“We’re making too much noise.”
“We’re whispering.”
“I got to get out before it’s daylight.”
“You go to sleep. I’ll get you up. When you come back we’ll have a time. We’ll go to a hotel up in Miami like we used to. Just like we used to. Someplace where they never seen either of us. Why couldn’t we go to New Orleans?”
“Maybe,” Harry said. “Listen Marie, I got to go to sleep now.”
“We’ll go to New Orleans?”
“Why not? Only I got to go to sleep.”
“Go to sleep. You’re my big honey. Go on to sleep. I’ll wake you. Don’t you worry.”
He went to sleep with the stump of his arm out wide on the pillow, and she lay for a long time looking at him. She could see his face in the street light through the window. I’m lucky, she was thinking. Those girls. They don’t know what they’ll get. I know what I’ve got and what I’ve had. I’ve been a lucky woman. Him saying like a loggerhead. I’m glad it was a arm and not a leg. I wouldn’t like him to have lost a leg. Why’d he have to lose that arm? It’s funny though, I don’t mind it. Anything about him I don’t mind. I’ve been a lucky woman. There ain’t no other men like that. People ain’t never tried them don’t know. I’ve had plenty of them. I’ve been lucky to have him. Do you suppose those turtles feel like we do? Do you suppose all that time they feel like that? Or do you suppose it hurts the she? I think of the damndest things. Look at him, sleeping just like a baby. I better stay awake so as to call him. Christ, I could do that all night if a man was built that way. I’d like to do it and never sleep. Never, never, no, never. No, never, never, never. Well, think of that, will you. Me at my age. I ain’t old. He said I was still good. Forty-five ain’t old. I’m two years older than him. Look at him sleep. Look at him asleep there like a kid.
Two hours before it was daylight they were out at the gas tank in the garage filling and corking demijohns and putting them in the back of the car. Harry wore a hook strapped to his right arm and shifted and lifted the wicker-covered demijohns handily.
“You don’t want no breakfast?”
“When I come back.”
“Don’t you want your coffee?”
“You got it?”
“Sure. I put it on when we came out.”
“Bring it out.”
She brought it out and he drank it in the dark sit- ting at the wheel of the car. She took the cup and put it on the shelf in the garage.
“I’m coming with you to help you handle the jugs,” she said.
“All right,” he told her and she got in beside him, a big woman, long legged, big handed, big hipped, still handsome, a hat pulled down over her bleached blonde hair. In the dark and the cold of the morning they drove out the county road through the mist that hung heavy over the flat.
“What you worried about, Harry?”
“I don’t know. I’m just worried. Listen, are you letting your hair grow out?”
“I thought I would. The girls have been after me.”
“The hell with them. You keep it like it is.”
“Do you really want me to?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s the way I like it.”
“You don’t think I look too old?”
“You look better than any of them.”
“I’ll fix it up then. I can make it blonder if you like it.”
“What have the girls got to say about what you do?” Harry said. “They got no business to bother you.”
“You know how they are. You know young girls are that way. Listen, if you make a good trip, we’ll go to New Orleans, should we?”
“Miami.”
“Well, Miami anyway. And we’ll leave them here.”
“I got some trip to make first.”
“You aren’t worried, are you?”
“No.”
“You know I lay awake almost four hours just thinking about you.”
“You’re some old woman.”
“I can think about you any time and get excited.”
“Well, we got to fill this gas now,” Harry told her.
At ten o’clock in the morning in Freddy’s place Harry was standing in against the bar with four or five others, and two customs men had just left. They had asked him about the boat and he had said he did not know anything about it.
“Where were you last night?” one of them asked.
“Here and at home.”
“How late were you here?”
“Until the place shut.”
“Anybody see you here?”
“Plenty of people,” Freddy said.
“What’s the matter?” Harry asked them. “Do you think I’d steal my own boat? What would I do with it? “
“I just asked you where you were,” the Customs House officer said. “Don’t get plugged.”
“I’m not plugged,” Harry said. “I was plugged back when they seized the boat without any proof she carried liquor.”
“There was an affidavit sworn to,” the customs man said. “It wasn’t my affidavit. You know the man that made it.”
“All right,” said Harry. “Only don’t say I’m plugged at you asking me. I’d rather you had her tied up. Then I got a chance to get her back. What chance I got if she’s stolen?”
“None, I guess,” said the customs man.
“Well, go peddle your papers,” Harry said.
“Don’t get snotty,” said the customs man, “or I’ll see you get something to be snotty about.”
“After fifteen years,” said Harry.
“You haven’t been snotty fifteen years.”
“No, and I haven’t been in jail either.”
“Well, don’t be snotty or you will be.”