PART II Short Stories Published in Books or
Magazines Subsequent to "The First Forty-nine"

One Trip Across



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

We sat down and one of them came over.

"Well," he said.

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

"You can name your own price."

"It isn't that. I can't do it. That's all."

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

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

"Don't make me feel bad," I told him. "I tell you true I can't do it."

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

"I know it. I'm all for you. But I can't do it."

"Why not?"

"I make my living with the boat. If I lose her I lose my living."

"With the money you buy another boat."

"Not in jail."

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

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

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

"You mean we would talk?" one of them who hadn't spoken said. He was angry.

"I said anything that can talk."

"Do you think we are lenguas largas?"

"No."

"Do you know what a lengua larga is?"

"Yes. One with a long tongue."

"Do you know what we do with them?"

"Don't be tough with me," I said. "You propositioned me. I didn't offer you anything."

"Shut up, Pancho," the one who had done the talking before said to the angry one.

"He said we would talk," Pancho said.

"Listen," I said. "I told you I didn't carry anything that can talk. Sacked liquor can't talk.
Demijohns can't talk. There's other things that can't talk. Men can talk."

"Can Chinamen talk?" Pancho said, pretty nasty.

"They can talk, but I can't understand them," I told him.

"So you won't?"

"It's just like I told you last night. I can't."

"But you won't talk?" Pancho said.

The one thing that he hadn't understood right had made him nasty. I guess it was disappointment,
too. I didn't even answer him.

"You're not a lengua larga, are you?" he asked, still nasty.

"I don't think so."

"What's that? A threat?"

"Listen," I told him. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty
people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet."

"So you're sure I've cut people's throats?"

"No," I said. "And I don't give a damn. Can't you do business without getting angry?"

"I am angry now," he said. "I would like to kill you."

"Oh, hell," I told him, "don't talk so much."

"Come on, Pancho, the first one said. Then, to me, "I am very sorry. I wish you would take us."

"I'm sorry, too. But I can't."

The three of them started for the door, and I watched them go. They were good-looking young
fellows, wore good clothes; none of them wore hats, and they looked like they had plenty of money.
They talked plenty of money, anyway, and they spoke the kind of English Cubans with money speak.
Two of them looked like brothers and the other one, Pancho, was a little taller but the same sort
of looking kid. You know, slim, good clothes, and shiny hair. I didn't figure he was as mean as he
talked. I figured he was plenty nervous.

As they turned out of the door to the right, I saw a closed car come across the square toward them.
The first thing a pane of glass went and the bullet smashed into the row of bottles on the showcase
wall to the right. I heard the gun going and, bop, bop, bop, there were bottles smashing all along
the wall.

I jumped behind the bar on the left side and could see looking over the edge. The car was stop-
ped and there were two fellows crouched down by it. One had a Thompson gun and the other had
a sawed-off automatic shotgun. The one with the Thompson gun was a nigger. The other had a
chauffeur's white duster on.

One of the boys was spread out on the sidewalk, face down, just outside the big window that
was smashed. The other two were behind one of the Tropical beer ice wagons that was stopped in
front of the Cunard bar next door. One of the ice-wagon horses was down in the harness, kicking,
and the other was plunging his head off.

One of the boys shot from the rear corner of the wagon and it ricocheted off the sidewalk. The
nigger with the tommy gun got his face almost into the street and gave the back of the wagon a burst
from underneath and sure enough one came down, falling toward the sidewalk with his head above the
curb. He flopped there, putting his hands over his head, and the chauffeur shot at him with the shotgun
while the nigger put in a fresh pan, but it was a long shot. You could see the buckshot marks all over
the sidewalk like silver splatters.

The other fellow pulled the one who was hit back by the legs to behind the wagon, and I saw the
nigger getting his face down on the paving to give them another burst. Then I saw old Pancho come
around the corner of the wagon and step into the lee of the horse that was still up. He stepped clear
of the horse, his face white as a dirty sheet, and got the chauffeur with the big Luger he had, hold-
ing it in both hands to keep it steady. He shot twice over the nigger's head, coming on, and once low.

He hit a tire on the car because I saw dust blowing in a spurt on the street as the air came out,
and at ten feet the nigger shot him in the belly with his tommy gun, with what must have been the last
shot in it because I saw him throw it down, and old Pancho sat down hard and went over forward. He
was trying to come up, still holding onto the Luger, only he couldn't get his head up, when the nigger
took the shotgun that was lying against the wheel of the car by the chauffeur and blew the side of his
head off. Some nigger.

I took a quick one out of the first bottle I saw open and I couldn't tell you yet what it was. The
whole thing made me feel pretty bad. I slipped along behind the bar and out through the kitchen in
back and all the way out. I went clean around the outside of the square and never even looked over
toward the crowd there was coming fast in front of the café and went in through the gate and out onto
the dock and got on board.

The fellow who had her chartered was on board waiting. I told him what had happened.

"Where's Eddy?" this fellow Johnson that had her chartered asked me.

"I never saw him after the shooting started."

"Do you suppose he was hit?"

"Hell no. I tell you the only shots that came in the café were into the show case. That was when
the car was coming behind them. That was when they shot the first fellow right in front of the window.
They came at an angle like this--"

"You seem awfully sure about it," he said.

"I was watching," I told him.

Then, as I looked up, I saw Eddy coming along the dock looking taller and sloppier than ever.

He walked with his joints all slung wrong.

"There he is."

Eddy looked pretty bad. He never looked too good early in the morning but he looked plenty bad
now.

"Where were you?" I asked him.

"On the floor."

"Did you see it?" Johnson asked him.

"Don't talk about it, Mr. Johnson," Eddy said to him. "It makes me sick to even think about it."

"You better have a drink," Johnson told him. Then he said to me, "Well, are we going out?"

"That's up to you."

"What sort of a day will it be?"

"Just about like yesterday. Maybe better."

"Let's get out then."

"All right, as soon as the bait comes."

We'd had this bird out three weeks fishing the stream and I hadn't seen any of his money yet
except one hundred dollars he gave me to pay the consul and clear and get some grub and put gas in
her before we came across. I was furnishing all the tackle and he had her chartered at thirty-five
dollars a day. He slept at a hotel and came aboard every morning. Eddy got me the charter so I had
to carry him. I was giving him four dollars a day.

"I've got to put gas in her," I told Johnson.

"All right."

"I'll need some money for that."

"How much?"

"It's twenty-eight cents a gallon. I ought to put in forty gallons anyway. That's eleven-twenty."

He got out fifteen dollars.

"Do you want to put the rest on the beer and the ice?" I asked him.

"That's fine," he said. "Just put it down against what I owe you."

I was thinking three weeks was a long time to let him go but if he was good for it what difference
was there? He should have paid every week anyway. But I've let them run a month and got the money.
It was my fault but I was glad to see it run at first. It was only the last few days he made me nervous
but I didn't want to say anything for fear of getting him plugged at me. If he was good for it, the
longer he went the better.

"Have a bottle of beer?" he asked me, opening the box.

"No thanks."

Just then this nigger we had getting bait comes down the dock and I told Eddy to get ready to cast
her off.

The nigger came on board with the bait and we cast off and started out of the harbor, the nigger fix-
ing on a couple of mackerel; passing the hook through their mouth, out the gills, slitting the side and
then putting the hook through the other side and out, tying the mouth shut on the wire leader and tying
the hook good so it couldn't slip and so the bait would troll smooth without spinning.

He's a real black nigger, smart and gloomy, with blue voodoo beads around his neck under his shirt
and an old straw hat. What he liked to do on board was sleep and read the papers. But he put on
a nice bait and he was fast.

"Can't you put on a bait like that, Captain?" Johnson asked me.

"Yes, sir."

"Why do you carry a nigger to do it?"

"When the big fish run you'll see," I told him.

"What's the idea?"

"The nigger can do it faster than I can."

"Can't Eddy do it?"

"No, sir."

"It seems an unnecessary expense to me." He'd been giving the nigger a dollar a day and the
nigger had been on a rumba every night. I could see him getting sleepy already.

"He's necessary," I said.

By then we had passed the smacks with their fish cars anchored in front of Cabanas and the skiffs
anchored fishing for mutton fish on the rock bottom by the Morro, and I headed her out where the
gulf made a dark line. Eddy put the two big teasers out and the nigger had baits on three rods.

