Islands in the Stream (17 page)

“Thanks, Tommy,” he heard Eddy say and then the boy climbed up with his paper-wrapped glass and Thomas Hudson tasted, took a swallow and felt the cold that had the sharpness of the lime, the aromatic varnishy taste of the Angostura and the gin stiffening the lightness of the ice-cold coconut water.

“Is it all right, papa?” the boy asked. He had a bottle of beer from the icebox that was perspiring cold drops in the sun.

“It’s excellent,” his father told him. “You put in plenty of gin too.”

“I have to,” young Tom said. “Because the ice melts so fast. We ought to have some sort of insulated holders for the glasses so the ice wouldn’t melt. I’m going to work out something at school. I think I could make them out of cork blocks. Maybe I can make them for you for Christmas.”

“Look at Dave now,” his father said.

David was working on the fish as though he had just started the fight.

“Look how sort of slab-sided he is,” young Tom said. “His chest and his back are all the same. He looks sort of like he was glued together. But he’s got the longest arm muscles you could ever see. They’re just as long on the back of his arms as on the front. The biceps and the triceps I mean. He’s certainly built strangely, papa. He’s a strange boy and he’s the best damn brother you can have.”

Down in the cockpit Eddy had drained his glass and was wiping David’s back with a towel again. Then he wiped his chest and his long arms.

“You all right, Davy?”

David nodded.

“Listen,” Eddy told him, “I’ve seen a grown man, strong, shoulders like a bull, yellow-out and quit on half the work you’ve put in on that fish already.”

David kept on working.

“Big man. Your Dad and Roger both know him. Trained for it. Fishing all the time. Hooked the biggest goddam fish a man ever hooked and yellowed out and quit on him just because he hurt. Fish made him hurt so he quit. You just keep it steady, Davy.”

David did not say anything. He was saving his breath and pumping, lowering, raising, and reeling.

“This damn fish is so strong because he’s a he,” Eddy told him. “If it was a she it would have quit long ago. It would have bust its insides or its heart or burst its roe. In this kind of fish the he is the strongest. In lots of other fish it’s the she that is strongest. But not with broadbill. He’s awfully strong, Davy. But you’ll get him.”

The line started to go out again and David shut his eyes a moment, braced his bare feet against the wood, hung back against the rod, and rested.

“That’s right, Davy,” Eddy said. “Only work when you’re working. He’s just circling. But the drag makes him work for it and it’s tiring him all the time.”

Eddy turned his head and looked below and Thomas Hudson knew from the way he squinted his eyes that he was looking at the big brass clock on the cabin wall.

“It’s five over three, Roger,” he said. “You’ve been with him three hours and five minutes, Davy old boy.”

They were at the point where David should have started to gain line. But instead the line was going out steadily.

“He’s sounding again,” Roger said. “Watch yourself, Davy. Can you see the line OK, Tom?”

“I can see it OK,” Thomas Hudson told him. It was not yet at a very steep slant and he could see it a long way down in the water from the top of the house.

“He may want to go down to die,” Thomas Hudson told his oldest boy, speaking very low. “That would ruin Dave.”

Young Tom shook his head and bit his lips.

“Hold him all you can, Dave,” Thomas Hudson heard Roger say. “Tighten up on him and give it all it will take.”

The boy tightened up the drag almost to the breaking point of the rod and line and then hung on, bracing himself to take the punishment the best he could, while the line went out and out and down and down.

“When you stop him this time I think you will have whipped him,” Roger told David. “Throw her out, Tom.”

“She’s cut,” Thomas Hudson said. “But I think I could save a little backing.”

“OK. Try it.”

“Backing now,” Thomas Hudson said. They saved a little line by backing but not much, and the line was getting terribly straight up and down. There was less on the reel now than at the worst time before.

“You’ll have to get out on the stern, Davy,” Roger said. “You’ll have to loosen the drag up a little to get the butt out.”

David loosened the drag.

“Now get the butt into your butt rest. You hold him around the waist, Eddy.”

“Oh God, papa,” young Tom said. “He’s taking it all right to the bottom now.”

David was on his knees on the low stern now, the rod bent so that its tip was underwater, its butt in the leather socket of the butt rest that was strapped around his waist. Andrew was holding onto David’s feet and Roger knelt beside him watching the line in the water and the little there was on the reel. He shook his head at Thomas Hudson.

There was not twenty yards more on the reel and David was pulled down with half the rod underwater now. Then there was barely fifteen yards on the reel. Now there was not ten yards. Then the line stopped going out. The boy was still bent far over the stern and most of the rod was in the water. But no line was going out.

“Get him back into the chair, Eddy. Easy. Easy,” Roger said. “When you can, I mean. He’s stopped him.”

Eddy helped David back into the fighting chair, holding him around the waist so that a sudden lurch by the fish would not pull the boy overboard. Eddy eased him into the chair and David got the rod butt into the gimbel socket and braced with his feet and pulled back on the rod. The fish lifted a little.

“Only pull when you are going to get some line,” Roger told David. “Let him pull the rest of the time. Try and rest inside the action except when you are working on him.”

“You’ve got him, Davy,” Eddy said. “You’re getting it on him all the time. Just take it slow and easy and you’ll kill him.

Thomas Hudson eased the boat a little forward to put the fish further astern. There was good shadow now over all the stern. The boat was working steadily further out to sea and no wind troubled the surface.

“Papa,” young Tom said to his father. “I was looking at his feet when I made the drinks. They’re bleeding.”

“He’s chafed them pulling against the wood.”

“Do you think I could put a pillow there? A cushion for him to pull against?”

“Go down and ask Eddy,” Thomas Hudson said. “But don’t interrupt Dave.”

It was well into the fourth hour of the fight now. The boat was still working out to sea and David, with Roger holding the back of his chair now, was raising the fish steadily. David looked stronger now than he had an hour before but Thomas Hudson could see where his heels showed the blood that had run down from the soles of his feet. It looked varnished in the sun.

“How’s your feet, Davy?” Eddy asked.

“They don’t hurt,” David said. “What hurts is my hands and arms and my back.”

“I could put a cushion under them.”

David shook his head.

“I think they’d stick,” he said. “They’re sticky. They don’t hurt. Really.”

Young Tom came up to the top side and said, “He’s wearing the bottoms of his feet right off. He’s getting his hands bad too. He’s had blisters and now they’re all open. Gee, papa. I don’t know.”

“It’s the same as if he had to paddle against a stiff current, Tommy. Or if he had to keep going up a mountain or stick with a horse after he was awfully tired.”

“I know it. But just watching it and not doing it seems so sort of awful when it’s your brother.”

“I know it, Tommy. But there is a time boys have to do things if they are ever going to be men. That’s where Dave is now.”

“I know it. But when I see his feet and his hands I don’t know, papa.”

“If you had the fish would you want Roger or me to take him away from you?”

“No. I’d want to stay with him till I died. But to see it with Davy is different.”

“We have to think about how he feels,” his father told him. “And what’s important to him.”

“I know,” young Tom said hopelessly. “But to me it’s just Davy. I wish the world wasn’t the way it is and that things didn’t have to happen to brothers.”

“I do too,” Thomas Hudson said. “You’re an awfully good boy, Tommy. But please know I would have stopped this long ago except that I know that if David catches this fish he’ll have something inside him for all his life and it will make everything else easier.”

Just then Eddy spoke. He had been looking behind him into the cabin again.

“Four hours even, Roger,” he said. “You better take some water, Davy. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” David said.

“I know what I’ll do that is practical,” young Tom said. “I’ll make a drink for Eddy. Do you want one, papa?”

“No. I’ll skip this one,” Thomas Hudson said.

Young Tom went below and Thomas Hudson watched David working slowly, tiredly but steadily; Roger bending over him and speaking to him in a low voice; Eddy out on the stern watching the slant of the line in the water. Thomas Hudson tried to picture how it would be down where the swordfish was swimming. It was dark of course but probably the fish could see as a horse can see. It would be very cold.

He wondered if the fish was alone or if there could be another fish swimming with him. They had seen no other fish but that did not prove this fish was alone. There might be another with him in the dark and the cold.

