Islands in the Stream (3 page)

“How’s the table?”

“Worse.”

“I’ll go down,” said Thomas Hudson. “I want to take a shower and change.”

“I’ve got them laying out for you on the bed,” Joseph told him. “You want another gin and tonic?”

“No thanks.”

“Mr. Roger’s in on the boat.”

“Good. I’ll get hold of him.”

“Will he be staying here?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll make up a bed for him anyway.”

“Good.”

Thomas Hudson took a shower
, scrubbing his head with soap and then rinsing under the prickling drive of the sharp, jetted shower. He was a big man and he looked bigger stripped than he did in his clothes. He was very tanned and his hair was faded and streaked from the sun. He carried no extra weight and on the scales he saw that he weighed 192 pounds.

I should have gone swimming before I took the shower, he thought. But I had a long swim this morning before I started work and I’m tired now. There will be plenty of swimming when the boys come. And Roger’s here too. That’s good.

He put on a clean pair of shorts and an old Basque shut and moccasins and went out the door and down the slope and through the gate in the picket fence onto the white glare of the sun-bleached coral of the King’s Highway.

Ahead a very erect-walking old Negro in a black alpaca coat and pressed dark trousers came out of one of the unpainted board shacks along the road that was shaded by two tall coconut palms and turned into the highway ahead of him. Thomas Hudson saw his fine black face as he turned.

From behind the shack a child’s voice came in an old English tune singing mockingly,

“Uncle Edward came from Nassau

Some candy for to sell

I buy some and P.H. buy some

and the candy give us hell—”

Uncle Edward turned his fine face, looking as sad as it was angry, in the bright afternoon light.

“I know you,” he said. “I can’t see you but I know who you are. I’ll report you to Constable.”

The child’s voice went on, rising clear and gay,

“Oh Edward

Oh Edward

Buff, rough, tough Uncle Edward

Your candy rotten.”

“Constable going to hear about this,” Uncle Edward said. “Constable know what steps to take.”

“Any rotten candy today, Uncle Edward?” the child’s voice called. He was careful to keep out of sight.

“Man is persecuted,” Uncle Edward said aloud as he walked on. “Man has his robe of dignity plucked at and destroyed. Oh, Good Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Ahead down the King’s Highway there was more singing coming from the rooms up above the Ponce de León. A Negro boy slipped by hurrying along the coral road.

“Been a fight, Mr. Tom,” he said. “Or something. Gentleman off’n a yacht been throwing things out of a window.”

“What things, Louis?”

“Any kind of things, Mr. Tom. Gentleman throw anything he can get his hands on. Lady try to stop him he say he going to throw the lady, too.”

“Where’s the gentleman from?”

“Big man from up north. Claims he can buy and sell the whole island. Guess he could get it pretty cheap if he keeps throwing it around the way he’s doing.”

“Constable taken any action, Louis?”

“No sir, Mr. Tom. Nobody has called in Constable yet. But way everybody figures, Constable’s time is coming.”

“You with them, Louis? I wanted to get some bait for tomorrow.”

“Yes sir, I’ll get your bait, Mr. Tom. Don’t worry about bait. I been with them right along. They hired me to take them bonefishing this morning and I been with them ever since. Only they ain’t been bonefishing. No
sir
. Unless throwing plates and cups and mugs and chairs and every time Mr. Bobby brings him the bill he tears up the bill and tells Mr. Bobby he’s a robbing thieving bastard and a crook is bonefishing.”

“Sounds like a difficult gentleman, Louis.”

“Mr. Tom, he’s the damnedest gentleman you ever saw before or since. He had me singing for them. You know I can’t sing good like Josey but I sing as good as I can and sometimes I sing
better
than I can. I’m singing
good
as I can. You know how it is. You heard me sing. All he wants to hear is that mama don’t want no peas no rice no coconut oil song. Over and over. It’s an old song and I get tired so I said to him, ‘Sir I know
new
songs. Good songs. Fine songs. And I know old songs such as the loss of John Jacob Astor on the
Titanic
when sunk by an iceberg and I would be glad to sing them rather than that no peas no rice song if you so wish.’ I said it polite and pleasant as you want. As you know I would say it. So this gentleman say, ‘Listen you ignorant black little bastard I own more stores and factories and newspapers than John Jacob Astor had pots to, you know the word, in, and I’ll take you and shove your head in those pots if you try to tell me what I want to hear.’ So then his lady said, ‘Darling, do you really have to be so rude to the boy? I thought he sang very well and I would like to hear some of the new songs.’ And the gentleman said, ‘Listen you.
You
won’t hear them and
he
won’t sing them.’ Mr. Tom, he’s a strange gentleman. But his lady just said, ‘Oh darling, you are difficult.’ Mr. Tom, he’s difficulter than a diesel engine is to a newborn tree monkey out of its mother’s womb. Excuse me if I talk too much. This has aroused me. He’s got her feeling very bad.”