The stream was in nearly to soundings and as we came toward the edge you could see her running
nearly purple with regular whirlpools. There was a light east breeze coming up and we put up
plenty of flying fish, those big ones that look like the picture of Lindbergh crossing the Atlan-
tic when they sail off.

Those big flying fish are the best sign there is. As far as you could see, there was that faded
yellow gulfweed in small patches that means the main stream is well in and there were birds ahead
working over a school of little tuna. You could see them jumping; just little ones weighing a couple
of pounds apiece.

"Put out any time you want," I told Johnson.

He put on his belt and his harness and put out the big rod with the Hardy reel with six hundred
yards of thirty-six thread. I looked back and his bait was trolling nice, just bouncing along on the
swell and the two teasers were diving and jumping. We were going just about the right speed and I
headed her into the stream.

"Keep the rod butt in the socket on the chair," I told him. "Then the rod won't be as heavy. Keep
the drag off so you can slack to him when he hits. If one ever hits with the drag on he'll jerk you
overboard."

Every day I'd have to tell him the same thing but I didn't mind that. One out of fifty parties you
get know how to fish. Then when they do know, half the time they're goofy and want to use line that
isn't strong enough to hold anything big.

"How does the day look?" he asked me.

"It couldn't be better," I told him. It was a pretty day all right.

I gave the nigger the wheel and told him to work along the edge of the stream to the eastward and
went back to where Johnson was sitting watching his bait bouncing along.

"Want me to put out another rod?" I asked him.

"I don't think so," he said. "I want to hook, fight, and land my fish myself."

"Good," I said. "Do you want Eddy to put it out and hand it to you if one strikes so you can hook
him?"

"No," he said. "I prefer to have only one rod out."

"All right."

The nigger was still taking her out and I looked and saw he had seen a patch of flying fish burst
out ahead and up the stream a little. Looking back, I could see Havana looking fine in the sun and
a ship just coming out of the harbor past the Morro.

"I think you're going to have a chance to fight one today, Mr. Johnson," I told him.

"It's about time," he said. "How long have we been out?"

"Three weeks today."

"That's a long time to fish."

"They're a funny fish," I told him. "They aren't here until they come. But when they come there's
plenty of them. And they've always come. If they don't come now they're never coming. The moon is
right. There's a good stream and we're going to have a good breeze."

"There were some small ones when we first came."

"Yes," I said. "Like I told you. The small ones thin out and stop before the big ones come."

"You party-boat captains always have the same line. Either it's too early or too late or the wind
isn't right or the moon is wrong. But you take the money just the same."

"Well," I told him, "the hell of it is that it usually is too early or too late and plenty of time
the wind is wrong. Then when you get a day that's perfect you're ashore without a party."

"But you think today's a good day?"

"Well," I told him, "I've had action enough for me already today. But I'd like to bet you're going
to have plenty."

"I hope so," he said.

We settled down to troll. Eddy went forward and lay down. I was standing up watching for a tail
to show. Every once in a while the nigger would doze off and I was watching him, too. I bet he
had some nights.

"Would you mind getting me a bottle of beer, Captain?" Johnson asked me.

"No, sir," I said, and I dug down in the ice to get him a cold one.

"Won't you have one?" he asked.

"No, sir," I said. "I'll wait till tonight."

I opened the bottle and was reaching it toward him when I saw this big brown bugger with a
spear on him longer than your arm burst head and shoulders out of the water and smash at that
mackerel. He looked as big around as a saw log.

"Slack it to him!" I yelled.

"He hasn't got it," Johnson said.

"Hold it, then."

He'd come up from deep down and missed it. I knew he'd turn and come for it again.

"Get ready to turn it loose to him the minute he grabs it."

Then I saw him coming from behind under water. You could see his fins out wide like purple wings
and the purple stripes across the brown. He came on like a submarine and his top fin came out
and you could see it slice the water. Then he came right behind the bait and his spear came out
too, sort of wagging clean out of water.

"Let it go into his mouth," I said. Johnson took his hand off the reel spool and it started to whiz
and the old marlin turned and went down and I could see the whole length of him shine bright silver
as he turned broadside and headed off fast toward shore.

"Put on a little drag," I said. "Not much."

He screwed down on the drag.

"Not too much," I said. I could see the line slant up. "Shut her down hard and sock him," I said.

"You've got to sock him. He's going to jump anyway."

Johnson screwed the drag down and came back on the rod.

"Sock him," I told him. "Stick it into him. Hit him half a dozen times."

He hit him pretty hard a couple of times more, and then the rod bent double and the reel commenc-
ed to screech and out he came, boom, in a long straight jump, shining silver in the sun and
making a splash like throwing a horse off a cliff.

"Ease up on the drag," I told him.

"He's gone," said Johnson.

"The hell he is," I told him. "Ease up on the drag quick."

I could see the curve in the line and the next time he jumped he was astern and headed out to sea.
Then he came out again and smashed the water white and I could see he was hooked in the side of his
mouth. The stripes showed clear on him. He was a fine fish, bright silver now, barred with purple and
as big around as a log.

"He's gone," Johnson said. The line was slack.

"Reel on him," I said. "He's hooked good. Put her ahead with all the machine!" I yelled to the
nigger.

Then once, twice, he came out stiff as a post, the whole length of him jumping straight toward us,
throwing the water high each time he landed. The line came taut and I saw he was headed inshore
again and I could see he was turning.

"Now he'll make his run," I said. "If he hooks up I'll chase him. Keep your drag light. There's
plenty of line."

The old marlin headed out to the nor'west like all the big ones go, and brother, did he hook up.
He started jumping in those long lopes and every splash would be like a speed boat in a sea. We went
after him, keeping him on the quarter once I'd made the turn. I had the wheel and I kept yelling to
Johnson to keep his drag light and reel fast. All of a sudden I see his rod jerk and the line go slack.
It wouldn't look slack unless you knew about it because of the pull of the belly of the line in the
water. But I knew.

"He's gone," I told him. The fish was still jumping and he went on jumping until he was out of
sight. He was a fine fish all right.

"I can still feel him pull," Johnson said.

"That's the weight of the line."

"I can hardly reel it. Maybe he's dead."

"Look at him," I said. "He's still jumping." You could see him out a half a mile, still throwing
spouts of water.

I felt his drag. He had it screwed down tight. You couldn't pull out any line. It had to break.

"Didn't I tell you to keep your drag light?"

"But he kept taking out line."

"So what?"

"So I tightened it."

"Listen," I told him. "If you don't give them line when they hook up like that they break it. There
isn't any line will hold them. When they want it you've got to give it to them. You have to keep a light
drag. The market fishermen can't hold them tight when they do that even with a harpoon line. What we
have to do is use the boat to chase them so they don't take it all when they make their run. After they
make their run they'll sound and you can tighten up the drag and get it back."

"Then if it hadn't broken I would have caught him?"

"You'd have had a chance."

"He couldn't have kept that up, could he?"

"He can do plenty of other things. It isn't until after he's made his run that the fight starts."

"Well, let's catch one," he said.

"You have to reel that line in first," I told him.

We'd hooked that fish and lost him without waking Eddy up. Now old Eddy came back astern.

"What's the matter?" he said.

Eddy was a good man on a boat once, before he got to be a rummy, but he isn't any good now. I
looked at him standing there tall and hollowcheeked with his mouth loose and that white stuff in the
corners of his eyes and his hair all faded in the sun. I knew he woke up dead for a drink.

"You'd better drink a bottle of beer," I told him. He took one out of the box and drank it.

"Well, Mr. Johnson," he said, "I guess I better finish my nap. Much obliged for the beer, sir."

Some Eddy. The fish didn't make any difference to him.

Well, we hooked another one around noon and he jumped off. You could see the hook go thirty
feet in the air when he threw it.

"What did I do wrong then?" Johnson asked.

"Nothing," I said. "He just threw it."

"Mr. Johnson," said Eddy, who'd waked up to have another bottle of beer-- "Mr. Johnson,
you're just unlucky. Now maybe you're lucky with women. Mr. Johnson, what do you say we go out
tonight?" Then he went back and lay down again.

About four o'clock when we're coming back close in to shore against the stream, it going like a
mill race, us with the sun at our backs, the biggest black marlin I ever saw in my life hit Johnson's
bait. We'd put out a feather squid and caught four of those little tuna and the nigger put one on his
hook for bait. It trolled pretty heavy but it made a big splash in the wake.

