The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway [205]
Well, I killed the engine and climbed up forward to have a look around. All there was to see was the two smacks off to the westward headed in, and way back the dome of the Capitol standing up white out of the edge of the sea. There was some gulfweed on the stream and a few birds working, but not many. I sat up there awhile on top of the house and watched, but the only fish I saw were those little brown ones that rise around the gulfweed. Brother, don’t let anybody tell you there isn’t plenty of water between Havana and Key West. I was just on the edge of it.
After a while I went down into the cockpit again and there was Eddy!
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter with the engine?”
“She broke down.”
“Why haven’t you got the hatch up?”
“Oh, hell!” I said.
Do you know what he’d done? He’d come back again and slipped the forward hatch and gone down into the cabin and gone to sleep. He had two quarts with him. He’d gone into the first bodega he’d seen and bought it and come aboard. When I started out he woke up and went back to sleep again. When I stopped her out in the gulf and she began to roll a little with the swell it woke him up.
“I knew you’d carry me, Harry,” he said.
“Carry you to hell,” I said. “You aren’t even on the crew list. I’ve got a good mind to make you jump overboard now.”
“You’re an old joker, Harry,” he said. “Us conchs ought to stick together when we’re in trouble.”
“You,” I said, “with your mouth. Who’s going to trust your mouth when you’re hot?”
“I’m a good man, Harry. You put me to the test and see what a good man I am.”
“Get me the two quarts,” I told him. I was thinking of something else.
He brought them out and I took a drink from the open one and put them forward by the wheel. He stood there and I looked at him. I was sorry for him and for what I knew I’d have to do. Hell, I knew him when he was a good man.
“What’s the matter with her, Harry?”
“She’s all right.”
“What’s the matter, then? What are you looking at me like that for?”
“Brother,” I told him, and I was sorry for him, “you’re in plenty of trouble.”
“What do you mean, Harry?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I haven’t got it all figured out yet.”
We sat there awhile and I didn’t feel like talking to him any more. Once I knew it, it was hard to talk to him. Then I went below and got out the pump-gun and the Winchester thirty-thirty that I always had below in the cabin and hung them up in their cases from the top of the house where we hung the rods usually, right over the wheel where I could reach them. I keep them in those full-length clipped sheep’s-wool cases soaked in oil. That’s the only way you can keep them from rusting on a boat.
I loosened up the pump and worked her a few times, and then filled her up and pumped one into the barrel. I put a shell in the chamber of the Winchester and filled up the magazine. I got out the Smith and Wesson thirty-eight special I had when I was on the police force up in Miami from under the mattress and cleaned and oiled it and filled it up and put it on my belt.
“What’s the matter?” Eddy said. “What the hell’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I told him.
“What’s all the damn guns for?”
“I always carry them on board,” I said. “To shoot birds that bother the baits or to shoot sharks cruising along the keys.”
“What’s the matter, damn it?” said Eddy. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I told him. I sat there with the old thirty-eight flopping against my leg when she rolled, and I looked at him. I thought, there’s no sense to do it now. I’m going to need him now.
“We’re going to do a little job,” I said. “In at Bacuranao. I’ll tell you what to do when it’s time.”
I didn’t want to tell him too far ahead because he would get to worrying and get so spooked he wouldn’t be any use.
“You couldn’t have anybody better than me. Harry,” he said. “I’m the man for you. I’m with you on anything.”
I looked at him, tall and bleary and shaky, and