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THE FIRST FORTY-NINE STORIES

Books by

ERNEST HEMINGWAY Stones

IN OUR TIME MEN WITHOUT WOMEN WINNER TAKE NOTHING

Novels

FIESTA A FAREWELL TO ARMS TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

General

THE TORRENTS OF SPRING DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA

Play

THE FIFTH COLUMN

THE FIRST FORTY-NINE

STORIES by

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

JONATHAN CAPE THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE

LONDON

JFED SHORT STORIES WERE FIRST PUBLISHED IN ~ FIFTH COLUMN AND THE FIRST FORTY-NINE 1939

RE- ISSUED, TYPE RE-SET AS

THE FIRST FORTY-NINE STORIES SEPTEMBER 1944 SECOND IMPRESSION MARCH 1946

THIS BOOK IS PRODUCED IN COM- PLETE CONFORMITY WITH THE AUTHORIZED ECONOMY STANDARDS

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN IN THE CITY OF OXFORD AT THE ALDEN PRESS

BOUND BY A. W. BAIN & CO. LTD., LONDON

CONTENTS

PREFACE 7 THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MAGOMBER Qy THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 44 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 58 OLD MAN AT THE BRIDGE 84 UP IN MICHIGAN 87 ON THE QVAI AT SMYRNA 93

IN OUR TIME INDIAN CAMP

'

95 THE DOCTOR AND THE DOCTOR'S WIFE IOO

THE END OF SOMETHING 105 THE THREE-DAY BLOW I IO

THE BATTLER 122

A VERY SHORT STORY 133

SOLDIER'S HOME 136 THE REVOLUTIONIST 145 MR. AND MRS. ELLIOT 147 CAT IN THE RAIN 152 OUT OF SEASON 156 CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW 163 MY OLD MAN 1 70 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER! PART I 1 86

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER I PART II 197

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN* THE UNDEFEATED 210

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY 243 HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS 249 THE KILLERS 254 CHE TI DICE LA PATRIA? 265 FIFTY GRAND 276 A SIMPLE INQUIRY 303 TEN INDIANS 306

6 CONTENTS A CANARY FOR ONE 313 AN ALPINE IDYLL 3 1 7 A PURSUIT RACE 334 TO-DAY IS FRIDAY 339 BANAL STORY 333 NOW I LAY ME 335

WINNER TAKE NOTHING AFTER THE STORM 344 A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE 35! THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 356 GOD REST YOU MERRY, GENTLEMEN 364 THE SEA CHANGE 369 A WAY YOU'LL NEVER BE 374 THE MOTHER OF A QUEEN 387 ONE READER WRITES 392 HOMAGE TO SWITZERLAND 394 A DAY'S WAIT 408 A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE DEAD 412 WINE OF WYOMING 422 THE GAMBLER, THE NUN, AND THE RADIO 440 FATHERS AND SONS 460

PREFACE f

THERE is not much to say about these stories. The first four

are the last ones I have written. The others follow in the

order in which they were originally published. The first one I wrote was 'Up in Michigan', written in

Paris in 1921. The last was 'Old Man at the Bridge', cabled

from Barcelona in April of 1938.

I wrote The Killers', 'To-day Is Friday', Ten Indians",

part of 'Fiesta', and the first third of 'To Have and Have Not'

in Madrid. It was always a good place for working. So was

Paris, and so were Key West, Florida, in the cool months; the

ranch, near Cooke City, Montana; Kansas City; Chicago;

Toronto, and Havana, Cuba.

Some other places were not so good, but maybe we were

not so good when we were in them.

There are many kinds of stories in this book. I hope that

you will find some that you like. Reading them over, the ones

I liked the best, outside of those that have achieved some

notoriety so that school teachers include them in story col-

lections that their pupils have to buy in story courses, and

you are always faintly embarrassed to read them and wonder whether you really wrote them or did you maybe hear them,

somewhere, are 'The Short Happy Life ofFrancis Macomber', 'In Another Country

5

, 'Hills Like White Elephants', 'A Way

You'll Never Be', 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro', 'A Clean,

Well-Lighted Place', and a story called 'The Light of the

World', which nobody else ever liked. There are some others

too. Because if you did not like them you would not publish them.

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have

to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt

the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it

bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone

again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it,

and know that I had something to write about, than to have

8 PREFACE

it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well

oiled in the closet, but unused. <

Now it is necessary to get to the grindstone again. I wQuld like to live long enough to write three more novels and

twenty-five more stories. I know some pretty good ones.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER

IT was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the

double green fly of the dining tent pretending thit nothing had happened.

'Will you have lime juice or lemon squash? 5 Macomber

asked.

Til have a gimlet/ Robert Wilson told him.

Til have a gimlet too. I need something,' Macomber's

wife said.

'I suppose it's the thing to do/ Macomber agreed. 'Tell

him to make three gimlets.'

The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles

out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind

that blew through the trees that shaded the tents.

'What had I ought to give them?' Macomber asked.

'A quid would be plenty/ Wilson told him. 'You don't

want to spoil them.'

'Will the headman distribute it?'

'Absolutely.'

Francis Macomber had, half an hour before, been carried

to his tent from the edge of the camp in triumph on the arms

and shoulders of the cook, the personal boys, the skinner and the porters. The gun-bearers had taken no part in the

demonstration. When the native boys put him down at the

door of his tent, he had shaken all their hands, received their

congratulations, and then gone into the tent and sat on the

bed until his wife came in. She did not speak to him when she came in and he left the tent at once to wash his face and hands in the portable wash basin outside and go over to the

dining tent to sit in a comfortable canvas chair in the breeze

and the shade.

Mrs. Macomber looked at Wilson quickly. She was an

extremely handsome and well-kept woman of the beauty and social position which had, five years before, commanded five

io HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER thousand dollars as the price of endorsing, with photographs, a beauty product which she had never used. She had been

married to Francis Macomber for eleven years.

'He is a good lion, isn't he?' Macomber said. His wife

looked at him now. She looked at both these men as though she had never seen them before.

One, Wilson, the white hunter, she knew she had never

truly seen before. He was about middle height with sandy hair, a stubby moustache, a very red face and extremely cold

blue eyes with faint white wrinkles at the corners that grooved

merrily when he smiled. He smiled at her now and she

looked away from his face at the way his shoulders sloped in

the loose tunic he wore with the four big cartridges held in

loops where the left breast pocket should have been, at his

big brown hands, his old slacks, his very dirty boots, and back

to his red face again. She noticed where the baked red of his

face stopped in a white line that marked the circle left by his

Stetson hat that hung now from one ofthe pegs ofthe tent pole.

'Well, here's to the lion, 5

Robert Wilson said. He smiled at

her again and, not smiling, she looked curiously at her

husband.

Francis Macomber was very tall, very well built if you did

not mind that length of bone, dark, his hair cropped like an

oarsman, rather thin-lipped, and was considered handsome.

He was dressed in the same sort of safari clothes that Wilson

wore except that his were new, he was thirty-five years old,

kept himselfvery fit, was good at court games, had a number of big- game fishing records, and had just shown himself, very

publicly, to be a coward.

'Here's to the lion,' he said. 'I can't ever thank you for

what you did.'

Margaret, his wife, looked away from him and back to

Wilson.

'Let's not talk about the lion, 5

she said.

Wilson looked over at her without smiling and now she

smiled at him.

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER n

'It's been a very strange day/ she said. 'Hadn't you ought to put your hat on even under the canvas at noon? You told

me that, you know.'

'Might put it on,' said Wilson.

'You know you have a very red face, Mr. Wilson,' she told

him and smiled again.

'Drink/ said Wilson.

'I don't think so/ she said. 'Francis drinks a great deal, but

his face is never red. 3

'It's red to-day/ Macomber tried a joke.

'No/ said Margaret. 'It's mine that's red to-day. But Mr.

Wilson's is always red.'

'Must be racial/ said Wilson. 'I say, you wouldn't like to

drop my beauty as a topic, would you?'

'I've just started on it.'

'Let's chuck it/ said Wilson.

'Conversation is going to be so difficult/ Margaret said.

'Don't bo silly, Margot/ her husband said.

'No difficulty/ Wilson said. 'Got a damn fine lion.'

Margot looked at them both and they both saw that she

was going to cry. Wilson had seen it coming for a long time

and he dreaded it. Macomber was past dreading it.

'I wish it hadn't happened. Oh, I wish it hadn't happened/ she said and started for her tent. She made no noise of crying but they could see that her shoulders were shaking under the

rose-coloured, sun-proofed shirt she wore.

'Women upset/ said Wilson to the tall man. 'Amounts to

nothing. Strain on the nerves and one thing'n another.'

'No/ said Macomber. 'I suppose that I rate that for the

rest ofmy life now.'

'Nonsense. Let's have a spot of the giant killer/ said Wilson.

'Forget the whole thing. Nothing to it anyway.' 'We might try/ said Macomber. 'I won't forget what you

did for me though.'

'Nothing/ said Wilson. 'All nonsense.'

So they sat there in the shade where the camp was pitched

12 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER under some wide-topped acacia trees with a boulder-strewn

cliff behind them, and a stretch of grass that ran to the bank of a boulder-filled stream in front with forest beyond it, and drank their just-cool lime drinks and avoided one another's

eyes while the boys set the table for lunch. Wilson could

tell that the boys all knew about it now and When he saw Macomber's personal boy looking curiously at his master

while he was putting dishes on the table he snapped at him in Swahili. The boy turned away with his face blank.

'What were you telling him?' Macomber asked.

'Nothing. Told him to look alive or I'd see he got about

fifteen of the best.'

'What's that? Lashes?'

'It's quite illegal,' Wilson said. 'You're supposed to fine

them.'

'Do you still have them whipped?'

'Oh, yes. They could raise a row ifthey chose to complain. But they don't. They prefer it to the fines.'

'How strange!' said Macomber. 'Not strange, really,' Wilson said. 'Which would you

rather do? Take a good birching or lose your pay?' Then he felt embarrassed at asking it and before

Macomber could answer he went on, 'We all take a beating

eVery day, you know, one way or another.'

This was no better. 'Good God,' he thought. 'I am a

diplomat, aren't I?'

'Yes, we take a beating,' said Macomber, still not looking at hini. I'm awfully sorry about that lion business. It

doesn't have to go any further, does it? I mean no one will

hear about it, will they?'

'You mean will I tell it at the Mathaiga Club?' Wilson

looked at him now coldly. He had not expected this. So he's

a bloody four-letter man as well as a bloody coward, he

thought. I rather liked him too until to-day. But how is one

to know about an American?

'No, 5

said Wilson. 'I'm a professional hunter. We never talk

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 13

about our clients. You can be quite easy on that. It's

supposed to be bad form to ask us not to talk though.' tL had decided now that to break would be much easier.

He would eat, then, by himself and could read a book v/ith

his meals. They would eat by themselves. He would see

them through the safari on a very formal basis what was it

the French called it? Distinguished consideration and it

would be a damn sight easier than having to go through this

emotional trash. He'd insult him and make a good clean

break. Then he could read a book with his meals and he'd

still be drinking their whisky. That was the phrase for it

when a safari went bad. You ran into another white hunter

and you asked, cHow is everything going?' and he answered,

c

Oh, I'm still drinking their whisky,' and you knew every-

thing had gone to pot.

'I'm sorry,' Macomber said and looked at him with his

American face that would stay adolescent until it became

middle-aged, and Wilson noted his crew-cropped hair, fine

eyes only faintly shifty, good nose, thin lips and handsome

jaw. 'I'm sorry I didn't realize that. There are lots of

things I don't know.'

So what could he do, Wilson thought. He was all ready to

break it off quickly and neatly and here the beggar was

apologizing after he had just insulted him. He made one

more attempt. 'Don't worry about me talking,' he said. 'I

have a living to make. You know in Africa no woman ever

misses her lion and no white man ever bolts.'

'I bolted like a rabbit,' Macomber said.

Now what in hell were you going to do about a man who talked like that, Wilson wondered.

Wilson looked at Macomber with his flat, blue, machine-

gunner's eyes and the other smiled back at him. He had a

pleasant smile if you did not notice how his eyes showed when he was hurt.

'Maybe I can fix it up on buffalo,' he said. 'We're after

them next, aren't we?'

i 4 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER c

ln the morning if you like/ Wilson told him. Perhaps he

had been wrong. This was certainly the way to take it. /ou

most certainly could not tell a damned thing about an

American. He was all for Macomber again. If you could

forget the morning. But, of course, you couldn't. The

morning had been about as bad as they come.

'Here comes the Memsahib,' he said. She was walking over from her tent looking refreshed and cheerful and quite

lovely. She had a very perfect oval face, so perfect that you

expected her to be stupid. But she wasn't stupid, Wilson

thought, no, not stupid.

'How is the beautiful red-faced Mr. Wilson? Are you feeling better, Francis, my pearl?'

'Oh, much,' said Macomber. 'I've dropped the whole thing,' she said, sitting down at

the table. 'What importance is there to whether Francis is

any good at killing lions? That's not his trade. That's Mr.

Wilson's trade. Mr. Wilson is really very impressive killing

anything. You do kill anything, don't you?'

'Oh, anything,' said Wilson. 'Simply anything. 3

They are, he thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest, the

cruellest, the most predatory and the most attractive and

their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened. Or is it that they pick men they can handle?

They can't know that much at the age they marry, he-

thought. He was grateful that he had gone through his educa-

tion on American women before now because this was a very attractive one.

'We're going after buff in the morning,' he told her.

'I'm coming,' she said.

'No you're not.'

'Oh, yes, I am. Mayn't I, Francis?'

'Why not stay in camp?' 'Not for anything,' she said. 'I wouldn't miss something

like to-day for anything.' When she left, Wilson was thinking, when she went off to

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 15

cry she seemed a hell of a fine woman. She seemed to

understand, to realize, to be hurt for him and for herself and

to k*now how things really stood. She is away for twenty minutes and now she is back, simply enamelled in 'that

American female cruelty. They are the damnedest womeji.

Really the clamnedest.

'We'll put on another show for you to-morrow,' Francis

Macomber said.

'You're not coming,' Wilson said.

'You're very mistaken,' she told him. 'And I want so to

see you perform again. You were lovely this morning. That

is if blowing things' heads off is lovely.'

'Here's the lunch,' said Wilson. 'You're very merry, aren't you?'

'Why not? I didn't come out here to be dull.'

'Well, it hasn't been dull,' Wilson said. He could see the

boulders in the river and the high bank beyond with the

trees and he remembered the morning.

'Oh, no/ she said. 'It's been charming. And to-morrow.

You don't know how I look forward to to-morrow.'

'That's eland he's offering you,' Wilson said.

'They're the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren't

they?'

'I suppose that describes them,' Wilson said.

'It's very good meat,' Macomber said.

'Did you shoot it, Francis?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'They're not dangerous, are they?'

'Only if they fall on you,' Wilson told her.

'I'm so glad.'

'Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,' Macomber said, cutting the eland steak and putting some mashed potato, gravy and carrot on the down-turned fork

that tined through the piece of meat.

'I suppose I could,' she said, 'since you put it so

prettily.'

16 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS M A C O M B E R

'To-night we'll have champagne for the lion,' Wilson said.

'It's a bit too hot at noon.'

'Oh, the lion,' Margot said. Td forgotten the lion!' -

So, Robert Wilson thought to himself, she is giving him a

ride, isn't she? Or do you suppose that's her idea of putting

up a good show? How should a woman act when she

discovers her husband is a bloody coward? She's damn cruel

but they're all cruel. They govern, of course, and to govern one has to be cruel sometimes. Still, I've seen enough of

their damn terrorism.

'Have some more eland,' he said to her politely.

That afternoon, late, Wilson and Macomber went out in

the motor car with the native driver and the two gun-bearers. Mrs. Macomber stayed in the camp. It was too hot to go out,

she said, and she was going with them in the early morning. As they drove off Wilson saw her standing under the big tree looking pretty rather than beautiful in her faintly rosy

khaki, her dark hair drawn back off her forehead and

gathered in a knot low on her neck, her face as fresh, he

thought, as though she were in England. She waved to them as the car went off through the swale of high grass and

curved around through the trees into the small hills of

orchard bush.

In the orchard bush they found a herd of impala, and

leaving the car they stalked one old ram with long, wide-

spread horns and Macomber killed it with a very creditable,

shot thatknocked the buck down at a good two hundred yards and se'nt the herd off bounding wildly and leaping over one

another's backs in long, leg-drawn-up leaps as unbelievable

and as floating as those one makes sometimes in dreams.

'That was a good shot,' Wilson said. 'They're a small

target. 5

'Is it a worth-while head?' Macomber asked.

'It's excellent,' Wilson told him. 'You shoot like that and

you'll have no trouble.'

'Do you think we'll find buffalo to-morrow? 5

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 17

'There's a good chance of it. They feed out early in the

morning and with luck we may catch them in the open.' I'd like to clear away that lion business/ Macomber said.

'It's not very pleasant to have your wife see you do somp.

thing like that.'

I should think it would be even more unpleasant to do it,

Wilson thought, wife or no wife, or to talk about it having done it. But he said,

C

I wouldn't think about that any more.

Anyone could be upset by his first lion. That's all over.'

But that night after dinner and a whisky and soda by the

fire before going to bed, as Francis Macomber lay on his cot

with the mosquito bar over him and listened to the night noises it was not all over. It was neither all over nor was it

beginning. It was there exactly as it happened with some

parts of it indelibly emphasized and he was miserably ashamed at it. But more than shame he felt cold, hollow

fear in him. The fear was still there like a cold slimy hollow

in all the emptiness where once his confidence had been and it made him feel sick. It was still there with him now.

It had started the night before when he had wakened and heard the lion roaring somewhere up along the river. It was a deep sound and at the end therewere sort ofcoughing grunts that made him seem just outside the tent, and when Francis

Macomber woke in the night to hear it he was afraid. He could hear his wife breathing quietly, asleep. There was no one to tell he was afraid, nor to be afraid with him, and,

lying alone, he did not know the Somali proverb that says

a brave man is always frightened three times by a lion; when he first sees his track, when he first hears him roar and when he first confronts him. Then while they were eating break-

fast by lantern light out in the dining tent, before the sun

was up, the lion roared again and Francis thought he was

just at the edge of camp. 'Sounds like an old-timer,' Robert Wilson said, looking up

from his kippers and coffee. 'Listen to him cough.' 'Is he very close?'

i$ HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 'A mile or so up the stream.'

'Will we see him? 5 '

'We'll have a look.'

'Does his roaring carry that far? It sounds as though he

were right in camp. 5

'^Carries a hell of a long way,' said Robert Wilson, c

lt's

strange the way it carries. Hope he's a shootable cat. The

boys said there was a very big one about here.'

'If I get a shot, where should I hit him,' Macomber asked,

'to stop him?'

'In the shoulders,' Wilson said. 'In the neck if you can

make it. Shoot for bone. Break him down.'

'I hope I can place it properly,' Macomber said.

'You shoot very well,' Wilson told him. 'Take your time.

Make sure of him. The first one in is the one that counts. 5

'What range will it be?'

'Can't tell. Lion has something to say about that. Don't

shoot unless it's close enough so you can make sure. 5

'At under a hundred yards?' Macomber asked.

Wilson looked at him quickly.

'Hundred's about right. Might have to take him a bit

under. Shouldn 5

t chance a shot at much over that. A hundred's a decent range. You can hit him wherever you want at that. Here comes the Memsahib.'

'Good morning, 5

she said. 'Are we going after that lion?'

'As soon as you deal with your breakfast, 5

Wilson said.

'How are you feeling?'

'Marvellous, 5

she said. Tm very excited. 5

Til just go and see that everything is ready.' Wilson went

off. As he left the lion roared again.

'Noisy beggar, 5

Wilson said. 'We'll put a stop to that.'

*What 5

s the matte*, Francis? 5

his wife asked him.

'Nothing, 5 Macomber said.

'Yes, there is, 5

she said. 'What are you upset about? 5

'Nothing, 5 he said.

'Tell me, 5

she looked at him. 'Don't you feel yvell? 5

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS M A C O M B E R 19

'It's that damned roaring,' he said. 'It's been going on all

night, you know.' f

Why didn't you wake me,' she said. Td love to have

heard it.'

'I've got to kill the damned thing,' Macomber s~id,

miserably.

'Well, that's what you're out here for, isn't it?'

'Yes. But I'm nervous. Hearing the thing roar gets on my nerves.'

'Well, then, as Wilson said, kill him and stop his roaring/

'Yes, darling,' said Francis Macomber. 'It sounds easy,

doesn't it?'

'You're not afraid, are you?' 'Of course not. But I'm nervous from hearing him roar

all night.'

'You'll kill him marvellously,' she said. 'I know you will.

I'm awfully anxious to see it.'

'Finish your breakfast and we'll be starting.'

'It's not light yet,' she said. 'This is a ridiculous hour.'

Just then the lion roared in a deep-chested moaning, sud-

denly guttural, ascending vibration that seemed to shake the

air and ended in a sigh and a heavy, deep-chested grunt. 'He sounds almost here,' Macomber's wife said.

'My God,' said Macomber. 'I hate that damned noise.'

'It's very impressive.'

'Impressive. It's frightful.'

Robert Wilson came up then carrying his short, ugly,

shockingly big-bored .505 Gibbs and grinning. 'Come on,' he said. 'Your gun-bearer has your Springfield

and the big gun. Everything's in the car. Have you solids?'

'Yes. 5

'I'm ready,' Mrs. Macomber said.

'Must make him stop that racket,' Wilson said. 'You get in

front. The Memsahib can sit back here with me.'

They climbed into the motor car and, in the grey first day-

light, moved off up the river through the trees. Macomber

20 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER

opened the breach of his rifle and saw he had metal-cased

bullets, shut the bolt and put the rifle on safety. He saw his

hand was trembling. He felt in his pocket for more cartridges

ar*d moved his fingers over the cartridges in the loops of his

tunic front. He turned back to where Wilson sat in the rear

seat of the doorless, box-bodied motor car beside his wife,

them both grinning with excitement, and Wilson leaned

forward and whispered. 'See the birds dropping. Means the old boy has left his

kill.'

On the far bank of the stream Macomber could see, above

the trees, vultures circling and plummeting down.

'Chances are he'll come to drink along here/ Wilson

whispered. 'Before he goes to lay up. Keep an eye out.'

Theywere driving slowly along the high bank ofthe stream

which here cut deeply to its boulder-filled bed, and they wound in and out through big trees as they drove. Macomber was watching the opposite bank when he felt Wilson take

hold of his arm. The car stopped. 'There he is,' he heard the whisper. 'Ahead and to the

right. Get out and take him. He's a marvellous lion.'

Macomber saw the lion now. He was standing almost

broadside, his great head up and turned toward them. The

earlymorning breeze thatblew toward them was just stirring

his dark mane, and the lion looked huge, silhouetted on the rise

of bank in the grey morning light, his shoulders heavy, his

barrel of a body bulking smoothly. 'How far is he?' asked Macomber, raising his rifle.

'About seventy-five. Get out and take him. 5

'Why not shoot from where I am?'

'You don't shoot them from cars,' he heard Wilson saying in his ear. 'Get out. He's not going to stay there all day.'

Macomber stepped out of the curved opening at the side

of the front seat, on to the step and down on to the ground. The lion still stood looking majestically and coolly toward

this object that his eyes only showed in silhouette, bulking

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 21

like some super-rhino. There was no man smell carried

toWard him and he watched the object, moving his great head a little from side to side. Then watching the object,

not afraid, but hesitating before going down the bartk.to

drink with such a thing opposite him, he saw aman figure

detach itself from it and he turned his heavy head and

swung away toward the cover of the trees as he heard a

cracking crash and felt the slam of a .30-06 220-grain solid

bullet that bit his flank and ripped in sudden hot scalding nausea through his stomach. He trotted, heavy, big-footed,

swinging wounded full-bellied, through the trees toward

the tall grass and cover, and the crash came again to go

past him ripping the air apart. Then it crashed again and he felt the blow as it hit his lower ribs and ripped on

through, blood sudden hot and frothy in his mouth, and he

galloped toward the high grass where he could crouch and not be seen and make them bring the crashing thing close

enough so he could make a rush and get the man that held it.

Macomber had not thought how the lion felt as he got out

of the car. He only knew his hands were shaking and as he

walked away from the car it was almost impossible for him to

make his legs move. They were stiff in the thighs, but he could feel the muscles fluttering. He raised the rifle, sighted on the junction of the lion's head and shoulders and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened though he pulled until he

thought his finger would break. Then he knew he had the

safety on and as he lowered the rifle to move the safety over

he moved another frozen pace forward, and the lion seeing his silhouette now clear of the silhouette of the car, turned

and started off at a trot, and, as Macomber fired, he heard

a whunk that meant that the bullet was home; but the lion

kept on going. Macomber shot again and everyone saw the

bullet throw a spout of dirt beyond the trotting lion. He shot again, remembering to lower his aim, and they all

heard the bullet hit, and the lion went into a gallop and was

in the tall grass before he had the bolt pushed forward.

22 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER Macomber stood there feeling sick at his stomach, his

hands that held the Springfield still cocked, shaking, and his

wife and Robert Wilson were standing by him. Beside him too,,were the two gun-bearers chattering in Wakamba.

'I. hit him/ Macomber said. 'I hit him twice.'

'You gut-shot him and you hit him somewhere forward/ Wilson said without enthusiasm. The gun-bearers looked

very grave. They were silent now.

'You may have killed him,' Wilson went on. 'We'll have to wait a while before we go in to find out.'

'What do you mean?'

'Let him get sick before we follow him up.'

'Oh,' said Macomber. 'He's a hell of a fine lion,' Wilson said cheerfully. He's

gotten into a bad place though.'

'Why is it bad?'

'Can't see him until you're on him.'

'Oh,' said Macomber. 'Come on,' said Wilson. 'The Memsahib can stay here in

the car. We'll go to have a look at the blood spoor.'

'Stay here, Margot,' Macomber said to his wife. His

mouth was very dry and it was hard for him to talk.

'Why?' she asked.

'Wilson says to.'

'We're going to have a look,' Wilson said. 'You stay here.

You can see even better from here.'

'All right.'

Wilson spoke in Swahili to the driver. He nodded and

said, 'Yes, Bwana.'

Then they went down the steep bank and across the

stream, climbing over and around the boulders and up the

other bank, pulling up by some projecting roots, and along it

until they found where the lion had been trotting when Macomber first shot. There was dark blood on the short

grass that the gun-bearers pointed out with grass stems, and that ran away behind the river bank trees.

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 23

'What do we do?' asked Macomber. 'Not much choice,' said Wilson. 'We can't bring the car

over! Bank's too steep. We'll let him stiffen up a bit and then

you and I'll go in and have a look for him.'

'Can't we set the grass on lire?' Macomber asked.

'Too green.'

'Can't we send beaters?'

Wilson looked at him appi^iisingly. 'Of course We can/ he said. 'But it's just a touch murderous. You see we know the

lion's wounded. You can drive an unwounded lion he'll

move on ahead of a noise but a wounded lion's going to

charge. You can't see him until you're right on him. He'll

make himselfperfectly flat in cover you wouldn't think would

hide a hare. You can't very well send boys in there to that

sort of a show. Somebody bound to get mauled.'

'What about the gun-bearers?'

'Oh, they'll go with us. It's their shauri. You see, they

signed on for it. They don't look too happy though, do they?* 'I don't want to go in there,' said Macomber. It was out

before he knew he'd said it.

'Neither do I,' said Wilson very cheerily. 'Really no choice though.' Then, as an afterthought, he glanced at

Macomber and saw suddenly how he was trembling and the

pitiful look on his face.

'You don't have to go in, of course,' he said. 'That's what I'm hired for, you know. That's why I'm so expensive.' 'You mean you'd go in by yourself? Why not leave hirm

there?'

Robert Wilson, whose entire occupation had been with the

lion and the problem he presented, and who had not been

thinking about Macomber except to note that he was rather

windy, suddenly felt as though he had opened the wrong door

in an hotel and seen something shameful.

'What do you mean?'

'Why not just leave him?'

'You mean pretend to ourselves he hasn't been hit? 5

24 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 'No. Just drop it.'

'It isn't done.'

'Why not?'

-'for one thing, he's certain to be suffering. For another, someone efse might run onto him.'

'I see.'

*But you don't have to have anything to do with it.'

Td like 'to,' Macomber said. 'I'm just scared, you know.'

'I'll go ahead when we go in,' Wilson said, 'with Kongoni tracking. You keep behind me and a little to one side.

Chances are we'll hear him growl. If we see him we'll both

shoot. Don't worry about anything. I'll keep you backed up. As a matter of fact, you know, perhaps you'd better not go. It might be much better. Why don't you go over and join the Memsahib while I just get it over with?'

'No, I want to go.'

*A11 right,' said Wilson. 'But don't go in if you don't want to. This is my shauri now, you know.'

'I want to go,' said Macomber.

They sat under a tree and smoked.

'Want to go back and speak to the Memsahib while we're

waiting?' Wilson asked.

'No.'

Til just step back and tell her to be patient.'

*Good/ said Macomber. He sat there, sweating under his

arms, his mouth dry, his stomach hollow feeling, wanting to

find courage to tell Wilson to go on and finish off the lion

without him. He could not know that Wilson was furious be-

cause he had not noticed the state he was in earlier and sent

him back to his wife. While he sat there Wilson came up. 'I

have your big gun,' he said. 'Take it. We've given him time, I think. Come on.'

Macomber took the big gun and Wilson said:

'Keep behind me and about five yards to the right and do

exactly as I tell you. 3 Then he spoke in Swahili to the two

:gun-bearers who looked the picture ofgloom.

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 25

'Let's go,' he said.

'Could I have a drink of water?' Macomber asked. Wilson

spoSe to the older gun-bearer, who wore a canteen on his belt

and the man unbuckled it, unscrewed the top and handed it

to Macomber, who took it noticing how heavy it Seemed a<nd

how hairy and shoddy the felt covering was in his hand. He raised it to drink and looked ahead at the high grass with the

flat-topped trees behind it. A breeze was blowing toward

them and the grass rippled gently in the wind. He looked at

the gun-bearer and he could see the gun-bearer was

suffering too with fear.

Thirty-five yards into the grass the big lion lay flattened

out along the ground. His ears were back and his only move- ment was a slight twitching up and down of his long, black-

tufted tail. He had turned at bay as soon as he had reached

this cover and he was sick with the wound through his full

belly, and weakening with the wound through his lungs that

brought a thin foamy red to his mouth each time he

breathed. His flanks were wet and hot and flies were on the

little opening the solid bullets had made in his tawny hide,

and his big yellow eyes, narrowed with hate, looked straight

ahead, only blinking when the pain came as he breathed,

and his claws dug in the soft baked earth. All of him, pain,

sickness, hatred and all of his remaining strength, was

tightening into an absolute concentration for a rush. He could hear the men talking and he waited, gathering all of

himself into this preparation for a charge as soon as the men would come into the grass. As he heard their voices his tail

stiffened to twitch up and down, and, as they came into the

edge of the grass, he made a" coughing grunt and charged.

Kongoni, the old gun-bearer, in the lead watching the

blood spoor, Wilson watching the grass for any movement, his big gun ready, the second gun-bearer looking ahead and

listening, Macomber close to Wilson, his rifle cocked, they had just moved into the grass when Macomber heard the

blood-choked cbughing grunt, and saw the swishing rush in

26 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER the grass. The next thing he knew he was running; running

wildly, in panic in the open, running toward the stream.

He heard the ca-ra-wong\ of Wilson's big rifle, and again in % "second crashing carawongl and turning saw the lion,

horrible-looking now, with half his head seeming to be gone,

crawling toward Wilson in the edge of the tall grass while

the red-faced man worked the bolt on the short ugly rifle and aimed carefully as another blasting carawongl came from the

muzzle, and the crawling, heavy, yellow bulk of the lion stif-

fened and the huge, mutilated head slid forward and Macom-

ber, standing by himself in the clearing where he had run,

holding a loaded rifle, while two black men and a white man looked back at him in contempt, knew the lion was dead.

He came toward Wilson, his tallness all seeming a naked

reproach, and Wilson looked at him and said:

'Want to take pictures?'

'No,' he said.

That was all anyone had said until they reached the motor car. Then Wilson had said:

'Hell of a fine lion. Boys will skin him out. We might as

well stay here in the shade.'

Macomber's wife had not looked at him nor he at her and he had sat by her in the back seat with Wilson sitting in the

front seat. Once he had reached over and taken his wife's

hand without looking at her and she had removed her hand from his. Looking across the stream to where the gun- bearers were skinning out the lion he could see that she had been able to see the whole thing. While they sat there his

wife had reached forward and put her hand on Wilson's

shoulder. He turned and she had leaned forward over the

low seat and kissed him on the mouth.

'Oh, I say,' said Wilson, going redder than his natural

baked colour.

'Mr. Robert Wilson,' she said. 'The beautifully red-faced

Mr. Robert Wilson.'

Then she sat down beside Macomber again and looked

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 27

away across the stream to where the lion lay, with uplifted,

whitfc-muscled, tendon-marked naked forearms, and white

bloating belly, as the black men fleshed away the skin.

Finally the gun-bearers brought the skin'over, wet and heavy, and climbed in behind with it, rolling it up before they got

in, and the motor car started. No one had said anything more until they were back in camp. That was the story of the lion. Macomber did not know

how the lion had felt before he started his rush, nor during it

when the unbelievable smash of the .505 with a muzzle

velocity of two tons had hit him in the mouth, nor what kept him coming after that, when the second ripping crash had smashed his hind quarters and he had come crawling on toward the crashing, blasting thing that had destroyed him.

Wilson knew something about it and only expressed it by saying/Damned fine lion', but Macomber did not know how Wilson felt about things either. He did not know how his

wife felt except that she was through with him.

His wife had beerr through with him before but it never

lasted. He was very wealthy, and would be much wealthier,

and he knew she would not leave him ever now. That was one of the few things that he really knew. He knew about

that, about motor cycles that was earliest about motor

cars, about duck-shooting, about fishing, trout, salmon and

big-sea, about sex in books, many books, too many books, about all court games, about dogs, not much about horses,

about hanging on to his money, about most of the other

things his world dealt in, and about his wife not leaving him.

His wife had been a great beauty and she was still a great

beauty in Africa, but she was not a great enough beauty any more at home to be able to leave him and better herself and she knew it and he knew it. She had missed the chance to

leave him and he knew it. Ifhe had been better with women she would probably have started to worry about him

getting another new, beautiful wife; but she knew too

much about him to worry about him either. Also, he had

28 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER

always had a great tolerance which seemed the nicest thing about him if it were not the most sinister.

*

All in all they were known as a comparatively happily*mar- riecl couple, one of those whose disruption is often rumoured

but never* occurs, and as the society columnist put it, they were adding more than a spice of adventure to their much envied and ever-enduring Romance by a Safari in what was

known as*Darkest Africa until the Martin Johnsons lighted it

on so many silver screens where they were pursuing Old

Simba the lion, the buffalo, Tembo the elephant and as well

collecting specimens for the Museum of Natural History. This same columnist had reported them on the verge at least

three times in the past and they had been. But they always made it up. They had a sound basis of union. Margot was

too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and Macomber had too much money for Margot ever to leave him.

It was now about three o'clock in the morning and Francis

Macomber, who had been asleep a little while after he had

stopped thinking about the lion, wakened and then slept

again, woke suddenly, frightened in a dream of the bloody- headed lion standing over him, and listening while his heart

pounded, he realized that his wife was not in the other cot

in the tent. He lay awake with that knowledge for two hours.

At the end of that time his wife came into the tent, lifted

her mosquito bar and crawled cozily into bed.

'Where have you been? 3 Macomber asked in the darkness.

'Hello,' she said. 'Are you awake?'

'Where have you been?'

'I just went out to get a breath of air.'

'You did, like hell.'

'What do you want me to say, darling?'

'Where have you been?'

'Out to get a breath of air.'

'That's a new name for it. You are a bitch.'

'Well, you're a coward.'

'All right/ he said. 'What of it?'

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 29

'Nothing as far as I'm concerned. But please let's not talk

darling, because I'm very sleepy.' 'You think that I'll take anything.' 'I know you will, sweet.'

'Well, I won't.'

'Please, darling, let's not talk. I'm so very sleepy.' 'There wasn't going to be any of that. You promised there

wouldn't be.'

'Well, there is now,' she said sweetly. 'You said if we made this trip that there would be none

of that. You promised.'

'Yes, darling. That's the way I meant it to be. But the

trip was spoiled yesterday. We don't have to talk about it,

do we?'

'You don't wait long when you have an advantage, do you?'

'Please let's not talk. I'm so sleepy, darling.' Tm going to talk.'

'Don't mind me then, because I'm going to sleep.' And she did.

At breakfast they were all three at the table before day- light and Francis Macomber found that, of all the many men that he had hated, he hated Robert Wilson the most.

'Sleep well?' Wilson asked in his throaty voice, filling a pipe. 'Did you?'

'Topping,' the white hunter told him.

You bastard, thought Macomber, you insolent bastard.

So she woke him when she came in, Wilson thought, look-

ing at them both with his flat, cold eyes. Well, why doesn't

he keep his wife where she belongs? What does he think I

am, a bloody plaster saint? Let him keep her where she

belongs. It's his own fault.

'Do you think we'll find buffalo?' Margot asked, pushing

away a dish of apricots. 'Chance of it,' Wilson said and smiled at her. 'Why don't

you stay in camp?'

30 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 'Not for anything,' she told him.

'Why not order her to stay in camp?' Wilson said to

Macomber.

iYou order her,' said Macomber coldly.

'Let's not have any ordering, nor,' turning to Macomber,

'any silliness, Francis,' Margot said quite pleasantly. 'Are you ready to start?' Macomber asked.

'Any time,' Wilson told him. 'Do you want the Memsahib to go?'

'Does it make any difference whether I do or not?'

The hell with it, thought Robert Wilson. The utter com-

plete hell with it. So this is what it's going to be like. Well,

this is what it's going to be like, then.

'Makes no difference,' he said.

'You're sure you wouldn't like to stay in camp with her

yourselfand let me go out and hunt the buffalo?' Macomber asked.

'Can't do that,' said Wilson. 'Wouldn't talk rot if I were

you.'

Tm not talking rot. I'm disgusted.'

'Bad word, disgusted.'

'Francis, will you please try to speak sensibly?' his wife said.

'I speak too damned sensibly,' Macomber said. 'Did you ever eat such filthy food?'

'Something wrong with the food?' asked Wilson quietly.

'No more than with everything else.'

'I'd pull yourself together, laddybuck/ Wilson said very

quietly. 'There's a boy waits at table that understands a

little English.'

'The hell with him.'

Wilson stood up and puffing on his pipe strolled away,

speaking a few words in Swahili to one of the gun-bearers who was standing waiting for him. Macomber and his wife

sat on at the table. He was staring at his coffee cup. 'If you make a scene I'll leave you, darling,' Margot said

quietly.

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS M A C O M B E R 31

'No, you won't.'

'You can try it and see.'

'You won't leave me.'

'No/ she said. C

I won't leave you and you'll behave

yourself.'

'Behave myself? That's a way to talk. Behave myself.'

'Yes. Behave yourself.'

'Why don'tyou try behaving?' 'I've tried it so long. So very long.'

'I hate that red-faced swine/ Macomber said. 'I loathe the

sight of him.'

'He's really very nice.'

'Oh, shut up? Macomber almost shouted. Just then the car

came up and stopped in front of the dining tent and the

driver and the two gun-bearers got out. Wilson walked over

and looked at the husband and wife sitting there at the table.

'Going shooting?' he asked.

'Yes/ said Macomber, standing up. 'Yes.'

'Better bring a woolly. It will be cool in the car/ Wilson

said.

Til get my leather jacket/ Margot said.

'The boy has it/ Wilson told her. He climbed into the

front with the driver and Francis Macomber and his wife

sat, not speaking, in the back seat.

Hope the silly beggar doesn't take a notion to blow the

back ofmy head off, Wilson thought to himself. Women are

a nuisance on safari.

The car was grinding down to cross the river at a pebbly ford in the grey daylight and then climbed, angling up the

steep bank, where Wilson had ordered a way shovelled out

the day before so they could reach the parklike wooded

rolling country on the far side.

It was a good morning, Wilson thought. There was a

heavy dew and as the wheels went through the grass and low

bushes he could smell the odour ofthe crushed fronds. It was

an odour like verbena and he liked this early morning smell

32 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER of the dew, the crushed bracken and the look of the tree

trunks showing black through the early morning mist, as t the

car made its way through the untracked, parklike country. HeJhad put the two in the back seat out of his mind now and was thinking about buffalo. The buffalo that he was after

stayed in the daytime in a thick swamp where it was impos- sible to get a shot, but in the night they fed out into an open stretch of Country and if he could come between them and their swamp with the car, Macomber would have a good chance at them in the open. He did not want to hunt buff

with Macomber in thick cover. He did not want to hunt buff

or anything else with Macomber at all, but he was a pro- fessional hunter and he had hunted with some rare ones in his

time. If they got buff to-day there would only be rhino to

come and the poor man would have gone through his dan-

gerous game and things might pick up. He'd have nothing more to do with the woman and Macomber would get over

that too. He must have gone through plenty of that before

by the look of things. Poor beggar. He must have a way of

getting over it. Well, it was the poor sod's own bloody fault.

He, Robert Wilson, carried a double size cot on safari to

accommodate any windfalls he might receive. He had hunted for a certain clientele, the international, fast, sporting

set, where the women did not feel they were getting their

money's worth unless they had shared that cot with the

white hunter. He despised them when he was away from

them although he liked some ofthem well enough at the time,

but he made his living by them; and their standards were

his standards as long as they were hiring him.

They were his standards in all except the shooting. He had

his own standards about the killing and they could live up to

them or get someone else to hunt them. He knew, too, that

they all respected him for this. This Macomber was art odd

one though. Damned if he wasn't. Now the wife. Well, the

wife. Yes, the wife, Mm, the wife. Well, he'd dropped all

that. He looked around at them. Macomber sat grim and

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 33

furious. Margot smiled at him. She looked younger to-day, more innocent and fresher and not so professionally beau-

tifuh What's in her heart God knows, Wilson thought. She

hadn't talked much last night. At that it was a pleasure to

see her. 9

The mottfr car climbed up a slight rise and went on

through the trees and then out into a grassy prairie-like

opening and kept in the shelter of the trees along the edge, the driver going slowly and Wilson looking carefully out

across the prairie and all along its far side. He stopped the

car and studied the opening with his field glasses. Then he

motioned to the driver to go on and the car moved slowly

along, the driver avoiding wart-hog holes and driving around the mud castles ants had built. Then, looking across

the opening, Wilson suddenly turned and said :

'By God, there they are!'

And looking where he pointed, while the car jumped forward and Wilson spoke in rapid Swahili to the driver,

Macomber saw three huge, black animals looking almost

cylindrical in their long heaviness, like big black tank cars,

moving at a gallop across the far edge of the open prairie.

They moved at a stiff-necked, stiff-bodied gallop and he

could see the upswept wide black horns on their heads as

they galloped heads out; the heads not moving.

They're three old bulls,' Wilson said. 'We'll cut them off

before they get to the swamp.' . The car was going a wild forty-five miles an hour across the

open, and as Macomber watched, the buffalo got bigger and

bigger until he could see the grey, hairless, scabby look ofone

huge bull and how his neck was a part of his shoulders and'

the shiny black of his horns as he galloped a little behind the

others that were strung out in that steady plunging gait; and

then, the car swaying as though it had just jumped a road,

they drew up close and he could see the plunging hugeness of

the bull, and the dust in his sparsely haired hide, the wide

boss of horn and his outstretched, wide-nostrilled muzzle,

34 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER and he was raising his rifle when Wilson shouted, 'Not from

the car, you fool!' and he had no fear, only hatred of Wilson,

while the brakes clamped on and the car skidded, ploughing

sideways to an almost stop and Wilson was out on one side

and he on the other, stumbling as his feet hit the still speeding-

by of the earth, and then he was shooting at the bull as he

moved away, hearing the bullets whunk into him, emptying his rifle at him as he moved steadily away, finally remem-

bering to get his shots forward into the shoulder, and as he

fumbled to re-load, he saw the bull was down. Down on his

knees, his big head tossing, and seeing the other two still

galloping he shot at the leader and hit him. He shot again and missed and he heard the carawonging roar as Wilson shot

and saw the leading bull slide forward onto his nose.

'Get that other,' Wilson said. 'Now you're shooting!'