Johnson took the harness off the reel so he could put the rod across his knees because his arms
got tired holding it in position all the time. Because his hands got tired holding the spool of the reel
against the drag of the big bait, he screwed the drag down when I wasn't looking. I never knew he had
it down. I didn't like to see him hold the rod that way but I hated to be crabbing at him all the time.
Besides, with the drag off, line would go out so there wasn't any danger. But it was a sloppy way to
fish.

I was at the wheel and was working the edge of the stream opposite that old cement factory where
it makes deep so close in to shore and where it makes a sort of eddy where there is always lots
of bait. Then I saw a splash like a depth bomb and the sword and eye and open lower jaw and huge
purple-black head of a black marlin. The whole top fin was up out of water looking as high as a
full-rigged ship, and the whole scythe tail was out as he smashed at that tuna. The bill was as big
around as a baseball bat and slanted up, and as he grabbed the bait he sliced the ocean wide open.
He was solid purple-black and he had an eye as big as a soup bowl. He was huge. I bet he'd go a
thousand pounds.

I yelled to Johnson to let him have line but before I could say a word I saw Johnson rise up in the
air off the chair as though he was being derricked, and him holding just for a second onto that rod
and the rod bending like a bow, and then the butt caught him in the belly and the whole works went
overboard.

He'd screwed the drag tight, and when the fish struck, it lifted Johnson right out of the chair and
he couldn't hold it. He'd had the butt under one leg and the rod across his lap. If he'd had the harness
on it would have taken him along, too.

I cut out the engine and went back to the stern. He was sitting there holding onto his belly where
the rod butt had hit him.

"I guess that's enough for today," I said.

"What was it?" he said to me.

"Black marlin," I said.

"How did it happen?"

"You figure it out," I said. "The reel cost two hundred and fifty dollars. It costs more now.
The rod cost me forty-five. There was a little under six hundred yards of thirty-six thread."

Just then Eddy slaps him on the back. "Mr. Johnson," he says, "you're just unlucky. You know I
never saw that happen before in my life."

"Shut up, you rummy," I said to him.

"I tell you, Mr. Johnson," Eddy said, "that's the rarest occurrence I ever saw in my life."

"What would I do if I was hooked to a fish like that?" Johnson said.

"That's what you wanted to fight all by yourself," I told him. I was plenty sore.

"They're too big," Johnson said. "Why, it would just be punishment."

"Listen," I said. "A fish like that would kill you."

"They catch them."

"People who know how to fish catch them. But don't think they don't take punishment."

"I saw a picture of a girl who caught one."

"Sure," I said. "Still fishing. He swallowed the bait and they pulled his stomach out and he came
to the top and died. I'm talking about trolling them when they're hooked in the mouth."

"Well," said Johnson, "they're too big. If it isn't enjoyable, why do it?"

"That's right, Mr. Johnson," Eddy said. "If it isn't enjoyable, why do it? Listen, Mr. Johnson.
You hit the nail on the head there. If it isn't enjoyable--why do it?"

I was still shaky from seeing that fish and feeling plenty sick about the tackle and I couldn't listen
to them. I told the nigger to head her for the Morro. I didn't say anything to them and there they sat,
Eddy in one of the chairs with a bottle of beer and Johnson with another.

"Captain," he said to me after a while, "could you make me a highball?"

I made him one without saying anything, and then I made myself a real one. I was thinking to myself
that this Johnson had fished fifteen days, finally he hooks into a fish a fisherman would give a
year to tie into, he loses him, he loses my heavy tackle, he makes a fool of himself and he sits
there perfectly content drinking with a rummy.

When we got in to the dock and the nigger was standing there waiting, I said, "What about
tomorrow?"

"I don't think so," Johnson said. "I'm about fed up with this kind of fishing."

"You want to pay off the nigger?"

"How much do I owe him?"

"A dollar. You can give him a tip if you want."

So Johnson gave the nigger a dollar and two Cuban twenty-cent pieces.

"What's this for?" the nigger asks me, showing the coins.

"A tip," I told him in Spanish. "You're through. He gives you that."

"Don't come tomorrow?"

"No."

The nigger gets his ball of twine he used for tying baits and his dark glasses, puts on his straw
hat and goes without saying good-bye. He was a nigger that never thought much of any of us.

"When do you want to settle up, Mr. Johnson?" I asked him.

"I'll go to the bank in the morning," Johnson said. "We can settle up in the afternoon."

"Do you know how many days there are?"

"Fifteen."

"No. There's sixteen with today and a day each way makes eighteen. Then there's the rod and
reel and the line from today."

"The tackle's your risk."

"No, sir. Not when you lose it that way."

"I've paid every day for the rent of it. It's your risk."

"No, sir," I said. "If a fish broke it and it wasn't your fault, that would be something else. You
lost that whole outfit by carelessness."

"The fish pulled it out of my hands."

"Because you had the drag on and didn't have the rod in the socket."

"You have no business to charge for that."

"If you hired a car and ran it off a cliff, don't you think you'd have to pay for it?"

"Not if I was in it," Johnson said.

"That's pretty good, Mr. Johnson," Eddy said. "You see it, don't you, Cap? If he was in it he'd
be killed. So he wouldn't have to pay. That's a good one."

I didn't pay any attention to the rummy. "You owe two hundred and ninety five dollars for that
rod and reel and line," I told Johnson.

"Well, it's not right," he said. "But if that's the way you feel about it why not split the
difference?"

"I can't replace it for under three hundred and sixty. I'm not charging you for the line. A fish like
that could get all your line and it not be your fault. If there was anyone here but a rummy they'd tell
you how square I'm being with you. I know it seems like a lot of money but it was a lot of money
when I bought the tackle, too. You can't fish like that without the best tackle you can buy."

"Mr. Johnson, he says I'm a rummy. Maybe I am. But I tell you he's right. He's right and he's
reasonable," Eddy told him.

"I don't want to make any difficulties," Johnson said finally. "I'll pay for it, even though I don't
see it. That's eighteen days at thirty-five dollars and two ninety-five extra."

"You gave me a hundred," I told him. "I'll give you a list of what I spent and I'll deduct what
grub there is left. What you bought for provisions going over and back."

"That's reasonable," Johnson said.

"Listen, Mr. Johnson," Eddy said. "If you knew the way they usually charge a stranger you'd know
it was more than reasonable. Do you know what it is? It's exceptional. The cap is treating you
like you were his own mother."

"I'll go to the bank tomorrow and come down in the afternoon. Then I'll get the boat day after
tomorrow."

"You can go back with us and save the boat fare."

"No," he said. "I'll save time with the boat."

"Well," I said. "What about a drink?"

"Fine," said Johnson. "No hard feelings now, are there?"

"No, sir," I told him. So the three of us sat there in the stern and drank a highball together.

The next day I worked around her all morning, changing the oil in her base and one thing and
another. At noon I went uptown and ate at a Chink place where you get a good meal for forty cents,
and then I bought some things to take home to my wife and our three girls. You know, perfume, a
couple of fans and two of those high combs. When I finished I stopped in at Donovan's and had a beer
and talked with the old man and then walked back to the San Francisco docks, stopping in at three or
four places for a beer on the way. I bought Frankie a couple at the Cunard bar and I came on board
feeling pretty good. When I came on board I had just forty cents left. Frankie came on board with me,
and while we sat and waited for Johnson I drank a couple of cold ones out of the ice box with
Frankie.

Eddy hadn't shown up all night or all day but I knew he would be around sooner or later, as soon
as his credit ran out. Donovan told me he'd been in there the night before a little while with John-
son, and Eddy had been setting them up on credit. We waited and I began to wonder about Johnson not
showing up. I'd left word at the dock for them to tell him to go on board and wait for me but they said
he hadn't come. Still, I figured he had been out late and probably didn't get up till around noon.
The banks were open until three-thirty. We saw the plane go out, and about five-thirty I was all over
feeling good and was getting plenty worried.

At six o'clock I sent Frankie up to the hotel to see if Johnson was there. I still thought he might
be out on a time or he might be there at the hotel feeling too bad to get up. I kept waiting and waiting
until it was late. But I was getting plenty worried because he owed me eight hundred and twenty-five
dollars.

Frankie was gone about a little over half an hour. When I saw him coming he was walking fast
and shaking his head.

"He went on the plane," he said.

