ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

“You want to answer them for me?”

“Yes sir. If that’s what you want. I’m educated way beyond my means.”

“Better bring them up.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Tom. There’s a paper too.”

“Save it for breakfast, please, Joseph.”

Thomas Hudson sat and read his mail and sipped at the cool drink. He read one letter over again and then put them all in a drawer of his desk.

“Joseph,” he called. “Have you everything ready for the boys?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Tom. And two extra cases of Coca-Cola. Young Tom, he must be bigger than me, ain’t he?”

“Not yet.”

“Think he can lick me now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I fought that boy so many times in private life,” Joseph said. “Sure is funny to call him mister. Mr. Tom, Mr. David, and Mr. Andrew. Three of the finest goddam boys I know. And the meanest is Andy.”

“He started out mean,” Thomas Hudson said.

“And boy, did he continue,” Joseph said admiringly.

“You set them a good example this summer.”

“Mr. Tom, you don’t want me to set those boys no good example this summer. Maybe three four years back when I was innocent. Me, I’m going to pattern myself on Tom. He’s been to an expensive school and he’s got good expensive manners. I can’t look like him exactly. But I can act like him. Free and easy but polite. Then I’m going to be smart like Dave. That’s the hardest part. Then I’m going to learn the secret of how Andy gets that mean.”

“Don’t you get mean around here.”

“No, Mr. Tom, you mistook what I meant. That meanness isn’t for in the house. I want that for my private life.”

“It will be nice to have them, won’t it?”

“Mr. Tom, there won’t be nothing like it since they had the big fire. I rank it right along with the Second Coming. Is it nice? you ask me. Yes sir, it’s nice.”

“We’ll have to figure out plenty of things for them to do to have fun.”

“No, Mr. Tom,” Joseph said. “We ought to figure out how to save them from their own fearsome projects. Eddy can help us. He knows them better than me. I’m their friend and that makes it difficult.”

“How’s Eddy?”

“He’s been drinking a little in anticipation of the Queen’s birthday. He’s in tip-top shape.”

“I better get down to Mr. Bobby’s while he’s still in that evil mood.”

“He asked for you, Mr. Tom. Mr. Bobby’s a gentleman if there ever was a gentleman and sometimes that trash comes in on yachts gets him worn down. He was wore down almighty thin when I left.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I went for Coca-Cola and I stayed to keep my hand in shooting a stick of pool.”

“How’s the table?”

“Worse.”

“I’ll go down,” said Thomas Hudson. “I want to take a shower and change.”

“I’ve got them laying out for you on the bed,” Joseph told him. “You want another gin and tonic?”

“No thanks.”

“Mr. Roger’s in on the boat.”

“Good. I’ll get hold of him.”

“Will he be staying here?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll make up a bed for him anyway.”

“Good.”

III

Thomas Hudson took a shower, scrubbing his head with soap and then rinsing under the prickling drive of the sharp, jetted shower. He was a big man and he looked bigger stripped than he did in his clothes. He was very tanned and his hair was faded and streaked from the sun. He carried no extra weight and on the scales he saw that he weighed 192 pounds.

I should have gone swimming before I took the shower, he thought. But I had a long swim this morning before I started work and I’m tired now. There will be plenty of swimming when the boys come. And Roger’s here too. That’s good.

He put on a clean pair of shorts and an old Basque shut and moccasins and went out the door and down the slope and through the gate in the picket fence onto the white glare of the sun-bleached coral of the King’s Highway.

Ahead a very erect-walking old Negro in a black alpaca coat and pressed dark trousers came out of one of the unpainted board shacks along the road that was shaded by two tall coconut palms and turned into the highway ahead of him. Thomas Hudson saw his fine black face as he turned.

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