“Let me get four fresh ones.”
“I have mine left from today.I put them in salt in the box.”
“Where are you going?”the boy asked.
“I go now for the sardines,”the boy said.
“Santiago,”the boy said.
They walked up the road together to the old man's shack and went in through its open door.The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it.The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack.The shack was made of the tough bud-shields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed,a table,one chair,and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal.On the brown walls of the flattened,overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre.These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.
“I remember everything from when we first went together.”
“He hasn't much faith.”
“I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.”