“What are you going to do about them now, Louis?”

“I been to get conch pearls,” he said.

They had stopped in the shade of a palm while he had been talking and he brought out a quite clean cloth from his pocket and unfolded it to show a half dozen of the shiny, nacreous pink, unpearllike pearls that are sometimes found in conches by the natives when they clean them and that no woman Thomas Hudson had ever known except Queen Mary of England has ever cared for as a gift. Of course Thomas Hudson could not think that he knew Queen Mary except through the papers and in pictures and a profile of her in
The New Yorker
but the fact that she liked conch pearls made him feel that he knew her better than he knew many other people he had known for a long time. Queen Mary liked conch pearls and the island was celebrating her birthday tonight, he thought, but he was afraid conch pearls would not make the gentleman’s lady feel very much better. Then, too, it Was always possible that Queen Mary said she liked them to please her subjects in the Bahamas.

They had walked down to the Ponce de León and Louis was saying, “His lady was crying, Mr. Tom. She was crying very bitterly. So I suggested I might go up to Roy’s and get some conch pearls for her to inspect.”

“They ought to make her very happy,” Thomas Hudson said. “If she likes conch pearls.”

“I hope they will. I’m taking them up now.”

Thomas Hudson went into the bar where it was cool and almost dark after the glare of the coral road and had a gin and tonic water with a piece of lime peel in the glass and a few drops of Angostura in the drink. Mr. Bobby was behind the bar looking terrible. Four Negro boys were playing billiards, occasionally lifting the table when necessary to bring off a difficult carom. The singing had stopped upstairs and it was very quiet in the room except for the click of the balls. Two of the crew of the yacht that was tied up in the slip were at the bar and as Thomas Hudson’s eyes adjusted to the light it was dim and cool and pleasant. Louis came downstairs.

“Gentleman’s asleep,” he said. “I left the pearls with his lady. She’s looking at them and crying.”

He saw the two sailors from the yacht look at each other but they didn’t say anything. He stood there, holding the long, pleasantly bitter drink, tasting the first swallow of it, and it reminded him of Tanga, Mombasa, and Lamu and all that coast and he had a sudden nostalgia for Africa. Here he was, settled on the island, when he could as well be in Africa. Hell, he thought, I can always go there. You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are. You are doing all right at that here.

“Tom, do you really like the taste of that stuff?” Bobby asked him.

“Sure. Or I wouldn’t drink it.”

“I opened a bottle by mistake once and it tasted like quinine.”

“It’s got quinine in it.”

“People surely are crazy,” Bobby said. “Man can drink anything he wants. He has money to pay for it He’s supposed to be taking his pleasure and he spoils good gin by putting it into some kind of a Hindu drink with quinine in it.”

“It tastes good to me. I like the quinine taste with the lime peel. I think it sort of opens up the pores of the stomach or something. I get more of a kick out of it than any other gin drink. It makes me feel good.”

“I know. Drinking always makes you feel good. Drinking makes me feel terrible. Where’s Roger?”

Roger was a friend of Thomas Hudson’s, who had a fishing shack down the island.

“He ought to be over soon. We’re going to eat with Johnny Goodner.”

“What men like you and Roger Davis and Johnny Goodner that been around stay around this island for I don’t know.”

“It’s a good island. You stay here, don’t you?”

“I stay to make a living.”

“You could make a living in Nassau.”

“Nassau, hell. There’s more fun here. This is a good island for having fun. Plenty money been made here, too.”

“I like to live here.”

“Sure,” said Bobby. “I do, too. You know that. If I can make a living. You sell those pictures you paint all the time?”

“They sell pretty good now.”

