Islands in the Stream Page 9

  Joseph had come along to scull the dinghy. He took Andrew in with him and they started for the reef while the others slipped over the side to swim.

  “Aren’t you coming, papa?” David called up to his father on the flying bridge of his fishing boat. The circle of glass over his eyes, nose, and forehead, with the rubber frame pressed under his nose, into his cheeks, and tight against his forehead, held tight into the flesh by a rubber strap around the back of his head, made him look like one of the characters in those pseudoscientific comic strips. “I’ll come over later on.”

  “Don’t wait too long until everything gets spooked.”

  “There’s plenty of reef. You won’t work it all over.”

  “But I know two holes out beyond the boilers that are wonderful. I found them the day we came alone. They were so untouched and full of fish I left them for when we would all be here.”

  “I remember. I’ll come over in about an hour.”

  “I’ll save them for when you come,” David said and started to swim after the others, his right hand holding the six-foot ironwood shaft with the hand-forged, twin-pronged fish grains fitted to the end and made fast with a length of heavy fishing line. His face was down in the water and he was studying the bottom through the glass of his mask as he swam. He was an undersea boy and now that he was so brown and that he was swimming with only the wet back of his head showing he reminded Thomas Hudson more than ever of an otter.

  He watched him swim along, using his left arm and kicking with his long legs and feet in a slow steady drive and occasionally, and each time much, much longer than you thought it would be, lifting his face a little to one side to breathe. Roger and his oldest boy had swum out with their masks up on their foreheads and were a long way ahead. Andrew and Joseph were over the reef in the dinghy but Andrew had not gone overboard yet. There was only a light wind and the water over the reef looked light and creaming, with the reef showing brown and the dark blue water beyond.

  Thomas Hudson went below to the galley where Eddy was peeling potatoes over a bucket held between his knees. He was looking out the porthole of the galley toward the reef.

  “Boys oughtn’t to scatter,” he said. “Ought to keep close to the dinghy.”

  “Do you think anything would come in over the reef?”

  “Tide’s pretty well up. These are spring tides.”

  “Water’s awfully clear,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Bad things in the ocean,” Eddy said. “This is a tough ocean around here if they get to smell that fish.”

  “They haven’t got any fish yet.”

  “They’ll get them soon. They want to get those fish right into that dinghy before any fish smell or any blood smell trails on that tide.”

  “I’ll swim out.”

  “No. You holler at them to stay close together and keep the fish in the dinghy.”

  Thomas Hudson went up on deck and shouted what Eddy had said to Roger. He held up his spear and waved that he had understood.

  Eddy came up into the cockpit with the pot full of potatoes in one hand and his knife in the other.

  “You take that good rifle, the little good one, and get up on the topside, Mr. Tom,” he said. “I just don’t like it. I don’t like boys out there on this tide. We’re too close to the real ocean.”

  “Let’s get them in.”

  “No. Chances are I just get nervous. Bad night last night anyway. I’m fond of them like they’re my boys and I worry the hell about them.” He put the pot of potatoes down. “Tell you what let’s do. Start her up and I’ll get the anchor up and we’ll run in closer to the reef and anchor. She’ll swing clear with this tide and the wind. Let’s put her right in.”

  Thomas Hudson started the big motor and went up to the flying bridge and the topside controls. Ahead, as Eddy got the anchor up, he could see them all in the water now and, as he watched, David came up from underwater with a fish flopping on his spear that he held high in the air and Thomas Hudson heard him shout for the dinghy.

  “Put her nose right against the reef,” Eddy called from the bow where he was holding the anchor.

  Thomas Hudson came up slowly to almost touch the reef, seeing the big brown coral heads, the black sea urchins on the sand, and the purple sea fans swaying toward him with the tide. Eddy heaved the anchor and Thomas Hudson came astern on the engine. The boat swung off and the reef slid away. Eddy paid out line until the rope came taut and Thomas Hudson cut the motor and they swung there.

  “Now we can keep an eye on them,” Eddy said, standing in the bow. “I can’t stand worrying about those kids. Ruins my damn digestion. Bad enough the way it is now.”

