Islands in the Stream Page 8

  “I’d like to have heard that explanation,” Roger said.

  “Shucks, Mr. Davis. It was very rudimentary. It wouldn’t have interested you. You understand that part perfectly well, don’t you?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “I wish we would have known Balzac and Gautier, though, as friends the way we knew Mr. Joyce.”

  “So do I,” said Thomas Hudson.

  “We knew some good writers, though, didn’t we?”

  “We certainly did,” Thomas Hudson said. It was pleasant and hot on the sand and he felt lazy after working and happy, too. It made him very happy to hear the boys talk.

  “Let’s go in and swim and then have lunch,” Roger said. “It’s getting hot.”

  Thomas Hudson watched them. Swimming slowly, the four of them swam out in the green water, their bodies making shadows over the clear white sand, bodies forging along, shadows projected on the sand by the slight angle of the sun, the brown arms lifting and pushing forward, the hands slicing in, taking hold of the water and pulling it back, legs beating along steadily, heads turning for air, breathing easily and smoothly. Thomas Hudson stood there and watched them swimming out with the wind and he was very fond of the four of them. He thought he ought to paint them swimming, although it would be very difficult. He would try it, though, during the summer.

  He was too lazy to swim although he knew he should and finally he walked out feeling the breeze-cooled water fresh and cool on his sun-warmed legs, feeling it cool around his crotch and then, slipping forward into the ocean river, he swam out to meet them as they came in. With his head on the same level theirs were on, it was a different picture, now, changed too because they were swimming against the breeze coming in and the chop was bothering both Andrew and David, who were swimming raggedly. The illusion of them being four sea animals was gone. They had gone out so smoothly and handsomely but now the two younger boys were having difficulty against the wind and the sea. It was not real difficulty. It was just enough to take away any illusion of being at home in the water as they had looked going out. They made two different pictures and perhaps the second was the better one. The five swimmers came out on the beach and walked up to the house.

  “That’s why I like it better underwater,” David said. “You don’t have to worry about breathing.”

  “Why don’t you goggle-fish with papa and Tommy this aft,” Andrew said to him. “I’ll stay ashore with Mr. Davis.”

  “Don’t you want to go, Mr. Davis?”

  “I might stay ashore.”

  “Don’t stay in on account of me,” Andrew said. “I’ve got plenty to do. I just thought maybe you were staying in.”

  “I think I’ll stay in,” Roger said. “I may lie around and read.”

  “Don’t let him maneuver you, Mr. Davis. Don’t let him charm you.”

  “I feel like staying in,” Roger said.

  They were up on the porch now and everyone had changed to dry shorts. Joseph had brought out a bowl of conch salad. All the boys were eating it, and young Tom was drinking a bottle of beer. Thomas Hudson was sitting back in a chair and Roger was standing with the shaker.

  “I get sleepy after lunch,” he said.

  “Well, we’ll miss you,” young Tom said. “I’d just as soon stay in, too.”

  “Come on, you stay in, too, Tom,” Andrew said. “Let Papa and David go.”

  “I won’t catch you,” young Tom told him.

  “I don’t want you to catch me. There’s a Negro boy that will catch me.”

  “What do you want to be a pitcher for, anyway?” Tommy said. “You’ll never be big enough.”

  “I’ll be as big as Dick Rudolph and Dick Kerr.”

  “Whoever they were,” young Tom said.

  “What’s some jockey’s name?” David whispered to Roger.

  “Earl Sande.”

  “You’ll be as big as Earl Sande,” David told him.

  “Oh, go and goggle-fish,” Andrew said. “I’m going to be a friend of Mr. Davis like Tom was of Mr. Joyce. Can I, Mr. Davis? Then at school I can say, ‘When Mr. Davis and I spent that summer together on that tropical island writing all those vicious stories while my own father was painting those pictures you’ve all seen of ladies in the nude.’ You paint them in the nude, don’t you papa?”

  “Sometimes. They’re quite dark though.”

  “Oh boy,” Andrew said. “I don’t care about the color. Tom can have Mr. Joyce.”

  “You’d be too shy to look at them,” David said.

  “Maybe I would. But I’d learn.”

  “A nude by papa would be nothing like that chapter by Mr. Joyce,” young Tom said. “It’s only because you’re a little boy that there seems to be anything extraordinary about a nude at all.”

  “OK. Just the same I’ll take Mr. Davis, with illustrations by papa. Somebody said at school Mr. Davis’s stories were truly vicious.”

  “All right. I’ll take Mr. Davis, too. I’m an old, old friend of Mr. Davis.”

  “And of Mr. Picasso and Mr. Braque and Mr. Miro and Mr. Masson and Mr. Pascin,” Thomas Hudson said. “You knew them all.”

  “And of Mr. Waldo Peirce,” young Tom said. “You see, Andy boy, you can’t win. You started too late. You can’t win. While you were up in Rochester and for years before you were born papa and I were out in the great world. I probably knew most of the greatest painters alive. Many of them were my very good friends.”

  “I have to start sometime,” Andrew said. “And I take Mr. Davis. You don’t have to write vicious stories either, Mr. Davis. I’ll make all that up the way Tommy does. You just tell me anything awful you ever did and I’ll say I was here when it happened.”