“People paying money for pictures of Uncle Edward. Pictures of Negroes in the water. Negroes on land. Negroes in boats. Turtle boats. Sponge boats. Squalls making up. Waterspouts. Schooners that got wrecked. Schooners building. Everything they could see free. They really buy them?”

“Sure they buy them. Once a year you have a show in New York and they sell them.”

“Auction them off?”

“No. The dealer who shows them puts a price on them. People buy them. Museums buy one once in a while.”

“Can’t you sell them yourself?”

“Sure.”

“I’d like to buy a waterspout,” Bobby said. “Damn big waterspout. Black as hell. Maybe better two waterspouts going roaring over the flats making a noise so you can’t hear. Sucking all the water across and scare you to death. Me in the dinghy sponging and nothing I can do. Waterspout blow the water glass right out of my hand. Almost suck the dinghy up out of the water. God’s own hell of a waterspout. How much would one like that cost? I could hang it right here. Or hang it up at home if it wouldn’t scare the old woman to death.”

“It would depend on how big it was.”

“Make it as big as you want,” Bobby said grandly. “You can’t make a picture like that too damn big. Put in three waterspouts. I seen three waterspouts closer than that across by Andros Island one time. They went right up to the sky and one sucked up a sponger’s boat and when it dropped the motor went right through the hull.”

“It’s just what the canvas would cost,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’d only charge for the canvas.”

“By God, get a big canvas then,” Bobby said. “We’ll paint waterspouts that will scare people right out of this bar and right off the damned island.”

He was moved by the grandeur of the project but its possibilities were just opening up to him.

“Tom, boy, do you think you could paint a full hurricane? Paint her right in the eye of the storm when she’s already blew from one side and calmed and just starting from the other? Put in everything from the Negroes lashed in the coconut palms to the ships blowing over the crest of the island? Put in the big hotel going. Put in two-by-fours sailing through the air like lances and dead pelicans blowing by like they were part of the gusts of rain. Have the glass down to twenty-seven and the wind velocities blown away. Have the sea breaking on the ten-fathom bar and the moon come out in the eye of the storm. Have a tidal wave come up and submerge every living thing. Have women blown out to sea with their clothes stripped from them by the wind. Have dead Negroes floating everywhere and flying through the air—”

“It’s an awfully big canvas,” Thomas Hudson said.

“To hell with the canvas!” Bobby said. “I’ll get a mainsail off a schooner. We’ll paint the greatest goddam pictures in the world and live throughout history. You’ve just been painting these little simple pictures.”

“I’ll start on the waterspouts,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Right,” said Bobby, hating to come back from the big project. “That’s sound. But by God we can make some great pictures with the knowledge you and I’ve got and with the training you’ve put in already.”

“I’ll start on the waterspouts tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Bobby. “That’s a beginning. But by God I’d like us to paint that hurricane, too. Anybody ever paint the sinking of the
Titanic
?”

“Not on a really big scale.”

“We could paint that. There’s a subject that always appealed to my imagination. You could get in the coldness of the iceberg as it moved off after they struck it. Paint the whole thing in a dense fog. Get in every detail. Get that man that got in the boat with the women because he thought he could help because he was a yachtsman. Paint him getting into the boat stepping on a few women just as big as life. He reminds me of that fellow we got upstairs now. Why don’t you go upstairs and make a drawing of that one while he’s asleep and use him in the painting?”

“I think we better just start with the waterspouts.”

“Tom, I want you to be a
big
painter,” Bobby said. “Leave all that chicken stuff behind. You’ve just been wasting yourself. Why there’s three paintings we’ve outlined together in less than half an hour and I haven’t even started to draw on my imagination. And what have you been doing up until now? Painting a Negro turning a loggerhead turtle on the beach. Not even a green turtle. A common loggerhead. Or painting two Negroes in a dinghy bullying a mess of crawfish. You’ve wasted your life, man.” He stopped and had a quick one from underneath the bar.

“That don’t count,” he said. “You never saw me take that one. Look, Tom, those are three great paintings. Big paintings. Worldwide paintings. Fit to hang in the Crystal Palace alongside the masterpieces of all time. Except the first, of course, is a small subject. But we haven’t started yet. No reason why we can’t paint one to end them all. What do you think of this?”