Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  They loaded their gear and water and picked up their fishermen’s lunch boxes, which Nick had ordered when they arrived, and were out through the pass and following the beach along the gulf all in a half hour. There was a good breeze on the water but very hot already. When they hit Caxambas Nick stayed to the right, the south side, and followed the line of mangrove keys that were lined in an arc as far as you could see. To the left there was also an arc of keys and between the two arcs there was a good two miles of water. Channels ran along the edge of the arcs but the center was mostly sand bar and coral formation and several small keys. They followed the channel about two miles down and Nick cut in toward the center away from the arc of keys, away from the deep of the channel and slowly hand over hand gently lowered the anchor casting distance from a mound of coral protruding from the water.

  “The tide is not as far in here as at Marco. We will try some top water plugs here for the smaller ones. I have the correct baits. Spooks.” They were big artificial top water baits with three treble hooks. As you retrieved them you worked the tip of the pole and the bait was made to move from one side to the other, Nick explained to Gus as they were fixing their equipment.

  Nick, using his spinning rod and eight ounce monofiliment line, was ready first and cast out long and easily dropping the bait in softly about four feet from the coral and began to work it back slowly. Old Gus stopped working on his line and watched Nick as he worked the bait and studied his wrist action. Old Gus knew it was all in the wrist. Nick made several more casts retrieving at different speeds and finally threw out towards the farthest point of coral and began to retrieve rapidly, Old Gus watching—and wham the water erupted midway between the coral and the boat and the snook came rushing angrily out of the water all golden on top with its great mouth spread wide and gills spread and you could plainly see the black lateral line that bisected its long slender built-for-speed body and the sun between the clouds reflecting on its silver underbelly and the droplets of water scattering from its furiously attacking bullet shaped body and up almost three feet out of the water and down and there was Nick’s bait some twelve feet in the air floating,—floating slowly downward. Nick was shaking visibly.

  “He missed it,” his voice quivered.

  “Holy,” Old Gus said, “I have never seen a fish strike like that. Holy!”

  Nick smiled, shaking. “So goddam quick,” Nick said. “Jesus, I never expected it that goddam quick. He was a good one. Ten pounds, I’d say.”

  “Holy,” Old Gus said. “Ten pounds. That is the biggest ten pounds of fish I have seen. It is frightening when they strike. I swear it.”

  “You must retrieve fast,” Nick said. “They are only taking it fast,” he said working the bait rapidly back now. “When they miss, if they do not knock the bait in the air, keep it working. They will usually take it again.”

  “Holy,” Old Gus said, rapidly now working on his gear.

  They did not get another strike there. And moved and worked three more coral formations. At the third one Old Gus had a strike that made him grin all silly but the fish missed and they decided after a while, with no more strikes, to go farther back where the arcs of keys joined and clustered and work the tree stumps and shady holes under the overhanging brush along the shorelines of those keys. They worked them for over half an hour and the tide began to slow, Nick noticed, and suddenly while they were casting under the overhanging mangrove branches of one key they were working the snook began to slap at their top water baits with their tails almost every cast.

  “Now they are playing,” Nick said. “Not hitting. They will not hit now until the change. Let’s find some shade and a beach and have some water and maybe a sandwich. I’m hungry.”

  “Fine,” Gus said.

  “We’ll move out a little toward the Pass. Over there,” Nick pointed about a mile away. “There is sand beach. We can change our baits on the beach. We will fish deep with heavy dudes when the tide has changed. They have to be heavy to get down in this swift tide,” Nick said and began to pull up the anchor, then before he started the motors: “I will make this run slowly so you can see some of the bird life. And marine life.”

  They started off slowly going between the small mangrove keys until they came to the channel along the arc. They saw several ospreys and many hawks and a pack of turkey vultures, some with great five foot wing spreads, as they soared through the air in wide circles and broad spirals, never moving only adjusting their wings as they glided effortlessly. And they saw a great blue heron and several egrets and a multitude of pelicans and along one protruding coral reef were a group of flamingos.

  “Nowhere in America are there birds like here,” Nick shouted to Gus above the sounds of the motor. “There is a great eagle’s nest not far from the Inn, I remember. We will look for it when we have a chance. It is the nest of a bald eagle.”

  They saw schools of mackerel and trout working over small bait and a large school of tarpon frolicking and leaping in the channel near the sand bar and one great hammerhead shark basking in the sun on the top of the water. It was at least ten feet long and caused considerable comment from Old Gus. Huge sting rays and whip rays leaped and landed flatly, resoundingly on the water all around them. It was very warm now a little after eight in the morning and the sky was slightly overcast with the sun coming through occasionally and all the time they had been in the vast bay they had seen only one other boat and that was a great distance away. Then they were approaching the beach. Nick stood up looking to see if there was any coral or rock and when he saw that there wasn’t, only a gentle upgrading of sand, he told Gus to hold on and gunned the motor and beached the boat. Nick pulled the boat up onto the sand as far as he could and they got out and walked back over twenty feet of white sand and in the shade of some small mangroves they ate a ham sandwich and drank some water then split an apple.

  “I think I would like to live here,” Gus said.

  “I have thought that,” Nick said. “But I don’t seem to be able to give up the city. When I came back I wasn’t even going to go home. Now it looks as if I am going to stay.”

  “You will work it out,” Gus said. “It takes time to work things out. Patience is the most important thing. If you have patience then everything will come in good time.”

  “It’s the one thing I don’t seem to have. Why must I live in the city? What in the hell is wrong with me? I like it here better. I have always loved it here. Or places that are far off like here.”

  “Your woman does not make too much difference here, does she?”

  “I hate to say it but no. But tonight I will call her.”

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Old Gus said. “That won’t help anything.”

  “I know it. But I’ll call her anyhow. I do things like that. I know they’re wrong before I do them but I do them anyhow—God, I feel good.”

  “Who wouldn’t—here?”

  “Old Pete,” Nick said. “If he was here he would be worried. And worrying us. He would be wondering if his partners were stealing. Or 5 his wife was out with someone. Or if my sister was getting laid. No, he’s no goddam fun on a fishing trip. Except when the fish are striking. He can’t fish worth a shit anyhow. He gets too excited. And he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. And he’s always trying to run me in the boat—and, come to think of it, out of the boat,” Nick grinned. “The hell with him. Christ, but it’s hot.”

  “I like the sun. I can take the sun,” Old Gus said.

  “Pierro wouldn’t like it here, either,” Nick said. “I went fishing with him once. It bores him. It really bores him. You wouldn’t think it would bore him. With that artistic sense he has. I mean being out on the water in the open. But it does. He shows no emotion when he fishes.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have any emotion. He has much, really. Of that I am sure. I have felt that even when he did not show it.”

  “I have felt it, too,” Nick said. “God, how I have felt it. Like an
electric current. Look, a racoon.”

  “I saw it before,” Old Gus said. “But what is that thing that crawls upon the beach?”

  “Where?”

  “Over there,” Old Gus pointed.

  “A horseshoe crab. They are something. They walk on land. On the bottom of the water. They swim. They drift. They have it made.”

  “I saw a sea robbin once,” Old Gus said. “At the aquarium. That is something to see. A fish with wings and feet.”

  “There are plenty around here. They will bite you like hell in a boat.”

  “Will you work for your father?” Old Gus asked.

  “For a while, I think. I don’t know,” Nick said. He was lighting a cigarette and Gus noticed the sudden constrained look on his face, the wrinkling of his forehead. Sitting there, the lit cigarette in his hand, Nick fingered the four-inch scar along his left cheek and jawbone under the four-day stubble of beard, the sweat pouring off the old but young face with the slightly flattened, twice busted, nose. How old he looked, Old Gus thought. How old-troubled for one so young.

  “By the time we are done with this place you should know,” Old Gus said. “If you are patient. I would not worry about it. Think about it if you wish, though. It is good to think about some things. At least better to think about them than to kill yourself making yourself think or do other things just to forget about the very thing you should think about. Very complex, eh?” the old man smiled. “Complex. That’s some word for me, eh? I bet you wouldn’t think your cousin would know such a word.”

  “I wish I knew what you did. Or was satisfied in the way you are.”

  “You will be.”

  “Not if I stay around Old Pete. I feel that. As long as I stay around him I will be like him. He’s too much for me—the sonofabitch.”

  “I’ll bet you know lots of sonsabitches. And like lots of them.”

  “That’s funny you should say that,” Nick said. “Boomer, he’s a friend of mine, and I were talking about that on the train coming home.”

  “Your father—he is strong,” Old Gus said. “Part of his strength is his patience. You could well learn some things from him. There are things in him, too, that it would be good to learn. Some things to keep. Other things not to keep.”

  “I suppose,” Nick said. “The tide should change in an hour. Then we’ll fish. It’s good there is this wind. It’s too much of a wind for mosquitoes. I’ve hardly been bitten,” he said and leaned back, his hands under his head, looking up through the mangrove branches to the white clouds and the blue sky where the clouds separated and up very high he could see birds circling. The birds were up as high as the clouds and he wondered what kind of birds they were. They must be turkey vultures to be up so high, he said to himself. Then he smiled to himself remembering the time that he had gone duck hunting with Red in Italy and they had been drinking brandy in the cold of the early morning before they had even gotten into the boats and how funny Red was, all show business, reading Variety religiously, how three guys from his, Red’s, precinct—not neighborhood or parish or Bronx, Nick remembered, but three guys from his precinct had made it in show business and he was going to make it too, and Red half sentimental drank that cold Italian morning with ice beginning to form on the lake amongst the reeds, Red sharper and funnier than he had ever heard him, Red seeing the lone goose flying far off against the gray sky so gracefully, Red saying so seriously: “Ain’t it a shame, Nick, he don’t even know he’s flying.” Then saying it again and damn near crying, damn near seriously sentimentally crying. God, how terrible it was seeing him dead. Not a mark on him dead. Thinking he was sleeping and trying to kid him awake but dead. They don’t all look dead. No, goddam it, they don’t. He didn’t. No, he just didn’t look dead. Did he?