But the other bull was moving steadily at the same gallop and he missed, throwing a spout of dirt, and Wilson missed

and the dust rose in a cloud and Wilson shouted, 'Gome on.

He's too far!' and grabbed his arm and they were in the car

again, Macomber and Wilson hanging on the sides and

rocketing swayingly over the uneven ground, drawing up on the steady, plunging, heavy-necked, straight-moving gallop of the bull.

They were behind him and Macomber was filling his rifle,

dropping shells onto the ground, jamming it, clearing the

jam, then they were almost up with the bull when Wilson

yelled 'Stop! 5 and the car skidded so that it almost swung

over and Macomber fell forward onto his feet, slammed his

bolt forward and fired as far forward as he could aim into

the galloping, rounded black back, aimed and shot again, then again, then again, and the bullets, all of them hitting,

had no effect on the buffalo that he could see. Then Wilson

shot, the roar deafening him, and he could see the bull

stagger. Macomber shot again, aiming carefully, and down he came, onto his knees.

'All right, 5

Wilson said. 'Nice work. That's the three.'

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 35

Macomber felt a drunken elation.

'How many times did you shoot?' he asked.

'Jhst three/ Wilson said. 'You killed the first bull. The

biggest one. I helped you finish the other two. Afraid fhey

might have got into cover. You had them killed. * I was just

mopping up'a little. You shot damn well.'

'Let's go to the car,' said Macomber. 'I want a drink.'

'Got to finish off that buff first,' Wilson told him. The buffalo was on his knees and he jerked his head furiously and bellowed in pig-eyed, roaring rage as they came toward him,

'Watch he doesn't get up,' Wilson said. Then, 'Get a little

broadside and take him in the neck just behind the ear.'

Macomber aimed carefully at the centre of the huge,

jerking, rage-driven neck and shot. At the shot the head

dropped forward.

'That does it,' said Wilson. 'Got the spine. They're a hell

of a looking thing, aren't they?'

'Let's get the drink,' said Macomber. In his life he had never felt so good.

In the car Macomber's wife sat very white faced. 'You were marvellous, darling,' she said to Macomber. 'What a^

ride.'

'Was it rough?' Wilson asked.

'It was frightful. I've never been more frightened in my life.'

'Let's all have a drink,' Macomber said.

'By all means,' said Wilson. 'Give it to the Memsahib.' She drank the neat whisky from the flask and shuddered a little

when she swallowed. She handed the flask to Macomber who handed it to Wilson.

'It was frightfully exciting,' she said. 'It's given me a

dreadful headache. I didn't know you were allowed to

shoot them from cars though. 3

'No one shot from cars,' said Wilson coldly.

'I mean chase them from cars.'

'Wouldn't ordinarily/ Wilson said. 'Seemed sporting

36 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER

enough to me though while we were doing it. Taking more chance driving that way across the plain full ofholes and one

thing and another than hunting on foot. Buffalo could have

charged us each time we shot if he liked. Gave him every chance. Wouldn't mention it to anyone though. It's illegal

if that's what you mean. 5

'It seemed very unfair to me,' Margot said, 'chasing those

big helpless things in a motor car.'

'Did it?' said Wilson.

'What would happen if they heard about it in Nairobi?'

'I'd lose my licence for one thing. Other unpleasant-

nesses,' Wilson said, taking a drink from the flask. Td be

out of business.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really.'

'Well,' said Macomber, and he smiled for the first time all

day. 'Now she has something on you.'

'You have such a pretty way of putting things, Francis,'

Margot Macomber said. Wilson looked at them both. If a

four-letter man marries a five-letter woman, he was thinking, what number of letters would their children be? What he

said was 'We lost a gun-bearer. Did you notice it?'

'My God, no/ Macomber said.

'Here he comes,' Wilson said. 'He's all right. He must

have fallen offwhen we left the first bull.'

Approaching them was the middle-aged gun-bearer, limp-

ing along in his knitted cap, khaki tunic, shorts and rubber

sandals, gloomy-faced and disgusted looking. As he came up he called out to Wilson in Swahili and they all saw the

change in the white hunter's face.

'What does he say?' asked Margot. 'He says the first bull got up and went into the bush,'

Wilson said with no expression in his voice.

'Oh/ said Macomber blankly. 'Then it's going to be just like the lion,

3

said Margot, full

of anticipation.

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 37

'It's not going to be a damned bitlike the lion,' Wilson told

her,, 'Did you want another drink, Macomber?'

'Thanks, yes,' Macomber said. He expected the feeling he

had had about the lion to come back but it did not. Forthe first time in his life he really felt wholly without feajr. Instead

offear he had a feeling ofdefinite elation.

'We'll go and have a look at the second bull,' Wilson said.

Til tell the driver to put the car in the shade.'

'What are you going to do?' asked Margot Macomber. 'Take a look at the buff,' Wilson said.

Til come.'

'Come along.'

The three ofthem walked over to where the second buffalo

bulked blackly in the open, head forward on the grass, the

massive horns swung wide.

'He's a very good head,' Wilson said. 'That's close to a

fifty-inch spread.' Macomber was looking at him with delight.

'He's hateful looking,' said Margot. 'Can't we go into the

shade?'

'Ofcourse,' Wilson said. 'Look,' he said to Macomber, and

pointed. 'See that patch of bush?'

'Yes.'

'That's where the first bull went in. The gun-bearer said

when he fell off the bull was down. He was watching us

helling along and the other two buff galloping. When he

looked up there was the bull up and looking at him. Gun- bearer ran like hell and the bull went off slowly into that

bush.'

'Can we go in after him now?' asked Macomber eagerly.

Wilson looked at him appraisingly. Damned if this isn't a

strange one, he thought. Yesterday he's scared sick and

to-day he's a ruddy fire-eater.

'No, we'll give him a while.'

'Let's please go into the shade,' Margot said. Her face was

white and s}ie looked ill.

38 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER They made their way to the car where it stood under a

single wide-spreading tree and all climbed in. ,

'Chances are he's dead in there, 5

Wilson remarked. 'After

a little we'll have a look. 5

Macon\ber felt a wild unreasonable happiness that he had

never known before.

'By God, that was a chase/ he said. 'I've never felt any such feelirg. Wasn't it marvellous, Margot?'

'I hated it. 3

'Why?' 'I hated it,' she said bitterly. 'I loathed it.'

'You know, I don't think I'd ever be afraid of anything

again, 5 Macomber said to Wilson. 'Something happened in

me after we first saw the buff and started after him. Like a

dam bursting. It was pure excitement.'

'Cleans out your liver,' said Wilson. 'Damn funny things

happen to people.'

Macomber's face was shining. 'You know, something did

happen to me,' he said. 'I feel absolutely different.'

His wife said nothing and eyed him strangely. She was

sitting far back in the seat and Macomber was sitting forward

talking to Wilson who turned sideways talking over the back

ofthe front seat.

'You know, I'd like to try another lion, 5 Macomber said.

'I'm really not afraid of them now. After all, what can they do to you?'

'That's it,' said Wilson. 'Worst one can do is kill you. How does it go? Shakespeare. Damned good. See if I can remem- ber. Oh, damned good. Used to quote it to myself at one

time. Let's see. "By my troth, I cafe not; a man can die but

once; we owe God a death, and let it go which way it will he

that dies this year is quit for the next." Damned fine, eh?'

He was very embarrassed, having brought out this thing he

had lived by, but he had seen men come of age before and it

always moved him. It was not a matter of their twenty-first

birthday.

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS M A C O M B E R 39

It had taken a strange chance ofhunting, a sudden precipi- tation into action without opportunity for worrying before-

hand, to bring this about with Macomber, but regardless of

how it had happened ithad most certainlyhappened. Look at

the beggar now, Wilson thought. It's that some ofthem stay

little boys so'iong, Wilson thought. Sometimes all their lives.

Their figures stay boyish when they're fifty. The great American boy-men. Damned strange people. Bijt he liked

this Macomber now. Damned strange fellow. Probably meant the end of cuckoldry too. Well, that would be a

damned good thing. Damned good thing. Beggar had

probably been afraid all his life. Don't know what started it.

But over now. Hadn't had time to be afraid with the buff.

That and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor cars made it familiar. Be a damn fire-eater now. He'd seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of

virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else

grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into

a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

From the far corner of the seat Margaret Macomber looked at the two of them. There was no change in Wilson.

She saw Wilson as she had seen him the day before when she

had first realized what his great talent was. But she saw the

change in Francis Macomber now.

'Do you have that feeling of happiness about what's going to happen?' Macomber asked, still exploring his new wealth.

'You're not supposed to mention it,' Wilson said, looking in the other's face. 'Much more fashionable to say you're scared. Mind you, you'll be scared too, plenty of times.'

'But you have a feeling of happiness about action to come?'

'Yes,' said Wilson. 'There's that. Doesn't do to talk too

much about all this. Talk the whole thing away. No pleasure in anything if you mouth it up too much.'

'You're both talking rot,' said Margot. 'Just because

you've chased some helpless animals in a motor car you talk

like heroes.'

40 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 'Sorry/ said Wilson. 'I have been gassing too much.' She's

worried about it already, he thought. 'If you don't know what we're talking about, why notkeep

out of it?' Macomber asked his wife.

'You've 4gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly,' his wife

said contemptuously, but her contempt was not secure. She

was very afraid of something. Macomber laughed, a very natural hearty laugh. 'You

know I have,' he said. C

I really have.'

'Isn't it sort of late?' Margot said bitterly. Because she had done the best she could for many years back and the way they were together now was no one person's fault.

'Not for me,' said Macomber.

Margot said nothing but sat back in the corner of the

seat.

'Do you think we've given him time enough?' Macomber asked Wilson cheerfully.

'We might have a look,' Wilson said. 'Have you any solids

left?'

'The gun-bearer has some.'

Wilson called in Swahili and the older gun-bearer, who was skinning out one of the heads, straightened up, pulled a

box of solids out of his pocket and brought them over to

Macomber, who filled his magazine and put the remaining shells in his pocket. 'You might as well shoot the Springfield,' Wilson said.

'You're used to it. We'll leave the Mannlicher in the car with

the Memsahib. Your gun-bearer can carry your heavy gun. I've this damned cannon. Now let me tell you about them.'

He had saved this until the last because he did not want to

worry Macomber. 'When a buff comes he comes with his

head high and thrust straight out. The boss of the horns

covers any sort of brain shot. The only shot is straight into

the nose. The only other shot is into his chest or, if you're to

one side, into the neck or the shoulders. After they've been

hit once they take a hell of a lot of killing. Don't try any-

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 41

thing fancy. Take the easiest shot there is. They've finished

skinning out that head now. Should we get started? 3

Hu called to the gun-bearers, who came up wiping their

hands, and the older one got into the back.

Til only take Kongoni, 5

Wilson said. 'The other can watch

to keep the birds away.' As the car moved slowly across the open space toward the

island of brushy trees that ran in a tongue of foliage along a

dry watercourse that cut the open swale, Macomber felt his

heart pounding and his mouth was dry again, but it was

excitement, not fear.

'Here's where he went in/ Wilson said. Then to the gun- bearer in Swahili, 'Take the blood spoor'.

The car was parallel to the patch of bush. Macomber, Wilson and the gun-bearer got down. Macomber, looking

back, saw his wife, with the rifle by her side, looking at him.

He waved to her and she did not wave back.

The brush was very thick ahead and the ground was dry.

The middle-aged gun-bearer was sweating heavily and

Wilson had his hat down over his eyes and his red neck

showed just ahead of Macomber. Suddenly the gun-bearer said something in Swahili to Wilson and ran forward.

'He's dead in there,' Wilson said. 'Good work', and he

turned to grip Macomber's hand and as they shook hands,

grinning at each other, the gun-bearer shouted wildly and

they saw him coming out of the bush sideways, fast as a crab,

and the bull coming, nose out, mouth tight closed, blood

dripping, massive head straight out, coming in a charge, his

little pig eyes bloodshot as he looked at them. Wilson, who was ahead, was kneeling shooting, and Macomber, as he fired,

unhearing his shot in the roaring of Wilson's gun, saw frag-

ments like slate burst from the huge boss of the horns, and the

head jerked; he shot again at the wide nostrils and saw the

horns jolt again and fragments fly, and he did not see Wilson

now and, aiming carefully, shot again with the buffalo's huge bulk almost on him and his rifle almost level with the on-

42 HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER coming head, nose out, and he could see the little wicked

eyes and the head started to lower, and he felt a sudden white-

hot, blinding flash explode inside his head and that was all

he ever felt.

Wilson Jiad ducked to one side to get in a shoulder shot.

Macomber had stood solid and shot for the nos'e, shooting a

touch high each time and hitting the heavy horns, splintering

and chippmg them like hitting a slate roof, and Mrs. Macom- ber in the car, had shot at the buffalo with the 6.5 Mann- licher as it seemed about to gore Macomber and had hit her

husband about two inches up and a little to one side of the

base of his skull.

Francis Macomber lay now, face down, not two yards from

where the buffalo lay on his side and his wife knelt over him with Wilson beside her.

'I wouldn't turn him over,' Wilson said.

The woman was crying hysterically.

Td get back in the car,' Wilson said. 'Where's the rifle?'

She shook her head, her face contorted. The gun-bearer

picked up the rifle,

'Leave it as it is,' said Wilson. Then, 'Go get Abdulla so

that he may witness the manner of the accident'.

He knelt down, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and

spread it over Francis Macomber's crew-cropped head where

it lay. The blood sank into the dry, loose earth.

Wilson stood up and saw the buffalo on his side, his legs

out, his thinly-haired belly crawling with ticks. 'Hell of a

good bull,' his brain registered automatically. CA good fifty

inches, or better. Better.' He called to the driver and told

him to spread a blanket over the body and stay by it. Then he walked over to the motor car where the woman sat crying in the corner.

'That was a pretty thing to do,' he said in a toneless voice.

'He would have left you too.'

'Stop it,' she said.

'Of course it's an accident,' he said. 'I know that.'

HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER 43

'Stop it,' she said.

'Don't worry,' he said. 'There will be a certain amount of

unpleasantness but I will have some photographs taken that

will be very useful at the inquest. There's the testimony ofthe

gun-bearers and the driver too. You're perfectly all right.'

'Stop it,' she said.

'There's a hell of a lot to be done,' he said. 'And I'll have to send a truck off to the lake to wireless for a plane to take

the three of us into Nairobi. Why didn't you poison him?

That's what they do in England.'

'Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,' the woman cried.

Wilson looked at her with his flat blue eyes.

'I'm through now,' he said. 'I was a little angry. I'd begun to like your husband.'

'Oh, please stop it,' she said. 'Please, please stop it.'

'That's better,' Wilson said. 'Please is much better. Now I'll stop.'

THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD MADRID is full of boys named Paco, which is the diminfttive

of the name Francisco, and there is a Madrid joke about a

father who came to Madrid and inserted an advertisement in

the personal columns ofEl Liberal which said: PAGO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL is FORGIVEN PAPA, and how g, squadron of Guardia Civil had to be called out to

disperse the eight hundred young men who answered the

advertisement. But this Paco, who waited on table at the

Pension Luarca, had no father to forgive him, nor anything for the father to forgive. He had two older sisters who were

chambermaids at the Luarca, who had gotten their place

through coming from the same small village as a former

Luarca chambermaid who had proven hardworking and honest and hence given her village and its products a good name; and these sisters had paid his way on the auto-bus to

Madrid and gotten him his job as an apprentice waiter. He came from a village in a part of Extremadura where con-

ditions were incredibly primitive, food scarce, and comforts

unknown, and he had worked hard ever since he could

remember. He was a well built boy with very black, rather curly hair,

good teeth and a skin that his sisters envied, and he had a

ready and unpuzzled smile. He was fast on his feet and did

his work well and he loved his sisters, who seemed beautiful

and sophisticated; he loved Madrid, which was still an un-

believable place, and he loved his work which, done under

bright lights, with clean linen, the wearing ofevening clothes,

and abundant food in the kitchen, seemed romantically beautiful.

There were from eight to a dozen other people who lived at

the Luarca and ate in the dining-room, but for Paco, the

youngest of the three waiters who served at table, the only ones who really existed were the bull fighters.

Second-rate matadors lived at that pension because the

44

THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 45

address in the Calle San Jeronimo was good, the food was

excellent and the room and board was cheap. It is necessary

for a bull fighter to give the appearance, if not of prosperity, at least of respectability, since decorum and dignity rank

above courage as the virtues most highly prized in Spain, and

bull fighters "stayed at the Luarca until their last pesetas were

gone. There is no record of any bull fighter having left the

Luarca for a better or more expensive hotel; second-rate bull

fighters never became first rate; but the descent from the

Luarca was swift since anyone could stay there who was

making anything at all and a bill was never presented to a

guest unasked until the woman who ran the place knew that

the case was hopeless.

At this time there were three full matadors living at the

Luarca as well as two very good picadors, and one excellent

banderillero. The Luarca was luxury for the picadors and

the banderilleros who, with their families in Seville, required

lodging in Madrid during the Spring season; but they were

well paid and in the fixed employ of fighters who were

heavily contracted during the coming season and the three

of these subalterns would probably make much more apiece than any of the three matadors. Of the three matadors one

was ill and trying to conceal it; one had passed his short

vogue as a novelty; and the third was a coward.

The coward had at one time, until he had received a

peculiar atrocious horn wound in the lower abdomen at the

start of his first season as a full matador, been exceptionally brave and remarkably skilful and he still had many of the

hearty mannerisms of his days of success. He was jovial to

excess and laughed constantly with and without provocation. He had, when successful, been very addicted to practical

jokes, but he had given them up now. They took an assur-

ance that he did not feel. This matador had an intelligent,

very open face and he carried himself with much style.

The matador who was ill was careful never to show it and

was meticulous about eating a little of all the dishes that were

46 THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

presented at the table. He had a great many handkerchiefs

which he laundered himself in his room and, lately, he had been selling his fighting suits. He had sold one, chdaply, before Christmas and another in the first week of April.

They had been very expensive suits, had always been well

kept and he had one more. Before he had became ill he had been a very promising, even a sensational, fighter and, while

he himself could not read, he had clippings which said that

in his debut in Madrid he had been better than Belmonte.

He ate alone at a small table and looked up very little.

The matador who had once been a novelty was very short

and brown and very dignified. He also ate alone at a separate table and he smiled very rarely and never laughed. He came from Valladolid, where the people are extremely serious, and he was a capable matador; but his style had become old-

fashioned before he had ever succeeded in endearing himself

to the public through his virtues, which were courage and a

calm capability, and his name on a poster would draw no

one to a bull ring. His novelty had been that he was so

short that he could barely see over the bull's withers, but

there were other short fighters, and he had never succeeded

in imposing himselfon the public's fancy. Of the picadors one was a thin, hawk-faced, grey-haired

man, lightly built but with legs and arms like iron, who

always wore cattlemen's boots under his trousers, drank too

much every evening and gazed amorously at any woman in

the pension. The other was huge, dark, brown-faced, good-

looking, with black hair like an Indian and enormous hands.

Both were great picadors although the first was reputed to

have lost much of his ability^through drink and dissipation,

and the second was said to be too headstrong and quarrel- some to stay with any matador more than a single season.

The banderillero was middle-aged, grey, cat-quick in spite

of his years and, sitting at the table he looked a moderately

prosperous business man. His legs were still good for this

season, and when they should go he was intelligent and

THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 47

experienced enough to keep regularly employed for a long time. The difference would be that when his speed of foot

wouM be gone he would always be frightened where now he was assured and calm in the ring and out of it. ,

On this evening every one had left the dining-room except the hawk-faeed picador who drank too much, the birth-

marked-faced auctioneer of watches at the fairs and festivals

of Spain, who also drank too much, and two priests from

Galicia who were sitting at a corner table and drinking if

not too much certainly enough. At that time wine was

included in the price of the room and board at the Luarca, and the waiters had just brought fresh bottles of Valdcpefias to the tables of the auctioneer, then to the picador and,

finally, to the two priests.

The three waiters stood at the end of the room. It was the

rule ofthe house that they should all remain on duty until the

diners whose tables they were responsible for should all have

left, but the one who served the table ofthe two priests had an

appointment to go to an Anarcho-Syndicalist meeting and Paco had agreed to take over his table for him.

Upstairs the matador who was ill was lying face down on his bed alone. The matador who was no longer a novelty was sitting looking out of his window preparatory to walking out to the cafe. The matador who was a coward had the

older sister of Paco in his room with him and was trying to

get her to do something which she was laughingly refusing

to do. This matador was saying 'Gome on, little savage.'

'No,' said the sister. 'Why should I?'

Tor a favour.'

'You've eaten and now you want me for dessert.'

'Just once. What harm can it do?'

'Leave me alone. Leave me alone, I tell you.'

'It is a very little thing to do.'

'Leave me alone, I tell you.'

Down in the dining-room the tallest ofthe waiters, who was

overdue at the meeting, said, 'Look at those black pigs drink.'

48 THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 'That's no way to speak/ said the second waiter. 'They

are decent clients. They do not drink too much.'

Tor me it is a good way to speak,' said the tall one. 'There

arc the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.'

'Certainly not the individual bull and the individual

priest,' said the second waiter. *

'Yes,' said the tall waiter. 'Only through the individual

can you attack the class. It is necessary to kill the individual

bull and the individual priest. All of them. Then there are

no more.'

'Save it for the meeting,' said the other waiter.

'Look at the barbarity of Madrid,' said the tall waiter. 'It

is now half-past eleven o'clock and these are still guzzling. 3

'They only started to eat at ten,' said the other waiter. 'As

you know there are many dishes. That wine is cheap and these have paid for it. It is not a strong wine.'

'How can there be solidarity ofworkers with fools like you?' asked the tall waiter.

'Look,' said the second waiter who was a man of fifty. 'I

have worked all my life. In all that remains ofmy life I must

work. I have no complaints against work. To work is normal.'

'Yes, but the lack ofwork kills.'

'I have always worked,' said the 'older waiter. 'Go on to

the meeting. There is no necessity to stay.'

'You are a good comrade,' said the tall waiter. 'But you lack all ideology.'

'Mejor si me falta eso que el otroj said the older waiter

(meaning it is better to lack that than work). 'Go on to the

mitin.'

Paco had said nothing. He did not yet understand politics

but it always gave him a thrill to hear the tall waiter speak of

the necessity for killing the priests and the Guardia Civil.

The tall waiter represented to him revolution and revolution

also was romantic. He himself would like to be a good catholic, a revolutionary, and have a steady job like this,

while, at the same time, being a bull fighter.

THE CAPITAL OF T FIE WORLD 49

'Go on to the meeting, Ignacio/ he said. 'I will respond for

younwork.' 'Tne two of us/ said the older waiter.

'There isn't enough for one/ said Paco. 'Go on to tfie

meeting.'

'Pues, me voy, said the tall waiter. 'And thanks.'

In the meantime, upstairs, the sister of Paco had gotten out

of the embrace of the matador as skilfully as a wrestler

breaking a hold and said, now angry, 'These are the hungry

people. A failed bull fighter. With your ton-load of fear. If

you have so much of that, use it in the ring.'

'That is the way a whore talks.'

'A whore is also a woman, but I am not a whore.'

'You'll be one.'

'Not through you.' 'Leave me,' said the matador who, now, repulsed and

refused, felt the nakedness of his cowardice returning. 'Leave you? What hasn't left you?' said the sister. 'Don't

you want me to make up the bed? I'm paid to do that.'

'Leave me,' said the matador, his broad good-looking face

wrinkled into a contortion that was like crying. 'You whore.

You dirty little whore.'

'Matador,' she said, shutting the door. 'My matador.'

Inside the room the matador sat on the bed. His face still

had the contortion which, in the ring, he made into a

constant smile which frightened those people in the first

rows of seats who knew what they were watching. 'And this/

he was saying aloud. 'And this. And this.'

He could remember when he had been good and it had

only been three years before. He could remember the weight of the heavy gold-brocaded fighting jacket on his shoulders

on that hot afternoon in May when his voice had still been

the same in the ring as in the cafe, and how he sighted along the point-dipping blade at the place in the top of the

shoulders where it was dusty in the short-haired black hump of muscle above the wide, wood-knocking, splintered-tipped

50 THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD horns that lowered as he went in to kill, and how the sword

pushed in as easy as into a mound ofstiff butter with the palm of his hand pushing the pommel, his left arm crossed low, his

left shoulder forward, his weight on his left leg, and then his

weight wasn't on his leg. His weight was on his lower belly

and as the bull raised his head the horn wa$ out of sight

in him and he swung over on it twice before they pulled him off it. So now when he went in to kill, and it was

seldom, he could not look at the horns and what did

any whore know about what he went through before he

fought? And what had they been through that laughed at him? They were all whores and they knew what they could do with it.

Down in the dining-room the picador sat looking at the

priests. If there were women in the room he stared at them.

If there were no women he would stare with enjoyment at a

foreigner, un ingles, but lacking women or strangers, he now stared with enjoyment and insolence at the two priests.

While he stared the birth-marked auctioneer rose and folding his napkin went out, leaving over half the wine in the last

bottle he had ordered. If his accounts had been paid up at

the Luarca he would have finished the bottle.

The two priests did not stare back at the picador. One of

them was saying/It is ten days since I have been here waiting to see him and all day I sit in the ante-chamber and he will

not receive me.'

'What is there to do?'

'Nothing. What can one do? One cannot go against

authority. 5

'I have been here for two weeks and nothing. I wait and

they will not see me.'

'We are from the abandoned country. When the money runs out we can return.'

'To the abandoned country. What does Madrid care

about Galicia? We are a poor province.' ;One understands the action of our brother Basilio.'

THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 51

*

Still I have no real confidence in the integrity of Basilio

Alvarez.'

'Madrid is where one learns to understand. Madrid kills

Spain.' 'If they would simply see one and refuse.'

'No. You ftiust be broken and worn out by waiting.'

'Well, we shall see. I can wait as well as another.'

At this moment the picador got to his feet, walked over to

the priests' table and stood, grey-headed and hawk-faced,

staring at them and smiling.

'A torero,' said one priest to the other.

'And a good one,' said the picador and walked out of the

dining-room, grey-jacketed, trim-waistcd, bow-legged, in

tight breeches over his high-heeled cattleman's boots that

clicked on the floor as he swaggered quite steadily, smiling to

himself. He lived in a small, tight, professional world of

personal efficiency, nightly alcoholic triumph, and insolence.

Now he lit a cigar and tilting his hat at an angle in the

hallway went out to the cafe.

The priests left immediately after the picador, hurriedly conscious of being the last people in the dining-room, and there was no one in the room now but Paco and the middle-

aged waiter. They cleared the tables and carried the

bottles into the kitchen.

In the kitchen was the boy who washed the dishes. He was

three years older than Paco and was very cynical and bitter.

'Take this,' the middle-aged waiter said, and poured out

a glass of the Valdepefias and handed it to him.

'Why not?' the boy took the glass.

'Tu, Paco?' the older waiter asked.

'Thank you,' said Paco. The three of them drank.

'I will be going,' said the middle-aged waiter.

'Good night,' they told him.

He went out and they were alone. Paco took a napkin one

of the priests had used and standing straight, his heels

planted, lowered the napkin and with head following the

52 THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD movement, swung his arms in the motion of a slow sweeping veronica. He turned and advancing his right foot slightly,

made the second pass, gained a little terrain on the imaginary bull and made a third pass, slow, perfectly timed and suave,

then gathered the napkin to his waist and swung his hips

away from the bull in a media-veronica.

The dishwasher, whose name was Enrique, watched him

critically and snecringly. 'How is the bull?' he said.

'Very brave/ said Paco. 'Look.'

Standing slim and straight he made four more perfect

passes, smooth, elegant and graceful.

'And the bull?' asked Enrique standing against the sink,

holding his wine glass and wearing his apron. 'Still has lots of gas,' said Paco.

'You make me sick, 5

said Enrique.

'Why?' 'Look.'

Enrique removed his apron and citing the imaginary bull

he sculptured four perfect, languid gypsy veronicas and ended up with a rebolera that made the apron swing in a

stiff arc past the bull's nose as he walked away from him.

'Look at that/ he said. 'And I wash dishes.'

'Why?'

'Fear,' said Enrique. 'Miedo. The same fear you would

have in a ring with a bull.'

'No,' said Paco. 'I wouldn't be afraid.'

'LecheT said Enrique. 'Everyone is afraid. But a torero

can control his fear so that he can work the bull. I went in

an amateur fight and I was so afraid I couldn't keep from

running. Every one thought it was very funny. So would

you be afraid. If it wasn't for fear every bootblack in Spain would be a bull fighter. You, a country boy, would be

frightened worse than I was.'

'No, 5

said Paco.

He had done it too many times in his imagination. Too

THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 53

many times he 'had seen the horns, seen the bull's wet muzzle, the ear twitching, then the head go down and the charge, the

hoofs \hudding and the hot bull pass him as he swung the

cape, to re-charge as he swung the cape again, then agaiy,

and again, and again, to end winding the bull around him in his great media-veronica, and walk swingingly away, with

bull hairs caught in the gold ornaments of his jacket from

the close passes; the bull standing hypnotized and tlje crowd

applauding. No, he would not be afraid. Others, yes. Not he. He knew he would not be afraid. Even if he ever was

afraid he knew that he could do it anyway. He had con-

fidence. 'I wouldn't be afraid,' he said.

Enrique said, 'Leche* again.

Then he said, 'If we should try it?'

'How?'

'Look,' said Enrique. 'You think of the bull but you do

not think of the horns. The bull has such force that the

horns rip like a knife, they stab like a bayonet, and they kill

like a club. Look,' he opened a table drawer and took out

two meat knives. 'I will bind these to the legs of a chair.

Then I will play bull for you with the chair held before my head. The knives are the horns. If you make those passes

then they mean something.' 'Lend me your apron,' said Paco. 'We'll do it in the

dining-room.'

'No,' said Enrique, suddenly not bitter. 'Don't do it,

Paco.'

'Yes,' said Paco. 'I'm not afraid.'

'You will be when you see the knives come.'

'We'll see, 3

said Paco. 'Give me the apron.' At this time, while Enrique was binding the two heavy-

bladed razor-sharp meat knives fast to the legs of the chair

with two soiled napkins holding the halfof each knife, wrap-

ping them tight and then knotting them, the two chamber-

maids, Paco's sisters, were on their way to the cinema to see

Greta Garbo in cAnna Christie'. Of the two priests, one was

54 THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD sitting in his underwear reading his breviary and the other

was wearing a nightshirt and saying the rosary. All the

bull fighters except the one who was ill had made- their

eyening appearance at the Cafe Fornos, where the big,

dark-haired picador was playing billiards, the short, serious

matador was sitting at a crowded table before a coffee and

milk, along with the middle-aged banderillero and other

serious workmen. The drinking, grey-headed picador was sitting with a glass

of cazalas brandy before him staring with pleasure at a

table where the matador whose courage was gone sat with

another matador who had renounced the sword to become a

banderillero again, and two very houseworn-looking

prostitutes.

The auctioneer stood on the street corner talking with

friends. The tall waiter was at the Anarcho-Syndicalist

meeting waiting for an opportunity to speak. The middle-

aged waiter was seated on the terrace of the Cafe Alvarez

drinking a small beer. The woman who owned the Luarca

was already asleep in her bed, where she lay on her back

with the bolster between her legs; big, fat, honest, clean,

easy-going, very religious and never having ceased to miss or

pray daily for her husband, dead, now, twenty years. In

his room, alone, the matador who was ill lay face down on his bed with his mouth against a handkerchief.

Now, in the deserted dining-room, Enrique tied the last

knot in the napkins that bound the knives to the chair legs

and lifted the chair. He pointed the legs with the knives on

them forward and held the chair over his head with the

two knives pointing straight ahead, one on each side of his

head.

'It's heavy, 5

he said. 'Look, Paco. It is very dangerous. Don't do it.' He was sweating. Paco stood facing him, holding the apron spread, holding

a fold of it bunched in each hand, thumbs up, first finger

down, spread to catch the eye of the bull.

THE LD 55

'Charge straight/ he said. 'Turn like a Dull. Charge as

many times as you want/ 'H\)w will you know when to cut the pass?' asked Enrique.

'It's better to do three and then a media.'

'All right/ said Paco. 'But come straight. Huh, torito!

Come on, littje bull!'

Running with head down Enrique came toward him and Paco swung the apron just ahead ofthe knife blade as it passed close in front of his belly and as it went by it was, to him, the

real horn, white-tipped, black, smooth, and as Enrique

passed him and turned to rush again it was the hot, blood-

flanked mass of the bull that thudded by, then turned like

a cat and came again as he swung the cape slowly. Then the

bull turned and came again and, as he watched the onrushing

point, he stepped his left foot two inches too far forward

and the knife did not pass, but had slipped in as easily as

into a wineskin and there was a hot scalding rush above and around the sudden inner rigidity of steel and Enrique

shouting. 'Ay! Ay! Let me get it out! Let me get it out!'

and Paco slipped forward on the chair the apron cape still

held, Enrique pulling QR the chair as thejknife turned in

him, in him, Paco.

The knife was out no\V and he sat on the floor' in tne widen-

ing warm pool. 'Put the napkin over it. Hold it!' said Enrique. 'Hold it

tight. I will run for the doctor. You must hold in the

haemorrhage.' 'There should be a rubber cup,' said Paco. He had seen

that used in the ring.

'I came straight,' said Enrique, crying. 'All I wanted was

to show the danger.' 'Don't worry,' said Paco, his voice sounding far away.

'But bring the doctor.'

In the ring they lifted you and carried you, running with

you, to the operating room. If the femoral artery emptied itself before you reached there they called the priest.

56 TH.

'Advise one of the priests,' said Paco, holding the napkin

tight against his lower abdomen. He could not believe that

this had happened to him.

Put Enrique was running down the Carrera San Jeromino to the all-night first-aid station and Paco was alone, first

sitting up, then huddled over, then slumped en the floor,

until it was over, feeling his life go out of him as dirty water

empties from a bathtub when the plug is drawn. He was

frightened and he felt faint and he tried to say an act of

contrition and he remembered how it started but before he

had said, as fast as he could, 'Oh, my God, I am heartily

sorry for having offended Thee who art worthy of all my love and I firmly resolve . . .' he felt too faint and he was

lying face down on the floor and it was over very quickly.

A severed femoral artery empties itself faster than you can

believe.

As the doctor from the first-aid station came up the stairs

accompanied by a policeman who held on to Enrique by the

arm, the two sisters of Paco were still in the moving-picture

palace of the Gran Via, where they were intensely dis-

appointed in the Garbo film, which showed the great star in

miserable low surroundings when they had been accustomed

to see her surrounded by great luxury and brilliance. The audience disliked the film thoroughly and were protesting

by whistling and stamping their feet. All the other people from the hotel were doing almost what they had been doing when the accident happened, except that the two priests

had finished their devotions and were preparing for sleep,

and the grey-haired picador had moved his drink over to

the table with the two houseworn prostitutes. A little later

he went out of the cafe with one of them. It was the one for

whom the matador who had lost his nerve had been buying drinks.

The boy Paco had never known about any of this nor

about what all these people would be doing on the next day and on other days to come. He had no idea how they really

THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 57

lived nor how they ended. He did not even realize they ended. He died, as the Spanish phrase has it, full of illu-

sions^ 1 He had not had time in his life to lose any of them,

nor even, at the end, to complete an act of contrition.

He had not even had time to be disappointed in tjie Garbo

picture which disappointed all Madrid for a week.

Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain igjiofeet high, and is said

to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called

the Masai 'Ngqje Ngai\ the House of God. Close to the western

summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. Mo one

has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 'THE marvellous thing is that it's painless/ he said. 'That's

how you know when it starts.'

'Is it really?'

'Absolutely. I'm awfully sorry about the odour, though. That must bother you.'

'Don't! Please don't.'

'Look at them/ he said. 'Now is it sight or is it scent that

brings them like that?'

The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade on to the glare of the

plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed.

'They've been there since the day the truck broke down/ he said. 'To-day's the first time any have lit on the ground. I watched the way they sailed very carefully at first in case

I ever wanted to use them in a story. That's funny now.'

'I wish you wouldn't/ she said.

'I'm only talking/ he said. 'It's much easier if I talk. But I don't want to bother you.'

'You know it doesn't bother me/ she said. 'It's that I've

gotten so very nervous not being able to do anything. I

think we might make it as easy as we can until the plane comes.'

'Or until the plane doesn't come.'

'Please tell me what I can do. There must be something I can do/

58

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 59.

'You can take the leg off and that might stop it, though I

doubt it. Or you can shoot me. You're a good shot now.

I taftght you to shoot, didn't I?'

'Please don't talk that way. Couldn't I read to you?' 'Read what?

3

'Anythingin the book bag that we haven't read.'

'I can't listen to it,' he said. 'Talking is the easiest. We quarrel and that makes the time pass.

5

'I don't quarrel. I never want to quarrel. Let's not

quarrel any more. No matter how nervous we get. Maybe they will be back with another truck to-day. Maybe the

plane will come.'

'I don't want to move,' the man said. 'There is no sense in

moving now except to make it easier for you. 5

'That's cowardly.' 'Can't you let a man die as comfortably as he can without

calling him names? What's the use of slanging me?'

'You're not going to die. 5

'Don't be silly. I'm dying now. Ask those bastards.' He looked over to where the huge, filthy birds sat, their naked

heads sunk in the hunched feathers. A fourth planed down to run quick-legged and then waddle slowly toward the

others.

'They are around every camp. You never notice them.

You can't die if you don't give up.'

'Where did you read that? You're such a bloody fool. 5

'You might think about someone else.'

'For Christ's sake, 5 he said. 'That's been my trade.

5

He lay then and was quiet for a while and looked across

the heat shimmer of the plain to the edge of the bush. There

were a few Tommies that showed minute and white against the yellow and, far off, he saw a herd of zebra, white against

the green of the bush. This was a pleasant camp under big trees against a hill, with good water, and close by, a nearly

dry water hole where sand grouse flighted in the mornings. 'Wouldn't you like me to read?

5

she asked. She was sitting

60 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO on a canvas chair beside his cot. 'There's a breeze coming

up/ 'No thanks.'

'Maybe the truck will come.'

'I don't give a damn about the truck.'

'I do. 5

'You give a damn about so many things that I dc^'+ '

'Not so many, Harry.' 'What about a drink?'

'It's supposed to be bad for you. It said in Black's to

.avoid all alcohol. You shouldn't drink.'

'Molo!' he shouted.

'Yes, Bwana.'

'Bring whisky-soda.'

'Yes, Bwana.'

'You shouldn't,' she said. 'That's what I mean by giving

up. It says it's bad for you. I know it's bad for you.'

'No,' he said. 'It's good for me.'

So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would

never have a chance to finish it. So this was the way it ended

in a bickering over a drink. Since the gangrene started in

his right leg he had no pain and with the pain the horror

had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and anger that this was the end of it. For this, that now was coming, he

had very little curiosity. For years it had obsessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy

being tired enough made it.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to

write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he

would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well, he would never know, now.

'I wish we'd never come,' the woman said. She was

looking at him holding the glass and biting her lip. 'You

never would have gotten anything like this in Paris. You

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 61

always said you loved Paris. We could have stayed in Paris

or gone anywhere. I'd have gone anywhere. I said I'd

go anywhere you wanted. If you wanted to shoot we could

have gone shooting in Hungary and been comfortable.'

'Your bloody money,' he said.

'That's noffair,' she said. 'It was always yours as much as

mine. I left everything and I went wherever you wanted to

go and I've done what you wanted to do. But I wish we'd

never come here.'

'You said you loved it.'

'I did when you were all right. But now I hate it. I don't

see why that had to happen to your leg. What have we done

to have that happen to us?'

'I suppose what I did was to forget to put iodine on it

when I first scratched it. Then I didn't pay any attention to

it because I never infect. Then, later, when it got bad, it was

probably using that weak carbolic solution when the other

antiseptics ran out that paralysed the minute blood vessels

and started the gangrene.' He looked at her, 'What else?'

'I don't mean that.'

'Ifwe could have hired a good mechanic instead of a half-

baked kikuyu driver, he would have checked the oil and never burned out that bearing in the truck.'

'I don't mean that.'

'If you hadn't left your own people, your goddamned Old

Westbury, Saratoga, Palm Beach people to take me on-'.

'Why, I loved you. That's not fair. I love you now. I'll

always love you. Don't you love me?'

'No,' said the man. 'I don't think so. I never have.'

'Harry, what are you saying? You're out of your head.'

'No. I haven't any head to go out of.'

'Don't drink that,' she said. 'Darling, please don't drink

that. We have to do everything we can.'

'You do it,' he said. 'I'm tired.'

Mow in his mind he saw a railway station at Karagatch and he

62 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO was standing with his pack and that was the headlight of the

Simplon- Orient cutting the dark now and he was leaving Thrace then

after the retreat. That was one of the things he had saved to write.,

wtth, in the morning at breakfast', looking out the window and seeing

snow on the mountains in Bulgaria and Nanseris Secretary asking

the old man if it were snow and the old man looking dt it and saying,

JV0, thafs not snow. Ifs too early for snow. And the Secretary

repeating to the other girls, No, you see. Ifs not snow and them all

saying, Ifs not snow, we were mistaken. But it was the snow all

right and he sent them on into it when he evolved exchange ofpopula- tions. And it was snow they tramped along in until they died that

winter.

It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that year up in the

Gauertal, thatyear they lived in the woodcutter's house with the big

square porcelain stove that filled half the room, and they slept on

mattressesfilled with beech leaves, the time the deserter came with his

feet bloody in the snow. He said the police were right behind him and

they gave him woollen socks and held the gendarmes talking until the

tracks had drifted over.

In Schrunz, on Christmas day, the snow was so bright it hurt

your eyes when you looked out from the weinstube and saw everyone

coming home from church. That was where they walked up the

sleigh-smoothed urine-yellowed road along the river with the steep

pine hills, skis heavy on the shoulder, and where they ran that great

run down the glacier above the Madlener-fyausy the snow as smooth

to see as cake frosting and as light as pdiwfev^nd he remembered

the noiseless rush the speed made asyou dropped dbwn like a bird.

They were snow-bound a week in the Madlener-haus that time in

the blizzard playing cards in the smoke by the lantern light and the

stakes were higher all the time as Hen Lent lost more. Finally he

lost it all. Everything, the skischule money and all the season's

profit and then his capital. He could see him with his long nose,

picking up the cards and then opening, 'Sans Voir\ There was always

gambling then. When there was no snowyou gambled and when there

was too muchyou gambled. He thought of all the time in his life he

had spent gambling.

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 63

But he had 'never written a line of that, nor of that cold, bright

Christmas day with the mountains showing across the plain that

Johnson hadflown across the lines to bomb the Austrian officers' leave

train, machine-gunning them as they scattered and ran. He rerr&m-

bered Johnson afterwards coming into the mess and starting to tell

about it. Arid how quiet it got and then somebody saying, 'You

bloody murderous bastard!''

Those were the same Austrians they killed then that he skied with

later. No, not the same. Hans, that he skied with all thatyear, had

been in the Kaiser-Jdgers and when they went hunting hares together

up the little valley above the saw-mill they had talked of the fighting

on Pasubio and of the attack on Pertica and Asalone and he had

never written a word of that. Nor of Monte Corno, nor the Siete

Commum, nor of Arsiedo.

How many winters had he lived in the Voralberg and the Arlberg? It wasfour and then he remembered the man who had thefox to sell

when they had walked into Bludenz, that time to buy presents, and

the cherry pip taste of good kirsch, the fast-slipping rush of running

powder-snow on crust, singing 'Hi! Ho! said RoilyT as you ran

down the last stretch to the steel drop, taking it straight, then running

the orchard in three turns and out across the ditch and on to the icy

road behind the inn. Knocking your bindings loose, kicking the skis

free and leaning them up against the wooden wall of the inn, the

lamplight' coming from the window, where inside, in the smoky,

new-wine smelling warmth, they were playing the accordion.

'Where did we stay in Paris? 3

he asked the woman who was

sitting by him in a canvas chair, now, in Africa.

'At the Crillon. You know that.'

'Why do I know that?'

'That's where we always stayed.'

'No. Not always.'

'There and at the Pavilion Henri-Quatre in St. Germain.

You said you loved it there.'

'Love is a dunghill/ said Harry. 'And I'm the cock that

gets on it to crow.'

64 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 'Ifyou have to go away/ she said, 'is it absolutely necessary

to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have

to take away everything? Do you have to kill your horse,

aiYd your wife and burn your saddle and your armour? 5

'Yes/ be said. 'Your damned money was my armour. My Swift and my Armour.'

