Inside, beyond the high rows of canned goods, picnic supplies, beachware, past the racks of suntan lotion, the beer and soft drink coolers and the bins and shelves of household goods, Bob passes over into the serious side of the store, the tackle shop, where on both sides of a long glass counter there are pyramids and cones of fishing rods, shelves and tall displays of hand-tied flies, plugs, jiggers and lures, line, weights, knives and reels, with repair equipment and worktables behind the counter and huge color photographs on the walls of record-breaking marlin, tuna and bonefish, game fish held up dead to the camera by their captors.
Behind the cash register at the far end of the counter, a tall, thick-bodied man, taller and thicker than Bob, is talking with great force to the balding man who runs the place, a wiry, pale-faced man in his forties nicknamed Tippy, as if he were a Keys “character,” an old conch, which does not suit him at all, for he is an essentially humorless, shrewd businessman who by his looks and manner could as easily be running a lumberyard in Toledo as this place. The tall man talking to Tippy, lecturing him, it seems, looks familiar to Bob, though all he can see of him is the back of his sandy-gray head, his broad back, tanned neck and arms. Tippy is listening intently, nodding in agreement, while the man plows on, gesturing with his hands, his low, slightly nasal voice rising and falling rhythmically with his hands. The man is wearing a white bill cap and aviator sunglasses, a white polo shirt that’s old and baggy enough to surround his ample stomach without pointing to it, floppy GI-style work pants with huge pockets, and smudged white tennis shoes.
Instantly, Bob decides that this is the man who owns the Chrysler
convertible outside. Though there are a half-dozen others in the store who also might be said to own the car, it’s only this man, at least as far as Bob Dubois is concerned, who is capable of owning it, who deserves to own it. If that white car in the lot is Bob’s idea of a proper grownup’s car, then this man in front of him is his idea of a proper grownup.
For years, Bob was one of those people who believe that there are two kinds of people, children and adults, and that they are like two different species. Then, when he himself became an adult and learned that the child in him had not only refused to die or disappear, but in fact seemed to be refusing to let the adult have his way, and when he saw that was true not only of him but of everyone else he knew as well—his wife, his brother, his friends, even his own mother and father—Bob reluctantly, sadly, with increasing loneliness, came to believe that there are no such things as adults after all, only children who try and usually fail to imitate adults. People are more or less adult-like, that’s all.
Except, that is, for the man in front of him. For the first time since he himself was a child, Bob Dubois believes that he is looking at a full-fledged adult, and it’s as if he has stumbled onto a saint or an angel right here in the Whale Harbor Tackle Shop in Islamorada, Florida, a saint having an animated discussion with sober, businesslike Tippy—no, not really a discussion, because the saint’s doing all the talking. Tippy just nods and listens and nods again, and it’s as if the saint is telling Tippy how the world looks from his miraculously elevated position.
The saint swings his arms in tandem, clearly explaining a particular kind of cast, low, close to the water, snaking the line in under mangrove roots for bonefish. His large, gray-haired head and deeply tanned face seem to have an aura swirling around them as he speaks, as if he were either not really present or were more profoundly present than anyone else. His size, larger than a large man’s, and the swiftness of his gestures, the pure, muscular clarity of his motions and his crisp, good-humored, rapid-fire speech—everything about him that Bob
can see and hear manifests the kind of superiority and self-assurance that only saints, or what Bob used to think of as adults, possess.
Bob moves a few feet closer along the counter, so he can hear what Tippy is privileged to hear. The saint glances to his left, sees Bob and goes on talking as if he has not seen Bob at all. Filled with wonder, afraid he will cry out, Bob says to himself, hopes he says it only to himself, for he cannot be sure, My God, it’s Ted Williams!
Ted Williams turns to him. Bob
has
said it aloud. “I’m … I’m didn’t mean interrupt …” Bob stumbles. His tongue feels like a hand, his hands like tongues.
Tippy looks at Bob as if he’s just discovered a counterfeit bill in the cash register. “Want help, mister?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest to make it clear that his question is only a question, not an offer.
Ted Williams peers down through the glass counter at the black and silver reels on the shelf and seems to be examining them for flaws rather than for possible purchase. He purses his lips and falls to whistling a tuneless tune.
