ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

He took the first bite, swallowed, blew out, “thew!” through rolled tongue, and took a long swallow of the tall drink. His full lower lip licked his thin Irish upper lip and he smiled with his gray eyes. His mouth was sliced upwards at the corners so it always looked as though he were about to smile, or had just smiled, but his mouth told very little about him unless you noticed the thinness of the upper lip. His eyes were what you needed to watch. He was the size and build of a middleweight gone a little heavy; but he looked in good shape lying there relaxed and that is how a man looks bad who is really out of shape. His face was brown but peeling across the nose and the forehead that went back with his receding hairline. He had a scar on his chin that could have been taken for a dimple if it had been just a little closer to the center and his nose had been just perceptibly flattened across the bridge. It wasn’t a flat nose. It just looked as though it had been done by a modern sculptor who worked directly in the stone and had taken off just the shadow of a chip too many.

“Tom, you worthless character, what have you been doing?”

“Working pretty steadily.”

“You would,” he said and took another bite of the chile. It was a very wrinkled and droopy chile about six niches long.

“Only the first one hurts,” he said. “It’s like love.”

“The hell it is. Chiles can hurt both ways.”

“And love?”

“The hell with love,” Thomas Hudson said.

“What a sentiment. What a way to talk. What are you getting to be? A victim of sheepherder’s madness on this island?”

“No sheep here, Johnny.”

“Stone-crab herder’s madness then,” Johnny said. “We don’t want to have you have to be netted or anything. Try one of these chiles.”

“I have,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Oh I know your past,” he said. “Don’t pull your illustrious past on me. You probably invented them. I know. Probably the man who introduced them into Patagonia on Yak-back. But I represent modern times. Listen Tommy. I have these chiles stuffed with salmon. Stuffed with bacalao. Stuffed with Chilean bonito. Stuffed with Mexican turtledoves’ breasts. Stuffed with turkey meat and mole. They’ll stuff them with anything and I buy them. Makes me feel like a damned potentate. But all that’s a perversion. Just this long, drooping, uninspiring, unstuffed, unpromising old chile with the brown chupango sauce is the best. You bastard,” he blew out through his pursed tongue again, “I got too much of you that time.”

He took a really long pull at the Tom Collins.

“They give me a reason for drinking,” he explained. “Have to cool my damned mouth. What are you having?”

“I might take one more gin and tonic.”

“Boy,” Johnny called. “One more gin and tonic for Bwana M’Kubwa.”

Fred, one of the island boys Johnny’s captain had hired, brought in the drink.

“Here it is, Mr. Tom.”

“Thank you, Fred,” Thomas Hudson said. “The Queen, God bless her,” and they drank.

“Where’s the old whoremaster?”

“Up at his house. He’ll be down.”

He ate some more of the chile without commenting on it, finished his drink, and said, “How are you really, old Tom?”

“OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ve learned how to live by myself pretty well and I work hard.”

“Do you like it here? I mean for all the time.”

“Yes. I got sick of moving around with it. I’d rather have it here. I get along well enough here, Johnny. Pretty damn well.”

“It’s a good place,” said Johnny. “It’s a good place for a guy like you that’s got some sort of inner resources. Hell of a place for a guy like me that keeps chasing it or running away from it. Is it true that Roger’s gone Red on us?”

“So they’re saying that already.”

“That’s what I heard on the coast.”

“What happened to him out there?”

“I don’t know all of it. But it was something pretty bad.”

“Really bad?”

“They’ve got different ideas of what’s bad out there. It wasn’t St. Quentin quail if that’s what you mean. Anyway out there with that climate and the fresh vegetables and everything it’s like the size of their football players. Hell, girls fifteen look twenty-four. At twenty-four they’re Dame May Whitty. If you’re not a marrying man you better look at their teeth pretty close. And of course you can’t tell a damn thing from their teeth. And they’ve all got mothers and fathers or one or the other and they’re all hungry. Climate gives them appetite, too, of course. Trouble is, people get enthusiastic sometimes and don’t ask for their driving licenses or their social security cards. I think they ought to measure it by size and weight and general capabilities and not just by age. Wreaks too many injustices just going by age. All around. Precocity isn’t penalized in any other sport. Other way around. Apprentice allowance claimed would be the fairest. Same as racing. They had me pretty well boxed on that rap. But that wasn’t what they got old Roger on.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *