There was quite a lot of celebration going on at Bobby’s place and you could see the lights from the open door over the water. The tide was still ebbing strong, and out where the light shone fish were jumping. They were gray snappers mostly, Tom thought, feeding on the bait fish that fell out with the tide. A few Negro boys were fishing with hand lines and you could hear them talking and cursing softly when they lost a fish, and hear the snappers flopping on the dock when they landed one. There were big snappers out there and the boys were baiting them up with chunks of marlin meat from a fish one of the boats had brought in early that afternoon and that had already been hung up, photographed, weighed, and butchered.
There was quite a crowd on the dock now with the singing and Rupert Pinder, a very big Negro who was said to have once carried a piano on his back, unaided, from the Government dock all the way up the King’s Highway to the old club that the hurricane blew away, and who fancied himself as a fighting man, called down from the dock, “Captain John, boys say they getting thirsty.”
“Buy something inexpensive and healthful, Rupert.”
“Yes sir, Captain John. Rum.”
“That’s what I had in mind,” John said. “Why not try for a demijohn? Better value, I think.”
“Many thanks, Captain John,” Rupert said. Rupert moved off through the crowd which thinned rapidly and fell in behind him. Thomas Hudson could see them all heading toward Roy’s place.
Just then, from one of the boats tied up at Brown’s dock, a rocket rose with a whoosh high into the sky and burst with a pop to light up the channel. Another went whooshing up at an angle and burst, this time, just over the near end of their dock.
“Damn,” said Fred Wilson. “We should have sent over to Miami for some.”
The night was lighted now with rockets whishing and popping and, in the light, Rupert and his followers were coming back out onto the dock, Rupert carrying a big wicker demijohn on his shoulder.
Someone fired a rocket from one of the boats and it burst just over the dock, lighting up the crowd, the dark faces, necks, and hands, and Rupert’s flat face, wide shoulders, and thick neck with the wicker-covered jug resting tenderly and proudly alongside his head.
“Cups,” he said to his followers, speaking over his shoulder. “Enameled cups.”
“Got tin cups, Rupert,” one boy said.
“Enameled cups,” Rupert said. “Get them. Buy them from Roy. Here’s money.”
“Get the Verey pistol of ours, Frank,” Fred Wilson said. “We might as well shoot up those flares and get some fresh ones.”
While Rupert waited grandly for the cups someone brought a saucepan and Rupert poured into it and it was passed around.
“For the little people,” Rupert said. “Drink up, unimportant people.”
Singing was proceeding steadily and with little organization. Along with the rockets some of the boats were firing off rifles and pistols and from Brown’s dock a Tommy gun was skipping tracers out over the channel. It fired a burst of threes and fours, then loosed off a full clip, rattling the red tracers out in a lovely looping arc over the harbor.
The cups came at the same time as Frank Hart dropped down into the stern carrying a case with a Verey pistol and an assortment of flares and one of Rupert’s assistants started pouring and handing cups around.
“God bless the Queen,” Frank Hart said and loaded and fired a flare past the end of the dock directly at the open door of Mr. Bobby’s place. The flare hit the concrete wall beside the door, burst, and burned brightly on the coral road, lighting everything with a white light.
“Take it easy,” Thomas Hudson said. “Those things can burn people.”
“The hell with take it easy,” Frank said. “Let me see if I can bag the Commissioner’s house.”
“You’ll burn it,” Roger told him.
“If I burn it I’ll pay for it,” Frank said.
The flare arced up toward the big white-porched house but it was short and burned brightly just this side of the Commissioner’s front porch.