Thomas Hudson wondered why the fish had stopped when he had gone so deep the last time. Did the fish reach his maximum possible depth the way a plane reached its ceiling? Or had the pulling against the bend of the rod, the heavy drag on the line, and the resistance of its friction in the water discouraged him so that now he swam quietly in the direction he wished to go? Was he only rising a little, steadily, as David lifted on him; rising docilely to ease the unpleasant tension that held him? Thomas Hudson thought that was probably the way it was and that David might have great trouble with him yet if the fish was still strong.

Young Tom had brought Eddy’s own bottle to him and Eddy had taken a long pull out of it and then asked Tom to put it in the bait box to keep it cool. “And handy,” he added. “If I see Davy fight this fish much longer it will make a damned rummy out of me.”

“I’ll bring it any time you want it,” Andrew said.

“Don’t bring it when I want it,” Eddy told him. “Bring it when I ask for it.”

The oldest boy had come up with Thomas Hudson and together they watched Eddy bend over David and look carefully into his eyes. Roger was holding the chair and watching the line.

“Now listen, Davy,” Eddy told the boy, looking close into his face. “Your hands and your feet don’t mean a damn thing. They hurt and they look bad but they are all right. That’s the way a fisherman’s hands and feet are supposed to get and next time they’ll be tougher. But is your bloody head all right?”

“Fine,” David said.

“Then God bless you and stay with the son of a bitch because we are going to have him up here soon.”

“Davy,” Roger spoke to the boy. “Do you want me to take him?”

David shook his head.

“It wouldn’t be quitting now,” Roger said. “It would just make sense. I could take him or your father could take him.”

“Am I doing anything wrong?” David asked bitterly.

“No. You’re doing perfectly.”

“Then why should I quit on him?”

“He’s giving you an awful beating, Davy,” Roger said. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

“He’s the one has the hook in his goddam mouth,” David’s voice was unsteady. “He isn’t giving me a beating. I’m giving him a beating. The son of a bitch.”

“Say anything you want, Dave,” Roger told him.

“The damn son of a bitch. The big son of a bitch.”

“He’s crying,” Andrew, who had come up topside and was standing with young Tom and his father, said. “He’s talking that way to get rid of it.”

“Shut up, horseman,” young Tom said.

“I don’t care if he kills me, the big son of a bitch,” David said. “Oh hell. I don’t hate him. I love him.”

“You shut up now,” Eddy said to David. “You save your wind.”

He looked at Roger and Roger lifted his shoulders to show he did not know.

“If I see you getting excited like that I’ll take him away from you,” Eddy said.

“I’m always excited,” David said. “Just because I never say it nobody knows. I’m no worse now. It’s only the talking.”

“Well you shut up now and take it easy,” Eddy said. “You stay calm and quiet and we’ll go with him forever.”

“I’ll stay with him,” David said. “I’m sorry I called him the names. I don’t want to say anything against him. I think he’s the finest thing in the world.”

“Andy, get me that bottle of pure alcohol,” Eddy said. I’m going to loosen up his arms and shoulders and his legs,” he said to Roger. “I don’t want to use any more of that ice water for fear I’d cramp him up.”

He looked into the cabin and said, “Five and a half even, Roger.” He turned to David, “You don’t feel too heated up now, do you, Davy?”

The boy shook his head.

“That straight-up-and-down sun in the middle of the day was what I was afraid of,” Eddy said. “Nothing going to happen to you now, Davy. Just take it easy and whip this old fish. We want to whip him before dark.”

David nodded.

“Papa, did you ever see a fish fight like this one?” young Tom asked.

“Yes,” Thomas Hudson told him.

“Very many?”

“I don’t know, Tommy. There are some terrible fish in this Gulf. Then there are huge big fish that are easy to catch.”

“Why are some easier?”

“I think because they get old and fat. Some I think are almost old enough to die. Then, of course, some of the biggest jump themselves to death.”

There had been no boats in sight for a long time and it was getting late in the afternoon and they were a long way out between the island and the great Isaacs light.

“Try him once more, Davy,” Roger said.

The boy bent his back, pulled back against his braced feet, and the rod, instead of staying solid, lifted slowly.

“You’ve got him coming,” Roger said. “Get that line on and try him again.”

The boy lifted and again recovered line.