Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

“We better go down and see Packard. We were going to check that today.”

“What’s to prevent him going down by East Jordan and Grand Traverse?”

“Nothing. But that isn’t his country. He’ll go some place that he knows.”

Suzy came out when they were opening the gate in the fence.

“Can I ride down to the store with you? I’ve got to get some groceries.”

“What makes you think we’re going to the store?”

“Yesterday you were talking about going to see Mr. Packard.”

“How are you going to get your groceries back?”

“I guess I can get a lift with somebody on the road or coming up the lake. This is Saturday.”

“All right. Climb up,” the local warden said.

“Thank you, Mr. Evans,” Suzy said.

At the general store and post office Evans hitched the team at the rack and he and the down-state man stood and talked before they went in.

“I couldn’t say anything with that damned Suzy.”

“Sure.”

“Packard’s a fine man. There isn’t anybody better-liked in this country. You’d never get a conviction on that trout business against him. Nobody’s going to scare him and we don’t want to antagonize him.”

“Do you think he’ll cooperate?”

“Not if you act rough.”

“We’ll go see him.”

Inside the store Suzy had gone straight through past the glass showcases, the opened barrels, the boxes, the shelves of canned goods, seeing nothing nor anyone until she came to the post office with its lockboxes and its general delivery and stamp window. The window was down and she went straight on to the back of the store. Mr. Packard was opening a packing box with a crowbar. He looked at her and smiled.

“Mr. John,” the hired girl said, speaking very fast. “There’s two wardens coming in that’s after Nickie. He cleared out last night and his kid sister’s gone with him. Don’t let on about that. His mother knows it and it’s all right. Anyhow she isn’t going to say anything.”

“Did he take all your groceries?”

“Most of them.”

“You pick out what you need and make a list and I’ll check it over with you.”

“They’re coming in now.”

“You go out the back and come in the front again. I’ll go and talk to them.”

Suzy walked around the long frame building and climbed the front steps again. This time she noticed everything as she came in. She knew the Indians who had brought in the baskets and she knew the two Indian boys who were looking at the fishing tackle in the first showcases on the left. She knew all the patent medicines in the next case and who usually bought them. She had clerked one summer in the store and she knew what the penciled code letters and numbers meant that were on the cardboard boxes that held shoes, winter overshoes, wool socks, mittens, caps and sweaters. She knew what the baskets were worth that the Indians had brought in and that it was too late in the season for them to bring a good price.

“Why did you bring them in so late, Mrs. Tabeshaw?” she asked.

“Too much fun Fourth of July,” the Indian woman laughed.

“How’s Billy?” Suzy asked.

“I don’t know, Suzy. I no see him four weeks now.”

“Why don’t you take them down to the hotel and try to sell them to the resorters?” Suzy said.

“Maybe,” Mrs. Tabeshaw said. “I took once.”

“You ought to take them every day.”

“Long walk,” Mrs. Tabeshaw said.

While Suzy was talking to the people she knew and making a list of what she needed for the house the two wardens were in the back of the store with Mr. John Packard.

Mr. John had gray-blue eyes and dark hair and a dark mustache and he always looked as though he had wandered into a general store by mistake. He had been away from northern Michigan once for eighteen years when he was a young man and he looked more like a peace officer or an honest gambler than a storekeeper. He had owned good saloons in his time and run them well. But when the country had been lumbered off he had stayed and bought farming land. Finally when the county had gone local option he had bought this store. He already owned the hotel. But he said he didn’t like a hotel without a bar and so he almost never went near it. Mrs. Packard ran the hotel. She was more ambitious than Mr. John and Mr. John said he didn’t want to waste time with people who had enough money to take a vacation anywhere in the country they wanted and then came to a hotel without a bar and spent their time sitting on the porch in rocking chairs. He called the resorters “change-of-lifers” and he made fun of them to Mrs. Packard but she loved him and never minded when he teased her.

“I don’t mind if you call them change-of-lifers,” she told him one night in bed. “I had the damn thing but I’m still all the woman you can handle, aren’t I?”

She liked the resorters because some of them brought culture and Mr. John said she loved culture like a lumberjack loved Peerless, the great chewing tobacco. He really respected her love of culture because she said she loved it just like he loved good bonded whiskey and she said, “Packard, you don’t have to care about culture. I won’t bother you with it. But it makes me feel wonderful.”

Mr. John said she could have culture until hell wouldn’t hold it just so long as he never had to go to a Chautauqua or a Self-Betterment Course. He had been to camp meetings and a revival but he had never been to a Chautauqua. He said a camp meeting or a revival was bad enough but at least there was some sexual intercourse afterwards by those who got really aroused although he never knew anyone to pay their bills after a camp meeting or a revival. Mrs. Packard, he told Nick Adams, would get worried about the salvation of his immortal soul after she had been to a big revival by somebody like Gypsy Smith, that great evangelist, but finally it would turn out that he, Packard, looked like Gypsy Smith and everything would be fine finally. But a Chautauqua was something strange. Culture maybe was better than religion, Mr. John thought. But it was a cold proposition. Still they were crazy for it. He could see it was more than a fad, though.

“It’s sure got a hold on them,” he had told Nick Adams. “It must be sort of like the Holy Rollers only in the brain. You study it sometime and tell me what you think. You going to be a writer you ought to get in on it early. Don’t let them get too far ahead of you.”

Mr. John liked Nick Adams because he said he had original sin. Nick did not understand this but he was proud.

“You’re going to have things to repent, boy,” Mr. John had told Nick. “That’s one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.”

“I don’t want to do anything bad,” Nick had said.

“I don’t want you to,” Mr. John had said. “But you’re alive and you’re going to do things. Don’t you lie and don’t you steal. Everybody has to lie. But you pick out somebody you never lie to.”

“I’ll pick out you.”

“That’s right. Don’t you ever lie to me no matter what and I won’t lie to you.”

“I’ll try,” Nick had said.

“That isn’t it,” Mr. John said. “It has to be absolute.”

“All right,” Nick said. “I’ll never lie to you.”

“What became of your girl?”

“Somebody said she was working up at the Soo.”

“She was a beautiful girl and I always liked her,” Mr. John had said.

“So did I,” Nick said.

“Try and not feel too bad about it.”

“I can’t help it,” Nick said. “None of it was her fault. She’s just built that way. If I ran into her again I guess I’d get mixed up with her again.”

“Maybe not.”