“I’m sure, too,” Willie said. “I’m not trying to be a fuck-up, Tom. But did you ever go really crazy?”
“No. I always missed it.”
“It’s a lot of bother,” Willie said. “And however long it lasts, it lasts too long. But I’ll stop drinking.”
“No. Just drink easy like you always did.”
“I was using the drinking to stave it off.”
“We’re always using drinking for something.”
“Sure. But this wasn’t any gag. Do you think I’d lie to you, Tom?”
“We all lie. But I don’t think you’d lie on purpose.”
“Go on up on your bridge,” Willie said. “I see you watching the water all the time like it was some girl that was going to get away from you. I won’t drink anything except sea water maybe and I’ll help Ara break them to pieces and put them together again.”
“Don’t drink, Willie.”
“If I said I won’t, I won’t.”
“I know.”
“Listen, Tom. Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“How bad is it with you?”
“I guess pretty bad.”
“Can you sleep?”
“Not much.”
“Last night?”
“Yes.”
“That was from walking the beach,” Willie said. “Go on up and forget about me. I’ll be working with Ara at our trade.”
They had searched the beach for tracks at Puerto Coco and they searched the mangroves beyond with the dinghy. There were some really good places for a turtle boat to hide. But they found nothing and the squalls came out earlier with heavy rain that made the sea look as though it were leaping into the air in white, spurting jets.
Thomas Hudson had walked the beach and gone back inland behind the lagoon. He had found the place where the flamingoes came at high tide and he had seen many wood ibis, the
He found nothing but the site of an old charcoal-burning and he came out onto the beach after the first squall hit and Ara had picked him up in the dinghy.
Ara loved running the outboard in the rain and a bad squall and he had told Thomas Hudson none of the searchers had found anything. Everybody was on board but Willie who had taken the furthest stretch of beach beyond the mangroves.
“And you?” Ara asked.
“Me, nothing.”
“This rain will cool off Willie. I’m going to get him when I put you on board. Where do you think they are, Tom?”
“At Guillermo. That’s where I’d be.”
“Me too. That’s what Willie thinks, too.”
“How was he?”
“He’s trying hard, Tom. You know Willie.”
“Yes,” said Thomas Hudson. They came alongside and he climbed aboard.
Thomas Hudson watched Ara pivot the dinghy on her stern and go off into the white squall. Then he called down for a towel and dried himself off on the stern.
Henry said, “Don’t you want a drink, Tom? You were really wet.”
“I’d like one.”
“Do you want straight rum?”
“That’s nice,” Thomas Hudson answered. He went below to get a sweatshirt and shorts and he saw that they were all cheerful.
“We all had a straight rum,” Henry said and brought him a glass half-full. “I don’t think that way if you dry off quickly anyone can catch cold. Do you?”
“Hi, Tom,” said Peters. “Have you joined our little group of health drinkers?”
“When did you wake up?” Thomas Hudson asked him.
“When I heard a gurgling noise.”
“I’ll make a gurgling noise some night and see if that wakes you up.”
“Don’t worry, Tom. Willie does that for me every night.”
Thomas Hudson decided not to drink the rum. Then, seeing them all having had a drink and being cheerful and happy on an uncheerful errand, he thought it would be pompous and priggish not to take it. He wanted it, too.
“Split this with me,” he said to Peters. “You are the only son of a bitch I ever knew that could sleep better with earphones on than without them.”
“That split’s nothing,” Peters said, entrenching himself in the retreat from formal discipline. “That split doesn’t give either of us anything.”
“Get one of your own, then,” Thomas Hudson said. “I like the goddam stuff as well as you do.”
The others were watching and Thomas Hudson could see Henry’s jaw muscles twitching.
“Drink it up,” Thomas Hudson said. “And run all your mysterious machines tonight as well as you can. For yourself and for the rest of us.”
“For all of us,” Peters said. “Who is the hardest-working man on this ship?”
“Ara,” Thomas Hudson said and sipped the rum for the first time as he looked around. “And every fucking body else on board.”
“Here’s to you, Tom,” Peters said.
“Here’s to you,” Thomas Hudson said and felt the words die cold and stale in his mouth. “To the earphone king,” he said, in order to recover something he had lost. “To all gurgling noises,” he added, being now a long way ahead as he should have been at the start.