drink,” he said. “And he doesn’t eat lunch. Is this fish all right?”

  “It’s excellent,” Thomas Hudson told him.

  “Please eat,” he said to Roger.

  “All right,” Roger said. “I’ll try.”

  “Haven’t you eaten anything, Mr. Davis?” Andrew asked.

  “No, Andy. But I’m going to eat now.”

  VIII

  In the night Thomas Hudson would wake and hear the boys asleep and breathing quietly and in the moonlight he could see them all and see Roger sleeping too. He slept well now and almost without stirring.

  Thomas Hudson was happy to have them there and he did not want to think about them ever going away. He had been happy before they came and for a long time he had learned how to live and do his work without ever being more lonely than he could bear; but the boys’ coming had broken up all the protective routine of life he had built and now he was used to its being broken. It had been a pleasant routine of working hard; of hours for doing things; places where things were kept and well-cared for; of meals and drinks to look forward to and new books to read and many old books to reread. It was a routine where the daily paper was an event when it arrived, but where it did not come so regularly that its nonarrival was a disappointment. It had many of the inventions that lonely people use to save themselves and even achieve unloneliness with and he had made the rules and kept the customs and used them consciously and unconsciously. But since the boys were here it had come as a great relief not to have to use them.

  It would be bad, though, he thought, when he started all that again. He knew very well how it would be. For a part of a day it would be pleasant to have the house neat and to think alone and read without hearing other people talk and look at things without speaking of them and work properly without interruption and then he knew the loneliness would start. The three boys had moved into a big part of him again that, when they moved out, would be empty and it would be very bad for a while.

  His life was built solidly on work and on the living by the Gulf Stream and on the island and it would stand up all right. The aids and the habits and the customs were all to handle the loneliness and by now he knew he had opened a whole new country for the loneliness to move into once the boys were gone. There was nothing to do about that, though. That would all come later and if it was coming there was no good derived from any fearing of it now.

  The summer, so far, had been a very lucky and good one. Everything had turned out well that could have turned out badly. He did not mean just spectacular things like Roger and the man on the dock, which could have come out very badly; nor David and the shark; but all sorts of small things had come out well. Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away.

  He knew almost what there is to know about living alone and he had known what it is to live with someone that you loved and that loved you. He had always loved his children but he had never before realized how much he loved them and how bad it was that he did not live with them. He wished that he had them always and that he was married to Tom’s mother. Then he thought that was as silly as wishing you had the wealth of the world to use as intelligently as you could; to be able to draw like Leonardo or paint as well as Pieter Brueghel; to have an absolute veto power against all wickedness and be able to detect it infallibly and always justly when it starts and stop it with something as simple as pressing a button and while doing all this to be always healthy and to live forever and not decay in mind nor body. That was what he thought tonight would be some good things to have. But you could not have them any more than you could have the children; nor that who you loved could be alive if who you loved was dead or gone out from your life. Out of all the things you could not have there were some that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good. There were many things that made it for him when he had it. But just now, in this month, four people made it something that was as good, in some ways, as what the one person had once been able to make and so far there had been no sorrow. There had been no sorrow at all.

  He did not even mind being awake now and remembered how it had been once when he had not been able to sleep and had lain in the night thinking about how he had lost the three boys and the fool he had been. He had thought how he had done things because he could not help them, or thought he could not help them, and had moved from one disastrous error of judgment to another that was worse. Now he accepted that as past and he was through with remorse. He had been a fool and he did not like fools. But that was over now and the boys were here and they loved him and he loved them. He would let it go at that for now.

  They would go away at the end of their stay and he would have the loneliness again. But it would be only a stage on the way until they came back. If Roger would stay and work and keep hum company it would be much easier. But he never knew about Roger nor what he would do. He smiled in the night thinking about Roger. Then he pitied him until he thought how disloyal it was and how Roger would hate pity and he stopped it and, hearing them all breathing quietly, he went to sleep.

  But he woke again when the moonlight came on his face and he started to think about Roger and the women he had been in trouble with. He and Roger had both behaved stupidly and badly with women. He did not want to think of his own stupidities so he would think of Roger’s.

  I won’t pity him, he thought, so it is not disloyal. I have been in enough trouble myself so that it is not disloyal to think about Roger’s trouble.
My own is different because I only really loved one woman and then lost her. I know well enough why. But I am through with thinking about that and it would probably be well not to think about Roger either. But tonight, because of the moonlight which, as always, would not let him sleep, he thought about him and his serious and comic troubles.

  He thought about the last girl Roger had been in love with in Paris when they had both lived there and how very handsome and how very false he thought she was when Roger had brought her to the studio. For Roger there was nothing false about her. She was another of his illusions and all his great talent for being faithful was at her service until they were both free to marry. Then, in a month, everything that had always been clear about her to everyone who knew her well was suddenly clear to Roger. It must have been a difficult day when it first happened but the process of seeing her clearly had been going on for some time when Roger had come up to the studio. He had looked at the canvases for a while and spoken critically and very intelligently about them. Then he said, “I told that Ayers I wouldn’t marry her.”

  “Good,” Thomas Hudson had said. “Was it a surprise?”

  “Not too much. There’d been some talk about it. She’s a phony.”

  “No,” Thomas Hudson had said. “How?”

  “Right through. Any way you slice her.”

  “I thought you liked her.”

  “No. I tried to like her. But I couldn’t make it except at the start. I was in love with her.”

  “What’s in love?”

  “You ought to know.”

  “Yes,” Thomas Hudson had said. “I ought to know.”

  “Didn’t you like her?”

  “No. I couldn’t stand her.”

  “She was your girl. And you didn’t ask me.”

  “I told her. But now I have to make it stick.”

  “You better pull out.”

  “No,” he said. “Let her pull out.”

  “I only thought it might be simpler.”

  “This is my town as much as it is hers.”

  “I know,” Thomas Hudson had said.

  “You fought that one out, too, didn’t you?” Roger had asked.