Tish Marches On (17 page)

“Be good to him if you happen on him,” he said. “He isn’t a bad sort, although savage at times. But if you see him, remember the job and cherish him. Make him happy. Feed his vanity. And when you’ve got him where you want him, mention
me
.”

I confess that this conversation made no great impression on me, being driven out of my mind by our preparations for departure. Tish had decided on a nice island on the west coast, with a good hotel and near two tarpon passes. There were many other islands about, as we verified by the map in the encyclopedia, and the passes led out in the Gulf of Mexico. In the spring the tarpon come in through these passes to lay their eggs, and later on we met a young man who said he had seen them doing it. They scrape a hole in the beach with their flippers, he said, and then lay the eggs. But while doing so they weep copiously. He had seen a very large one with tears streaming down its face.

One of the first things we did, I remember, was to purchase our fishing tackle. It appeared that for catching large fish it was necessary to have not only a stout pole, as they fight to free themselves, but a strong line and spool, or reel, with which to wind them in. Also that with this equipment went a sort of harness, made of leather and swung from the shoulders, and very much like the things used to carry flags in processions, in that it had a socket in front in which to rest the end of the pole.

The young man behind the counter was very affable. When Tish looked at the line and doubted its strength, he smiled and said it would bring in anything but a whale. Aggie sneezed violently at that, as some time before, while boating in the ocean, we had dropped our anchor and a fluke had caught in the blowhole of one of these great mammals. At first, when we began to move, I recall that Tish had mentioned the velocity of the tide. But it was not the tide, and the whale towed us for miles before finally blowing out the anchor.

“Now, just to show you how strong that line is,” he said, “only the other day a friend of mine was fishing off the center of the railroad bridge, when a tug came along. Well, that meant raising the center span, so my friend just tied his line there and left it. Pretty soon he heard a lot of shouting, and he looked over. And what do you think? As the span raised, his hook had caught in the belt worn by the tug captain, and there he was, forty feet in the air and the tug going on without him.”

“What size of man was he?” Tish inquired.

“Big heavy man. Must have weighed all of two hundred pounds.”

“But of course he wasn’t fighting. These fish
fight
. I understand.”

“Wasn’t fighting! I can tell you this. That captain almost bit a girder in two, and when they cut him down and he’d swum out, he about ruined this friend of mine. He’s getting about now, but he’s still on crutches.”

Our dear Tish did not trouble to explain, and armed with our purchases we departed.

For purposes of comfort Tish had planned that our fishing costumes were to consist of our one-piece bathing suits, shameful contraptions with practically no lower portion whatever, but over which we were each to wear a long skirt for decency in the boat, and a mackintosh when leaving the hotel. And in view of later developments I must explain that we were to have a boat, but no boatman, Tish having had considerable experience in this line; dating indeed from the time at Lake Penzance when she was taking her first lesson, and started with such an unexpected jerk that she threw out the instructor.

I have never forgotten that incident, as she did not then know how to stop the engine, and we were obliged to cruise about at top speed for twenty-one hours, before the gasoline gave out.

Our preparations, however, were delayed by a most unfortunate occurrence. Or rather two of them.

About a week before our date of departure Hannah called us up in the middle of the night and asked us to go right over.

“What on earth
is
it, Hannah?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said tearfully. “She’s locked in her room and groaning something awful. Every now and then I can hear her get out of bed and run in and turn on the shower bath, but she won’t let me in.”

Well, we dressed as fast as we could, and matters were as Hannah had said. The shower bath was running, and apparently Tish was in it, as she gave no heed to my knock.

“Tish!” Aggie cried. “Tish!”

In the end we decided to climb the fire escape and thus gain access to her, and this we did. But I shall never forget our horror when at last we stood outside her window and peered in through the pane. The room was in a state of confusion, and our dear Tish, in practically a state of nature, was half running about it. Even as we gazed she shot with incredible rapidity into the bathroom, and we could hear the shower running again.

