“Now listen, Davy,” Eddy told the boy, looking close into his face. “Your hands and your feet don’t mean a damn thing. They hurt and they look bad but they are all right. That’s the way a fisherman’s hands and feet are supposed to get and next time they’ll be tougher. But is your bloody head all right?”
“Fine,” David said.
“Then God bless you and stay with the son of a bitch because we are going to have him up here soon.”
“Davy,” Roger spoke to the boy. “Do you want me to take him?”
David shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be quitting now,” Roger said. “It would just make sense. I could take him or your father could take him.”
“Am I doing anything wrong?” David asked bitterly.
“No. You’re doing perfectly.”
“Then why should I quit on him?”
“He’s giving you an awful beating, Davy,” Roger said. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”
“He’s the one has the hook in his goddam mouth,” David’s voice was unsteady. “He isn’t giving me a beating. I’m giving him a beating. The son of a bitch.”
“Say anything you want, Dave,” Roger told him.
“The damn son of a bitch. The big son of a bitch.”
“He’s crying,” Andrew, who had come up topside and was standing with young Tom and his father, said. “He’s talking that way to get rid of it.”
“Shut up, horseman,” young Tom said.
“I don’t care if he kills me, the big son of a bitch,” David said. “Oh hell. I don’t hate him. I love him.”
“You shut up now,” Eddy said to David. “You save your wind.”
He looked at Roger and Roger lifted his shoulders to show he did not know.
“If I see you getting excited like that I’ll take him away from you,” Eddy said.
“I’m always excited,” David said. “Just because I never say it nobody knows. I’m no worse now. It’s only the talking.”
“Well you shut up now and take it easy,” Eddy said. “You stay calm and quiet and we’ll go with him forever.”
“I’ll stay with him,” David said. “I’m sorry I called him the names. I don’t want to say anything against him. I think he’s the finest thing in the world.”
“Andy, get me that bottle of pure alcohol,” Eddy said. I’m going to loosen up his arms and shoulders and his legs,” he said to Roger. “I don’t want to use any more of that ice water for fear I’d cramp him up.”
He looked into the cabin and said, “Five and a half even, Roger.” He turned to David, “You don’t feel too heated up now, do you, Davy?”
The boy shook his head.
“That straight-up-and-down sun in the middle of the day was what I was afraid of,” Eddy said. “Nothing going to happen to you now, Davy. Just take it easy and whip this old fish. We want to whip him before dark.”
David nodded.
“Papa, did you ever see a fish fight like this one?” young Tom asked.
“Yes,” Thomas Hudson told him.
“Very many?”
“I don’t know, Tommy. There are some terrible fish in this Gulf. Then there are huge big fish that are easy to catch.”
“Why are some easier?”
“I think because they get old and fat. Some I think are almost old enough to die. Then, of course, some of the biggest jump themselves to death.”
There had been no boats in sight for a long time and it was getting late in the afternoon and they were a long way out between the island and the great Isaacs light.
“Try him once more, Davy,” Roger said.
The boy bent his back, pulled back against his braced feet, and the rod, instead of staying solid, lifted slowly.
“You’ve got him coming,” Roger said. “Get that line on and try him again.”
The boy lifted and again recovered line.
“He’s coming up,” Roger told David. “Keep on him steady and good.”
David went to work like a machine, or like a very tired boy performing as a machine.
“This is the time,” Roger said. “He’s really coming up. Put her ahead just a touch, Tom. We want to take him on the port side if we can.”