“What do you have to eat?”the boy asked.
“Let me get four fresh ones.”
The boy left him there and when he came back the old man was still asleep.
“Far out to come in when the wind shifts.I want to be out before it is light.”
“The month when the great fish come,”the old man said.“ Anyone can be a fisherman in May.”
“I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.”
“No.I will make it later on.Or I may eat the rice cold.”
“You bought me a beer,”the old man said.“You are already a man.”
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck.The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks.The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords.But none of these scars were fresh.They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
“You study it and tell me when I come back.”
“The Yankees cannot lose.”
“Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?”
“A pot of yellow rice with fish.Do you want some?”