“What did you have against him?” Eddy asked me.
“Nothing,” I said. “He was the easiest man to do business with I ever met. I thought there must be something wrong all the time.”
“What did you kill him for?”
“To keep from killing twelve other Chinks,” I told him.
“Harry,” he said, “you’ve got to give me one because I can feel them coming on. It made me sick to see his head all loose like that.”
So I gave him one.
“What about the Chinks?” Eddy said.
“I want to get them out as quick as I can,” I told him. “Before they smell up the cabin.”
“Where are you going to put them?”
“We’ll run them right in to the long beach,” I told him.
“Take her in now?”
“Sure,” I said. “Take her in slow.”
We came in slow over the reef and to where I could see the beach shine. There is plenty of water over the reef and inside it’s all sandy bottom and slopes right in to shore.
“Get up forward and give me the depth.”
He kept sounding with a grains pole, motioning me on with the pole. He came back and motioned me to stop. I came astern on her.
“You’ve got about five feet.”
“We’ve got to anchor,” I said. “If anything happens so we haven’t time to get her up, we can cut loose or break her off.”
Eddy paid out rope and when finally she didn’t drag he made her fast. She swung stern in.
“It’s sandy bottom, you know,” he said.
“How much water have we got at the stern?”
“Not over five feet.”
“You take the rifle,” I said. “And be careful,”
“Let me have one,” he said. He was plenty nervous.
I gave him one and took down the pump-gun. I unlocked the cabin door, opened it, and said: “Come on out.”
Nothing happened.
Then one Chink put his head out and saw Eddy standing there with a rifle and ducked back.
“Come on out. Nobody’s going to hurt you,” I said.
Nothing doing. Only lots of talk in Chink.
“Come on out, you!” Eddy said. My God, I knew he’d had the bottle.
“Put that bottle away,” I said to him, “or I’ll blow you out of the boat.”
“Come on out,” I said to them, “or I’ll shoot in at you.”
I saw one of them looking at the corner of the door and he saw the beach evidently because he begins to chatter.
“Come on,” I said, “or I’ll shoot.”
Out they came.
Now I tell you it would take a hell of a mean man to butcher a bunch of Chinks like that and I’ll bet there would be plenty of trouble, too, let alone mess.
They came out and they were scared and they didn’t have any guns but there were twelve of them. I walked backwards down to the stem holding the pump gun. “Get overboard,” I said. “It’s not over your heads.”
Nobody moved.
“Over you go.”
Nobody moved.
“You yellow rat-eating aliens,” Eddy said, “get overboard.”
“Shut your drunken mouth,” I told him.
“No swim,” one Chink said.
“No need swim,” I said. “No deep.”
“Come on, get overboard,” Eddy said.
“Come astern here,” I said. “Take your gun in one hand and your grains pole in the other and show them how deep it is.”
He showed them.
“No need swim?” the one asked me.
“No.”
“True?”
“Yes.”
“Where we?”
“Cuba.”
“You damn crook,” he said and went over the side, hanging on and then letting go. His head went under but he came up and his chin was out of water. “Damn crook,” he said. “Damn crook.”
He was mad and he was plenty brave. He said something in Chink and the others started going into the water off the stern.
“All right,” I said to Eddy. “Get the anchor up.”
As we headed her out, the moon started to come up and you could see the Chinks with just their heads out of water walking ashore, and the shine of the beach and the brush behind.
We got out past the reef and I looked back once and saw the beach and the mountains starting to show up; then I put her on her course for Key West.
“Now you can take a sleep,” I said to Eddy. “No, wait, go below and open up all the ports to get the stink out and bring me the iodine.”
“What’s the matter?” he said when he brought it.
“I cut my finger.”
“Do you want me to steer?”
“Get a sleep,” I said. “I’ll wake you up.”
He lay down on the built-in bunk in the cockpit, over the gas tank, and in a little while he was asleep.
I held the wheel with my knee and opened up my shirt and saw where Mr. Sing bit me. It was quite a bite and I put iodine on it, and then I sat there steering and wondering whether a bite from a Chinaman was poisonous and listened to her running nice and smooth and the water washing along her and I figured, Hell no, that bite wasn’t poisonous. A man like that Mr. Sing probably scrubbed his teeth two or three times a day. Some Mr. Sing. He certainly wasn’t much of a business man. Maybe he was. Maybe he just trusted me. I tell you I couldn’t figure him.
Well, now it was all simple except for Eddy. Because he’s a rummy he’ll talk when he gets hot. I sat there steering and I looked at him and I thought, Hell, he’s as well off dead as the way he is, and then I’m all clear. When I found he was on board I decided I’d have to do away with him but then when everything had come out so nice I didn’t have the heart. But looking at him lying there it certainly was a temptation. But then I thought there’s no sense spoiling it by doing something you’d be sorry for afterwards. Then I started to think he wasn’t even on the crew list and I’d have a fine to pay for bringing him in and I didn’t know how to consider him.
