“By God,” said Bobby. “I ain’t seen nothing faze her yet. But I’m going to hang her higher just the same. That gentleman last night worried me.”
He handed Thomas Hudson another bottle of ice-cold Pilsner.
“Tom, I want to tell you how sorry I am about the fish. I know Eddy since we were boys and I never heard him lie. About anything important, I mean. I mean if you asked him to tell you something true.”
“It was a hell of a thing. I’m not going to tell anybody about it.”
“That’s the right way,” Bobby said. “I just wanted you to know how sorry I was. Why don’t you finish that beer and have a drink? We don’t want to start feeling sad this early. What would make you feel good?”
“I feel good enough. I’m going to work this afternoon and I don’t want to get logy.”
“Oh well, if I can’t break you out maybe somebody will come in that I can. Look at that damn yacht. She must have taken a beating coming across with that shallow draft.”
Thomas Hudson looked out the open door and saw the handsome, white, houseboat type craft coming up the channel. She was one of the type that chartered out of a Mainland port to go down through the Florida Keys and on a day such as yesterday, calm and flat, she could have crossed the Gulf Stream without incident. But today she must have taken a beating with her shallow draft and so much superstructure. Thomas Hudson wondered that she had been able to come in over the bar with the sea that was running.
The houseboat ran up the harbor a little further to anchor and Thomas Hudson and Bobby watched her from the doorway, all white and brass and everyone that showed on her in whites.
“Customers,” Mr. Bobby said. “Hope they’re nice people. We haven’t had a full-sized yacht in here since the tuna run was over.”
“Who is she?”
“I never seen her before. Pretty boat, all right. Certainly not built for the Gulf, though.”
“She probably left at midnight when it was calm and this hit her on the way over.”
“That’s about it,” Bobby said. “Must have been some rolling and some crashing. It’s really blowing. Well, we’ll see who they are shortly. Tom, let me make you something, boy. You make me nervous not drinking.”
“All right. I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
“No tonic water. Joe took the last case up to the house.”
“A whisky sour then.”
“With Irish whisky and no sugar,” Bobby said. “Three of them. Here comes Roger.” Thomas Hudson saw him through the open door.
Roger came in. He was barefooted, wore a faded pair of dungarees, and an old striped fisherman’s shirt that was shrunken from washings. You could see the back muscles move under it as he leaned forward and put his arms on the bar. In the dim light of Bobby’s, his skin showed very dark and his hair was salt- and sun-streaked.
“They’re still sleeping,” he said to Thomas Hudson. “Somebody beat up Eddy. Did you see?”
“He was having fights all last night,” Bobby told him. “They didn’t amount to anything.”
“I don’t like things to happen to Eddy,” Roger said.
“Wasn’t anything bad, Roger,” Bobby assured him. “He was drinking and fighting people who wouldn’t believe him. Nobody did anything wrong to him.”
“I feel bad about David,” Roger said to Thomas Hudson. “We shouldn’t have ever let him do it.”
“He’s probably all right,” Thomas Hudson said. “He was sleeping well. But it was my responsibility. I was the one to call it off.”
“No. You trusted me.”
“The father has the responsibility,” Thomas Hudson said. “And I turned it over to you when I had no right to. It isn’t anything to delegate.”
“But I took it,” Roger said. “I didn’t think it was harming him. Neither did Eddy.”
“I know,” Thomas Hudson said. “I didn’t think it was either. I thought something else was at stake.”
“So did I,” Roger said. “But now I feel selfish and guilty as hell.”
“I’m his father,” Thomas Hudson said. “It was my fault.”