He stood up. It was a fine clear afternoon, pleasant, not cold, with a light north breeze. It was a nice afternoon all right. The tide was running out and there were two pelicans sitting on the piling at the edge of the channel. A grunt fishing boat, painted dark green, chugged past on the way around to the fish market, the Negro fisherman sitting in the stern holding the tiller. Harry looked out across the water, smooth with the wind blowing with the tide, gray blue in the afternoon sun, out to the sandy island formed when the channel was dredged where the shark camp had been located. There were white gulls flying over the island.
“Be a pretty night,” Harry thought. “Be a nice night to cross.”
He was sweating a little from being down around the engines, and he straightened up and wiped his face with a piece of waste.
There was Albert on the dock.
“Listen, Harry,” he said. “I wish you’d carry me.”
“What’s the matter with you now?”
“They’re only going to give us three days a week on the relief now. I just heard about it this morning. I got to do something.”
“All right,” said Harry. He had been thinking again. “All right.”
“That’s good,” said Albert. “I was afraid to go home to see my old woman. She gave me hell this noon like it was me had laid off the relief.”
“What’s the matter with your old woman?” asked Harry cheerfully. “Why don’t you smack her?”
“You smack her,” Albert said. “I’d like to hear what she’d say. She’s some old woman to talk.”
“Listen, AI,” Harry told him. “Take my car and this and go around to the Marine Hardware and get six metric plugs like this one. Then go get a 20-cent piece of ice and a half a dozen mullets. Get two cans of coffee, four cans of cornbeef, two loaves of bread, some sugar and two cans of condensed milk. Stop at the Sinclair and tell them to come down here and put in a hundred and fifty gallons. Get back as soon as you can and change the number two and the number four plugs in the port engine counting back from the flywheel. Tell them I’ll be back to pay for the gas. They can wait or find me at Freddy’s. Can you remember all that? We’re taking a party out tarponing and fishing them tomorrow.”
“It’s too cold for tarpon,” Albert said.
“The party says no,” Harry told him.
“Hadn’t I better get a dozen mullets?” Albert asked. “In case the jacks tear ’em up? There’s plenty jacks now in those channels.”
“Well, make it a dozen. But get back inside an hour and have the gas filled.”
“Why you want to put in so much gas?”
“We may be running early and late and not have time to fill.”
“What’s become of those Cubans that wanted to be carried?”
“Haven’t heard anything more from them.”
“That was a good job.”
“This is a good job too. Come on, get going.”
“What am I going to be working for?”
“Five bucks a day,” said Harry. “If you don’t want it don’t take it.”
“All right,” said Albert. “Which plugs was it?”
“The number two and the number four counting back from the flywheel,” Harry told him. Albert nodded his head. “I guess I can remember,” he said. He got into the car and made a turn in it and went off up the street.
From where Harry stood in the boat he could see the brick and stone building and the front entrance of the First State Trust and Savings Bank. It was just a block down at the foot of the street. He couldn’t see the side entrance. He looked at his watch. It was a little after two o’clock. He shut the engine hatch and climbed up on the dock. Well, now it comes off or it doesn’t, he thought. I’ve done what I can now. I’ll go up and see Freddy and then I’ll come back and wait. He turned to the right as he left the dock and walked down a back street so that he would not pass the bank.
In at Freddy’s he wanted to tell him about it but he couldn’t. There wasn’t anybody in the bar and he sat on a stool and wanted to tell him, but it was impossible. As he was ready to tell him he knew Freddy would not stand for it. In the old days, maybe, yes, but not now. Maybe not in the old days either. It wasn’t until he thought of telling it to Freddy that he realized how bad it was. I could stay right here, he thought, and there wouldn’t be anything. I could stay right here and have a few drinks and get hot and I wouldn’t be in it. Except there’s my gun on the boat. But nobody knows it’s mine except the old woman. I got it in Cuba on a trip the time when I peddled those others. Nobody knows I’ve got it. I could stay here now and I’d be out of it. But what the hell would they eat on? Where’s the money coming from to keep Marie and the girls? I’ve got no boat, no cash, I got no education. What can a one-armed man work at? All I’ve got is my
“Give me a drink” he said to Freddy.
“Sure.”