“Well, the suicide gentleman took kindly to this idea and they’d talk it over every day. Others tried to get in on it and proposed they form an excursion of death seekers and just go as far as Nassau for the preliminaries. But Big Harry, he held out for New York City and finally he confided to the suicide gentleman that he couldn’t stand this life no longer and he was ready to go.
“Big Harry, he had to go out for a couple days crawfishing on a order he had from Captain Ralph and while he was gone the suicide gentleman took to drinking too much. Then he’d take some kind of ammonia from up north that would seem to sober him up and he’d come down to drink here again. But it was accumulating in him some way.
“We all called him Suicides by then so I said to him, ‘Suicides, you better lay off or you’ll never live to reach oblivion.’
“ ‘I’m bound for it now,’ he says. ‘I’m en route. I’m headed for it. Take the money for these drinks. I’ve made my dread decision.’
“ ‘Here’s your change,’ I said to him.
“ ‘I don’t want no change. Keep it for Big Harry so he can have a drink before he joins me.’
“So he goes out in a rush and he dives off of Johnny Black’s dock into the channel with the tide going out and it’s dark and no moon and nobody sees him any more until he washes up on the point in two days. Everybody looked for him good that night, too. I figured he must have struck his head on some old concrete and went out with the tide. Big Harry come in and he mourned him until the change was all drunk up. It was change from a twenty-dollar bill too. Then Big Harry said to me, ‘You know, Bobby, I think old Suicides was crazy.’ He was right, too, because when his family sent for him the man who came explained to Commissioner old Suicides had suffered from a thing called Mechanic’s Depressive. You never had that, did you, Roger?”
“No,” said Roger. “And now I think I never will.”
“That’s the stuff,” Mr. Bobby said. “And don’t you ever fool with that old oblivion stuff.”
“Fuck oblivion,” said Roger.
XI
Lunch was excellent, the steak was browned outside and striped by the grill. A knife slipped through the outer part and inside the meat was tender and juicy. They all dipped up juice from their plates and put it on the mashed potatoes and the juice made a lake in their creamy whiteness. The lima beans, cooked in butter, were firm; the cabbage lettuce was crisp and cold and the grapefruit was chilly cold.
Everyone was hungry with the wind and Eddy came up and looked in while they were eating. His face looked very bad and he said, “What the hell do you think of meat like that?”
“It’s wonderful,” young Tom said.
“Chew it good,” Eddy said. “Don’t waste that eating it fast.”
“You can’t chew it much or it’s gone,” young Tom told him.
“Have we got dessert, Eddy?” David asked.
“Sure. Pie and ice cream.”
“Oh boy,” Andrew said. “Two pieces?”
“Enough to founder you. Ice cream’s as hard as a rock.”
“What kind of pie?”
“Loganberry pie.”
“What kind of ice cream?”
“Coconut.”
“Where’d we get it?”
“Run-boat brought it.”
They drank iced tea with the meal and Roger and Thomas Hudson had coffee after the dessert.
“Eddy’s a wonderful cook,” Roger said.
“Some of it’s appetite.”
“That steak wasn’t appetite. Nor that salad. Nor that pie.”
“He is a fine cook,” Thomas Hudson agreed. “Is the coffee all right?”
“Excellent.”
“Papa,” young Tom asked, “if the people on the yacht go to Mr. Bobby’s can we go down and practice Andy being a rummy on them?”
“Mr. Bobby might not like it. He might get in bad with Constable.”
“I’ll go down and tell Mr. Bobby and I’ll speak to Constable. He’s a friend of ours.”
“All right. You tell Mr. Bobby and keep a look out for when the yacht people show up. What will we do about Dave?”
“Can’t we carry him? He’d look good that way.”
“I’ll put on Tom’s sneakers and walk,” David said. “Have you got it worked out, Tommy?”
“We can make it up as we go along,” young Tom said. “Can you still turn your eyelids inside out?”
“Oh sure,” said David.
“Don’t do it now, please,” Andrew said. “I don’t want to be sick right after lunch.”
“For a dime I’d make you throw up now, horseman.”
“No please don’t. Later on I won’t mind.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Roger asked young Tom.
“I’d love it,” young Tom said. “We can work it out together.”
“Let’s go then,” Roger said. “Why don’t you take a nap, Davy?”
“I might,” said David. “I’ll read till I go to sleep. What are you going to do, papa?”
“I’m going to work in the lee out on the porch.”
“I’ll lie out there on the cot and watch you work. Will you mind?”
“No. Make me work better.”
“We’ll be back,” Roger said. “What about you, Andy?”
“I’d like to come and study it. But I think I better not because the people might be there.”
“That’s smart,” young Tom said. “You’re smart, horseman.”
They went off and Thomas Hudson worked all afternoon. Andy watched for a while and then went out somewhere and David watched and read and did not talk.
Thomas Hudson wanted to paint the leap of the fish first because painting him in the water was going to be much more difficult and he made two sketches, neither of which he liked, and finally a third one that he did like.
“Do you think that gets it, Davy?”
“Gee, papa, it looks wonderful. But water comes up with him when he comes out, doesn’t it? I mean not just when he splashed back.”
“It must,” his father agreed. “Because he has to burst the surface.”
“He came up so long. A lot must have come up. I suppose it really drips off him or pours off him if you could see it fast enough. Is he on his way up or on his way down?”
“This is just the sketch. I thought of him as just at the top.”
“I know it’s just the sketch, papa. You forgive me if I butt in. I don’t mean to act as though I knew.”
“I like you to tell me.”
“You know who’d know would be Eddy. He sees faster than a camera and he remembers. Don’t you think Eddy is a great man?”
“Of course he is.”
“Practically nobody knows about Eddy. Tommy does, of course. I like Eddy better than anybody except you and Mr. Davis. He cooks just like he loved it and he knows so much and can do anything. Look what he did with the shark and look how he went overboard yesterday after the fish.”
“And last night people beating him up because they didn’t believe him.”
“But, papa, Eddy isn’t tragic.”
“No. He’s happy.”
“Even today after he was all beaten up he was happy. And I’m sure he was happy that he went in after him.”
“Of course.”
“I wish Mr. Davis was happy the way Eddy is.”
“Mr. Davis is more complicated than Eddy.”
“I know it. But I can remember when he used to be careless happy. I know Mr. Davis very well, papa.”
He’s pretty happy now. I know he’s lost the carelessness though.”
“I didn’t mean a bad carelessness.”
“I didn’t, either. But there is some sort of a sureness that he’s lost.”