“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.