We got through the window somehow, and could hear Hannah outside in the hall.

“Here’s the olive oil, Miss Tish,” she was quavering. “And some baking soda and a lump of ice. If you’d only let me in—!”

It was not until Tish was in bed, her swollen face and portions of her poor body eased with oil and soda, that we learned what had happened. With her usual foresightedness she had bought a sun machine, in order to inure herself against the actinic rays of the South, and although carefully instructed to expose herself but two minutes at the beginning, had dropped asleep!

Toward dawn, under the medicinal influence of a quantity of blackberry cordial, she fell asleep, and we stole away.

But it was several days before she was quite herself again; although the weather was cold, she could not don her flannels for some time, as the itching was very unpleasant.

The second incident was most unfortunate, as for a time it appeared that our poor Aggie would give up the trip altogether.

It had been Tish’s wise decision that, as we intended to be on the water most of the time and as boats were liable to accident, we should all take some swimming lessons. Aggie objected at once, and it was necessary to argue with her at great length.

“Water,” Tish said, “is a friendly element, not an unfriendly one. A large part of the human body is water; a large part of the earth’s surface is covered with water. Without water, where are we?”

“We’re right here,” said Aggie stubbornly. “Right here on good solid earth, and here I stay.”

But in the end she agreed to make the experiment. Although she refused to go into the pool beyond the shallow end, we did succeed in getting her to stoop and wet her shoulders. But the lesson was not a great success for any of us. Even Tish found the buoyancy of water rather less than she had expected, and gave up trying to learn the Australian crawl stroke in favor of learning to keep her head above water.

All in all, I think we were rather discouraged when the instructor departed and we left the pool. And it was then that the second incident occurred to which I have referred. Aggie was behind us, and I had taken off my suit and was standing under a shower when I heard a splash, accompanied by a shriek. As quickly as possible I threw a bath towel around me and rushed out, to see the form of our beloved comrade drifting aimlessly beneath the surface. What was my relief, however, to perceive that she was quite conscious, and that she was holding her nose with one hand while struggling with the other! Tish had by that time reached me, in time to see Aggie rise to the surface, draw a deep breath, take a fresh grip of her nostrils and submerge again with a look of black indignation at both of us.

“She will not drown, Lizzie,” Tish reassured me. “With that system she can go down almost indefinitely.”

Fortunately the swimming instructor arrived soon after, and marking by the bubbles which arose the spot where she had last gone down, he rescued her at once. She was none the worse for her experience, although she sneezed steadily for an hour and a half. The only serious result was that she said she was through with water forever.

“Dever agaid,” she said, as we stood about her. “Dever. I dod’t give a dab if I dever go fishig. Let the fish stay id the water, if they dod’t dow ady better. If they did dow better they wold’dt be fish.”

After a glass or two of blackberry cordial, however, she improved greatly, although she said she was still dizzy from her experience. One of the phases of her recovery was that she insisted that she could not focus her eyes and was seeing everything double. As a matter of fact, Tish shortly after heard her sneezing violently in her dressing room, and found her surveying her shoes tearfully.

“I’be got four shoes ad four feet, Tish,” she wailed, “ad I’be all bixed up.”

Later on she was able to tell her story quite clearly. She said she had stepped on a wet cake of soap at the end of the diving board, and had been shot the length of the board and into the water before she could even scream.

Our preparations now went on apace. A day or so later Charlie Sands telephoned to Tish that he’d been talking to the boss about tarpon, and that it was heavy work to land one, and needed muscle as well as practice. Also he said that the boss would be in our vicinity, and to look out for him.

“And no fooling!” he said. “Remember that he’s bread and butter and payday to me, and watch over him. And if you can’t get friendly,” he added, “at least keep out of his way. I’d like to feel that he was safe anyhow. I need him in my business.”

“Safe?” said Tish indignantly. “Do you think I intend to damage the man?”

“Absolutely not. But all I ask is this: if you feel an attack of trouble coming on, just leave him out of it. Pick on somebody else. That’s all.”