All right. There it was. The consulate was closed. I had forty cents, and anyhow the plane was in
Miami by now. I couldn't even send a wire. Some Mr. Johnson, all right. It was my fault. I should
have known better.

"Well," I said to Frankie, "we might as well have a cold one. Mr. Johnson bought them." There
were three bottles of Tropical left.

Frankie felt as bad as I did. I don't know how he could but he seemed to. He just kept slapping
me on the back and shaking his head.

So there it was. I was broke. I'd lost five hundred and thirty dollars of the charter, and tackle I
couldn't replace for three hundred and fifty more. How some of that gang that hangs around the dock
would be pleased at that, I thought. It certainly would make some conchs happy. And the day before I
turned down three thousand dollars to land three aliens on the Keys. Anywhere, just to get them out
of the country.

All right, what was I going to do now? I couldn't bring in a load because you have to have money
to buy the booze and besides there's no money in it any more. The town is flooded with it and
there's nobody to buy it. But I was damned if I was going home broke and starve a summer in that
town. Besides I've got a family. The clearance was paid when we came in. You usually pay the
broker in advance and he enters you and clears you. Hell, I didn't even have enough money to put
in gas. It was a hell of a note, all right. Some Mr. Johnson.

"I've got to carry something, Frankie," I said. "I've got to make some money."

"I'll see," said Frankie. He hangs around the water front and does odd jobs and is pretty deaf
and drinks too much every night. But you never saw a fellow more loyal nor with a better heart. I've
known him since I first started to run over there. He used to help me load plenty of times. Then when I
got handling stuff and went party-boating and broke out this swordfishing in Cuba I used to see him a
lot around the dock and around the café. He seems dumb and he usually smiles instead of talking but
that's because he's deaf.

"You carry anything?" Frankie asked.

"Sure," I said. "I can't choose now."

"Anything?"

"Sure."

"I'll see," Frankie said. "Where will you be?"

"I'll be at the Perla," I told him. "I have to eat."

You can get a good meal at the Perla for twenty-five cents. Everything on the menu is a dime except
soup, and that is a nickel. I walked as far as there with Frankie, and I went in and he went on.
Before he went he shook me by the hand and clapped me on the back again.

"Don't worry," he said. "Me Frankie much politics. Much business. Much drinking. No money.
But big friend. Don't worry."

"So long, Frankie," I said. "Don't you worry either, boy."

I went in the Perla and sat down at a table. They had a new pane of glass in the window that had
been shot up and the show case was all fixed up. There were a lot of gallegos drinking at the bar and
some eating. One table was playing dominoes already. I had black bean soup and a beef stew with
boiled potatoes for fifteen cents. A bottle of Hatuey beer brought it up to a quarter. When I spoke to
the waiter about the shooting he wouldn't say anything. They were all plenty scared.

I finished the meal and sat back and smoked a cigarette and worried my head off. Then I saw Frankie
coming in the door with someone behind him. Yellow stuff, I thought to myself. So it's yellow stuff.

"This is Mr. Sing," Frankie said, and he smiled. He'd been pretty fast all right and he knew it.

"How do you do?" said Mr. Sing.

Mr. Sing was about the smoothest-looking thing I'd ever seen. He was a Chink all right, but he talk-
ed like an Englishman and he was dressed in a white suit with a silk shirt and black tie and one of
those hundred-and-twenty-five-dollar Panama hats.

"You will have some coffee?" he asked me.

"If you do."

"Thank you," said Mr. Sing. "We are quite alone here?"

"Except for everybody in the café," I told him.

"That is all right," Mr. Sing said. "You have a boat?"

"Thirty-eight feet," I said. "Hundred horse Kermath."

"Ah," said Mr. Sing. "I had imagined it was a lugger."

"It can carry two hundred and sixty-five cases without being loaded."

"Would you care to charter it to me?"

"On what terms?"

"You need not go. I will provide a captain and a crew."

"No," I said. "I go on her wherever she goes."

"I see," said Mr. Sing. "Would you mind leaving us?" he said to Frankie. Frankie looked as
interested as ever and smiled at him.

"He's deaf," I said. "He doesn't understand much English."

"I see," said Mr. Sing. "You speak Spanish. Tell him to rejoin us later."

I motioned to Frankie with my thumb. He got up and went over to the bar.

"You don't speak Spanish?" I said.

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Sing. "Now what are the circumstances that would--that have made you
consider …"

"I'm broke."

"I see," said Mr. Sing. "Does the boat owe any money? Can she be libeled?"

"No."

"Quite so," Mr. Sing said. "How many of my unfortunate compatriots could your boat
accommodate?"

"You mean carry?"

"That's it."

"How far?"

"A day's voyage."

"I don't know," I said. "She can take a dozen if they didn't have any baggage."

"They would not have baggage."

"Where do you want to carry them?"

"I'd leave that to you," Mr. Sing said.

"You mean where to land them?"

"You would embark them for the Tortugas where a schooner would pick them up."

"Listen," I said. "There's a lighthouse at the Tortugas on Loggerhead Key with a radio
that works both ways."

"Quite," said Mr. Sing. "It would certainly be very silly to land them there."

"Then what?"

"I said you would embark them for there. That is what their passage calls for."

"Yes," I said.

"You would land them wherever your best judgment dictated."

"Will the schooner come to Tortugas to get them?"

"Of course not," said Mr. Sing. "How silly."

"How much are they worth a head?"

"Fifty dollars," said Mr. Sing.

"No."

"How would seventy-five do?"

"What do you get a head?"

"Oh, that's quite beside the point. You see, there are a great many facets, or shall we say angles,
to my issuing the tickets. It doesn't stop there."

"Yes," I said. "And what I'm supposed to do doesn't have to be paid for, either. Eh?"

"I see your point absolutely," said Mr. Sing. "Should we say a hundred dollars apiece?"

"Listen," I said. "Do you know how long I would go to jail if they pick me up on this?"

"Ten years," said Mr. Sing. "Ten years at least. But there is no reason to go to jail, my dear
Captain. You run only one risk--when you load your passengers. Everything else is left to your
discretion."

"And if they come back on your hands?"

"That's quite simple. I would accuse you to them of having betrayed me. I will make a partial
refund and ship them out again. They realize, of course, that it is a difficult voyage."

"What about me?"

"I suppose I should send some word to the consulate."

"I see."

"Twelve hundred dollars, Captain, is not to be despised at present."

"When would I get the money?"

"Two hundred when you agree and a thousand when you load."

"If I would go off with the two hundred?"

"I could do nothing, of course," he smiled. "But I know you wouldn't do such a thing, Captain."

"Have you got the two hundred with you?"

"Of course."

"Put it under the plate." He did. "All right," I said. "I'll clear in the morning and pull out at dark.
Now, where do we load?"

"How would Bacuranao be?"

"All right. Have you got it fixed?"

"Of course."

"Now, about the loading," I said. "You show two lights, one above the other, at the point. I'll
come in when I see them. You come out in a boat and load from the boat. You come yourself and you
bring the money. I won't take one on board until I have it."

"No," he said; "one-half when you start to load and the other when you are finished."

"All right," I said. "That's reasonable."

"So everything is understood?"

"I guess so," I said. "There's no baggage and no arms. No guns, knives, or razors; nothing. I have
to know about that."

"Captain," said Mr. Sing, "have you no trust in me? Don't you see our interests are identical?"

"You'll make sure?"

"Please do not embarrass me," he said. "Do you not see how our interests coincide?"

"All right," I told him. "What time will you be there?"

"Before midnight."

"All right," I said. "I guess that's all."

"How do you want the money?"

"In hundreds is all right."

He stood up and I watched him go out. Frankie smiled at him as he went. He was a smoothlooking
Chink all right. Some Chink.

Frankie came over to the table. "Well?" he said.

"Where did you know Mr. Sing?"

"He ships Chinamen," Frankie said. "Big business."

"How long you know him?"

"He's here about two years," Frankie said. "Another one ship them before him. Somebody kill
him."

"Somebody will kill Mr. Sing, too."

"Sure," said Frankie. "Why not? Plenty big business."

"Some business," I said.

"Big business," said Frankie. "Ship Chinamen never come back. Other Chinamen write letters
say everything fine."

"Wonderful," I said.

"This kind of Chinamen no understand write. Chinamen can write all rich. Eat nothing. Live on
rice. Hundred thousand Chinamen here. Only three Chinese women."

"Why?"

"Government no let."

"Hell of a situation," I said.

