Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

“You think they’ll come out?” the nigger asked.

“Sure,” the man said. “Why not?”

“It’s blowing too hard.”

“They’re looking for us.”

“Not with it like this. What you want to lie to me for?” The nigger was talking with his mouth almost against a sack.

“Take it easy, Wesley,” the man told him.

“Take it easy, the man says,” the nigger went on. “Take it easy. Take what easy? Take dyin’ like a dog easy? You got me here. Get me out.”

“Take it easy,” the man said, kindly.

“They ain’t coming,” the nigger said. “I know they ain’t coming. I’m cold I tell you. I can’t stand this pain and cold I tell you.”

The man sat up feeling hollow and unsteady. The nigger’s eyes watched him as he rose on one knee, his right arm dangling, took the hand of his right arm in his left hand and placed it between his knees and then pulled himself up by the plank nailed above the gunwale until he stood, looking down at the nigger, his right hand still held between his thighs. He was thinking that he had never really felt pain before.

“If I keep it out straight, pulled out straight, it don’t hurt so bad,” he said.

“Let me tie it up in a sling,” the nigger said.

“I can’t make a bend in the elbow,” the man said. “It stiffened that way.”

“What we goin’ to do?”

“Dump this liquor,” the man told him. “Can’t you put over what you can reach, Wesley?”

The nigger tried to move to reach a sack, then groaned and lay back.

“Do you hurt that bad, Wesley?”

“Oh God,” the nigger said.

“You don’t think once you moved it it wouldn’t hurt so bad?”

“I’m shot,” the nigger said. “I ain’t going to move. The man wants me to go to dumpin’ liquor when I’m shot.”

“Take it easy.”

“You say that once more I go crazy.”

“Take it easy,” the man said quietly.

The nigger made a howling noise and shuffling with his hands on the deck picked up the whetstone from under the coaming.

“I’ll kill you,” he said. “I’ll cut your heart out.”

“Not with no whetstone,” the man said. “Take it easy, Wesley.”

The nigger blubbered with his face against a sack. The man went on slowly lifting the sacked packages of liquor and dropping them over the side.

While he was dumping the liquor he heard the sound of a motor and looking he saw a boat headed toward them coming down the channel around the end of the key. It was a white boat with a buff painted house and a windshield.

“Boat coming,” he said. “Come on Wesley.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m remembering from now on,” the man said. “Before was different.”

“Go ahead an’ remember,” The nigger told him. “I ain’t forgot nothing either.”

Working fast now, the sweat running down his face, not stopping to watch the boat coming slowly down the channel, the man picked up the sacked packages of liquor with his good arm and dropped them over the side.

“Roll over.” He reached for the package under the nigger’s head and swung it over the side. The nigger raised himself up and looked.

“Here they are,” he said. The boat was almost abeam of them.

“It’s Captain Willie,” the nigger said. “With a party.”

In the stern of the white boat two men in flannels and white cloth hats sat in fishing chairs trolling and an old man in a felt hat and a windbreaker held the tiller and steered the boat close past the mangroves where the booze boat lay.

“What you say, Harry?” the old man called as he passed. The man called Harry waved his good arm in reply. The boat went on past, the two men who were fishing looking toward the booze boat and talking to the old man. Harry could not hear what they were saying.

“He’ll make a turn at the mouth and come back,” Harry said to the Negro. He went below and came up with a blanket. “Let me cover you up.”

“ ’Bout time you cover me up. They couldn’t help but see that liquor. What we goin’ to do?”

“Willie’s a good skate,” the man said. “He’ll tell them in town we’re out here. Those fellows fishing ain’t going to bother us. What they care about us?”

He felt very shaky now and he sat down on the steering seat and held his right arm tight between his thighs. His knees were shaking and with the shaking he could feel the ends of the bone in his upper arm grate. He opened his knees, lifted his arm out, and let it hang by his side. He was sitting there, his arm hanging, when the boat passed them coming back up the channel. The two men in the fishing chairs were talking. They had put up their rods and one of them was looking at them through a pair of glasses. They were too far out for him to hear what they were saying. It would not have helped him if he had heard it.

On board the charter boat South Florida, trolling down the Woman Key channel because it was too rough to go out to the reef, Captain Willie Adams was thinking. So Harry crossed last night. That boy’s got cojones. He must have got that whole blow. She’s a sea boat all right. How you suppose he smashed his windshield? Damned if I’d cross a night like last night. Damned if I’d ever run liquor from Cuba. They bring it all from Mariel now! Just go in and out. It’s supposed to be wide open. “What’s that you say, Cap?”