But—and I wish him to recall this—neither then nor at any other time did he describe the boss or give us his name. No matter how bitter he may feel he must do us this simple justice.

D
URING THE NEXT FEW
days we completed our arrangements. Tish shipped down a box of groceries and a case of bottled water in case, as she said, that we became attached to a large fish and were delayed after meal hours. Also we sent the wool with which we usually knit, during our vacations, the slippers et cetera for the Old Ladies’ Home. And in leisure moments at Tish’s request we practiced strengthening the muscles of arm and hand, as Charlie Sands had suggested.

Thus, Aggie turned the clothes wringer an hour or so each day, while I ran the lawn mower. Tish, living in an apartment, was able to attach a pair of flatirons to her line, and from the fire escape platform reel them in and thus exercise precisely the muscles required.

Unluckily, owing to the attitude of the people in the apartments below, she was compelled to do this work at night. They had never quite forgiven the fact that, some years before, during practice with a target in the cellar, she had accidentally sent a bullet up through the floor of the apartment above and struck a card table where some people named Johnson were playing bridge, and where Mr. Johnson had just doubled four no-trumps.

After she had done her fishing practice successfully from the fire escape for one or two nights, that had to be abandoned because a man named Jamieson, trying to get into his apartment rather late without waking Mrs. Jamieson, unfortunately saw the irons hanging there, and feeling rather cheerful he gave them a shove.

Well, of course they came back and struck him, and he went through a large windowpane and fell onto the dog, and Tish said the noise was really something frightful.

The janitor came up to see her the next morning, and he was most disagreeable.

“No,” he said unpleasantly. “I can’t prove it on you, Miss Carberry, and I’m too smart to try. But I don’t trust you. Come right down to it, practically all the trouble we’ve had in this building’s been up to you; and that Jamieson woman claims that it was you, and that you knocked her husband on the head and made him act as though he had been drinking.”

“Then she’s a fool,” said Tish sharply. “He’d
been
drinking.”

Which was a fatal slip, for it cost her twenty dollars for a new windowpane and the veterinary’s bill for examining the dog.

But our dear Tish was not daunted. To be safe, she transferred her practice to the roof and from there lowered her weights into the alley, usually deserted at night. However, by that fatality which was to pursue us from first to last of that dreadful excursion, here once more she met with an accident and as a result we started south a day or two earlier than we had planned and thus precipitated the real calamity.

On the evening in question, Tish had raised and lowered the irons several times without trouble. Being then weary, she rested them on the coping of the roof, and was surveying the beauties of the night when she heard certain sounds below. She peered over, and she saw the janitor of her building staggering along carrying a heavy box, and accompanied by a policeman. They were conversing amiably, and she heard the policeman say:

“Better get in before that old hellcat sees you. She’s a dry, isn’t she?”

“Dry?” said the janitor, panting somewhat. “She makes the Sahara desert look like a fresh-water lake. She’d think nothing of smashing a case like this.”

With that, moving suddenly in the darkness, our unfortunate Tish must have touched the weights; for they went over and dropped with incredible rapidity, followed by a crash as of glass and a burst of really sickening profanity. She had only time to see the policeman lying in the alley, and to reel in, when she heard the janitor rushing up the stairs, and hammering at her door.

Hannah admitted him, and of course Tish was not there. But in the interval she had had time to lock the door to the roof and from that secure spot to consider the situation.

It was not pleasant. The janitor was on guard at the foot of the stairs, shouting that something had cost sixty-five dollars; and the policeman was sitting up in the alley and feeling around for his helmet. Also at least a dozen cats had discovered the liquor in the alley, and were fighting and love-making in the most shocking manner.

She is a truthful woman, but she says the spectacle of a half dozen domestic and beloved family cats trying under the electric light in the alley to walk dizzily along the top of a fence, and falling off time after time, or caressing one another promiscuously, not only seriously interfered with her train of thought, but was one of the greatest arguments for temperance she had ever witnessed.