Bob says, “I’m sorry … I mean, excuse me, but you’re Ted Williams, and … I didn’t mean to interrupt …”
Ted Williams looks up from the reels, casts a quick glance at Bob and nods, just a swift, impersonal dip and tug of his massive head, and returns to the reels, waiting, obviously, for Bob to get his business done and move away.
But Bob takes a step closer. “Mr. Williams, I’m from New Hampshire. The Red Sox … I’m a Red Sox … I mean, I love the Red Sox, Mr. Williams, since I’m a boy. And my father, him too, he loved the Red Sox, we all did. My father, he … he saw you play, down in Fenway, he’s dead now, he told me about it, and I saw you on television, when I was a kid, you know….” Bob’s mouth is dry, and he’s gulping for air. What’s the matter with me? This is crazy, he thinks. He’s only a man, just a human being like the rest of us. Visions of his father flood Bob’s mind, and he feels his eyes fill, and suddenly he’s afraid that he’s going to start weeping right here in front of Ted
Williams. What’s happening to me? He clamps both hands onto the counter and steadies himself. He asks it again, What’s happening to me? And he sees his father’s face, sad and pinched, a cigarette held between his teeth, his lips pulled back as if in a snarl, while the man tightens the nuts on the front wheel of Bob’s bicycle. Bob says to Ted Williams, “My father wanted me to see you play, but he couldn’t. I couldn’t, I mean. I miss my father a lot, you know? I … I know it sounds foolish, but … well, that’s all,” he says, stopping himself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Williams.”
Ted Williams, without looking up, says, “No problem.”
Suddenly, Bob is running from the store in flight, bumping customers and knocking over displays, as if he’s stolen something. Outside, the sky is dark and low, and rain is pouring down. Bob splashes through puddles to his car, and when he gets in, discovers that he left the windows open. The seats are soaked. When he leans over and cranks up the window on the passenger’s side, he sees a small, white-haired woman inside the Chrysler convertible, her face angry and impatient as she draws the top down against the windshield bar and wrenches it closed.
Slowly, Bob closes the window next to him. He lays his head against the wet seat back and shuts his eyes. “Oh, Jesus,” he says. “Why, why, why? What’s the answer?” He watches his breath cloud over the windshield and window glass, while the rain pours down outside. When he can no longer see the world outside the car, he closes his eyes again and rests, like an animal momentarily hidden from its pursuers.
Elaine asks over her shoulder from the stove, “You get what you wanted?”
The girls, still posted in front of the television set, are watching a puppet who lives in a garbage can holler at a man in a bird suit. Bob
takes up a position at the kitchen counter on the living room side and leans over it as if it were a fence. “I just saw Ted Williams,” he announces.
“Oh. Did you get what you wanted? You know, the nets for the shrimp. I managed to save the pan. Shrimp would be nice. A change.”
“Yeah. I mean, no, I … I guess I got so excited and all, seeing Ted Williams like that, alive. You know? Ted Williams! I mean, I knew he was alive, and I knew he had a place around here, in Islamorada, but I never expected to actually walk up on him like that. It’s really amazing to me. You probably can’t understand that.”
“No,” she says in a flat voice, and it’s clear to Bob that she doesn’t want to, either.
But he goes on. “Ted Williams is like a god to me, ever since I was a kid. My father took me once to Fenway Park down in Boston, and it was really to see Ted Williams play. He was old then, Ted Williams, I mean, not my father, and about to retire. Old for a ballplayer. Anyhow, we got there and got seats out behind the third baseline so we could see him better. He played left field. And then it turned out he didn’t play that day, I think they put Yastrzemski in, who was only a kid then, just come up from Pawtucket or someplace. Williams was sick or something. My father, he was more pissed off than I was, I think, and he bitched and moaned about it all the way home, and that was the only time we ever went to a ball game together. Whenever I asked to go again, he’d say, ‘Remember last time we drove all the way down to Boston and Williams didn’t even play.’ And then, the next year, I think it was, Williams retired, and from then on left field belonged to Yaz. I really should’ve gotten Yaz’s autograph last spring up in Winter Haven. Actually, I should’ve gotten Ted Williams’ autograph today….”
