But I fear the Indians of Cleveland

and the boy carried the wooden boat with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff
and the harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff
along with the club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought
alongside. No one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail and the
heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no local
people would steal from him, the old man thought that a gaff and a harpoon were
needless temptations to leave in a boat.
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 budshields 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 [15] 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.
“What do you have to eat?” the boy asked.
“A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?”
“No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?”
“No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold.”
“May I take the cast net?”
“Of course.”
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. “Eighty-five is a lucky number,” the old man said. “How would you like to see me
bring one in that dressed out over a thousand pounds?” “I’ll get the cast net and go for
sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?”
[16] “Yes. I have yesterday’s paper and I will read the baseball.” The boy did not
know whether yesterday’s paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it out from
under the bed.
“Perico gave it to me at the bodega,” he explained. “I’ll be back when I have the
sardines. I’ll keep yours and mine together on ice and we can share them in the morning.
When I come back you can tell me about the baseball.”
“The Yankees cannot lose.”
“But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.”