Islands in the Stream Read Online Free PDF

the first one hurts,” he said. “It’s like love.”
    “The hell it is. Chiles can hurt both ways.”
    “And love?”
    “The hell with love,” Thomas Hudson said.
    “What a sentiment. What a way to talk. What are you getting to be? A victim of sheepherder’s madness on this island?”
    “No sheep here, Johnny.”
    “Stone-crab herder’s madness then,” Johnny said. “We don’t want to have you have to be netted or anything. Try one of these chiles.”
    “I have,” Thomas Hudson said.
    “Oh I know your past,” he said. “Don’t pull your illustrious past on me. You probably invented them. I know. Probably the man who introduced them into Patagonia on Yak-back. But I represent modern times. Listen Tommy. I have these chiles stuffed with salmon. Stuffed with bacalao. Stuffed with Chilean bonito. Stuffed with Mexican turtledoves’ breasts. Stuffed with turkey meat and mole. They’ll stuff them with anything and I buy them. Makes me feel like a damned potentate. But all that’s a perversion. Just this long, drooping, uninspiring, unstuffed, unpromising old chile with the brown chupango sauce is the best. You bastard,” he blew out through his pursed tongue again, “I got too much of you that time.”
    He took a really long pull at the Tom Collins.
    “They give me a reason for drinking,” he explained. “Have to cool my damned mouth. What are you having?”
    “I might take one more gin and tonic.”
    “Boy,” Johnny called. “One more gin and tonic for Bwana M’Kubwa.”
    Fred, one of the island boys Johnny’s captain had hired, brought in the drink.
    “Here it is, Mr. Tom.”
    “Thank you, Fred,” Thomas Hudson said. “The Queen, God bless her,” and they drank.
    “Where’s the old whoremaster?”
    “Up at his house. He’ll be down.”
    He ate some more of the chile without commenting on it, finished his drink, and said, “How are you really, old Tom?”
    “OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ve learned how to live by myself pretty well and I work hard.”
    “Do you like it here? I mean for all the time.”
    “Yes. I got sick of moving around with it. I’d rather have it here. I get along well enough here, Johnny. Pretty damn well.”
    “It’s a good place,” said Johnny. “It’s a good place for a guy like you that’s got some sort of inner resources. Hell of a place for a guy like me that keeps chasing it or running away from it. Is it true that Roger’s gone Red on us?”
    “So they’re saying that already.”
    “That’s what I heard on the coast.”
    “What happened to him out there?”
    “I don’t know all of it. But it was something pretty bad.”
    “Really bad?”
    “They’ve got different ideas of what’s bad out there. It wasn’t St. Quentin quail if that’s what you mean. Anyway out there with that climate and the fresh vegetables and everything it’s like the size of their football players. Hell, girls fifteen look twenty-four. At twenty-four they’re Dame May Whitty. If you’re not a marrying man you better look at their teeth pretty close. And of course you can’t tell a damn thing from their teeth. And they’ve all got mothers and fathers or one or the other and they’re all hungry. Climate gives them appetite, too, of course. Trouble is, people get enthusiastic sometimes and don’t ask for their driving licenses or their social security cards. I think they ought to measure it by size and weight and general capabilities and not just by age. Wreaks too many injustices just going by age. All around. Precocity isn’t penalized in any other sport. Other way around. Apprentice allowance claimed would be the fairest. Same as racing. They had me pretty well boxed on that rap. But that wasn’t what they got old Roger on.”
    “What did they get me on?” Roger Davis asked.
    He had dropped down from the dock onto the deck in his rope-soled shoes without making any noise and he stood there looking awfully big in a sweatshirt three sizes too large for