"Let me get four fresh ones. "
"One,” the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.
"Two,” the boy said.
"Two,” the old man agreed. "You didn't steal them?"
"I would, "the boy said. "But I bought these. " 'Thank you, ”
the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.
"Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current, "he said.
"Where are you going? ”
the boy asked.
"Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light. "
"I'll try to get him to work far out, ”
the boy said. "Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid. "
"He does not like to work too far out. "
"No, "the boy said. "But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin. "
"Are his eyes that bad?"
"He is almost blind. "
"It is strange,” the old man said. "He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes. "
"But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.
"I am a strange old man. "
"But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?"
"I think so. And there are many tricks. "
"Let us take the stuff home, "the boy said. "So I can get the cast net and go after the sardines. "
They picked up the gear from the boat. The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden box with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside. No one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail and the heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no local people would steal from him, the old man thought that a gaff and a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.
They walked up the road together to the old man's shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made of the tough bud-shields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt. (the royal palm: a tall, graceful palm of southern Florida and Cuba.)
"What do you have to eat? " the boy asked.
"A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?"
"No, I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?"
"No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold. "
"May I take the cast net?"
"Of course. "
There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they
went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.
"Eighty-five is a lucky number, ”
the old man said. "How would you like to see me bring one in that dressed out over a thousand pounds?"
"I'll get the cast net and go for sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?"
"Yes. I have yesterday's paper and I will read the baseball. "
The boy did not know whether yesterday's paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it out from under the bed.
"Perico gave it to me at the bodega, " he explained. (bodega: a grocery store.)
"I'll be back when I have the sardines. I'll keep yours and mine together on ice and we can share them in the morning. When I come back you can tell me about the baseball. "(the baseball: The old man supports the Yankees of the American League.) "The Yankees cannot lose. "
"But I fear the Indians of Cleveland. "
"Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio. " (the great DiMaggio: Joe DiMaggio, a fisherman’s son, outfielder with the Yankees from 1936 to 1951.)
"I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.
"Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago. "
"You study it and tell me when I come back. "
"Do you think we should buy a terminal of the lottery with an eighty-five?
Tomorrow is the eighty-fifth day. "(a terminal of the lottery: Lottery tickets of various kinds are sold openly in the Caribbean. Perhaps the old man refers to the last two digits of a longer number.) "We can do that, ”
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