“I can order one.”
“Have faith in the Yankees my son.Think of the great DiMaggio.”
“I'll get the cast net and go for sardines.Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?”
There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it.But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.
“You study it and tell me when I come back.”
“Far out to come in when the wind shifts.I want to be out before it is light.”
“No,”the old man said.“ But we have.Haven't we?”“Yes,”the boy said.“Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home.”
“We can do that,”the boy said.“But what about the eighty-seven of your great record?”
“May I get the sardines?I know where I can get four baits too.”
“Let us take the stuff home,”the boy said.“ So I can get the cast net and go after the sardines.”
“It could not happen twice.Do you think you can find an eighty-five?”
When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbor from the shark factory;but today there was only the faint edge of the odor because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.
“One,”the old man said.His hope and his confidence had never gone.But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.