To Have and Have Not

CHAPTER 7

While he was dumping the liquor he heard the sound of a motor and looking 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 and 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 sat up.

“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 do 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 towards 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 him 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.

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. It’s supposed to be wide open. “What’s that you say, Cap?”

“What boat is that?” asked one of the men in the fishing chairs.

“That boat?”

“Yes, that boat.”

“Oh, that’s a Key West boat.”

“What I said was, whose boat is it?”

“I wouldn’t know that, Cap.”

“Is the owner a fisherman?”

“Well, some say he is.”

“What do you mean?”

“He does a little of everything.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“No, sir.”

“You called him Harry.”

“Not me.”

“I heard you call him Harry.”

Captain Willie Adams took a good look at the man who was speaking to him. He saw a high-cheekboned, thin-lipped, very ruddy face with deep set gray eyes and a contemptuous mouth looking at him from under a white canvas hat.

“I must have called him that by mistake,” Captain Willie said.

“You can see that the man is wounded, Doctor,” the other man said, handing the glasses to his companion.

“I can see that without glasses,” the man addressed as Doctor said. “Who is that man?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Captain Willie.

“Well, you will know,” the man with the contemptuous mouth said. “Write down the numbers on the bow.”

“I have them, Doctor.”

“We’ll go over and have a look,” the Doctor said.

“Are you a doctor?” Captain Willie asked.

“Not of medicine,” the gray-eyed man told him.

“If you’re not a medical doctor I wouldn’t go over there.”

“Why not?”

“If he wanted us he would have signalled us. If he don’t want us it’s none of our business. Down here everybody aims to mind their own business.”

“All right. Suppose you mind yours then. Take us over to that boat.”

Captain Willie continued on his way up the channel, the two-cylinder Palmer coughing steadily.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why don’t you obey my order?”

“Who the hell you think you are?” asked Captain Willie.

“That’s not the question. Do as I tell you.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“All right. For your information, I’m one of the three most important men in the United States today.”

“What the hell you doing in Key West, then?”

The other man leaned forward. “He’s Frederick Harrison,” he said impressively.

“I never heard of him,” said Captain Willie.

“Well, you will,” said Frederick Harrison. “And so will every one in this stinking jerkwater little town if I have to grub it out by the roots.”

“You’re a nice fellow,” said Captain Willie. “How did you get so important?”

“He’s one of the biggest men in t…