“I'll give him the belly meat of a big fish,”the old man said.“ Has he done this for us more than once?”
“I know it,”the boy said.“I'll be right back. Have another coffee.We have credit here.”
“I've been asking you to,”the boy told him gently.“I have not wished to open the container until you were ready.”“I'm ready now,”the old man said.“ I only needed time to wash.”
“That's very kind of you,”the old man said.“Should we eat?”
They had coffee from condensed milk cans at an early morning place that served fishermen.
“Que va.”The boy said.“ It is what a man must do.”
“I can remember it,”the old man said.“ I'll waken you in time.”
“Do you remember when he used to come to the Terrace? I wanted to take him fishing but I was too timid to ask him.Then I asked you to ask him and you were too timid.”
“Tell me about the baseball,”The boy asked him.
“And the best fisherman is you.”
“Naturally.But he makes the difference.In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn.But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives in the old park.”
He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches,so white they hurt your eyes,and the high capes and the great brown mountains.He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it.He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.