To Have and Have Not Page 3
HARRY MOROAN--WINTER 'You can't know how bad they arc. There is an absolutely murderous tyranny that extends over every little village in the country. Three people cannot be together on the street. Cuba has no foreign enemies and doesn't need any army, but she has an army of twenty-five thousand now, and the army, from the corporals up, suck the blood from the nation. Everyone, even the private soldiers, are out to make their fortunes. Now they have a military reserve with every kind of crook, bully and informer of the old days of Machado in it, and they take anything the army does not bother with. We have to get rid of the army before anything can start. Before we were ruled by clubs. Now we are ruled by rifles, pistols, machine-guns, and bayonets.' 'It sounds bad,' Harry said, steering, and letting her go off to the eastward. 'You cannot realize how bad it is,' the boy said. 'I love my poor country and I would do anything, anything to free it from this tyranny we have now. I do things I hate. But I would do things I hate a thousand times more.' I want a drink, Harry was thinking. What the hell do I care about his revolution. F----his revolution. To help the working man he robs a bank and kills a fellow works with him and then kills that poor damned Albert that never did any harm. That's a working man he kills. He never thinks of that. With a family. It's the Cubans run Cuba.
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT though he had been struck in the abdomen with a club. His back was against one of the iron-pipe upports of the fishing chairs and while the Cuban shot at him again md splintered the fishing chair tbove his head, he reached down, found the Thompson gun, raised it carefully, holding the for- ward grip with the hook and rattled half of the fresh clip into the man who sat leaning forward, calmly shooting at him from the seat. The man was down on the seat in a heap and Harry felt around on the ockpit floor until he could find the big-faced man, who lay face down, felt for his head wth the hook on his bad arm, hooked it around, then put the muzzle of the gun against the head and touched the trigger. Touching the head, the gun made a noise like hitting a pumpkin with a club. Harry put down the gun and lay on his side on the cockpit floor. 'i'm a son of a bitch,' he said, his lips agahst the planking. I'm a gone son of a bitch now. I got to eut the engines or we'll all bum up, he thought. I got a chance still. I got a kind of a chance. Jesus Christ. One thing to spoil it. One thing to go wrong. God danm it. Oh, God damn that Cuban bastard. Who'd have thought I hadn't got him? I-Ie got on his hands and knees and letting one side of the htteh over the engines slam down, crawled over it forward to where the steering stool was. He pulled up on it, surprised to find how well he could m'ovc, then suddenly feeling faint and weak 7o
HARRY MORGAN--WINTER
as he stood erect, he leaned forward with his bad arm resting on the compass and cut the two switches. The engines were quiet and he could hear the water against her sides. There was no other sound. She swung into the trough of the little sea the North wind had raised and began to roll. He hung against the wheel, then eased himself on to the steering stool, leaning against the chart table. He could feel the strength drain out of him in a steady faint nausea. He opened his shirt with his good hand and felt the hole with the base of the palm of his hand, then fingered it. There was very little bleeding. All inside, he thought. I better lie down and give it a chance to quiet. The moon was up now and he could see what was in the cockpit. Some mess, he thought, some hell of a mess. Better get down before I fall down, he thought and he lowered himself down to the cockpit floor. He lay on his side and then, as the boat rolled, the moonlight came in and he could see everything in the cockpit clearly. It's crowded, he thought. That's what it is, it's crowded. Then, he thought, I wonder what she'll do. I wonder what Marie will do? Maybe they'll pay her the rewards. God damn that Cuban. She'll get along, I guess. She's a smart woman. I guess we would all have gotten along. I guess it was nuts all right. I guess I bit off too much more than I could chew. I shouldn't have tried it. I had it all
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
fight up to the end. Nobody'll know how it happened. I wish I could do something about Marie. Plenty money on this boat. i don't even know how much. Anybody be O.K. with that money, i wonder if the coast-guard will pinch it. Some of it, I guess. I wish I could let the old woman know what happened. I wonder what she'll do? I don't know. I guess I should have got a job in a filling station or something. I should have quit trying to go in boats. There's no honest money going in boats any more. If the bitch wouldn't only roll. If she'd only quit rolling. I can feel all that slopping back and forth inside. Me. Mr. Bee-lips and Albert. Everybody that had to do with it. These bastards too. It must be an unlucky business. Some unlucky business, i guess what a man like me ought to do is run something like a filling station. Hell, I couldn't run no filling station. Marie, she'll run something. She's too old to peddle her hips now. I wish this bitch wouldn't roll. I'll just have to take it easy. I got to take it as easy as I can. They say if you don't drink water and lay still, They say especially if you don't drink water. He looked at what the moonlight showed in the cockpit. Well, i don't have to clean her up, he thought. Take it easy. That's what I got to do. Take it easy. I've got to take it as easy as I can. i've got sort of a chance. If you lay still and don't drink any water.