'Don't.'

'All right. I'll stop that. I don't want to hurt you.'

'It's a little bit late now.'

'All right then. I'll go on hurting you. It's more amusing. The only thing I ever really liked to do with you I can't do

now.'

'No, that's not true. You liked to do many things and

everything you wanted to do I did.'

'Oh, for Christ sake stop bragging, will you?' He looked at her and saw her crying.

'Listen,' he said. 'Do you think that it is fun to do this? I

don't know why I'm doing it. It's trying to kill to keep your- self alive, I imagine. I was all right when we started talking.

I didn't mean to start this, and now I'm crazy as a coot and

being as cruel to you as I can be. Don't pay any attention,

darling, to what I say. I love you, really. You know I love

you. I've never loved anyone else the way I love you. 5

He slipped into the familiar lie he made his bread and

butter by.

'You're sweet to me.'

'You bitch,' he said. 'You rich bitch. That's poetry. I'm

full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry.'

'Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil

now?'

'I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like

to leave things behind.'

It was evening now and he had been asleep. The sun was

gone behind the hill and there was a shadow all across the

plain and the small animals were feeding close to camp;

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 65

quick dropping heads and switching tails, he watched them

keeping well out away from the bush now. The birds no

longer waited on the ground. They were all perched heavily in a tree. There were many more of them. His personal

boy was sitting by the bed.

'Memsahib*s gone to shoot, 3

the boy said. 'Does Bwana want?

5

'Nothing.' She had gone to kill a piece of meat and, knowing how he

liked to watch the game, she had gone well away so she

would not disturb this little pocket of the plain that he could

see. She was always thoughtful, he thought. On anything she knew about, or had read, or that she had ever heard.

It was not her fault that when he went to her he was

already over. How could a woman know that you meant

nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said,

his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth.

It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth

to tell. He had had his life and it was over and then he

went on living it again with different people and more

money, with the best of the same places, and some new ones.

You kept from thinking and it was all marvellous. You \vere equipped with good insides so that you did not go to

pieces that way, the way most ofthem had, and you made an

attitude that you cared nothing for the work you used to do,

now that you could no longer do it. But, in yourself, you said that you would write about these people; about the

very rich; that you were really not ofthem but a spy in their

country; that you would leave it and write of it and for once

it would be written by some one who knew what he was

writing of. But he would never do it, because each day ofnot

writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled

his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he

did no work at all. The people he knew now were all much

66 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO more comfortable when he did not work. Africa was where

he had been happiest in the good time of his life, so he had come out here to start again. They had made this safari

\tfith the minimum of comfort. There was no hardship; but there was no luxury and he had thought that he could

get back into training that way. That in some*way he could

work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into the

mountains to work and train in order to burn it out of his

body. She had liked it. She said she loved it. She loved anything

that was exciting, that involved a change of scene, where

there were new people and where things were pleasant.

And he had felt the illusion of returning strength of will to

work. Now if this was how it ended, and he knew it was, he

must not turn like some snake biting itself because its back

was broken. It wasn't this woman's fault. If it had not been

she it would have been another. If he lived by a lie he

should try to die by it. He heard a shot beyond the hill.

She shot very well, this good, this rich bitch, this kindly caretaker and destroyer of his talent. Nonsense. He had

destroyed his talent himself. Why should he blame this

woman because she kept him well? He had destroyed his

talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he

believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery,

by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was

this? A catalogue of old books? What was his talent any-

way? It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do. And he had chosen to make his living with

something else instead of a pen or a pencil. It was strange,

tod, wasn't it, that when he fell in love with another woman, that woman should always have more money than the last

one? But when he no longer was in love, when he was only

lying, as to this woman, now, who had the most money of

all, who had all the money that was, who had had a husband

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 67

and children, '

who had taken lovers and been dissatisfied

with them, and who loved him dearly as a writer, as a man, as a companion and as a proud possession; it was. strange that when he did not love her at all and was lying, that Ire

should be able to give her more for her money thamwhen he

had really loVed.

We must all be cut out for what we do, he thought. How- ever you make your living is where your talent lies. He had sold vitality, in one form or another, all his life, and when

your affections are not too involved you give much better

value for the money. He had found that out but he would never write that, now, either. No, he would not write that,

although it was well worth writing.

Now she came in sight, walking across the open towards

the camp. She was wearing jodhpurs and carrying her rifle.

The two boys had a Tommie slung and they were coming

along behind her. She was still a good-looking woman, he

thought, and she had a pleasant body. She had a great talent and appreciation for the bed, she was not pretty, but

he liked her face, she read enormously, liked to ride and

shoot and, certainly, she drank too much. Her husband had died when she was still a comparatively young woman and for a while she had devoted herself to her two just-grown

children, who did not need her and were embarrassed at

having her about, to her stable of horses, to books, and to

bottles. She liked to read in the evening before dinner and

she drank Scotch and soda while she read. By dinner she

was fairly drunk and after a bottle of wine at dinner she was

usually drunk enough to sleep.

That was before the lovers. After she had the Ipvers she

did not drink so much because she did not have to be drunk

to sleep. But the lovers bored her. She had been married

to a man who had never bored her and these people bored

her very much. Then one of her two children was killed in a plane crash

and after that was over she did not want the lovers, and drink

68 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO

being no anaesthetic she had to make another life. Suddenly, she had been acutely frightened of being alone. But she

wanted someone that she respected with her. % It had begun very simply. She liked what he wrote and

she had always envied the life he led. She thought he did

exactly what he wanted to. The steps by Which she had

acquired him and the way in which she had finally fallen in

love with him were all part of a regular progression in which

she had built herselfa new life and he had traded away what remained of his old life.

He had traded it for security, for comfort too, there was no

denying that, and for what else? He did not know. She

would have brought him anything he wanted. He knew that.

She was a damned nice woman too. He would as soon be in

bed with her as anyone; rather with her, because she was

richer, because she was very pleasant and appreciative and because she never made scenes. And now this life that

she had built again was coming to a term because he had not

used iodine two weeks ago when a thorn had scratched his

knee as they moved forward trying to photograph a herd

of waterbuck standing, their heads up, peering while their

nostrils searched the air, their ears spread wide to hear the

first noise that would send them rushing into the bush.

They had bolted, too, before he got the picture.

Here she came now.

He turned his head on the cot to look toward her. 'Hello,'

he said.

'I shot a Tommy ram,' she told him. 'He'll make you good broth and I'll have them mash some potatoes with the

Klim. How do you feel?'

'Much better.'

'Isn't that lovely? You know I thought perhaps you would. You were sleeping >vhen I left.'

'I had a good sleep. Did you walk far? 5

'No. Just around behind the hill. I made quite a good shot on the Tommy.'

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 69

'You shoot marvellously, you know. 5

'I love it. I've loved Africa. Really. Ifyou're all right it's

the most fun that I've ever had. You don't know the fun it's

been to shoot with you. I've loved the country.' 'I love it too.'

r

'Darling, you don't know how marvellous it is to see you

feeling better. I couldn't stand it when you felt that way. You won't talk to me like that again, will you? Promise

me?'

'No,' he said. 'I don't remember what I said.'

'You don't have to destroy me. Do you? I'm only a

middle-aged woman who loves you and wants to do what you want to do. I've been destroyed two or three times already. You wouldn't want to destroy me again, would you?'

Td like to destroy you a few times in bed,' he said.

'Yes. That's the good destruction. That's the way we're

made to be destroyed. The plane will be here to-morrow.'

'How do you know?'

Tm sure. It's bound to come. The boys have the wood all

ready and the grass to make the smudge. I went down and looked at it again to-day. There's plenty ofroom to land and

we have the smudges ready at both ends.'

'What makes you think it will come to-morrow?'

'I'm sure it will. It's overdue now. Then, in town, they will fix up your leg and then we will have some good destruction. Not that dreadful talking kind.'

'Should we have a drink? The sun is down.'

'Do you think you should?'

Tm having one.'

'We'll have one together. Molo, letti dui whisky-soda!' she

called.

'You'd better put on your mosquito boots,' he told her.

Til wait till I bathe . . .'

While it grew dark they drank and just before it was dark

and there was no longer enough light to shoot, a hyena crossed the open on his way around the hill.

70 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 'That bastard crosses there every night/ the man said.

'Every night for two weeks/

'He's the one makes the noise at night. I don't mind it.

They're a filthy animal though.'

Drinking together, with no pain now except the discomfort

of lying in the one position, the boys lighting a fire, its

shadow jumping on the tents, he could feel the return of

acquiescence in this life of pleasant surrender. She was very

good to him. He had been cruel and unjust in the afternoon.

She was a fine woman, marvellous really. And just then it

occurred to him that he was going to die.

It came with a rush; not as a rush ofwater nor ofwind; but

of a sudden evil-smelling emptiness and the odd thing was

that the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it.

'What is it, Harry?' she asked him.

'Nothing,' he said. 'You had better move over to the

other side. To windward.'

'Did Molo change the dressing?'

'Yes. I'm just using the boric now.'

'How do you feel?'

'A little wobbly.' 'I'm going in to bathe,' she said. Til be right out. I'll eat

with you and then we'll put the cot in.'

So, he said to himself, we did well to stop the quarrelling.

He had never quarrelled much with this woman, while with

the women that he loved he had quarrelled so much they had

finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarrelling, killed

what they had together. He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

He thought about alone in Constantinople that time, having

quarrelled in Paris before he had gone out. He had whored the whole

time and then, when that was over, and he had failed to kill his

loneliness, but only made it worse, he had written her, the first one,

tht one who left him, a letter telling her how he had never been able

to kill it . . . How when he thought he saw her outside the Regence

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 71

one time it made him go allfaint and sick inside, and that he would

follow a woman who looked like her in some way, along the Boulevard,

afraid to see it was not she, afraid to lose the feeling it gave him.

How everyone he had slept with had only made him miss her mofe.

How what she had done could never matter since he knew he could

not cure himself of loving her. He wrote this letter at the Club, cold

sober, and mailed it to New York asking her to write him at the

office in Paris. That seemed safe. And that night missing her so

much it made him feel hollow sick inside, he wandered up past

Taxings, picked a girl up and took her out to supper. He had gone

to a place to dance with her afterwards, she danced badly, and left

her for a hot Armenian slut, that swung her belly against him so it

almost scalded. He took her away from a British gunner subaltern

after a row. The gunner asked him outside and they fought in the

street on the cobbles in the dark. He'd hit him twice, hard, on the

side of thejaw and when he didn't go down he knew he was infor a

fight. The gunner hit him in the body, then beside his eye. He swung with his left again and landed and the gunner fell on him and

grabbed his coat and tore the sleeve off and he clubbed him twice

behind the ear and then smashed him with his right as he pushed him

away. When the gunner went down his head hit first and he ran

with the girl because they heard the M.P.s coming. They got into a

taxi and drove out to Rimmily Hissa along the Bosphorus, and

around, and back in the cool night and went to bed and shefelt as

over-ripe as she looked but smooth, rose-petal, syrupy, smooth-

bellied, big-breasted and needed no pillow under her buttocks, and he

left her before she was awake looking blousy enough in the fast

daylight and turned up at the Pera Palace with a black eye, carrying

his coat because one sleeve was missing.

That same night he leftfor Anatolia and he remembered, later on

that trip, riding all day through fields of the poppies that they raised

for opium and how strange it made you feel, finally, and all the

distances seemed wrong, to where they had made the attack with the

newly-arrived Constantine officers,

that did not know a god-damned

thing, and the artillery had fired into the troops and the British

observer had cried like a child.

72 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO That was the day he'd first seen dead men wearing white ballet

skirts and upturned shoes with pompoms on them. The Turks had

come steadily and lumpily and he had seen the skirted men running

and the officers shooting into them and running then themselves and

he and the British observer had run too until his lungs ached and his

mouth was full of the taste ofpennies and they stopped behind some

rocks and there were the Turks coming as lumpily as ever. Later

he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he

had seen, much worse. So when he got back to Paris that time he

could not talk about it or stand to have it mentioned. And there in the

cafe as he passed was that American poet with a pile of saucers in

front of him and a stupid look on his potato face talking about the

Dada movement with a Roumanian who said his name was Tristan

Tzarti, who always wore a monocle and had a headache, and, back

at the apartment with his wife that now he loved again, the quarrel

all over, the madness all over, glad to be home, the office sent his

mail up to theflat. So then the letter in answer to the one he'd written

came in on a platter one morning and when he saw the hand-writing

he went cold all over and tried to slip the letter underneath another.

But his wife said, 'Who is that letterfrom, dear?' and that was the

end of the beginning of that.

He remembered the good times with them all, and the quarrels.

They always picked the finest places to have the quarrels. And why had they always quarrelled when he was feeling best? He had never

written any of that because, at first, he never wanted to hurt anyone

and then it seemed as though there was enough to write without it.

But he had always thought that he would write itfinally. There was

so much to write. He had seen the world change; notjust the events;

although he had seen many of them and had watched the people, but

he had seen the subtler change and he could remember how the people

were at different times. He had been in it and he had watched it and it

was his duty to write of it; but now he never would.

'How do you feel?' she said. She had come out from the

tent now after her bath.

'All right.'

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 73

'Gould you eat now?' He saw Molo behind her with the

folding table and the other boy with the dishes.

'I want to write,' he said.

'You ought to take some broth to keep your strength up.i ,

'I'm going to die to-night,' he said. 'I don't need my strength up.'

'Don't be melodramatic, Harry, please/ she said.

'Why don't you use your nose? I'm rotted half-way up my thigh now. What the hell should I fool with broth for?

Molo, bring whisky-soda.' 'Please take the broth,' she said gently.

'All right.'

The broth was too hot. He had to hold it in the cup until it

cooled enough to take it and then he just got it down without

gagging. 'You're a fine woman,' he said. 'Don't pay any attention

to me.'

She looked at him with her well-known, well-loved face

from Spur and Town and Country, only a little the worse for

drink, only a little the worse for bed, but Town and Country

never showed those good breasts and those useful thighs and those lightly small-of-back caressing hands, and as he looked

and saw her well-known pleasant smile, he felt death come

again. This time there was no rush. It was a puff, as of a

wind that makes a candle flicker and the flame go tall.

'They can bring my net out later and hang it from the tree

and build the fire up. I'm not going in the tent to-night.

It's not worth moving. It's a clear night. There won't be

any rain.'

So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not

hear. Well, there would be no more quarrelling. He could promise that. The one experience that he had never

had he was not going to spoil now. He probably would.

You spoiled everything. But perhaps he wouldn't.

'You can't take dictation, can you?' 'I never learned,' she told him.

74 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO That's all right.'

There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if

you could get it right.

There was a log house, chinked white with mortar^ on a hill above

the lake. There was a bell on a pole by the door to call the people

in to meals. Behind the house were fields and behind the fields was

the timber. A line of lombardy poplars ran from the house to the

dock. Other poplars ran along the point. A road went up to the hills

along the edge of the timber and along that road he picked black-

berries. Then that log house was burned down and all the guns that had been on deerfoot racks above the open fire place were burned

and afterwards their barrels, with the lead melted in the magazines,

and the stocks burned away, lay out on the heap of ashes that were

used to make lye for the big iron soap kettles, andyou asked Grand-

father ifyou could have them to play with, and he said, no. Ton

see they were his guns still and he never bought any others. JVbr did

he hunt any more. The house was rebuilt in the same place out of lumber now and painted white and from its porch you saw the

poplars and the lake beyond; but there were never any more guns.

The barrels of the guns that had hung on the deer feet on the wall

of the log house lay out there on the heap of ashes and no one ever

touched them.

In the Black Forest, after the war, we rented a trout stream and

there were two ways to walk to it. One was down the valley from

Triberg and around the valley road in the shade of the trees that

bordered the white road, and then up a side road that went up

through the hills, past many smallfarms, with the big Schwarzwald

houses, until that road crossed the stream. That was where our

fishing began.

The other way was to climb steeply up to the edge of the woods and

then go across the top of the hills through the pine woods, and then out

to the edge of a meadow and down across this meadow to the bridge.

There were birches along the stream and it was not big, but narrow,

clear and fast, with pools where it had cut under the roots of the

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 75

birches. At the Hotel in Triberg the proprietor had a fine season.

It was very pleasant and we were all great friends. The next year came the inflation and the money he had made theyear before was not

enough to buy supplies to open the hotel and he hanged himself.

You could dictate that, but you could not dictate the Place Contre-

scarpe where the flower sellers dyed their flowers in the street and the

dye ran over the paving where the autobus started and the old men

and the women, always drunk on wine and bad marc; and the children

with their noses running in the cold; the smell of dirty sweat and

poverty and drunkenness at the Cafe des Amateurs and the whores

at the Bal Musette they lived above. The Concierge who entertained

the trooper of the Garde Republicaine in her loge, his horse-hair-

plumed helmet on a chair. The locataire across the hall whose

husband was a bicycle racer and herjoy that morning at the Cremerie

when she had opened L'Auto and seen where he placed third in

Paris-Tours, his first big race. She had blushed and laughed and

then gone upstairs crying with theyellow sporting paper in her hand.

The husband of the woman who ran the Bal Musette drove a taxi

and when he, Harry, had to take an early plane the husband knocked

upon the door to wake him and they each drank a glass of white wine

at the zinc of the bar before they started. He knew his neighbours

in that quarter then because they all were poor.

Around that Place there were two kinds: the drunkards and the

sportifs. The drunkards killed their poverty that way; the sportifs

took it out in exercise. They were the descendants of the Com-

munards and it was no struggle for them to know their politics.

They knew who had shot theirfathers, their relatives, their brothers,

and their friends when the Versailles troops came in and took the

town after the Commune and executed anyone they could catch with

calloused hands, or who wore a cap, or carried any other sign he was

a working man. And in that poverty, and in that quarter across the

street from a Boucherie Chevaline and a wine-co-operative he had

written the start of all he was to do. There never was another part

of Paris that he loved like that, the sprawling trees, the old white

plastered houses painted brown below, the long green of the autobus

in that round square, the purple flower dye upon the paving, the

76 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO sudden drop down the hill of the rue Cardinal Lemoine to the River,

and the other way the narrow crowded world of the rue Mouffetard.

The street that ran up toward the Pantheon and the other that he

always took with the bicycle, the only asphalted street in all that

quarter, smooth under the tyres, with the high narrow houses and the

cheap tall ~hotel where Paul Verlaine had died. There were only two

rooms in the apartments where they lived and he had a room on the

top floor of that hotel that cost him sixty francs a month where he

did his writing, andfrom it he could see the roofs and chimney pots

and all the hills of Paris.

From the apartment you could only see the wood and coal man's

plate. He sold wine, too, bad wine. The golden horse's head

outside the Boucherie Chevaline where the carcasses hungyellow gold

and red in the open window, and the green painted co-operative

where they bought their wine; good wine and cheap. The rest was

plaster walls and the windows of the neighbours. The neighbours

who, at night, when someone lay drunk in the street, moaning and

groaning in that typical French ivresse that you were propaganded to believe did not exist, would open their windows and then the

murmur of talk.

'Where is the policeman? When you don't want him the bugger

is always there. He's sleeping with some concierge. Get the Agent.' Till someone threw a bucket of waterfrom a window and the moaning

stopped. 'What's that? Water. Ah, that's intelligent' And the

windows shutting. Marie, hisfemme de menage, protesting against

the eight-hour day saying, 'If a husband works until six he gets only

a little drunk on the way home and does not waste too much. If he

works only until Jive he is drunk every night and one has no money. It is the wife of the working man who suffersfrom this shortening of hours'

'Wouldn't you like some more broth?' the woman asked

now.

'No, thank you very much. It is awfully good. 5

Try just a little.'

'I would like a whisky-soda.'

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 77

'It's not good for you.'

'No. It's bad for me. Cole Porter wrote the words and the

music. This knowledge that you're going mad for me.'

'You know I like you to drink.'

'Oh yes. Only it's bad for me.'

When she goes, he thought. I'll have all I want. Not all I

want but all there is. Ayee, he was tired. Too tired. He was

going to sleep a little while. He lay still and death was not

there. It must have gone around another street. It went in

pairs, on bicycles, and moved absolutely silently on the

pavements.

No, he had never written about Paris. Not the Paris that he cared

about. But what about the rest that he had never written?

What about the ranch and the silvered grey of the sage brush, the

quick, clear water in the irrigation ditches, and the heavy green of the

alfalfa? The trail went up into the hills and the cattle in the summer

were shy as deer. The bawling and the steady noise and slow moving mass raising a dust asyou brought them down in thefall. And behind

the mountains, the clear sharpness of the peak in the evening light and,

riding down along the train in the moonlight, bright across the valley.

Now he remembered coming down through the timber in the dark

holding the horse's tail whenyou could not see and all the stories that

he meant to write.

About the half-wit chore boy who was. left at the ranch that time

and told not to let any one get any hay, and that old bastardfrom the

Forks who had beaten the boy when he had workedfor him stopping

to get somefeed. The boy refusing and the old man saying he would

beat him again. The boy got the riflefrom the kitchen and shot him

when he tried to come into the barn and when they came back to the

ranch he'd been dead a week, frozen in the corral, and the dogs had

eaten part ofhim. But what was leftyou packed on a sled wrapped in

a blanket and roped on andyou got the boy to help you haul it, and

the two ofyou took it out over the road on skis, and sixty miles down

to town to turn the boy over. He having no idea that he would be

arrested. Thinking he had done his duty and that you were his

78 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO

friend and he would be rewarded. He'd helped to haul the old man

in so everybody could know how bad the old man had been, and how

he'd tried to steal somefeed that didn't belong to him, and when the

sheriffput the handcuffs on the boy he couldn't believe it. Then he'd

started to cry. That was one story he had saved to write. He knew

at least twenty good stories from out there and he had never written

one. Why?

'You tell them why,' he said.

'Why what, dear?'

'Why nothing.' She didn't drink so much, now, since she had him. But if

he lived he would never write about her, he knew that now.

Nor about any of them. The rich were dull and they drank

too much, or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor

Julian and his romantic awe ofthem and how he had started

a story once that began, 'The very rich are different from

you and me.' And how someone had said toJulian. Yes, they have more money. But that was not humorous to Julian. He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him just as much as any other thing that wrecked him.

He had been contemptuous of those who wrecked. You did not have to like it because you understood it. He could

beat anything, he thought, because nothing could hurt him ifhe did not care.

All right. Now he would not care for death. One thing he

had always dreaded was the pain. He could stand pain as

well as any man, until it went on too long, and wore him out,

but here he had something that had hurt frightfully and just when he had felt it breaking him, the pain had stopped.

He remembered long ago when Williamson, the bombing officer,

had been hit by a stick bomb some one in a German patrol had thrown

as he was coming in through the wire that night and, screaming, had

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 79

begged everyone to kill him. He was afat man, very brave, and a good

officer, although addicted to fantastic shows. But that night he was

caught in the wire, with aflare lighting him up and his bowels spilled

out into the wire, so when they brought him in, alive, they had to cut

him loose. Shoot me, Harry. For Christ sake shoot me. They had

had an argument one time about our Lord never sendingyou anything

you could not bear and someone's theory had been that meant that a

certain time the pain passedyou out automatically. But he had always remembered Williamson, that night. Nothing passed out Williamson

until he gave him all his morphine tablets that he had always saved

to use himself and then they did not work right away.

Still this now, that he had, was very easy; and if it was no

worse as it went on there was nothing to worry about. Except that he would rather be in better company. He thought a little about the company that he would like

to have.

No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can't expect to find the people still there.

The people are all gone. The party's over and you are with

your hostess now.

I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he

thought. 'It's a bore,' he said out loud.

'What is, my dear?'

'Anything you do too bloody long.'

He looked at her face between him and the fire. She was

leaning back in the chair and the firelight shone on her

pleasantly lined face and he could see that she was sleepy.

He heard the hyena make a noise just outside the range of

the fire.

'I've been writing,' he said. 'But I got tired/

'Do you think you will be able to sleep?'

'Pretty sure. Why don't you turn in?'

'I like to sit here with you. 5

'Do you feel anything strange?' he asked her.

8o THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 'No. Just a little sleepy.'

'I do,' he said.

He had just felt death come by again.

'You know the only thing I've never lost is curiosity/ he

said to her.

'You've never lost anything. You're the most complete man I've ever known.'

'Christ/ he said. 'How little a woman knows. What is

that? Your intuition?'

Because, just then, death had come and rested its head on

the foot ofthe cot and he could smell its breath.

'Never believe any of that about a scythe and a skull,' he

told her. 'It can be two bicycle policemen as easily or be a

bird. Or it can have a wide snout like a hyena.' It had moved up on him now, but it had no shape any

more. It simply occupied space.

'Tell it to go away.' It did not go away but moved a little closer.

'You've got a hell of a breath/ he told it. 'You stinking

bastard.'

It moved up closer to him still and now he could not speak to it, and when it saw he could not speak it came a little closer,

and now he tried to send it away without speaking, but it

moved in on him so its weight was all upon his chest, and while it crouched there and he could not move, or speak, he

heard the woman say, 'Bwana is asleep now. Take the cot

up very gently and carry it into the tent'.

He could not speak to tell her to make it go away and it

crouched now, heavier so he Could not breathe. And then,

while they lifted the cot, suddenly it was all right and the

weight went from his chest.

It was morning and had been morning for some time and he heard the plane. It showed very tiny and then made a

wide circle and the boys ran out and lit the fires, using kero-

sene, and piled on grass so there were two big smudges at each

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 81 a

end of the level place and the morning breeze blew them toward the camp and the plane circled twice more, low this

time, and then glided down and levelled off and landed

smoothly and, coming walking toward him, was old Comp- ton in slacks, a tweed jacket and a brown felt hat.

'What's th matter, old cock? 5

Compton said.

'Bad leg,' he told him. 'Will you have some breakfast?'

'Thanks. I'll just have some tea. It's the Puss Moth, you know. I won't be able to take the Memsahib. There's only room for one. Your lorry is on the way.' Helen had taken Compton aside and was speaking to him.

Compton came back more cheery than ever.

'We'll get you right in,' he said. Til be back for the Mem. Now I'm afraid I'll have to stop at Arusha to refuel. We'd better get going.'

'What about the tea?'

'I don't really care about it, you know. 5

The boys had picked up the cot and carried it around the

green tents and down along the rock and out on to the plain and along past the smudges that were burning brightly now, the grass all consumed, and the wind fanning the fire, to the

little plane. It was difficult getting him in, but once in he lay

back in the leather seat, and the leg was stuck straight out to

one side ofthe seat where Compton sat. Compton started the

motor and got in. He waved to Helen and to the boys and, as

the clatter moved into the old familiar roar, they swung around with Compie watching for wart-hog holes and roared,

bumping, along the stretch between the fires and with the

last bump rose and he saw them all standing below, waving, and the camp beside the hill, flattening now, and the plain

spreading, clumps of trees, and the bush flattening, while the

game trails ran now smoothly to the dry waterholes, and

there was a new water that he had never known of. The

zebra, small rounded backs now, and the wildebeeste, big-

headed dots seeming to climb as they moved in long fingers

across the plain, now scattering as the shadow came toward

82 THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO them, they were tiny now, and the movement had no gallop, and the plain as far as you could see, grey-yellow now and ahead old Compie's tweed back and the brown felt hat. Then

they were over the first hills and the wildebeeste were trail-

ing up them, and then they were over mountains with sud-

den depths ofgreen-rising forest and the solid bamboo slopes,

and then the heavy forest again, sculptured into peaks and hollows until they crossed, and hills sloped down and then

another plain, hot now, and purple brown, bumpy with heat

and Compie looking back to see how he was riding. Then there were other mountains dark ahead.

And then instead of going on to Arusha they turned left,

he evidently figured that they had the gas, and looking down he saw a pink sifting cloud, moving over the ground, and in

the air, like the first snow in a blizzard, that comes from

nowhere, and he knew the locusts were coming up from the

South. Then they began to climb and they were going to the

East it seemed, and then it darkened and they were in a

storm, the rain so thick it seemed like flying through a water-

fall, and then they were out and Compie turned his head and

grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as

wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white

in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro. And then he

knew that there was where he was going.

Just then the hyena stopped whimpering in the night and

started to make a strange, human, almost crying sound. The woman heard it and stirred uneasily. She did not waks. In

her dream she was at the house on Long Island and it was the

night before her daughter's debut. Somehow her father was

there and he had been very rude. Then the noise the hyena made was so loud she woke and for a moment she did not

know where she was and she was very afraid. Then she took

the flashlight and shone it on the other cot that they had

carried in after Harry had gone to sleep. She could see his

bulk under the mosquito bar but somehow he had gotten his

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO 83

leg out and it hung down alongside the cot. The dressings

had all come down and she could not look at it.

'Molo,' she called. 'Molo! Molo!'

Then she said, 'Harry, Harry!' Then her voice rising,

'Harry! Please, Oh Harry! 5

There was no answer and she could not hearhim breathing.

Outside the tent the hyena made the same strange noise

that had awakened her. But she did not hear him for the

beating of her heart.

*

OLD MAN AT THE BRIDGE

AN old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge arjoss the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts stag-

gered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping

push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without

moving. He was too tired to go any farther.

It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridge- head beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. I did this and returned over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot,

but the old man was still there.

'Where do you come from?' I asked him.

'From San Carlos/ he said, and smiled.

That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to

mention it and he smiled.

'I was taking care of animals,' he explained.

'Oh,' I said, not quite understanding.

'Yes,' he said, 'I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. I

was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.'

He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I

looked at his black dusty clothes and his grey dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, 'What animals were

they?'

'Various animals,' he said, and shook his head. 'I had to

leave them.'

I was watching the bridge and the African looking country of the Ebro Delta and wondering how long now it would be

before we would see the enemy, and listening all the while for

the first noises that would signal that ever mysterious event

called contact, and the old man still sat there.

'What animals were they?' I asked.

84

OLD MAN AT THE BRIDGE 85

'There were three animals altogether,' he explained. 'There were two goats and a cat and then there were four

pairs of pigeons.'

'And you had to leave them?' I asked.

'Yes. Because of the artillery. The captain told me to go because of the artillery.'

'And you have no family?' I asked, watching the far end of

the bridge where a few last carts were hurrying down the

slope of the bank.

'No,' he said, 'only the animals I stated. The cat, ofcourse, will be all right. A cat can look out for itself, but I cannot

think what will become of the others.'

'What politics have you?' I asked.

T am without politics,' he said. 'I am seventy-six years old.

I have come twelve kilometres now and I think now I can go no farther.'

'This is not a good place to stop,' I said. 'If you can make

it, there are trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa.'

'I will wait a while,' he said, 'and then I will go. Where do

the trucks go?'

'Towards Barcelona,' I told him.

'I know ofno one in that direction,' he said, 'but thank you

very much. Thank you again very much.'

He looked at me very blankly and tiredly, then said, having to share his worry with someone, 'The cat will be all right,

I am sure. There is no need to be unquiet about the cat. But

the others. Now what do you think about the others?'

'Why, they'll probably come through it all right.'

'You think so?'

'Why not?' I said, watching the far bank where now there

were no carts.

'But what will they do under the artillery when I was told

to leave because of the artillery? 5

'Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?' I asked.

'Yes.'

Then they'll fly.'

86 OLDMANATTHEBRIDGE 'Yes, certainly they'll fly. But the others. It's better not to

think about the others/ he said.

'Ifyou are rested I would go/ I urged. 'Get up and try to

walk now.'

'Thank you/ he said and got to his feet, swayed from side

to side and then sat down, backwards in the du!st.

'I was taking care of animals/ he said dully, but no longer to me. 'I was only taking care of animals.'

There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a

grey overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not

up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after them-

selves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.

ON THE QUAI AT SMYRNA

THE strange thing was, he said, how they screamed every

night at midnight. I do not know why they screamed at thc*t

time. We were in the harbour and they were all on. the pier and at midnight they started screaming. We used to turn the

searchlight on them to quiet them. That always did the trick.

We'd run the searchlight up and down over them two or

three times and they stopped it. One time I was senior officer

on the pier and a Turkish officer came up to me in a frightful

rage because one of our sailors had been most insulting to

him. So I told him the fellow would be sent on ship and be

most severely punished. I asked him to point him out. So he

pointed out a gunner's mate, most inoffensive chap. Said

he'd been most frightfully and repeatedly insulting; talking to me through an interpreter. I couldn't imagine how the

gunner's mate knew enough Turkish to be insulting. I called

him over and said, 'And just in case you should have spoken to any Turkish officers.'

'I haven't spoken to any of them, sir.'

'I'm quite sure of it,' I said, 'but you'd best go on board

ship and not come ashore again for the rest ofthe day.' Then I told the Turk the man was being sent on board

ship and would be most severely dealt with. Oh, most

rigorously. He felt topping about it. Great friends we were.

The worst, he said, were the women with dead babies. You couldn't get the women to give up their dead babies.

They'd have babies dead for six days. Wouldn't give them

up. Nothing you could do. about it. Had to take them away finally. Then there was an old lady, most extraordinary case.

I told it to a doctor and he said I was lying. We were clear-

ing them off the pier, had to clear off the dead ones, and this

old woman was lying on a sort of litter. They said, 'Will you have a look at her, sir?' So I had a look at her and just then

she died and went absolutely stiff. Her legs drew up and she

drew up from the waist and went quite rigid. Exactly as

93

94 ON THE QUAIAT SMYRNA

though she had been dead over night. She was quite dead

and absolutely rigid. I told a medical chap about it and he

told me it was impossible.

^ They were all out there on the pier and it wasn't at all like

an earthquake or that sort of thing because they never knew about the Turk. They never knew what the old Turk would do. You remember when they ordered us not to come in to

take off any more? I had the wind up when we came in that

morning. He had any amount of batteries and could have

blown us clean out of the water. We were going to come in,

run close along the pier, let go the front and rear anchors and then shell the Turkish quarter ofthe town. They would have

blown us out of water but we would have blown the town

simply to hell. They just fired a few blank charges at us as

we came in. Kemal came down and sacked the Turkish com- mander. For exceeding his authority or some such thing.

He got a bit above himself. It would have been the hell of a

mess.

You remember the harbour. There were plenty of nice

things floating around in it. That was the only time in my life I got so I dreamed about things. You didn't mind the

women who were having babies as you did those with the

dead ones. They had them all right. Surprising how few

of them died. You just covered them over with something and let them go to it. They'd always pick out the darkest

place in the hold to have them. None of them minded any-

thing once they got off the pier.

The Greeks were nice chaps too. When they evacuated

they had all their baggage animals they couldn't take off

with them so theyjust broke their forelegs and dumped them into the shallow water. All those mules with their forelegs

broken pushed over into the shallow water. It was all a

pleasant business. My word, yes, a most pleasant business.

IN OUR TIME

Everybody was drunk. The whole battery was drunk going along the

road in the dark. We were going to the Champagne. The lieutenant

kept riding his horse out into thefields and saying to him, Tm drunk, I

tellyou, mon vioux. Oh, I am so soused'. We went along the road all

night in the dark and the adjutant kept riding up alongside my kitchen

and saying, '

You mustput it out. It is dangerous. It will be observed* .

We werefifty kilometresfrom thefront but the adjutant worried about

thefire in my kitchen. It wasfunny going along that road. That was

when I was a kitchen corporal.

INDIAN CAMP

AT the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting. Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the

Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle

George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle

George. The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oar-

locks of the other boat quite a way ahead ofthem in the mist.

The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back

with his father's arm around him. It was cold on the water.

The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard,

but the other boat moved farther ahead in the mist all

the time.

'Where are we going. Dad?' Nick asked.

'Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.'

'Oh/ said Nick.

Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle

George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian

95

96 INDIAN CAMP

pulled the boat way up on the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars.

They walked up from the beach through a meadow that

was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and fol-

lowed a trail that led to the logging road thatran back into

the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the

timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian

stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walked on

along the road.

They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-

peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest

the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She

had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old

women in the camp had been helping her. The men had

moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke out of

range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and

the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into

the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a

quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an

axe three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.

Nick's father ordered some water to be put on the stove,

and while it was heating he spoke to Nick.

'This lady is going to have a baby, Nick,' he said.

'I know, 5

said Nick.

'You don't know,' said his father. 'Listen to me. What she

is going through is called being in labour. The baby wants

to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are

trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams.'

INDIAN CAMP 97

'I see,' Nick said.

Just then the woman cried out.

'Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to make her

stop screaming?' asked Nick. .

'No. I haven't any anaesthetic,' his father said. 'But her

screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are not important.' The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the

water was hot. Nick's father went into the kitchen and

poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a

basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

'Those must boil,' he said, and began to scrub his hands in

the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father's hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands

very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

'You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first,

but sometimes they're not. When they're not they make a

lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I'll have to operate on this lady. We'll know in a little while.'

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

'Pull back that quilt, will you, George?' he said. 'I'd

rather not touch it.'

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three

Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on

the arm and Uncle George said, 'Damn squaw bitch!' and

the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it

breathe and handed it to the old woman.

'See, it's a boy, Nick,' he said. 'How do you like being an

interne?'

98 INDIAN CAMP Nick said, 'All right'. He was looking away so as not to

see what his father was doing. 'There. That gets it,' said his father and put something

ijito the basin.

Nick cjidn't look at it.

'Now,' his father said, 'there's some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I'm going to

sew up the incision I made.'

Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three

Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin out in the kitchen.

Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled

reminiscently. Til put some peroxide on that, George,' the doctor said.

He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and

her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not

know what had become of the baby or anything. Til be back in the morning,' the doctor said, standing up.

'The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she'll

bring everything we need.'

He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are

in the dressing room after a game. 'That's one for the medical journal, George,' he said.

'Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with

nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.'

Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his

arm.

'Oh, you're a great man, all right,' he said.

'Ought to have a look at the proud father. They're usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs,' the doctor said. 'I

must say he took it all pretty quietly.'

He pulled back the blanket from the Indian's head. His

hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower

bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian

lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut

INDIAN CAMP 99

from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left

arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

'Take Nick out of the shanty, George,' the doctor said.

There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the- door of

the kitchen, h*ad a good view of the upper bunk when his

father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian's head back.

It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked

along the logging road back toward the lake.

'I'm terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie,' said his

father, all his post-operative exhilaration gone. 'It was an

awful mess to put you through.' 'Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?'

Nick asked.

'No, that was very, very exceptional.'

'Why did he kill himself, Daddy?' 'I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess.'

'Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?' 'Not very many, Nick.'

'Do many women?'

'Hardly ever.'

'Don't they ever?'

'Oh, yes. They do sometimes.'

'Daddy?' 'Yes.'

'Where did Uncle George go?'

'He'll turn up all right.'

'Is dying hard, Daddy?' 'No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.'

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father

rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass

jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand

in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning. In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the

boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would

never die.

Minarets stuck up in the rain out of Adrianople across the mudflats.

The carts were jammed for thirty miles along the Karagatch road.

Water buffalo and cattle were hauling carts through the mud. No end

and no beginning. Just carts loaded with everything they owned.

The old men and women, soaked through, walked along keeping the

cattle moving. The Maritza was running yellow almost up to the

bridge. Carts were jammed solid on the bridge with camels bobbing

along through them. Greek cavalry herded along the procession.

Women and kids were in the carts couched with mattressesy mirrors,

sewing machines, bundles. There was a woman having a kid with a

young girl holding a blanket over her and crying. Scared sick looking

at it. It rained all through the evacuation.

THE DOCTOR AND THE DOCTOR'S WIFE

DICK BOULTON came from the Indian camp to cut up logs

for Nick's father. He brought his son Eddy and another

Indian named Billy Tabeshaw with him. They came in

through the back gate out of the woods, Eddy carrying the

long cross-cut saw. It flopped over his shoulder and made a

musical sound as he walked. Billy Tabeshaw carried two

big cant-hooks. Dick had three axes under his arm.

He turned and shut the gate. The others went on ahead of

him down to the lake shore where the logs were buried in the

sand.

The logs had been lost from the big log booms that were

towed down the lake to the mill by the steamer Magic. They had drifted up on to the beach and if nothing were done about them sooner or later the crew ofthe Magic would come

along the shore in a rowboat, spot the logs, drive an iron spike with a ring on it into the end ofeach one and then tow them out into the lake to make a new boom. But the lumbermen

might never come for them because a few logs were not worth

100

THE DOCTOR AND THE DOCTORS WIFEioi

the price of a crew to gather them. If no one came for them

they would be left to waterlog and rot on the beach.

Nick's father always assumed that this was what would

happen, and hired the Indians to come down from the camp and cut the logs up with the cross-cut saw and split them with

a wedge to make cord wood and chunks for the open fire-

place. Dick Boulton walked around past the cottage down to

the lake. There were four big beech logs lying almost buried

in the sand. Eddy hung the saw up by one of its handles in

the crotch of a tree. Dick put the three axes down on the

little dock. Dick was a half-breed and many of the farmers

around the lake believed he was really a white man. He was

very lazy but a great worker once he was started. He took a

plug of tobacco out of his pocket, bit off a chew and spoke in Ojibway to Eddy and Billy Tabeshaw.

They sunk the ends of their cant-hooks into one of the

logs and swung against it to loosen it in the sand. They swung their weight against the shafts of the cant-hooks. The

log moved in the sand. Dick Boulton turned to Nick's father.

'Well, Doc,' he said, 'that's a nice lot of timber you've stolen.'

'Don't talk that way, Dick,' the doctor said. 'It's drift-

wood.'

Eddy and Billy Tabeshaw had rocked the log out of the

wet sand and rolled it toward the water.

Tut it right in,' Dick Boulton shouted.

'What are you doing that for?' asked the doctor.

'Wash it off. Clean off the sand on account of the saw. I

want to see who it belongs to,' Dick said.

The log was just awash in the lake. Eddy and Billy Tabe-

shaw leaned on their cant-hooks sweating in the sun. Dick

kneeled down in the sand and looked at the mark of the

sealer's hammer in the wood at the end of the log.

'It belongs to White and McNally, 5 he said, standing up

and brushing off his trousers knees.

The doctor was very uncomfortable.

102 THE DOCTOR AND THE DOCTOR'S WIFE

'You'd better not saw it up then, Dick/ he said, shortly.

'Don't get huffy, Doc,' said Dick. 'Don't get huffy. I

don't care who you steal from. It's none of my business.'

i

'If you think the logs are stolen, leave them alone and take

your tools back to the camp,' the doctor said. His face was

red. r

'Don't go off at half cock, Doc,' Dick said. He spat tobacco

juice on the log. It slid off, thinning in the water. 'You

know they're stolen as well as I do. It don't make any difference to me.'

'All right. If you think the logs are stolen, take your stuff

and get out.'

'Now, Doc '

'Take your stuff and get out.'

'Listen, Doc.'

'If you call me Doc once again, I'll knock your eye teeth

down your throat.'

'Oh, no, you won't, Doc. 5

Dick Boulton looked at the doctor. Dick was a big man. He knew how big a man he was. He liked to get into fights.

He was happy. Eddy and Billy Tabeshaw leaned on their

cant-hooks and looked at the doctor. The doctor chewed the

beard on his lower lip and looked at Dick Boulton. Then he

turned away and walked up the hill to the cottage. They could see from his back how angry he was. They all watched him walk up the hill and go inside the cottage.

Dick said something in Ojibway. Eddy laughed but Billy

Tabeshaw looked very serious. He did not understand Eng- lish but he had sweat all the time the row was going on. He was fat with only a few hairs of moustache like a Chinaman. He picked up the two cant-hooks. Dick picked up the axes

and Eddy took the saw down from the tree. They started off

and walked up past the cottage and out the back gate into the

woods. Dick left the gate open. Billy Tabeshaw went back

and fastened it. They were gone through the woods.

In the cottage the doctor, sitting on the bed in his room,

THE DOCTOR AND THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 103

saw a pile of medical journals on the floor by the bureau.

They were still in their wrappers unopened. It irritated him.

'Aren't you going back to work, dear?' asked the doctor's

wife from the room where she was lying with the blinds

drawn.

'No!'

'Was anything the matter?'

'I had a row with Dick Boulton.'

'Oh/ said his wife. 'I hope you didn't lose your temper,

Henry.'

'No,' said the doctor.

jjthat he who ruleth his spirit is greater than

taketh, a city,' said his wife. She was a Christian

Scientist. Her Bible, her copy of Science and Health and her

Quarterly were on a table beside her bed in the darkened

room.

Her husband did not answer. He was sitting on his bed

now, cleaning a shotgun. He pushed the magazine full of

the heavy yellow shells and pumped them out again. They were scattered on the bed.

'Henry,' his wife called. Then paused a moment. 'Henry!'

