Ernest Hemingway - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“Listen, Mr. Johnson,” Eddy said. “If you knew the way they usually charge a stranger you’d know it was more than reasonable. Do you know what it is? It’s exceptional. The cap is treating you like you were his own mother.”

“I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and come down in the afternoon. Then I’ll get the boat day after tomorrow.”

“You can go back with us and save the boat fare.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll save time with the boat.”

“Well,” I said. “What about a drink?”

“Fine,” said Johnson. “No hard feelings now, are there?”

“No, sir,” I told him. So the three of us sat there in the stern and drank a highball together.

The next day I worked around her all morning, changing the oil in her base and one thing and another. At noon I went uptown and ate at a Chink place where you get a good meal for forty cents, and then I bought some things to take home to my wife and our three girls. You know, perfume, a couple of fans and two of those high combs. When I finished I stopped in at Donovan’s and had a beer and talked with the old man and then walked back to the San Francisco docks, stopping in at three or four places for a beer on the way. I bought Frankie a couple at the Cunard bar and I came on board feeling pretty good. When I came on board I had just forty cents left. Frankie came on board with me, and while we sat and waited for Johnson I drank a couple of cold ones out of the ice box with Frankie.

Eddy hadn’t shown up all night or all day but I knew he would be around sooner or later, as soon as his credit ran out. Donovan told me he’d been in there the night before a little while with Johnson, and Eddy had been setting them up on credit. We waited and I began to wonder about Johnson not showing up. I’d left word at the dock for them to tell him to go on board and wait for me but they said he hadn’t come. Still, I figured he had been out late and probably didn’t get up till around noon. The banks were open until three-thirty. We saw the plane go out, and about five-thirty I was all over feeling good and was getting plenty worried.

At six o’clock I sent Frankie up to the hotel to see if Johnson was there. I still thought he might be out on a time or he might be there at the hotel feeling too bad to get up. I kept waiting and waiting until it was late. But I was getting plenty worried because he owed me eight hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Frankie was gone about a little over half an hour. When I saw him coming he was walking fast and shaking his head.

“He went on the plane,” he said.

All right. There it was. The consulate was closed. I had forty cents, and anyhow the plane was in Miami by now. I couldn’t even send a wire. Some Mr. Johnson, all right. It was my fault. I should have known better.

“Well,” I said to Frankie, “we might as well have a cold one. Mr. Johnson bought them.” There were three bottles of Tropical left.

Frankie felt as bad as I did. I don’t know how he could but he seemed to. He just kept slapping me on the back and shaking his head.

So there it was. I was broke. I’d lost five hundred and thirty dollars of the charter, and tackle I couldn’t replace for three hundred and fifty more. How some of that gang that hangs around the dock would be pleased at that, I thought. It certainly would make some conchs happy. And the day before I turned down three thousand dollars to land three aliens on the Keys. Anywhere, just to get them out of the country.

All right, what was I going to do now? I couldn’t bring in a load because you have to have money to buy the booze and besides there’s no money in it any more. The town is flooded with it and there’s nobody to buy it. But I was damned if I was going home broke and starve a summer in that town. Besides I’ve got a family. The clearance was paid when we came in. You usually pay the broker in advance and he enters you and clears you. Hell, I didn’t even have enough money to put in gas. It was a hell of a note, all right. Some Mr. Johnson.

“I’ve got to carry something, Frankie,” I said. “I’ve got to make some money.”

“I’ll see,” said Frankie. He hangs around the water front and does odd jobs and is pretty deaf and drinks too much every night. But you never saw a fellow more loyal nor with a better heart. I’ve known him since I first started to run over there. He used to help me load plenty of times. Then when I got handling stuff and went party-boating and broke out this swordfishing in Cuba I used to see him a lot around the dock and around the café. He seems dumb and he usually smiles instead of talking but that’s because he’s deaf.

“You carry anything?” Frankie asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I can’t choose now.”

“Anything?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll see,” Frankie said. “Where will you be?”

“I’ll be at the Perla,” I told him. “I have to eat.”

You can get a good meal at the Perla for twenty-five cents. Everything on the menu is a dime except soup, and that is a nickel. I walked as far as there with Frankie, and I went in and he went on. Before he went he shook me by the hand and clapped me on the back again.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Me Frankie much politics. Much business. Much drinking. No money. But big friend. Don’t worry.”

“So long, Frankie,” I said. “Don’t you worry either, boy.”

I went in the Perla and sat down at a table. They had a new pane of glass in the window that had been shot up and the show case was all fixed up. There were a lot of gallegos drinking at the bar and some eating. One table was playing dominoes already. I had black bean soup and a beef stew with boiled potatoes for fifteen cents. A bottle of Hatuey beer brought it up to a quarter. When I spoke to the waiter about the shooting he wouldn’t say anything. They were all plenty scared.

I finished the meal and sat back and smoked a cigarette and worried my head off. Then I saw Frankie coming in the door with someone behind him. Yellow stuff, I thought to myself. So it’s yellow stuff.

“This is Mr. Sing,” Frankie said, and he smiled. He’d been pretty fast all right and he knew it.

“How do you do?” said Mr. Sing.

Mr. Sing was about the smoothest-looking thing I’d ever seen. He was a Chink all right, but he talked like an Englishman and he was dressed in a white suit with a silk shirt and black tie and one of those hundred-and-twenty-five-dollar Panama hats.

“You will have some coffee?” he asked me.

“If you do.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Sing. “We are quite alone here?”

“Except for everybody in the café,” I told him.

“That is all right,” Mr. Sing said. “You have a boat?”

“Thirty-eight feet,” I said. “Hundred horse Kermath.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Sing. “I had imagined it was a lugger.”

“It can carry two hundred and sixty-five cases without being loaded.”

“Would you care to charter it to me?”

“On what terms?”

“You need not go. I will provide a captain and a crew.”

“No,” I said. “I go on her wherever she goes.”

“I see,” said Mr. Sing. “Would you mind leaving us?” he said to Frankie. Frankie looked as interested as ever and smiled at him.

“He’s deaf,” I said. “He doesn’t understand much English.”

“I see,” said Mr. Sing. “You speak Spanish. Tell him to rejoin us later.”

I motioned to Frankie with my thumb. He got up and went over to the bar.

“You don’t speak Spanish?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Sing. “Now what are the circumstances that would—that have made you consider …”

“I’m broke.”

“I see,” said Mr. Sing. “Does the boat owe any money? Can she be libeled?”