"You do business him?"

"Maybe."

"Good business," said Frankie. "Better than politics. Much money. Plenty big business."

"Have a bottle of beer," I told him.

"You not worry any more?"

"Hell no," I said. "Plenty big business. Much obliged."

"Good," said Frankie and patted me on the back. "Make me happier than nothing. All I want is
you happy. Chinamen good business, eh?"

"Wonderful."

"Make me happy," said Frankie. I saw he was about ready to cry because he was so pleased
everything was all right, so I patted him on the back. Some Frankie.

First thing in the morning I got hold of the broker and told him to clear us. He wanted the crew
list and I told him nobody.

"You're going to cross alone, Captain?"

"That's right."

"What's become of your mate?"

"He's on a drunk," I told him.

"It's very dangerous to go alone."

"It's only ninety miles," I said. "Do you think having a rummy on board makes any difference?"

I ran her over to the Standard Oil dock across the harbor and filled up both the tanks. She held
nearly two hundred gallons when I had her full. I hated to buy it at twenty-eight cents a gallon but I
didn't know where we might go.

Ever since I'd seen the Chink and taken the money I'd been worrying about the business. I don't
think I slept all night. I brought her back to the San Francisco dock, and there was Eddy waiting on the
dock for me.

"Hello, Harry," he said to me and waved. I threw him the stern line and he made her fast, and
then came aboard; longer, blearier, drunker than ever. I didn't say anything to him.

"What do you think about that fellow Johnson going off like that, Harry?" he asked me. "What do
you know about that?"

"Get out of here," I told him. "You're poison to me."

"Brother, don't I feel as bad about it as you do?"

"Get off of her," I told him.

He just settled back in the chair and stretched his legs out. "I hear we're going across today," he
said. "Well, I guess there isn't any use to stay around."

"You're not going."

"What's the matter, Harry? There's no sense to get plugged with me."

"No? Get off her."

"Oh, take it easy."

I hit him in the face and he stood up and then climbed up onto the dock.

"I wouldn't do a thing like that to you, Harry," he said.

"I'm not going to carry you," I told him. "That's all."

"Well, what did you have to hit me for?"

"So you'd believe it."

"What do you want me to do? Stay here and starve?"

"Starve, hell," I said. "You can get work on the ferry. You can work your way back."

"You aren't treating me square," he said.

"Who did you treat square, you rummy?" I told him. "You'd double-cross your own mother."

That was true, too. But I felt bad about hitting him. You know how you feel when you hit a drunk.

But I wouldn't carry him the way things were now, not even if I wanted to.

He started to walk off down the dock looking longer than a day without breakfast. Then he turned
and came back.

"How's to let me take a couple of dollars, Harry?"

I gave him a five-dollar bill of the Chink's.

"I always knew you were my pal. Harry, why don't you carry me?"

"You're bad luck."

"You're just plugged," he said. "Never mind, old pal. You'll be glad to see me yet."

Now he had money he went off a good deal faster but I tell you it was poison to see him walk,
even. He walked just like his joints were backwards.

I went up to the Perla and met the broker and he gave me the papers and I bought him a drink.
Then I had lunch and Frankie came in.

"Fellow gave me this for you," he said and handed me a rolled-up sort of tube wrapped in paper and
tied with a piece of red string. It looked like a photograph when I unwrapped it and I unrolled it
thinking it was maybe a picture someone around the dock had taken of the boat.

All right. It was a close-up picture of the head and chest of a dead nigger with his throat cut clear
across from ear to ear and then stitched up neat and a card on his chest saying in Spanish: "This is
what we do to lenguas largas."

"Who gave it to you?" I asked Frankie.

He pointed out a Spanish boy that works around the docks who is just about gone with the con.
This kid was standing at the lunch counter.

"Ask him to come over."

The kid came over. He said two young fellows gave it to him about eleven o'clock. They asked him
if he knew me and he said yes. Then he gave it to Frankie for me. They gave him a dollar to see
that I got it. They were well dressed, he said.

"Politics," Frankie said.

"Oh, yes," I said.

"They think you told the police you were meeting those boys here that morning."

"Oh, yes."

"Bad politics," Frankie said. "Good thing you go."

"Did they leave any message?" I asked the Spanish boy.

"No," he said. "Just to give you that."

"I'm going to have to leave now," I said to Frankie.

"Bad politics," Frankie said. "Very bad politics."

I had all the papers in a bunch that the broker had given me and I paid the bill and walked out of
that café and across the square and through the gate and I was plenty glad to come through the
warehouse and get out on the dock. Those kids had me spooked all right. They were just dumb enough
to think I'd tipped somebody off about that other bunch. Those kids were like Pancho. When they
were scared they got excited, and when they got excited they wanted to kill somebody.

I got on board and warmed up the engine. Frankie stood on the dock watching. He was smiling
that funny deaf smile. I went back to him.

"Listen," I said. "Don't you get in any trouble about this."

He couldn't hear me. I had to yell it at him.

"Me good politics," Frankie said. He cast her off.

I waved to Frankie, who'd thrown the bowline on board, and I headed her out of the slip and drop-
ped down the channel with her. A British freighter was going out and I ran along beside her and
passed her. I went out the harbor and past the Morro and put her on the course for Key West; due
north. I left the wheel and went forward and coiled up the bowline and then came back and held her
on her course, spreading Havana out astern and then dropping it off behind us as we brought the
mountains up.

I dropped the Morro out of sight after a while and then the National Hotel and finally I could just
see the dome of the Capitol. There wasn't much current compared to the last day we had fished and
there was only a light breeze. I saw a couple of smacks headed in toward Havana and they were
coming from the westward so I knew the current was light.

I cut the switch and killed the motor. There wasn't any sense in wasting gas. I'd let her drift. When
it got dark I could always pick up the light of the Morro or, if she drifted up too far, the lights of
Cojimar, and steer in and run along to Bacuranao. I figured the way the current looked she would drift
the twelve miles up to Bacuranao by dark and I'd see the lights of Baracóa.

Well, I killed the engine and climbed up forward to have a look around. All there was to see was the
two smacks off to the westward headed in, and way back the dome of the Capitol standing up white out
of the edge of the sea. There was some gulfweed on the stream and a few birds working, but not many.
I sat up there awhile on top of the house and watched, but the only fish I saw were those little
brown ones that rise around the gulfweed. Brother, don't let anybody tell you there isn't plenty
of water between Havana and Key West. I was just on the edge of it.

After a while I went down into the cockpit again and there was Eddy!

"What's the matter? What's the matter with the engine?"

"She broke down."

"Why haven't you got the hatch up?"

"Oh, hell!" I said.

Do you know what he'd done? He'd come back again and slipped the forward hatch and gone down
into the cabin and gone to sleep. He had two quarts with him. He'd gone into the first bodega
he'd seen and bought it and come aboard. When I started out he woke up and went back to sleep
again. When I stopped her out in the gulf and she began to roll a little with the swell it woke
him up.

"I knew you'd carry me, Harry," he said.

"Carry you to hell," I said. "You aren't even on the crew list. I've got a good mind to make you
jump overboard now."

"You're an old joker, Harry," he said. "Us conchs ought to stick together when we're in
trouble."

"You," I said, "with your mouth. Who's going to trust your mouth when you're hot?"

"I'm a good man, Harry. You put me to the test and see what a good man I am."

"Get me the two quarts," I told him. I was thinking of something else.

He brought them out and I took a drink from the open one and put them forward by the wheel. He
stood there and I looked at him. I was sorry for him and for what I knew I'd have to do. Hell, I knew
him when he was a good man.

"What's the matter with her, Harry?"

"She's all right."

"What's the matter, then? What are you looking at me like that for?"

"Brother," I told him, and I was sorry for him, "you're in plenty of trouble."

"What do you mean, Harry?"

"I don't know yet," I said. "I haven't got it all figured out yet."

We sat there awhile and I didn't feel like talking to him any more. Once I knew it, it was hard to
talk to him. Then I went below and got out the pump-gun and the Winchester thirty-thirty that I always
had below in the cabin and hung them up in their cases from the top of the house where we hung the
rods usually, right over the wheel where I could reach them. I keep them in those full-length clipped
sheep's-wool cases soaked in oil. That's the only way you can keep them from rusting on a boat.