'Yes,' the doctor said.

'You didn't say anything to Boulton to anger him, did you?'

'No,' said the doctor.

'What was the trouble about, dear?'

'Nothing much.'

'Tell me, Henry. Please don't try and keep anything from

me. What was the trouble about?'

'Well, Dick owes me a lot of money for pulling his squaw

through pneumonia and I guess he wanted a row so he

wouldn't have to take it out in work.'

His wife was silent. The doctor wiped his gun carefully

with a rag. He pushed the shells back in against the spring of the magazine. He sat with the gun on his knees. He was

very fond of it. Then he heard his wife's voice from the

darkened room.

104 THE DOCTOR AND THE DOCTOR'S WIFE

'Dear, I don't think, I really don't think that anyone would really do a thing like that.'

'No?' the doctor said.

'No. I can't really believe that anyone would do a thing of that sort intentionally.'

The doctor stood up and put the shotgun in the corner

behind the dresser.

'Are you going out, dear?' his wife said.

'I think I'll go for a walk, 3

the doctor said.

'If you see Nick, dear, will you tell him his mother wants

to see him?' his wife said.

The doctor went out on the porch. The screen door

slammed behind him. He heard his wife catch her breath

when the door slammed.

'Sorry,' he said, outside her window with the blinds

drawn.

'It's all right, dear,' she said.

He walked in the heat out the gate and along the path into

the hemlock woods. It was cool in the woods even on such a

hot day. He found Nick sitting with his back against a tree,

reading. 'Your mother wants you to come and see her,' the doctor

said.

'I want to go with you,' Nick said.

His father looked down at him.

'All right. Come on, then,' his father said. 'Give me. the

book, I'll put it in my pocket.' 'I know where there's black squirrels, Daddy,' Nick said.

'All right/ said his father. 'Let's go there.'

We were in a garden at Mons. Young Buckley came in with hispatrol

from across the river. The first German I saw climbed up over the

garden wall. We waited till he got one leg over and then potted him.

He had so much equipment on and looked awfully surprised andfeil down into the garden. Then three more came over farther down the

wall. We shot* them. They all came just like that.

THE END OF SOMETHING

IN the old days Hortons Bay was a lumbering town. No one

who lived in it was out ofsound of the big saws in the mill by the lake. Then one year there were no more logs to make lumber. The lumber schooners came into the bay and were

loaded with the cut of the mill that stood stacked in the yard.

All the piles of lumber were carried away. The big mill

building had all its machinery that was removable taken out

and hoisted on board one of the schooners by the men who had worked in the mill. The schooner moved out of the bay toward the open lake carrying the two great saws, the travel-

ling carriage that hurled the logs against the revolving,

circular saws, and all the rollers, wheels, belts and iron piled on a hull-deep load of lumber. Its open hold covered with

canvas and lashed tight, the sails of the schooner filled and

it moved out into the open lake, carrying with it everything that had made the mill a mill and Hortons Bay a town.

The one-story bunk houses, the eating-house, the company store, the mill offices, and the big mill itself stood deserted in

the acres of sawdust that covered the swampy meadow by the shore of the bay. Ten years later there was nothing of the mill left except

the broken white limestone ofits foundations showing through the swampy second growth as Nick and Marjorie rowed

along the shore. They were trolling along the edge of the

channel bank where the bottom dropped off suddenly from

io6 THE END OF SOMETHING

sandy shallows to twelve feet ofdark water. They were trolling

on their way to the point to set night lines for rainbow trout.

'There's our old ruin, Nick,' Marjorie said.

Nick, rowing, looked at the white stone in the green trees.

'There it is,' he said.

'Can you remember when it was a mill?' Marjorie asked.

'I can just remember,' Nick said.

'It seems more like a castle,' Marjorie said.

Nick said nothing. They rowed on out of sight of the mill,

following the shore line. Then Nick cut across the bay.

'They aren't striking,' he said.

'No,' Marjorie said. She was intent on the rod all the time

they trolled, even when she talked. She loved to fish. She

loved to fish with Nick.

Close beside the boat a big trout broke the surface of the

water. Nick pulled hard on one oar so the boat would turn

and the bait spinning far behind would pass where the trout

was feeding. As the trout's back came up out ofthe water the

minnows jumped wildly. They sprinkled the surface like a

handful of shot thrown into the water. Another trout broke

water, feeding on the other side of the boat.

'They're feeding,' Marjorie said.

'But they won't strike,' Nick said.

He rowed the boat around to troll past both the feeding

fish, then headed it for the point. Marjorie did not reel in

until the boat touched the shore.

They pulled the boat up the beach and Nick lifted out a

pail of live perch. The perch swam in the water in the pail.

Nick caught three of them with his hands and cut their heads

off and skinned them while Marjorie chased with her hands

in the bucket, finally caught a perch, cut its head off and skinned it. Nick looked at her fish.

'You don't want to take the ventral fin out,' he said. Til

be all right for bait but it's better with the ventral fin in.'

He hooked each of the skinned perch through the tail.

There were two hooks attached to a leader on each rod.

THE END OF SOMETHING 107

Then Marjorie rowed the boat out over the channel-bank,

holding the line in her teeth, and looking toward Nick, who stood on the shore holding the rod and letting the line run

out from the reel.

'That's about right,' he called.

'Should I let it drop?' Marjorie called back, holding the

line in her hand.

'Sure. Let it go.' Marjorie dropped the line overboard and watched the baits go down through the water.

She came in with the boat and ran the second line out the

same way. Each time Nick set a heavy slab of driftwood

across the butt of the rod to hold it solid and propped it up at an angle with a small slab. He reeled in the slack line so

the line ran taut out to where the bait rested on the sandy floor of the channel and set the click on the reel. When a

trout, feeding on the bottom, took the bait it would run with

it, taking line out of the reel in a rush and making the reel

sing with the click on.

Marjorie rowed up the point a little way so she would not

disturb the line. She pulled hard on the oars and the boat

went way up the beach. Little waves came in with it. Mar-

jorie stepped out of the boat and Nick pulled the boat high

up the beach.

'What's the matter, Nick?' Marjorie asked.

'I don't know, 5 Nick said, getting wood for a fire.

They made a fire with driftwood. Marjorie went to the

boat and brought a blanket. The evening breeze blew the

smoke toward the point, so Marjorie spread the blanket out

between the fire and the lake.

Marjorie sat on the blanket with her back to the fire and

waited for Nkk. He came over and sat down beside her on

the blanket. In back of them was the close second-growth timber of the point and in front was the bay with the mouth ofHortons Creek. It was not quite dark. The fire-light went

as far as the water. They could both see the two steel rods

at an angle over the dark water. The fire glinted on the reels.

io8 THE END OF SOMETHING

Marjorie unpacked the basket of supper. 'I don't feel like eating,' said Nick.

'Come on and eat, Nick.'

'All right.'

They ate without talking, and watched the two rods and

the fire-light in the water.

'There's going to be a moon to-night,' said Nick. He looked

across the bay to the hills that were beginning to sharpen

against the sky. Beyond the hills he knew the moon was

coming up. 'I know it,' Marjorie said happily. 'You know everything,' Nick said.

'Oh, Nick, please cut it out! Please, please don't be that

way!' 'I can't help it,' Nick said. 'You do. You know every-

thing. That's the trouble. You know you do.'

Marjorie did not say anything. 'I've taught you everything. You know you do. What

don't you know, anyway?'

'Oh, shut up/ Marjorie said. 'There comes the moon.'

They sat on the blanket without touching each other and

watched the moon rise.

'You don't have to talk silly/ Marjorie said. 'What's really

the matter?'

'I don't know.'

'Of course you know.'

'No, I don't.'

*Go on and say it.'

Nick looked on at the moon, coming up over the hills.

'It isn't fun any more.'

He was afraid to look at Marjorie. Then he looked at her.

She sat there with her back toward him. He looked at her

back. 'It isn't fun any more. Not any of it.'

She didn't say anything. He went on. 'I feel as though

everything was gone to hell inside of me. I don't know,

Marge. I don't know what to say.'

THE END OF SOMETHING 109

He looked on at her back.

'Isn't love any fun?' Marjorie said.

'No,' Nick said. Marjorie stood up. Nick sat there, his

head in his hands.

'I'm going to take the boat,' Marjorie called to him. 'You can walk back around the point.'

'All right,' Nick said. Til push the boat off for you.' 'You don't need to,' she said. She was afloat in the boat on

the water with the moonlight on it. Nick went back and lay down with his face in the blanket by the fire. He could hear

Marjorie rowing on the water.

He lay there for a long time. He lay there while he heard

Bill come into the clearing walking around through the

woods. He felt Bill coming up to the fire. Bill didn't touch

him, either.

'Did she go all right?' Bill said.

'Yes,' Nick said, lying, his face on the blanket.

'Have a scene?'

'No, there wasn't any scene.'

'How do you feel?'

'Oh, go away, Bill! Go away for a while.'

Bill selected a sandwich from the lunch basket and walked

over to have a look at the rods.

// was afrightfully hot day. We'djammed an absolutelyperfect barri-

cade across the bridge. It was simply priceless. A big old wrought-

iron gratingfrom thefront ofa house. Too heavy to lift andyou could

shot through it and they would have to climb over it. It was abso-

lutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from

forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out alone and worked

on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle. Their officers were very

jine. We werefrightfully put out when we heard theflank had gone,

and we had to fall back.

THE THREE-DAY BLOW

THE rain stopped as Nick turned into the road that went up through the orchard. The fruit had been picked and the fall

wind blew through the bare trees. Nick stopped and picked

up a Wagner apple from beside the road, shiny in the brown

grass from the rain. He put the apple in the pocket of his

Mackinaw coat.

The road came out of the orchard on to the top of the hill.

There was the cottage, the porch bare, smoke coming from the

chimney. In back was the garage, the chicken coop and the

second-growth timber like a hedge against the woods behind.

The big trees swayed far over in the wind as he watched. It

was the first of the autumn storms.

As Nick crossed the open field above the orchard the door

of the cottage opened and Bill came out. He stood on the

porch looking out.

'Well, Wemedge?' he said.

'Hey, Bill,' Nick said, coming up the steps.

They stood together, looking out across the country, down over the orchard, beyond the road, across the lower fields and the woods of the point to the lake. The wind was blowing

straight down the lake. They could see the surf along Ten Mile point.

'She's blowing,' Nick said.

no

THE THREE-DAY BLOW m 'She'll blow like that for three days,' Bill said.

'Is your dad in?' Nick said.

'No. He's out with the gun. Come on in.'

Nick went inside the cottage. There was a big fire in thp

fireplace. The wind made it roar. Bill shut the door.

'Have a drink?' he said.

He went out to the kitchen and came back with two glasses

and a pitcher of water. Nick reached the whisky bottle from

the shelf above the fireplace.

'All right?' he said.

'Good,' said Bill.

They sat in front of the fire and drank the Irish whisky and

water.

'It's got a swell, smoky taste,' Nick said, and looked at the

fire through the glass.

'That's the peat,' Bill said.

'You can't get peat into liquor,' Nick said.

'That doesn't make any difference,' Bill said.

'You ever seen any peat?' Nick asked.

'No,' said Bill.

'Neither have I,' Nick said.

His shoes, stretched out on the hearth, began to steam in

front of the fire.

'Better take your shoes off,' Bill said.

'I haven't got any socks on.'

'Take them off and dry them and I'll get you some,' Bill

said. He went upstairs into the loft and Nick heard him

walking about overhead. Upstairs was open under the roof

and was where Bill and his father and he, Nick, sometimes

slept. In back was a dressing room. They moved the cots

back out of the rain and covered them with rubber blankets.

Bill came down with a pair of heavy wool socks.

'It's getting too late to go around without socks,' he said.

'I hate to start them again,' Nick said. He pulled the socks

on and slumped back in the chair, putting his feet up on the

screen in front of the fire.

ii2 THE THREE-DAY BLOW 'You'll dent in the screen/ Bill said. Nick swung his feet

over to the side of the fireplace.

'Got anything to read?' he asked.

'Only the paper.'" 'What did the Cards do?'

'Dropped a double header to the Giants.'

'That ought to cinch it for them.'

'It's a gift,' Bill said. 'As long as McGraw can buy every

good ball player in the league there's nothing to it.'

'He can't buy them all/ Nick said.

'He buys all the ones he wants/ Bill said. 'Or he makes

them discontented so they have to trade them to him.'

'Like Heinie Zim/ Nick agreed.

'That bonehead will do him a lot of good.' Bill stood up. 'He can hit/ Nick offered. The heat from the fire was

baking his legs.

'He's a sweet fielder, too/ Bill said. 'But he loses ball

games.'

'Maybe that's what McGraw wants him for/ Nick

suggested.

'Maybe/ Bill agreed. 'There's more always to it than we know about/ Nick said.

'Of course. But we've got pretty good dope for being so

far away.' 'Like how much better you can pick them if you don't see

the horses.'

'That's it.'

Bill reached down the whisky bottle. His big hand went

all the way around it. He poured the whisky into the glass

Nick held out.

'How much water?'

'Just the same.'

He sat down on the floor beside Nick's chair.

'It's good when the fall storms come, isn't it?' Nick said.

'It's swell.'

THE THREE-DAY BLOW 113.

'It's the best time of year, 5 Nick said.

'Wouldn't it be hell to be in town?' Bill said.

'I'd like to see the World Series,' Nick said.

'Well, they're always in New York or Philadelphia now/ Bill said. 'That doesn't do us any good.'

'I wonder if the Cards will ever win a pennant?' 'Not in our lifetime,' Bill said.

'Gee, they'd go crazy,' Nick said.

'Do you remember when they got going that once before

they had the train wreck?'

'Boy!' Nick said, remembering. Bill reached over to the table under the window for the

book that lay there, face down, where he had put it when he

went to the door. He held his glass in one hand and the book in the other, leaning back against Nick's chair.

'What are you reading?' 'Richard Feverel'

'I couldn't get into it.'

'It's all right,' Bill said. 'It ain't a bad book, Wemedge.' 'What else have you got I haven't read?' Nick asked.

'Did you read the Forest Lovers?'

'Yup. That's the one where they go to bed every night with the naked sword between them.'

'That's a good book, Wemedge.' 'It's a swell book. What I couldn't ever understand was

what good the sword would do. It would have to stay edge

up all the time because if it went over flat you could roll right

over it and it wouldn't make any trouble.'

'It's a symbol,' Bill said.

'Sure,' said Nick, 'but it isn't practical.'

'Did you ever read Fortitude?

'It's fine,' Nick said. 'That's a real book. That's where his

old man is after him all the time. Have you got any more by

Walpole?' ,

'The Dark Forest,' Bill said. 'It's about Russia.'

'What does he know about Russia?' Nick asked.

H

ii4 THE THREE-DAY BLOW 'I don't know. You can't ever tell about those guys.

Maybe he was there when he was a boy. He's got a lot of

dope on it.'

Td like to meet him,' Nick said.

'I'd like to meet Chesterton,' Bill said.

'I wist he was here now,' Nick said. 'We'd take him fishing

to the 'Voix to-morrow.'

'I wonder if he'd like to go fishing,' Bill said.

'Sure/ said Nick. 'He must be about the best guy there is.

Do you remember the Flying Inn?

'If an angel out of heaven

Gives you something else to drink,

Thank him for his kind intentions;

Go and pour them down the sink!'

'That's right,' said Nick. 'I guess he's a better guy than

Walpole.'

'Oh, he's a better guy, all right,' Bill said.

'But Walpole's a better writer.'

'I don't know,' Nick said. 'Chesterton's a classic.' *

Walpole's a classic, too,' Bill insisted.

'I wish we had them both here,' Nick said. 'We'd take

them both fishing to the 'Voix to-morrow.'

'Let's get drunk,' Bill said.

'All right,' Nick agreed.

'My old man won't care,' Bill said.

'Are you sure?' said Nick.

'I know it,' Bill said.

'I'm a little drunk now,' Nick said.

'You aren't drunk,' Bill said.

He got up from the floor and reached for the whisky bottle.

Nick held out his glass. His eyes fixed on it while Bill poured. Bill poured the glass half full of whisky. 'Put in your own water,' he said. 'There's just one more

shot.'

'Got any more?' Nick asked.

THE THREE-DAY BLOW 115

'There's plenty more but dad only likes me to drink what's

open. 5

'Sure, 5

said Nick.

'He says opening bottles is what makes drunkards, 5

Bili

explained. 'That's right,

5

said Nick. He was impressed. He had never

thought ofthat before. He had always thought it was solitary

drinking that made drunkards.

'How is your dad? 5

he asked respectfully.

'He's all right,' Bill said. 'He gets a little wild sometimes.'

'He's a swell guy,' Nick said. He poured water into his

glass out of the pitcher. It mixed slowly with the whisky. There was more whisky than water.

'You bet your life he is,' Bill said.

'My old man's all right,' Nick said.

'You're damn right he is,' said Bill.

'He claims he's never taken a drink in his life,' Nick said, as

though announcing a scientific fact.

'Well, he's a doctor. My old man's a painter. That's

different.'

'He's missed a lot,' Nick said sadly.

'You can't tell,' Bill said. 'Everything's got its compensa- tions.'

'He says he's missed a lot himself, 5 Nick confessed.

'Well, dad's had a tough time,' Bill said.

'It all evens up, 5 Nick said.

They sat looking into the fire and thinking of this profound truth.

Til get a chunk from the back porch, 5 Nick said. He had

noticed while looking into the fire that the fire was dying down. Also he wished to show he could hold his liquor and

be practical. Even if his father had never touched a drop Bill was not going to get him drunk before he himself was

drunk.

'Bring one ofthe big beech chunks, 3

Bill said. He was also

being consciously practical.

n6 THE THREE-DAY BLOW Nick came in with the log through the kitchen and in

passing knocked a pan off the kitchen table. He laid the log down and picked up the pan. It had contained dried apricots, c oaking in water. He carefully picked up all the apricots off

the floor, some of them had gone under the stove, and put them back in the pan. He dipped some more water on to

them from the pail by the table. He felt quite proud of

himself. He had been thoroughly practical.

He came in carrying the log and Bill got up from the chair

and helped him put it on the fire.

That's a swell log, 5 Nick said.

Td been saving it for the bad weather,' Bill said. 'A log like that will burn all night.'

'There'll be coals left to start the fire in the morning,' Nick

said.

'That's right,' Bill agreed. They were conducting the

conversation on a high plane. 'Let's have another drink,' Nick said.

'I think there's another bottle open in the locker,' Bill said.

He kneeled down in the corner in front of the locker and

brought out a square-faced bottle.

'It's Scotch,' he said.

Til get some more water,' Nick said. He went out into

the kitchen again. He filled the pitcher with the dipper,

dipping cold spring water from the pail. On his way back

to the living room he passed a mirror in the dining room and looked in it. His face looked strange. He smiled at the face

in the mirror and it grinned back at him. He winked at it

and went on. It was not his face but it didn't make any difference.

Bill had poured out the drinks.

'That's an awfully big shot,' Nick said.

'Not for us, Wemedge,' Bill said.

'What'll we drink to?' Nick asked, holding up the glass.

'Let's drink to fishing,' Bill said.

'All right,' Nick said. 'Gentlemen, I give you fishing/

THE THREE-DAY BLOW 117

'All fishing,' Bill said. 'Everywhere.'

'Fishing,' Nick said. 'That's what we drink to.'

'It's better than baseball,' Bill said.

'There isn't any comparison,' said Nick. 'How did we eve*

get talking about baseball?'

'It was a mistake,' Bill said. 'Baseball is a game for louts.'

They drank all that was in their glasses.

'Now let's drink to Chesterton.'

'And Walpole,' Nick interposed.

Nick poured out the liquor. Bill poured in the water.

They looked at each other. They felt very fine.

'Gentlemen,' Bill said, 'I give you Chesterton and Walpole.' 'Exactly, gentlemen,' Nick said.

They drank. Bill filled up the glasses. They sat down in

the big chairs in front of the fire.

'You were very wise, Wemedge,' Bill said.

'What do you mean?' asked Nick.

'To bust off that Marge business,' Bill said.

T guess so,' said Nick.

'It was the only thing to do. Ifyou hadn't, by now you'd be

backhome working trying to getenough money to get married .

'

Nick said nothing. 'Once a man's married he's absolutely bitched,' Bill went

on. 'He hasn't got anything more. Nothing. Not a damn

thing. He's done for. You've seen the guys that get married.'

Nick said nothing. 'You can tell them/ Bill said. 'They get this sort of fat

married look. They're done for.'

'Sure,' said Nick.

'It was probably bad busting it off,' Bill said. 'But you

always fall for somebody else and then it's all right. Fall

for them but don't let them ruin you.'

'Yes,' said Nick.

'If you'd have married her you would have had to marry the whole family. Remember her mother and that guy she

married '

n8 THE THREE-DAY BLOW Nick nodded.

'Imagine having them around the house all the time and

going to Sunday dinners at their house, and having them

9ver to dinner and her telling Marge all the time what to

do and how to act.'

Nick sat quiet.

'You came out of it damned well/ Bill said. 'Now she can

marry somebody of her own sort and settle down and be

happy. You can't mix oil and water and you can't mix that

sort of thing any more than if I'd marry Ida that works for

Strattons. She'd probably like it, too.'

Nick said nothing. The liquor had all died out of him and

left him alone. Bill wasn't there. He wasn't sitting in front

of the fire or going fishing to-morrow with Bill and his dad or anything. He wasn't drunk. It was all gone. All he knew was that he had once had Marjorie and that he had lost her.

She was gone and he had sent her away. That was all that

mattered. He might never see her again. Probably he never

would. It was all gone, finished.

'Let's have another drink,' Nick said.

Bill poured it out. Nick splashed in a little water.

'If you'd gone on that way we wouldn't be here now,' Bill said.

That was true. His original plan had been to go down home and get a job. Then he had planned to stay in Charle-

voix all winter so he could be near Marge. Now he did not

know what he was going to do.

'Probably we wouldn't even be going fishing to-morrow,' Bill said. 'You had the right dope, all right.'

'I couldn't help it,' Nick said.

'I know. That's the way it works out,' Bill said.

'All of a sudden everything was over,' Nick said. 'I don't

know why it was. I couldn't help it. Just like when the

three-day blows come now and rip all the leaves off the

trees.'

'Well, it's over. That's the point,' Bill said.

THE THREE-DAY BLOW n^

'It was my fault/ Nick said.

'It doesn't make any difference whose fault it was/ Bill

said.

'No, I suppose not/ Nick said.

The big thing was that Marjorie was gone and that pro-

bably he would never see her again. He had talked to her

about how they would go to Italy together and the fun they would have. Places they would be together. It was all gone now.

'So long as it's over that's all that matters/ Bill said. 'I tell

you, Wemedge, I was worried while it was going on. You

played it right. I understand her mother is sore as hell.

She told a lot of people you were engaged.' 'We weren't engaged/ Nick said.

'It was all around that you were.'

'I can't help it/ Nick said. 'We weren't.'

'Weren't you going to get married?' Bill asked.

'Yes. But we weren't engaged/ Nick said.

'What's the difference?' Bill asked judicially.

'I don't know. There's a difference.'

'I don't see it/ said Bill.

'All right/ said Nick. 'Let's get drunk.'

'All right/ Bill said. 'Let's get really drunk.'

'Let's get drunk and then go swimming/ Nick said.

He drank off his glass.

Tm as sorry as hell about her but what could I do?' he

said. 'You know what her mother was like!'

'She was terrible/ Bill said.

'All of a sudden it was over/ Nick said. 'I oughtn't to talk

about it.'

'You aren't/ Bill said. 'I talked about it and now I'm

through. We won't ever speak about it again. You don't

want to think about it. You might get back into it again.'

Nick had not thought about that. It had seemed so

absolute. That was a thought. That made him feel better,

'Sure/ he said. 'There's always that danger.'

120 THE THREE-DAY BLOW He felt happy now. There was not anything that was

irrevocable. He might go into town Saturday night. To-

day was Thursday. 'There's always a chance/ he said.

'You'll have to watch yourself/ Bill said.

Til watch myself/ he said.

He felt happy. Nothing was finished. Nothing was ever

lost. He would go into town on Saturday. He felt lighter,

as he had felt before Bill started to talk about it. There was

always a way out.

'Let's take the guns and go down to the point and look for

your dad/ Nick said.

'All right.'

Bill took down the two shotguns from the rack on the wall.

He opened a box of shells. Nick put on his Mackinaw coat

and his shoes. His shoes were stiff from the drying. He was

still quite drunk but his head was clear.

'How do you feel?' Nick asked.

'Swell. I've just got a good edge on.' Bill was buttoning up his sweater.

'There's no use getting drunk.'

'No. We ought to get outdoors.'

They stepped out the door. The wind was blowing a gale.

'The birds will lie right down in the grass with this/ Nick

said.

They struck down toward the orchard.

'I saw a woodcock this morning/ Bill said.

'Maybe we'll jump him/ Nick said.

'You can't shoot in this wind/ Bill said.

Outside now the Marge business was no longer so tragic.

It was not even very important. The wind blew everything like that away.

'It's coming right off the big lake/ Nick said.

Against the wind they heard the thud of a shotgun. 'That's dad/ Bill said. 'He's down in the swamp.' 'Let's cut down that way/ Nick said.

THE THREE-DAY BLOW 121

'Let's cut across the lower meadow and see if we jump anything/ Bill said.

'All right,' Nick said.

None of it was important now. The wind blew it out of hij head. Still he could always go into town Saturday night.

It was a good' thing to have in reserve.

They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning

against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the

courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard.

ft rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut.

One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried

him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up

against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other

Jive stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the

soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When theyfired

the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his

knees.

THE BATTLER

NICK stood up. He was all right. He looked up the track at

the lights of the caboose going out of sight around the curve.

There was water on both sides of the track, then tamarack

swamp. He felt of his knee. The pants were torn and the skin was

barked. His hands were scraped and there were sand and

cinders driven up under his nails. He went over to the edge of the track down the little slope to the water and washed

his hands. He washed them carefully in the cold water,

getting the dirt out from the nails. He squatted down and

bathed his knee.

That lousy crut of a brakeman. He would get him some

day. He would know him again. That was a fine way to act.

'Come here, kid,' he said. 'I got something for you.'

He had fallen for it. What a lousy kid thing to have done.

They would never suck him in that way again. 'Come here, kid, I got something for you.' Then wham

and he lit on his hands and knees beside the track.

Nick rubbed his eye. There was a big bump coming up.

122

THE BATTLER 123

He would have a black eye, all right. It ached already. That son of a crutting brakeman.

He touched the bump over his eye with his fingers. Oh, well, it was only a black eye. That was all he had gotten oirt

of it. Cheap at the price. He wished he could see it. Could

not see it looking into the water, though. It was dark and he

was a long way off from anywhere. He wiped his hands on

his trousers and stood up, then climbed the embankment to

the rails.

He started up the track. It was well ballasted and made

easy walking, sand and gravel packed between the ties, solid

walking. The smooth roadbed like a- causeway went on

ahead through the swamp. Nick walked along. He must get

to somewhere.

Nick had swung on to the freight train when it slowed

down for the yards outside of Walton Junction. The train,

with Nick on it, had passed through Kalkaska as it started

to get dark. Now he must be nearly to Mancelona. Three or

four miles of swamp. He stepped along the track, walking so he kept on the ballast between the ties, the swamp ghostly in the rising mist. His eye ached and he was hungry. He

kept on hiking, putting the miles of track back of him. The

swamp was all the same on both sides of the track.

Ahead there was a bridge. Nick crossed it, his boots

ringing hollow on the iron. Down below the water showed

black between the slits of ties. Nick kicked a loose spike and

it dropped into the water. Beyond the bridge were hills.

It was high and dark on both sides of the track. Up the track

Nick saw a fire.

He came up the track toward the fire carefully. It was off

to one side of the track, below the railway embankment. He had only seen the light from it. The track came out through a cut and where the fire was burning the country opened out

and fell away into woods. Nick dropped carefully down the

embankment and cut into the woods to come up to the fire

through the trees. It was a beechwood forest and the fallen

i24 THE BATTLER beechnut burrs were under his shoes as he walked between

the trees. The fire was bright now, just at the edge of the

trees. There was a man sitting by it. Nick waited behind

the tree and watched. The man looked to be alone. He was

sitting there with his head in his hands looking at the fire.

Nick stepped out and walked into the firelight.'

The man sat there looking into the fire. When Nick

stopped quite close to him he did not move.

'Hello!' Nick said.

The man looked up. 'Where did you get the shiner?

5

he said.

'A brakeman busted me.'

'Off the through freight?'

'Yes.'

'I saw the bastard,' the man said. 'He went through here

'bout an hour and a half ago. He was walking along the top of the cars slapping his arms and singing.'

'The bastard!'

'It must have made him feel good to bust you,' the man said

seriously.

Til bust him. 5

'Get him with a rock sometime when he's going through,' the man advised.

Til get him.'

'You're a tough one, aren't you?'

'No,' Nick answered.

'All you kids are tough.'

'You got to be tough,' Nick said.

'That's what I said.'

The man looked at Nick and smiled. In the firelight Nick

saw that his face was misshapen. His nose was sunken, his

eyes were slits, he had queer-shaped lips. Nick did not per- ceive all this at once, he only saw the man's face was queerly formed and mutilated. It was like putty in colour. Dead

looking in the firelight.

'Don't you like my pan?' the man asked.

THE BATTLER 125

Nick was embarrassed.

'Sure/ he said.

'Look here!' the man took off his cap. He had only one eai. It was thickened and tight againrt

the side of his head. Where the other ear should h%ve been

there was a stump. 'Ever see one like that?'

'No/ said Nick. It made him a little sick.

'I could take it/ the man said. 'Don't you think I could

take it, kid?'

'You bet!'

'They all bust their hands on me/ the little man said

'They couldn't hurt me.'

He looked at Nick. 'Sit down/ he said. 'Want to eat?'

'Don't bother/ Nick said. Tm going on to the town.'

'Listen!' the man said. 'Gall me Ad.'

'Sure!'

'Listen/ the little man said. Tm not quite right.'

'What's the matter?'

'I'm crazy.'

He put on his cap. Nick felt like laughing. 'You're all right/ he said.

'No, I'm not. I'm crazy. Listen, you ever been crazy?'

'No/ Nick said. 'How does it get you?' 'I don't know/ Ad said. 'When you got it you don't know

about it. You know me, don't you?' 'No.'

Tm Ad Francis.'

'Honest to God?'

'Don't you believe it?'

'Yes.'

Nick knew it must be true.

'You know how I beat them?'

'No/ Nick said.

'My heart's slow. It only beats forty a minute. Feel it/

Nick hesitated.

126 THE BATTLER 'Come on,' the man took hold of his hand. 'Take hold of

my wrist. Put your fingers there.'

The little man's wrist was thick and the muscles bulged *?bove the bone. Nick felt the slow pumping under his fingers.

'Got # watch?'

'No.'

'Neither have I,' Ad said. 'It ain't any good ifyou haven't

got a watch.'

Nick dropped his wrist.

'Listen,' Ad Francis said. 'Take ahold again. You count

and I'll count up to sixty.'

Feeling the slow hard throb under his fingers Nick started

to count. He heard the little man counting slowly, one, two,

three, four, five, and on aloud.

'Sixty,' Ad finished. 'That's a minute. What did you make it?'

'Forty,' Nick said.

'That's right,' Ad said happily. 'She never speeds up.' A man dropped down the railroad embankment and came

across the clearing to the fire.

'Hello, Bugs!' Ad said.

'Hello!' Bugs answered. It was a negro's voice. Nick

knew from the way he walked that he was a negro. He stood with his back to them, bending over the fire. He

straightened up. 'This is my pal Bugs,' Ad said. 'He's crazy, too.'

'Glad to meet you,' Bugs said. 'Where you say you're from?'

'Chicago,' Nick said.

'That's a fine town,' the negro said. 'I didn't catch your name.'

"Adams. Nick Adams.'

'He says he's never been crazy. Bugs,' Ad said.

'He's got a lot coming to him/ the negro said. He was

unwrapping a package by the fire.

'When are we going to eat, Bugs?' the prizefighter asked.

THE BATTLER 127

'

Right away.' 'Are you hungry, Nick?'

'Hungry as hell.'

'Hear that, Bugs?' 'I hear most ofwhat goes on.'

That ain't What I asked you.' 'Yes. I heard what the gentleman said.'

Into a skillet he was laying slices of ham. As the skillet

grew hot the grease sputtered and Bugs, crouching on long

nigger legs over the fire, turned the ham and broke eggs into

the skillet, tipping it from side to side to baste the eggs with

the hot fat.

'Will you cut some bread out of that bag. Mister Adams?'

Bugs turned from the fire.

'Sure.'

Nick reached in the bag and brought out a loaf of bread.

He cut six slices. Ad watched him and leaned forward.

'Let me take your knife, Nick,' he said.

'No, you don't,' the negro said. 'Hang on to your knife,

Mister Adams.'

The prizefighter sat back.

'Will you bring me the bread, Mister Adams?' Bugs asked.

Nick brought it over.

'Do you like to dip your bread in the ham fat?' the negro asked.

'You bet!'

'Perhaps we'd better wait until later. It's better at the

finish of the meal. Here.'

The negro picked up a slice ofham and laid it on one ofthe

pieces ofbread, then slid an egg on top of it.

'Just close that sandwich, will you, please, and give it to

Mister Francis.'

Ad took the sandwich and started eating. 'Watch out how that egg runs/ the negro warned. 'This is

for you, Mister Adams. The remainder for myself. 5

Nick bit into the sandwich. The negro was sitting opposite

iz8 THE BATTLER him beside Ad. The hot fried ham and eggs tasted

wonderful.

'Mister Adams is right hungry,' the negro said. The little

coian whom Nick knew by name as a former champion fighter

was silent. He had said nothing since the negro had spoken about the knife.

'May I offer you a slice of bread dipped right in the hot

ham fat?' Bugs said.

Thanks a lot.'

The little white man looked at Nick.

'Will you have some, Mister Adolph Francis?' Bugs offered

from the skillet.

Ad did not answer. He was looking at Nick.

'Mister Francis?' came the nigger's soft voice.

Ad did not answer. He was looking at Nick.

'I spoke to you, Mister Francis,' the nigger said softly.

Ad kept on looking at Nick. He had his cap down over his

eyes. Nick felt nervous.

'How the hell do you get that way?' came out from under

the cap sharply at Nick. 'Who the hell do you think you are?

You're a snotty bastard. You come in here where nobody asks you and eat a man's food and when he asks to borrow a

knife you get snotty.'

He glared at Nick, his face was white and his eyes almost

out of sight under the cap. 'You're a hot sketch. Who the hell asked you to butt in

here?'

'Nobody.' 'You're damn right nobody did. Nobody asked you to stay

either. You come in here and act snotty about my face and

smoke my cigars and drink my liquor and then talk snotty.

Where the hell do you think you get off?'

Nick said nothing. Ad stood up. Til tell you, you yellow-livered Chicago bastard. You're

going to get youi; can knocked off. Do you get that?'

Nick stepped back. The little man came toward him

THE BATTLER 129

slowly, stepping flat-footed forward, his left foot stepping

forward, his right dragging up to it.

'Hit me/ he moved his head. 'Try and hit me.'

'I don't want to hit you.'

'You won't get out of it that way. You're going to take a

beating, see? Come on and lead at me.'

'Cut it out,' Nick said.

'All right, then, you bastard.'

The little man looked down at Niek's feet. As he looked

down the negro, who had followed behind him as he moved

away from the fire, set himself and tapped him across the

base ofthe skull. He fell forward and Bugs dropped the cloth-

wrapped blackjack on the grass. The little man lay there,

his face in the grass. The negro picked him up, his head

hanging, and carried him to the fire. His face looked bad, the eyes open. Bugs laid him down gently.

'Will you bring me the water in the bucket, Mister Adams?' he said. 'I'm afraid I hit him just a little hard.'

The negro splashed water with his hand on the man's face

and pulled his ear gently. The eyes closed.

Bugs stood up. 'He's all right,' he said. 'There's nothing to worry about.

I'm sorry, Mister Adams.'

'It's all right.' Nick was looking down at the little man.

He saw the blackjack on the grass and picked it up. It had a

flexible handle and was limber in his hand. It was made of

worn black leather with a handkerchief wrapped around the

heavy end.

'That's a whalebone handle,' the negro smiled. 'They don't make them any more. I didn't know how well you could take care of yourself and, anyway, I didn't want you to hurt him or mark him up no more than he is.'

The negro smiled again. 'You hurt him yourself.'

'I know how to do it. He won't remember nothing of it. I

have to do it to change him when he gets that way.'

i 3o THE BATTLER Nick was still looking down at the little man, lying, his eyes

closed in the firelight. Bugs put some wood on the fire.

'Don't you worry about him none. Mister Adams. I seen

Mm like this plenty of times before.'

'Whavmade him crazy?' Nick asked.

'Oh, a lot of things,' the negro answered from the fire.

'Would you like a cup of this coffee, Mister Adams?'

He handed Nick the cup and smoothed the coat he had

placed under the unconscious man's head.

'He took too many beatings, for one thing,' the negro sipped the coffee. 'But that just made him sort of simple. Then his

sister was his manager and they was always being written

up in the papers all about brothers and sisters and how she loved her brother and how he loved his sister, and then they got married in New York and that made a lot of

unpleasantness.' 'I remember about it.'

'Sure. Of course they wasn't brother and sister no more than a rabbit, but there was a lot of people didn't like it

either way and they commenced to have disagreements, and

one day she just went off and never come back.'

He drank the coffee and wiped his lips with the pink palm of his hand.

'He just went crazy. Will you have some more coffee,

Mister Adams?'

'Thanks.'

'I seen her a couple of times,' the negro went on. 'She was

an awful good-looking woman. Looked enough like him to

be twins. He wouldn't be bad-looking without his face all

busted.'

He stopped. The story seemed to be over. 6Where did you meet him?' asked Nick.

'I met him in jail,' the negro said. 'He was busting people all the time after she went away and they put him in jail. I

was in for cuttin' a man.'

He smiled, and went on soft-voiced:

THE BATTLER 131

'Right away I liked him and when I got out I looked him

up. He likes to think I'm crazy and I don't mind. I like to be

with him and I like seeing the country and I don't have to

commit no larceny to do it. I like living like a gentleman.' 'What do you all do?' Nick asked.

'Oh, nothing. Just move around. He's got money.' 'He must have made a lot of money.' 'Sure. He spent all his money, though. Or they took it

away from him. She sends him money.' He poked up the fire.

'She's a mighty fine woman,' he said. 'She looks enough like him to be his own twin.'

The negro looked over at the little man, lying breathing

heavily. His blond hair was down over his forehead. His

mutilated face looked childish in repose. 'I can wake him up any time now, Mister Adams. If you

don't mind I wish you'd sort of pull out. I don't like to not

be hospitable, but it might disturb him back again to see you. I hate to have to thump him and it's the only thing to do

when he gets started. I have to sort of keep him away from

people. You don't mind, do you, Mister Adams? No, don't

thank me, Mister Adams. I'd have warned you about him but he seemed to have taken such a liking to you and I

thought things were going to be all right. You'll hit a town about two miles up the track. Mancelona they call it. Good-

bye. I wish we could ask you to stay the night but it's just

out of the question. Would you like to take some of that ham and some bread with you? No? You better take a sandwich,' all this in a low, smooth, polite nigger voice.

'Good. Well, good-bye, Mister Adams. Good-bye and

good luck!'

Nick walked away from the fire across the clearing to the

railway tracks. Out of the range of the fire he listened. The low soft voice of the negro was talking. Nick could not hear

the words. Then he heard the little man say, 'I got an awful

headache, Bugs.'

132 THE BATTLER 'You'll feel better. Mister Francis,' the negro's voice

soothed. 'Just you drink a cup of this hot coffee.'

Nick climbed the embankment and started up the track.

He found he had a ham sandwich in his hand and put it in

his pocket. Looking back from the mounting grade before

the track curved into the hills he could see the firelight in the

clearing.

Nick sat against the wall of the church where they had dragged him to

be clear of machine-gun fire in the street. Both legs stuck out awk-

wardly. He had been hit in the spine. Hisface was sweaty and dirty.

The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot. Rinaldi, big

backed, his equipment sprawling, layface downward against the wall.

Nick looked straight ahead brilliantly. The pink wall of the house

opposite had fallen out from the roof, and an iron bedstead hung twisted toward the street. Two Austrian dead lay in the rubble in the

shade of the house. Up the street were other dead. Things were

getting forward in the town. It was going well. Stretcher bearers

would be along any time now. Nick turned his head carefully and

looked at Rinaldi. 'Senta Rinaldi. Senta. You and me we've made

a separate peace.'' Rinaldi lay still in the sun breathing with difficulty.

'Not patriots' Nick turned his head carefully away smiling sweatily.

Rinaldi was a disappointing audience.

A VERY SHORT STORY

ONE hot evening in Padua they carried him up on to the roof

and he could look out over the top of the town. There were

chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the

searchlights came out. The others went down and took the

bottles with them. He and Luz could hear them below on

the balcony. Luz sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in

the hot night.

Luz stayed on night duty for three months. They were

glad to let her. When they operated on him she prepared him for the operating table; and they had a joke about friend

or enema. He went under the anaesthetic holding tight on to

himselfso he would not blab about anything during the silly,

talky time. After he got on crutches he used to take the

temperatures so Luz would not have to get up from the bed.

There were only a few patients, and they all knew about it.

133

134 A VERY SHORT STORY

They all liked Luz. As he walked back along the halls he

thought of Luz in his bed.

Before he went back to the front they went into the Duomo and prayed. It was dim and quiet, and there were other

beople praying. They wanted to get married, but there was not enOtigh time for the banns, and neither of{hem had birth

certificates. They felt as though they were married, but they wanted everyone to know about it, and to make it so they could not lose it.

Luz wrote him many letters that he never got until after

the armistice. Fifteen came in a bunch to the front and he

sorted them by the dates and read them all straight through.

They were all about the hospital, and how much she loved

him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at night.

After the armistice they agreed he should go home to get a

job so they might be married. Luz would not come home until he had a good job and could come to New York to meet

her. It was understood he would not drink, and he did not

want to see his friends or anyone in the States. Only to get a job and be married. On the train from Padua to Milan

they quarrelled about her not being willing to come home at

once. When they had to say good-bye, in the station at Milan,

they kissed good-bye, but were not finished with the quarrel. He felt sick about saying good-bye like that.

He went to America on a boat from Genoa. Luz went back

to Pordonone to open a hospital. It was lonely and rainy there and there was a battalion of arditi quartered in the

town. Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter, the

major of the battalion made love to Luz, and she had never

known Italians before, and finally wrote to the States that

theirs had been only a boy and girl affair. She was sorry,

and she knew he would probably not be able to understand, but might some day forgive her, and be grateful to her, and she expected, absolutely unexpectedly, to be married in the

spring. She loved him as always, but she realized now it was

AVERYSHORTSTORY 135

only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great

career, and believed in him absolutely. She knew it was for

the best.

The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other

time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago abou v

it. A short tinie after he contracted gonorrhoea froin a sales

girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab

through Lincoln Park.

While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta,

he lay very fiat and sweated and prayed ohjesus christ get me out of here. Dearjesusplease getme out. Christpleasepleaseplease christ. If

you'll only keep me from getting killed Pll do anything you say. I

believe injou and Pll tell everyone in the world thatyou are the only

one that matters. Pleaseplease dearjesus. The shelling rnovedfarther up

the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came

up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next

night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at

the Villa Rossa about Jesus. And he never told anybody.

SOLDIER'S HOME

KREBS went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas.

There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity

brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and

style collar. He enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not

return to the United States until the second division returned

from the Rhine in the summer of 1919. There is a picture which shows him on the Rhine with

two German girls and another corporal. Krebs and the cor-

poral look too big for their uniforms. The German girls are

not beautiful. The Rhine does not show in the picture.

By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting ofheroes was over. He came back much too late.

The men from the town who had been drafted had all been

welcomed elaborately on their return. There had been a

great deal of hysteria. Now the reaction had set in. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be

getting back so late, years after the war was over.

At first Krebs, t who had been at Belleau Wood, Soissons, the

Champagne, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne, did not want to

talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no

136

SOLDIER'S HOME 137

one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities. Krebs found

that to be listened to at all he had to lie, and after he had done

this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and agains*-

talking about it. A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the War set in because of the lies he had told. All

of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so

long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for

a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done

something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then

were lost themselves.

