“The boats put out after the fish. It been their business. But my boat stayed behind. My business never in no Gulf that day. My business never up by Marathon. My business with the Atlantic Ocean. Bob Wilson brother. Gamblers.
“My business told me: Go out in the fog. Keep walking. Walk through fear. Fear is a door! On the other side”—he pointed—“Fiskadoro meets Fiskadoro.” He swiveled his arm, pointing his finger at another: “Glen gonna meet Glen.”
The boys and young men were more and more astonished by every one of his words. Some of them trembled visibly, and their teeth clacked with fear.
“I don’t need fifty rules. I don’t need twenty rules. I don’t need ten rules. Every day have one, two, three problems. Every day have one, two, three rules. That day my rule come to me like, Do your business, fool. Leave alone the most personal thing today!
“When my head gotten clanging because of my personal wife laying around naked and tangle up with James Melroy in the Twelve Shacks, my rule come to me like, Do not kill a wife, do not kill a man who you can call him by his name, James Melroy. Personal is crazy! Go do your business!
“But I was afraid of my business. I was afraid of to be seen. Everybody would question to me, Where the wife now, my pal? Is she visit up to those shacks below Marathon? You know James Melroy live up those shacks, isn’t it now? Maybe somebody was ask me like this: Brother, you gonna ’bout to visit up there and shoot that man? I was afraid of them see me go in my boat and say, That man, he is not going up toward Marathon. That man, he is a frighten coward.
“But I telling you, Allah is there. His words are ‘Courage’ and ‘Obey.’ I was afraid of to be seen? — in the blinding sun nobody wasn’t see me. I was afraid of questions? — questions never draw no blood, but yes except inside the stomach of a frighten coward. I went out. I walked through fear. I meeted myself. I did my business. I obeyed the rules for the problems of one day. Now I got business in every place on the Keys. I don’t worry about who was my wife then. I don’t know her name.
“But she know my name now. Every day. Every day she call on me. Every day she come crying and beating her face. And I say, If I knowed your name, stranger-woman, I surely be go speak to you. But I don’t speak to you because of I don’t know your name.”
They waited in silence. He picked up sand and let it drift away between his fingers. The shapes of the young men, flattened out by the firelight, seemed to shift when the wind plagued the flames. Whenever the drift of smoke turned around and came at a man, he ducked his face thoughtfully into the crook of thumb and finger, covering his eyes and nose with his hand.
It began to seem they might not be permitted to hear about Cassius Clay Sugar Ray’s business of that day, which had made him famous everywhere. The boys and young men got anxious. One tossed a smooth rock into the fire. Others said, “Hm! Hm!” but couldn’t fathom how to prod him into going on. Finally one said, “Tell it to us ’bout the words of Allah.” A couple of others said, “Right!” “That’s right!”
As if he’d never spoken the words in his life before, Cassius Clay Sugar Ray repeated, “Bob Wilson brother, Michael Wilson, he had the power of moving dice, and so the gambling men they kept him in chains. They kept him incognito on the North Deerfield, way up past the contamination. That’s why we had to go.
“I took four men. Bob Wilson. The person called Holy Apples. Michael Torres. And a sailor name Smith, that’s all anybody know now, Smith. We went in my fisher, the Guerrilla.
“After one half morning we come around the Twicetown Key to the Ocean. The Ocean side ain’t put there for our boats — they tell you that, but we never said it that day. We took the Ocean, brother. We took the Ocean, my pal. We sailed the fog full of ghosts. We was hear them talking but we wasn’t understand the words, because of they were the Ocean ghosts who we never knew them, not any ghosts from around here, who one time they used to be our friends. Then when the fog let loose of us, we have the wind and rain.
“A storm been our mother all the way. She pick us up — sometime the boat she flying. The hands of the Ocean come out and took Smith. There wasn’t nothing we could do, we wasn’t see it coming. But we see it coming for Holy Apples because of Holy Apples started to glow as loud as this”—he picked up a coal, holding it with complete serenity in the palm of his hand, and blew on it to make it flare. “We knew he gone be next, Holy Apples, and we clutch onto him, Bob Wilson and me, while Michael Torres kept up screaming at the wind.
“The person called Holy Apples was glowing so loud Bob Wilson and me was look at the bones glowing inside of our hands where we holding him. Then the mighty wind yelled words like, ‘Rock an’ Rooooll! Bop-a-loooola!’ and it turned the boat around three times, and the tail of the sea come up and stole Holy Apples out of our little arms. We knew that was all. She agua won’t take a crew, or even half a crew, without she taking the whole boat. We knew she wasn’t reach up for no more others of us.
“The storm cracked open right in the middle and fell down the sides of the sky. Way out at the edges of the east, now, we watch the water boiling. On the west we saw the city Miami. Just like the Ocean been boiling on the east, the storm been making the city Miami remember the old war again. The air stand black and boiling all around it, but the towers they come on fire from the sun. Some buildings in the south they still there. Some buildings they high as fifty fish-boats put together, some buildings they look like made out of a thousand mirrors, some buildings they black and shiny as a person’s eye. I try to remember but I really ain’t can’t, because of that day everything I watch been bigger than my mind. The city goes from all the way in the north to all the way in the south. The North Deerfield, that’s a part of it. You know when you get to the North Deerfield because of after that you ain’t can’t never go north no more. The Ocean take you in and beach you. The biggest sail we got over in Twicetown ain’t can’t fight the struggle against that corriente.
“Me and Bob Wilson talking while the boat move in, and Michael Torres cried a little bit, until when we told him what we talked about. We said, Fugdat shit, now, that’s all. We said, Whatever happen go happen.
“I didn’t know the name of Allah then, but I said, ‘I think I hear one word from God’s mouth, and that word is Courage.’
“Bob Wilson said, ‘I think I hear a word, too, and it’s a different word and that word is Obey.’
“When we telling that to Michael Torres, he say, Fugdat shit, too. He say, Whatever happen go happen, too.
“The Guerrilla, you understand me now, the Guerrilla she beach there, right up against the North Deerfield face, and we go sleep right in her. Let them come! All night we heard whispering all around us that we wasn’t figure it out — water-ghosts whispering another language. And rain-ghosts came. Let them come! Fugdat shit! But I never slept for one breath, though, I admit it, it’s true.
“And then a strange morning. Rain all night disappeared with the dawn, like dreams, and the sun soft on the North Deerfield two hours. We hiding in the boat and watch the North Deerfield fish-men. Next thing, cool arms been in the air touching us. By the time the North Deerfield fish-men ropes toss on the boats and them put out, such a cold fog come unrolling like a prayer mat, off the Ocean side. The fish-men they just only let that fog chase the boats out to the Ocean. Didn’t let it stop their journeys.
“I never did felt a town so cold. Almost of everybody in the North Deerfield stayed in by the stoves. If you walked about, ghosts going in and lick the juice of your lungs. Their tongues they rough like a cat’s, but cold. They hide in the fog. You cough up pink fog and die. We got off the boat and march around—cold water in that harbor! We shook like baby canes and had a stupid thought — we thought we gone walk around, no problem. We thought nobody never gone go out but a thief or a vagabond from far away, on a cold day like that, which we never saw before in our life. Rubbage, rubbage — hey, watch me now — in the North Deerfield, they ain’t can’t feel the cold. They walk around inside it, and say, Oh, what a hot day it is!