“Bob,” Elaine says, interrupting him. “We have to talk.” She turns and faces him, holding a wooden spoon in her hand as if about to wave it at him to make her point.
“Yeah?” He whips out his cigarettes and lights one, and his hands are trembling. “Everybody seems to want to have a fucking talk
with me these days.” Then, without his knowing how or why, his voice has changed pitch and tone, and he’s shouting at her. “Ave wants to talk to me! You want to talk to me! Anybody else around here wants to talk to me?” he barks, turning to the children, who look up startled, confused.
“Bob, for heaven’s sake …”
“I can’t even come in here and get a little excited about seeing my goddamned childhood hero, a man who’s a fucking god to me, without bringing me down for it!”
“All I said was …”
“All you said was,
‘
I want to have a talk with you,’ in that damned accusing way of yours, as if I was a fucking little kid, like you’re going to tell me what’s what and how it’s all my fault! I know already what you got to say to me.”
She folds her arms over her breasts. “What, then? You tell me.”
“I know. I know.”
“What?”
He spins and walks toward the door, stops, and without looking at her, says, “You want to tell me what I already know. You want to tell me what shit this all is.
Shit.
This … this whole damned life.”
“Is it? You feel that way about it?”
He remains silent for a second. “Yeah. It’s shit. All of it, shit, shit, shit. And now you want to tell me how it’s all my fault,” he says in a low, cold voice. “You like doing that, telling me how it’s all my fault.”
“Is it?”
“No! No, goddamn it! It’s not all my fault!” He’s bellowing again, glaring at her from the door. “It’s shit, all right, but it’s not my fault!”
“Bob, the girls! Please! You’ll wake the baby.”
“Send ’em outside. We’ll get this settled now, once and for all, dammit!”
“Send them outside yourself,” she answers. “They’re your children too, remember.”
“Ruthie, Emma! Get outside for a while and play in the yard or something. Me and Mommy got to talk about something private.”
The girls whine and argue that the show’s not over yet, they don’t want to go outside, it’s raining. They turn back to the screen, and Ruthie slides her thumb into her mouth.
“Take your damned thumb out of your mouth!” Bob shouts. “And get the hell outside when I tell you to! It’s not raining now.”
Quickly, they obey, careful not to touch him as they pass him at the door.
Elaine turns down the burner on the stove and sits heavily at the kitchen table. She crosses her legs and lights a cigarette, waiting. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Whose fault is it?”
“How the fuck should I know? I’m not a genius. You think you know, though. You’re the fucking genius. You think it’s all my fault because we’re broke all the time and living like niggers in a shack in the middle of nowhere, eating goddamned macaroni and cheese out of a goddamned no-name box.” He looks scornfully over at the saucepan on the stove. “You could use a little more imagination, you know. You didn’t show much interest when I brought up getting some shrimp tonight. I could’ve gotten ten or fifteen pounds of shrimp easy, the way they’re running, and we could freeze what we didn’t eat right off, or we could sell some. The catwalks along the bridges are crowded these nights with people using a little imagination.”
“You forgot to get the nets,” she says, “because you saw an old retired baseball player.”
“Well, you didn’t want me to go out shrimping anyhow. All you do is bring me down about things I get excited about. You, you never get excited about anything anymore. All you do is mope around here with a long face.” He crosses to the television set and snaps it off. “I hate that fucking thing!”
“Bob, you can’t hear yourself, or you’d shut up. Can you listen to me for a minute?”
“Gimme a beer.”
Elaine gets up and opens the refrigerator and passes a can of Schlitz over the counter, as if she were a waitress and he a customer. Then she stands at the counter, both hands grasping the edge of it, and says to him, “Now, you listen to me for a few minutes. I know you’re working hard, as hard as anyone can. And I know you’re worried and scared. Like I am. And you’re right, it’s true, this life is shit,” she says, and the word “shit,” because he’s never heard her say it before, sounds to Bob so powerfully derogatory in her mouth that he shudders. To Bob, Elaine has made the term suddenly so strong that he instinctively wants to defend this life, his life, against it. But he’s too late. He has said it himself, and now, with her saying it, he sees the word and his life as one thing, as waste, excrement, offal, as a secret, dirty thing that should be hidden or buried, as a thing to be ashamed of.