“Where was it?”
“Up in Maine. I don’t think my father ever forgave me although he tried to understand it. I’ve wished it was me every day since. But that’s hardly a career.”
“What was your brother’s name?”
“Dave.”
“Hell. Was that why you wouldn’t go goggle-fishing today?”
“I guess so. But I’m going every other day. You never work those things out, though.”
“You’re grown up enough not to talk that way.”
“I tried to go down after him. But I couldn’t find him,” Roger said. “It was too deep and it was really cold.”
“David Davis,” Thomas Hudson said.
“Yes. In our family the first one is called Roger and the second one David.”
“Roge, you did get over it, though.”
“No,” Roger said. “You never get over it and sooner or later I have to tell it. I’m ashamed of that the way I’m ashamed of the fight on the dock.”
“You had nothing to be ashamed of there.”
“Yes, I did. I told you once. Let’s not go into that.”
“All right.”
“I’m not going to have any more fights. Ever. You never fight and you can fight as well as I can.”
“I can’t fight as well as you. But I just made up my mind I wouldn’t fight.”
“I’m not going to fight and I’m going to be some good and quit writing junk.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard you say,” Thomas Hudson said.
“Do you think I could write something that would be worth a damn?”
“You could try. What did you quit painting for?”
“Because I couldn’t kid myself any longer. I can’t kid myself any longer on the writing either.”
“What are you going to do, practically?”
“Go some place and write a good straight novel as well as I can write it.”
“Why don’t you stay here and write? You can stay on here after the boys are gone. It’s too hot to write in your place.”
“I wouldn’t bother you too much?”
“No, Roge. I get lonely, too, you know. You can’t just run away from everything all the time. This sounds like a speech. I’ll cut it out.”
“No. Go on. I need it.”
“If you are going to start to work, start here.”
“You don’t think out West would be better?”
“Any place is good. The thing is not to run from it.”
“No. Any place isn’t good,” Roger objected. “I know that. They’re good and then they go bad.”
“Sure. But this is a good place now. Maybe it won’t always be. But it’s fine now. You’d have company when you quit work and so would I. We wouldn’t interfere with each other and you could really bite on the nail.”
“Do you truly think I could write a novel that would be any good?”
“You never will if you don’t try. You told me a hell of a good novel tonight if you wanted to write it. Just start with the canoe.”
“And end it how?”
“Make it up after the canoe.”
“Hell,” Roger said. “I’m so corrupted that if I put in a canoe it would have a beautiful Indian girl in it that young Jones, who is on his way to warn the settlers that Cecil B. de Mille is coming, would drop into, hanging by one hand to a tangle of vines that covers the river while he holds his trusty flintlock, ‘Old Betsy,’ in the other hand, and the beautiful Indian girl says, ‘Jones, it ees you. Now we can make love as our frail craft moves toward the falls that some day weel be Niagara.’ ”
“No,” said Thomas Hudson. “You could just make the canoe and the cold lake and your kid brother—”
“David Davis. Eleven.”
“And afterwards. And then make up from there to the end.”
“I don’t like the end,” Roger said.
“I don’t think any of us do, really,” Thomas Hudson said. “But there’s always an end.”
“Maybe we better knock off talking,” Roger said. “I’m liable to start thinking about the novel. Tommy, why is it fun to paint well and hell to write well? I never painted well. But it was fun even the way I painted.”
“I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. “Maybe in painting the tradition and the line are clearer and there are more people helping you. Even when you break from the straight line of great painting, it is always there to help you.”
“I think another thing is that better people do it,” Roger said. “If I were a good enough guy maybe I could have been a good painter. Maybe I’m just enough of a son of a bitch to be a good writer.”
“That’s the worst oversimplification I’ve ever heard.”
“I always oversimplify,” Roger maintained. “That’s one reason I’m no damn good.”
“Let’s go to bed.”
“I’ll stay up and read a while,” Roger said.
They slept well and Thomas Hudson did not wake when Roger came out to the sleeping porch late in the night. After breakfast the wind was light and there were no clouds in the sky and they organized for a day of underwater fishing.
“You’re coming, aren’t you, Mr. Davis?” Andrew asked.
“I most certainly am.”
“That’s good,” said Andrew. “I’m glad.”
“How do you feel, Andy?” Thomas Hudson asked.
“Scared,” said Andrew. “Like always. But I’m not so scared with Mr. Davis going.”
“Never be scared, Andy,” Roger said. “It’s worthless. Your father told me.”
“They tell you,” Andrew said. “They always tell you. But David’s the only young boy I ever knew with any brains that isn’t scared.”
“Shut up,” David said. “You’re just a creature of your imagination.”
“Mr. Davis and I are always scared,” Andrew said. “It’s possibly our superior intelligence.”
“You’re going to be careful, Davy, aren’t you?” Thomas Hudson said.
“Naturally.”
Andrew looked at Roger and shrugged his shoulders.
VII
Down along the reef where they went for underwater fishing on that day, there was the old iron wreck of a steamer that had broken up and at high tide the rusty iron of her boilers still showed above the sea. Today the wind was in the south and Thomas Hudson anchored in the lee of a patch of reef, not too close in, and Roger and the boys got their masks and spears ready. The spears were very primitive, and of all sorts, and these spears were made according to Thomas Hudson’s and the boy’s individual ideas.
Joseph had come along to scull the dinghy. He took Andrew in with him and they started for the reef while the others slipped over the side to swim.
“Aren’t you coming, papa?” David called up to his father on the flying bridge of his fishing boat. The circle of glass over his eyes, nose, and forehead, with the rubber frame pressed under his nose, into his cheeks, and tight against his forehead, held tight into the flesh by a rubber strap around the back of his head, made him look like one of the characters in those pseudoscientific comic strips. “I’ll come over later on.”
“Don’t wait too long until everything gets spooked.”
“There’s plenty of reef. You won’t work it all over.”
“But I know two holes out beyond the boilers that are wonderful. I found them the day we came alone. They were so untouched and full of fish I left them for when we would all be here.”
“I remember. I’ll come over in about an hour.”
“I’ll save them for when you come,” David said and started to swim after the others, his right hand holding the six-foot ironwood shaft with the hand-forged, twin-pronged fish grains fitted to the end and made fast with a length of heavy fishing line. His face was down in the water and he was studying the bottom through the glass of his mask as he swam. He was an undersea boy and now that he was so brown and that he was swimming with only the wet back of his head showing he reminded Thomas Hudson more than ever of an otter.