Hemingway

a title bout in ten rounds

Round 8: "Death in the Afternoon" I Began to Catch On when they hooked a wooden raft on the stern of our boat and started wiring our tuna to the raft. Then I saw what he had meant by "the tools." He got them out of his boat. Some tools. One was a sawed-off repeating shotgun that looked like a howitzer. Instead of buckshot each shell was loaded with 10 or 12 big steel ball-bearings about the size of a .45 slug. It had once belonged to gangsters and you only had to get hit by one of those pellets to get your name in the papers. The muzzle of the thing looked like the entrance to the Hudson Tunnel. Couldn't miss with it.

The second tool was a Thompson machine gun. It tossed out 45-caliber slugs at the rate of 600 a minute. The Tommy gun also had been taken away from gangsters in a certain town and presented to a certain party by the police department. No information as to the number of "The Boys" it had rubbed out was available. But it sure looked sinister. The third tool was just a Colt automatic .45 pistol. It looked like a kid's toy pistol alongside of that sawed-off shotgun. Looks like the sharks are going to have a nice little dinner party, I thought.

As we headed out to deep water the Bimini contingent gave us a rousing cheer. Nobody hates a shark like a native does unless it's Hemingway. The raft was following us on a towline about 20 feet long. You could see the tuna blood dripping in the water. That's like sending an invitation to dinner by telegraph to the sharks, Ernest explained. They can smell it or something a mile away. Just like we hear a dinner bell. We had plenty of ammunition with us, both liquid and solid and were looking forward to a nice afternoon of revenge.

Floyd Gibbons had the sawed-off shotgun, Ernest the Tommy gun and I had the Colt. I'm a crack shot with a pistol, if I do say it myself. That's why I took the pistol. To show the boys some fancy shooting.

About a half-bottle out, the sharks started picking up our scent. You could see their dorsal fins coming up on all sides. So we got ready to welcome our guests. Ernest and Gib took their weapons with them and climbed up on the flying bridge above me. I stayed below (continued on page 66)Hemingway(continued from page 63) in the stern fishing chair, pulled my yachting cap down to shield my eyes from the sun and made myself comfortable. The ringside seat gave me an advantage, I thought. Put me just that much closer to the target. Ernest called out the battle orders to me.

"Just don't stand up," he said.

Can you imagine that, I thought. Me stand up in front of those two guys with that gangster artillery? Must think I'm crazy. I may not know much about fishing but if there is one thing I do know it's guns.

Meanwhile, our guests were really gathering around. We let them follow us for a while and then slowed down to a walk. There must have been about 10 of them slowly circling the raft. Casing the joint. Now and then one of the ugly brutes would roll over on his side and look us over with a cold appraising eye like those human killers in Hemingway's story. I'd sure hate to have one of them staring at me that way if I was in the water, I thought.

"Don't shoot until they start to jump," Ernest said.

The captain slowed us down so we were just barely moving. Enough to keep the raft far enough away from the boat. I noticed the sharks traveled in twos. Took their mates right along to dinner with them. No Men Without Women here, I thought. Then a big guy jumped. Looked like a freight train coming out of the water and his wide open mouth looked like a railroad tunnel with teeth. You could get your whole head in it. Some dentures too. And he must have been 10 feet long.

I was so awed at the very size of the guy that I got buck ague. Forgot to shoot. Guess Gib did too. But Killer Hemingway hadn't forgotten to shoot. You could hear the Tommy gun rat-tat-tatting and actually see the tracers going right into the shark's body. He seemed to stop in mid air for an instant at the top of his arc and then fell like a ton of bricks on the raft. The raft almost turned over from the shock and you could see blood shooting out of the bullet holes in the shark's side like red water out of faucets as he flopped back into the drink. And that was the signal for the most horrible sight you ever saw.

While the wounded shark was still flopping and very much alive the others forgot all about the tuna and turned on him. He fought back but he didn't have a chance. They tore him to pieces before our eyes. The water turned red with blood. It swirled like a red whirlpool as they fought to get at him. They had fresh meat now and you could hear their awful teeth ripping and tearing like a wrecking crew on an old building. Cannibals and what cannibals. And the wounded shark's own mate was the most ferocious of all. I saw her bite a 20-pound piece out of his white belly while he was still alive. A minute before she had been swimming lovingly by his side and now she was eating the guy alive. That's the female of the species for you, I thought. I decided to blast her if it was the last thing I did. And it nearly was the last thing I did.

