Ernest Hemingway - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“I could fight good then,” he said. “But he got the eye before I knew even what was happening. He got it with a lucky gouge. Well,” Blindy said without any rancor, “that put a stop to my fighting days.”

“Give Blackie a drink,” I said to Frank.

“Blindy’s the name, Tom. I earned that name. You seen me earn it. That’s the same fellow who put me adrift down the road tonight. Fellow bit the eye. We ain’t never made friends.”

“What did you do to him?” the stranger asked.

“Oh, you’ll see him around,” Blindy said. “You’ll recognize him any time you see him. I’ll let it come as a surprise.”

“You don’t want to see him,” I told the stranger.

“You know that’s one of the reasons I’d like to see sometimes,” Blindy said. “I’d like to just have one good look at him.”

“You know what he looks like,” Frank told him. “You went up and put your hands on his face once.”

“Did it again tonight too,” Blindy said happily. “That’s why he put me out of the car. He ain’t got no sense of humor at all. I told him on a cold night like this he’d ought to bundle up so the whole inside of his face wouldn’t catch cold. He didn’t even think that was funny. You know that Willie Sawyer he’ll never be a man of the world.”

“Blackie, you have one on the house,” Frank said. “I can’t drive you home because I only live just down the road. But you can sleep in the back of the place.”

“That’s mighty good of you, Frank. Only just don’t call me Blackie. I’m not Blackie any more. Blindy’s my name.”

“Have a drink, Blindy.”

“Yes, sir,” Blindy said. His hand reached out and found the glass and he raised it accurately to the three of us.

“That Willis Sawyer,” he said. “Probably alone home by himself. That Willie Sawyer he don’t know how to have any fun at all.”

HALFWAY DOWN THE GRAVEL ROAD FROM Hortons Bay, the town, to the lake there was a spring. The water came up in a tile sunk beside the road, lipping over the cracked edge of the tile and flowing away through the close growing mint into the swamp. In the dark Nick put his arm down into the spring but could not hold it there because of the cold. He felt the featherings of the sand spouting up from the spring cones at the bottom against his fingers. Nick thought, I wish I could put all of myself in there. I bet that would fix me. He pulled his arm out and sat down at the edge of the road. It was a hot night.

Down the road through the trees he could see the white of the Bean house on its piles over the water. He did not want to go down to the dock. Everybody was down there swimming. He did not want Kate with Odgar around. He could see the car on the road beside the warehouse. Odgar and Kate were down there. Odgar with that fried-fish look in his eye every time he looked at Kate. Didn’t Odgar know anything? Kate wouldn’t ever marry him. She wouldn’t ever marry anybody that didn’t make her. And if they tried to make her she would curl up inside of herself and be hard and slip away. He could make her do it all right. Instead of curling up hard and slipping away she would open out smoothly, relaxing, untightening, easy to hold. Odgar thought it was love that did it. His eyes got walleyed and red at the edges of the lids. She couldn’t bear to have him touch her. It was all in his eyes. Then Odgar would want them to be just the same friends as ever. Play in the sand. Make mud images. Take all-day trips in the boat together. Kate always in her bathing suit. Odgar looking at her.

Odgar was thirty-two and had been twice operated on for varicocele. He was ugly to look at and everybody liked his face. Odgar could never get it and it meant everything in the world to him. Every summer he was worse about it. It was pitiful. Odgar was awfully nice. He had been nicer to Nick than anybody ever had. Now Nick could get it if he wanted it. Odgar would kill himself, Nick thought, if he knew it. I wonder how he’d kill himself. He couldn’t think of Odgar dead. He probably wouldn’t do it. Still people did. It wasn’t just love. Odgar thought just love would do it. Odgar loved her enough, God knows. It was liking, and liking the body, and introducing the body, and persuading, and taking chances, and never frightening, and assuming about the other person, and always taking never asking, and gentleness and liking, and making liking and happiness, and joking and making people not afraid. And making it all right afterwards. It wasn’t loving. Loving was frightening. He, Nicholas Adams, could have what he wanted because of something in him. Maybe it did not last. Maybe he would lose it. He wished he could give it to Odgar, or tell Odgar about it. You couldn’t ever tell anybody about anything. Especially Odgar. No, not especially Odgar. Anybody, anywhere. That had always been his first mistake, talking. He had talked himself out of too many things. There ought to be something you could do for the Princeton, Yale and Harvard virgins, though. Why weren’t there any virgins in state universities? Coeducation maybe. They met girls who were out to marry and the girls helped them along and married them. What would become of fellows like Odgar and Harvey and Mike and all the rest? He didn’t know. He hadn’t lived long enough. They were the best people in the world. What became of them? How the hell could he know. How could he write like Hardy and Hamsun when he only knew ten years of life. He couldn’t. Wait till he was fifty.

In the dark he kneeled down and took a drink from the spring. He felt all right. He knew he was going to be a great writer. He knew things and they couldn’t touch him. Nobody could. Only he did not know enough things. That would come all right. He knew. The water was cold and made his eyes ache. He had swallowed too big a gulp. Like ice cream. That’s the way with drinking with your nose underwater. He’d better go swimming. Thinking was no good. It started and went on so. He walked down the road, past the car and the big warehouse on the left where apples and potatoes were loaded onto the boats in the fall, past the white-painted Bean house where they danced by lantern light sometimes on the hardwood floor, out on the dock to where they were swimming.

They were all swimming off the end of the dock. As Nick walked along the rough boards high above the water he heard the double protest of the long springboard and a splash. The water lapped below in the piles. That must be the Ghee, he thought. Kate came up out of the water like a seal and pulled herself up the ladder.

“It’s Wemedge,” she shouted to the others. “Come on in, Wemedge. It’s wonderful.”

“Hi, Wemedge,” said Odgar. “Boy it’s great.”

“Where’s Wemedge?” It was the Ghee, swimming far out.

“Is this man Wemedge a nonswimmer?” Bill’s voice very deep and bass over the water.

Nick felt good. It was fun to have people yell at you like that. He scuffed off his canvas shoes, pulled his shirt over his head and stepped out of his trousers. His bare feet felt the sandy planks of the dock. He ran very quickly out the yielding plank of the springboard, his toes shoved against the end of the board, he tightened and he was in the water, smoothly and deeply, with no consciousness of the dive. He had breathed in deeply as he took off and now went on and on through the water, holding his back arched, feet straight and trailing. Then he was on the surface, floating face down. He rolled over and opened his eyes. He did not care anything about swimming, only to dive and be underwater.

“How is it, Wemedge?” The Ghee was just behind him.

“Warm as piss,” Nick said.

He took a deep breath, took hold of his ankles with his hands, his knees under his chin, and sank slowly down into the water. It was warm at the top but he dropped quickly into cool, then cold. As he neared the bottom it was quite cold. Nick floated down gently against the bottom. It was marly and his toes hated it as he uncurled and shoved hard against it to come up to the air. It was strange coming up from underwater into the dark. Nick rested in the water, barely paddling and comfortable. Odgar and Kate were talking together up on the dock.