I loosened up the pump and worked her a few times, and then filled her up and pumped one into the
barrel. I put a shell in the chamber of the Winchester and filled up the magazine. I got out the Smith
and Wesson thirty-eight special I had when I was on the police force up in Miami from under the
mattress and cleaned and oiled it and filled it up and put it on my belt.

"What's the matter?" Eddy said. "What the hell's the matter?"

"Nothing," I told him.

"What's all the damn guns for?"

"I always carry them on board," I said. "To shoot birds that bother the baits or to shoot sharks
cruising along the keys."

"What's the matter, damn it?" said Eddy. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I told him. I sat there with the old thirty-eight flopping against my leg when she
rolled, and I looked at him. I thought, there's no sense to do it now. I'm going to need him now.

"We're going to do a little job," I said. "In at Bacuranao. I'll tell you what to do when it's time."

I didn't want to tell him too far ahead because he would get to worrying and get so spooked he
wouldn't be any use.

"You couldn't have anybody better than me. Harry," he said. "I'm the man for you. I'm with you
on anything."

I looked at him, tall and bleary and shaky, and I didn't say anything.

"Listen, Harry. Would you give me just one?" he asked me. "I don't want to get the shakes."

I gave him one and we sat and waited for it to get dark. It was a fine sunset and there was a nice
light breeze, and when the sun got pretty well down I started the engine and headed her in slow
toward land.

We lay offshore about a mile in the dark. The current had freshened up with the sun down and I
noticed it running in. I could see the Morro light way down to the westward and the glow of Havana,
and the lights opposite us were Rincón and Baracóa. I headed her up against the current until I was
past Bacuranao and nearly to Cojimar. Then I let her drift down. It was plenty dark but I could tell
good where we were. I had all the lights out.

"What's it going to be, Harry?" Eddy asked me. He was beginning to be spooked again.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know," he said. "You've got me worried." He was pretty close to the shakes and when
he came near me he had a breath like a buzzard.

"What time is it?"

"I'll go down and see," he said. He came back up and said it was half past nine.

"Are you hungry?" I asked him.

"No," he said. "You know I couldn't eat, Harry."

"All right," I told him. "You can have one."

After he had it I asked him how he felt. He said he felt fine.

"I'm going to give you a couple more in a little while," I told him. "I know you haven't got any
guts unless you've got rum and there isn't much on board. So you'd better go easy."

"Tell me what's up," said Eddy.

"Listen," I said, talking to him in the dark. "We're going in to Bacuranao and pick up twelve
Chinks. You take the wheel when I tell you to and do what I tell you to. We'll take the twelve Chinks
on board and we'll lock them below forward. Go on forward now and fasten the hatch from the
outside."

He went up and I saw him shadowed against the dark. He came back and he said, "Harry, can I
have one of those now?"

"No," I said. "I want you rum-brave. I don't want you useless."

"I'm a good man, Harry. You'll see."

"You're a rummy," I said. "Listen. One Chink is going to bring those twelve out. He's going to
give me some money at the start. When they're all on board he's going to give me some more money.
When you see him start to hand me money the second time you put her ahead and hook her up and head
her out to sea. Don't you pay any attention to what happens. You keep her going out no matter what
happens. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"If any Chink starts bursting out of the cabin or coming through the hatch, once we're out and
under way, you take that pump-gun and blow them back as fast as they come out. Do you know how to
use the pump-gun?"

"No. But you can show me."

"You'd never remember. Do you know how to use the Winchester?"

"Just pump the lever and shoot it."

"That's right," I said. "Only don't shoot any holes in the hull."

"You'd better give me that other drink," Eddy said.

"All right. I'll give you a little one."

I gave him a real one. I knew they wouldn't make him drunk now; not pouring into all that fear.
But each one would work for a little while. After he drank this Eddy said, just as though he was
happy, "So we're going to run Chinks. Well, by God, I always said I'd run Chinamen if I was ever
broke."

"But you never got broke before, eh?" I said to him. He was funny all right.

I gave him three more drinks to keep him brave before it was half past ten. It was funny watching him
and it kept me from thinking about it myself. I hadn't figured on all this wait. I'd planned to leave
after dark, run out, just out of the glare, and coast along to Cojimar.

At a little before eleven I saw the two lights show on the point. I waited a little while and then I
took her in slow. Bacuranao is a cove where there used to be a big dock for loading sand. There is a
little river that comes in when the rains open the bar across the mouth. The northers, in the winter,
pile the sand up and close it.

They used to go in with schooners and load guavas from the river and there used to be a town.

But the hurricane took it and it is all gone now except one house that some gallegos built out of the
shacks the hurricane blew down and that they use for a clubhouse on Sundays when they come out to
swim and picnic from Havana. There is one other house where the delegate lives but it is back from
the beach.

Each little place like that all down the coast has a government delegate, but I figured the Chink
must use his own boat and have him fixed. As we came in I could smell the sea grape and that sweet
smell from the brush you get off the land.

"Get up forward," I said to Eddy.

"You can't hit anything on that side," he said. "The reef's on the other side as you go in." You
see, he'd been a good man once.

"Watch her," I said, and I took her in to where I knew they could see us. With no surf they could
hear the engine. I didn't want to wait around, not knowing whether they saw us or not, so I flashed the
running lights on once, just the green and red, and turned them off. Then I turned her and headed her
out and let her lay there, just outside, with the engine just ticking. There was quite a little swell
that close in.

"Come on back here," I said to Eddy and I gave him a real drink.

"Do you cock it first with your thumb?" he whispered to me. He was sitting at the wheel now,
and I had reached up and had both the cases open and the butts pulled out about six inches.

"That's right."

"Oh boy," he said.

It certainly was wonderful what a drink would do to him and how quick.

We lay there and I could see a light from the delegate's house back through the bush. I saw the
two lights on the point go down, and one of them moving off around the point. They must have blown
the other one out.

Then, in a little while, coming out of the cove, I see a boat come toward us with a man sculling. I
could tell by the way he swung back and forth. I knew he had a big oar. I was pretty pleased. If they
were sculling that meant one man.

They came alongside.

"Good evening. Captain," said Mr. Sing.

"Come astern and put her broadside," I said to him.

He said something to the man who was sculling but he couldn't scull her backwards, so I took hold
of the gunwale and passed her astern. There were eight men in the boat. The six Chinks, Mr. Sing,
and the kid sculling. While I was pulling her astern I was waiting for something to hit me on top
of the head but nothing did. I straightened up and let Mr. Sing hold onto the stern.

"Let's see what it looks like," I said.

He handed it to me and I took it up to where Eddy was at the wheel and put on the binnacle light.
I looked at it carefully. It looked all right to me and I turned off the light. Eddy was trembling.

"Pour one yourself," I said. I saw him reach for the bottle and tip it up.

I went back to the stern.

"All right," I said. "Let six come on board."

Mr. Sing and the Cuban that sculled were having a job holding their boat from knocking in what little
swell there was. I heard Mr. Sing say something in Chink and all the Chinks in the boat started to
climb onto the stern.

"One at a time," I said.

He said something again, and then one after another six Chinks came over the stern. They were
all lengths and sizes.

"Show them forward," I said to Eddy.

"Right this way, gentlemen," said Eddy. By God, I knew he had taken a big one.

"Lock the cabin," I said, when they were all in.

"Yes, sir," said Eddy.

"I will return with the others," said Mr. Sing.

"O.K.," I told him.

I pushed them clear and the boy with him started sculling off.

"Listen," I said to Eddy. "You lay off that bottle. You're brave enough now."

"O.K., chief," said Eddy.

"What's the matter with you?"

"This is what I like to do," said Eddy. "You say you just pull it backward with your thumb?"

"You lousy rummy," I told him. "Give me a drink out of that."

"All gone," said Eddy. "Sorry, chief."

"Listen. What you have to do now is watch her when he hands me the money and put her ahead."

"O.K., chief," said Eddy.

I reached up and took the other bottle and got the corkscrew and drew the cork. I took a good drink
and went back to the stem, putting the cork in tight and laying the bottle behind two wicker jugs
full of water.

"Here comes Mr. Sing," I said to Eddy.

"Yes, sir," said Eddy.

The boat came out sculling toward us.

He brought her astern and I let them do the holding in. Mr. Sing had hold of the roller we had
across the stern to slide a big fish on board.

"Let them come aboard," I said, "one at a time."

Six more assorted Chinks came on board over the stern.

"Open up and show them forward," I told Eddy.

"Yes, sir," said Eddy.

