“You got it, Henry?” he asked through the tube. “Yes, Tom.”
“Work on it and around it with short bursts.”
He heard the .50’s start slamming and he waved Ara and Willie in. They came in as fast as the little motor would bring them. Willie was firing all the time until they were under the lee of the ship.
Willie jumped aboard and came up on the flying bridge while Ara made the dinghy fast.
He looked at Tom and at Gil who was putting a tourniquet on his left leg as close to the crotch as he could tighten it.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What you got, Tommy?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. He did not know, either. He could not see any of the wounds. All he saw was the color of the blood and it was dark so he did not worry. But there was too much of it and he felt very sick.
“What’s in there, Willie?”
“I don’t know. There was a guy with a burp gun fired on us and I got him. Or I’m pretty sure I did.”
“I didn’t hear it with the noise you made.”
“You guys sounded like an ammunition dump going up. Do you think there’s anything still back there?”
“Still, maybe. We gave it the treatment.”
“We’ll have to work it out,” Willie said.
“We can let these sons of bitches hang and rattle,” Thomas Hudson said. “Or we can go in now and finish it.”
“I’d rather take care of you.”
Henry was probing with the .50’s. He was as delicate as he was rough with a machine gun and with a pair of them all his qualities were doubled.
“Do you know where they are, Willie?”
“There’s only one place they can be.”
“Then let’s go in blasting and blow the shit out of them.”
“Spoken like an officer and a gentleman,” Willie said. “We sunk their skiff.”
“Oh. We didn’t hear that either,” Thomas Hudson said.
“It didn’t make much noise,” Willie said. “Ara chopped her open with a machete and cut the sail up. Christ couldn’t repair her in a month the best day he was in that carpenter shop.”
“You get up forward with Henry and George and have Ara and Antonio on the starboard side and let’s go in,” Thomas Hudson said. He felt very sick and strange, although there was no dizziness yet. The dressings Gil had put on contained the bleeding too easily and he knew it was internal. “Put lots of fire on and you signal me how to go. How close are they?”
“Right up against the shore behind the little rise of ground.”
“Can Gil reach it all right with the big ones?”
“I’ll shoot tracers to show him the target.”
“They’ll still be there?”
“They got no place to go. They saw us break up the skiff. They’re fighting Custer’s Last Stand in the mangroves. Christ, I wish I had some Anheuser Busch.”
“Ice cold in cans,” Thomas Hudson said. “Let’s get in.”
“You’re awfully white, Tommy,” Willie said. “And you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Let’s take her in fast then,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’m still all right.”
They closed fast with Willie with his head up over the starboard bow sometimes waving a correction.
Henry was traversing before and behind the rise that showed by the higher trees and George was working on what should be the lip of the rise.
“How is it, Willie?” Thomas Hudson said into the tube.
“You got enough hulls up here to start a brass foundry,” Willie answered. “Lay her goddam bow up against the bank and swing her broadside so Ara and Antonio can bear.”
Gil thought he saw something and fired. But it was the low branch of a tree that Henry had cut loose.
Thomas Hudson watched the bank come closer and closer until he could see individual leaves again. Then he swung her broadside until he heard Antonio firing and saw his tracers going in a little to the right of Willie’s. Ara was firing now, too. Then he came a little astern on his motors and swung her close to the bank but not so close that Gil could not throw.
“Throw an extinguisher,” he said. “Where Willie’s been shooting.”
Gil threw and again Thomas Hudson marvelled at the throw and at the shine of the brass cylinder whirling high through the air to drop almost exactly where it should. There was the flash and the roar and then the rising smoke and then Thomas Hudson saw a man walking toward them out of the smoke with his hands clasped over his head.
“Hold up the fire,” he said as rapidly as he could into two tubes.
But Ara had already fired and he saw the man slump forward into the mangroves on his knees with his head forward.
He spoke again and said, “Resume fire.” Then he said to Gil, very tiredly, “Put in another one about the same place if you can. Then put in a couple of frags.”
He had had a prisoner. But he had lost him.
After a while he said, “Willie, you and Ara want to have a look?”
“Sure,” Willie said. “But keep some fire on while we go in. I want to go in from the back.”
“Tell Henry what you want. When do you want it off?”
“As soon as we clear the entrance.”
“All right, jungle man,” Thomas Hudson said and for the first time he had time to realize that he was probably going to die.
XXI
He heard the noise of a grenade bursting behind the small ridge. Then there was no more noise and no firing. He leaned heavily on the wheel and he watched the smoke of the grenade thin out in the wind.
“I’m going to take her on through as soon as I see the dinghy,” he said to Gil.
He felt Antonio’s arm around him and heard him say, “You lie down, Tom. I’m taking her.”
“All right,” he said and he took a last look down the narrow, green-banked river. The water was brown but clear and the tide was flowing strong.
Gil and Antonio helped him to lie down on the planking of the bridge. Then Antonio took the wheel. He went astern a little more to hold her against the tide and Thomas Hudson could feel the sweet rhythm of the big motors.
“Loosen the tourniquet a little,” he said to Gil.
“We’ll get the air mattress,” Gil said.
“I like it on the deck,” Thomas Hudson said. “I think it is better if I don’t move much.”
“Get a cushion under his head,” Antonio said. He was looking down the channel.
In a little while he said, “They’re waving us in, Tom,” and Thomas Hudson felt the motors go ahead and the ship slide forward.
“Anchor her as soon as we’re out of the channel.”
“Yes, Tom. Don’t talk.”
Henry came up and took the wheel and the controls when they anchored. Now that they were in the open again, Thomas Hudson felt her swing into the wind.
“There’s lots of water in here, Tom,” Henry said.
“I know. All the way to Caibarién and the two channels are clear and well marked.”
“Please don’t talk, Tom. Just lie quiet.”
“Have Gil get a light blanket.”
“I’ll get it. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much, Tommy.”
“It hurts,” Thomas Hudson said. “But not too bad. It doesn’t hurt any worse than things hurt that you and I have shot together.”
“Here’s Willie,” Henry said.
“You old son of a bitch,” said Willie. “Don’t talk. There were four in there with the guide. It was the main party. Then there was the one Ara got by mistake. He feels awful about it when you wanted a prisoner so much. He’s crying and I told him to stay below. He just loosed off like anybody would.”
“What did you throw the grenade at?”
“Just a place I didn’t like the look of. Don’t you talk, Tom.”
“You have to go back and detrap that hulk.”
“We’re going right away and we’ll check the other place. I wish the Christ we had a speed boat. Tommy, those goddam f
ire extinguishers are better than an .81mm mortar.”
“Not the same range.”
“What the hell we want with range? That Gil was throwing them into a bushel basket.”
“Get going.”
“How bad are you, Tommy?”
“Pretty bad.”
“Think you can make it?”
“I’m going to try.”
“Keep perfectly still. Don’t move for anything.”
They were not gone long but it seemed a long time to Thomas Hudson. He lay on his back in the shade of a canopy Antonio had rigged for him. Gil and George had unlaced the canvas from the windward side of the flying bridge and the wind came fresh and friendly. It was not as strong as it had been yesterday but it was steady from the east and the clouds were high and thin. The sky was the blue sky of the eastern part of the island where the trades blow strongest and Thomas Hudson lay and watched it and tried to hold his pain in control. He had refused the hypodermic of morphine that Henry had brought him because he thought he might still have to think. He knew he could always take it later on.
He lay there under the light blanket with the dressings on his three wounds. Gil had sifted them all full of sulfa when he dressed them and he could see sulfa spilled like sugar on the part of the deck where he had stood at the wheel while Gil had worked on him. When they had taken down the canvas, so he would have more air, he had noticed the three small holes where the bullets had come through and the others to the left and to the right. He had seen the gashes in the canvas from the grenade fragments.
As he lay there, Gil watched him and saw his salt-bleached head and his gray face above the light blanket. Gil was a simple boy. He was a great athlete and nearly as strong as Ara and if he could have hit a curve ball he would have been a very good ball player. He had a great throwing arm. Thomas Hudson looked at him and smiled, remembering the grenades. Then he smiled just to look at Gil and the long muscles of his arms.
“You should have been a pitcher,” he said and his voice sounded strange to him.
“I never had control.”
“You had it today.”
“Maybe it wasn’t really necessary before,” Gil smiled. “You want some water on your mouth, Tommy. Just nod your head.”
Thomas Hudson shook his head and looked out at the lake that was the inside passage. It showed white caps now. But they were the small waves of a good sailing breeze and beyond them he could see the blue hills of the Turiguaño.
That’s what we’ll do, he thought. We’ll head for the Central or for the other place and they may have a doctor there. No, it’s too late in the season. But they can fly a good surgeon in. They are all fine people in there. A bad surgeon is worse than none and I can lie quiet until he comes and they move me. I ought to take a lot of sulfa. But I shouldn’t drink water. Don’t worry about it, boy, he said to himself. All your life is just pointed toward it. But why couldn’t Ara not have shot that son of a bitch so we would have something to show for it all so it would have done some good. I don’t mean good. I mean so it would have been some use. Hell, if they had had the firepower we had. They must have pulled the other stakes on the channels to suck us into that one. But maybe if we had the prisoner he would be stupid and know nothing. He would have been useful to have had though. We are not being very useful now. Sure we are. We are detrapping that old turtle boat.
Think about after the war and when you will paint again. There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing. You can paint the sea better than anyone now if you will do it and not get mixed up in other things. Hang on good now to how you truly want to do it. You must hold hard to life to do it. But life is a cheap thing beside a man’s work. The only thing is that you need it. Hold it tight. Now is the true time you make your play. Make it now without hope of anything. You always coagulated well and you can make one more real play. We are not the lumpen-proletariat. We are the best and we do it for free.
“Tom, do you want some water?” Gil asked again.
Thomas Hudson shook his head.
Three chickenshit bullets, he thought, to fuck good painting and prove nothing. Why did the poor bastards ever make that error on the massacre key? They could have surrendered and been all right. I wonder who the one was who came out to surrender when Ara shot. He could have been like the boy they shot at massacre key. Why do they have to be such damned fanatics? We chased good and we will always fight. But I hope we are not fanatics.
Then he heard the noise of the outboard coming. He could not see it join them from where he lay and then Ara and Willie came up. Ara was sweating and they both were scratched by the brush.
“I am sorry, Tom,” Ara said.
“Shit,” said Thomas Hudson.
“Let’s haul ass out of here,” Willie said, “and I’ll tell you. Ara, get the hell down on the anchor and send Antonio up here to take her.”
“We’re going in to the Central. It’s faster.”
“Smart,” Willie said. “Now don’t talk, Tom, and let me tell you.” He stopped and put his hand on Thomas Hudson’s forehead lightly and reached under the blanket and felt the pulse accurately but very gently.
“Don’t die, you bastard,” he said. “Just hold it and don’t move.”
“Roger,” Thomas Hudson said.
“At the first fight there were three deads,” Willie explained. He was to windward of Thomas Hudson sitting on the deck and he smelled sour of sweat and his bad eye was swung wild again and all the plastic surgery on his face showed white. Thomas Hudson lay very quietly and listened to him.
“They had two burp guns only but they were set up good. Gil’s first extinguisher got them and the .50’s cut the shit out of them. Antonio hit them too. Henry can really shoot the .50’s.”
“He always could.”
“I mean with the heat on. So we detrapped that joint and it is very high now. Ara and I cut all the wires but we left the stuff. She’s OK and I’ll pinpoint the location of these other Krauts on the chart.”
The anchor was up and the motors were turning.
“We didn’t do so good, did we?” Thomas Hudson said.
“They outsmarted us. But we had the firepower. They didn’t do so good either. Don’t say anything to Ara about the prisoner. He feels bad enough. He says he squeezed off before he thought.”
The ship was heading toward the blue hills and gathering speed.
“Tommy,” Willie said. “I love you, you son of a bitch, and don’t die.”
Thomas Hudson looked at him without moving his head.
“Try and understand if it isn’t too hard.”
Thomas Hudson looked at him. He felt far away now and there were no problems at all. He felt the ship gathering her speed and the lovely throb of her engines against his shoulder blades which rested hard against the boards. He looked up and there was the sky that he had always loved and he looked across the great lagoon that he was quite sure, now, he would never paint and he eased his position a little to lessen the pain. The engines were around three thousand now, he thought, and they came through the deck and into him.
“I think I understand, Willie,” he said.
“Oh shit,” Willie said. “You never understand anybody that loves you.”
THE END.
Islands in the Stream Page 45
