Cayos in the Stream Read Free Page A

happier. But you have been jabbed. You counterpunch, the way you do in the ring. And, jabbed once, you hit back twice. “These wild geese chase on their own, remember. If they catch you, you won’t see your home port again.”
    “Ernest . . .” She shakes her elegant head. Whatever she swallows is bound to be better left unsaid. She contents herself with—no, she suffices herself with, for she is plainly not content—“What are the odds?”
    “If I do go out, I have a chance of finding something. If I don’t, I have no chance at all. That makes the odds worth playing.”
    She rolls her eyes. “How long have you wanted to be a hero?”
    You do not answer that. The only true answer is always . The ambulance driving in the last war, the writing, the hunting, the drinking, the fighting, the womanizing . . . You have chased that one thing your whole life. Hero is a four-letter word, too. Sweet Jesus, though, what a four-letter word!
    On the Pilar , if you find your wild goose, you will also find that one thing. “Odds worth playing,” you repeat.
    “Playing.” Martha freights the word with more doubt than it should be able to bear. “But don’t you see, dammit, the Germans won’t be playing even if you catch up with them? They’ll kill you, they’ll log it—if they bother—and they’ll go on about their business.”
    They may. For some men, war is only a business. They do not get excited about it, any more than other men get excited about selling shoes or changing spark plugs. Men like that also are often uncommonly good at their trade.
    As for you, your log book is a joke. Any Navy officer with a log book half as vague and sloppy would have to commit hara-kiri like a Jap to atone for the disgrace. But you are obscenitied if you want to be like a Navy officer. All you want is to find a U-boat. No. All you want is to find a U-boat and to sink the son of a bitch.
    You do not want much, do you?
    “Oh, go on!” Martha throws her hands in the air. She is lefthanded, in her body and in the way she thinks. “Go play. You will anyhow.”
    You give her the last word. How can you help it, when she is so right?
    When you go play, your pilot is a sour-faced Catalan named Josep. Not José. Josep. He is touchy about that. He has lived in Cuba for many years, but he still speaks Spanish with the accent you hear in Barcelona. Any Spaniard will tell you Catalan is only Spanish spelled badly. Josep will punch any Spaniard in the teeth if he starts coming out with that mierda .
    Josep used to be a fisherman in the Mediterranean. He has fished these waters since he crossed the Atlantic. He fished from other men’s boats when he first came. As soon as he could afford to, he bought his own. That did not take long. He has always worked hard. And he is as cheap as Jews are supposed to be.
    He pilots for you now because he hates Fascists even more than you do. You are damn glad to have him aboard, too. What he does not know about the cayos and the channels spiderwebbing between them is not to be known. He knows those islands and the waters that wash them the way you know the hair and the scars on your leg.
    “Cayo Bernardo?” he says when you tell him where you want to go. His eyebrows do not rise. The come down and pull together instead. They are black and thick and bushy. You wonder if he has Basque blood in him. Then his tanned, seamed face clears. “I can take you there. But why do you want to go? Nothing has happened on Cayo Bernardo since the beginning of time.”
    “Something may have,” you answer. You do not want to contradict a man like Josep straight out. That is worse luck than taking a hammer and smashing every mirror you own.
    He snorts. “Not likely!”
    “The bar talk—”
    “Bar talk? Bar talk is piss coming out the wrong end, nothing else but.” Josep pauses. Those heavy eyebrows lower and pull together again. “The bar talk about Cayo Bernardo is funny lately, isn’t it? A fisherman missing around