Well, I had plenty of time to think about it and I held her on her course and every once in a while I’d take a drink out of the bottle he’d brought on board. There wasn’t much in it, and when I’d finished it, I opened up the only one I had left, and I tell you I felt pretty good steering, and it was a pretty night to cross. It had turned out a good trip all right, finally, even though it had looked plenty bad plenty of times.
When it got daylight Eddy woke up. He said he felt terrible.
“Take the wheel a minute,” I told him. “I want to look around.”
I went back to the stem and threw a little water on her. But she was perfectly clean. I scrubbed the brush over the side. I unloaded the guns and stowed them below. But I still kept the gun on my belt. It was fresh and nice as you want it below, no smell at all. A little water had come in through the starboard port onto one of the bunks was all; so I shut the ports. There wasn’t a customhouse officer in the world could smell Chink in her now.
I saw the clearance papers in the net bag hanging up under her framed license where I’d shoved them when I came on board and I took them out to look them over. Then I went up to the cockpit.
“Listen,” I said. “How did you get on the crew list?”
“I met the broker when he was leaving for the consulate and told him I was going.”
“God looks after rummies,” I told him and I took the thirty-eight off and stowed it down below.
I made some coffee down below and then I came up and took the wheel.
“There’s coffee below,” I told him.
“Brother, coffee wouldn’t do me any good.” You knew you had to be sorry for him. He certainly looked bad.
About nine o’clock we saw the Sand Key light just about dead ahead. We’d seen tankers going up the gulf for quite a while.
“We’ll be in now,” I said to him. “I’m going to give you the same four dollars a day just as if Johnson had paid.”
> “How much did you get out of last night?” he asked me.
“Only six hundred,” I told him.
I don’t know whether he believed me or not.
“Don’t I share in it?”
“That’s your share,” I told him. “What I just told you, and if you ever open your mouth about last night I’ll hear of it and I’ll do away with you.”
“You know I’m no squealer, Harry.”
“You’re a rummy. But no matter how rum dumb you get, if you ever talk about that, I promise you.”
“I’m a good man,” he said. “You oughtn’t to talk to me like that.”
“They can’t make it fast enough to keep you a good man,” I told him. But I didn’t worry about him any more, because who was going to believe him? Mr. Sing wouldn’t make any complaints. The Chinks weren’t going to. You know the boy that sculled them out wasn’t. Eddy would mouth about it sooner or later, maybe, but who believes a rummy?
Why, who could prove anything? Naturally it would have made plenty more talk when they saw his name on the crew list. That was luck for me, all right. I could have said he fell overboard, but it makes plenty talk. Plenty of luck for Eddy, too. Plenty of luck, all right.
Then we came to the edge of the stream and the water quit being blue and was light and greenish and inside I could see the stakes on the Long Reef and on the Western Dry Rocks and the wireless masts at Key West and the La Concha hotel up high out of all the low houses and plenty smoke from out where they’re burning garbage. Sand Key light was plenty close now and you could see the boathouse and the little dock alongside the light and I knew we were only forty minutes away now and I felt good to be getting back and I had a good stake now for the summertime.
“What do you say about a drink, Eddy?” I said to him.
“Ah, Harry,” he said, “I always knew you were my pal.”
The Tradesman’s Return
THEY CAME ON ACROSS IN THE NIGHT AND it blew a big breeze from the northwest. When the sun was up he sighted a tanker coming down the gulf and she stood up so high and white with the sun on her in that cold air that it looked like tall buildings rising out of the sea and he said to the nigger, “Where the hell are we?”
The nigger raised himself up to look.
“Ain’t nothing like that this side of Miami.”
“You know damn well we ain’t been carried up to no Miami,” he told the nigger.
“All I say ain’t no buildings like that on no Florida keys.”
“We’ve been steering for Sand Key.”
“We’ve got to see it then. It or American shoals.”
Then in a little while he saw it was a tanker and not buildings and then in less than an hour he saw Sand Key light, straight, thin and brown, rising out of the sea right where it ought to be.
“You got to have confidence steering,” he told the nigger.
“I got confidence,” the nigger said. “But the way this trip gone I ain’t got confidence no more.”
“How’s your leg?”
“It hurts me all the time.”
“It ain’t nothing,” the man said. “You keep it clean and wrapped up and it’ll heal by itself.”
He was steering to the westward now to go in to lay up for the day in the mangroves by Woman Key where he would not see anybody and where the boat was to come out to meet them.
“You’re going to be all right,” he told the Negro.
“I don’t know,” the nigger said. “I hurt bad.”
“I’m going to fix you up good when we get in to the place,” he told him. “You aren’t shot bad. Quit worrying.”
“I’m shot,” he said. “I ain’t never been shot before. Anyway I’m shot is bad.”
“You’re just scared.”
“No sir. I’m shot. And I’m hurting bad. I’ve been throbbing all night.”
The nigger went on grumbling like that and he could not keep from taking the bandage off to look at it.