CHAPTER XI
Ts next morning in Key West Richard Gordon was on his way home from a visit to Freddy's Bar where he had gone to ask about the bank robbery. Riding his bicycle, he passed a heavy-set, big, blue-eyed woman, with bleached-blonde hair showing under her old man's felt hat, hurrying across the road, her eyes red from crying. Look at that big ox, he thought. What do you suppose a woman like that thinks about? What do you suppose she does in bed? How does her husband feel about her when she gets that size. Who do you suppose he runs around with in this town? Wasn't she an appalling looking woman? Like a battleship. Terrific. He was almost home now. He left his bicycle on the front porch and went in the hallway, closing the front door the termites had tunnelled and riddled. 'What did you find out, Dick?' his wife called from the kitchen. 'Don't talk to me,' he said. 'i'm going to work. I have it all in my head.' 'That's fine,' she said. 'I'll leave you alone.' He sat down at the big table in the front room. He was writing a novel about a strike in a textile factory. In to-day's chapter he was going to use the big woman with the tear-reddened eyes he had just seen on the way home. Her husband when he came
CH.APTER
FDY rALLACE'S boat, the ue Cog/, thirty four feet long, with a V number out of Tampa, wa painted white; the forward deck was painted a colou called Frolic green and the inside o'the cockpit wa painted Frolic green. The top of the house wa painted the same colour. Her name and home port Key West, Fla., were painted in black across he: stern. She was not equipped with outriggers an had no mast. She was equipped with glass wind. shields, one of which, that i'orward of the wheel was broken. There were a number of 'resh, wood. splintered holes in the newly painted planking o her hull. Splintered ptches could be seen on hot1 sides ot her hull about a foot below the gunwale ant a little forward of the centre of the cockpit. Thcr was another group of these splintered places almos at the water line on the starboard side of the hull opposite the aft stanchion that mpported her hous or awning. From the lower of these somethin dark had dripped and hung in ropy lines agains the new paint of her hull. She drifted broadside to the gentle north wind about ten miles outside of the north-bound tanker lanes, gay looking in her fresh white and green, against the dark, blue Gulf Stream water. There were patches ofsun-yellowed Sargasso weed ttoating 76
HARRY MORGAN--WINTER
would not numb away, and he lay quietly now and felt it. For a time he had thought that if he could pull himself up over himself it would warm him like a blanket, and he thought for a while that he had gotten himself pulled up and he had started to warm. But that warmth was really only the hemorrhage produced by raising his knees up; and as the warmth faded he knew now that you could not pull yourself up over yourself and there was nothing to do about the cold but take it. He lay there, trying hard in all of him not to die long after he could not think.
He was in the shadow now, as the boat drifted, and it was colder all the time. The launch had been drifting since ten o'clock of the night before and it was now getting late in the afternoon. There was nothing else in sight across the surface of the Gulf Stream but the gulf weed, a few pink, inflated, membranous bubbles of Portuguese men-of-war cocked jauntily on the surface, and the distant smoke of a loaded tanker bound north from Tampico.