  I wonder how I will look when I am dead. No one is going to see me, though. No one. That is going to be in my will. And there will be no public funeral. I will fix that with my lawyer. My wife will not even be permitted to come to my funeral. No one.

  But you will die. Everyone dies. The earth will die. Like you the earth is only on a journey. From a primeval cloud of cosmic dust through ages of mountain building, through ice ages, and continent changes, until finally it gave life. But it will die. It is inevitable that it will die. Then sun will redden and swell and the earth will boil, then as the solar fires wane it will circle the void in a cold lifeless entombment round and round the dying sun.

  Oh God, what then?

  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust—Oh God, what then? Was that all—all there was to him, too? That can’t be all. It can’t be.

  And Old Gus watching him lying there knew there wasn’t anything that he could say or do.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THAT same morning, at about the very same time Gus and Nick were walking down to the dock, Old Pete Stratton was pacing the bedroom floor of the Winnetka house. He had earlier that night dreamed that he was walking with Mary down a hill in his native Greece. In the dream Mary was wearing her white wedding dress and he was barefoot. Since, he had awakened several times in cold sweats.

  It was a bad dream, he knew. It was bad to dream that you were going down. And to dream of white meant death. He did not know what it meant to dream he was walking again in his bare feet, but once in the night he had deduced that it might mean that he was going to die penniless.

  He had faced the east, as was customary, and prayed each of the three times that he had gotten up. He had said the “Our Father” and then a special prayer in Greek asking God not to let him die yet as his work on this earth was not yet finished. He had told God, as God well knew, that Mary needed him, and Nick needed him, and Yvonne needed him. That without him, they, having been sheltered from all the practical things of this earth and all too willing to believe and trust in strangers, would certainly lose all that he, Old Pete, had worked and striven for to give them security. Besides, he told God, he had not finished his work with the Church of Verdamah. He was going to build a bigger, better church. And there were so many things he wanted to do for the people there.

  It was certainly a terrible dream, he thought now in the early morning. Oh God—it was Mary in the white dress in the dream. That didn’t mean Mary was going to die? Not Mary. Mary was too young. Too healthy. Mary had never had a sick day in her life. Maybe, though, it was the drinking. Maybe she was drinking herself to death. Maybe God was going to punish him and Mary for her drinking. Oh, MY GOD! I will have to talk to her again about this drinking. Maybe I can go see a Catholic priest. Maybe we could go to some church on the west side of Chicago where we wouldn’t be known and get Mary to take the oath. If I told the priest how she was drinking, how her drinking was ruining us, disgracing us, certainly the priest would make her take the oath. If the priest was any kind of a priest at all he would make her take the oath, he told himself. Even a Catholic priest would have to face up to that responsibility.

  Then, in his mind, he saw his own bare feet just as he had seen them in the dream walking down the hill. I’ve got to watch my money, he said to himself blotting out the picture of the dream. I’ve got to start to save more. Maybe, though, the dream meant to watch out for the Stratos brothers. Maybe it wasn’t a bad dream at all then. Maybe God gave me a warning because they were trying to break me. I picked them out of the gutter, too. Right out of the jail. The gutter. That’s what happens when you treat someone too good. I gotta watch out. Watch my deals. The war’s gonna be over soon. What then? I wonder if there’ll be another depression. I’d sell out now if I thought there’d be another depression. I wonder what I could get. But remember what Green said. Remember what he said about there being a BOOM. About BUILDING. About the new AMERICA. That was one smart Jew, that Green. One goddamn smart Jew banker.

  That was a terrible dream, though. God, I got troubles—A crazy kid. A wife that drinks. And two partners who are brothers. You can’t beat blood. You don’t suppose that dream meant something might happen to Nick. You know how that crazy kid drives a car. And the w
ay he’s been drinking lately. He gets that from his mother. He must. I wonder where he’s at. The least he could do would be to call his mother. The way his mother worries. You’d think he’d have the decency, the respect to call his mother and let her know where he was and that he got there safe. Kids ain’t like they used to be. God, what’s happening to this world? Wars. Killing. Drinking. Crazy kids with no respect. Parents throwing their daughters to boys. Partners you can’t trust. God, what did I ever do to deserve this?

  “Mary,” he began to shake her. “Mary,” he said, feeling a cold sweat on his forehead, and under his arms, and between his legs. “Get up. Get up.”

  “Yes, Pete. What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t feel so good,” he said. “I don’t feel so good at all. I hardly slept. I had terrible dreams. I think it may be my heart.”

  She was up quickly. She made him sit down on the chaise longue and felt his forehead and took his pulse. “I’ll get you a pill,” she said. “Your pulse is fine. But I’ll get you a pill anyhow. And a brandy.”

  “I don’t want any brandy.”

  “It will be good for you. You know I know what’s best for you when you’re not feeling well.”

  “Yes, Dolly,” he said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, Pete.”

  “Come over here and kiss me.”

  She went over and put her arms around him and kissed him hard and then held his head for a moment against her breast. God, but she was good in bed, he thought. No matter whether they had had an argument or not she was always good in bed. She was wonderful that way. And the way she nursed him when he was sick. She was really a good wife. She didn’t know anything about the world but a man couldn’t have a better wife than Mary. Or prettier.