  “I’ll stay up here and watch them.”

  “I’ll pass you up the rifle and get the hell back to those potatoes. The boys like potato salad, don’t they? The way we fix it?”

  “Sure. Roger too. Put in plenty of hard-boiled egg and onion.

  “I’ll keep the potatoes good and firm. Here’s the rifle.”

  As Thomas Hudson reached for the rifle it was chunky and heavy in its clipped sheep-wool-lined case that he kept saturated with Fiend-oil to keep the sea air from rusting it. He pulled it out by the butt and slid the case under the decking on the flying bridge. It was a .256 Mannlicher Shoenauer with the old eighteen-inch barrel they weren’t allowed to sell any more. The stock and forearm were browned like a walnut nutmeat with oil and rubbing, and the barrel, rubbed from months of carrying in a saddle bucket, was oil-slick, without a spot of rust. The cheek piece of the stock was worn smooth from his own cheek and when he pulled back the bolt the revolving magazine was full of heavy bellied cartridges with the long, thin, pencil-shaped metal-cased bullet with only a tiny exposed lead tip.

  It was really too good a gun to keep on a boat but Thomas Hudson was so fond of it and it reminded him of so many things, so many people, and so many places that he liked to have it with him and he found that, in the sheepskin case, once the clipped wool was well impregnated with Fiend-oil, the rifle was not harmed at all by the salt air. A gun is to shoot anyway, he thought, not to be preserved in a case, and this was a really good rifle, easy to shoot, easy to teach anyone to shoot with, and handy on the boat. He had always had more confidence shooting it, as to being able to place his shots at close and moderate range, than any other rifle he had ever owned and it made him happy to pull it out of the case now and pull back the bolt and shove a shell into the breech.

  The boat lay almost steady in the tide and the breeze, and he slipped the sling over one of the levers of the topside controls so that the rifle hung there handy, and lay down on the sunning mattress on the flying bridge. Lying on his belly to brown his back, he looked out to where Roger and the boys were spearfishing. They were all diving, staying down varying lengths of time and coming up for air to disappear again, occasionally coming up with fish on the spears. Joseph was sculling from one to another to take the fish off the spear points and drop them into the dinghy. He could hear Joseph shouting and laughing and see the bright color of the fish, red or red with brown speckles or red and yellow or striped yellow as Joseph took them off the spears or pulled them loose and tossed them back into the shade under the stern of the dinghy.

  “Let me have a drink, Eddy, will you please?” Thomas Hudson called down over the side.

  “What’s it to be?” Eddie stuck his head out of the forward cockpit. He was wearing his old felt hat and a white shirt and in the bright sun his eyes were bloodshot and Thomas Hudson noticed he had Mercurochrome on his lips.

  “What did you do to your mouth?” he asked him.

  “Some sort of trouble last night. I just put that on. Does it show bad?”

  “It makes you look like some back island whore.”

  “Oh hell,” said Eddy. “I put it on without looking at it in the dark. Just by the feel. Do you want a drink with coconut water? I got some water coconuts.”

  “Very good.”

  “Want a Green Isaac’s Special?”


  “Fine. Make it a Special.”

  Where Thomas Hudson lay on the mattress his head was in the shade cast by the platform at the forward end of the flying bridge where the controls were and when Eddy came aft with the tall cold drink made of gin, lime juice, green coconut water, and chipped ice with just enough Angostura bitters to give it a rusty, rose color, he held the drink in the shadow so the ice would not melt while he looked out over the sea.

  “Boys seem to be doing all right,” Eddy said. “We’ve got fish for dinner already.”

  “What else will we have?”

  “Mashed potatoes with the fish. Got some tomato salad, too. That potato salad to start with.”

  “Sounds fine. How’s that potato salad?”

  “It isn’t cold yet, Tom.”

  “Eddy, you like to cook, don’t you?”

  “Damn right I like to cook. I like going in a boat and I like to cook. What I don’t like is rows and fights and trouble.”

  “You used to be pretty good at trouble, though.”

