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TO HAVE AND HAVE  NOT
'Well, let's catch one,1 he said.
'You have to reel that line in first,' I told him.
We'd hooked that fish and lost him without
waking Eddy up. Now old Eddy came back astern.
'What's the matter?' he said.
Eddy was a good man on a boat once, before he
got to be a rummy, but he isn't any good now.
I looked at him standing there tall and hollow-
cheeked with his mouth loose and that white stuff
in the corners of his eyes an? his hair all faded in
the sun. I knew he woke up ucad for a drink.
'You'd better drink a bottle of beer/ I told him.
He took one out of the box and drank it,
'Well, Mr. Johnson,' he said, 'I guess I better
finish my nap. Much obliged for the beer, sir/
Some Eddy. The fish didn't make any difference to
him.
Well, we hooked another one around noon and
he jumped off. You could see the hook go thirty
feet in the air when he threw it*
'What did I do wrong then?' Johnson asked.
'Nothing/ I said. 'He just threw it.'
'Mr. Johnson,' said Eddy, who'd waked up to
have another bottle of beer, 'Mr, Johnson, you're
just unlucky. Now maybe you're lucky with
women. Mr. Johnson, what do you say we go out
to-night?' Then he went bade and laid down
again.
About four o'clock when we're coming back close
in to shore against the stream; it going like a mill
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