“You don’t have to tell me,” Eddy said. “I’ll see that old evil son of a bitch going on his back the rest of my life. Did you ever see anything look more evil?”
They sat there waiting for the lunch and Thomas Hudson was looking out to sea where Joseph had sculled out to where the shark had gone down. Joseph was looking over the side of the dinghy into a water glass.
“Can you see anything?” Thomas Hudson called to him.
“Too deep, Mr. Tom. He went down right over the shelf. He’s laying on the bottom now.”
“I wish we could have gotten his jaws,” young Tom said. “Wouldn’t you like to have them all bleached and hanging up, papa?”
“I think they would give me bad dreams,” Andrew said. “I’m just as glad we haven’t got them.”
“They’d be a wonderful trophy,” young Tom said. “That would be something to take to school.”
“They’d belong to Dave if we had them,” Andrew said.
“No. They’d belong to Eddy,” young Tom said. “I believe he’d give them to me if I asked him for them.”
“He’d give them to Dave,” Andrew said.
“I don’t think maybe you should go out again so soon, Dave,” Thomas Hudson said.
“It won’t be till plenty of time after lunch,” David said. “We have to wait for the low tide.”
“I mean goggle-fish so soon.”
“Eddy said it was all right.”
“I know. But I’m still pretty spooked.”
“But Eddy knows.”
“You wouldn’t like to just not go as a present to me?”
“Certainly, papa, if you want. But I love it underwater. I guess I love it more than anything. And if Eddy says—”
“OK,” said Thomas Hudson. “People aren’t supposed to ask for presents anyway.”
“Papa, I didn’t mean it like that. I won’t go if you don’t want me to. Only Eddy said—”
“What about a moray? Eddy mentioned morays.”
“Papa, there’s always morays. You taught me not to be afraid of morays and how to handle them and how to watch out for them and the kind of holes they live in.”
“I know. And I let you go out there where that shark came.”
“Papa, we were all out there. Don’t make yourself some sort of special guilt about it. I just went too far out and I lost that good yellowtail after I’d speared him and he bloodied the water and that called the shark.”
“Didn’t he come just like a hound though?” Thomas Hudson said. He was trying to get rid of the emotion. “I’ve seen them come at really great speed like that before. There was one that used to live off Signal Rock that used to come that way on the smell of a bait. I’m very ashamed I couldn’t hit him.”
“You were shooting awfully close to him, papa,” young Tom said.
“I was doing everything but hit him.”
“He wasn’t coming for me, papa,” David said. “He was coming for the fish.”
“He’d have taken you, though,” Eddy said. He was setting the table. “Don’t ever fool yourself he wouldn’t with that fish smell on you and the blood in the water. He’d have hit a horse. He’d have hit anything. Good God, don’t talk about it. I’ll have to have another drink.”
“Eddy,” David said. “Will it really be safe on the low tide?”
“Sure. Didn’t I tell you so before?”
“You aren’t making some sort of a point, are you?” Thomas Hudson asked David. He had stopped looking out across the water and he was all right again. He knew that what David was doing was what he should do no matter why he was doing it and he knew he had been selfish about it.
“Papa, all I mean is that I love it better than anything else and it’s such a wonderful day for it and we never know when it might blow—”
“And Eddy says,” Thomas Hudson interrupted.
“And Eddy says,” David grinned with him.
“Eddy says the hell with all of you. Come on and eat it up now before I throw it the hell overboard.” He stood there with the bowl of salad, the platter of browned fish, and the mashed potatoes. “Where’s that Joe?”