“But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?”
“I know,”the old man said.“ It is quite normal.”
“Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current,”he said.
“One sheet.That's two dollars and a half.Who can we borrow that from?”
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.
“But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.”
“The Yankees cannot lose.”
“I can order one.”
“Far out to come in when the wind shifts.I want to be out before it is light.”
“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?”
“Where are you going?”the boy asked.
“You bought me a beer,”the old man said.“You are already a man.”
They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry.Others,of the older fishermen,looked at him and were sad.But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen.The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full across two planks,with two men staggering at the end of each plank,to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana.Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle,their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.