Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway Read Free Book Online Page B

Negroes fell back and then closed in around the two of them leaving plenty of room.
    Thomas Hudson didn’t know what the man expected to happen when he got up on the dock. No one said anything and there were all those black faces around him and he took a swing at Roger and Roger hit him in the mouth with a left and his mouth started to bleed. He swung at Roger again and Roger hooked him hard to the right eye twice. He grabbed hold of Roger and Roger’s sweatshirt tore when he dug the man in the belly hard with his right and then pushed him away and slapped him hard across the face backhand with his open left hand.
    None of the Negroes had said a word. They just kept the two men surrounded and gave them plenty of room. Someone, Tom thought it was John’s boy Fred, had turned the dock lights on and you could see well.
    Roger went after the man and hooked him three times fast to the head high up. The man grabbed him and his sweatshirt tore again as he pushed him away and jabbed him twice in the mouth.
    “Cut out those lefts,” Frank yelled. “Throw your right and cool the son of a bitch. Cool him.”
    “Got anything to say to me?” Roger said to the man and hooked him hard on the mouth. The man was bleeding badly from the mouth and the whole right side of his face was coming up and his right eye was almost closed.
    The man grabbed Roger and Roger held him inside and steadied him. The man was breathing hard and he hadn’t said anything. Roger had a thumb on the inside of the man’s two elbows and Tom could see him rubbing the thumbs back and forth over the tendons between the biceps and the forearms.
    “Don’t you bleed on me, you son of a bitch,” Roger said, and brought his left hand up fast and loose and knocked the man’s head back and then backhanded him across the face again.
    “You can get a new nose now,” he said.
    “Cool him, Roger. Cool him,” Frank pled with him.
    “Can’t you see what he’s doing, you dope?” Fred Wilson said. “He’s ruining him.”
    The man grabbed Roger and Roger held him and pushed him away.
    “Hit me,” he said. “Come on. Hit me.”
    The man swung at him and Roger ducked it and grabbed him.
    “What’s your name?” he said to the man.
    The man didn’t answer. All he did was breathe as though he were dying with asthma.
    Roger was holding the man again with his thumbs pressing in on the inside of his elbows. “You’re a strong son of a bitch,” he said to the man. “Who the hell ever told you you could fight?”
    The man swung at him weakly and Roger grabbed him, pulled him forward, spun him a little, and clubbed him twice on the ear with the base of his right fist.
    “You think you’ve learned not to talk to people?” he asked the man.
    “Look at his ear,” Rupert said. “Like a bunch of grapes.”
    Roger was holding the man again with his thumbs pushing in against the tendons at the base of the biceps. Thomas Hudson was watching the man’s face. It had not been frightened at the start; just mean as a pig’s is; a really mean boar. But it was really completely frightened now. He had probably never heard of fights that no one stopped. Probably he thought in some part of his mind about the stories he had read where men were kicked to death if they went down. He still tried to fight. Each time Roger told him to hit him or pushed him away he tried to throw a punch. He hadn’t quit.
    Roger pushed him away. The man stood there and looked at him. When Roger wasn’t holding him in that way that made him feel absolutely helpless the fear drained away a little and the meanness came back. He stood there frightened, badly hurt, his face destroyed, his mouth bleeding, and that ear looking like an overripe fig as the small individual hemorrhages united into one great swelling inside the skin. As he stood there, Roger’s hands off him now, the fear drained and the indestructible meanness welled up.
    “Anything to say?” Roger asked him.
    “Slob,” the man said.