His lies were quite unimportant lies and consisted in

attributing to himself things other men had seen, done or

heard of, and stating as facts certain apocryphal incidents

familiar to all soldiers. Even his lies were not sensational at

the pool room. His acquaintances, who had heard detailed

accounts of German women found chained to machine-guns in the Argonne forest and who could not comprehend, or

were barred by their patriotism from interest in, any German

machine-gunners who were not chained, were not thrilled

by his stories.

Krebs acquired the nausea in regard to experience that is

the result of untruth or exaggeration, and when he occasion-

ally met another man who had really been a soldier and they talked a few minutes in the dressing room at a dance he fell

into the easy pose of the old soldier among other soldiers :

that he had been badly, sickeningly frightened all the time.

In this way he lost everything.

During this time, it was late summer, he was sleeping late

in bed, getting up to walk down town to the library to get a

book, eating lunch at home, reading on the front porch until

he became bored and then walking down through the town

to spend the hottest hours of the day in the cool dark of the

pool room. He loved to play pool. In the evening he practised on his clarinet, strolled down

1 38 SOLDIER'SHOME town, read and went to bed. He was still a hero to his two

young sisters. His mother would have given him breakfast

in bed if he had wanted it. She often came in when he was in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but her

Attention always wandered. His father was non-committal.

Before Krebs went away to the war he had never been

allowed to drive the family motor car. His father was in the

real estate business and always wanted the car to be at his

command when he required it to take clients out into the

country to show them a piece of farm property. The car

always stood outside the First National Bank building where

his father had an office on the second floor. Now, after the

war, it was still the same car.

Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls had grown up. But they lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that

Krebs did not feel the energy or the courage to break into it.

He liked to look at them, though. There were so many good-

looking young girls. Most of them had their hair cut short.

When he went away only little girls wore their hair like that

or girls that were fast. They all wore sweaters and shirt

waists with round Dutch collars. It was a pattern. He liked

to look at them from the front porch as they walked on the

other side of the street. He liked to watch them walking under the shade of the trees. He liked the round Dutch collars above their sweaters. He liked their silk stockings and flat shoes. He liked their bobbed hair and the way they walked.

When he was in town their appeal to him was not very

strong. He did not like them when he saw them in the

Greek's ice cream parlour. He did not want them themselves

really. They were too complicated. There was something else. Vaguely he wanted a girl but he did not want to have to

work to get her. He would have liked to have a girl but he

did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did

SOLDIER'S HOME 139

not want to have to do any courting. He did not want to tell

any more lies. It wasn't worth it.

He did not want any consequences. He did not want any

consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without

consequences. Besides he did not really need a girl. Thft

army had taught him that. It was all right to pose as though

you had to have a girl. Nearly everybody did that. But it

wasn't true. You did not need a girl. That was the funny

thing. First a fellow boasted how girls meant nothing to him, that he never thought of them, that they could not touch

him. Then a fellow boasted that he could not get along without girls, that he had to have them all the time, that he

could not go to sleep without them.

That was all a lie. It was all a lie both ways. You did not

need a girl unless you thought about them. He learned that

in the army. Then sooner or later you always got one. When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did

not have to think about it. Sooner or later it would come.

He had learned that in the army. Now he would have liked a girl if she had come to him

and not wanted to talk. But here at home it was all too com-

plicated. He knew he could never get through it all again. It was not worth the trouble. That was the thing about

French girls and German girls. There was not all this talking.

You couldn't talk much and you did not need to talk. It was

simple and you were friends. He thought about France and

then he began to think about Germany. On the whole he

had liked Germany better. He did not want to leave Ger-

many. He did not want to come home. Still, he had come home. He sat on the front porch. He liked the girls that were walking along the other side of

the street. He liked the look of them much better than the

French girls or the German girls. But the world they were

in was not the world he was in. He would like to have one

of them. But it was not worth it. They were such a nice

pattern. He liked the pattern. It was exciting. But he would

i 4o SOLDIER'S HOME not go through all the talking. He did not want one badly

enough. He liked to look at them all, though. It was not

worth it. Not now when things were getting good again. He sat there on the porch reading a book on the war. It

was a history and he was reading about all the engagements he had been in. It was the most interesting reading he had

ever done. He wished there were more maps. He looked

forward with a good feeling to reading all the really good histories when they would come out with good detail maps. Now he was really learning about the war. He had been a

good soldier. That made a difference.

One morning after he had been home about a month his

mother came into his bedroom and sat on the bed. She

smoothed her apron. 'I had a talk with your father last night, Harold,' she said,

xand he is willing for you to take the car out in the evenings.' 'Yeah?

5

said Krebs, who was not fully awake. 'Take the

car out? Yeah?'

'Yes. Your father has felt for some time that you should be

able to take the car out in the evenings whenever you wished, but we only talked it over last night.'

Til bet you made him,' Krebs said.

'No. It was your father's suggestion that we talk the

matter over.'

'Yeah. I'll bet you made him,' Krebs sat up in bed.

'Will you come down to breakfast, Harold?' his mother said.

'As soon as I get my clothes on,' Krebs said.

His mother went out of the room and he could hear her

frying something downstairs while he washed, shaved and dressed to go down into the dining-room for breakfast. While

he was eating breakfast his sister brought in the mail.

'Well, Hare,' she said. 'You old sleepy-head. What do you ver get up for?'

Krebs looked at her. He liked her. She was his best sister.

'Have you got the paper?' he asked.

She handed him The Kansas City Star and he shucked off

SOLDIER'S HOME I4 i

its brown wrapper and opened it to the sporting page. He folded The Star open and propped it against the water pitcher with his cereal dish to steady it, so he could read while he ate.

'Harold/ his mother stood in the kitchen doorway, 'Harol^,

please don't muss up the paper. Your father can't read his

Star if it's be'en mussed.'

'I won't muss it,' Krebs said.

His sister sat down at the table and watched him while he

read.

'We're playing indoor over at school this afternoon,' she

said. 'I'm going to pitch.'

'Good,' said Krebs. 'How's the old wing?' 'I can pitch better than lots of the boys. I tell them all you

taught me. The other girls aren't much good.' 'Yeah?' said Krebs.

'I tell them all you're my beau. Aren't you my beau, Hare?*

'You bet.'

'Couldn't your brother really be your beau just because

he's your brother?'

'I don't know.'

'Sure you know. Couldn't you be my beau, Hare, if I was old enough and if you wanted to?'

'Sure. You're my girl now.'

'Am I really your girl?'

'Sure.'

'Do you love me?'

'Uh, huh.'

'Will you love me always?' 'Sure.'

'Will you come over and watch me play indoor?'

'Maybe.'

'Aw, Hare, you don't love me. Ifyou loved me, you'd want to come over and watch me play indoor.'

Kreb's mother came into the dining-room from the kitchen.

She carried a plate with two fried eggs and some crisp bacon

on it and a plate of buckwheat cakes.

i 42 SOLDIER'S HOME 'You run along, Helen/ she said. 'I want to talk to Harold.'

She put the eggs and bacon down in front of him and

brought in a jug of maple syrup for the buckwheat cakes.

Then she sat down across the table from Krebs.

'I wish you'd put down the paper a minute, Harold/ she

said.

Krebs took down the paper and folded it.

'Have you decided what you are going to do yet, Harold?'

his mother said, taking off her glasses.

'No/ said Krebs.

'Don't you think it's about time?' His mother did not say this in a mean way. She seemed worried.

'I hadn't thought about it/ Krebs said.

'God has some work for every one to do/ his mother said.

'There can be no idle hands in His Kingdom.' 'Pm not in His Kingdom/ Krebs said.

'We arc all of us in His Kingdom.' Krebs felt embarrassed and resentful as always. 'I've worried about you so much, Harold/ his mother went

on. 'I know the temptations you must have been exposed to.

I know how weak men are. I know what your own dear

grandfather, my own father, told us about the Civil War, and I have prayed for you. I pray for you all day long, Harold.'

Krebs looked at the bacon fat hardening on his plate.

'Your father is worried, too/ his mother went on. 'He

thinks you have lost your ambition, that you haven't got a

definite aim in life. Charley Simmons, who is just your age,

has a good job and is going to be married. The boys are all

settling down; they're all determined to get somewhere; you can see that boys like Charley Simmons are on their way to

being really a credit to the community.' Krebs said nothing. 'Don't look that way, Harold/ his mother said. 'You

know we love you and I want to tell you for your own good how matters stand. Your father does not want to hamper your freedom. He thinks you should be allowed to drive the

SOLDIER'S HOME 143

car. If you want to take some of the nice girls out riding with you, we are only too pleased. We want you to enjoy

yourself. But you are going to have to settle down to work, Harold. Your father doesn't care what you start in at.

c

All work is honourable as he says. But you've got to -make a

start at something. He asked me to speak to you this morning and then you can stop in and sec him at his office.'

'Is that all?' Krcbs said.

'Yes. Don't you love your mother, dear boy?'

'No,' Krebs said.

His mother looked at him across the table. Her eyes were

shiny. She started crying. 'I don't love anybody,' Krebs said.

It wasn't any good. He couldn't tell her, he couldn't

make her see it. It was silly to have said it. He had only hurt her. He went over and took hold of her arm. She was

crying with her head in her hands.

'I didn't mean it,' he said. 'I was just angry at something. I didn't mean I didn't love you.'

His mother went on crying. Krebs put his arm on her

shoulder.

'Can't you believe me, mother?'

His mother shook her head.

'Please, please, mother. Please believe me.'

'All right,' his mother said chokily. She looked up at him.

'I believe you, Harold.'

Krebs kissed her hair. She put her face up to him.

Tm your mother,' she said. 'I held you next to my heart

when you were a tiny baby.' Krebs felt sick and vaguely nauseated.

'I know, Mummy,' he said. Til try and* be a good boy for

you.' 'Would you kneel and pray with me, Harold?' his mother

asked.

They knelt down beside the dining-room table and Krebs's

mother prayed.

i44 SOLDIER'S HOME 'Now, you pray, Harold/ she said.

'I can't,' Krebs said.

'Try, Harold.'

'I can't.'

'Do you want me to pray for you?' 'Yes.'

So his mother prayed for him and then they stood up and

Krebs kissed his mother and went out of the house. He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of

it had touched him. He had felt sorry for his mother and she

had made him lie. He would go to Kansas City and get ajob and she would feel all right about it. There would be one

more scene maybe before he got away. He would not go down to his father's office. He would miss that one. He wanted his life to go smoothly. It had just gotten going that

way. Well, that was all over now, anyway. He would go over to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball.

If it happened right down close infront ofyou, you could see Villalta

snarl at the bull and curse him, and when the bull charged he swung back firmly like an oak when the wind hits it, his legs tight together,

the muleta trailing and the swordfollowing the curve behind. Then he

cursed the bull, flopped the muleta at him, and swung backfrom the

charge, hisfeetfirm, the muleta curving, and at each swing the crowd

roaring.

When he started to kill it was all in the same rush. The bull

looking at him straight infront, hating. He drew out the swordfrom thefolds of the muleta and sighted with the same movement and called

to the bull, Toro! Toro! and the bull charged and Villalta charged

and just for a moment they became one. Villalta became one with

the bull and then it was over. Villalta standing straight and the

red hilt of the sword sticking out dully between the buWs shoulders.

Villalta, his hand up at the crowd and the bull roaring blood, looking

straight at Villalta and his legs caving.

CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW

THE funicular car bucked once more and then stopped. It

could not go farther, the snow drifted solidly across the track.

The gale scouring the exposed surface of the mountain had

swept the snow surface into a wind-board crust. Nick,

waxing his skis in the baggage car, pushed his boots into the

toe irons and shut the clamp tight. He jumped from the car

sideways on to the hard wind-board, made a jump turn and

crouching and trailing his sticks slipped in a rush down the

slope.

On the white below George dipped and rose and dipped out of sight. The rush and the sudden swoop as he dropped down a steep undulation in the mountain side plucked Nick's

mind out and left him only the wonderful flying, dropping sensation in his body. He rose to a slight up-run and then the

snow seemed to drop out from under him as he went down,

163

164 CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW down, faster and faster in a rush down the last, long steep

slope. Crouching so he was almost sitting back on his skis,

trying to keep the centre ofgravity low, the snow driving like

a sand-storm, he knew the pace was too much. But he held

it. He would not let go and spill. Then a patch of soft snow, left in a hollow by the wind, spilled him and he went over

and over in a clashing of skis, feeling like a shot rabbit, then

stuck, his legs crossed, his skis sticking straight up and his

nose and earsjammed full ofsnow.

George stood a little farther down the slope, knocking the

snow from his wind jacket with big slaps.

'You took a beauty, Mike, 5 he called to Nick. 'That's

lousy soft snow. It bagged me the same way.' 'What's it like over the khud?' Nick kicked his skis around

as he lay on his back and stood up. 'You've got to keep to your left. It's a good fast drop with

a Christy at the bottom on account ofa fence.'

'Wait a sec and we'll take it together.'

'No, you come on and go first. I like to see you take the

knuds.'

Nick Adams came up past George, big back and blond

head still faintly snowy, then his skis started slipping at the

edge and he swooped down, hissing in the crystalline powder snow and seeming to float up and drop down as he went up and down the billowing khuds. He held to his left at the

end, as he rushed toward the fence, keeping his knees

locked tight together and turning his body like tightening a screw brought his skis sharply around to the right in

a smother ofsnow and slowed into a loss of speed parallel to

the hillside and the wire fence.

He looked up thfe hill. George was coming down in tele-

mark position, kneeling; one leg forward and bent, the other

trailing; his sticks hanging like some insect's thin legs, kicking

up puffs of snow as they touched the surface and finally the

whole kneeling, trailing figure coming around in a beautiful

right curve, crouching, the legs shot forward and back, the

CROSS -COUNTRY SNOW 165

body leaning out against the swing, the sticks accenting the

curve like points oflight, all in a wild cloud ofsnow.

'I wns afraid to Christy, 5

George said, 'the snow was too

deep. You made a beauty.' 'I can't tclemark with my leg,

5 Nick said.

Nick held down the top strand of the wire fence with his ski

and George slid over. Nick followed him down to the road.

They thrust bent-kneed along the road into a pine forest.

The road became polished ice, stained orange and a tobacco

yellow from the teams hauling logs. The skiers kept to the

stretch of snow along the side. The road dipped sharply to

a stream and then ran straight up-hill. Through the woods

they could see a long, low-eaved, weather-beaten building.

Through the trees it was a faded yellow. Closer the window frames were painted green. The paint was peeling. Nick

knocked his clamps loose with one of his ski sticks and kicked

off the skis.

'We might as well carry them up here, 5 he said.

He climbed the steep road with the skis on his shoulder,

kicking his heel nails into the icy footing. He heard George

breathing and kicking in his heels just behind him. They stacked the skis against the side of the inn and slapped the

snow off each other 5

s trousers, stamped their boots clean, and

went in.

Inside it was quite dark. A big porcelain stove shone in the

corner of the room. There was a low ceiling. Smooth benches back of dark, wine-stained tables were along each

side of the rooms. Two Swiss sat over their pipes and two

decies of cloudy new wine next to the stove. The boys took

off their jackets and sat against the wall on the other side of

the stove. A voice in the next room stopped singing and a

girl in a blue apron came in through the door to see what

they wanted to drink.

'A bottle of Sion, 5

Nick said. 'Is that all right, Gidge? 5

'Sure,* said George. 'You know more about wine than I

do. I like any of it. 5

166 CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW The girl went out.

'There's nothing really can touch skiing, is there?' Nick

said. 'The way it feels when you first drop off on a long nn.'

'Huh/ said George. 'It's too swell to talk about.'

The girl brought the wine in and they had trouble with the

cork. Nick finally opened it. The girl went out and they heard her singing in German in the next room.

'Those specks ofcork in it don't matter,' said Nick.

'I wonder if she's got any cake.'

'Let's find out.'

The girl came in and Nick noticed that her apron covered

swellingly her pregnancy. I wonder why I didn't see that

when she first came in, he thought. 'What were you singing?' he asked her.

'Opera, German opera.' She did not care to discuss the

subject. 'We have some apple strudel ifyou want it.'

'She isn't so cordial, is she?' said George.

'Oh, well. She doesn't know us and she thought we were

going to kid her about her singing, maybe. She's from up where they speak German probably and she's touchy about

being here, and then she's got that baby coming without

being married and she's touchy.' 'How do you know she isn't married?'

'No ring. Hell, no girls get married around here till they're knocked up.'

The door came open and a gang of woodcutters from up the road came in, stamping their boots and steaming in the

room. The waitress brought in three litres of new wine for

the gang and they sat at the two tables, smoking and quiet, with their hats off, leaning back against the wall or forward

on the table. Outside the horses on the wood sledges made an occasional sharp jangle of bells as they tossed their heads.

George and Nick were happy. They were fond of each

other. They knew they had the run back home ahead of

them.

CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW 167

'When have you got to go back to school?' Nick asked.

'To-night,' George answered. 'I've got to get the ten-forty from Montreux.'

T wish you could stick over and we could do the Dent du

Lys to-morrow.'

M got to gefc educated,' George said. 'Gee, Mike, don't you wish we could just bum together? Take our skis and go on

the train to where there was good running and then go on and put up at pubs and go right across the Oberland and up the Valais and all through the Engadine and just take repair kit and extra sweaters and pyjamas in our rucksacks and not

give a damn about school or anything.'

'Yes, and go through the Schwarzwald that way. Gee, the

swell places.'

'That's where you went fishing last summer, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

They ate the strudel and drank the rest ofthe wine.

George leaned back against the wall and shut his eyes.

'Wine always makes me feel this way,' he said.

'Feel bad?' Nick asked.

'No. I feel good, but funny.' 'I know,' Nick said.

'Sure,' said George. 'Should we have another bottle?' Nick asked.

'Not for me,' George said.

They sat there, Nick leaning his elbows on the table,

George slumped back against the wall.

'Is Helen going to have a baby?' George said, coming down to the table from the wall.

'Yes.'

'When?'

'Late next summer.'

'Are you glad?'

'Yes. Now,' 'Will you go back to the States?'

'I guess so.'

168 CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW 'Do you want to?'

'No.'

'Does Helen?'

'No.'

George sat silent. He looked at the empty bottle and the

empty glasses.

'It's hell, isn't it?' he said.

'No. Not exactly,' Nick said.

'Why not?'

'I don't know,' Nick said.

'Will you ever go skiing together in the States?' George said.

'I don't know,' said Nick.

'The mountains aren't much,' George said.

'No,' said Nick. 'They're too rocky. There's too much timber and they're too far away.'

'Yes,' said George, 'that's the way it is in California.'

'Yes, 5

Nick said, 'that's the way it is everywhere I've ever

been.'

'Yes,' said George, 'that's the way it is.'

The Swiss got up and paid and went out.

'I wish we were Swiss,' George said.

'They've all got goitre,' said Nick.

'I don't believe it,' George said.

'Neither do I,' said Nick.

They laughed.

'Maybe we'll never go skiing again, Nick,' George said.

^We've got to,' said Nick. 'It isn't worth while if you can't.

5

'We'll go, all right,' George said.

'We've got to, 5

Nick agreed. 'I wish we could make a promise about it,' George said.

Nick stood up. He buckled his wind jacket tight. He leaned over George and picked up the two ski poles from

against the wall. He stuck one of the ski poles into the

floor.

CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW 169

'There isn't any good in promising,' he said.

They opened the door and went out. It was very cold.

The snow had crusted hard. The road ran up the hill into

the pine trees.

They took down their skis from where they leaned against the wall of the inn. Nick put on his gloves. George was

already started up the road, his skis on his shoulder. Now they would have the run home together.

/ heard the drums coming down the street and then the fifes and the

pipes and then they came around the corner, all dancing. The street

wasfull of them. Maera saw him and then I saw him. When they

stopped the music for the crouch he hunched down in the street with

them all and when they started it again he jumped up and went

dancing down the street with them. He was drunk all right.

You go down after him, said Maera, he hates me.

So I went down and caught up with them and grabbed him while he

was crouched down waiting for the music to break loose and said,

Come on Luis. For Christ's sakeyou've got bulls this afternoon. He didn't listen to me, he was listening so hardfor the music to start.

I said, Don't be a damnfool Luis. Come on back to the hotel.

Then the music started up again and hejumped up and twisted away

from me and started dancing. I grabbed his arm and he pulled loose

and said, Oh leave me alone. You're not my father.

I went back to the hotel and Maera was on the balcony looking out

to see ifTd be bringing him back. He went inside when he saw me

and came downstairs disgusted.

Well, I said, after all he's just an ignorant Mexican savage.

Yes, Maera said, and who will kill his bulls after he gets a

cornada?

We, I suppose, I said.

Yes, we, said Maera. We kills the savages' bulls, and the

drunkards' bulls, and the riau-riau dancers' bulls. Yes. We kill

them. We kill them all right. Yes. Yes. Yes.

MY OLD MAN

I GUESS looking at it, now, my old man was cut out for a fat

guy, one of those regular little roly fat guys you see around, but he sure never got that way, except a little toward the last,

and then it wasn't his fault, he was riding over thejumps only and he could afford to carry plenty ofweight then. I remem-

170

MYOLDMAN 171

ber the way he'd pull on a rubber shirt over a couple of

jerseys and a big sweat shirt over that, and get me to run

with him in the forenoon in the hot sun. He'd have, maybe, taken a trial trip with one of Razzo's skins early in the morn-

ing after just getting in from Torino at four o'clock in the

morning and 'beating it out to the stables in a cab and then

with the dew all over everything and the sun just starting to

get going, I'd help him pull off his boots and he'd get into a

pair of sneakers and all these sweaters and we'd start out.

'Come on, kid,' he'd say, stepping up and down on his toes

in front of the jock's dressing-room, 'let's get moving.' Then we'd start offjogging around the infield once, maybe,

with him ahead, running nice, and then turn out the gate and

along one of those roads with all the trees along both sides of

them that run out from San Siro. I'd go ahead ofhim when we hit the road and I could run pretty good and I'd look

around and he'd be jogging easy just behind me and after a

little while I'd look around again and he'd begun to sweat.

Sweating heavy and he'd just be dogging it along with his

eyes on my back, but when he'd catch me looking at him he'd

grin and say, 'Sweating plenty?' When my old man grinned,

nobody could help but grin too. We'd keep right on running out toward the mountains and then my old man would yell,

'Hey, Joe!' and I'd look back and he'd be sitting under a tree

with a towel he'd had around his waist wrapped around his

neck.

I'd come back and sit down beside him and he'd pull a

rope out of his pocket and start skipping rope out in the sun

with the sweat pouring off his face and him skipping rope out in the white dust with the rope going cloppetty, cloppetty,

clop, clop, clop, and the sun hotter, and him working harder

up and down a patch of the road. Say, it was a treat to see

my old man skip rope, too. He could whirr it fast or lop it

slow and fancy. Say, you ought to have seerfwops look at us

sometimes, when they'd come by, going into town walking

along with big white steers hauling the cart. They sure looked

iya MYOLDMAN as though they thought the old man was nuts. He'd start the

rope whirring till they'd stop dead still and watch him, then

give the steers a cluck and a poke with the goad and get going

again. When I'd sit watching him working out in the hot sun I

sure felt fond of him. He sure was fun and he done his work

so hard and he'd finish up with a regular whirring that'd

drive the sweat out on his face like water and then sling the

rope at the tree and come over and sit down with me and

lean back against the tree with the towel and a sweater

wrapped around his neck.

'Sure it's hell keeping it down, Joe/ he'd say, and lean back

and shut his eyes and breathe long and deep, e

it ain't like

when you're a kid.' Then he'd get up and before he started

to cool we'd jog along back to the stables. That's the way it

was keeping down to weight. He was worried all the time.

Most jocks can just about ride off all they want to. A jock loses about a kilo every time he rides, but my old man was

sort of dried out and he couldn't keep down his kilos without

all that running. I remember once at San Siro, Regoli, a little wop, that was

riding for Buzoni, came out across the paddock going to the

bar for something cool; and flicking his boots with his whip, after he'd just weighed in and my old man had just weighed in too, and came out with the saddle under his arm looking red-faced and tired and too big for his silks and he stood there

looking at young Regoli standing up to the outdoors bar, cool

and kid-looking, and I said, 'What's the matter, Dad?' 'cause

I thought maybe Regoli had bumped him or something and he just looked at Regoli and said, 'Oh, to hell with it', and went on to the dressing-room.

Well, it would have been all right, maybe, if we'd stayed in Milan and ridden at Milan and Torino, 'cause if there ever

were any easy courses, it's those two. 'Pianola, Joe/ my old

man said when he dismounted in the winning stall after what the wops thought was a hell of steeplechase. I asked him

MYOLDMAN 173

once. 'This course rides itself. It's the pace you're going at,

that makes riding the jumps dangerous, Joe. We ain't going

any pace here, and they ain't really bad jumps either. But it's the pace always not the jumps that makes th^

trouble.'

San Siro wtis the swellest course I'd ever seen but the old

man said it was a dog's life. Going back and forth between Mirafiore and San Siro and riding just about every day in

the week with a train ride every other night. I was nuts about the horses, too. There's something about

it, when they come out and go up to the track to the post.

Sort of dancy and tight looking with the jock keeping a tight

hold on them and maybe easing off a little and letting them run a little going up. Then once they were at the barrier it

got me worse than anything. Especially at San Siro with that

big green infield and the mountains way off and the fat wop starter with his big whip and the jocks fiddling them around

and then the barrier snapping up and that bell going off and them all getting off in a bunch and then commencing to

string out. You know the way a bunch of skins gets off. If

you're up in the stand with a pair of glasses all you see is

them plunging off and then that bell goes off and it seems

like it rings for a thousand years and then they come

sweeping round the turn. There wasn't ever anything like

it for me.

But my old man said one day, in the dressing-room, when he was getting into his street clothes, 'None ofthese things are

horses, Joe. They'd kill that bunch of skates for their hides

and hoofs up at Paris.' That was the day he'd won the

Premio Commercio with Lantorna shooting her out of the

field the last hundred metres like pulling a cork out of a

bottle.

It was right after the Premio Commercio that we pulled

out and left Italy. My old man and Holbrook and a fat wop in a straw hat that kept wiping his face with a handkerchief

were having an argument at a table in the Galleria. They

174 MYOLDMAN were all talking French and the two of them was after my old man about something. Finally he didn't say anything

any more but just sat there and looked at Holbrook, and the

two of them kept after him, first one talking and then the

other, and the fat wop always butting in on Holbrook.

'You go out and buy me a Sportsman, will you, Joe?' my old man said, and handed me a couple of soldi without

looking away from Holbrook.

So I went out of the Galleria and walked over to in front

of the Scala and bought a paper, and carne back and stood a

little way away because I didn't want to butt in and my old

man was sitting back in his chair looking down at his coffee

and fooling with a spoon and Holbrook and the big wop were

standing and the big wop was wiping his face and shaking his head. And I came up and my old man acted just as

though the two of them weren't standing there and said,

"Want an ice, Joe?' Holbrook looked down at my old man and said slow and careful, 'You son of a bitch,' and he and

the fat wop went out through the tables.

My old man sat there and sort of smiled at me, but his face

was white and he looked sick as hell and I was scared and felt sick inside because I knew something had happened and I didn't see how anybody could call rny old man a son of a

bitch, and get away with it. My old man opened up the

Sportsman and studied the handicaps for a while, and then he

said, 'You got to take a lot of things in this world, Joe.' And three days later we left Milan for good on the Turin train for

Paris, after an auction sale out in front of Turner's stables of

everything we couldn't get into a trunk and a suitcase.

We got into Paris early in,the morning in a long, dirty station the old man told me was the Gare de Lyon. Paris was an awful big town after Milan. Seems like in Milan every-

body is going somewhere and all the trams run somewhere and there ain't any sort of a mix-up, but Paris is all balled

up and they never do straighten it out. I got to like it, though,

part of it, anyway, and say, it's got the best race courses in

MYOLDMAN 175

the world. Seems as though that were the thing that keeps it all going and about the only thing you can figure on is that

every day the buses will be going out to whatever track they're

running at, going right out through everything to the track.

I never really got to know Paris well, because I just came in

about once or twice a week with the old man from Maisons

and he always sat at the Cafe de la Paix on the Opera side

with the rest of the gang from Maisons and I guess that's

one of the busiest parts of the town. But, say, it is funny that

a big town like Paris wouldn't have a Galleria, isn't it?

Well, we went out to live at Maisons-Lafitte, where just about everybody lives except the gang at Chantilly, with a

Mrs. Meyers that runs a boarding house. Maisons is about the

swellest place to live I've ever seen in all my life. The town ain't so much, but there's a lake and a swell forest that we used to go offbumming in all day, a couple of us kids, and my old man made me a sling shot and we got a lot of things with

it but the best one was a magpie. Young Dick Atkinson shot

a rabbit with it one day and we put it under a tree and were

all sitting around and Dick had some cigarettes and all of a

sudden the rabbit jumped up and beat it into the brush and we chased it but we couldn't find it. Gee, we had fun at

Maisons. Mrs. Meyers used to give me lunch in the morning and I'd be gone all day. I learned to talk French quick. It's

an easy language. As soon as we got to Maisons, my old man wrote to Milan

for his licence and he was pretty worried till it came. He used

to sit around the Cafe de Paris in Maisons with the gang, there were lots of guys he'd known when he rode up at Paris,

before the war, lived at Maisons, and there's a lot of time to

sit around because the work around a racing stable, for the

jocks, that is, is all cleaned up by nine o'clock in the morning.

They take the first bunch of skins out to gallop them at 5.30 in the morning and they work the second lot at 8 o'clock.

That means getting up early all right and going to bed early,

too. If a jock's riding for somebody too, he can't go boozing

176 MY OLD MAN around because the trainer always has an eye on him if he's a

kid and if he ain't a kid he's always got an eye on himself.

So mostly if a jock ain't working he sits around the Caf6 de

Paris with the gang and they can all sit around about two or

three hours in front of some drink like a vermouth and seltz

and they talk and tell stories and shoot pool &nd it's sort of

like a club or the Galleria in Milan. Only it ain't really like

the Galleria because there everybody is going by all the time

and there's everybody around at the tables.

Well, my old man got his licence all right. They sent it

through to him without a word and he rode a couple oftimes.

Amiens, up country and that sort of thing, but he didn't seem

to get any engagement. Everybody liked him and whenever I'd come into the Cafe in the forenoon I'd find somebody drinking with him because my old man wasn't tight like most

of these jockies that have got the first dollar they made riding at the World's Fair in St. Louis in nineteen ought four. That's

what my old man would say when he'd kid George Burns.

But it seemed like everybody steered clear of giving my old

man any mounts.

We went out to wherever they were running every day with the car from Maisons and that was the most fun of all.

I was glad when the horses came back from Deauville and the summer. Even though it meant no more bumming in the

woods, 'cause then we'd ride to Enghien or Tremblay or St.

Cloud and watch them from the trainers' and jockeys' stand.

I sure learned about racing from going out with that gang and the fun of it was going every day.

I remember once out at St. Cloud. It was a big two hun-

dred thousand franc race with seven entries and War Cloud a big favourite. I went around to the paddock to see the

horses with my old man and you never saw such horses. This

War Cloud is a great big yellow horse that looks just like

nothing but run. I never saw such a horse. He was being led

around the paddocks with his head down and when he went

by me I felt all hollow inside he was so beautiful. There

MYOLDMAN 177

never was such a wonderful, lean, running built horse. And he went around the paddock putting his feet just so and quiet and careful and moving easy like he knewjust what he had to

do and not jerking and standing up on his legs and getting wild eyed like you see these selling platers with a shot ofdope in them. The 'crowd was so thick I couldn't see him again

except just his legs going by and some yellow and my old

man started out through the crowd and I followed him over

to the jocks' dressing-room back in the trees and there was a

big crowd around there, too, but the man at the door in a

derby nodded to my old man and we got in and everybody was sitting around and getting dressed and pulling shirts

over their heads and pulling boots on and it all smelled

hot and sweaty and linimenty and outside was the crowd

looking in.

The old man went over and sat down beside George Gardner that was getting into his pants and said, 'What's

the dope, George?' just in an ordinary tone of voice, 'cause

there ain't any use him feeling around because George either can tell him or he can't tell him.

'He won't win,' George says very low, leaning over and

buttoning the bottoms of his breeches.

'Who will?' my old man says, leaning over close so nobody can hear.

'Foxless,' George says, 'and if he does, save me a couple of

tickets.'

My old man says something in a regular voice to George and George says, 'Don't ever bet on anything I tell you,'

kidding like, and we beat it out and through all the crowd

that was looking in, over to the 100 franc mutuel machine.

But I knew something big was up because George is War Cloud's jockey. On the way he gets one of the yellow odds-

sheets with the starting-prices on and War Cloud is only

paying 5 for 10, Cefisidote is next at 3 to i and fifth down the

list this Foxless at 8 to i . My old man bets five thousand on

Foxless to win and puts on a thousand to place and we went

M

178 MYOLDMAN around back of the grandstand to go up the stairs and get a

place to watch the race.

We were jammed in tight and first a man in a long coat

with a grey tall hat and a whip folded up in his hand came out and then one after another the horses, with the jocks up and a stable boy holding the bridle on each side and walking

along, followed the old guy. That big yellow horse War Cloud came first. He didn't look so big when you first looked

at him until you saw the length of his legs and the whole way he's built and the way he moves. Gosh, I never saw such a

horse. George Gardner was riding him and they moved

along slow, back of the old guy in the grey tall hat that

walked along like he was a ring master in a circus. Back of

War Cloud, moving along smooth and yellow in the sun,

was a good looking black with a nice head with Tommy Archibald riding him; and after the black was a string of five

more horses all moving along slow in a procession past the

grandstand and the pesage. My old man said the black was

Fcpdess and I took a good look at him and he was a nice-

looking horse, all right, but nothing like War Cloud.

Everybody cheered War Cloud when he went by and he

sure was one swell-looking horse. The procession of them went around on the other side past the pelouse and then

back up to the near end of the course and the circus master

had the stable boys turn them loose one after another so they could gallop by the stands on their way up to the post and let everybody have a good look at them. They weren't at

the post hardly any time at all when the gong started and

you could see them way off across the infield all in a bunch

starting on the first swing like a lot of little toy horses. I

was watching them through the glasses and War Cloud was

running well back, with one of the bays making the pace.

They swept down and around and came pounding past and War Cloud was way back when they passed us and this

Foxless horse in front and going smooth. Gee, it's awful

when they go by you and then you have to watch them go

MYOLDMAN 179

farther away and get smaller and smaller and then all

bunched up on the turns and then come around towards

into the stretch and you feel like swearing and god-damming worse and worse. Finally they made the last turn and came into the straightaway with this Foxlcss horse way out in

front. Everybody was looking funny and saying 'War Cloud'

in sort of a sick way and them pounding nearer down the

stretch, and then something came out of the pack right into

my glasses like a horse-headed yellow streak and everybody

began to yell 'War Cloud' as though they were crazy. Wai-

Cloud came on faster than I'd ever seen anything in my life

and pulled up on Foxless that was going fast as any black

horse could go with the jock flogging hell out ofhim with the

gad and they were right dead neck and neck for a second but

War Cloud seemed going about twice as fast with those great

jumps and that head out but it was while they were neck

and neck that they passed the winning post and when the

numbers went up in the slots the first one was 2 and that

meant that Foxless had won.

I felt all trembly and funny inside and then we were all

jammed in with the people going downstairs to stand in front

of the board where they'd post what Foxless paid. Honest,

watching the race I'd forgot how much my old man had bet

on Foxless. I'd wanted War Cloud to win so damned bad.

But now it was all over it was swell to know we had the

winner.

'Wasn't it a swell race, Dad?' I said to him.

He looked at me sort offunny with his derby on the back

of his head. 'George Gardner's a swell jockey all right,' he

said. 'It sure took a great jock to keep that War Cloud horse

from winning.' Of course I knew it was funny all the time. But my old

man saying that right out like that sure took the kick all out

of it for me and I didn't get the real kick back again ever,

even when they posted the numbers upon the board and the

bell rang to pay offand we saw that Foxless paid 67.50 for 10.

i8o MY OLD MAN All round people were saying, Toor War Cloud! Poor War Cloud!' And I thought, I wish I were a jockey and could

have rode him instead of that son of a bitch. And that was

funny, thinking of George Gardner as a son of a bitch be-

cause I'd always liked him and besides he'd given us the

winner, but I guess that's what he is, all right.

My old man had a big lot of money after that race and he

took to coming into Paris oftener. If they raced at Tremblay he'd have them drop him in town on their way back to

Maisons and he and I'd sit out in front of the Cafe de la Paix

and watch the people go by. It's funny sitting there. There's

streams of people going by and all sorts of guys come up and

want to sell you things, and I loved to sit there with my old

man. That was when we'd have the most fun. Guys would come by selling funny rabbits that jumped if you squeezed a

bulb and they'd come up to us and my old man would kid

with them. He could talk French just like English and all

those kind of guys knew him 'cause you can always tell a

jockey and then we always sat at the same table and they

got used to seeing us there. There were guys selling matri-

monial papers and girls selling rubber eggs that when you

squeezed them a rooster came out of them and one old

wormy-looking guy that went by with postcards of Paris,

showing them to everybody, and, of course, nobody ever

bought any, and then he would come back and show the

under side ofthe pack and they would all be smutty postcards and lots of people would dig down and buy them.

Gee, I remember the funny people that used to go by. Girls around supper time looking for somebody to take them out to eat and they'd speak to my old man and he'd make some joke at them in French and they'd pat me on the head and go on. Once there was an American woman sitting with

her kid daughter at the next table to us and they were both

eating ices and I kept looking at the girl and she was awfully

good looking and I smiled at her and she smiled at me but

that was all that ever came of it because I looked for her

MY OLD MAN 181

mother and her every day and I made up ways that I was

going to speak to her and I wondered if I got to know her if

her mother would let me take her out to Auteuil or Tremblay but I never saw either of them again. Anyway, I guess it

wouldn't have been any good, anyway, because looking back

on it I rcmeniber the way I thought out would be best to

speak to her was to say, Tardon me, but perhaps I can give

you a winner at Enghicn to-day?' and, after all, maybe she

would have thought I was a tout instead of really trying to

give her a winner.

We'd sit at the Cafe de la Paix, my old man and me, and we had a big drag with the waiter because my old man drank

whisky and it cost five francs, and that meant a good tip when the saucers were counted up. My old man was drinking more than I'd ever seen him, but he wasn't riding at all now and

besides he said that whisky kept his weight down. But I

noticed he was putting it on, all right, just the same. He'd

busted away from his old gang out at Maisons and seemed

to like just sitting around on the boulevard with me. But he

was dropping money every day at the track. He'd feel sort of

doleful after the last race, if he'd lost on the day, until we'd

get to our table and he'd have his first whisky and then he'd

be fine.

He'd be reading the Paris-Sport and he'd look over at me and say, 'Where's your girl, Joe?' to kid me on account I had told him about the girl that day at the next table. And I'd get

red, but I liked being kidded about her. It gave me a good

feeling. 'Keep your eye peeled for her, Joe,' he'd say, 'she'll

be back.'

He'd ask me questions about things and some of the things

I'd say he'd laugh. And then he'd get started talking about

things. About riding down in Egypt, or at St. Moritz on the

ice before my mother died, and about during the war when

they had regular races down in the south of France without

any purses, or betting or crowds or anything just to keep the

breed up. Regular races with the jocks riding hell out of the

i82 MYOLDMAN horses. Gee, I could listen to my old man talk by the hour,

especially when he'd had a couple or so of drinks. He'd tell

me about when he was a boy in Kentucky and going coon

hunting, and the old days in the States before everything went on the bum there. And he'd say, 'Joe, when we've got a

decent stake, you're going back there to the States and go to

school.'

'What've I got to go back there to go to school for when

everything's on the bum there?' I'd ask him.

'That's different,' he'd say and get the waiter over and pay the pile of saucers and we'd get a taxi to the Gare St. Lazare

and get on the train out to Maisons.

One day at Auteuil after a selling steeplechase, my old man

bought in the winner for 30,000 francs. He had to bid a

little to get him but the stable let the horse go finally and my old man had his permit and his colours in a week. Gee, I

felt proud when my old man was an owner. He fixed it up for stable space with Charles Drake and cut out coming in

to Paris, and started his running and sweating out again, and him and I were the whole stable gang. Our horse's name was

Gilford, he was Irish bred and a nice, sweet jumper. My old

man figured that training him and riding him, himself, he

was a good investment. I was proud of everything and I

thought Gilford was as good a horse as War Cloud. He was a

good, solid jumper, a bay, with plenty of speed on the flat, if

you asked him for it, and he was a nice-looking horse, too.

Gee, I was fond of him. The first time he started with my old man up, he finished third in a 2500 metre hurdle race and when my old man got off him, all sweating and happy in the

place stall, and went in to weigh, I felt as proud of him as

though it was the first race he'd ever placed in. You see,

when a guy ain't been riding for a long time, you can't make

yourself really believe that he has ever rode. The whole

thing was different now, 'cause down in Milan, even big races never seemed to make any difference to my old man, if

he won he wasn't ever excited or anything, and now it was

MY OLD MAN 18^

so I couldn't hardly sleep the night before a race and I knew

my old man was excited, too, even if he didn't show it.

Riding for yourself makes an awful difference.

Second time Gilford and my old man started, was a rainy

Sunday at Auteuil, in the Prix du Marat, a 4500 metre

steeplechase. As soon as he'd gone out I beat it up in the

stand with the new glasses my old man had bought for me to

watch them. They started way over at the far end of the

course and there was some trouble at the barrier. Something with goggle blinders on was making a great fuss and rearing around and busted the barrier once, but I could see my old

man in our black jacket, with a white cross and a black cap,

sitting up on Gilford, and patting him with his hand. Then

they were off in ajump and out of sight behind the trees and the gong going for dear life and the pari-mutuel wickets

rattling down. Gosh, I was so excited, I was afraid to look

at them, but I fixed the glasses on the place where they would come out back of the trees and then out they came with the

old black jacket going third and they all sailing over the

jump like birds. Then they went out of sight again and then

they came pounding out and down the hill and all going nice and sweet and easy and taking the fence smooth in a

bunch, and moving away from us all solid. Looked as though

you could walk across on their backs they were all so bunched and going so smooth. Then they bellied over the big double

Bullfinch and something came down. I couldn't see who it

was, but in a minute the horse was up and galloping free

and the field, all bunched still, sweeping around the long left

turn into the straightaway. Theyjumped the stone wall and

came jammed down the stretch toward the big water-jump

right in front of the stands. I saw them coming and hollered

at my old man as he went by, and he was leading by about a

length and riding way out, and light as a monkey, and they were racing for the water-jump. They took off over the big

hedge of the water-jump in a pack and then there was a

crash, and two horses pulled sideways out of it, and kept on

i84 MY OLD MAN

going, and three others were piled up. I couldn't see my old

man anywhere. One horse kneed himself up and the jock had hold of the bridle and mounted and went slamming on

after the place money. The other horse was up and away by himself, jerking his head and galloping with the bridle

rein hanging and the jock staggered over to one side of the

track against the fence. Then Gilford rolled over to one side

off my old man and got up and started to run on three legs

with his front off hoof dangling and there was my old man

laying there on the grass flat out with his face up and blood

all over the side of his head. I ran down the stand and

bumped into a jam of people and got to the rail and a cop

grabbed me and held me and two big stretcher-bearers were

going out after my old man and around on the other side of

the course I saw three horses, strung way out, coming out of

the trees and taking the jump.

My old man was dead when they brought him in and while

a doctor was listening to his heart with a thing plugged in

his ears, I heard a shot up the track that meant they'd killed

Gilford. I lay down beside my old man, when they carried

the stretcher into the hospital room, and hung on to the

stretcher and cried and cried, and he looked so white and

gone and so awfully dead, and I couldn't help feeling that if

my old man was dead maybe they didn't need to have shot

Gilford. His hoof might have got well. I don't know. I

loved my old man so much.

Then a couple of guys came in and one ofthem patted me on the back and then went over and looked at my old man and then pulled a sheet off the cot and spread it over him; and the other was telephoning in French for them to send the

ambulance to take him out to Maisons. And I couldn't stop

crying, crying and choking, sort of, and George Gardner came in and sat down beside me on the floor and put his arm around me and says, 'Come on, Joe, old boy. Get up and 'we'll go out and wait for the ambulance.'

George and I went out to the gate and I was trying to stop

MYOLDMAN 185

bawling and George wiped offmy face with his handkerchief

and we were standing back a little ways while the crowd was

going out of the gate and a couple of guys stopped near us

while we were waiting for the crowd to get through the gate and one of them was counting a bunch of mutuel tickets and

he said, 'Weil, Butler got his, all right.'