  “The hell I do make things up that way,” young Tom said. “Sometimes papa and Mr. Davis refresh my memory for me. But I figured in and took part in a whole epoch in painting and in literature and if I had to I could write my memoirs right now as far as that goes.”

  “You’re getting crazy, Tommy,” Andrew said. “You better watch yourself.”

  “Don’t tell him a thing, Mr. Davis,” young Tom said. “Make him start from scratch like we did.”

  “You leave it to me and Mr. Davis,” Andrew said. “You stay out of this.”

  “Tell me about some more of those friends of mine, papa,” young Tom said. “I know I knew them and I know we used to be around cafés together but I’d like to know some more definite things about them. The sort of things I know about Mr. Joyce, say.”

  “Can you remember Mr. Pascin?”

  “No. Not really. What was he like?”

  “You can’t claim him as a friend if you don’t even remember him,” Andrew said. “Do you think I won’t be able to remember what Mr. Davis was like a few years from now?”

  “Shut up,” young Tom said. “Tell me about him please, papa.”

  “Mr. Pascin used to make some drawings that could illustrate the parts you like of Mr. Joyce very well.”

  “Really? Gee, that would be something.”

  “You used to sit with him at the café and he used to draw pictures of you sometimes on napkins. He was small and very tough and very strange. He used to wear a derby hat most of the time and he was a beautiful painter. He always acted as though he knew a great secret, as though he had just heard it and it amused him. It made him very happy sometimes and sometimes it made him sad. But you could always tell he knew it and it amused him very much.”

  “What was the secret?”

  “Oh drunkenness and drugs and the secret Mr. Joyce knew all about in that last chapter and how to paint beautifully. He could paint more beautifully than anybody then and that was his secret, too, and he didn’t care. He thought he didn’t care about anything but he did really.”

  “Was he bad?”

  “Oh yes. He was really bad and that was part of his secret. He liked being bad and he didn’t have remorse.”

  “Were he and I good friends?”

  “Very. He used to call you The Mon
ster.”

  “Gee,” said young Tom, happily. “The Monster.”

  “Have we got any pictures of Mr. Pascin’s, papa?” David asked.

  “A couple.”

  “Did he ever paint Tommy?”

  “No. He used to draw Tommy mostly on napkins and on the marble top of café tables. He called him the horrible, beer-swilling monster of the Left Bank.”

  “Get that tide down, Tom,” David said.

  “Did Mr. Pascin have a dirty mind?” young Tom asked.

  “I believe so.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I believe you could say he had. I think that was part of his secret.”

  “But Mr. Joyce didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “And you haven’t.”

  “No,” Thomas Hudson said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you have a dirty mind, Mr. Davis?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s good,” young Tom said. “I told the headmaster neither papa nor Mr. Joyce had dirty minds and now I can tell him about Mr. Davis if he asks me. He was pretty set on it that I had a dirty mind. But I wasn’t worried. There’s a boy at school that really has one and you can tell the difference all right. What was Mr. Pascin’s first name?”

  “Jules.”

  “How do you spell it?” David asked. Thomas Hudson told him.

  “What ever became of Mr. Pascin?” young Tom asked.

  “He hanged himself,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Oh gee,” Andrew said.

  “Poor Mr. Pascin,” young Tom said in benediction. “I’ll pray for him tonight.”

  “I’m going to pray for Mr. Davis,” Andrew said.

  “And do it often,” Roger said.

  VI

  That night after the boys had gone to bed Thomas Hudson and Roger Davis sat up in the big room talking. It had been too rough to do much goggle-fishing and after supper the boys had gone off with Joseph to go snapper fishing. They had come back tired and happy and said good night and gone to bed. The men had heard them talking for a while and then they were asleep.

  Andrew was afraid of the dark and the other boys knew it but they never teased him about it.

  “Why do you think he’s afraid of the dark?” Roger asked.

  “I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. “Weren’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I was,” Thomas Hudson said. “Is it supposed to mean anything?”

  “I don’t know,” Roger said. “I was afraid of dying and that something would happen to my brother.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother. Where is he?”

  “Dead,” Roger said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to be. It was when we were kids.”

  “Was he older than you?”

  “A year younger.”

  “What was it?”

  “A canoe turned over with us.”

  “How old were you?”

  “About twelve.”

  “Don’t talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m not sure it did me a lot of good,” Roger said. “Didn’t you know about it really?”

  “Never.”

  “For a long time I thought everybody in the world knew about it. It’s strange when you are a boy. The water was too cold and he let go. But what it added up to was that I came back and he didn’t.”

  “Poor bloody Roger.”

  “No,” said Roger. “But it was early to learn about that stuff. And then I loved him very much and I’d always been afraid something would happen to him. The water was cold for me too. But I couldn’t say that.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Up in Maine. I don’t think my father ever forgave me although he tried to understand it. I’ve wished it was me every day since. But that’s hardly a career.”

  “What was your brother’s name?”

  “Dave.”

  “Hell. Was that why you wouldn’t go goggle-fishing today?”

