Neither parent, then, treated the boys’ futures as something the boys themselves had any control over. And when you come right down to it, Bob thinks, as he drives north on Route 1 into Islamorada, they were both right. That’s what Eddie’s finding out, and because it’s coming late, it’s coming hard. He’s been lucky, that’s all, which is the basic difference between his life so far and mine, Bob decides. It’s not intelligence or hard work or courage. It’s luck. And luck can’t last a lifetime, unless you die young.
On the north side of Islamorada, a half mile before the bridge that crosses to Windley Key, Bob turns off at the Whale Harbor Tackle Shop, a long, low building on the bay that’s more a general store than a tackle shop, with a marina and boatyard behind it. There are only a few cars in the lot, and Bob parks deliberately behind a white Chrysler convertible with the top down. He gets out of his car and strolls around it and for a few seconds admires the Chrysler, standing next to it while he finishes off the can of Schlitz, rubbing his tee-shirted belly and examining the rolled and pleated red leather upholstery, which smells like nothing but itself and reminds Bob of polished wood, Irish tweed, gleaming brass. Glancing at his own face in the tear-shaped outside mirror, Bob suddenly sees himself as he must look from inside the store, a man in work clothes guzzling beer and drooling over someone else’s luck. Abruptly, he turns and heads inside, pitching the empty can into the trash barrel by the door as he enters.
He wishes he’d taken his captain’s hat with him when he left home, as he believes he’s treated with more respect here with the properly crumpled captain’s hat on his head than he is without it. The hat ordinarily embarrasses him, especially when he’s not running the Belinda Blue, and off the boat he usually bends it and stuffs it into his back pocket. The hat had been sort of a joke anyhow, a present given to him by Ave one night over beers at the Clam Shack after Bob had gotten his commercial license. He sensed that somehow Ave was mocking him with the hat, or maybe Honduras was, he couldn’t be sure, so he accepted it with mixed feelings and wore it reluctantly after that, as if it were merely and strictly part of the uniform that men with his job were supposed to wear.
Inside, beyond the high rows of canned goods, picnic supplies, beachware, past the racks of suntan lotion, the beer and soft drink coolers and the bins and shelves of household goods, Bob passes over into the serious side of the store, the tackle shop, where on both sides of a long glass counter there are pyramids and cones of fishing rods, shelves and tall displays of hand-tied flies, plugs, jiggers and lures, line, weights, knives and reels, with repair equipment and worktables behind the counter and huge color photographs on the walls of record-breaking marlin, tuna and bonefish, game fish held up dead to the camera by their captors.
Behind the cash register at the far end of the counter, a tall, thick-bodied man, taller and thicker than Bob, is talking with great force to the balding man who runs the place, a wiry, pale-faced man in his forties nicknamed Tippy, as if he were a Keys “character,” an old conch, which does not suit him at all, for he is an essentially humorless, shrewd businessman who by his looks and manner could as easily be running a lumberyard in Toledo as this place. The tall man talking to Tippy, lecturing him, it seems, looks familiar to Bob, though all he can see of him is the back of his sandy-gray head, his broad back, tanned neck and arms. Tippy is listening intently, nodding in agreement, while the man plows on, gesturing with his hands, his low, slightly nasal voice rising and falling rhythmically with his hands. The man is wearing a white bill cap and aviator sunglasses, a white polo shirt that’s old and baggy enough to surround his ample stomach without pointing to it, floppy GI-style work pants with huge pockets, and smudged white tennis shoes.
Instantly, Bob decides that this is the man who owns the Chrysler convertible outside. Though there are a half-dozen others in the store who also might be said to own the car, it’s only this man, at least as far as Bob Dubois is concerned, who is capable of owning it, who deserves to own it. If that white car in the lot is Bob’s idea of a proper grownup’s car, then this man in front of him is his idea of a proper grownup.
For years, Bob was one of those people who believe that there are two kinds of people, children and adults, and that they are like two different species. Then, when he himself became an adult and learned that the child in him had not only refused to die or disappear, but in fact seemed to be refusing to let the adult have his way, and when he saw that was true not only of him but of everyone else he knew as well — his wife, his brother, his friends, even his own mother and father — Bob reluctantly, sadly, with increasing loneliness, came to believe that there are no such things as adults after all, only children who try and usually fail to imitate adults. People are more or less adult-like, that’s all.
Except, that is, for the man in front of him. For the first time since he himself was a child, Bob Dubois believes that he is looking at a full-fledged adult, and it’s as if he has stumbled onto a saint or an angel right here in the Whale Harbor Tackle Shop in Islamorada, Florida, a saint having an animated discussion with sober, businesslike Tippy — no, not really a discussion, because the saint’s doing all the talking. Tippy just nods and listens and nods again, and it’s as if the saint is telling Tippy how the world looks from his miraculously elevated position.
The saint swings his arms in tandem, clearly explaining a particular kind of cast, low, close to the water, snaking the line in under mangrove roots for bonefish. His large, gray-haired head and deeply tanned face seem to have an aura swirling around them as he speaks, as if he were either not really present or were more profoundly present than anyone else. His size, larger than a large man’s, and the swiftness of his gestures, the pure, muscular clarity of his motions and his crisp, good-humored, rapid-fire speech — everything about him that Bob can see and hear manifests the kind of superiority and self-assurance that only saints, or what Bob used to think of as adults, possess.
Bob moves a few feet closer along the counter, so he can hear what Tippy is privileged to hear. The saint glances to his left, sees Bob and goes on talking as if he has not seen Bob at all. Filled with wonder, afraid he will cry out, Bob says to himself, hopes he says it only to himself, for he cannot be sure, My God, it’s Ted Williams!
Ted Williams turns to him. Bob has said it aloud. “I’m … I’m didn’t mean interrupt …” Bob stumbles. His tongue feels like a hand, his hands like tongues.
Tippy looks at Bob as if he’s just discovered a counterfeit bill in the cash register. “Want help, mister?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest to make it clear that his question is only a question, not an offer.
Ted Williams peers down through the glass counter at the black and silver reels on the shelf and seems to be examining them for flaws rather than for possible purchase. He purses his lips and falls to whistling a tuneless tune.
Bob says, “I’m sorry … I mean, excuse me, but you’re Ted Williams, and … I didn’t mean to interrupt …”