The other guy said, C

I don't give a good goddam if he did,

the crook. He had it coming to him on the stuff he's pulled.'

'I'll say he had,' said the other guy, and tore the bunch of

tickets in two.

And George Gardner looked at me to see if I'd heard and

I had all right, and he said, 'Don't you listen to what those

bums said, Joe. Your old man was one swell guy.'

But I don't know. Seems like when they get started they don't leave a guy nothing.

Maera lay still ', his head on his arms, hisface in the sand. Hefelt

warm and stickyfrom the bleeding. Each time hefelt the horn coming.

Sometimes the bull only bumped him with his head. Once the horn

went all the way through him and hefelt it go into the sand. Someone

had the bull by the tail. They were swearing at him andflopping the

cape in hisface. Then the bull was gone. Some men picked Maera up and started to run with him toward the barriers through the gate out

the passageway around under the grandstand to the infirmary. They laid Maera down on a cot and one of the men went outfor the doctor.

The others stood around. The doctor came running from the corral

where he had been sewing up picador horses. He had to stop and wash

his hands. There was a great shouting going on in the grandstand

overhead. Maera felt everything getting larger and larger and then

smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger and

then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster

and faster as when they speed up on a cinematograph film. Then he

was dead.

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I

THE train went on up the track out of sight, around one of

the hills of burnt timber. Nick sat down on the bundle of

canvas and bedding the baggage man had pitched out of the

door ofthe baggage car. There was no town, nothing but the

rails and the burned-over country. The thirteen saloons that

had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the

ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground. Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hill-side, where

he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the

river. The river was there. It swirled against the log spiles

1 86

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I 187

of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, coloured from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout

keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins.

As he watched them they changed their positions by quick

angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick

watched them a long time.

He watched them holding themselves with their noses into

the current, many trout in deep, fast moving water, slightly

distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex

surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth

against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the bridge. At,

the bottom of the pool were the big trout. Nick did not see

them at first. Then he saw them at the bottom of the pool,

big trout looking to hold themselves on the gravel bottom in

a varying mist of gravel and sand, raised in spurts by the

current.

Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a

hot day. A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time

since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow ofthe kingfisher moved

up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he

came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and

then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his

shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current,

unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened

facing up into the current.

Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the

old feeling.

He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away,

pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep

pool as it curved away around the foot of a bluff.

Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the

cinders beside the railway track. He was happy. He ad-

justed the pack harness around the bundle, pulling straps

tight, slung the pack on his back, got his arms through the

i88 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I

shoulder straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders

by leaning his forehead against the wide band of the tump- line. Still, it was too heavy. It was much too heavy. He had his leather rod-case in his hand and leaning forward to

keep the weight of the pack high on his shoulders he walked

along the road that paralleled the railway track, leaving the

burned town behind in the heat, and then turned off around

a hill with a high, fire-scarred hill on either side on to a road

that went back into the country. He walked along the road

feeling the ache from the pull of the heavy pack. The road

climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His

muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking,

the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.

From the time he had gotten down off the train and the

baggage man had thrown his pack out of the open car door

things had been different. Seney was burned, the country was burned over and changed, but it did not matter. It

could not all be burned. He knew that. He hiked along the

road, sweating in the sun, climbing to cross the range of hills

that separated the railway from the pine plains.

The road ran on, dipping occasionally, but always climb-

ing. Nick went on up. Finally the road after going parallel

to the burnt hill-side reached the top. Nick leaned back

against a stump and slipped out of the pack harness. Ahead ofhim, as far as he could see, was the pine plain. The burned

country stopped off at the left with the range of hills. On ahead islands of dark pine trees rose out of the plain. Far off

to the left was the line of the river. Nick fallowed it with his

eye and caught glints of the water in the sun.

There was nothing but the pine plain ahead of him, until

the far blue hills that marked the Lake Superior height of

land. He could hardly see them, faint and far away in the

heat-light over the plain. Ifhe looked too steadily they were

gone. But if he only half-looked they were there, the far-off

hills of the height of land.

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I 189

Nick sat down against the charred stump and smoked a

cigarette. His pack balanced on the top ofthe stump, harness

holding ready, a hollow moulded in it from his back. Nick

sat smoking, looking out over the country. He did not need

to get his map out. He knew where he was from the position of the river.

As he smoked, his legs stretched out in front of him, he

noticed a grasshopper walk along the ground and up on to

his woollen sock. The grasshopper was black. As he had

walked along the road, climbing, he had started many grass-

hoppers from the dust. They were all black. They were not

the big grasshoppers with yellow and black or red and black

wings whirring out from their black wing sheathing as they

fly up. These were just ordinary hoppers, but all a sooty black in colour. Nick had wondered about them as he

walked, without really thinking about them. Now, as he

watched the black hopper that was nibbling at the wool of

his sock with its fourway lip, he realized that they had all

turned black from living in the burned-over land. He realized that the fire must have come the year before, but the

grasshoppers were all black now. He wondered how long

they would stay that way.

Carefully he reached his hand down and took hold of the

hopper by the wings. He turned him up, all his legs walking in the air, and looked at his jointed belly. Yes, it was black

too, iridescent where the back and head were dusty.

'Go on, hopper/ Nick said, speaking out loud for the first

time. Tly away somewhere.'

He tossed the grasshopper up into the air and watched him

sail away to a charcoal stump across the road.

Nick stood up. He leaned his back against the weight of

his pack where it rested upright on the stump and got his

arms through the shoulder straps. He stood with the pack on his back on the brow of the hill looking out across the

country toward the distant river and then struck down the

hill-side away from the road. Underfoot the ground was good

190 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I

walking. Two hundred yards down the hill-side the fire line

stopped. Then it was sweet fern, growing ankle high, to

walk through, and clumps ofjack pines; a long undulating

country with frequent rises and descents, sandy underfoot

and the country alive again. Nick kept his direction by the sun. He knew where he

wanted to strike the river and he kept on through the pine

plain, mounting small rises to see other rises ahead of him and sometimes from the top of a rise a great solid island of

pines off to his right or his left. He broke off some sprigs of

the heathery sweet fern, and put them under his pack straps.

The chafing crushed it and he smellcd it as he walked.

He was tired and very hot, walking across the uneven, shadelcss pine plain. At any time he knew he would strike

the river by turning off to his left. It could not be more than

a mile away. But he kept on toward the north to hit the

river as far upstream as he could go in one day's walking. For some time as he walked Nick had been in sight of one

of the big islands of pine standing out above the rolling high

ground he was crossing. He dipped down and then as he

came slowly up to the crest of the ridge he turned and made toward the pine trees.

There was no underbrush in the island of pine trees The trunks of the trees went straight up or slanted toward each

other. The trunks were straight and brown without branches.

The branches were high above. Some interlocked to make a

solid shadow on the brown forest floor. Around the grove of

trees was a bare space. It was brown and soft underfoot as

Nick walked on it. This was the over-lapping of the pine needle floor, extending out beyond the width of the high branches. The trees had grown tall and the branches moved

high, leaving in the sun this bare space they had once

covered with shadow. Sharp at the edge of this extension

of the forest floor commenced the sweet fern.

Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He lay on his back and looked up into the pine trees. His neck

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I 19!

and back and the small of his back rested as he stretched.

The earth felt good against his back. He looked up at the

sky, through the branches, and then shut his eyes. He opened them and looked up again. There was a wind high

up in the branches. He shut his eyes again and went to

sleep.

Nick woke stiff and cramped. The sun was nearly down. His pack was heavy and the straps painful as he lifted it on.

He leaned over with the pack on and picked up the leather

rod-case and started out from the pine trees across the sweet

fern swale, toward the river. He knew it could not be more than a mile.

He came down a hill-side covered with stumps into a

meadow. At the edge of the meadow flowed the river. Nick

was glad to get to the river. He walked upstream through the meadow. His trousers were soaked with the dew as he

walked. After the hot day, the dew had come quickly and

heavily. The river made no sound. It was too fast and

smooth. At the edge of the meadow, before he mounted to

a piece of high ground to make camp, Nick looked down the

river at the trout rising. They were rising to insects come from the swamp on the other side of the stream when the sun

went down. The trout jumped out of water to take them.

While Nick walked through the little stretch of meadow

alongside the stream, trout had jumped high out of water.

Now as he looked down the river, the insects must be settling

on the surface, for the trout were feeding steadily all down the stream. As far down the long stretch as he could see,

the trout were rising, making circles all down the surface of

the water, as though it were starting to rain.

The ground rose, wooded and sandy, to overlook the

meadow, the stretch of river and the swamp. Nick dropped his pack and rod-case and looked for a level piece of ground. He was very hungry and he wanted to make his camp before

he cooked. Between two jack-pines, the ground was quite level. He took the axe out of the pack and chopped out two

192 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I

projecting roots. That levelled a piece of ground large

enough to sleep on. He smoothed out the sandy soil with his

hand and pulled all the sweet fern bushes by their roots. His

hands smelled good from the sweet fern. He smoothed the

uprooted earth. He did not want anything making lumps under the blankets. When he had the ground smooth, he

spread his three blankets. One he folded double, next to the

ground. The other two he spread on top.

With the axe he slit off a bright slab ofpine from one ofthe

stumps and split it into pegs for the tent. He wanted them

long and solid to hold in the ground. With the tent unpacked and spread on the ground, the pack, leaning against a jack-

pine, looked much smaller. Nick tied the rope that served the

tent for a ridge-pole to the trunk of one of the pine trees and

pulled the tent up off the ground with the other end of the

rope and tied it to the other pine. The tent hung on the rope like a canvas blanket on a clothes line. Nick poked a pole he had cut up under the back peak of the canvas and then

made it a tent by pegging out the sides. He pegged the sides

out taut and drove the pegs deep, hitting them down into

the ground with the flat of the axe until the rope loops were

buried and the canvas was drum tight.

Across the open mouth of the tent Nick fixed cheesecloth

to keep out mosquitoes. He crawled inside under the mos-

quito bar with various things from the pack to put at the

head of the bed under the slant of the canvas. Inside the tent

the light came through the brown canvas. It smelled plea-

santly of canvas. Already there was something mysterious and home-like. Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent.

He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it

was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was a good place to camp. He was there,

in the good place. He was in his home where he had made it. Now he was hungry.

BIG TWO- HEARTED RIVER: PART I 193

He came out, crawling under the cheesecloth. It was

quite dark outside. It was lighter in the tent.

Nick went over to the pack and found, with his fingers, a

long nail in a paper sack of nails, in the bottom of the pack* He drove it into the pine tree, holding it close and hitting it

gently with the flat of the axe. He hung the pack up on the

nail. All his supplies were in the pack. They were off the

ground and sheltered now.

Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been

hungrier. He opened and emptied a can of pork and beans

and a can of spaghetti into the frying-pan. 'I've got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I'm willing to

carry it,' Nick said. His voice sounded strange in the darken-

ing woods. He did not speak again. He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the

axe from a stump. Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, push-

ing the four legs down into the ground with his boot. Nick

put the frying-pan on the grill over the flames. He was

hungrier. The beans and spaghetti warmed. Nick stirred

them and mixed them together. They began to bubble,

making little bubbles that rose with difficulty to the surface.

There was a good smell. Nick got out a bottle of tomato

catchup and cut four slices of bread. The little bubbles

were coming faster now, Nick sat down beside the fire and lifted the frying-pan off. He poured about half the contents

out into the tin plate. It spread slowly on the plate. Nick

knew it was too hot. He poured on some tomato catchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too hot. He looked at the fire, then at the tent, he was not going to spoil

it all by burning his tongue. For years he had never enjoyed fried bananas because he had never been able to wait for

them to cool. His tongue was very sensitive. He was very

hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark,

he saw a mist rising. He looked at the tent once more. All

right. He took a full spoonful from the plate.

'Chrise,' Nick said. 'Geezus Chrise,' he said happily.

194 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I

He ate the whole plateful before he remembered the bread.

Nick finished the second plateful with the bread, mopping the plate shiny. He had not eaten since a cup of coffee and

a ham sandwich in the station restaurant at St. Ignace. It

had been a very fine experience. He had been that hungry before, but had not been able to satisfy it. He could have

made camp hours before if he had wanted to. There were

plenty of good places to camp on the river. But this was

good. Nick tucked two big chips ofpine under the grill. The fire

flared up. He had forgotten to get water for the coffee. Out of the pack he got a folding canvas bucket and walked down the hill, across the edge of the meadow, to the stream. The other bank was in the white mist. The grass was wet and

cold as he knelt on the bank and dipped the canvas bucket

into the stream. It bellied and pulled hard in the current.

The water was ice cold. Nick rinsed the bucket and carried

it full up to the camp. Up away from the stream it was not

so cold.

Nick drove another big nail and hung up the bucket full

of water. He dipped the coffee pot half full, put some more

chips under the grill on to the fire and put the pot on. He could not remember which way he made coffee. He could

remember an argument about it with Hopkins, but not which

side he had taken. He decided to bring it to a boil. He remembered now that was Hopkins's way. He had once

argued about everything with Hopkins. While he waited

for the coffee to boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked to open cans. He emptied the can of apricots out into a

tin cup. While he watched the coffee on the fire, he drank

the juice syrup of the apricots, carefully at first to keep from

spilling, then meditatively, sucking the apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.

The coffee boiled as he watched. The lid came up and

coffee and grounds ran down the side of the pot. Nick took

it off the grill. It was a triumph for Hopkins. He put sugar

BIG TWO- HEARTED RIVER: PART I 195

in the empty apricot cup and poured some of the coffee out

to cool. It was too hot to pour and he used his hat to hold

the handle of the coffee pot. He would not let it steep in the

pot at all. Not the first cup. It should be straight Hopkins all the way. Hop deserved that. He was a very serious coffee

drinker. He \^as the most serious man Nick had ever known.

Not heavy, serious. That was a long time ago. Hopkins

spoke without moving his lips. He had played polo. He made millions of dollars in Texas. He had borrowed car

fare to go to Chicago, when the wire came that his first big well had come in. He could have wired for money. That would have been too slow. They called Hop's girl the Blonde

Venus. Hop did not mind because she was not his real girl.

Hopkins said very confidently that none ofthem would make fun of his real girl. He was right. Hopkins went away when the telegram came. That was on the Black River. It took

eight days for the telegram to reach him. Hopkins gave

away his .22 calibre Colt automatic pistol to Nick. He gave his camera to Bill. It was to remember him always by. They were all going fishing again next summer. The Hop Head was rich. He would get a yacht and they would all cruise

along the north shore of Lake Superior. He was excited

but serious. They said good-bye and all felt bad. It broke up the trip. They never saw Hopkins again. That was a long time ago on the Black River.

Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he

could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the

coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the

fire. He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off

his shoes and trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled the

shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between

the blankets.

Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of

the fire, when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet

i g6 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I

night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched

under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close

to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again unddr the blanket.

He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.

They hanged Sam Cardinella at six o'clock in the morning in the

corridor of the county jail. The corridor was high and narrow with

tiers of cells on either side. All the cells were occupied. The men

had been brought in for the hanging. Five men sentenced to be

hanged were in the five top cells. Three of the men to be hanged were

negroes. They were very frightened. One of the white men sat on his

cot with his head in his hands. The other lay flat on his cot with a

blanket wrapped around his head.

They came out on to the gallows through a door in the wall.

There were seven of them including two priests. They were carrying

Sam Cardinella. He had been like that since about four o'clock in

the morning.

While they were strapping his legs together two guards held him

up and the two priests were whispering to him. 'Be a man, my son,

said one priest. When they came toward him with the cap to go over

his head Sam Cardinella lost control of his sphincter muscle. The

guards who had been holding him up both dropped him. They were

both disgusted. 'How about a chair, WillT asked one of the guards.

'Better get one? said a man in a derby hat.

When they all stepped back on the scaffolding back of the drop,

which was very heavy, built of oak and steel and swung on ball

bearings, Sam Cardinella was left sitting there strapped tight, the

younger of the two priests kneeling beside the chair. The priest

skipped back on to the scaffolding, just before the drop fell.

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II

IN the morning the sun was up and the tent was starting to

get hot. Nick crawled out under the mosquito netting stretched across the mouth ofthe tent, to look at the morning. The grass was wet on his hands as he came out. He held his

trousers and his shoes in his hands. The sun was just up over

the hill. There was the meadow, the river and the swamp.

197

ig8 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II

There were birch trees in the green of the swamp on the

other side of the river.

The river was clear and smoothly fast in the early morning. Down about two hundred yards were three logs all the way across the stream. They made the water smooth and deep above them. As Nick watched, a mink crossed the river on the logs and went into the swamp. Nick was excited. He was excited by the early morning and the river. He was

really too hurried to eat breakfast, but he knew he must. He built a little fire and put on the coffee pot.

While the water was heating in the pot he took an empty bottle and went down over the edge of the high ground to

the meadow. The meadow was wet with dew and Nick

wanted to catch grasshoppers for bait before the sun dried

the grass. He found plenty of good grasshoppers. They were at the base of the grass stems. Sometimes they clung to a grass stem. They were cold and wet with the dew, and could not jump until the sun warmed them. Nick picked them up, taking only the medium-sized brown ones, and

put them into the bottle. He turned over a log and just

under the shelter of the edge were several hundred hoppers. It was a grasshopper lodging house. Nick put about fifty

of the medium browns into the bottle. While he was picking

up the hoppers the others warmed in the sun and com-

menced to hop away. They flew when they hopped. At first they made one flight and stayed stiff when they landed, as though they were dead.

Nick knew that by the time he was through with breakfast

they would be as lively as ever. Without dew in the grass it

would take him all day to catch a bottle full of good grass-

hoppers and he would have to crush many ofthem, slamming at them with his hat. He washed his hands at the stream. He was excited to be near it. Then he walked up to the tent.

The hoppers were already jumping stiffly in the grass. In

the bottle, warmed by th6 sun, they were jumping in a mass.

Nick put in a pine stick as a cork. It plugged the mouth of

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II 199

the bottle enough, so the hoppers could not get out and left

plenty of air passage. He had rolled the log back and knew he could get grass-

hoppers there every morning. Nick laid the bottle full ofjumping grasshoppers against a

pine trunk. Rapidly he mixed some buckwheat flour with

water and stirred it smooth, one cup of flour, one cup of

water. He put a handful of coffee in the pot and dipped a

lump of grease out of a can and slid it sputtering across the

hot skillet. On the smoking skillet he poured smoothly the

buckwheat batter. It spread like lava, the grease spitting

sharply. Around the edges the buckwheat cake began to

firm, then brown, then crisp. The surface was bubbling

slowly to porousness. Nick pushed under the browned under

surface with a fresh pine chip. He shook the skillet sideways and the cake was loose on the surface. I won't try and flop

it, he thought. He slid the chip of clean wood all the way under the cake, and flopped it over on to its face. It sputtered in the pan. When it was cooked Nick regreased the skillet. He used all

the batter. It made another big flapjack and one smaller one.

Nick ate a big flapjack and a smaller one, covered with

apple butter. He put apple butter on the third cake, folded

it over twice, wrapped it in oiled paper and put it in his shirt

pocket. He put the apple butter jar back in the pack and

cut bread for two sandwiches.

In the pack he found a big onion. He sliced it in two and

peeled the silky outer skin. Then he cut one half into slices

and made onion sandwiches. He wrapped them in oiled

paper and buttoned them in the other pocket of his khaki

shirt. He turned the skillet upside down on the grill, drank

the coffee, sweetened and yellow brown with the condensed

milk in it, and tidied up the camp. It was a good camp. Nick took his fly rod out of the leather rod-case, jointed it,

and shoved the rod-case back into the tent. He put on the

reel and threaded the line through the guides. He had to

200 BIG TWO -HEARTED RIVER: PART II

hold it from hand to hand, as he threaded it, or it would

slip back through its own weight. It was a heavy, double

tapered fly line. Nick had paid eight dollars for it a long time ago. It was made heavy to lift back in the air and

come forward flat and heavy and straight to make it possible

to cast a fly which has no weight. Nick operied the alumi-

nium leader box. The leaders were coiled between the damp flannel pads. Nick had wet the pads at the water cooler on

the train up to St. Ignace. In the damp pads the gut leaders

had softened and Nick unrolled one and tied it by a loop at the end to the heavy fly line. He fastened a hook on the

end of the leader. It was a small hook; very thin and

springy. Nick took it from his hook book, sitting with the rod across

his lap. He tested the knot and the spring of the rod by

pulling the line taut. It was a good feeling. He was careful

not to let the hook bite into his finger.

He started down to the stream, holding his rod, the bottle

of grasshoppers hung from his neck by a thong tied in half

hitches around the neck of the bottle. His landing net hung by a hook from his belt. Over his shoulder was a long flour

sack tied at each corner into an car. The cord went over his

shoulder. The sack flapped against his legs.

Nick felt awkward and professionally happy with all his

equipment hanging from him. The grasshopper bottle swung against his chest. In his shirt the breast pockets bulged

against him with the lunch and his fly book.

He stepped into the stream. It was a shock. His trousers

clung tight to his legs. His shoes felt the gravel. The water

was a rising cold shock.

Rushing, the current sucked against his legs. Where he

stepped in, the water was over his knees. He waded with the

current. The gravel slid under his shoes. He looked down at

the swirl of water below each leg and tipped up the bottle

to get a grasshopper. The first grasshopper gave a jump in the neck of the bottle

BIG TWO- HEARTED RIVER: PART II 201

and went out into the water. He was sucked under in the

whirl by Nick's right leg and came to the surface a little way downstream. He floated rapidly, kicking. In a quick circle,

breaking the smooth surface of the water, he disappeared. A trout had taken him.

Another hopper poked his face out of the bottle. His

antennae wavered. He was getting his front legs out of the

bottle to jump. Nick took him by the head and held him while he threaded the slim hook under his chin, down

through his thorax and into the last segments of his abdomen.

The grasshopper took hold of the hook with his front feet,

spitting tobacco juice on it. Nick dropped him into the

water.

Holding the rod in his right hand he let out line against the pull of the grasshopper in the current. He stripped off

line from the reel with his left hand and let it run free. He could see the hopper in the little waves of the current. It

went out of sight.

There was a tug on the line. Nick pulled against the taut

line. It was his first strike. Holding the now living rod

across the current, he brought in the line with his left hand.

The rod bent in jerks, the trout pumping against the current.

Nick knew it was a small one. He lifted the rod straight up in the air. It bowed with the pull.

He saw the trout in the water jerking with his head and

body against the shifting tangent of the line in the stream.

Nick took the line in his left hand and pulled the trout,

thumping tiredly against the current, to the surface. His

back was mottled the clear, water-over-gravel colour, his

side flashing in the sun. The rod under his right arm, Nick

stooped, dipping his right hand into the current. He held

the trout, never still, with his moist right hand, while he

unhooked the barb from his mouth, then dropped him back

into the stream.

He hung unsteadily in the current, then settled to the

bottom beside a stone. Nick reached down his hand to touch

202 BIG TWO- HEARTED RIVE-R: PART II

him, his arm to the elbow under water. The trout was steady in the moving stream, resting on the gravel, beside a stone.

As Nick's fingers touched him, touched his smooth, cool,

underwater feeling he was gone, gone in a shadow across

the bottom of the stream.

He's all right, Nick thought. He was only tired.

He had wet his hand before he touched the trout, so he

would not disturb the delicate mucus that covered him. If a

trout was touched with a dry hand, a white fungus attacked

the unprotected spot. Years before when he had fished

crowded streams, with fly fishermen ahead ofhim and behind

him, Nick had again and again come on dead trout, furry with white fungus, drifted against a rock, or floating belly up in some pool. Nick did not like to fish with other men on the

river. Unless they were of your party, they spoiled it.

He wallowed down the stream, above his knees in the

current, through the fifty yards of shallow water above the

pile of logs that crossed the stream. He did not rebait his

hook and held it in his hand as he waded. He was certain he

could catch small trout in the shallows, but Jie did not want them. There would be no big trout in the shallows this time

of day. Now the water deepened up his thighs sharply and coldly.

Ahead was the smooth dammed-back flood of water above

the logs. The water was smooth and dark; on the left, the

lower edge of the meadow; on the right the swamp. Nick leaned back against the current and took a hopper

from the bottle. He threaded the hopper on the hook and

spat on him for good luck. Then he pulled several yards of

line from the reel and tossed the hopper out ahead on to the

fast, dark water. It floated down towards the logs, then the

weight of the line pulled the bait under the surface. Nick

held the rod in his right hand, letting the line run out through his fingers.

There was a long tug. Nick struck and the rod came alive

and dangerous, bent double, the line tightening, coming

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II 203

out of water, tightening, all in a heavy, dangerous, steady

pull. Nick felt the moment when the leader would break if

the strain increased and let the line go.

The reel racheted into a mechanical shriek as the line

went out in a rush. Too fast. Nick could not check it, the

line rushing out, the reel note rising as the line ran out.

With the core of the reel showing, his heart feeling stopped with the excitement, leaning back against the current that

mounted icily his thighs. Nick thumbed the reel hard with

his left hand. It was awkward getting his thumb inside the

fly reel frame.

As he put on pressure the line tightened into sudden hard-

ness and beyond the logs a huge trout went high out ofwater.

As hejumped, Nick lowered the tip of the rod. But he felt, as

he dropped the tip to ease the strain, the moment when the

strain was too great; the hardness too tight. Of course, the

leader had broken. There was no mistaking the feeling when all spring left the line and it became dry and hard. Then it

went slack.

His mouth dry, his heart down, Nick reeled in. He had

never seen so big a trout. There was a heaviness, a power not to be held, and then the bulk of him, as he jumped. He looked as broad as a salmon.

Nick's hand was shaky. He reeled in slowly. The thrill

had been too much. He felt, vaguely, a little sick, as though it would be better to sit down.

The leader had broken where the hook was tied to it.

Nick took it in his hand. He thought of the trout somewhere on the bottom, holding himself steady over the gravel, far

down below the light, under the logs, with the hook in hisjaw. Nick knew the trout's teeth would cut through the snell of the

hook. The hook would imbed itself in his jaw. He'd bet the

trout was angry. Anything that size would be angry. That

was a trout. He had been solidly hooked. Solid as a rock.

He felt like a rock, too, before he started off. By God, he was

a big one. By God, he was the biggest one I ever heard of.

204 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II

Nick climbed out on to the meadow and stood, water run-

ning down his trousers and out ofhis shoes, his shoes squelchy. He went over and sat on the logs. He did not want to rush

his sensations any. He wriggled his toes in the water, in his shoes, and got out

a cigarette from his breast pocket. He lit it and tossed the

match into the fast water below the logs. A tiny trout rose

at the match, as it swung around in the fast current. Nick

laughed. He would finish the cigarette.

He sat on the logs, smoking, drying in the sun, the sun

warm on his back, the river shallow ahead entering the woods,

curving into the woods, shallows, light glittering, big water-

smooth rocks, cedars along the bank and white birches, the

logs warm in the sun, smooth to sit on, without bark, grey to

the touch; slowly the feeling of disappointment left him. It

went away slowly, the feeling of disappointment that came

sharply after the thrill that made his shoulders ache. It was all right now. His rod lying out on the logs, Nick tied a new hook on the leader, pulling the gut tight until it grimped into itself in a hard knot.

He baited up, then picked up the rod and walked to the

far end of the logs to get into the water, where it was not too

deep. Under and beyond the logs was a deep pool. Nick

walked around the shallow shelf near the swamp shore until

he came out on the shallow bed of the stream.

On the left, where the meadow ended and the woods

began, a great elm tree was uprooted. Gone over in a storm, it lay back into the woods, its roots clotted with dirt, grass

growing in them, rising a solid bank beside the stream. The river cut to the edge of the uprooted tree. From where Nick

stood he could see deep channels, like ruts, cut in the shallow

bed of the stream by the flow of the current. Pebbly where he stood and pebbly and full of boulders beyond; where it

curved near the tree roots, the bed of the stream was marly and between the ruts of deep water green weed fronds swung in the current.

BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II 205

Nick swung the rod back over his shoulder and forward, and the line, curving forward, laid the grasshopper down on

one of the deep channels in the weeds. A trout struck and Nick hooked him.

Holding the rod far out toward the uprooted tree and

sloshing backward in the current, Nick worked the trout,

plunging, the rod bending alive, out of the danger of the

weeds into the open river. Holding the rod, pumping alive

against the current, Nick brought the trout in. He rushed, but always came, the spring of the rod yielding to the rushes,

sometimes jerking under water, but always bringing him in.

Nick eased downstream with the rushes. The rod above his

head he led the trout over the net, then lifted.

The trout hung heavy in the net, mottled trout back and

silver sides in the meshes. Nick unhooked him; heavy sides,

good to hold, big undershot jaw, and slipped him, heaving and big sliding, into the long sack that hung from his

shoulders in the water.

Nick spread the mouth of the sack against the current and it filled, heavy with water. He held it up, the bottom in the

stream, and the water poured out through the sides. Inside

at the bottom was the big trout, alive in the water.

Nick moved downstream. The sack out ahead ofhim sunk

heavy in the water, pulling from his shoulders.

It was getting hot, the sun hot on the back of his neck.

Nick had one good trout. He did not care about getting

many trout. Now the stream was shallow and wide. There

were trees along both banks. The trees of the left bank made short shadows on the current in the forenoon sun. Nick knew there were trout in each shadow. In the afternoon, after the

sun had crossed toward the hills, the trout would be in the

cool shadows on the other side of the stream.

The very biggest ones would lie up close to the bank. You could always pick them up there on the Black. When the

sun was down they all moved out into the current. Just when the sun made the water blinding in the glare before it went

ao6 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II

down, you were liable to strike a big trout anywhere in the

current. It was almost impossible to fish then, the surface of

the water was blinding as a mirror in the sun. Of course, you could fish upstream, but in a stream like the Black, or this,

you had to wallow against the current and in a deep place,

the water piled up on you. It was no fun tot fish upstream with this much current.

Nick moved along through the shallow stretch watching the banks for deep holes. A beech tree grew close beside the

river, so that the branches hung down into the water. The stream went back in under the leaves. There were always trout in a place like that.

Nick did not care about fishing that hole. He was sure he

would get hooked in the branches.

It looked deep though. He dropped the grasshopper so the

current took it under water, back in under the overhanging branch. The line pulled hard and Nick struck. The trout

threshed heavily, halfout ofwater in the leaves and branches.

The line was caught. Nick pulled hard and the trout was off.

He reeled in and holding the hook in his hand, walked down the stream.

Ahead, close to the left bank, was a big log. Nick saw it

was hollow; pointing up river the current entered it smoothly,

only a little ripple spread each side of the log. The water was

deepening. The top of the hollow log was grey and dry. It

was partly in the shadow.

Nick took the cork out of the grasshopper bottle and a

hopper clung to it. He picked him off, hooked him and tossed

him out. He held the rod far out so that the hopper on the

water moved into the current flowing into the hollow log.

Nick lowered the rod and the hopper floated in. There was a

heavy strike. Nick swung the rod against the pull. It felt as

though he were hooked into the log itself, except for the live

feeling.

He tried to force the fish out into the current. It came,

heavily.

BIG TWO- HEAR TED RIVER: PART II 207

The line went slack, and Nick thought the trout was gone. Then he saw him, very near, in the current, shaking his head,

trying to get the hook out. His mouth was clamped shut.

He was fighting the hook in the clear flowing current.

Looping in the line with his left hand, Nick swung the rod

to make the line taut and tried to lead the trout toward the

net, but he was gone, out of sight, the line pumping. Nick

fought him against the current, letting him thump in the

water against the spring of the rod. He shifted the rod to his

left hand, worked the trout upstream, holding his weight,

fighting on the rod, and then let him down into the net. He lifted him clear of the water, a heavy half circle in the net,

the net dripping, unhooked him and slid him into the sack.

He spread the mouth of the sack and looked down in at

the two big trout alive in the water.

Through the deepening water, Nick waded over to the

hollow log. He took the sack off, over his head, the trout

flopping as it came out of water, and hung it so the trout

were deep in the water. Then he pulled himself up on the

log and sat, the water from his trousers and boots running down into the stream. He laid his rod down, moved along to

the shady end of the log and took the sandwiches out of his

pocket. He dipped the sandwiches in the cold water. The current carried away the crumbs. He ate the sandwiches

and dipped his hat full of water to drink, the water running out through his hat just ahead of his drinking.

It was cool in the shade, sitting on the log. He took a

cigarette out and struck a match to light it. The match sunk

into the grey wood, making a tiny furrow. Nick leaned over

the side of the log, found a hard place and lit the match. He sat smoking and watching the river.

Ahead the river narrowed and went into a swamp. The river became smooth and deep and the swamp looked solid

with cedar trees, their trunks close together, their branches

solid. It would not be possible to walk through a swamp like

that. The branches grew so low. You would have to keep

2o8 BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II

almost level with the ground to move at all. You could not

crash through the branches. That must be why the animals

that lived in swamps were built the way they were, Nick

thought. He wished he had brought something to read. He felt like

reading. He did not feel like going on into tKc swamp. He looked down the river. A big cedar slanted all the way across

the stream. Beyond that the river went into the swamp. Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction

against deep wading with the water deepening up under his

armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them.

In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came

together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in

patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing

would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure.

Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the

stream any farther to-day. He took out his knife, opened it and stuck it in the log.

Then he pulled up the sack, reached into it and brought out

one of the trout. Holding him near the tail, hard to hold,

alive, in his hand, he whacked him against the log. The trout quivered, rigid. Nick laid him on the log in the shade

and broke the neck of the other fish the same way. He laid

them side by side on the log. They were fine trout.

Nick cleaned them, slitting them from the vent to the tip

of the jaw. All the insides and the gills and tongue came out

in one piece. They were both males; long grey-white strips

of milt, smooth and clean. All the insides clean and compact,

coming out all together. Nick tossed the offal ashore for the

minks to find.

He washed the trout in the stream. When he held them back up in the water they looked like live fish. Their colour

was not gone yet. He washed his hands and dried them on the log. Then he laid the trout on the sack spread out on the log, rolled them up in it, tied the bundle and put it in

the landing net. His knife was still standing, blade stuck in

BIG TWO- HEARTED RIVER: PART II 209

the log. He cleaned it on the wood and put it in his pocket. Nick stood up on the log, holding his rod, the landing net

hanging heavy, then stepped into the water and splashed ashore. He climbed the bank and cut up into the woods> toward the high ground. He was going back to camp. He looked back. The river just showed through the trees. There

were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.

r L'ENVOI

1 he king was working in the garden. He seemed very glad to see me.

We walked through the garden. This is the queen, he said. She was

clippingji rose bush. Oh how doyou do, she said. We sat down at a

table under a big tree and the king ordered whisky and soda. We have

good whisky anyway, he said. The rej}olt^na^c^n^njttee,

he told

me, would not allow him to go outside the palace grounds. Plastiras

is a very good man I believe, he said, butfrightfully difficult. I think

he did right though shooting those chaps. If Kerensky had shot afew

men things might have been altogetE^different. Of course the great

thing in this sort of an affair is not to be shot oneself!

It was very jolly. We talkedfor a long time. Like all Greeks he

wanted to go to America.

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN

THE UNDEFEATED MANUEL GARCIA climbed the stairs to Don Miguel Retana's

office. He set down his suitcase and knocked on the door.

There was no answer. Manuel, standing in the hallway, felt

there was some one in the room. He felt it through the door.

'Retana,' he said, listening.

There was no answer.

He's there, all right, Manuel thought.

'Retana,' he said and banged the door.

"'Who's there?' said some one in the office.

'Me, Manolo,' Manuel said*.

'What do you want?' asked the voice..

'I want to work,' Manuel said.^^ ~*

Something in the door clicked several times and it swung open. Manuel went in, carrying his suitcase.

A little man sat behind a desk at the far side of the room.

Over his head was a bull's head, stuffed by a Madrid ta&i-

dernust; on the walls were framed photographs and bull-

fight posters. The little man sat looking at Manuel., *I thought they'd killed you/ he

said<j5 Manuel knocked with his knuckles on the desk. The little

man sat looking at him across the desk.

'How many corridas you had this year?' Retana asked.

'One, 3 he answered.

'Just that one?' the little man asked.

'That's all.'

'I read about it in the papers, 5 Retana said. He leaned

back in the chair and looked at Manuel.

Manuel looked up at the stuffed bull. He had seen it often

before. He felt a certain family interest in it. It had killed

210

THE UNDEFEATED 211

his brother, the promising one, about nine years ago. Manuel remembered the day. There was a brass plate on the oak

shield the bull's head was mounted on. Manuel could not

read it, but he imagined it was in memory of his brother.

Well, he had been a good kid.

The plate % said: 'The Bull "Mariposa" of the Duke of

Veragua, which accepted 9 varas for 7 caballos, and caused

the death of Antonio Garcia, Novillero, April 27, 1909.'

Retana saw him looking at the stuffed bull's head.

'The lot the Duke sent me for Sunday will make a scandal,'

he said. 'They're all bad in the legs. What do they say about

them at the Cafe?' C

I don't know/ Manuel said 'I just got in.'

'Yes,' Retana said. 'You still have your bag.'

He looked at Manuel, leaning back behind the big desk.

'Sit down,' he said. 'Take off your cap.'

Manuel sat down; his cap off, his face was changed. He looked pale, and his coleta pinned forward on his head, so

that it would not show under the cap, gave him a strange look.

'You don't look well,' Retana said.

'I just got out of the hospital,' Manuel said.

'I heard they'd cut your leg off,' Retana said.

'No,' said Manuel. 'It got all right.'

Retana leaned forward across the desk and pushed a

wooden box of cigarettes toward Manuel.

'Have a cigarette,' he said.

Thanks.'

Manuel lit it.

'Smoke?' he said, offering the match to Retana.

'No,' Retana waved his hand, 'I never smoke.'

Retana watched him smoking.

'Why don't you get a job and go to work?' he said.

*I don't want to work,' Manuel said. 'I am a bull-fighter/

There aren't any bull-fighters any more,' Retana said.

Tm a bull-fighter,' Manuel said.

212 THE UNDEFEATED 'Yes, while you're in there/ Retana said.

Manuel laughed. Retana sat, saying nothing and looking at Manuel.

Til put you in a nocturnal if you want,' Retana offered.

'When?' Manuel asked.

'To-morrow night.'

'I don't like to substitute for anybody,' Manuel said. That was the way they all got killed. That was the way Salvador

got killed. He tapped with his knuckles on the table.

'It's all I've got,' Retana said.

'Why don't you put me on next week? 5 Manuel suggested.

'You wouldn't draw,' Retana said. 'All they want is Litri

and Rubito and La Torre. Those kids are good.'

'They'd come to see me get it,' Manuel said, hopefully.

'No, they wouldn't. They don't know who you are any more.'

'I've got a lot of stuff,' Manuel said.

'I'm offering to put you on to-morrow night,' Retana said. 4You can work with young Hernandez and kill two novillos

after the Chariots.'

'Whose novillos?' Manuel asked.

'I don't know. Whatever stuff they've got in the corrals.

What the veterinaries won't pass in the daytime.' 'I don't like to substitute,' Manuel said.

'You can take it or leave it,' Retana said. He leaned for-

ward over the papers. He was no longer interested. The

appeal that Manuel had made to him for a moment when he

thought of the old days was gone. He would like to get him to substitute for Larita because he could get him cheaply. He could get others cheaply too. He would like to help him,

though. Still he had given him the chance. It was up to him.

'How much do I get?' Manuel asked. He was still playing with the idea of refusing. But he knew he could not refuse.

'Two hundred and fifty pesetas,' Retana said. He had

thought of five hundred, but when he opened his mouth it

said two hundred and fifty.

THE UNDEFEATED 213

'You pay Villalta seven thousand/ Manuel said.

'You're not Villalta,' Retana said.

'I know it,' Manuel said.

'He draws it, Manolo,' Retana said in explanation.

'Sure,' said Manuel. He stood up. 'Give me three hun-

dred, Retana! 5

'All right,' Retana agreed. He reached in the drawer for a

paper. 'Can I have fifty now?' Manuel asked.

'Sure,' said Retana. He took a fifty-peseta note out of his

pocket-book and laid it, spread out flat, on the table.

Manuel picked it up and put it in his pocket. 'What about a cuadrilla?' he asked.

'There's the boys that always work for me nights,' Retana

said. 'They're all right.'

'How about picadors?' Manuel asked.

'They're not much,' Retana admitted.

'I've got to have one good pic,' Manuel said.

'Get him then,' Retana said. 'Go and get him.'

'Not out of this,' Manuel said. 'I'm not paying for any cuadrilla out of sixty duros.'

Retana said nothing but looked at Manuel across the big desk.

'You know I've got to have one good pic,' Manuel said.

Retana said nothing but looked at Manuel from a long way off.

'It isn't right,' Manuel said.

Retana was still considering him, leaning back in his chair,

considering him from a long way away. There're the regular pics/ he offered.

'I know, 5 Manuel said. 'I know your regular pics.'

Retana did not smile. Manuel knew it was over.

'All I want is an even break, 5 Manuel said reasoningly.

*When I go out there I want to be able to call my shots on the

bull. It only takes one good picador. 5

He was talking to a man who was no longer listening.

2i4 THE UNDEFEATED If you want something extra/ Retana said, 'go and get it.

There will be a regular cuadrilla out there. Bring as many of your own pics as you want. The charlotada is over by 10.30.'

'All right/ Manuel said. 'If that's the way you feel about

it.'

'That's the way/ Retana said.

Til see you to-morrow night/ Manuel said.

Til be out there/ Retana said.

Manuel picked up his suitcase and went out.

'Shut the door/ Retana called.

Manuel looked back. Retana was sitting forward looking at

some papers. Manuel pulled the door tight until it clicked.

He went down the stairs and out of the door into the hot

brightness of the street. It was very hot in the street and the

light on the white buildings was sudden and hard on his eyes.

He walked down the shady side of the street toward the

Puerta del Sol. The shade felt solid and cool as running water. The heat came suddenly as he crossed the intersect-

ing streets. Manuel saw no one he knew in all the people he

passed.

Just before the Puerto del Sol he turned into a cafe.

It was quiet in the cafe. There were a few men sitting at

tables against the wall. At one table four men played cards.

Most of the men sat against the wall smoking, empty coffee-

cups and liqueur-glasses before them on the tables. Manuel went through the long room to a small room in back. A man sat at a table in the corner asleep. Manuel sat down at one

of the tables.

A waiter came in and stood beside Manuel's table.

'Have you seen Zurito?' Manuel asked him.

'He was in before lunch/ the waiter answered, 'He won't

be back before five o'clock.'

'Bring me some coffee and milk and a shot of the ordinary/ Manuel said.

The waiter came back into the room carrying a tray with a

THE UNDEFEATED- 215

big coffee-glass and a liqueur-glass on it. In his left hand he

held a bottle of brandy. He swung these down to the table

and a boy who had followed him poured coffee and milk into

the glass from two shiny, spouted pots with long handles.

Manuel took off his cap and the waiter noticed his pigtail

pinned forward on his head. He winked at the coffee-boy as

he poured out the brandy into the little glass beside

Manuel's coffee. The coffee-boy looked at Manuel's pale face

curiously.

'You fighting here?' asked the waiter, corking up the bottle.

'Yes,' Manuel said. 'To-morrow.'

The waiter stood there, holding the bottle on one hip.

'You in the Charlie Chaplins?' he asked.

The coffee-boy looked away, embarrassed.

'No. In the ordinary. 5

'I thought they were going to have Chaves and Hernan-

dez,' the waiter said.

'No. Me and another.'

'Who? Chaves or Hernandez?'

'Hernandez, I think/

'What's the matter with Chaves?'

'He got hurt. 5

"Where did you hear that?'

'Retana.'

"Hey, Looie,' the waiter called to the next room. 'Chaves

got cogida.'

Manuel had taken the wrapper off the lumps of sugar and

dropped them into his coffee. He stirred it and drank it

down, sweet, hot, and warming in his empty stomach. He drank off the brandy.

'Give me another shot of that,' he said to the waiter.

The waiter uncorked the bottle and poured the glass fullr

slopping another drink into the saucer. Another waiter had come up in front of the table. The coffee-boy was gone,

'Is Chaves hurt bad?' the second waiter asked Manuel.

'I don't know,' Manuel said. 'Retana didn't say.'

216 THE UNDEFEATED 'A hell of a lot he cares/ the tall waiter said. Manuel had

not seen him before. He must have just come up. 'If you stand in with Retana in this town, you're a made

man/ the tall waiter said. 'If you aren't in with him, you

might just as well go out and shoot yourself.'

'You said it,' the other waiter who had come in said. 'You

said it then.'

'You're right I said it,' said the tall waiter. 'I know what I'm talking about when I talk about that bird.'

'Look what he's done for Villalta,' the first waiter said.

'And that ain't all,' the tall waiter said. 'Look what he's

done for Marcial Lalanda. Look what he's done for

Nacional.'

'You said it, kid,' agreed the short waiter.

Manuel looked at them, standing talking in front of his

table. He had drunk his second brandy. They had for-

gotten about him. They were not interested in him.

'Look at that bunch of camels,' the tall waiter went on.

'Did you ever see this Nacional II?'

'I seen him last Sunday, didn't I?' the original waiter said.

'He's a giraffe,' the short waiter said.

'What did I tell you?' the tall waiter said. 'Those are

Retana's boys.'

'Say, give me another shot of that/ Manuel said. He had

poured the brandy the waiter had slopped over in the saucer

into his glass and drank it while they were talking.

The original waiter poured his glass full mechanically, and

the three ofthem went out of the room talking.

In the far corner the man was still asleep, snoring slightly

on the intaking breath, his head back against the wall.

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too

hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do.

He wanted to see Zurito. Hewould go to sleep while he waited.

He kicked his suitcase under the table to be sure it was there.

Perhaps it would be better to put it back under the seat,

against the wall. He leaned down and shoved it under.

THE UNDEFEATED 217

Then he leaned forward on the table and went to sleep.

When he woke there was some one sitting across the table

from him. It was a big man with a heavy brown face like

an Indian. He had been sitting there some time. He had waved the waiter away and sat reading the paper and

occasionally looking down at Manuel, asleep, his head on the

table. He read the paper laboriously, forming the words with

his lips as he read. When it tired him he looked at Manuel.

He sat heavily in the chair, his black Cordoba hat tipped forward.

Manuel sat up and looked at him.

'Hello, Zurito, 5 he said.

c

Hello, kid,' the big man said.

'I've been asleep,' Manuel rubbed his forehead with the

back of his fist.

'I thought maybe you were.'

'How's everything?' 'Good. How is everything with you?' 'Not so good.'

They were both silent. Zurito, the picador, looked at

Manuel's white face. Manuel looked down at the picador's enormous hands folding the paper to put away in his pocket.

'I got a favour to ask you, Manos,' Manuel said.

Manosduros was Zurito's nickname. He never heard it

without thinking of his huge hands. He put them forward

on the table self-consciously.

'Let's have a drink,' he said.

'Sure,' said Manuel.

The waiter came and went and came again. He went out

of the room looking back at the two men at the table.

'What's the matter, Manolo?' Zurito set down his glass.

'Would you pic two bulls for me to-morrow night?' Manuel

asked, looking up at Zurito across the table. c

No, J

said Zurito. Tm not pic-ing. 5

Manuel looked down at his glass. He had expected that

answer; now he had it. Well, he had it.

2i8 THE UNDEFEATED Tm sorry, Manolo, but I'm not pic-ing.' Zurito looked at

his hands.

'That's all right,' Manuel said.

Tm too old,' Zurito said.

'I just asked you,' Manuel said.

'Is it the nocturnal to-morrow?'

'That's it. I figured if I had just one good pic, I could get

away with it.'

'How much are you getting?'

'Three hundred pesetas.'

'I get more than that for pic-ing.'

'I know,' said Manuel. 'I didn't have any right to ask

you.' 'What do you keep on doing it for?' Zurito asked. 'Why

don't you cut off your coleta, Manolo?'

'I don't know,' Manuel said.

'You're pretty near as old as I am,' Zurito said.

*I don't know,' Manuel said. 'I got to do it. If I can fix it

so that I get an even break, that's all I want. I got to stick

with it, Manos.'

'No, you don't.'

'Yes. I do. I've tried keeping away from it.'

'I know how you feel. But it isn't right. You ought to get

out and stay out.'

'I can't do it. Besides, I've been going good lately.'

Zurito looked at his face.

'You've been in the hospital.'

'But I was going great when I got hurt.'

Zurito said nothing. He tipped the cognac out of his

saucer into his glass.

'The papers said they never saw a better faena,' Manuel said.

Zurito looked at him.

'You know when I get going I'm good,' Manuel said.

'You're too old,' the picador said.

'No, 5

said Manuel. 'You're ten years older than I am.'

THE UNDEFEATED 219

'With me it's different.'

Tm not too old,' Manuel said.

They sat silent, Manuel watching the picador's face.

'I was going great till I got hurt,' Manuel offered.

'You ought to have seen me, Manos,' Manuel saidy

reproachfully. 'I don't want to see you,' Zurito said. 'It makes me

nervous.'

'You haven't seen me lately.'

'I've seen you plenty.'

Zurito looked at Manuel, avoiding his eyes.

'You ought to quit it, Manolo.'

'I can't,' Manuel said. 'I'm going good now, I tell you/ Zurito leaned forward, his hands on the table.

'Listen. I'll pic for you and if you don't go big to-morrow

night, you'll quit. See? Will you do that?'

'Sure.'

Zurito leaned back, relieved.

'You got to quit,' he said. 'No monkey business. You got to cut the coleta/

'I won't have to quit,' Manuel said. 'You watch me. I've

got the stuff.'

Zurito stood up. He felt tired from arguing. 'You got to quit,' he said. Til cut your coleta myself.'

'No, you won't,' Manuel said. 'You won't have a chance/

Zurito called the waiter.

'Come on/ said Zurito. 'Come on up to the house.'

Manuel reached under the seat for his suitcase. He was

happy. He knew Zurito would pic for him. He was the best

picador living. It was all simple now.

'Come on up to the house and we'll eat,' Zurito said.

Manuel stood in the patio de caballos waiting for the

Charlie Chaplins to be over. Zurito stood beside him.

Where they stood it was dark. The high door that led into

the bull-ring was shut. Above them they heard a shout, then

220 THE UNDEFEATED another shout of laughter. Then there was silence. Manuel liked the smell of the stables about the patio de caballos.

It smelt good in the dark. There was another roar from the

arena and then applause, prolonged applause, going on and

on.

'You ever seen these fellows? 5

Zurito asked, big and

looming beside Manuel in the dark.

'No,' Manuel said.

'They're pretty funny,' Zurito said. He smiled to himself

in the dark.

The high, double, tight-fitting door into the bull-ring

swung open and Manuel saw the ring in the hard light of the

arc-lights, the plaza, dark all the way around, rising high; around the edge of the ring were running and bowing two

men dressed like tramps, followed by a third in the uniform

of a hotel bell-boy who stooped and picked up the hats and

canes thrown down on to the sand and tossed them back up into the darkness.

The electric light went on in the patio.

Til climb on to one of those ponies while you collect the

kids,' Zurito said.

Behind them came the jingle of the mules, coming out to

go into the arena and be hitched on to the dead bull.

The members of the cuadrilla, who had been watching the

burlesque from the runway between the barrera and the

seats, came walking back and stood in a group talking, under

the electric light in the patio. A good-looking lad in a silver-

and-orange suit came up to Manuel and smiled.

Tm Hernandez,' he said and put out his hand.

Manuel shook it.

'They're regular elephants we've got to-night,' the boy said

cheerfully.

'They're big ones with horns/ Manuel agreed. 'You drew the worst lot,' the boy said.

'That's all right,' Manuel said. 'The bigger they are, the

more meat for the poor.'

THE UNDEFEATED 221

'Where did you get that one?' Hernandez grinned. 'That's an old one/ Manuel said. 'You line up your cuad-

rilla, so I can see what I've got.'

'You've got some good kids,' Hernandez said. He was very cheerful. He had been on twice before in nocturnals and was

beginning to gfet a following in Madrid. He was happy the

fight would start in a few minutes.

'Where are the pics?' Manuel asked.

'They're back in the corrals fighting about who gets the

beautiful horses/ Hernandez grinned. The mules came through the gate in a rush, the whips

snapping, bells jangling and the young bull ploughing a

furrow of sand.

They formed up for the paseo as soon as the bull had gone

through. Manuel and Hernandez stood in front. The youths of

the cuadrillas were behind, their heavy capes furled over

their arms. In back, the four picadors, mounted, hold-

ing their steel-tipped push-poles erect in the half-dark of the

corral.

'It's a wonder Retana wouldn't give us enough light to see

the horses by/ one picador said.

'He knows we'll be happier if we don't get too good a look

at these skins/ another pic answered.

'This thing I'm on barely keeps me off the ground/ the

first picador said.

'Well, they're horses.'

'Sure, they're horses.'

They talked, sitting their gaunt horses in the dark.

Zurito said nothing. He had the only steady horse of the

lot. He had tried him, wheeling him in the corrals and he

responded to the bit and the spurs. He had taken the

bandage off his right eye and cut the strings where they had

tied his ears tight shut at the base. He was a good, solid

horse, solid on his legs. That was all he needed. He intended

to ride him all through the corrida. He had already, since he

222 THE UNDEFEATED had mounted, sitting in the half-dark in the big, quilted

saddle, waiting for the paseo, pioed through the whole

corrida in his mind. The other picadors went on talking on

both sides ofhim. He did not hear them.

The two matadors stood together in front of their three

peones, their capes furled over their left arms in the same

fashion. Manuel was thinking about the three lads in back of

him. They were all three Madrilenos, like Hernandez, boys about nineteen. One of them, a gipsy, serious, aloof, and

dark-faced, he liked the look of. He turned.

'What's your name, kid?' he asked the gipsy.

Tuentes,' the gipsy said.

'That's a good name,' Manuel said.

The gipsy smiled, showing his teeth.

'You take the bull and give him a little run when he comes

out,' Manuel said.

'All right,' the gipsy said. His face was serious. He began to think about just what he would do.

'Here she goes,' Manuel said to Hernandez.

'All right. We'll go.'

Heads up, swinging with the music, their right arms

swinging free, they stepped out, crossing the sanded arena

under the arc-lights, the cuadrillas opening out behind, the

picadors riding after, behind came the bull-ring servants and

the jingling mules. The crowd applauded Hernandez as they marched across the arena. Arrogant, swinging, they looked

straight ahead as they marched.

They bowed before the president, and the procession broke up into its component parts. The bull-fighters went over to the barrera and changed their heavy mantles for the

light fighting capes. The mules went out. The picadors

galloped jerkily around the ring, and two rode out the gate

they had come in by. The servants swept the sand

smooth.

Manuel drank a glass of water poured for him by one of

Retana's deputies, who was acting as his manager and sword-

THE UNDEFEATED 223

handler. Hernandez came over from speaking with his own

manager. 'You got a good hand, kid,

5 Manuel complimented him.

'They like me,' Hernandez said happily. 'How did the pasco go?

5 Manuel asked Retana 5

s man.

'Like a wedding, 5

said the handler. 'Fine. You came out

like Joselito and Belmonte. 5

Zurito rode by, a bulky equestrian statue. He wheeled his

horse and faced him toward the toril on the far.side of the

ring where the bull would come out. It was strange under

the arc-light. He pic-cd in the hot afternoon sun for big

money. He didn't like this arc-light business. He wished

they would get started.

Manuel went up to him.

'Pic him, Manos, 5

he said. 'Cut him down to size for

me.'

Til pic him, kid,' Zurito spat on the sand. Til make him

jump out of the ring.'

'Lean on him, Manos,' Manuel said.

Til lean on him,' Zurito said. 'What's holding it up?' 'He's coming now,' Manuel said.

Zurito sat there, his feet in the box-stirrups, his great legs

in the buckskin-covered armour gripping the horse, the reins

in his left hand, the long pic held in his right hand, his broad

hat well down over his eyes to shade them from the lights,

watching the distant door of the toril. His horse's ears

quivered. Zurito patted him with his left hand.

The red door of the toril swung back and for a moment Zurito looked into the empty passageway far across the

arena. Then the bull came out in a rush, skidding on his four

legs as he came out under the lights, then charging in a gallop,

moving softly in a fast gallop, silent except as he woofed

through wide nostrils as he charged, glad to be free after the

dark pen. In the first row of seats, slightly bored, leaning forward to

write on the cement wall in front of his knees, the substitute

224 THE UNDEFEATED

bull-fight critic ofEl Heraldo scribbled: 'Campagnero, Negro,

42, came out at 90 miles an hour with plenty ofgas '

Manuel, leaning against the barrera, watching the bull,

waved his hand and the gipsy ran out, trailing his cape. The

bull, in full gallop, pivoted and charged the cape, his head

down, his tail rising. The gipsy moved in a zigzag, and as he

passed, the bull caught sight ofhim and abandoned the cape to charge the man. The gip sprinted and vaulted the red

fence of the barrera as the bull struck it with his horns. He tossed into it twice with his horns, banging into the wood

blindly.

The critic ofEl Heraldo lit a cigarette and tossed the match at the bull, then wrote in his note-book, 'large and with

enough horns to satisfy the cash customers, Campagnero showed a tendency to cut into the terrain of the bull-fighters'.

Manuel stepped out on the hard sand as the bull banged into the fence. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zurito

sitting the white horse close to the barrera, about a quarter of the way around the ring to the left. Manuel held the

cape close in front of him, a fold in each hand, and shouted

at the bull. 'Huh! Huh!' The bull turned, seemed to brace

against the fence as he charged in a scramble, driving into

the cape as Manuel side-stepped, pivoted on his heels with

the charge of the bull, and swung the cape just ahead of the

horns. At the end of the swing he was facing the bull again and held the cape in the same position close in front of his

body, and pivoted again as the bull recharged. Each time,

as he swung, the crowd shouted.

Four times he swung with the bull, lifting the cape so it

billowed full, and each time bringing the bull around to

charge again. Then, at the end of the fifth swing, he held the

cape against his hip and pivoted, so the cape swung out like

a ballet dancer's skirt and wound the bull around himself

like a belt, to step clear, leaving the bull facing Zurito on the

white horse, come up and planted firm, the horse facing

the bull, its ears forward, its lips nervous, Zurito, his hat over

THE UNDEFEATED 225

his eyes, leaning forward, the long pole sticking out before

and behind in a sharp angle under his right arm, held half-

way down, the triangular iron point facing the bull.

El Heraldo's second-string critic, dra,wing on his cigarette,

his eyes on the bull, wrote: 'the veteran Manolo designed a series ofacceptable veronicas, ending in a very Belmontistic

recorte that earned applause from the regulars, and we entered the tercio of the cavalry.'

Zurito sat his horse, measuring the distance between the

bull and the end of the pic. As he looked, the bull gathered himself together and charged, his eyes on the horse's chest.

As he lowered his head to hook, Zurito sunk the point of the

pic in the swelling hump of muscle above the bull's shoulder,

leaned all his weight on the shaft, and with his left hand

pulled the white horse into the air, front hoofs pawing, and

swung him to the right as he pushed the bull under and

through so the horns passed safely under the horse's belly

and the horse came down, quivering, the bull's tail brushing his chest as he charged the cape Hernandez offered him.

Hernandez ran sideways, taking the bull* out and away with the cape, toward the other picador. He fixed him with

a swing of the cape, squarely facing the horse and rider, and

stepped back. As the bull saw the horse he charged. The

picador's lance slid along his back, and as the shock of the

charge lifted the horse, the picador was already half-way out

of the saddle, lifting his right leg clear as he missed with the

lance and falling to the left side to keep the horse between

him and the bull. The horse, lifted and gored, crashed over

with the bull driving into him, the picador gave a shove with

his boots against the horse and lay clear, waiting to be lifted

and hauled away and put on his feet.

Manuel let the bull drive into the fallen horse; he was in no

hurry, the picador was safe; besides, it did a picador like that

good to worry. He'd stay on longer next time. Lousy pics!

He looked across the sand at Zurito a little way out from the

barrera, his horse rigid, waiting.

226 THE UNDEFEATED 'Huh!' he called to the bull, 'TomarP holding the cape in

both hands so it would catch his eye. The bull detached him-

selffrom the horse and charged the cape, and Manuel, running

sideways and holding the cape spread wide, stopped, swung on

his heels, and brought the bull sharply around facing Zurito.

'Campagnero accepted a pair of varas for the death of one

rosinante, with Hernandez and Manolo at the quites,' El

Heraldo's critic wrote. 'He pressed on the iron and clearly

showed he was no horse-lover. The veteran Zurito resur-

rected some of his old stuff with the pike-pole, notably the

suerte '

'Ole! OleP the man sitting beside him shouted. The shout

was lost in the roar of the crowd, and he slapped the critic on

the back. The critic looked up to see Zurito, directly below

him, leaning far out over his horse, the length of the pic

rising in a sharp angle under his armpit, holding the pic almost by the point, bearing down with all his weight, hold-

ing the bull off, the bull pushing and driving to get at the

horse, and Zurito, far out, on top of him, holding him, hold-

ing him, and slowly pivoting the horse against the pressure,

so that at last he was clear. Zurito felt the moment when the

horse was clear and the bull could come past, and relaxed

the absolute steel lock of his resistance, and the triangular

steel point of the pic ripped in the bull's hump of shoulder

muscle as he tore loose to find Hernandez's cape before his

muzzle. He charged blindly into the cape and the boy took

him out into the open arena.

Zurito sat patting his horse and looking at the bull charg-

ing the cape that Hernandez swung for him out under the

bright light while the crowd shouted.

'You see that one?' he said to Manuel.

'It was a wonder/ Manuel said.

'I got him that time,' Zurito said. 'Look at him now.'

At the conclusion of a closely turned pass of the cape the

bull slid to his knees. He was up at once, but far out across

the sand Manuel and Zurito saw the shine of the pumping

THE UNDEFEATED 227

flow of blood, smooth against the black of the bull's shoulder.

'I got him that time,' Zurito said.

'He's a good bull,' Manuel said.

'If they gave me another shot at him, I'd kill him,' Zurito

said.

'They'll change the thirds on us,' Manuel said.

'Look at him now,' Zurito said.

'I got to go over there,' Manuel said, and started on a run

for the other side of the ring, where the monos were leading a

horse out by the bridle toward the bull, whacking him on the

legs with rods and all, in a procession, trying to get him to-

ward the bull, who stood, dropping his head, pawing, unable

to make up his mind to charge.

Zurito, sitting his horse, walking him toward the scene, not

missing any detail, scowled.

Finally the bull charged, the horse leaders ran for the

barrera, the picador hit too far back, and the bull got under

the horse, lifted him, threw him on to his back.

Zurito watched. The monos, in their red shirts, running out to drag the picador clear. The picador, now on his feet,

swearing and flopping his arms. Manuel and Hernandez

standing ready with their capes. And the bull, the great,

black bull, with a horse on his back, hooves dangling, the

bridle caught in the horns. Black bull with a horse on his

back, staggering short-legged, then arching his neck and

lifting, thrusting, charging to slide the horse off, horse sliding

down. Then the bull into a lunging charge at the cape Manuel spread for him.

The bull was slower now, Manuel felt. He was bleeding

badly. There was a sheen of blood all down his flank.

Manuel offered him the cape again. There he came, eyes

open, ugly, watching the cape. Manuel stepped to the side

and raised his arms, tightening the cape ahead of the bull for

the veronica.

Now he was facing the bull. Yes, his head was going down a little. He was carrying it lower. That was Zurito.

2*8 THE UNDEFEATED Manuel flopped the cape; there he comes; he side-stepped

and swung in another veronica. He's shooting awfully

accurately, he thought. He's had enough fight, so he's

watching now. He's hunting now. Got his eye on me. But

I always give him the cape. He shook the cape at the bull; there he comes; he side-

stepped. Awful close that time. I don't want to work that

close to him.

The edge of the cape was wet with blood where it had

swept along the bull's back as he went by.

All right, here's the last one.

Manuel, facing the bull, having turned with him each

charge, offered the cape with his two hands. The bull looked

at him. Eyes watching, horns straight forward, the bull

looked at him, watching. 'Huh! 5 Manuel said, 'Toro!' and leaning back, swung the

cape forward. Here he comes. He side-stepped, swung the cape in back ofhim, and pivoted, so the bull followed a swirl ofcape and then was left with nothing, fixed by the pass, dominated

by the cape. Manuel swung the cape under his muzzle with

one hand, to show the bull was fixed, and walked away. There was no applause. Manuel walked across the sand toward the barrera, while

Zurito rode out of the ring. The trumpet had blown to

change the act to the planting ofthe banderillos while Manuel had been working with the bull. He had not consciously noticed it. The monos were spreading canvas over the two

dead horses and sprinkling sawdust around them.

Manuel came up to the barrera for a drink of water.

Retana's man handed him the heavy porous jug.

Fuentes, the tall gipsy, was standing holding a pair of

banderillos, holding them together, slim, red sticks, fish-hook

points out. He looked at Manuel.

'Go on out there, 5 Manuel said.

The gipsy trotted out. Manuel set down the jug and watched. He wiped his face with his handkerchief.

THE UNDEFEATED 229

The critic of El Heraldo reached for the bottle of warm

champagne that stood between his feet, took a drink, and

finished his paragraph. c

the aged Manolo rated no applause for a vulgar series

of lances with the cape and we entered the third of the

palings.'

Alone in the centre of the ring the bull stood, still fixed.

Fuentes, tall, flat-backed, walking toward him arrogantly, his arms spread out, the two slim, red sticks, one in each hand, held by the fingers, points straight forward. Fuentes walked

forward. Back ofhim and to one side was a peon with a cape. The bull looked at him and was no longer fixed.

His eyes watched Fuentes, now standing still. Now he

leaned back, calling to him. Fuentes twitched the two

banderillos and the light on the steel points caught the

bull's eye.

His tail went up and he charged. He came straight, his eyes on the man. Fuentes stood still,

leaning back, the banderillos pointing forward. As the bull

lowered his head to hook, Fuentes leaned backward, his arms

came together and rose, his two hands touching, the

banderillos two descending red lines, and leaning forward

drove the points into the bull's shoulder, leaning far in over

the bull's horns and pivoting on the two upright sticks, his

legs tight together, his body curving to one side to let the

bull pass. e

Ole!' from the crowd.

The bull was hooking wildly, jumping like a trout, all four

feet off the ground. The red shaft of the banderillos tossed as

he jumped. Manuel, standing at the barrera, noticed that he looked

always to the right.

'Tell him to drop the next pair on the right,' he said to

the kid who started to run out to Fuentes with the new banderillos.

A heavy hand fell on his shoulder. It was Zurito.

230 THE UNDEFEATED 'How do you feel, kid?' he asked.

Manuel was watching the bull.

Zurito leaned forward on the barrera, leaning the weight of his body on his arms. Manuel turned to him.

'You're going good,' Zurito said.

Manuel shook his head. He had nothing to do now until

the next third. The gipsy was very good with the banderillos.

The bull would come to him in the next third in good shape. He was a good bull. It had all been easy up to now. The final stuff with the sword was all he worried over. He did

not really worry. He did not even think about it. But stand-

ing there he had a heavy sense of apprehension. He looked

out at the bull, planning his faena, his work with the red

cloth that was to reduce the bull, to make him manageable. The gipsy was walking out toward the bull again, walking

heel-and-toe, insultingly, like a ballroom dancer, the red

shafts of the banderillos twitching with his walk. The bull

watched him, not fixed now, hunting him, but waiting to get close enough so he could be sure of getting him, getting the

horns into him.

As Fuentcs walked forward the bull charged. Fuentes ran

across the quarter of a circle as the bull charged and, as he

passed running backward, stopped, swung forward, rose on his toes, arm straight out, and sunk the banderillos straight down into the tight of the big shoulder muscles as the bull

missed him.

The crowd were wild about it.

That kid won't stay in this night stuff long,' Retana's man said to Zurito.

'He's good, 5

Zurito said.

'Watch him now.'

They watched.

Fuentes was standing with his back against the barrera.

Two ofthe cuadrilla were back ofhim, with their capes ready to flop over the fence to distract the bull.

The bull, with his tongue out, his barrel heaving, was

THE UNDEFEATED * 3 t

watching the gipsy. He thought he had him now. Back

against the red planks. Only a short charge away. The bull

watched him.

The gipsy bent back, drew back his arms, the banderillos

pointing at the bull. He called to the bull, stamped one foot.

The bull was suspicious. He wanted the man. No more barbs in the shoulder.

Fuentcs walked a little closer to the bull. Bent back. Called

again. Somebody in the crowd shouted a warning. 'He's too damn close,' Zurito said.

'Watch him,' Retana's man said.

Leaning back, inciting the bull with the banderillos,

Fuentes jumped, both feet off the ground. As he jumped the

bull's tail rose and he charged. Fuentes came down on his

toes, arms straight out, whole body arching forward, and drove the shafts straight down as he swung his body clear of

the right horn.

The bull crashed into the barrera where the flopping capes had attracted his eye as he lost the man. The gipsy came running along the barrera toward Manuel,

taking the applause of the crowd. His vest was ripped where

he had not quite cleared the point of the horn. He was

happy about it, showing it to the spectators. He made the

tour of the ring. Zurito saw him go by, smiling, pointing at

his vest. He smiled.

Somebody else was planting the last pair of banderillos.

Nobody was paying any attention.

Retana's man tucked a baton inside the red cloth of a

muleta, folded the cloth over it, and handed it over the

barrera to Manuel. He reached in the leather sword-case, took out a sword, and holding it by its leather scabbard,

reached it over the fence to Manuel. Manuel pulled the

blade out by the red hilt and the scabbard fell limp. He looked at Zurito. The big man saw he was sweating,

'Now you get him, kid,' Zurito said.

Manuel nodded.

232 THE UNDEFEATED 'He's in good shape/ Zurito said.

'Just like you want him, 5

Retana's man assured him.

Manuel nodded.

The trumpeter, up under the roof, blew for the final act,

and Manuel walked across the arena toward where, up in the

dark boxes, the president must be.

In the front row of seats the substitute bull-fight critic of

El Heraldo took a long drink of the warm champagne. He had decided it was not worth while to write a running story

and would write up the corrida back in the office. What the

hell was it anyway? Only a nocturnal. If he missed any-

thing he would get it out of the morning papers. He took

another drink of the champagne. He had a date at Maxim's

at twelve. Who were these bull-fighters anyway? Kids and

bums. A bunch of bums. He put his pad of paper in his

pocket and looked over toward Manuel, standing very much alone in the ring, gesturing with his hat in a salute toward a

box he could not see high up in the dark plaza. Out in the

ring the bull stood quiet, looking at nothing. 'I dedicate this bull to you, Mr. President, and to the public

of Madrid, the most intelligent and generous of the world,'

was what Manuel was saying. It was a formula. He said it

all. It was a little long for nocturnal use.

He bowed at the dark, straightened, tossed his hat over his

shoulder, and, carrying the muleta in his left hand and the

sword in his right, walked out toward the bull.

Manuel walked toward the bull. The bull looked at him; his eyes were quick. Manuel noticed the way the banderillos

hung down on his left shoulder and the steady sheen of blood

from Zurito's pic-ing. He noticed the way the bull's feet

were. As he walked forward, holding the muleta in his left

hand and the sword in his right, he watched the bull's feet.

The bull could not charge without gathering his feet together. Now he stood square on them, dully.

Manuel walked toward him, watching his feet. This was

all right. He could do this. He must work to get the bull's

THE UNDEFEATED 233

head down, so he could go in past the horns and kill him.

He did not think about the sword, not about killing the bull.

He thought about one thing at a time. The coming things

oppressed him, though. Walking forward, watching the

bull's feet, he saw successively his eyes, his wet muzzle, and the wide, forward-pointing spread of his horns. The bull

had light circles about his eyes. His eyes watched Manuel.

He felt he was going to get this little one with the white

face.

Standing still now and spreading the red cloth of the

muleta with the sword, pricking the point into the cloth so

that the sword, now held in his left hand, spread the red

flannel like the jib of a boat, ManueL noticed the points of

the bull's horns. One of them was splintered from banging

against the barrera. The other was sharp as a porcupine

quill. Manuel noticed while spreading the muleta that the

white base of the horn was stained red. While he noticed

these things he did not lose sight of the bull's feet. The bull

watched Manuel steadily.

He's on the defensive now, Manuel thought. He's reserv-

ing himself. I've got to bring him out of that and get his

head down. Always get his head down. Zurito had his head

down once, but he's come back. He'll bleed when I start him

going and that will bring it down.

Holding the muleta, with the sword in his left hand widen-

ing it in front of him, he called to the bull.

The bull looked at him.

He leaned back insultingly and shook the widespread flannel.

The bull saw the muleta. It was a bright scarlet under the

arc-light. The bull's legs tightened. Here he comes. Whoosh! Manuel turned as the bull came

and raised the muleta so that it passed over the bull's horns

and swept down his broad back from head to tail. The bull

had gone clean up in the air with the charge. Manuel had

not moved.

234 THE UNDEFEATED At the end of the pass the bull turned like a cat coming

around a corner and faced Manuel.

He was on the offensive again. His heaviness was gone. Manuel noted the fresh blood shining down the black

shoulder and dripping down the bull's leg. He drew the

sword out of the muleta and held it in his right hand. The muleta held low down in his left hand, leaning toward the

left, he called to the bull. The bull's legs tightened, his eyes on the muleta. Here he comes, Manuel thought. Yuh! He swung with the charge, sweeping the muleta ahead of

the bull, his feet firm, the sword following the curve, a point of light under the arcs.

The bull recharged as the pase natural finished and Manuel raised the muleta for a pase de pecho. Firmly planted, the

bull came by his chest under the raised muleta. Manuel leaned his head back to avoid the clattering banderillo

shafts. The hot, black bull body touched his chest as it passed. Too damn close, Manuel thought. Zurito, leaning on the

barrera, spoke rapidly to the gipsy, who trotted out toward

Manuel with a cape. Zurito pulled his hat down low and looked out across the arena at Manuel.

Manuel was facing the bull again, the muleta held low and to the left. The bull's head was down as he watched the

muleta.

'If it was Belmonte doing that stuff, they'd go crazy/ Retana's man said.

Zurito said nothing. He was watching Manuel out in the

centre of the arena.

'Where did the boss dig this fellow up? 5

Retana's man asked.

'Out of the hospital,' Zurito said.

That's where he's going damn quick,' Retana's man said.

Zurito turned on him.

'Knock on that,' he said, pointing to the barrera.

'I was just kidding, man,' Retana's man said.

'Knock on the wood.'

THE UNDEFEATED 235

Retana's man leaned forward and knocked three times

on the barrera.

'Watch the faena,' Zurito said.

Out in the centre of the ring, under the lights, Manuel was

kneeling, facing the bull, and as he raised the muleta in both

hands the bull charged, tail up. Manuel swung his body clear and, as the bull recharged,

brought around the muleta in a half-circle that pulled the bull

to his knees.

'Why, that one's a great bull-fighter,' Retana's man said.

'No, he's not,' said Zurito.

Manuel stood up and, the muleta in his left hand, the

sword in his right, acknowledged the applause from the

dark plaza. The bull had humped himself up from his knees and stood

waiting, his head hung low.

Zurito spoke to two of the other lads of the cuadrilla and

they ran out to stand back ofManuel with their capes. There

were four men back of him now. Hernandez had followed

him since he first came out with the muleta. Fuentes stood

watching, his cape held against his body, tall, in repose,

watching, lazy-eyed. Now the two came up. Hernandez motioned them to stand one at each side. Manuel stood

alone, facing the bull.

Manuel waved back the men with the capes. Steppingback

cautiously, they saw his face was white and sweating. Didn't they know enough to keep back? Did they want to

catch the bull's eye with the capes after he was fixed and

ready? He had enough to worry about without that kind of

thing.

The bull was standing, his four feet square, looking at the

muleta. Manuel furled the muleta in his left hand. The bull's eyes watched it. His body was heavy on his feet. He carried his head low, but not too low.

Manuel lifted the muleta at him. The bull did not move.

Only his eyes watched.

236 THE UNDEFEATED He's all lead, Manuel thought. He's all square. He's

framed right. He'll take it.

He thought in bull-fight terms. Sometimes he had a

thought and the particular piece of slang would not come into his mind and he could not realize the thought. His

instincts and his knowledge worked automatically, and his

brain worked slowly and in words. He knew all about bulls.

He did not have to think about them. He just did the right

thing. His eyes noted things and his body performed the

necessary measures without thought. If he thought about it,

he would be gone.

Now, facing the bull, he was conscious of many things at

the same time. There were the horns, the one splintered, the

other smoothly sharp, the need to profile himself toward the

left horn, lance himself short and straight, lower the muleta, so the bull would follow it, and, going in over the horns, put the sword all the way into a little spot about as big as a five-

peseta piece straight in back of the neck, between the sharp

pitch of the bull's shoulders. He must do all this and must

then come out from between the horns. He was conscious

he must do all this, but his only thought was in words: 'Corto

y derecho.'

'Corto y derecho,' he thought, furling the muleta. Short

and straight. Corto y derecho, he drew the word out of the

muleta, profiled on the splintered left horn, dropped the

muleta across his body, so his right hand with the sword on

the level with his eye made the sign of the cross, and, rising

on his toes, sighted along the dipping blade of the sword at

the spot high up between the bull's shoulders.

Corto y derecho he launched himself on the bull.

There was a shock, and he felt himselfgo up in the air. He pushed on the sword as he went up and over, and it flew out

of his hand. He hit the ground and the bull was on him.

Manuel, lying on the ground, kicked at the bull's muzzle with

his slippered feet. Kicking, kicking, the bull after him,

missing him in his excitement, bumping him with his head,

THE UNDEFEATED 237

driving the horns into the sand. Kicking like a man keeping a ball in the air, Manuel kept the bull from getting a clean

thrust at him.

Manuel felt the wind on his back from the capes

flopping at the bull, and then the bull was gone, gone over him in a rush. Dark, as his belly went over. Not even

stepped on.

Manuel stood up and picked up the muleta. Fuentes

handed him the sword. It was bent where it had struck the

shoulder-blade. Manuel straightened it on his knee and ran

toward the bull, standing now beside one of the dead horses*

As he ran, his jacket flopped where it had been ripped under

his armpit. 'Get him out of there,' Manuel shouted to the gipsy. The

bull had smelled the blood of the dead horse and ripped into

the canvas cover with his horns. He charged Fuentes's cape, with the canvas hanging from his splintered horn, and the

crowd laughed. Out in the ring, he tossed his head to rid

himself of the canvas. Hernandez, running up from behind

him, grabbed the end of the canvas and neatly lifted it off

the horn.

The bull followed it in a half-charge and stopped still. He was on the defensive again. Manuel was walking toward him with the sword and muleta. Manuel swung the muleta

before him. The bull would not charge. Manuel profiled toward the bull, sighting along the

dipping blade of the sword. The bull was motionless,

seemingly dead on his feet, incapable of another charge. Manuel rose to his toes, sighting along the steel, and

charged.

Again there was the shock and he felt himself being borne

back in a rush, to strike hard on the sand. There was no chance of kicking this time. The bull was on top of him.

Manuel lay as though dead, his head on his arms, and the

bull bumped him. Bumped his back, bumped his face in the

sand. He felt the horn go into the sand between his folded

238 THE UNDEFEATED arms. The bull hit him in the small of the back. His face

drove into the sand. The horn drove through one of his

sleeves and the bull ripped it off. Manuel was tossed clear

and the bull followed the capes.

Manuel got up, found the sword and muleta, tried the

point of the sword with his thumb, and then ran toward the

barrcra for a new sword.

Retana's man handed him the sword over the edge of the

barrera.

'Wipe off your face/ he said.

Manuel, running again toward the bull, wiped his bloody face with his handkerchief. He had not seen Zurito. Where was Zurito?

The cuadrilla had stepped away from the bull and waited

with their capes. The bull stood, heavy and dull again after

the action.

Manuel walked toward him with the muleta. He stopped and shook it. The bull did not respond. He passed it right

and left, left and right before the bull's muzzle. The bull's

eyes watched it and turned with the swing, but he would not

charge. He was waiting for Manuel.

Manuel was worried. There was nothing to do but go in.

Corto y derecho. He profiled close to the bull, crossed the

muleta in front of his body and charged. As he pushed in the

sword, he jerked his body to the left to clear the horn. The bull passed him and the sword shot up in the air, twinkling under the arc-lights, to fall red-hiked on the sand.

Manuel ran over and picked it up. It was bent and he

straightened it over his knee.

As he came running toward the bull, fixed again now, he

passed Hernandez standing with his cape. 'He's all bone,' the boy said encouragingly. Manuel nodded, wiping his face. He put the bloody

handkerchief in his pocket. There was the bull. He was close to the barrera now.

Damn him. Maybe he was all bone. Maybe there was not

THE UNDEFEATED 239

any place for the sword to go in. The hell there wasn't!

He'd show them.

He tried a pass with the muleta and the bull did not move.

Manuel chopped the muleta back and forth in front of the

bull. Nothing doing. He furled the muleta, drew the sword out, profiled and

drove it on the bull. He felt the sword buckle as he shoved it

in, leaning his weight on it, and then it shot high in the air,

end-over-ending into the crowd. Manuel had jerked clear as

the sword jumped. The first cushions thrown down out of the dark missed him.

Then one hit him in the face, his bloody face looking toward

the crowd. They were coming down fast. Spotting the sand.

Somebody threw an empty champagne bottle from close

range. It hit Manuel on the foot. He stood there watching the dark, where the things were coming from. Then some-

thing whisked through the air and struck by him. Manuel leaned over and picked it up. It was his sword. He straightened it over his knee and gestured with it to the crowd.

'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you!'

Oh, the dirty bastards! Dirty bastards! Oh, the lousy,

dirty bastards! He kicked into a cushion as he ran.

There was the bull. The same as ever. All right, you dirty,

lousy bastard!

Manuel passed the muleta in front of the bull's black

muzzle.

Nothing doing. You won't! All right. He stepped close and jammed the

sharp peak of the muleta into the bull's damp muzzle.

The bull was on him as he jumped back and as he tripped on a cushion he felt the horn go into him, into his side. He

grabbed the horn with his two hands and rode backward,

holding tight on to the place. The bull tossed him and he was

clear. He lay still. It was all right. The bull was gone. He got up coughing and feeling broken and gone. The

dirty bastards!

24o THE UNDEFEATED 'Give me the sword/ he shouted. 'Give me the stuff.'

Fuentes came up with the muleta and the sword.

Hernandez put his arm around him.

'Go on to the infirmary, man/ he said. 'Don't be a damn fool.

5

'Get away from me/ Manuel said. 'Get to hell away from

me.'

He twisted free. Hernandez shrugged his shoulders.

Manuel ran toward the bull.

There was the bull standing, heavy, firmly planted. All right, you bastard! Manuel drew the sword out of the

muleta, sighted with the same movement, and flung himself

on to the bull. He felt the sword go in all the way. Right up to the guard. Four fingers and his thumb into the bull. The blood was hot on his knuckles, and he was on top of the bull.

The bull lurched with him as he lay on, and seemed to

sink; then he was standing clear. He looked at the bull going down slowly over on his side, then suddenly four feet in the

air.

Then he gestured at the crowd, his hand warm from the

bull blood.

All right, you bastards! He wanted to say something, but

he started to cough. It was hot and choking. He looked

down for the muleta. He must go over and salute the presi-

dent. President hell! He was sitting down looking at some-

thing. It was the bull. His four feet up. . Thick tongue out.

Things crawling around on his belly and under his legs.

Crawling where the hair was thin. Dead bull. To hell with

the bull! To hell with them all! He started to get to his feet

and commenced to cough. He sat down again, coughing.

Somebody came and pushed him up.

They carried him across the ring to the infirmary, running with him across the sand, standing blocked at the gate as the

mules came in, then around under the dark passageway, men

grunting as they took him up the stairway, and then laid him down.

THE UNDEFEATED 241

The doctor and two men in white were waiting for him.

They laid him out on the table. They were cutting away his

shirt. Manuel felt tired. His whole chest felt scalding inside.

He started to cough and they held something to his mouth.

Everybody was very busy. There was an electric light in his eyes. He shut his eyes.

He heard someone coming very heavily up the stairs. Then he did not hear it. Then he heard a noise far off. That was the crowd. Well, somebody would have to kill his other bull.

They had cut away all his shirt. The doctor smiled at him.

There was Retana.

'Hello, Retana!' Manuel said. He could not hear his voice.

Retana smiled at him and said something. Manuel could

not hear it.

Zurito stood beside the table, bending over where the

doctor was working. He was in his picador clothes, without

his hat.

Zurito said something to him. Manuel could not hear it.

Zurito was speaking to Retana. One of the men in white

smiled and handed Retana a pair of scissors. Retana gave them to Zurito. Zurito said something to Manuel. He could

not hear it.

To hell with this operating-table. He'd been on plenty of

operating-tables before. He was not going to die. There

would be a priest if he was going to die.

Zurito was saying something to him. Holding up the

scissors.

That was it. They were going to cut off his coleta. They were going to cut off his pigtail.

Manuel sat up on the operating-table. The doctor stepped

back, angry. Someone grabbed him and held him.

'You couldn't do a thing like that, Manos,' he said.

He heard suddenly, clearly, Zurito's voice.

'That's all right,' Zurito said. 'I won't do it. I was joking/ 'I was going good,' Manuel said. 'I didn't have any luck.

That was all.'

-242 THE UNDEFEATED Manuel lay back. They had put something over his face.

It was all familiar. He inhaled deeply. He felt very tired.

He was very, very tired. They took the thing away from his

face.

*I was going good,' Manuel said weakly, 'I was going

great.'

Retana looked at Zurito and started for the door.

Til stay here with him/ Zurito said.

Retana shrugged his shoulders.

Manuel opened his eyes and looked at Zurito.

'Wasn't I going good, Manos?' he asked, for confirmation.

'Sure,' said Zurito. 'You were going great.'

The doctor's assistant put the cone over Manuel's face and

he inhaled deeply. Zurito stood awkwardly > watching.

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

IN the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it

any more. It Was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came

very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was

pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow

powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their

tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small

birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It

was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

We were all at the hospital every afternoon, and there were

different ways ofwalking across the town through the dusk to

the hospital. Two ofthe ways were alongside canals, but they were long. Always, though, you crossed a bridge across a

canal to enter the hospital. There was a choice of three

bridges. On one of them a woman sold roasted chestnuts.

It was warm, standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the

chestnuts were warm afterward in your pocket. The hospital was very old and very beautiful, and you entered through a

gate and walked across a courtyard and out a gate on the

tothdt?* side. There were usually funerals starting from the

courtyard. Beyond the old hospital were the new brick

pavilions, and there we met every afternoon and were all

very polite and interested in what was the matter, and sat

in the machines that were to make so much difference.

The doctor came up to the machine where I was sitting

and said: 'What did you like best to do before the war? Did

you practise a sport?' I said: 'Yes, football.'

'Good,' he said. 'You will be able to play football again better than ever.'

My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from

the knee to the ankle without a calf, and the machine was to

243

244 IN ANOTHER COUNTRY bend the knee and make it move as in riding a tricycle. But

it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending part. The doctor said: 'That will all

pass. You are a fortunate young man. You will play football

again like a champion.' In the next machine was a major who had a little hand like

a baby's. He winked at me when the doctor examined his

hand, which was between two leather straps that bounced up and down and flapped the stiff fingers, and said: 'And will I

too play football, captain-doctor?' He had been a very great

fencer, and before the war the greatest fencer in Italy.

The doctor went to his office in a back room and brought a

photograph which showed a hand that had been withered

almost as small as the major's, before it had taken a machine

course, and after was a little larger. The major held the

photograph with his good hand and looked at it very carefully.

'A wound?' he asked.

'An industrial accident,' the doctor said.

'Very interesting, very interesting,' the major said, and

handed it back to the doctor.

'You have confidence?'

'No,' said the major. There were three boys who came each day who were about

the same age I was. They were all three from Milan, and one

of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and

one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished

with the machines, sometimes we walked back together to the

Cafe Cova, which was next door to the Scala. We walked the

short way through the communist quarter because we were

four together. The people hated us because we were officers,

and from a wine-shop someone called out, 'A basso gli

ufficiali!' as we passed. Another boy who walked with us

sometimes and made us five wore a black silk handkerchief

across his face because 1 he had no nose then and his face was

to be rebuilt. He had gone out to the front from the military

academy and been wounded within an hour after he had

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY 245

gone into the front line for the first time. They rebuilt his

face, but he came from a very old family and they could

never get the nose exactly right. He went to South America and worked in a bank. But this was a long time ago, and

then we did not any of us know how it was going to be after-

ward. We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it any more.

We all had the same medals, except the boy with the black

silk bandage across his face, and he had not been at the front

long enough to get any medals. The tall boy with a very pale face who was to be a lawyer had been a lieutenant of Arditi

and had three medals of the sort we each had only one of.

He had lived a very long time with death and was a little

detached. We were all a little detached, and there was

nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital. Although, as we walked to the

Cova through the tough part of town, walking in the dark,

with light and singing coming out of the wineshops, and

sometimes having to walk into the street when the men and

women would crowd together on the sidewalk so that we would have had to jostle them to get by, we felt held together

by there being something that had happened that they, the

people who disliked us, did not understand.

We ourselves all understood the Cova, where it was rich

and warm and not too brightly lighted, and noisy and

smoky at certain hours, and there were always girls at the

tables and the illustrated papers on a rack on the wall. The

girls at the Cova were very patriotic, and I found that the

most patriotic people in Italy were the cafe girls and I

believe they are still patriotic.

The boys at first were very polite about my medals and

asked me what I had done to get them. I showed them the

papers, which were written in very beautiftil language and

full offratellanza and abnegazione, but which really said, with

the adjectives removed, that I had been given the medals

because I was an American. After that their manner

246 IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

changed a little toward me, although I was their friend

against outsiders. I was a friend, but I was never really one

ofthem, after they had read the citations, because it had been

different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals. I had been wounded, it was true; but

we all knew that being wounded, after all, was really an

accident. I was never ashamed of the ribbons, though, and

sometimes, after the cocktail hour, I would imagine myself

having done all the things they had done to get their medals; but walking home at night through the empty streets with

the cold wind and all the shops closed, trying to keep near

the street lights, I knew that I would never have done such

things, and I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in

bed at night by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I

would be when I went back to the front again. The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks; and I

was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to those who had never hunted; they, the three, knew better and so we drifted apart. But I stayed good friends with the boy who had been wounded his first day at the front, because he

would never know now how he would have turned out; so he

could never be accepted either, and I liked him because I

thought perhaps he would not have turned out to be a hawk either.

The major, who had been the great fencer, did not believe

in bravery, and spent much time while we sat in the machines

correcting my grammar. He had complimented me on how I spoke Italian, and we talked together very easily. One day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was

so easy to say. 'Ah, yes,' the major said. 'Why, then, do you not take up the use of grammar?' So we took up the use of

grammar, and soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind.

The major came very regularly to the hospital. I do not

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY 247

think he ever missed a day, although I am sure he did not

believe in the machines. There was a time when none of us

believed in the machines, and one day the major said it was

all nonsense. The machines were new then and it was we who were to prove them. It was an idiotic idea, he said, 'a

theory, like another'. I had not learned my grammar, and he said I was a stupid impossible disgrace, and he was a fool

to have bothered with me. He was a small man and he sat

straight up in his chair with his right hand thrust into the

machine and looked straight ahead at the wall while the

straps thumped up and down with his fingers in them.

'What will you do when the war is over, if it is over?' he

asked me. 'Speak grammatically!' 'I will go to the States.'

'Are you married?'

'No, but I hope to be.'

'The more of a fool you are,' he said. He seemed very

angry. 'A man must not marry.'

'Why, Signor Maggiore?' 'Don't call me "Signor Maggiore".'

'Why must not a man marry?' 'He cannot marry. He cannot marry,' he said angrily.

'If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a

position to lose that. He should not place himselfin a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.'

He spoke very angrily and bitterly, and looked straight ahead while he talked.

'But why should he necessarily lose it?'

'He'll lose it,' the major said. He was looking at the wall.

Then he looked down at the machine and jerked his little

hand out from between the straps and slapped it hard against his thigh. 'He'll lose it,' he almost shouted. 'Don't argue with me!' Then he called to the attendant who ran the

machines. 'Come and turn this damned thing off.'

He went back into the other room for the light treatment

and the massage. Then I heard him ask the doctor if he

1248 IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

might use his telephone and he shut the door. When he

came back into the room, I was sitting in another machine.

He was wearing his cape and had his cap on, and he came

directly toward my machine and put his arm on my shoulder.

'I am so sorry,' he said, and patted me on the shoulder

with his good hand. 'I would not be rude. My wife has just died. You must forgive me.'

<Oh '

I said, feeling sick for him. 'I am so sorry.'

He stood there biting his lower lip. 'It is very difficult,'

he said. 'I cannot resign myself.'

He looked straight past me and out through the window.

Then he began to cry. 'I am utterly unable to resign myself,'

he said and choked. And then crying, his head up looking at nothing, carrying himself straight and soldierly, with

tears on both his checks and biting his lips, he walked past the machines and out the door.

The doctor told me that the major's wife, who was very

young and whom he had not married until he was definitely

invalided out of the war, had died of pneumonia. She had been sick only a few days. No one expected her to die. The

major did not come to the hospital for three days. Then he

came at the usual hour, wearing a black band on the sleeve

of his uniform. When he came back, there were large framed photographs around the wall, of all sorts of wounds before and after they had been cured by the machines. In

front of the machine the major used were three photographs of hands like his that were completely restored. I do not

know where the doctor got them. I always understood we were the first to use the machines. The photographs did not

make much difference to the major because he only looked

out of the window.

AN ALPINE IDYLL

IT was hot coining down into the valley even in the early

morning. The sun melted the snow from the skis we were

carrying and dried the wood. It was spring in the valley but

the sun was very hot. We came along the road into Galtur

carrying our skis and rucksacks. As we passed the church-

yard a burial was just over. I said, 'Griiss Gott', to the priest

as he walked past us coming out of the churchyard. The

priest bowed.

'It's funny a priest never speaks to you, 5

John said.

'You'd think they'd like to say "Griiss Gott".'

'They never answer,' John said.

We stopped in the road and watched the sexton shovelling in the new earth. A peasant with a black beard and high leather boots stood beside the grave. The sexton stopped

shovelling and straightened his back. The peasant in the

high boots took the spade from the sexton and went on filling

in the grave spreading the earth evenly as a man spread-

ing manure in a garden. In the bright May morning the

grave-filling looked unreal. I could not imagine anyone

being dead.

'Imagine being buried on a day like this/ I said to John. '

'I wouldn't like it.'

'Well,' I said, 'we don't have to do it.'

We went on up the road past the houses of the town to the

inn. We had been skiing in the Silvretta for a month, and it

was good to be down in the valley. In the Silvretta the skiing

had been all right, but it was spring skiing, the snow was good

only in the early morning and again in the evening. The rest of the time it was spoiled by the sun. We were both tired

of the sun. You could not get away from the sun. The only shadows were made by rocks or by the hut that was built

under the protection of a rock beside a glacier, and in the

318 AN ALPINE IDYLL shade the sweat froze in your underclothing. You could not

sit outside the hut without dark glasses. It was pleasant to

be burned black but the sun had been very tiring. You could not rest in it. I was glad to be down away from snow.

It was too late in the spring to be up in the Silvretta. I was a little tired of skiing. We had stayed too long. I could taste

the snow water we had been drinking melted off the tin roof

of the hut. The taste was a part ofthe way I felt about skiing.

I was glad there were other things beside skiing, and I was

glad to be down, away from the unnatural high mountain

spring, into this May morning in the valley.

The innkeeper sat on the porch of the inn, his chair tipped back against the wall. Beside him sat the cook.

'Ski-heil!' said the innkeeper. 'Heil!' we said and leaned the skis against the wall and

took off our packs. 'How was it up above?' asked the innkeeper. 'Schon. A little too much sun.'

'Yes. There's too much sun this time of year.'

The cook sat on in his chair. The innkeeper went in with

us and unlocked his office and brought out our mail. There

was a bundle of letters and some papers. 'Let's get some beer,' John said.

'Good. We'll drink it inside.'

The proprietor brought two bottles and we drank them while we read the letters.

'We better have some more beer,' John said. A girl brought it this time. She smiled as she opened the bottles.

'Many letters,' she said.

'Yes. Many.' 'Prosit,' she said and went out, taking the empty bottles.

'I'd forgotten what beer tasted like. 5

'I hadn't,' John said. 'Up in the hut I used to think about

it a lot.'

'Well,' I said, 'we've got it now.'

'You oughtn't to ever do anything too long.'

AN ALPINE IDYLL 319

'No. We were up there too long.'

Too damn long/ John said. 'It's no good doing a thing too long.'

The sun came through the open window and shone

through the beer bottles on the table. The bottles were half

full. There w&s a little froth on the beer in the bottles, not

much because it was very cold. It collared up when you

poured it into the tall glasses. I looked out of the open win-

dow at the white road. The trees beside the road were dusty.

Beyond was a green field and a stream. There were trees

along the stream and a mill with a water wheel. Through the open side of the mill I saw a long log and a saw in it

rising and falling. No one seemed to be tending it. There

were four crows walking in the green field. One crow sat in

a tree watching. Outside on the porch the cook got off his

chair and passed into the hall that led back into the kitchen.

Inside, the sunlight shone through the empty glasses on the

table. John was leaning forward with his head on his arms.

Through the window I saw two men come up the front

steps. They came into the drinking room. One was the

bearded peasant in the high boots. The other was the sexton.

They sat down at the table under the window. The girl came in and stood by their table. The peasant did not seem to see

her. He sat with his hands on the table. He wore his old

army clothes. There were patches on the elbows.

'What will it be? 3

asked the sexton. The peasant did not

pay any attention.

'What will you drink? 5

'Schnapps,' the peasant said.

'And a quarter litre of red wine/ the sexton told the girl.

The girl brought the drinks and the peasant drank the

schnapps. He looked out of the window. The sexton

watched him. John had his head forward on the table. He was asleep. The innkeeper came in and went over to the table. He

spoke in dialect and the sexton answered him. The peasant

320 AN ALPINE IDYLL looked out of the window. The innkeeper went out of the

room. The peasant stood up. He took a folded ten-thousand

kronen note out of a leather pocketbook and unfolded it.

The girl came up. 'Alles?' she asked.

'Alles,' he said.

'Let me buy the wine,' the sexton said.

'Alles,' the peasant repeated to the girl. She put her hand in the pocket of her apron, brought it out full of coins and counted out the change. The peasant went out the door. As soon as he was gone the innkeeper came into the room again and spoke to the sexton. He sat down at the table. They talked in dialect. The sexton was amused. The innkeeper was disgusted. The sexton stood up from the table. He was a

little man with a moustache. He leaned out of the window and looked up the road.

'There he goes in,' he said.

'In the Lowen?' '

Ja ''

They talked again and then the innkeeper came over to

our table. The innkeeper was a tall man and old. He looked

at John asleep.

'He's pretty tired.'

'Yes, we were up early.'

'Will you want to eat soon?'

'Any time/ I said. 'What is there to eat?'

'Anything you want. The girl will bring the eating-card.'

The girl brought the menu. John woke up. The menu was written in ink on a card and the card slipped into a

wooden paddle. 'There's the speise-karte,' I said to John. He looked at it.

He was still sleepy.

'Won't you have a drink with us?' I asked the innkeeper. He sat down. 'Those peasants are beasts,' said the inn-

keeper. *We saw that one at a funeral coming into town.

5

AN ALPINE IDYLL 321

'That was his wife. 5

'Oh. 5

'He's a beast. All these peasants are beasts. 5

'How do you mean? 5

'You wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe what just

happened about that one. 3

'Tell me. 5

'You wouldn't believe it. 5 The innkeeper spoke to the

sexton. 'Franz, come over here.' The sexton came, bringing his little bottle of wine and his glass.

'The gentlemen are just come down from the Wiesbadener-

hiitte,' the innkeeper said. We shook hands.

'What will you drink?' I asked.

'Nothing, 5 Franz shook his finger.

'Another quarter litre?'

'All right.'

'Do you understand dialect?' the innkeeper asked.

'No.'

'What's it all about?' John asked.

'He's going to tell us about the peasant we saw filling the

grave, coming into town. 5

'I can't understand it, anyway,' John said. 'It goes too-

fast for me. 5

'That peasant,' the innkeeper said, 'to-day he brought his

wife in to be buried. She died last November. 5

'December,' said the sexton.

'That makes nothing. She died last December then, and he notified the commune. 5

'December eighteenth, 5 said the sexton.

'Anyway, he couldn't bring her over to be buried until the

snow was gone.' 'He lives on the other side of the Paznaun,' said the

sexton. 'But he belongs to this parish.'

'He couldn't bring her out at all? 5

I asked.

'No. He can only come, from where he lives, on skis until

the snow melts. So to-day he brought her in to be buried

x

322 AN ALPINE IDYLL and the priest, when he looked at her face, didn't want to

bury her. You go on and tell it,' he said to the sexton. 'Speak

German, not dialect.'

'It was very funny with the priest,' said the sexton. 'In the

report to the commune she died of heart trouble. We knew she had heart trouble here. She used to fai'nt in church

sometimes. She did not come for a long time. She wasn't

strong to climb. When the priest uncovered her face he asked

Olz, "Did your wife suffer much?" "No," said Olz. "When I came in the house she was dead across the bed."

'The priest looked at her again. He didn't like it.

' "How did her face get that way?" '

"I don't know," Olz said. ' "You'd better find out," the priest said, and put the

blanket back. Olz didn't say anything. The priest looked at

him. Olz looked back at the priest. "You want to know?" '

"I must know," the priest said.'

'This is where it's good,' the innkeeper said. 'Listen to

this. Go on, Franz.' '

"Well," said Olz, "when she died I made the report to

the commune and I put her in the shed across the top of the

big wood. When I started to use the big wood she was stiff

and I put her up against the wall. Her mouth was open and

when I came into the shed at night to cut up the big wood, I

hung the lantern from it." '

"Why did you do that?" asked the priest. '

"I don't know," said Olz. ' "Did you do that many times?" '

"Every time I went to work in the shed at night." '

"It was very wrong," said the priest. "Did you love your wife?"

'

"Ja, I loved her," Olz said. "I loved her fine.'"

'Did you understand it all?' asked the innkeeper. 'You

understand it all about his wife?'

'I heard it.'

'How about eating?' John asked,

AN ALPINE IDYLL 323

'You order,' I said. 'Do you think it's true?' I asked the

innkeeper. 'Sure it's true/ he said. 'These peasants are beasts.'

'Where did he go now?'

'He's gone to drink at my colleague's, the Lowen.'

'He didn't want to drink with me/ said the sexton.

'He didn't want to drink with me, after he knew about his

wife/ said the innkeeper.

'Say/ said John. 'How about eating?'

'All right/ I said.

A PURSUIT RACE

WILLIAM CAMPBELL had been in a pursuit race with a bur-

lesque show ever since Pittsburgh. In a pursuit race, in

bicycle racing, riders start at equal intervals to ride after

one another. They ride very fast because the race is usually limited to a short distance and if they slow their riding another rider who maintains his pace will make up the space that separated them equally at the start. As soon as a rider

is caught and passed he is out of the race and must get down from his bicycle and leave the track. If none of the riders

are caught the winner of the race is the one who has gained the most distance. In most pursuit races, if there are only two riders, one of the riders is caught inside of six miles. The

burlesque show caught William Campbell at Kansas City.

William Campbell had hoped to hold a slight lead over the

burlesque show until they reached the Pacific coast. As long as he preceded the burlesque show as advance man he was

being paid. When the burlesque show caught up with him he was in bed. He was in bed when the manager of the bur-

lesque troupe came into his room and after the manager had

gone out he decided that he might as well stay in bed. It

was very cold in Kansas City and he was in no hurry to go out. He did not like Kansas City. He reached under the bed for a bottle and drank. It made his stomach feel better. Mr.

Turner, the manager of the burlesque show, had refused a

drink.

William Campbell's interview with Mr. Turner had been a

little strange. Mr. Turner had knocked on the door. Camp- bell had said: 'Come in!

5 When Mr. Turner came into the

room he saw clothing on a chair, an open suitcase, the bottle

on a chair beside the bed, and someone lying in the bed

completely covered by the bed-clothes.

'Mister Campbell,' Mr. Turner said.

324

APURSUITRACE 325

'You can't fire me,' William Campbell said from under-

neath the covers. It was warm and white and close under

the covers. cYou can't fire me because I've got down off my

bicycle. 5

'You're drunk,' Mr. Turner said.

'Oh, yes,' William Campbell said, speaking directly

against the sheet and feeling the texture with his lips.

'You're a fool,' Mr. Turner said. He turned off the electric

light. The electric light had been burning all night. It was now ten o'clock in the morning. 'You're a drunken fool.

When did you get into this town?'

'I got into this town last night,' William Campbell said,

speaking against the sheet. He found he liked to talk through a sheet. 'Did you ever talk through a sheet?'

'Don't try to be funny. You aren't funny.'

Tm not being funny. I'm just talking through a sheet.'

'You're talking through a sheet all right.'

'You can go now, Mr. Turner,' Campbell said. 'I don't

work for you any more.'

'You know that anyway.' 'I know a lot,' William Campbell said. He pulled down

the sheet and looked at Mr. Turner. 'I know enough so I

don't mind looking at you at all. Do you want to hear what I know?'

'No.'

'Good,' said William Campbell. 'Because really I don't

know anything at all. I was just talking.' He pulled the sheet

up over his face again. 'I love it under a sheet,' he said. Mr.

Turner stood beside the bed. He was a middle-aged man with a large stomach and a bald head and he had many things to do. 'You ought to stop off here, Billy, and take

a cure,' he said. 'I'll fix it up ifyou want to do it.'

'I don't want to take a cure,' William Campbell said. C

I

don't want to take a cure at all. I am perfectly happy. All

my life I have been perfectly happy.' 'How long have you been this way?'

326 APURSUITRACE 'What a question!' William Campbell breathed in and out

through the sheet.

'How long have you been stewed, Billy?'

'Haven't I done my work?'

'Sure. I just asked you how long you've been stewed, Billy.'

'I don't know. But I've got my wolf back/ he touched

the sheet with his tongue. 'I've had him for a week.'

'The hell you have.'

'Oh, yes. My dear wolf. Every time I take a drink he goes outside the room. He can't stand alcohol. The poor little

fellow.' He moved his tongue round and round on the sheet.

'He's a lovely wolf. He's just like he always was.' William

Campbell shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

'You got to take a cure, Billy,' Mr. Turner said. 'You

won't mind the Keeley. It isn't bad.'

'The Keeley,' William Campbell said. 'It isn't far from

London.' He shut his eyes and opened them, moving the eye-

lashes against the sheet. 'I just love sheets,' he said. He looked at Mr. Turner.

'Listen, you think I'm drunk.'

'You are drunk.'

'No, I'm not.'

'You're drunk and you've had D.Ts.'

'No.' William Campbell held the sheet around his head.

'Dear sheet,' he said. He breathed against it gently. 'Pretty

sheet. You love me, don't you, sheet? It's all in the price of

the room. Just like inJapan. No,' he said. 'Listen, Billy, dear

Sliding Billy, I have a surprise for you. I'm not drunk. I'm

hopped to the eyes.'

'No,' said Mr. Turner.

'Take a look.' William Campbell pulled up the right

sleeve of his pyjama jacket under the sheet, then shoved the

right forearm out. 'Look at that.' On the forearm, from

just above the wrist to the elbow, were small blue circles

around tiny dark blue punctures. The circles almost

touched one another. That's the new development/

APURSUITRACE 327

William Campbell said. 'I drink a little now once in a while,

just to drive the wolf out of the room.'

'They got a cure for that,' 'Sliding Billy' Turner said.

'No,' William Campbell said. 'They haven't got a cure

for anything.] 'You can't just quit like that, Billy,' Turner said. He sat

on the bed.

'Be careful of my sheet,' William Campbell said.

'You can't just quit at your age and take to pumping your- self full of that stuffjust because you got in ajam.

5

'There's a law against it. If that's what you mean.'

'No, I mean you got to fight it out.'

Billy Campbell caressed the sheet with his lips and his

tongue. 'Dear sheet,' he said. 'I can kiss this sheet and see

right through it at the same time. 5

'Cut it out about the sheet. You can't just take to that

stuff, Billy.'

William Campbell shut his eyes. He was beginning to feel

a slight nausea. He knew that this nausea would increase

steadily, without there ever being the relief of sickness, until

something were done against it. It was at this point that he

suggested that Mr. Turner have a drink. Mr. Turner

declined. William Campbell took a drink from the bottle.

It was a temporary measure. Mr. Turner watched him. Mr.

Turner had been in this room much longer than he should

have been, he had many things to do; although living in daily

association with people who used drugs, he had a horror of

drugs, and he was very fond ofWilliam Campbell; he did not

wish to leave him. He was very sorry for him and he felt a

cure might help. He knew there were good cures in Kansas

City. But he had to go. He stood up.

'Listen, Billy,' William Campbell said, 'I want to tell you

something. You're called "Sliding Billy". That's because

you can slide. I'm called just Billy. That's because I never

could slide at all. I can't slide, Billy. I can't slide. It just

catches. Every time I try it, it catches.' He shut his

328 APURSUITRACE yes. 'I can't slide, Billy. It's awful when you can't slide.'

'Yes/ said 'Sliding Billy' Turner.

*Yes, what?' William Campbell looked at him.

'You were saying.'

'No,' said William Campbell. 'I wasn't saying. It must

have been a mistake.'

'You were saying about sliding.'

'No. It couldn't have been about sliding. But listen, Billy,

and I'll tell you a secret. Stick to sheets, Billy. Keep away from women and horses and, and '

he stopped '

eagles,

Billy. If you love horses you'll get horse-s , and if you

love eagles you'll get eagle-s .' He stopped and put his

head under the sheet.

'I got to go,' said 'Sliding Billy' Turner.

'If you love women you'll get a dose,' William Campbell said. 'Ifyou love horses

*

'Yes, you said that.'

'Said what?'

'About horses and eagles.'

'Oh, yes. And if you love sheets.' He breathed on the sheet

and stroked his nose against it. T don't know about sheets,'

he said. 'I just started to love this sheet.'

'I have to go,' Mr. Turner said. 'I got a lot to do.'

That's all right,' William Campbell said. 'Everybody's

got to go.'

'I better go.'

'All right, you go.'

'Are you all right, Billy?'

'I was never so happy in my life.'

'And you're all right?'

'I'm fine. You go along. I'll just lie here for a little while.

Around noon I'll get up.'

But when Mr. Turner came up to William Campbell's room at noon William Campbell was sleeping and as Mr.

Turner was a man who knew what things in life were very valuable he did not wake him.

TO-DAY IS FRIDAY

Three Roman soldiers are in a drinking-place at eleven o'clock at

night. There are barrels around the wall. Behind the wooden counter is

a Hebrew wine-seller. The three Roman soldiers are a little cockeyed.

IST SOLDIER You tried the red?

2ND SOLDIER No, I ain't tried it.

IST SOLDIER You better try it.

2ND SOLDIER All right, George, we'll have a round of the

red.

HEBREW WINE-SELLER Here you are, gentlemen. You'll

like that. (He sets down an earthenware pitcher that he has filled

from one of the casks) That's a nice little wine.

IST SOLDIER Have a drink of it yourself. (He turns to the

third Roman soldier who is leaning on a barrel) What's the matter

with you?

3RD SOLDIER I got a gut-ache. 2ND SOLDIER You've been drinking water.

IST SOLDIER Try some of the red.

3RD SOLDIER I can't drink the damn stuff. It makes my gut sour.

IST SOLDIER You been out here too long.

3RD SOLDIER Hell, don't I know it?

IST SOLDIER Say, George, can't you give this gentleman

something to fix up his stomach?

HEBREW WINE-SELLER I got it right here.

( The third Roman soldier tastes the cup that the wine-seller has

mixedfor him)

3RD SOLDIER Hey, what you put in that, camel chips? WINE-SELLER You drink that right down, Lootenant.

That'll fix you up right.

3RD SOLDIER Well, I couldn't feel any worse.

IST SOLDIER Take a chance on it. George fixed me up fine

the other day.

329

330 TO-DAY IS FRIDAY WINE-SELLER You were in bad shape, Lootenant. I know

what fixes up a bad stomach.

( The third Roman soldier drinks the cup down)

3RD SOLDIER Jesus Christ. (He makes a face)

2ND SOLDIER That false alarm!

IST SOLDIER Oh, I don't know. He was pretty good in

there to-day. 2ND SOLDIER 'Why didn't he come down off the cross?

IST SOLDIER He didn't want to come down off the cross.

That's not his play.

2ND SOLDIER Show me a guy that doesn't want to come down off the cross.

IST SOLDIER Aw, hell, you don't know anything about it.

Ask George there. Did he want to come down off the cross,

George? WINE-SELLER I'll tell you, gentlemen, I wasn't out there.

It's a thing I haven't taken any interest in.

2ND SOLDIER Listen, I seen a lot of them here and

plenty of other places. Any time you show me one that

doesn't want to get down off the cross when the time comes

when the time comes, I mean I'll climb right up with him.

IST SOLDIER I thought he was pretty good in there to-day.

3RD SOLDIER He was all right.

2ND SOLDIER You guys don't know what I'm talking

about. I'm not saying whether he was good or not. What I mean is, when the times comes. When they first start

nailing him, there isn't none of them wouldn't stop it if

they could.

IST SOLDIER Didn't you follow it, George? WINE-SELLER No, I didn't take any interest in it, Loo-

tenant.

IST SOLDIER I was surprised how he acted.

3RD SOLDIER The part I don't like is the nailing them on.

You kpow, that must get to you pretty bad.

2ND SOLDIER It isn't that that's so bad, as when they first

TO-DAY IS FRIDAY 33*

lift 'em up. (He makes a lifting gesture with his two palms

together) When the weight starts to pull on 'em. That's when it get's 'em.

3RD SOLDIER It take some of them pretty bad.

IST SOLDIER Ain't I seen 'em? I seen plenty of them. I tell

you, he was pretty good in there to-day.

( The second Roman soldier smiles at the Hebrew wine-seller)

2ND SOLDIER You're a regular Christer, big boy. IST SOLDIER Sure, go on and kid him. But listen while I

tell you something. He was pretty good in there to-day. 2ND SOLDIER What about some more wine?

( The wine-seller looks up expectantly. The third Roman soldier

is sitting with his head down. He does not look well)

3RD SOLDIER I don't want any more.

2ND SOLDIER Just for two, George.

( The wine-seller puts out a pitcher of wine, a size smaller than

the last one. He leansforward on the wooden counter)

IST SOLDIER You see his girl?

2ND SOLDIER Wasn't I standing right by her?

IST SOLDIER She's a nice-looker.

2ND SOLDIER I knew her before he did. (He winks at the

wine-seller)

IST SOLDIER I used to see her around the town.

2ND SOLDIER She used to have a lot of stuff. He never

brought her no good luck.

IST SOLDIER Oh, he ain't lucky. But he looked pretty good to me in there to-day.

2ND SOLDIER What become of his gang? IST SOLDIER Oh, they faded out. Just the women stuck by

him.

2ND SOLDIER They were a pretty yellow crowd. When

they seen him go up there they didn't want any of it.

IST SOLDIER The women stuck all right.

332 TO-DAY IS FRIDAY 2ND SOLDIER Sure, they stuck all right.

IST SOLDIER You see me slip the old spear into him?

2ND SOLDIER You'll get into trouble doing that some day. IST SOLDIER It was the least I could do for him. I'll tell

you he looked pretty good to me in there to-day. HEBREW WINE-SELLER Gentlemen, you know I got to close.

IST SOLDIER We'll have one more round.

2ND SOLDIER What's the use? This stuff don't get you anywhere. Come on, let's go.

IST SOLDIER Just another round.

3RD SOLDIER (getting upfrom the barrel) No, come on. Let's

go. I feel like hell to-night.

IST SOLDIER Just one more.

2ND SOLDIER No, come on. We're going to go. Goodnight, George. Put it on the bill.

WINE-SELLER Good night, gentlemen. (He looks a little

worried) You couldn't let me have a little something on

account, Lootenant?

2ND SOLDIER What the hell, George ! Wednesday's pay-day. WINE-SELLER It's all right, Lootenant. Good night,

gentlemen.

(The three Roman soldiers go out the door into the street.

Outside in the street)

2ND SOLDIER George is a kike just like all the rest of them.

IST SOLDIER Oh, George is a nice fella.

2ND SOLDIER Everybody's a nice fella to you to-night.

3RD SOLDIER Come on, let's go up to the barracks. I feel

like hell to-night.

2ND SOLDIER You been out here too long.

3RD SOLDIER No, it ain't just that. I feel like hell.

2ND SOLDIER You been out here too long. That's all.

CURTAIN

BANAL STORY

So he ate an orange, slowly spitting out the seeds. Outside, the snow was turning to rain. Inside, the electric stove

seemed to give no heat and rising from his writing-table, he

sat down upon the stove. How good it felt! Here, at last,

was life.

He reached for another orange. Far away in Paris,

Mascart had knocked Danny Frush cuckoo in the second

round. Far off in Mesopotamia, twenty-one feet ofsnow had fallen. Across the world in distant Australia, the English cricketers were sharpening up their wickets. There was Romance.

Patrons of the arts and letters have discovered The Forum, he read. It is the guide, philosopher, and friend of the think-

ing minority. Prize short stories will their authors write

our best sellers of to-morrow?

You will enjoy these warm, homespun, American tales, bits

of real life on the open ranch, in crowded tenement or com- fortable home, and all with a healthy undercurrent of

humour. I must read them, he thought. He read on. Our children's children what of them?

Who of them? New means must be discovered to find room for us under the sun. Shall this be done by war or can it be

done by peaceful methods?

Or will we all have to move to Canada? Our deepest convictions will Science upset them? Our

civilization is it inferior to older orders of things? And meanwhile, in the far-off drippingjungles ofYucatan,

sounded the chopping of the axes of the gum-choppers. Do we want big men or do we want them cultured?

Take Joyce. Take President Coolidge. What star must our

college students aim at? There is Jack Britton. There is

Doctor Henry Van.Dyke. Can we reconcile the two? Take the case of Young Stribling.

333

334 BANAL STORY And what of our daughters who must make their own

Soundings? Nancy Hawthorne is obliged to make her own

Soundings in the sea of life. Bravely and sensibly she faces

the problems which come to every girl of eighteen. It was a splendid booklet.

Are you a girl of eighteen? Take the case ofJoan of Arc.

Take the case ofBernard Shaw. Take the case of Betsy Ross.

Think of these things in 1925 Was there a risque page in

Puritan history?. Were there two sides to Pocahontas? Did she have a fourth dimension?

Are modern paintings and poetry Art? Yes and No.

Take Picasso.

Have tramps codes ofconduct? Send your mind adventur-

ing.

There is Romance everywhere. Forum writers talk to the

point, are possessed of humour and wit. But they do not try

to be smart and are never long-winded. Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas,

intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual. He laid down the booklet.

And meanwhile, stretched flat on a bed in a darkened

room in his house in Triana, Manuel Garcia Maera lay with

a tube in each lung, drowning with the pneumonia. All the

papers in Andalucia devoted special supplements to his

death, which had been expected for some days. Men and

boys bought full-length coloured pictures ofhim to remember him by, and lost the picture they had of him in their memo- ries by looking at the lithographs. Bull-fighters were very relieved he was dead, because he did always in the bull-ring

the things they could only do sometimes. They all marched in the rain behind his coffin and there were one hundred and

forty-seven bull-fighters followed him out to the cemetery, where they buried him in the tomb next to Joselito. After

the funeral every one sat in the cafes out of the rain, and

many coloured pictures of Maera were sold to meri who rolled them up and put them away in their pockets.

A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE

IT was late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the

electric light. In the daytime the street was dusty, but at

night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit

late because he was deafand now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that

the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave

without paying, so they kept watch on him.

'Last week he tried to commit suicide,' one waiter said.

'Why?' 'He was in despair.'

'What about?'

'Nothing.' 'How do you know it was nothing?' 'He has plenty of money.'

They sat together at a table that was close against the wall

near the door of the cafe and looked at the terrace where the

tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the

shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the

wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street

light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him.

'The guard will pick him up/ one waiter said.

'What does it matter if he gets what he's after?'

'He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago.'

The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer

with his glass. The younger waiter went over to him.

'What do you want?'

The old man looked at him. 'Another brandy,' he said.

'You'll be drunk/ the waiter said. The old man looked at

him. The waiter went away.

352 A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE 'He'll stay all night/ he said to his colleague. 'I'm sleepy

now. I never get into bed before three o'clock. He should

have killed himself last week.'

The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from

the counter inside the cafe and marched out to the old man's

table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of

brandy. 'You should have killed yourself last week,' he said to the

deaf man. The old man motioned with his finger. {A little

more/ he said. The waiter poured on into the glass so that

the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile. 'Thank you/ the old man said. The waiter took the bottle back inside the cafe. He sat down at

the table with his colleague again. 'He's drunk now/ he said.

'He's drunk every night.'

'What did he want to kill himself for?'

'How should I know?'

'How did he do it?'

'He hung himself with a rope.'

'Who cut him down?'

'His niece.'

'Why did they do it?'

'Fear for his soul.'

'How much money has he got?'

'He's got plenty.'

'He must be eighty years old.'

'Anyway I should say he was eighty.'

'I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three

o'clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?'

'He stays up because he likes it.'

'He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed

for me.'

'He had a wife once too.'

'A wife would be no good to him now.'

'You can't tell. He might be better with a wife.'

A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE 353

'His niece looks after him.'

'I know. You said she cut him down. 5

'I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing.' 'Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without

spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him.'

'I don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must work.'

The old man looked from his glass across the square, then

over at the waiters.

'Another brandy,' he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over.

'Finished,' he said, speaking with that omission of syntax

stupid people employ when talking to drunken people or

foreigners. 'No more to-night. Close now.'

'Another,' said the old man. 'No. Finished/ The waiter wiped the edge of the table

with a towel and shook his head.

The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a

leather coin purse from his pocket and paid for the drinks,

leaving half a peseta tip.

The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old

man walking unsteadily but with dignity.

'Why didn't you let him stay and drink?' the unhurried

waiter asked. They were putting up the shutters. 'It is not

half-past two.'

'I want to go home to bed.'

'What is an hour?'

'More to me than to him.'

'An hour is the same.'

'You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle

and drink at home. 5

'It's not the same.'

'No, it is not,' agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not

wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry. 'And you? You have no fear of going home before your

usual hour?'

354 A CLEAN, WELL- LIGHTED PLACE 'Are you trying to insult me?'

'No, hombre, only to make a joke.'

'No,' the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from

pulling down the metal shutters. 'I have confidence. I am all confidence.'

'You have youth, confidence, and a job,' the older waiter

said. 'You have everything.' 'And what do you lack?'

'Everything but work.'

'You have everything I have.'

'No. I have never had confidence and I am not young.' 'Gome on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.'

'I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe,' the older

waiter said. 'With all those who do not want to go to bed.

With all those who need a light for the night.'

'I want to go home and into bed.'

'We are of two different kinds,' the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. 'It is not only a question of

youth and confidence, although those things are very beau-

tiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there

may be someone who needs the cafe.'

'Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long.'

'You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe.

It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there

are shadows of the leaves.'

'Good night,' said the younger waiter.

'Good night,' the other said. Turning off the electric light

he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of

course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music.

Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is

all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It

was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that

and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order.

Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada

A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE 355

y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in

nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into

nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full

of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before

a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

'What's yours?' asked the barman.

'Nada.'

'Otro loco mas,' said the barman and turned away. 'A little cup,' said the waiter.

The barman poured it for him.

'The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is un-

polished,' the waiter said.

The barman looked at him but did not answer. It was too

late at night for conversation.

'You want another copita?' the barman asked.

'No, thank you,' said the waiter and went out. He disliked

bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with

daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself,

it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD WHEN he saw us come in the door the bartender looked up and then reached over and put the glass covers on the two

free-lunch bowls.

'Give me a beer/ I said. He drew it, cut the top off with

the spatula and then held the glass in his hand. I put the

nickel on the wood and he slid the beer toward me.

'What's yours?' he said to Tom. 'Beer.'

He drew that beer and cut it off and when he saw the

money he pushed the beer across to Tom. 'What's the matter?' Tom asked.

The bartender didn't answer him. He just looked over our

heads and said, 'What's yours?' to a man who'd come in.

'Rye/ the man said. The bartender put out the bottle

and glass and a glass of water.

Tom reached over and took the glass off the free-lunch

bowl. It was a bowl of pickled pigs' feet and there was a

wooden thing that worked like a scissors, with two wooden forks at the end to pick them up with.

'No/ said the bartender and put the glass cover back on the bowl. Tom held the wooden scissors fork in his hand.

'Put it back/ said the bartender.

'You know where/ said Tom. The bartender reached a hand forward under the bar,

watching us both. I put fifty cents on the wood and he

straightened up. 'What was yours?' he said.

'Beer/ I said, and before he drew the beer he uncovered

both the bowls.

'Your goddam pigs' feet stink/ Tom said, and spit what he

had in his mouth on the floor. The bartender didn't say any-

thing. The man who had drunk the rye paid and went out

without looking back.

356

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 357

'You stink yourself, 5

the bartender said. 'All you punks stink.'

'He says we're punks,' Tommy said to me.

'Listen,' I said. 'Let's get out.'

'You punks clear the hell out of here,' the bartender said.

'I said we were going out,' I said. 'It wasn't your idea.'

'We'll be back,' Tommy said.

'No you won't,' the bartender told him.

'Tell him how wrong he is,' Tom turned to me.

'Come on,' I said.

Outside it was good and dark.

'What the hell kind of place is this?' Tommy said.

'I don't know,' I said. 'Let's go down to the station.'

We'd come in that town at one end and we were going out the other. It smelled of hides and tan bark and the big

piles of sawdust. It was getting dark as we came in, and now that it was dark it was cold and the puddles of water in the

road were freezing at the edges. Down at the station there were five whores waiting for the

train to come in, and six white men and four Indians. It was crowded and hot from the stove and full of stale smoke. As we came in nobody was talking and the ticket window was down.

'Shut the door, can't you!' somebody said.

I looked to see who said it. It was one of the white men.

He wore stagged trousers and lumbermen's rubbers and a

mackinaw shirt like the others, but he had no cap and his

face was white and his hands were white and thin.

'Aren't you going to shut it?'

'Sure,' I said, and shut it.

'Thank you,' he said. One of the other men snickered.

'Ever interfere with a cook?' he said to me.

'No.'

'You can interfere with this one,' he looked at the cook.

'He likes it. 5

,

The cook looked away from him holding his lips tight

together.

358 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 'He puts lemon juice on his hands/ the man said. 'He

wouldn't get them in dishwater for anything. Look how white they are.'

One of the whores laughed out loud. She was the biggest whore I ever saw in my life and the biggest woman. And she had on one ofthose silk dresses that change colours. There

were two other whores that were nearly as big but the big one must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. You couldn't believe she was real when you looked at her. All

three had those changeable silk dresses. They sat side by side

on the bench. They were huge. The other two were just

ordinary looking whores, peroxide blondes.

'Look at his hands,' the man said and nodded his head at

the cook. The whore laughed again and shook all over.

The cook turned and said to her quickly, 'You big disgust-

ing mountain of flesh.'

She just keep on laughing and shaking.

'Oh, my Christ,' she said. She had a nice voice. 'Oh, my sweet Christ.'

The two other whores, the big ones, acted very quiet and

placid as though they didn't have much sense, but they were

big, nearly as big as the biggest one. They'd have both gone well over two hundred and fifty pounds. The other two were

dignified.

Of the men, besides the cook and the one who talked, there

were two other lumberjacks, one that listened, interested but

bashful, and the other that seemed getting ready to say some-

thing, and two Swedes. Two Indians were sitting down at the

end of the bench and one standing up against the wall.

The man who was getting ready to say something spoke to

me very low, 'Must be like getting on top of a hay mow.'

I laughed and said it to Tommy. 'I swear to Christ I've never been anywhere like this,' he

said. 'Look at the three of them.' Then the cook spoke up. 'How old are you boys?' 'I'm ninety-six and he's sixty-nine,' Tommy said.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 359

'Ho! Ho! Ho!' the big whore shook with laughing. She

had a really pretty voice. The other whores didn't smile.

'Oh, can't you be decent?' the cook said. 'I asked just to

be friendly. 3

'We're seventeen and nineteen,' I said.

'What's th matter with you?' Tommy turned to me.

That's all right.'

'You can call me Alice,' the big whore said and then she

began to shake again. 'Is that your name?' Tommy asked.

'Sure/ she said. 'Alice. Isn't it?' she turned to the man who sat by the cook.

'Alice. That's right.'

'That's the sort of name you'd have,' the cook said.

'It's jmy real name,' Alice said.

'What's the other girls' names?' Tom asked.

'Hazel and Ethel,' Alice said. Hazel and Ethel smiled.

They weren't very bright.

'What's your name? 5

I said to one of the blondes.

'Frances,' she said.

'Frances what?'

'Frances Wilson. What's it to you?'

'What's yours?' I asked the other one.

'Oh, don't be fresh,' she said.

'He just wants us all to be friends,' the man who talked

said. 'Don't you want to be friends?'

'No,' the peroxide one said. 'Not with you.'

'She's just a spitfire,' the man said. 'A regular little

spitfire.'

The one blonde looked at the other and shook her head.

'Goddamned mossbacks,' she said.

Alice commenced to laugh again and to shake all over.

'There's nothing funny,' the cook said. 'You all laugh but

there's nothing funny. You two young lads; where are you bound for?'

'Where are you going yourself?' Tom asked him.

360 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 'I want to go to Cadillac/ the cook said. 'Have you ever

been there? My sister lives there.'

'He's a sister himself/ the man in the stagged trousers said.

'Can't you stop that sort of thing?' the cook asked. 'Can't

we speak decently?' 'Cadillac is where Steve Ketchel came from 'and where Ad

Wolgast is from/ the shy man said.

'Steve Ketchel/ one of the blondes said in a high voice as

though the name had pulled a trigger on her. 'His own father shot and killed him. Yes, by Christ, his own father.

There aren't any more men like Steve Ketchel.'

'Wasn't his name Stanley Ketchel?' asked the cook.

'Oh, shut up/ said the blonde. 'What do you know about

Steve? Stanley. He was no Stanley. Steve Ketchel was the

finest and most beautiful man that ever lived. I never saw a

man as clean and as white and as beautiful as Steve Ketchel.

There never was a man like that. He moved just like a tiger

and he was the finest, free-est, spender that ever lived.'

'Did you know him?' one of the men asked.

'Did I know him? Did I know him? Did I love him? You ask me that? I knew him like you know nobody in the world

and I loved him like you love God. He was the greatest,

finest, whitest, most beautiful man that ever lived, Steve

Ketchel, and his own father shot him down like a dog.'

'Were you out on the coast with him?'

'No. I knew him before that. He was the only man I ever

loved.'

Everyone was very respectful to the peroxide blonde, who said all this in a high stagey way, but Alice was beginning to shake again. I felt it sitting by her.

'You should have married him/ the cook said.

'I wouldn't hurt his career/ the peroxide blonde said. 'I

wouldn't be a drawback to him. A wife wasn't what he

needed. Oh, my God, what a man he was.'

'That was a fine way to look at it/ the cook said. 'Didn't

Jack Johnson knock him out though?'

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 361

c

lt was a trick/ Peroxide said. 'That big dinge took him

by surprise. He'd just knocked Jack Johnson down, the big black bastard. That nigger beat him by a fluke.'

The ticket window went up and the three Indians went

over to it.

'Steve knocked him down/ Peroxide said. 'He turned to

smile at me.'

'I thought you said you weren't on the coast/ someone said. 6

1 went outjust for that fight. Steve turned to smile at me and that black son of a bitch from hell jumped up and hit

him by surprise. Steve could lick a hundred like that black

bastard.'

'He was a great fighter/ the lumberjack said.

'I hope to God he was/ Peroxide said. 'I hope to God they don't have fighters like that now. He was like a god, he was.

So white and clean and beautiful and smooth and fast and

like a tiger or like lightning.'

'I saw him in the moving pictures of the fight/ Tom said.

We were all very moved. Alice was shaking all over and I

looked and saw she was crying. The Indians had gone outside on the platform.

'He was more than any husband could ever be/ Peroxide

said. 'We were married in the eyes of God and I belong to

him right now and always will and all of me is his. I don't

care about my body. They can take my body. My soul

belongs to Steve Ketchel. By God, he was a man.'

Everybody felt terribly. It was sad and embarrassing. Then Alice, who was still shaking, spoke, 'You're a dirty liar/

she said in that low voice. 'You never layed Steve Ketchel

in your life and you know it. 3

'How can you say that?' Peroxide said proudly. 'I say it because it's true/ Alice said. Tm the only one

here that ever knew Steve Ketchel and I come from Mance-

lona and I knew him there and it's true and you know it's

true and God can strike me dead if it isn't true.'

'He can strike me too/ Peroxide said.