"Lock the cabin."

"Yes, sir."

I saw he was at the wheel.

"All right, Mr. Sing," I said. "Let's see the rest of it."

He put his hand in his pocket and reached the money out toward me. I reached for it and grabbed
his wrist with the money in his hand, and as he came forward on the stern I grabbed his throat with the
other hand. I felt her start and then churn ahead as she hooked up and I was plenty busy with Mr. Sing
but I could see the Cuban standing in the stem of the boat holding the sculling oar through all the
flopping and bouncing Mr. Sing was doing. He was flopping and bouncing worse than any dolphin on
a gaff.

I got his arm around behind him and came up on it but I brought it too far because I felt it go.
When it went he made a funny little noise and came forward, me holding him throat and all, and bit me
on the shoulder. But when I felt the arm go I dropped it. It wasn't any good to him any more and I took
him by the throat with both hands, and brother, that Mr. Sing would flop just like a fish, true, his loose
arm flailing, but I got him forward onto his knees and had both thumbs well in behind his talk box and
I bent the whole thing back until she cracked. Don't think you can't hear it crack, either.

I held him quiet just a second, and then I laid him down across the stem. He lay there, face up,
quiet, in his good clothes, with his feet in the cockpit, and I left him.

I picked up the money off the cockpit floor and took it up and put it on the binnacle and counted
it. Then I took the wheel and told Eddy to look under the stem for some pieces of iron that I used for
anchoring whenever we fished bottom fishing on patches or rocky bottom where you wouldn't want to
risk an anchor.

"I can't find anything," he said. He was scared being down there by Mr. Sing.

"Take the wheel," I said. "Keep her out."

There was a certain amount of moving around going on below but I wasn't spooked about them.
I found a couple of pieces of what I wanted--iron from the old coaling dock at Tortugas--and I
took some snapper line and made a couple of good big pieces fast to Mr. Sing's ankles. Then when
we were about two miles offshore I slid him over. He slid over smooth off the roller. I never even
looked in his pockets. I didn't feel like fooling with him.

He'd bled a little on the stern from his nose and his mouth, and I dipped a bucket of water that
nearly pulled me overboard the way we were going, and cleaned her off good with a scrub brush from
under the stern.

"Slow her down," I said to Eddy.

"What if he floats up?" Eddy said.

"I dropped him in about seven hundred fathoms," I said. "He's going down all that way. That's a long
way, brother. He won't float till the gas brings him up and all the time he's going with the current
and baiting up fish. Hell," I said, "you don't have to worry about Mr. Sing."

"What did you have against him?" Eddy asked me.

"Nothing," I said. "He was the easiest man to do business with I ever met. I thought there must be
something wrong all the time."

"What did you kill him for?"

"To keep from killing twelve other Chinks," I told him.

"Harry," he said, "you've got to give me one because I can feel them coming on. It made me sick
to see his head all loose like that."

So I gave him one.

"What about the Chinks?" Eddy said.

"I want to get them out as quick as I can," I told him. "Before they smell up the cabin."

"Where are you going to put them?"

"We'll run them right in to the long beach," I told him.

"Take her in now?"

"Sure," I said. "Take her in slow."

We came in slow over the reef and to where I could see the beach shine. There is plenty of water
over the reef and inside it's all sandy bottom and slopes right in to shore.

"Get up forward and give me the depth."

He kept sounding with a grains pole, motioning me on with the pole. He came back and motioned
me to stop. I came astern on her.

"You've got about five feet."

"We've got to anchor," I said. "If anything happens so we haven't time to get her up, we can cut
loose or break her off."

Eddy paid out rope and when finally she didn't drag he made her fast. She swung stern in.

"It's sandy bottom, you know," he said.

"How much water have we got at the stern?"

"Not over five feet."

"You take the rifle," I said. "And be careful,"

"Let me have one," he said. He was plenty nervous.

I gave him one and took down the pump-gun. I unlocked the cabin door, opened it, and said:

"Come on out."

Nothing happened.

Then one Chink put his head out and saw Eddy standing there with a rifle and ducked back.

"Come on out. Nobody's going to hurt you," I said.

Nothing doing. Only lots of talk in Chink.

"Come on out, you!" Eddy said. My God, I knew he'd had the bottle.

"Put that bottle away," I said to him, "or I'll blow you out of the boat."

"Come on out," I said to them, "or I'll shoot in at you."

I saw one of them looking at the corner of the door and he saw the beach evidently because he
begins to chatter.

"Come on," I said, "or I'll shoot."

Out they came.

Now I tell you it would take a hell of a mean man to butcher a bunch of Chinks like that and I'll
bet there would be plenty of trouble, too, let alone mess.

They came out and they were scared and they didn't have any guns but there were twelve of them.
I walked backwards down to the stem holding the pump gun. "Get overboard," I said. "It's not
over your heads."

Nobody moved.

"Over you go."

Nobody moved.

"You yellow rat-eating aliens," Eddy said, "get overboard."

"Shut your drunken mouth," I told him.

"No swim," one Chink said.

"No need swim," I said. "No deep."

"Come on, get overboard," Eddy said.

"Come astern here," I said. "Take your gun in one hand and your grains pole in the other and
show them how deep it is."

He showed them.

"No need swim?" the one asked me.

"No."

"True?"

"Yes."

"Where we?"

"Cuba."

"You damn crook," he said and went over the side, hanging on and then letting go. His head went
under but he came up and his chin was out of water. "Damn crook," he said. "Damn crook."

He was mad and he was plenty brave. He said something in Chink and the others started going
into the water off the stern.

"All right," I said to Eddy. "Get the anchor up."

As we headed her out, the moon started to come up and you could see the Chinks with just their
heads out of water walking ashore, and the shine of the beach and the brush behind.

We got out past the reef and I looked back once and saw the beach and the mountains starting to
show up; then I put her on her course for Key West.

"Now you can take a sleep," I said to Eddy. "No, wait, go below and open up all the ports to get
the stink out and bring me the iodine."

"What's the matter?" he said when he brought it.

"I cut my finger."

"Do you want me to steer?"

"Get a sleep," I said. "I'll wake you up."

He lay down on the built-in bunk in the cockpit, over the gas tank, and in a little while he was
asleep.

I held the wheel with my knee and opened up my shirt and saw where Mr. Sing bit me. It was quite
a bite and I put iodine on it, and then I sat there steering and wondering whether a bite from a
Chinaman was poisonous and listened to her running nice and smooth and the water washing along her
and I figured, Hell no, that bite wasn't poisonous. A man like that Mr. Sing probably scrubbed his
teeth two or three times a day. Some Mr. Sing. He certainly wasn't much of a business man. Maybe he
was. Maybe he just trusted me. I tell you I couldn't figure him.

Well, now it was all simple except for Eddy. Because he's a rummy he'll talk when he gets hot. I sat
there steering and I looked at him and I thought, Hell, he's as well off dead as the way he is, and
then I'm all clear. When I found he was on board I decided I'd have to do away with him but then
when everything had come out so nice I didn't have the heart. But looking at him lying there it
certainly was a temptation. But then I thought there's no sense spoiling it by doing something you'd be
sorry for afterwards. Then I started to think he wasn't even on the crew list and I'd have a fine to pay
for bringing him in and I didn't know how to consider him.

Well, I had plenty of time to think about it and I held her on her course and every once in a while
I'd take a drink out of the bottle he'd brought on board. There wasn't much in it, and when I'd finished
it, I opened up the only one I had left, and I tell you I felt pretty good steering, and it was a pretty
night to cross. It had turned out a good trip all right, finally, even though it had looked plenty bad
plenty of times. When it got daylight Eddy woke up. He said he felt terrible.

"Take the wheel a minute," I told him. "I want to look around."

I went back to the stem and threw a little water on her. But she was perfectly clean. I scrubbed
the brush over the side. I unloaded the guns and stowed them below. But I still kept the gun on my
belt. It was fresh and nice as you want it below, no smell at all. A little water had come in through the
starboard port onto one of the bunks was all; so I shut the ports. There wasn't a customhouse officer
in the world could smell Chink in her now.

I saw the clearance papers in the net bag hanging up under her framed license where I'd shoved
them when I came on board and I took them out to look them over. Then I went up to the cockpit.

"Listen," I said. "How did you get on the crew list?"

"I met the broker when he was leaving for the consulate and told him I was going."

