Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

“Don’t you want to get a paper?”

“I’d like to,” he said. “I’ll see if the cashier has one.”

“At the drugstore,” the cashier said. “St. Petersburg and Tampa papers at the drugstore.”

“Where is it?”

“At the corner. I doubt if you could miss it.”

“You want anything from the drugstore?” Roger asked the girl.

“Camels,” she said. “Remember we have to fill the ice jug.”

“I’ll ask them.”

Roger came back with the morning papers and a carton of cigarettes.

“It’s not going so good.” He handed her one of the papers.

“Is there anything we didn’t get on the radio?”

“Not much. But it doesn’t look so good.”

“Can they fill the ice jug?”

“I forgot to ask.”

The waitress came with the two breakfasts and they both drank their cold grapefruit juice and started to eat. Roger kept on reading his paper so Helena propped hers against a water glass and read too.

“Have you any chili sauce?” Roger asked the waitress. She Was a thin juke-joint looking blonde.

“You bet,” she said. “You people from Hollywood.”

“I’ve been there.”

“Ain’t she from there?”

“She’s going there.”

“Oh Jesus me,” the waitress said. “Would you write in my book?

“I’d love to,” Helena said. “But I’m not in pictures.”

“You will be, honey,” the waitress said. “Wait a minute,” she said, got a pen.”

She handed Helena the book. It was quite new and had a grey imitation leather cover.

“I only just got it,” she said. “I only had this job a week.”

Helena wrote Helena Hancock on the first page in the rather flamboyant untypical hand that had emerged form the mixed ways of writing she had been taught at various schools.

“Jesus beat me what a name,” the waitress said. “Wouldn’t you write something with it?”

“What’s your name?” Helena asked.

“Marie.”

To Marie from her friend Helena wrote above the florid name in the slightly suspect script.

“Gee thanks,” Marie said. Then to Roger, “You don’t mind writing do you.”

“No,” Roger said. “I’d like to. What’s your last name, Marie?”

“Oh that don’t matter.”

He wrote Best always to Marie from Roger Hancock.

“You her father?” the waitress asked.

“Yes,” said Roger.

“Gee I’m glad she’s going out there with her father,” the waitress said. “Well I certainly wish you people luck.”

“We need it,” Roger said.

“No,” the waitress said. “You don’t need it. But I wish it to you anyway. Say you must have got married awfully young.”

“I was,” Roger said. I sure as hell was, he thought.

“I’ll bet her mother was beautiful.”

“She was the most beautiful girl you ever saw.”

“Where’s she now?”

“In London,” Helena said.

“You people certainly lead lives,” the waitress said. “Do you want another glass of milk?”

“No thanks,” Helena said. “Where are you from, Marie?”

“Fort Meade,” the waitress said. “It’s right up the road.”

“Do you like it here?”

“This is a bigger town. It’s a step up I guess.”

“Do you have any fun?”

“I always have fun when there’s any time. Do you want anything more?” she asked Roger.

“No. We have to roll.”

They paid the check and shook hands.

“Thanks very much for the quarter,” the waitress said. “And for writing in my book. I guess I’ll be reading about you in the papers. Good luck, Miss Hancock.”

“Good luck,” Helena said. “I hope you have a good summer.”

“It’ll be all right,” the waitress said. “You be careful won’t you.”

“You be careful too,” Helena said.

“O.K.,” Marie said. “Only it’s kind of late for me.”

She bit her lip and turned and went into the kitchen.

“She was a nice girl,” Helena said to Roger as they got into the car. “I should have told her it was sort of late for me too. But I guess that only would have worried her.”

“We must fill the ice jug,” Roger said.

“I’ll take it in,” Helena offered. “I haven’t done anything for us all day.”

“Let me get it.”

“No. You read the paper and I’ll get it. Have we enough Scotch?”

“There’s that whole other bottle in the carton that isn’t opened.”

“That’s splendid.”

Roger read the paper. I might as well, he thought. I’m going to drive all day.

“It only cost a quarter,” the girl said when she came back with the jug. “But it’s chipped awfully fine. Too fine I’m afraid.”

“We can get some more this evening.”

When they were out of the town and had settled down to the long black highway north through the prairie and the pines, into the hills of the lake country, the road striped black over the long, varied peninsula, heavy with the mounting summer heat now that they were away from the sea breeze; but with them making their own breeze driving at a steady seventy on the straight long stretches and feeling the country being put behind them, the girl said, “It’s fun to drive fast isn’t it? It’s like making your own youth.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sort of foreshortening and telescoping the world the way youth does.”

“I never thought much about youth.”

“I know it,” she said. “But I did. You didn’t think about it because you never lost it. If you never thought about it you couldn’t lose it.”

“Go on,” he said. “That doesn’t follow.”

“It doesn’t make good sense,” she said. “I’ll get it straightened out though and then it will. You don’t mind me talking when it doesn’t make completely good sense do you?”

“No, daughter.”

“You see if I made really completely good sense I wouldn’t be here.” She stopped. “Yes I would. It’s super good sense. Not common sense.”

“Like surrealism?”

“Nothing like surrealism. I hate surrealism.”

“I don’t,” he said. “I liked it when it started. It kept on such a long time after it was over was the trouble.”

“But things are never really successful until they are over.”

“Say that again.”

“I mean they aren’t successful in America until they are over. And they have to have been over for years and years before they are successful in London.”

“Where did you learn all this, daughter?”

“I thought it out,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think while I was waiting around for you.”

“You didn’t wait so very much.”

“Oh yes I did. You’ll never know.”

There was a choice to be made soon of two main highways with very little difference in their mileage and he did not know whether to take the one that he knew was a good road through pleasant country but that he had driven many times with Andy and David’s mother or the newly finished highway that might go through duller country.

That’s no choice, he thought. We’ll take the new one. The hell with maybe starting something again like I had the other night coming across the Tamiami Trail.

They caught the news broadcast on the radio, switching it off through the soap operas of the forenoon and on at each hour.

“It isn’t like fiddling while Rome burns,” Roger said. “It’s driving west northwest at seventy miles an hour away from a fire that’s burning up what you care about to the east and hearing about it while you drive away from it.”

“If we keep on driving long enough we’ll get to it.”

“We hit a lot of water first.”

“Roger. Do you have to go? If you have to go you should.”