“You bought me a beer,”the old man said.“You are already a man.”
“But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.
“How old was I when you first took me in a boat?”
“Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces.Can you remember?”
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.
“Why not?”the old man said.“ Between fishermen.”
“Two,”the old man agreed.“ You didn't steal them?”
“Where are you going?”the boy asked.
“You study it and tell me when I come back.”
“Keep warm old man,”the boy said.“ Remember we are in September.”
“Are his eyes that bad?”
“The Yankees cannot lose.”
“I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck.The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks.The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling