“No, Tom. Goddam it, why can’t I lift on him?”
“He’s an awfully big fish, Dave,” Roger told him. “You can’t bull him around. You’ve got to lead him and try to convince him where he has to come.”
“You tell me what to do and I’ll do it until I die,” David said. “I trust you.”
“Don’t talk about dying,” Roger said. “That’s no way to talk.”
“I mean it,” David said. “I mean it really.”
Young Tom came back up on the flying bridge with his father. They were looking down at David, bent and harnessed to his fish, with Roger standing by him and Eddy holding the chair. Andrew was putting the glass of water to Dave’s mouth. He took some in and spat it out.
“Pour some on my wrists, will you, Andy?” he asked.
“Papa, do you think he can really stay with this fish?” Tom said to his father very softly.
“It’s an awful lot of fish for him.”
“It scares me,” Tom said. “I love David and I don’t want any damned fish to kill him.”
“Neither do I and neither does Roger and neither does Eddy.”
“Well we’ve got to look after him. If he gets in really bad shape, Mr. Davis ought to take the fish or you take him.”
“He’s a long way from bad shape yet.”
“But you don’t know him like we do. He would kill himself to get the fish.”
“Don’t worry, Tom.”
“I can’t help it,” young Tom said. “I’m the one in the family that always worries. I hope I’ll get over it.”
“I wouldn’t worry about this now,” Thomas Hudson said.
“But papa, how is a boy like David going to catch a fish like that? He’s never caught anything bigger than sailfish and amberjack.”
“This fish will get tired. It’s the fish that has the hook in his mouth.”
“But he’s monstrous,” Tom said. “And Dave’s fastened to him just as much as he is to Dave. It’s so wonderful I can’t believe it if Dave catches him, but I wish you or Mr. Davis had him.
“Dave’s doing all right.”
They were getting further out to sea all the time but it was still a flat calm. There were many patches of Gulf weed now, sunburned so that they were yellow on the purple water, and sometimes the slow-moving taut white line ran through a patch of weed and Eddy reached down and cleared any weed that clung to the line. As he leaned over the coaming and pulled the yellow weed off the line and tossed it away, Thomas Hudson saw his wrinkled red brown neck and old felt hat and heard him say to Dave, “He’s practically towing the boat, Davy. He’s way down there tiring himself and tiring himself all the time.”
“He’s tiring me, too,” David said.
“You got a headache?” Eddy asked.
“No.”
“Get a cap for him,” Roger said.
“I don’t want it, Mr. Davis. I’d rather have some water on my head.”
Eddy dipped a bucket of sea water and wet the boy’s head carefully with his cupped hand, soaking his head and pushing the hair back out of his eyes.
“You say if you get a headache,” he told him.
“I’m fine,” David said. “You tell me what to do, Mr. Davis.”
“See if you can get any line on him,” Roger said.
David tried and tried and tried again but he could not raise the fish an inch.
“All right. Save your strength,” Roger told him. Then to Eddy, “Soak a cap and put it on him. This is a hell of a hot day with the calm.”
Eddy dipped a long-visored cap in the bucket of salt water and put it on Dave’s head.
“The salt water gets in my eyes, Mr. Davis. Really. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll wipe it out with some fresh,” Eddy said. “Give me a handkerchief, Roger. You go get some ice water, Andy.”
While the boy hung there, his legs braced, his body arched against the strain, the boat kept moving slowly out to sea. To the westward a school of either bonito or alba-core were troubling the calm of the surface and terns commenced to come flying, calling to each other as they flew. But the school of fish went down and the terns lit on the calm water to wait for the fish to come up again. Eddy had wiped the boy’s face and now was dipping the handkerchief in the glass of ice water and laying it across David’s neck. Then he cooled his wrists with it and then, with the handkerchief soaked in ice water again, wrung it out while he pressed it against the back of David’s neck.
“You say if you have a headache,” Eddy told him. “That ain’t quitting. That’s just sense. This is a hell of a goddam hot sun when it’s a calm.”
“I’m all right,” David told him. “I hurt bad in the shoulders and the arms is all.”
“That’s natural,” Eddy said. “That’ll make a man out of you. What we don’t want is for you to get no sunstroke nor bust any gut.”
“What will he do now, Mr. Davis?” David asked. His voice sounded dry.
“Maybe just what he’s doing. Or he might start to circle. Or he may come up.”
“It’s a damn shame he sounded so deep at the start so we haven’t any line to maneuver him with,” Thomas Hudson said to Roger.
“Dave stopped him is the main thing,” Roger said. “Pretty soon the fish will change his mind. Then we’ll work on him. See if you can get any just once, Dave.”
David tried but he could not raise him at all.
“He’ll come up,” Eddy said. “You’ll see. All of a sudden there won’t be anything to it, Davy. Want to rinse your mouth out?”
David nodded his head. He had reached the breath-saving stage.
“Spit it out,” Eddy said. “Swallow just a little.” He turned to Roger. “One hour even,” he said. “Is your head all right, Davy?”
The boy nodded.
“What do you think, papa?” young Tom said to his father. “Truly?”
“He looks pretty good to me,” his father said. “Eddy wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”
“No, I guess not,” Tom agreed. “I wish I could do something useful. I’m going to get Eddy a drink.”
“Get me one, too, please.”
“Oh good. I’ll make one for Mr. Davis, too.”
“I don’t think he wants one.”
“Well I’ll ask him.”
“Try him once more, Davy,” Roger said very quietly, and the boy lifted with all his strength, holding the sides of the spool of the reel with his hands.
“You got an inch,” Roger said. “Take it in and see if you can get some more.”
Now the real fight began. Before David had only been holding him while the fish moved out to sea and the boat moved with him. But now he had to lift, let the rod straighten with the line he had gained, and then lower the rod slowly while he took the line in by reeling.
“Don’t try to do it too fast,” Roger told him. “Don’t rush yourself. Just keep it steady.”
The boy was bending forward and pulling up from the soles of his feet, using all the leverage of his body and all of what weight he had on each lift; then reeling fast with his right hand as he lowered.
“David fishes awfully pretty,” young Tom said. “He’s fished since he was a little boy but I didn’t know he could fish this well. He always makes fun of himself because he can’t play games. But look at him now.”
“The hell with games,” Thomas Hudson said. “What did you say, Roger?”
“Go ahead on him just a touch,” Roger called up.
“Ahead on him just a touch,” Thomas Hudson repeated and on the next lift, as they nudged slowly forward, David recovered more line.
“Don’t you like games either, papa?” Tom asked.
“I used to. Very much. But not anymore.”