“Neither do I,” he said. “But my family is going to eat as long as anybody eats. What they’re trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town. That’s what I hear. I hear they’re buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they’re going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists.”
“You talk like a radical,” I said.
“I ain’t no radical,” he said. “I’m sore. I been sore a long time.”
“Losing your arm don’t make you feel better.”
“The hell with my arm. You lose an arm you lose an arm. There’s worse things than lose an arm. You’ve got two arms and you’ve got two of something else. And a man’s still a man with one arm or with one of those. The hell with it,” he says. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Then after a minute he says, “I got those other two still.” Then he started the car and said, “Come on, we’ll go see these fellows.”
We rode along the boulevard with the breeze blowing and a few cars going past and the smell of dead sea grass on the cement where the waves had gone over the seawall at high tide, Harry driving with his left arm. I always liked him all right and I’d gone in a boat with him plenty of times in the old days, but he was changed now since he lost his arm and that fellow down visiting from Washington made an affidavit that he saw the boat unloading liquor that time, and the customs seized her. When he was in a boat he always felt good and without his boat he felt plenty bad. I think he was glad of an excuse to steal her. He knew he couldn’t keep her but maybe he could make a piece of money with her while he had her. I needed money bad enough but I didn’t want to get in any trouble. I said to him, “You know I don’t want to get in any real trouble, Harry.”
“What worse trouble you going to get in than you’re in now?” he said. “What the hell worse trouble is there than starving?”
“I’m not starving,” I said. “What the hell you always talking about starving for?”
“Maybe you’re not, but your kids are.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “I’ll work with you but you can’t talk that way to me.”
“All right,” he said. “But be sure you want the job. I can get plenty of men in this town.”
“I want it,” I said. “I told you I want it.”
“Then cheer up.”
“You cheer up,” I said. “You’re the only one that’s talking like a radical.”
“Aw, cheer up,” he said. “None of you Conchs has any guts.”
“Since when ain’t you a Conch?”
“Since the first good meal I ever ate.” He was mean talking now, all right, and since he was a boy he never had no pity for nobody. But he never had no pity for himself either.
“All right,” I said to him.
“Take it easy,” he said. Ahead of us I could see the lights of this place.
“We’re going to meet them here,” Harry said.
“Keep your mouth buttoned up.”
“The hell with you.”
“Aw, take it easy,” Harry said as we turned into the runway and drove around to the back of the place. He was a bully and he was bad spoken but I always liked him all right.
We stopped the car in back of this place and went into the kitchen where the man’s wife was cooking at a stove. “Hello, Freda,” Harry said to her. “Where’s Bee-lips?”
“He’s right in there, Harry. Hello, Albert.”
“Hello, Miss Richards,” I said. I knew her ever since she used to be in jungle town, but two or three of the hardest working married women in town used to be sporting women and this was a hard working woman, I tell you that. “Your folks all well?” she asked me.
“They’re all fine.”
We went on through the kitchen and into this back room. There was Bee-lips, the lawyer, and four Cubans with him, sitting at a table.
“Sit down,” said one of them in English. He was a tough looking fellow, heavy, with a big face and a voice deep in his throat, and he had been drinking plenty you could see. “What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” said Harry.
“All right,” said this Cuban. “Have it your own way. Where’s the boat?”
“She’s down at the yacht basin,” Harry said.
“Who’s this?” the Cuban asked him, looking at me.
“My mate,” Harry said. The Cuban was looking me over and the other Cubans were looking us both over. “He looks hungry,” the Cuban said and laughed. The others didn’t laugh. “You want a drink?”
“All right,” Harry said. “What? Bacardi?”
“Whatever you’re drinking,” Harry told him.
“Does your mate drink?”
“I’ll have one,” I said.
“Nobody asked you yet,” the big Cuban said. “I just asked if you drank.”
“Oh, cut it out, Roberto,” one of the other Cubans, a young one, not much more than a kid, said. “Can’t you do anything without getting nasty?”
“What do you mean nasty? I just asked if he drinks. If you hire somebody don’t you ask if he drinks?”
“Give him a drink,” said the other Cuban. “Let’s talk business.”
“What you want for the boat, big boy?” the deep-voiced Cuban called Roberto asked Harry.
“Depends on what you want to do with her,” Harry said.
“Take the four of us to Cuba.”
“Where in Cuba?”
“Cabañas. Close to Cabañas. Down the coast from Mariel. You know where it is?”
“Sure,” said Harry. “Just take you there?”
“That’s all. Take us there and put us ashore.” “Three hundred dollars.”
“Too much. What if we charter you by the day and guarantee you two weeks’ charter?”
“Forty dollars a day and you put up fifteen hundred dollars for if anything happens to the boat. Do I have to clear it?”
“No.”
“You pay for the gas and oil,” Harry told them.
“We’ll give you two hundred dollars to take us over there and put us ashore.”
“No.”
“How much do you want?”
“I told you.”
“That’s too much.”
“No, it isn’t,” Harry told him. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what your business is and I don’t know who shoots at you. I got to cross the Gulf twice in the winter time. Anyway I’m risking my boat. I’ll carry you for two hundred and you can put up a thousand for a guaranty nothing happens to the boat.”
“That’s reasonable,” Bee-lips told them. “That’s more than reasonable.”
The Cubans started talking in Spanish. I couldn’t understand them but I knew Harry could.
“All right,” the big one, Roberto, said. “When can you start?”
“Any time tomorrow night.”
“Maybe we don’t want to go until the night after,” one of them said.
“That’s O.K. with me,” Harry said. “Only let me know in time.”
“Is your boat in good shape?”
“Sure,” said Harry.
“She is a nice looking boat,” the young one of them said.
“Where did you see her? “
“Mr. Simmons, the lawyer here, showed her to me.”
“Oh,” said Harry.
“Have a drink,” said another of the Cubans. “Have you been to Cuba much?”
“A few times.”
“Speak Spanish?”
“I never learned it,” Harry said.
I saw Bee-lips, the lawyer, look at him, but he is so crooked himself that he’s always more pleased if people aren’t telling the truth. Just like when he came in to speak to Harry about this job he couldn’t speak to him straight. He had to pretend he wanted to see Juan Rodriguez, who is a poor stinking Gallego that would steal from his own mother that Bee-lips has got indicted again so he can defend him.