Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

His father had frost in his beard in cold weather and in hot weather he sweated very much. He liked to work in the sun on the farm because he did not have to and he loved manual work, which Nick did not. Nick loved his father but hated the smell of him and once when he had to wear a suit of his father’s underwear that had gotten too small for his father it made him feel sick and he took it off and put it under two stones in the creek and said that he had lost it. He had told his father how it was when his father had made him put it on but his father had said it was freshly washed. It had been, too. When Nick had asked him to smell of it his father sniffed at it indignantly and said that it was clean and fresh. When Nick came home from fishing without it and said he lost it he was whipped for lying.

Afterwards he had sat inside the woodshed with the door open, his shotgun loaded and cocked, looking across at his father sitting on the screen porch reading the paper, and thought, “I can blow him to hell. I can kill him.” Finally he felt his anger go out of him and he felt a little sick about it being the gun that his father had given him. Then he had gone to the Indian camp, walking there in the dark, to get rid of the smell. There was only one person in his family that he liked the smell of; one sister. All the others he avoided all contact with. That sense blunted when he started to smoke. It was a good thing. It was good for a bird dog but it did not help a man.

“What was it like, Papa, when you were a little boy and used to hunt with the Indians?”

“I don’t know,” Nick was startled. He had not even noticed the boy was awake. He looked at him sitting beside him on the seat. He had felt quite alone but this boy had been with him. He wondered for how long. “We used to go all day to hunt black squirrels,” he said. “My father only gave me three shells a day because he said that would teach me to hunt and it wasn’t good for a boy to go banging around. I went with a boy named Billy Gilby and his sister Trudy. We used to go out nearly every day all one summer.”

“Those are funny names for Indians.”

“Yes, aren’t they,” Nick said.

“But tell me what they were like.”

“They were Ojibways,” Nick said. “And they were very nice.”

“But what were they like to be with?”

“It’s hard to say,” Nick Adams said. Could you say she did first what no one has ever done better and mention plump brown legs, flat belly, hard little breasts, well holding arms, quick searching tongue, the flat eyes, the good taste of mouth, then uncomfortably, tightly, sweetly, moistly, lovely, tightly, achingly, fully, finally, unendingly, never-endingly, never-to-endingly, suddenly ended, the great bird flown like an owl in the twilight, only it was daylight in the woods and hemlock needles stuck against your belly. So that when you go in a place where Indians have lived you smell them gone and all the empty pain killer bottles and the flies that buzz do not kill the sweetgrass smell, the smoke smell and that other like a fresh cased marten skin. Nor any jokes about them nor old squaws take that away. Nor the sick sweet smell they get to have. Nor what they did finally. It wasn’t how they ended. They all ended the same. Long time ago good. Now no good.

And about the other. When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first. He could thank his father for that.

“You might not like them,” Nick said to the boy. “But I think you would.”

“And my grandfather lived with them too when he was a boy, didn’t he?”

“Yes. When I asked him what they were like he said that he had many friends among them.”

“Will I ever live with them?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “That’s up to you.”

“How old will I be when I get a shotgun and can hunt by myself?”

“Twelve years old if I see you are careful.”

“’I wish I was twelve now.”

“You will be, soon enough.”

“What was my grandfather like? I can’t remember him except that he gave me an air rifle and an American flag when I came over from France that time. What was he like?”

“He’s hard to describe. He was a great hunter and fisherman and he had wonderful eyes.”

“’Was he greater than you?”

“He was a much better shot and his father was a great wing shot too.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t better than you.”

“Oh, yes he was. He shot very quickly and beautifully. I’d rather see him shoot than any man I ever knew. He was always very disappointed in the way I shot.”

“Why do we never go to pray at the tomb of my grandfather?”

“We live in a different pan of the country. It’s a long way from here.”

“In France that wouldn’t make any difference. In France we’d go. I think I ought to go to pray at the tomb of my grandfather.”

“Sometime we’ll go.”

“I hope we won’t live somewhere so that I can never go to pray at your tomb when you are dead.”

“We’ll have to arrange it.”

“Don’t you think we might all be buried at a convenient place? We could all be buried in France. That would be fine.”

“I don’t want to be buried in France,” Nick said.

“Well, then, we’ll have to get some convenient place in America. Couldn’t we all be buried out at the ranch?”

“That’s an idea.”

“Then I could stop and pray at the tomb of my grandfather on the way to the ranch.”

“You’re awfully practical.”

“Well, I don’t feel good never to have even visited the tomb of my grandfather.”

“We’ll have to go,” Nick said. “I can see we’ll have to go.”

Part II

Short Stories Published in Books

or Magazines Subsequent to

“The First Forty-nine”

One Trip Across

YOU KNOW HOW IT IS THERE EARLY IN the morning in Havana with the bums still asleep against the walls of the buildings; before even the ice wagons come by with ice for the bars? Well, we came across the square from the dock to the Pearl of San Francisco Café to get coffee and there was only one beggar awake in the square and he was getting a drink out of the fountain. But when we got inside the café and sat down, there were the three of them waiting for us.

We sat down and one of them came over.

“Well,” he said.

“I can’t do it,” I told him. “I’d like to do it as a favor. But I told you last night I couldn’t.”

“You can name your own price.”

“It isn’t that. I can’t do it. That’s all.”

The two others had come over and they stood there looking sad. They were nice-looking fellows all right and I would have liked to have done them the favor.

“A thousand apiece,” said the one who spoke good English.

“Don’t make me feel bad,” I told him. “I tell you true I can’t do it.”

“Afterwards, when things are changed, it would mean a good deal to you.”

“I know it. I’m all for you. But I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“I make my living with the boat. If I lose her I lose my living.”

“With the money you buy another boat.”

“Not in jail.”

They must have thought I just needed to be argued into it because the one kept on.

“You would have three thousand dollars and it could mean a great deal to you later. All this will not last, you know.”

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t care who is President here. But I don’t carry anything to the States that can talk.”

“You mean we would talk?” one of them who hadn’t spoken said. He was angry.