  “I guess so. But I’m going every other day. You never work those things out, though.”

  “You’re grown up enough not to talk that way.”

  “I tried to go down after him. But I couldn’t find him,” Roger said. “It was too deep and it was really cold.”

  “David Davis,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Yes. In our family the first one is called Roger and the second one David.”

  “Roge, you did get over it, though.”

  “No,” Roger said. “You never get over it and sooner or later I have to tell it. I’m ashamed of that the way I’m ashamed of the fight on the dock.”

  “You had nothing to be ashamed of there.”

  “Yes, I did. I told you once. Let’s not go into that.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m not going to have any more fights. Ever. You never fight and you can fight as well as I can.”

  “I can’t fight as well as you. But I just made up my mind I wouldn’t fight.”

  “I’m not going to fight and I’m going to be some good and quit writing junk.”

  “That’s the best thing I’ve heard you say,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Do you think I could write something that would be worth a damn?”

  “You could try. What did you quit painting for?”

  “Because I couldn’t kid myself any longer. I can’t kid myself any longer on the writing either.”

  “What are you going to do, practically?”

  “Go some place and write a good straight novel as well as I can write it.”

  “Why don’t you stay here and write? You can stay on here after the boys are gone. It’s too hot to write in your place.”

  “I wouldn’t bother you too much?”

  “No, Roge. I get lonely, too, you know. You can’t just run away from everything all the time. This sounds like a speech. I’ll cut it out.”

  “No. Go on. I need it.”

  “If you are going to start to work, start here.”

  “You don’t think out West would be better?”

  “Any place is good. The thing is not to run from it.”

  “No. Any place isn’t good,” Roger objected. “I know that. They’re good and then they go bad.”

  “Sure. But this is a good place now. Maybe it won’t always be. But it’s fine now. You’d have company when you quit work and so would I. We wouldn’t interfere with each other and you could really bite on the nail.”

  “Do you truly think I could write a novel that would be any good?”

  “You never will if you don’t try. You told me a hell of a good novel tonight if you wanted to write it. Just start with the canoe.”

  “And end it how?”

  “Make it up after the canoe.”

  “Hell,” Roger said. “I’m so corrupted that if I put in a canoe it would have a beautiful Indian girl in it that young Jones, who is on his way to warn the settlers that Cecil B. de Mille is coming, would drop into, hanging by one hand to a tangle of vines that covers the river while he holds his trusty flintlock, ‘Old Betsy,’ in the other hand, and the beautiful Indian girl says, ‘Jones, it ees you. Now we can make love as our frail craft moves toward the falls that some day weel be Niagara.’ ”

  “No,” said Thomas Hudson. “You could just make the canoe and the cold lake and your kid brother—”

  “David Davis. Eleven.”

  “And afterwards. And then make up from there to the end.”

  “I don’t like the end,” Roger said.

  “I don’t think any of us do, really,” Thomas Hudson said. “But there’s always an end.”

  “Maybe we better knock off talking,” Roger said. “I’m liable to start thinking about the novel. Tommy, why is it fun to paint well and hell to write well? I never painted well. But it was fun even the way I painted.”

  “I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. “Maybe in painting the tradition and the line are clearer
and there are more people helping you. Even when you break from the straight line of great painting, it is always there to help you.”

  “I think another thing is that better people do it,” Roger said. “If I were a good enough guy maybe I could have been a good painter. Maybe I’m just enough of a son of a bitch to be a good writer.”

  “That’s the worst oversimplification I’ve ever heard.”

  “I always oversimplify,” Roger maintained. “That’s one reason I’m no damn good.”

  “Let’s go to bed.”

  “I’ll stay up and read a while,” Roger said.

  They slept well and Thomas Hudson did not wake when Roger came out to the sleeping porch late in the night. After breakfast the wind was light and there were no clouds in the sky and they organized for a day of underwater fishing.

  “You’re coming, aren’t you, Mr. Davis?” Andrew asked.

  “I most certainly am.”

  “That’s good,” said Andrew. “I’m glad.”

  “How do you feel, Andy?” Thomas Hudson asked.

  “Scared,” said Andrew. “Like always. But I’m not so scared with Mr. Davis going.”

  “Never be scared, Andy,” Roger said. “It’s worthless. Your father told me.”

  “They tell you,” Andrew said. “They always tell you. But David’s the only young boy I ever knew with any brains that isn’t scared.”

  “Shut up,” David said. “You’re just a creature of your imagination.”

  “Mr. Davis and I are always scared,” Andrew said. “It’s possibly our superior intelligence.”

  “You’re going to be careful, Davy, aren’t you?” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Naturally.”

  Andrew looked at Roger and shrugged his shoulders.

  VII

  Down along the reef where they went for underwater fishing on that day, there was the old iron wreck of a steamer that had broken up and at high tide the rusty iron of her boilers still showed above the sea. Today the wind was in the south and Thomas Hudson anchored in the lee of a patch of reef, not too close in, and Roger and the boys got their masks and spears ready. The spears were very primitive, and of all sorts, and these spears were made according to Thomas Hudson’s and the boy’s individual ideas.