I jumped to my feet to get a better shot. But I never got a chance to shoot. Something that sounded like a 12-inch shell went off in my ear and at the same time something hit me on top of the head and I went down. Mr. Gibbons, I realized dimly, had let go with that big howitzer just as I had stood up.

I wondered how badly I was hurt. Didn't feel much pain. But they say the more you are hurt the less pain. Maybe I was dead already, I thought, and didn't know it. The top of my head might even be back there with those sharks for all I knew. Maybe they were fighting over my brains right this minute. I sneaked my hand slowly up to my head to see if it was still there. It was on all right. But the 10-dollar yachting cap I had been wearing was gone.

I opened my eyes and there were Gib, Hemingway, the captain and the bait-cutter all looking down at me with that shocked look people always give some poor guy who has been hurt in an accident. I thought Gib's one eye would pop out of his head. You could see he felt terrible about having shot me. Hemingway turned me over on my stomach as if I were a baby and ran his hands through my hair. Then he burst out laughing.

"Never touched him," he said. "Just blew his hat off. That's all."

Get a load of that guy, I thought. Death blows my hat off and he says, "That's all." Ten or 12 ball-bearings comb my hair and he laughs. That comes from wisecracking with those undertakers around that cemetery of his, I thought. I was so burned up I sat right up.

"That's all, is it?" I said. "A quarter of an inch closer and those sharks would be eating scrambled brains right now."

"I doubt that," he said. "If you had any you would not have stood up."

Gib and I grabbed a bottle of Scotch and went below. We lay down on the bunks with the bottle between us thinking we might take a little nap.

But we had as much chance sleeping on that boat as you would have had in a boiler factory and slaughterhouse combined. You could hear the rat-tat-tatting of that Tommy gun and the awful snapping and splashing at the stern as though it were right in the room with you. It was like being in a dugout in the war except for that Scotch. You could hear Hemingway yelling too and swearing his head off. Bet he's forgotten already that my head might have been back there in my cap, I thought.

I said aloud, "That guy's a killer at heart. He should have stayed in Chicago and taken a job in the stockyards."

"He's tough all right," Gib said, "but he can write like hell."

"Like hell he can write," I said. "Writes for people who move their lips when they read."

"Ever read his books?" Gib said.

"No," I said.

"Why?" he said.

"Don't have any," I said.

He said, "Why don't you buy one?"

"Buy one?" I said. "Who ever buys a book written by a friend?"

"Get one at the public library then," he said.

"Just try and get one," I said. "I went to eight branches in New York and couldn't find one. All out. You got to make a reservation two months in advance for his stuff."

"Well, that proves it doesn't it?" Gib said.

"It just proves how many people there are over here who move their lips when they read," I said, "and that goes for Hollywood too."

"Watch out," Gib said. "I think he's coming."

The war had stopped upstairs. But you could still hear Ernest stomping around in those bare feet of his. Makes more noise in his bare feet than most people do in brogans. We heard the motors go on and noticed the boat was moving. They seemed to be working up there too. But Gib and I just stayed in our bunks and worked on the Scotch. It wasn't cut like the stuff is in New York. Guess the Killer must have smelled it topside. He came down grinning from ear to ear. "We got eight of them," he said.

"Where do you get that we stuff?" I said. "Hope I didn't spoil your afternoon by not getting killed."

"Not at all," he said. "The afternoon's still young. How you feeling?"

"I am suffering no pain, thank you," I said. He reached for the Scotch.

"So I see," he said.

Better give him both barrels right now, I thought.

I said aloud,"Ernest, did anybody ever take a shot at you because you bit into a tuna sandwich?"

"No," he said.

"OK," I said,"but you go and blast eight poor fish to death with a machine gun just because one of them took a bite of your tuna. Do you call that fair?"

"Let's go up on deck and get some air," he said.

"Good idea," Gib said.