  “I always avoided it, Tom. Sometimes you can’t avoid it but I always tried to.”

  “What was it last night?”

  “Nothing.”

  He didn’t want to talk about it. He never talked about the old days either when there had been plenty of trouble.

  “All right. What else is there to eat? We have to feed them up. They’re growing boys.”

  “I made a cake at the house and brought her and there’s a couple of fresh pineapples cold in the ice. I’ll slice them up.”

  “Good. How will we have the fish?”

  “Any way you want it. Let’s see what the best is of what they get, then cook it how they and you and Roger want it. David just got a good yellowtail. He had another one but he lost it. This one’s a big flaggy. He’s getting far out, though. He’s still got the fish and Joe’s the hell over toward Andy with the dinghy.”

  Thomas Hudson put the drink down in the shade and stood up.

  “Jesus Christ,” Eddy said. “There it comes!”

  Out across the blue water, showing like a brown dinghy sail and slicing through the water with heavy, tail-propelled, lunging thrusts, the high triangular fin was coming in toward the hole at the edge of the reef where the boy with the mask on his face held his fish up out of the water.

  “Oh Jesus,” Eddy said. “What a son of a bitching hammerhead. Jesus, Tom. Oh Jesus.”

  Thomas Hudson remembered, afterwards, the main impression he had was the great height of the fin, the way it turned and swung like a hound on a scent, and the way it knifed forward and still seemed to wobble.

  He had the .256 up and shot just ahead of the fin. The shot was over and threw a spurt of water and he remembered the barrel was sticky with oil. The fin went right on weaving in.

  “Throw him the goddam fish,” Eddy yelled to David and jumped off the back of the house down into the cockpit.

  Thomas Hudson shot again and was behind with another spurt of water. He felt sick at his stomach, as though something had hold of him inside and was gripping him there, and he shot again; as carefully and steady as he could; knowing fully what the shot meant; and the spurt of water was ahead of the fin. The fin kept right on with the same awful motion. He had one shot now, no extra shells, and the shark was about thirty yards from the boy, coming in with the same slicing motion. David had the fish of the spear in his hand, the mask was up on his forehead, and he was looking steadily toward the shark coming.

  Thomas Hudson was trying to be loose but steady, trying to hold his breath and not to think of anything but the shot; to squeeze and keep just a touch ahead and at the base of the fin which was wobbling more now than it had at the start when he heard the submachine gun start firing from the stern and saw water start to spout all around the fin. Then it clattered again in a short burst and the water jumped in a tighter patch right at the base of the fin. As he shot, the clatter came again, short and tight, and the fin went under and there was a boil in the water and then the biggest hammerhead he had ever seen rose white-bellied out of the sea and began to plane over the water crazily, on his back, throwing water like an aquaplane. His belly was shining an obscene white, his yard-wide mouth like a turned-up grin, the great horns of his head with the eyes on the end, spread wide out as he bounced and slid over the water. Eddy’s gun rapping and ripping into the white of his belly making black spots that were red before he turned and went down and Thomas Hudson could see him rolling over and over as he sank.

  “Get those goddamned kids in here,” he heard Eddy shouting. “I can’t stand this sort of thing.”

  Roger had swum fast toward David, and Joseph was pulling Andy into the dinghy and then sculling out toward the other two.

  “Goddam,” Eddy said. “Did you ever see such a hammerhead? Thank God they show on the surface when they hook up. Thank God for that. The bastards always get on top. Did you see him go?”

  “Give me a box of shells,” Thomas Hudson said. He was shaky and hollow sick feeling inside. “Come on in here,” he shouted. They were swimming alongside of the dinghy and Roger was pushing David up over the gunwale.

  “They might as well fish,” Eddy said. “Any shark in the ocean will go for him now. He’ll call the whole ocean up. Did you see him go on his back, Tom, and then that damned roll? Jesus, what a hammerhead. Did you see the kid with the fish ready to throw him? That’s my Davy boy. Oh what a old Davy boy.”

  “They better come in.”

  “Sure they better. I was just talking. They’ll come in. Don’t worry they won’t come in.”

  “God, it was a terrible thing. Where did you have that gun?”

  “Commissioner made some trouble about me having it ashore so I’ve been keeping it in the locker under my bunk.”

  “You certainly can shoot it.”

  “Hell, who couldn’t shoot it with that shark going toward that old Davy boy waiting there quiet with that fish to throw? Looking straight at where the shark was coming. Hell, I don’t care if I never see anything else in my goddam life.”

  They came up over the side out of the dinghy. The kids were wet and very excited and Roger was very shaken. He went over and shook hands with Eddy and Eddy said, “We never should have let them get out like that on this tide.”

  Roger shook his head and put his arm around Eddy.

  “My fault,” Eddy said. “I was born here. You’re a stranger. It wasn’t your fault. I’m the one that’s responsible.”

  “You lived up to your responsibilities all right,” Roger said.

  “Hell,” Eddy said. “Nobody could miss him at that range.”

  “Could you see him, Dave?” Andrew asked very politely.

  “Only his fin till just at the end. Then I could see him before Eddy hit him and he went down and then came out on his back.”

  Eddy was rubbing him with a towel and Thomas Hudson could see the goose pimples still over his legs and back and shoulders.

  “I never saw anything like when he came out of water and started to go on his back,” young Tom said. “I never saw anything in the world like that.”

  “You won’t see a lot of things like that,” his father told him.

  “He must have weighed eleven hundred pounds,” Eddy said. “I don’t think they make a bigger hammerhead. Jesus, Roger, did you see that fin on him?”

  “I saw it,” Roger said.

  “Do you think we can get him?” David asked.

  “Hell no,” Eddy said. “He went down rolling over and over to hell knows where. He’s down in eighty fathoms and the whole ocean will eat on him. He’s calling them up now.”

  “I wish we could have got him,” David said.

  “Take it easy, Davy boy. You got the goose flesh on you still.”

  “Were you very scared, Dave?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes,” David told him.

  “What were you going to do?” Tom asked, very respectfully.

  “I was going to throw the fish to him,” David said and
as Thomas Hudson watched him the little sharp wave of pimples spread over his shoulders. “Then I was going to hit him in the middle of his face with the grains.”

  “Oh hell,” Eddy said and he turned away with the towel. “What do you want to drink, Roger?”

  “Have you got any hemlock?” Roger asked him.

  “Cut it out, Roger,” Thomas Hudson said. “We were all responsible.”

  “Irresponsible.”

  “It’s over.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll make some gin drinks,” Eddy said. “Tom had a gin drink when it happened.”

  “It’s still up there.”

  “It won’t be any damn good now,” Eddy said. “I’ll make you a fresh one.”

  “You’re pretty good, Davy,” young Tom told him very proudly. “Wait till I tell the boys about this at school.”

  “They wouldn’t believe it,” David said. “Don’t tell them if I’m going there.”

  “Why?” young Tom asked.

  “I don’t know,” David said. Then he started to cry like a little boy. “Oh shit, I couldn’t stand it if they didn’t believe it.”

  Thomas Hudson picked him up and held him in his arms with his head against his chest and the other kids turned away and Roger looked away and then Eddy came out with three drinks with his thumb in one of them. Thomas Hudson could tell he’d had another one below.

  “What’s the matter with you, Davy?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Good,” Eddy said. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk, you damn old son of a bitch. Get down and quit blubbering and let your old man drink.”

  David stood there standing very straight.

  “Is it OK to fish that part in low tide?” he asked Eddy.

  “Nothing will bother you,” Eddy said. “There’s morays. But nothing big will come in. They can’t make it at low tide.”

  “Can we go at low tide, papa?”

  “If Eddy says so. Eddy’s the boss man.”

  “Hell, Tom,” Eddy said, and he was very happy, his Mercurochromed lips were happy and his bloodshot eyes as happy as eyes could be. “Anybody couldn’t hit that damned no-good hammerhead with one of those things ought to throw the damn thing away before he’d get in trouble with it.”