“There was a man named Bosch could paint pretty well along those lines.”
“The magneto man?”
“No. Hieronymus Bosch. Very old-timer. Very good. Pieter Brueghel worked on that too.”
“He an old-timer too?”
“Very old-timer. Very good. You’d like him.”
“Oh hell,” said Bobby. “No old-timer will touch us. Besides the world’s never ended yet, so how the hell does he know any more about it than we do?”
“He’d be pretty hard to beat.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” Bobby said. “We’ve got a picture that would put him out of business.”
“What about another one of those?”
“Yes, damn it. I forget this is a bar room. God bless the Queen, Tom. We’re forgetting what day it is, too. Here, have one on me and we’ll drink her health.”
He poured himself a small glass of rum and handed Thomas Hudson the bottle of Booth’s yellow gin, some limes on a plate, a knife, and a bottle of Schweppes’s Indian Tonic Water.
“Fix your own damn drink. The hell with those fancy drinks.”
After Thomas Hudson had made the drink and shaken a few drops of bitters in it from the bottle that had a gull’s quill in the cork, he raised his glass and then looked down the bar.
“What are you two drinking? Name it if it’s simple.”
“Dog’s Head,” one of the sailors said.
“Dog’s Head it is,” Bobby said and reached into the ice tub and handed them the two cold bottles of ale. “The glasses are out. Rummies been throwing the glasses away all day. Everybody got their drinks? Gentlemen, The Queen. I don’t think she’d care much for this island and I’m not sure she’d do extremely well here. But gentlemen, The Queen. God bless her.”
They all drank her health.
“Must be a great woman,” said Bobby. “Bit on the stiff side for me. Always fancied Queen Alexandra myself. Lovely type. But we will try to give the Queen’s Birthday full honors. This is a small island but a patriotic one. Man from here went to the last war and had his arm shot off. Can’t be more patriotic than that.”
“Whose birthday did he say it was?” one of the sailors asked.
“Queen Mary of England,” Bobby said. “Mother of the present King Emperor.”
“That’s the one the Queen Mary’s named after, isn’t it?” the other sailor asked.
“Tom,” said Bobby. “You and I will drink the next toast alone.”
IV
It was dark now and there was a breeze blowing so that there were no mosquitoes nor sand flies and the boats had all come in, hoisting their outriggers as they came up the channel, and now were lying tied up in the slips of the three docks that projected out from the beach into the harbor. The tide was running out fast and the lights of the boats shone on the water that showed green in the light and moved so fast it sucked at the piling of the docks and swirled at the stern of the big cruiser they were on. Alongside in the water where the light was reflected off the planking of the cruiser toward the unpainted piling of the dock where old motorcar and truck tires were tied as fenders, making dark rings against the darkness under the rock, garfish, attracted by the light, held themselves against the current. Thin and long, shining as green as the water, only their tails moving, they were not feeding, nor playing; only holding themselves there in the fascination of the light.
Johnny Goodner’s cruiser, Narwhal, where they were waiting for Roger Davis, was headed into the ebbing tide and astern of her in the same slip, made fast so that the two cabin cruisers lay stern to stern, was the boat of the party that had been at Bobby’s place all day. Johnny Goodner sat in a chair in the stern with his feet on another chair and a Tom Collins in his right hand and a long, green Mexican chile pepper in his left.
“It’s wonderful,” he said. “I bite just a little piece and it sets my mouth on fire and I cool it with this.”