I79
HARRY MORGAN-WINTER 'You bitch.' 'No,' she said. 'I'm not a bitch. I've tried to be a good wife, but you're as selfish and conceited as a barnyard rooster. Always crowing, "Look what i've done. Look how I've made you happy. Now run along and cackle." Well, you don't make me happy and I'm sick of you. I'm through cackling.' 'You shouldn't cackle. You never produced any- thing to cackle about.' 'Whose fault was that? Didn't I want children? But we never could afford them. But we could afford to go to the Cap d'Antibes to swim and to Switzerland to ski. We can afford to come down here to Key West. I'm sick of you. I dislike you. This Bradley woman to-day was the last straw.' 'Oh, leave her out of it.' 'You coming home with lipstick all over you. CouIdn't you even wash? There's some on your forehead, too.' 'You kissed that drunken twirp.' 'No, I didn't. But I would have if I'd known wlat you were doing.' 'Why did you let him kiss you?' 'I was furious at you. We waited and waited and waited. You never came near me. You went off with that woman and stayed for hours. John brought me home.' 'Oh, Jolm, is it?' 'Yes, John. Jo. John.' 'And what's his last name? Thomas?'
HARRY MORGAN--WINTER 'He asked you what?' he said, his voice coming from a long way away. 'To marry him.' 'Why?' 'Because he loves me. Because he wants me to live with him. He makes enough money to support 'You're married to me.' 'Not really. Not in the church. You wouldn't marry me in the church and it broke my poor mother's heart as you well know. I was so senti- mental about you I'd break anyone's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too. It's broken and gone. Everything i believed in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bath-room door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is you making me happy and the going
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to any more. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some books. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. Your kind of pick. nose love. You writer.' 'You little mick slut.' 'Don't call me names. I know the word for you.' 'All right.' 'No, not all right. All wrong and wrong again. If you were just a good writer I could stand for all the rest of it maybe. But i've seen you bitter, jealous, changing your politics to suit the fashion, sucking up to people's faces and talking about them behind their backs, i've seen you until I'm sick of you. Then that dirty rich bitch of a Bradley woman to-day. Oh, I'm sick of it. I've tried to take care of you and humour you and look after you and cook for you and keep quiet when you wanted and cheerful when you wanted and give you your little explosions and pretend it made me happy, and put up with your rages and jealousies and your,meannesses and now I'm through.' ". . 'So now you want to start again with a drunken professor?' 'He's a man. He's kind and he's charitable and he makes you feel comfortable and we come from the same thing and we have values that you'll never have. He's like my father was.'
HARRY MORGAN--WINTER 'He's a drunk.' 'He drinks. But so dd my father. And my fathe wore wool socks and put Iris feet n them up on a chair and read the paper n the even{n. And when we had croup he took care of us. He was a boiler maker and his hands were all broken and he liked to fight when he drank, and he could fight when he was sober. He went to mass because my mother wanted him to and he did his Easter duty for her and for Our Lord, but mostly for her, and he was a good union man and if he ever went with another woman she never knew it.' 'I'll bet he went with plenty.' 'Maybe he did, but if he did he told the priest, not her, and if he did it was because he couldn't help it and he was sorry and repented of it. He didn't do it out of curiosity, or from barnyard pride, or to tell his wife what a great man he was. If he did it was because my mother was away with us kids for the summer, and he was out with the boys and got drunk. He was a man.' 'You ought to be a writer and write about him.' 'I'd be a better writer than you. And John Mac- Walsey is a good man. That's what you're not. You couldn't be. No matter what your politics or your religion.' 'I haven't any religion.' 'Neither have I. But I had one once and I'm going to have one again. And you won't be there to "take it awy. Like you've taken away everything else.'
HARRY MORGAN--WINTER 'Wouldn't try another?' 'No. I'll have whisky.' 'You know, it's something to me to meet you,' Spellman said. 'I don't suppose you remember me at that party.' 'No. But maybe it was a good party. You're not supposed to remember a good party, are you?' 'I guess not,' aid Spellman. 'It was at Margaret Van Brunt's. Do you remember?' he asked hope- fully. . 'I'm trying to.' 'I was the one st fire to the place,' Spellman said. ' 'No,' said Gordon. 'Yes,' said Spellman, happily. 'That was me. That was th greatest party I was ever on.' 'What are you doing now?' Gbrdon asked. 'Not much,' said Spellman. 'I get around a little. I'm taking it sort of easy now. Are you writing a new book?' 'Yes. About halfdone.' 'That's great,' said Spellman. 'What's it about?' 'A strike in a textile plant.' 'That's marvellous,' said Spellman. 'You know I'm a sucker for anything on the social conflict.' 'I love it,' said Spellman. 'I go for it above any- thing else. You're absolutely the best of the lot. Listen, has it got a beaafiful Jewish agitator in it?' 'Why?' asked Richard Gordon, suspiciously.
