The Old Man and the Sea

The sun was setting over the harbor in Cuba, and the fishermen were coming in. Their boats carried marlin and shark, the day's work visible for all to see. But one old man's skiff was empty again.

Santiago was old—everything about him was old, except his eyes. Those were the same color as the sea: cheerful and undefeated. For eighty-four days now, he had rowed out each morning and returned each evening with nothing. The other fishermen called him "salao"—the worst form of unlucky. The younger men mocked him openly. He did not mind. He had been through worse.

The boy Manolin was there to meet him, as he had been every evening since his father had forced him to leave Santiago's boat. After forty days without a catch, the boy's father had declared the old man unlucky and sent his son to work on a boat that was catching fish. But the boy loved Santiago, who had taught him to fish when he was just a child. So every evening, Manolin helped the old man carry his gear up from the shore.

They walked together toward the Terrace restaurant, the boy carrying the coiled lines and the gaff hook, the old man shouldering the mast and sail. The sail was patched many times over, bleached to different shades by the sun. Like Santiago himself, it had been repaired so often that little of the original remained.

At the Terrace, the boy bought the old man a beer. They sat among the other fishermen, some of whom had brought back good catches. The boy wanted to talk about sailing together again. Santiago said no—the boy's father had made the right choice. The boy had to obey.

"But I could get you fresh bait," Manolin said.

"I have some," Santiago replied.

"Let me get four fresh ones."

The old man looked at him. "One," he said.

"Two," the boy insisted.

"Two," Santiago agreed, and that was how they always settled things.

They carried the gear up the hill to Santiago's shack, a small structure built from the tough bud-shields of the royal palm. Inside, there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a dirt floor. On the wall hung a color picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. Once, there had been a photograph of his wife, but he had taken it down because looking at it made him too lonely.

The old man sat in his chair on the porch, and the boy went to fetch dinner—a gift from Martin, the owner of the Terrace. When Manolin returned, Santiago was asleep in the chair. The boy woke him gently, and they ate together in the dim light of the shack.

They talked about baseball, as they always did. The Yankees were going to win the pennant. Santiago believed in Joe DiMaggio, who did all things perfectly, even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel. The boy worried about the Indians of Cleveland and the Tigers of Detroit. Santiago laughed and said he should be careful, or he'd start fearing the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago too.

This was their ritual. The old man, poor and unlucky, and the boy who kept him alive with small kindnesses. Manolin brought him food. He brought him coffee. He brought him the small sardines that Santiago pretended he already had. The boy knew the old man had nothing, and the old man knew the boy knew. Neither said it directly. That was their way.

"Remember when we went to see the baseball star?" the boy asked.

They had both been too shy to ask him to go fishing. Santiago still regretted it. He would have liked to show the great player how a real fisherman worked.

The boy left, and Santiago sat alone in the dark. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it, and he knew it was not disgraceful and carried no loss of true pride.

That night, he dreamed of Africa. He was a boy again, and the long golden beaches stretched before him. The white beaches were so white they hurt his eyes. He saw the high capes and the great brown mountains. He heard the roar of the surf and smelled the tar and oakum of the deck. The lions came down to the beach in the evening, playing like young cats. He dreamed of them often now. Not of his wife, who had been dead a long time. Not of the great fish he had caught. Just the lions on the beach, young and strong and full of life.

Before dawn, he woke and went to rouse the boy. They walked together to the shack, gathered the equipment, and carried it down to the shore. They drank coffee at a small shop that opened early. The boy hurried to get sardines and bait from the ice shop. When they reached the skiff, they pushed it onto the water.

"Good luck, old man," the boy said.

"Good luck," Santiago replied.

He rowed out of the harbor in the dark, past the other boats, past the fishermen who stayed close to shore. Today, he would go far out. Far beyond where the others fished. Out where the schools of bonito and albacore swam, and maybe a big one with them.

He heard the hissing of flying fish as they broke the surface and skimmed over the water. He watched the small, frail birds that tried to make a living off the wild ocean. He loved the sea like a woman, he thought—a woman who granted or withheld great gifts. And he loved the creatures of the sea, even the ones he had to kill.

His hands were calloused from years of pulling lines. His back was stooped from years of bending over the skiff. But his eyes were still clear, still the color of the sea, still cheerful and undefeated.

Eighty-four days without a fish. The village had given up on him. The boy's father had taken his helper away. The younger men laughed when he passed. None of it mattered. He knew how to fish. He knew where the big ones lived. And he knew that luck could change.

Tomorrow, he would row farther than he had ever rowed before. He would set his lines at depths most fishermen could not reach. He would find the big fish, or he would die trying.

But what kind of man would go out alone into the vast ocean, hoping to catch the biggest fish of his life, knowing that even if he succeeded, he might not make it back?