The Basque came aboard carrying his raincoated
“Get as far out as the channel will let you,” he said. “We’ll find Willie.”
“Is it one of the boats?”
“Sure,” Ara said. “But I’m sure it’s abandoned. It’s going to rain, Tom.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Me either.”
“It’s a nice key. I found an old trail to water. But it wasn’t used.”
“There’s water on Willie’s side, too.”
“There’s Willie,” Ara said. He was sitting on the sand. His legs were drawn up and his
“Where you two fuck-offs been?” he asked.
“When were they here, Willie?”
“Yesterday by the turds,” Willie said. “Or should I say their excrement?”
“How many?”
“Eight that could execremenate and three of these with the bubbleshits.”
“What else?”
“They got a guide or a pilot or whatever his rating is.”
The guide they had picked up was a fisherman who had a palm-thatched shelter and had been salting barracuda strips on a rack to sell them later to the Chinese who bought fish for the Chinese retail grocers who would sell the dried fish in their shops as codfish. The fisherman had salted and dried a good quantity of fish by the looks of the rack.
“Krauts eat ’em plenty codfish now on in,” Willie said.
“What language is that?”
“My own,” Willie said. “Everybody has a private language around here, like Basque or something. You got an objection if I speak mine?”
“Tell me the rest.”
“Sleepum here one smoke,” Willie said. “Eatum pig meat. All sameee from Massacre Key. Kraut master no gottum tin goods or save ’em.”
“Cut out the shit and tell it straight.”
“Ole Massa Hudson going to lose all afternoon anyway due huge rainfall accompanied squall winds all along same. Might as well listen alongside Willie all same famous scout of the Pampas. Willie tell his own way.”
“Cut it out.”
“Listen, Tom, who found Krauts twice?”
“What about the boat?”
“Boat all same finish. She alongside too many rotten planks. One drop out by stern.”
“They hit something coming in with a bad light.”
“I guess so. Well, I’ll cut out the shit. They’ve gone on into the westward sun. Eight men and a guide. Maybe nine if the captain couldn’t shit on account of his great responsibilities like our own leader himself has trouble sometimes and now it is starting to rain. The boat they left was stunk up and beshat with pigs and chickens and that comrade we buried. There’s one other guy is wounded but it doesn’t look bad from the dressing.”
“Pussy?”
“Yeah. But clean pus. You want to see it all or you take my word for it?”
“I take your word on all of it but I want to see it.”
He saw everything, the tracks, the fire, where they had slept and cooked, the dressing, the part of the brush they had used as a latrine, and the groove the turtle boat had made in the sand when they beached her. It was raining hard now and the first gusts of the squall were coming.
“Put on the coats and put the
“I’ll help you,” Willie said. “We’re breathing down their necks, Tom.”
“There’s an awful lot of country and they have someone with local knowledge now.”
“You just keep thinking the way you are,” Willie said. “What local knowledge has he got that we haven’t got?”
“Certainly he’ll have plenty.”
“The hell with him. I’m going to wash on the stern with soap. Jesus, I want to feel that fresh water and that soap.”
It was raining so hard now that it was hard to see the ship as they came around the point. The squall had moved out toward the ocean and it was so violent and the rain so heavy that trying to see the ship was like looking at an object from behind a falls. Her tanks will fill like nothing with this, Thomas Hudson thought. She’ll probably be running off through the galley faucets and the head right now.
“How many days since it rained, Tom?” Willie asked.
“We’ll have to check with the log. It’s something over fifty.”
“It’s like the goddam monsoon breaking,” Willie said. “Give me a gourd so I can bail.”
“Keep the cover on your
“Her butt is in my crotch and her nose is under the left shoulder of my coat,” Willie said. “She never had it better in her life. Give me the gourd.”