第1章 The Old Mans Hard Life[第4页/共8页]

“I know,”the old man said.“ It is quite normal.”

The boy left him there and when he came back the old man was still asleep.

“I can order one.”

The boy did not know whether yesterday's paper was a fiction too.But the old man brought it out from under the bed.

“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?”

“Keep warm old man,”the boy said.“ Remember we are in September.”

“No,”the old man said. “You're with a lucky boat.Stay with them.”

“Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?”

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.