“We’ll have to steal the boat. You know they ain’t got her fixed so I can’t start her.”
“How you going to get her out of the sub-base?”
“I’ll get her out.”
“How’re we coming back?”
“I’ll have to figure that. If you don’t want to go, say so.”
“I’d just as soon go if there’s any money in it.”
“Listen,” he said. “You’re making seven dollars and a half a week. You got three kids in school that are hungry at noon. You got a family that their bellies hurt and I give you a chance to make a little money.”
“You ain’t said how much money. You got to have money for taking chances.”
“There ain’t much money in any kind of chances now, Al,” he said. “Look at me. I used to make thirty-five dollars a day right through the season taking people out fishing. Now I get shot and lose an arm, and my boat, running a lousy load of liquor that’s worth hardly as much as my boat. But let me tell you, my kids ain’t going to have their bellies hurt and I ain’t going to dig sewers for the government for less money than will feed them. I can’t dig now anyway. I don’t know who made the laws but I know there ain’t no law that you got to go hungry.”
“I went out on strike against those wages,” I told him.
“And you come back to work,” he said. “They said you were striking against charity. You always worked, didn’t you? You never asked anybody for charity.”
“There ain’t any work,” I said. “There ain’t any work at living wages anywhere.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “But my family is going to eat as long as anybody eats. What they’re trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town. That’s what I hear. I hear they’re buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they’re going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists.”
“You talk like a radical,” I said.
“I ain’t no radical,” he said. “I’m sore. I been sore a long time.”
“Losing your arm don’t make you feel better.”
“The hell with my arm. You lose an arm you lose an arm. There’s worse things than lose an arm. You’ve got two arms and you’ve got two of something else. And a man’s still a man with one arm or with one of those. The hell with it,” he says. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Then after a minute he says, “I got those other two still.” Then he started the car and said, “Come on, we’ll go see these fellows.”
We rode along the boulevard with the breeze blowing and a few cars going past and the smell of dead sea grass on the cement where the waves had gone over the seawall at high tide, Harry driving with his left arm. I always liked him all right and I’d gone in a boat with him plenty of times in the old days, but he was changed now since he lost his arm and that fellow down visiting from Washington made an affidavit that he saw the boat unloading liquor that time, and the customs seized her. When he was in a boat he always felt good and without his boat he felt plenty bad. I think he was glad of an excuse to steal her. He knew he couldn’t keep her but maybe he could make a piece of money with her while he had her. I needed money bad enough but I didn’t want to get in any trouble. I said to him, “You know I don’t want to get in any real trouble, Harry.”
“What worse trouble you going to get in than you’re in now?” he said. “What the hell worse trouble is there than starving?”
“I’m not starving,” I said. “What the hell you always talking about starving for?”
“Maybe you’re not, but your kids are.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “I’ll work with you but you can’t talk that way to me.”
“All right,” he said. “But be sure you want the job. I can get plenty of men in this town.”
“I want it,” I said. “I told you I want it.”
“Then cheer up.”
“You cheer up,” I said. “You’re the only one that’s talking like a radical.”
“Aw, cheer up,” he said. “None of you Conchs has any guts.”
“Since when ain’t you a Conch?”
“Since the first good meal I ever ate.” He was mean talking now, all right, and since he was a boy he never had no pity for nobody. But he never had no pity for himself either.
“All right,” I said to him.
“Take it easy,” he said. Ahead of us I could see the lights of this place.
“We’re going to meet them here,” Harry said.
“Keep your mouth buttoned up.”
“The hell with you.”
“Aw, take it easy,” Harry said as we turned into the runway and drove around to the back of the place. He was a bully and he was bad spoken but I always liked him all right.
We stopped the car in back of this place and went into the kitchen where the man’s wife was cooking at a stove. “Hello, Freda,” Harry said to her. “Where’s Bee-lips?”
“He’s right in there, Harry. Hello, Albert.”
“Hello, Miss Richards,” I said. I knew her ever since she used to be in jungle town, but two or three of the hardest working married women in town used to be sporting women and this was a hard working woman, I tell you that. “Your folks all well?” she asked me.
“They’re all fine.”