“Leave it alone,” the man who was steering told him. The nigger lay on the floor of the cockpit and there were sacks of liquor, shaped like hams, piled everywhere. He had made himself a place in them to lie down in. Every time he moved there was the noise of broken glass in the sacks and there was the odor of spilled liquor. The liquor had run all over everything. The man was steering in for Woman Key now. He could see it now plainly.
“I hurt,” the nigger said. “I hurt worse all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Wesley,” the man said. “But I got to steer.”
“You treat a man no better than a dog,” the nigger said. He was getting ugly now, but the man was still sorry for him.
“I’m going to make you comfortable, Wesley,” he said. “You lay quiet now.”
“You don’t care what happens to a man,” the nigger said. “You ain’t hardly human.”
“I’m going to fix you up good,” the man said. “You just lay quiet.”
“You ain’t going to fix me up,” the nigger said. The man, whose name was Harry, said nothing then because he liked the nigger and there was nothing to do now but hit him, and he couldn’t hit him. The nigger kept on talking.
“Why we didn’t stop when they started shooting?”
The man did not answer.
“Ain’t a man’s life worth more than a load of liquor?”
The man was intent on his steering.
“All we have to do is stop and let them take the liquor.”
“No,” the man said. “They take the liquor and the boat and you go to jail.”
“I don’t mind jail,” the nigger said. “But I never wanted to get shot.”
He was getting on the man’s nerves now and the man was becoming tired of hearing him talk.
“Who the hell’s shot worse?” he asked him. “You or me?”
“You’re shot worse,” the nigger said. “But I ain’t never been shot. I didn’t figure to get shot. I ain’t paid to get shot. I don’t want to be shot.”
“Take it easy, Wesley,” the man told him. “It don’t do you any good to talk like that.”
They were coming up on the key now. They were inside the shoals and as he headed her into the channel it was hard to see with the sun on the water. The nigger was going out of his head, or becoming religious because he was hurt; anyway he was talking all the time.
“Why they ran liquor now?” he said. “Prohibition’s over. Why they keep up a traffic like that? Whyn’t they bring the liquor in on the ferry?”
The man steering was watching the channel closely.
“Why don’t people be honest and decent and make a decent honest living?”
The man saw where the water was rippling smooth off the bank even when he could not see the bank in the sun and he named her off. He swung her around, spinning the wheel with one arm, and then the channel opened out and he took her slowly right up to the edge of the mangroves. He came astern on the engines and threw out the two clutches.
“I can put a anchor down,” he said. “But I can’t get no anchor up.”
“I can’t even move,” the nigger said.
“You’re certainly in a hell of a shape,” the man told him.
He had a difficult time breaking out, lifting and dropping the small anchor but he got it over, and paid out quite a lot of rope and the boat swung in against the mangroves so they came right into the cockpit. Then he went back and down into the cockpit. He thought the cockpit was a hell of a sight, all right.
All night after he had dressed the nigger’s wound and the nigger had bandaged his arm he had been watching the compass, steering, and when it came daylight he had seen the nigger lying there in the sacks in the middle of the cockpit, but then he was watching the seas and the compass and looking for the Sand Key light and he had never observed carefully how things were. Things were bad.
The nigger was lying in the middle of the load of sacked liquor with his leg up. There were eight bullet holes through the cockpit splintered wide. The glass was broken in the
windshield. He did not know how much stuff was smashed and wherever the nigger had not bled he himself had bled. But the worst thing, the way he felt at the moment, was the smell of booze. Everything was soaked in it. Now the boat was lying quietly against the mangroves but he could not stop feeling the motion of the big sea they had been in all night in the gulf.
“I’m going to make some coffee,” he told the nigger. “Then I’ll fix you up again.”
“I don’t want no coffee.”
“I do,” the man told him. But down below he began to feel dizzy so he came out on deck again.
“I guess we won’t have coffee,” he said.
“I want some water.”
“All right.”
He gave the Negro a cup of water out of a demijohn.
“Why you want to keep on running for when they started to shoot?”
“Why they want to shoot?” the man answered.
“I want a doctor,” the nigger told him.
“What’s a doctor going to do that I ain’t done for you?”
“Doctor going to cure me.”
“You’ll have a doctor tonight when the boat comes out.”
“I don’t want to wait for no boat.”
“All right,” the man said. “We’re going to dump this liquor now.”
He started to dump it and it was hard work one-handed. A sack of liquor only weighs about forty pounds but he had not dumped very many of them before he became dizzy again. He sat down in the cockpit and then he lay down.
“You going to kill yourself,” the nigger said.
The man lay quietly in the cockpit with his head against one of the sacks.
The branches of the mangroves had come into the cockpit and they made a shadow over him where he lay. He could hear the wind above the mangroves and looking out at the high, cold sky see the thin brown clouds of the norther.
“Nobody going to come out with this breeze,” he thought. “They won’t look for us to have started with this blowing.”
“You think they’ll come out?” the nigger asked.
“Sure,” the man said. “Why not?”
“It’s blowing too hard.”
“They’re looking for us.”
“Not with it like this. What you want to lie to me for?” The nigger was talking with his mouth almost against a sack.