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
'it's a part for Sylvia Sidney. I'm in love with her. Want to see her picture?' 'I've seen it,' said Richard Gordon. 'Let's have a drink,' said Spellman, happily. 'Think of meeting you down here. You know, I'm a lucky fellow. Really lucky.' 'Why?' asked Richard Gordon. 'I'm crazy,' said Spellman. 'Gee, it's wonderful. It's just like being in love only it always comes out fight.' Richard Gordon edged away a little. 'Don't be that way,' said Spellman. 'I'm not violent. That is, I'm almost never violent. Come on, let's have a drink.' 'Have you been crazy long?' ' 'I think always,' said Spellman. 'I tell you it's the only way to be happy in times like these. What do I care what Douglas Aircraft does? What do I care what A. T. and T. stock does? They can't touch me. I just pick up one of your books or I take a drink, or I look at Sylvia's picture, and I'm happy. I'm like a bird. I'm better than a bird. I'm a...' He seemed to hesitate and hunt for a word, then hurried on. Tm.a lovely little stork,' he blurted out and blushed. He looked at Richard Gordon fixedly, his lips working, and a large blond young man de- tached himself from a group down the bar and coming toward him put ahand on his arm. 'Come on, Harold,' he said. 'We'd better be getting home.'
HARRY MORGAN--WINTER
'Thanks.' They went out through the crowd and Richard Gordon got in beside the sheriff in his car. 'What do you suppose happened in Morgan's boat?' he asked. 'God knows,' the sheriff said. 'It sounds pretty grizly.' 'Didn't they have any other information?' 'Not a thing,' said the sheriff. 'Now look at that, will you?" They were opposite the brightly lighted open front of Freddy's place and it was jammed to the sidewalk. Men in dungarees, some bareheaded, others in caps, old service hats and in cardboard helmets, crowded the bar three deep, and the loud-speaking niclde-in- the-slot phonograph was playing 'Isle of" Capri'. As they pulled up a man came hurtling out of" the open door, another man on top of him. They f
ell and rolled on the sidewalk, and the man on top, holding the other's hair in both hands, banged his head up and down on the cement, making a sickening noise. No one at the bar was paying any attention. The sheriff got out of the car and grabbed the man on top by the shoulder. 'Cut it out,' he said. 'Get up there.' The man straightened up and looked at the sheriff. 'For Christ sake, can't you mind your own business?' The other man, blood in his hair, blood oozing from one ear, and more of it trickling down his freckled face, squared off at the sheriff. 97
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
red-headed one said. 'Listen, pal,' to Richard Gordon, 'How's to have another?' 'Aren't they fine boys?' said the tall man. 'War is a purifying and ennobling force. The question is whetker only people like ourselves here are fitted to be soldiers or whether the different services have formed us.' 'I don't know,' said Richard Gordon. 'I would like to bet you that not three men in this room were drafted,' the tall man said. 'These are the aite. The very top cream of the scum. What Wellington won at Waterloo with. Well, Mr. Hoover ran us out of Anticosti flats and Mr. Roose- velt has shipped us down here to get rid of us. They've run the camp in a way to invite an epidemic but the poor bastards won't die. They shipped a few of us to Tortugas but that's healthy now. Besides, we wouldn't stand for it. So they've brought us back. What's the next move? They've got to get rid of us. You can see that, can't you?' 'Why?' 'Because we are the desperate ones,' the man said. 'The ones with nothing to lose. We are the com- pletely brutalized ones. We're worse than the stuff the original Spartacus worked with. But it's tough to try to do anything with because we have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it. But we're not all like that. There are some of us that are oin to hand it out.'