Medicine had become a magic word with him one night when the man had been drunk, really drunk, and Boise would not sleep with him. Princessa would not sleep with him when he was drunk, nor would Willy. No one would sleep with him when he was drunk except Friendless, which was Big Goats’ early name, and Friendless’s Brother, who was really his sister, and who was an unfortunate cat who had many sorrows and occasional ecstasies. Goats liked him drunk better than sober or, perhaps, it was because only when Thomas Hudson was drunk that Goats got to sleep with him that made it seem that way. But on this night Thomas Hudson had been ashore about four days when he got really drunk. It had started at noon at the Floridita and he had drunk first with Cuban politicians that had dropped in, nervous for a quick one; with sugar planters and rice planters; with Cuban government functionaries, drinking through their lunch hour; with second and third secretaries of Embassy, shepherding someone to the Floridita; with the inescapable FBI men, pleasant and all trying to look so average, clean-cut-young-American that they stood out as clearly as though they had worn a bureau shoulder patch on their white linen or seersucker suits. He had drunk double frozen daiquiris, the great ones that Constante made, that had no taste of alcohol and felt, as you drank them, the way downhill glacier skiing feels running through powder snow and, after the sixth and eighth, felt like downhill glacier skiing feels when you are running unroped. Some Navy that he knew came in and he drank with them and then with some of the then-called Hooligan Navy or Coast Guard. This was getting too near to shop, which he was drinking away from, so he went down to the far end of the bar where the old respectable whores were, the fine old whores that every resident drinker at the Floridita had slept with sometime in the last twenty years, and sat on a stool with them and had a club sandwich and drank more double frozens.
When he had come back to the farm that night he was very drunk and none of the cats would sleep with him but Goats, who was not allergic to the basic rum smell, had no prejudice against drunkenness, and revelled in the rich whore smell, as full-bodied as a fine Christmas fruitcake. They slept heavily together, Goats purring loudly whenever he woke, and finally Thomas Hudson, waking and remembering how much he had drunk, said to Goats, “We’ve got to take the medicine.”
Goats loved the sound of the word, which symbolized all this rich life he was sharing, and purred stronger than ever.
“Where is the medicine, Goats?” Thomas Hudson had asked. He turned on the reading light by the bed but it was dead. In the storm that had kept him ashore, wires had blown down or been shorted and not yet repaired and there was no electricity. He felt on the night table by the bed for the big double Seconal capsule, the last one that he had, that would put him to sleep again and let him wake in the morning without a hangover. He knocked it off the table as he reached in the darkness and he couldn’t find it. He felt all over the floor carefully and he couldn’t find it. He had no matches by the bed because he was not smoking and the flashlight battery had been overused by the servants while he was away and was dead.
“Goats,” he had said. “We have to find the medicine.”
He had got out of bed and Goats came down on the floor, too, and they hunted for the medicine. Goats went under the bed, not knowing what he was hunting, but doing all he could, and Thomas Hudson said to him, “The medicine, Goats. Find the medicine.”
Goats made whimpery cries under the bed and ranged all of the area. Finally he came out, purring, and Thomas Hudson, feeling over the floor, touched the capsule. It was dusty and cobwebby under his fingers. Goats had found it.
“You found the medicine,” he had told Goats. “You wonder cat.” After he had washed off the capsule in the palm of his hand with some water from the carafe by the bed and then swallowed it with a drink of water he lay, feeling it take hold slowly, and praised Goats, and the big cat purred at the praise and always afterwards medicine was a magic word to him.