“I think perhaps I can too.But I try not to borrow.First you borrow.Then you beg.”
“Keep warm old man,”the boy said.“ Remember we are in September.”
“That's easy. I can always borrow two dollars and a half.”
“I go now for the sardines,”the boy said.
The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
“Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago.”
“It is strange,”the old man said.“He never went turtle-ing.That is what kills the eyes.”
“One sheet.That's two dollars and a half.Who can we borrow that from?”
“But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.
“No,”the old man said. “You're with a lucky boat.Stay with them.”
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.