Ernest Hemingway - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“Poor Helena.”

“Don’t call me Helena. Call me daughter.”

“My poor daughter. My darling.”

“That’s a nice word too. You mustn’t mix it with daughter though. It’s no good that way. Mummy knew him. I thought she might have said something. She just said she’d never noticed and when I said, ‘You might have noticed,’ she said, ‘I though you knew what you were doing and I had no call to interfere.’ I said, ‘Couldn’t you just have said something or couldn’t somebody just have said something?’ and she said, ‘Darling, everyone thought you knew what you were doing. Everyone. Everyone knows you don’t care anything about it yourself and I had every right to think you knew the facts of life in this right little tight little island.’”

She was sitting stiff and straight beside him now and she had no tone in her voice at all. She didn’t mimic. She simply used the exact words or as exactly as she remembered them. Roger thought they sounded quite exact.

“Mummy was a great comfort,” she said. “She said a lot of things to me that day.”

“Look,” Roger said. “We’ll throw it all away. All of it. We’ll throw it all away now right here beside the road. Any of it you want to get rid of you can always tell me. But we’ve thrown it all away now and we’ve really thrown it away.”

“I want it to be like that,” she said. “That’s how I started out. And you know I said at the start we’d give it a miss.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m glad really because now we have thrown it away.”

“It’s nice of you. But you don’t have to make incantations or exorcisions or any of that. I can swim without water wings. And he was damned beautiful.”

“Spit it out. If that’s the way you want it.”

“Don’t be like that. You’re so damned superior you don’t have to be superior. Roger?”

“Yes, Bratchen.”

“I love you very much and we don’t have to do this any more do we?”

“No. Truly.”

“I’m so glad. Now will we be jolly?”

“Sure we will. Look,” he said. “There are the birds. The first of them.”

They showed white in the cypress hammock that rose like an island of trees out of the swamp on their left the sun shining on them in the dark foliage and as the sun lowered more came flying across the sky, flying white and slow, their long legs stretched behind them.

“They’re coming in for the night. They’ve been feeding out in the marsh. Watch the way they brake with their wings and the long legs slant forward to land.”

“Will we see the ibises too?”

“There they are.”

He had stopped the car and across the darkening swamp they could see the wood ibis crossing the sky with their pulsing flight to wheel and light in another island of trees.

“They used to roost much closer.”

“Maybe we will see them in the morning,” she said. “Do you want me to make a drink while we’ve stopped?”

“We can make it while we drive. The mosquitoes will get to us here.”

As he started the car there were a few mosquitoes in it, the big black Everglades type, but the rush of the wind took them out when he opened the door and slapped them out with his hand and the girl found two enameled cups in the packages they had brought and the carton that held a bottle of White Horse. She wiped the cups out with a paper napkin, poured in Scotch, the bottle still in the carton, put in lumps of ice from the thermos jug and poured soda into them.

“Here’s to us,” she said and gave him the cold enameled cup and he held it drinking slowly and driving on, holding the wheel with his left hand, driving along into the road that was dusky now. He put on the lights a little later and soon they cut far ahead into the dark and the two of them drank the whisky and it was what they needed and made them feel much better. There is always a chance, Roger thought, when a drink can still do what it is supposed to do. This drink had done exactly what it should do.

“It tastes sort of slimy and slippery in a cup.”

“Enameled,” Roger said.

“That was pretty easy,” she said. “Doesn’t it taste wonderfully?”

“It’s the first drink we’ve had all day. Except that resin wine at lunch. It’s our good friend,” he said. “The old giant killer.”

“That’s a nice name for it. Did you always call it that?”

“Since the war. That’s when we first used it for that.”

“This forest would be a bad place for giants.”

“I think they’ve been killed off a long time,” he said. “They probably hunted them out with those big swamp buggies with the huge tires.”

“That must be very elaborate. It’s easier with an enameled cup.”

“Tin cups make it taste even better,” he said. “Not for giant killing. Just for how good it can be. But you ought to have ice cold spring water and the cup chilled in the spring and you look down in the spring and there are little plumes of sand that rise on the bottom where it’s bubbling.”

“Will we have that?”

“Sure. We’ll have everything. You can make a wonderful one with wild strawberries. If you have a lemon you cut half of it and squeeze it into the cup and leave the rind in the cup. Then you crush the wild strawberries into the cup and wash the sawdust off a piece of ice from the icehouse and put it in and then fill the cup with Scotch and then stir it till it’s all mixed and cold.”

“Don’t you put in any water?”

“No. The ice melts enough and there’s enough juice in the strawberries and from the lemon.”

“Do you think there will still be wild strawberries?”

“I’m sure there will be.”

“Do you think there will be enough to make a shortcake?”

“I’m pretty sure there will be.”

“We better not talk about it. I’m getting awfully hungry.”

“We’ll drive about another drink more,” he said. “And then we ought to be there.”

They drove on in the night now with the swamp dark and high on both sides of the road and the good headlights lighting far ahead. The drinks drove the past away the way the headlights cut through the dark and Roger said.

“Daughter, I’ll take another if you want to make it.”

When she had made it she said, “Why don’t you let me hold it and give it to you when you want it?”

“It doesn’t bother me driving.”

“It doesn’t bother me to hold it either. Doesn’t it make you feel good?”

“Better than anything.”

“Not than anything. But awfully good.”

Ahead now were the lights of a village where the trees were cleared away and Roger turned onto a road that ran to the left and drove past a drugstore, a general store, a restaurant and along a deserted paved street that ran to the sea. He turned right and drove on another paved street past vacant lots and scattered houses until they saw the lights of a filling station and a neon sign advertising cabins. The main highway ran past there joining the sea road and the cabins were toward the sea. They stopped the car at the filling station and Roger asked the middle-aged man who came out looking blue-skinned in the light of the sign to check the oil and water and fill the tank.

“How are the cabins?” Roger asked.

“O.K., Cap,” the man said. “Nice cabins. Clean cabins.”

“Got clean sheets?” Roger asked.

“Just as clean as you want them. You folks fixing to stay all night?”

“If we stay.”

“All night’s three dollars.”

“How’s for the lady to have a look at one?”

“Fine and dandy. She won’t ever see no finer mattresses. Sheets plumb clean. Shower. Perfect cross ventilation. Modern plumbing.”

“I’ll go in,” the girl said.

“Here take a key. You folks from Miami?”