“Listen, I need the money. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m all washed up here. You know that, Harry.”
“Who don’t know that?”
“You know how they’ve been financing this revolution with kidnapping and the rest of it.”
“I know.”
“This is the same sort of thing. They’re doing it for a good cause.”
“Yeah. But this is here. This is where you were born. You know everybody works there.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to anybody.”
“With those guys?”
“I thought you had
“I got
“I’m not,” Bee-lips said.
Jesus, thought Harry. He’s said it himself.
“I’m going to get out,” Bee-lips said.
“When are you going to get the boat out?”
“Tonight.”
“Who’s going to help you?”
“You.”
“Where you going to put her?”
“Where I always put her.”
There was nothing difficult about getting the boat out. It was as simple as Harry had figured it. The night watchman made his rounds on the hour and the rest of the time he was at the outer gate of the old Navy Yard. They came into the basin in a skiff, cut her loose on the ebb tide and she went out herself with the skiff towing her. Outside, while she drifted in the channel, Harry checked the motors and found all they had done was disconnect the distributor heads. He checked the gas and found she had close to a hundred and fifty gallons. They hadn’t syphoned any out of the tanks and she had what he had left coming across that last time. He had filled her up before they started and she had burned very little because they had to come across so slow in the heavy seas.
“I’ve got gas at the house in the tank,” he told Bee-lips. “I can take one load of demijohns out with me in the car and Albert can bring another if we need it. I’m going to put her up in the creek right where it crosses the road. They can come out in a car.”
“They wanted you to be right at the Porter Dock.”
“How can I lay there with this boat?”
“You can’t. But I don’t think they’ll want to do any car driving.”
“Well, we’ll put her there tonight and I can fill and do what needs to be done and then shift her. You can hire a speed boat to bring them out. I got to put her up there now. I got plenty to do. You scull in and drive out to the bridge and pick me up. I’ll be on the road there in about two hours. I’ll leave her and come out to the road.”
“I’ll pick you up,” Bee-lips told him, and Harry with the motors throttled down so that she moved quietly through the water, swung her around and towed the skiff close in to where the riding light of the cable schooner showed. He threw the clutches out and held the skiff while Bee-lips got in.
“In about two hours,” he said.
“All right,” said Bee-lips.
Sitting on the steering seat, moving ahead slowly in the dark, keeping well out from the lights at the head of the docks, Harry thought, Bee-lips is doing some work for his money all right. Wonder how much he thinks he is going to get? I wonder how he ever hooked up with those guys. There’s a smart kid who had a good chance once. He’s a good lawyer, too. But it made me cold to hear him say it himself. He put his mouth on his own self all right. It’s funny how a man can mouth something. When I heard him mouth himself it scared me.
When he came in the house he did not turn on the light but took off his shoes in the hall and went up the bare stairs in his stocking feet. He undressed and got into bed wearing only his undershirt, before his wife woke. In the dark she said, “Harry?” and he said, “Go to sleep, old woman.”
“Harry, what’s the matter?”
“Going to make a trip.”
“Who with?”
“Nobody. Albert maybe.”
“Whose boat?”
“I got the boat again.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“You’ll go to jail, Harry.”
“Nobody knows I’ve got her.”
“Where is she?”
“Hid.”
Lying still in the bed he felt her lips on his face and searching for him and then her hand on him and he rolled over against her close.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes. Now.”
“I was asleep. Do you remember when we’d do it asleep?”
“Listen, do you mind the arm? Don’t it make you feel funny?”
“You’re silly. I like it. Any that’s you I like. Put it across there. Put it along there. Go on. I like it, true.”
“It’s like a flipper on a loggerhead.”
“You ain’t no loggerhead. Do they really do it three days? Coot for three days?”
“Sure. Listen, be quiet. We’ll wake the girls.”
“They don’t know what I’ve got. They won’t never know what I’ve got. Ah, Harry. That’s it. Ah, you honey.”
“Wait.”
“I don’t want no wait. Come on. That’s it. That’s where. Listen, did you ever do it with a nigger wench?”
“Sure.”
“What’s it like?”
“Like nurse shark.”
“You’re funny. Harry, I wish you didn’t have to go. I wish you didn’t ever have to go. Who’s the best you ever did it with?”
“You.”
“You lie. You always lie to me. There. There. There.”
“No. You’re the best.”
“I’m old.”
“You’ll never be old.”
“I’ve had that thing.”
“That don’t make no difference when a woman’s any good.”
“Go ahead. Go ahead now. Put the stump there. Hold it there. Hold it. Hold it now. Hold it.”