"God looks after rummies," I told him and I took the thirty-eight off and stowed it down below.
I made some coffee down below and then I came up and took the wheel.

"There's coffee below," I told him.

"Brother, coffee wouldn't do me any good." You knew you had to be sorry for him. He certainly
looked bad.

About nine o'clock we saw the Sand Key light just about dead ahead. We'd seen tankers going
up the gulf for quite a while.

"We'll be in now," I said to him. "I'm going to give you the same four dollars a day just as if
Johnson had paid."

"How much did you get out of last night?" he asked me.

"Only six hundred," I told him.

I don't know whether he believed me or not.

"Don't I share in it?"

"That's your share," I told him. "What I just told you, and if you ever open your mouth about last
night I'll hear of it and I'll do away with you."

"You know I'm no squealer, Harry."

"You're a rummy. But no matter how rum dumb you get, if you ever talk about that, I promise
you."

"I'm a good man," he said. "You oughtn't to talk to me like that."

"They can't make it fast enough to keep you a good man," I told him. But I didn't worry about
him any more, because who was going to believe him? Mr. Sing wouldn't make any complaints. The
Chinks weren't going to. You know the boy that sculled them out wasn't. Eddy would mouth about it
sooner or later, maybe, but who believes a rummy?

Why, who could prove anything? Naturally it would have made plenty more talk when they saw his
name on the crew list. That was luck for me, all right. I could have said he fell overboard, but
it makes plenty talk. Plenty of luck for Eddy, too. Plenty of luck, all right.

Then we came to the edge of the stream and the water quit being blue and was light and greenish
and inside I could see the stakes on the Long Reef and on the Western Dry Rocks and the wireless
masts at Key West and the La Concha hotel up high out of all the low houses and plenty smoke from
out where they're burning garbage. Sand Key light was plenty close now and you could see the boat-
house and the little dock alongside the light and I knew we were only forty minutes away now and
I felt good to be getting back and I had a good stake now for the summertime.

"What do you say about a drink, Eddy?" I said to him.

"Ah, Harry," he said, "I always knew you were my pal."



The Tradesman's Return



THEY CAME ON ACROSS IN THE NIGHT AND it blew a big breeze from the northwest. When the
sun was up he sighted a tanker coming down the gulf and she stood up so high and white with the
sun on her in that cold air that it looked like tall buildings rising out of the sea and he said to the
nigger, "Where the hell are we?"

The nigger raised himself up to look.

"Ain't nothing like that this side of Miami."

"You know damn well we ain't been carried up to no Miami," he told the nigger.

"All I say ain't no buildings like that on no Florida keys."

"We've been steering for Sand Key."

"We've got to see it then. It or American shoals."

Then in a little while he saw it was a tanker and not buildings and then in less than an hour he
saw Sand Key light, straight, thin and brown, rising out of the sea right where it ought to be.

"You got to have confidence steering," he told the nigger.

"I got confidence," the nigger said. "But the way this trip gone I ain't got confidence no more."

"How's your leg?"

"It hurts me all the time."

"It ain't nothing," the man said. "You keep it clean and wrapped up and it'll heal by itself."

He was steering to the westward now to go in to lay up for the day in the mangroves by Woman
Key where he would not see anybody and where the boat was to come out to meet them.

"You're going to be all right," he told the Negro.

"I don't know," the nigger said. "I hurt bad."

"I'm going to fix you up good when we get in to the place," he told him. "You aren't shot bad.
Quit worrying."

"I'm shot," he said. "I ain't never been shot before. Anyway I'm shot is bad."

"You're just scared."

"No sir. I'm shot. And I'm hurting bad. I've been throbbing all night."

The nigger went on grumbling like that and he could not keep from taking the bandage off to look
at it.

"Leave it alone," the man who was steering told him. The nigger lay on the floor of the cockpit
and there were sacks of liquor, shaped like hams, piled everywhere. He had made himself a place in
them to lie down in. Every time he moved there was the noise of broken glass in the sacks and there
was the odor of spilled liquor. The liquor had run all over everything. The man was steering in for
Woman Key now. He could see it now plainly.

"I hurt," the nigger said. "I hurt worse all the time."

"I'm sorry, Wesley," the man said. "But I got to steer."

"You treat a man no better than a dog," the nigger said. He was getting ugly now, but the man
was still sorry for him.

"I'm going to make you comfortable, Wesley," he said. "You lay quiet now."

"You don't care what happens to a man," the nigger said. "You ain't hardly human."

"I'm going to fix you up good," the man said. "You just lay quiet."

"You ain't going to fix me up," the nigger said. The man, whose name was Harry, said nothing then
because he liked the nigger and there was nothing to do now but hit him, and he couldn't hit him.

The nigger kept on talking.

"Why we didn't stop when they started shooting?"

The man did not answer.

"Ain't a man's life worth more than a load of liquor?"

The man was intent on his steering.

"All we have to do is stop and let them take the liquor."

"No," the man said. "They take the liquor and the boat and you go to jail."

"I don't mind jail," the nigger said. "But I never wanted to get shot."

He was getting on the man's nerves now and the man was becoming tired of hearing him talk.

"Who the hell's shot worse?" he asked him. "You or me?"

"You're shot worse," the nigger said. "But I ain't never been shot. I didn't figure to get shot. I
ain't paid to get shot. I don't want to be shot."

"Take it easy, Wesley," the man told him. "It don't do you any good to talk like that."

They were coming up on the key now. They were inside the shoals and as he headed her into the
channel it was hard to see with the sun on the water. The nigger was going out of his head, or
becoming religious because he was hurt; anyway he was talking all the time.

"Why they ran liquor now?" he said. "Prohibition's over. Why they keep up a traffic like that?
Whyn't they bring the liquor in on the ferry?"

The man steering was watching the channel closely.

"Why don't people be honest and decent and make a decent honest living?"

The man saw where the water was rippling smooth off the bank even when he could not see the bank
in the sun and he named her off. He swung her around, spinning the wheel with one arm, and then
the channel opened out and he took her slowly right up to the edge of the mangroves. He came astern
on the engines and threw out the two clutches.

"I can put a anchor down," he said. "But I can't get no anchor up."

"I can't even move," the nigger said.

"You're certainly in a hell of a shape," the man told him.

He had a difficult time breaking out, lifting and dropping the small anchor but he got it over, and
paid out quite a lot of rope and the boat swung in against the mangroves so they came right into the
cockpit. Then he went back and down into the cockpit. He thought the cockpit was a hell of a sight, all
right.

All night after he had dressed the nigger's wound and the nigger had bandaged his arm he had
been watching the compass, steering, and when it came daylight he had seen the nigger lying there in
the sacks in the middle of the cockpit, but then he was watching the seas and the compass and looking
for the Sand Key light and he had never observed carefully how things were. Things were bad.

The nigger was lying in the middle of the load of sacked liquor with his leg up. There were eight
bullet holes through the cockpit splintered wide. The glass was broken in the windshield. He did not
know how much stuff was smashed and wherever the nigger had not bled he himself had bled. But the
worst thing, the way he felt at the moment, was the smell of booze. Everything was soaked in it. Now
the boat was lying quietly against the mangroves but he could not stop feeling the motion of the big sea
they had been in all night in the gulf.

"I'm going to make some coffee," he told the nigger. "Then I'll fix you up again."

"I don't want no coffee."

"I do," the man told him. But down below he began to feel dizzy so he came out on deck again.

"I guess we won't have coffee," he said.

"I want some water."

"All right."

He gave the Negro a cup of water out of a demijohn.

"Why you want to keep on running for when they started to shoot?"

"Why they want to shoot?" the man answered.

"I want a doctor," the nigger told him.

"What's a doctor going to do that I ain't done for you?"

"Doctor going to cure me."

"You'll have a doctor tonight when the boat comes out."

"I don't want to wait for no boat."

"All right," the man said. "We're going to dump this liquor now."

He started to dump it and it was hard work one-handed. A sack of liquor only weighs about forty
pounds but he had not dumped very many of them before he became dizzy again. He sat down in the
cockpit and then he lay down.

"You going to kill yourself," the nigger said.

The man lay quietly in the cockpit with his head against one of the sacks.

The branches of the mangroves had come into the cockpit and they made a shadow over him where
he lay. He could hear the wind above the mangroves and looking out at the high, cold sky see
the thin brown clouds of the norther.

"Nobody going to come out with this breeze," he thought. "They won't look for us to have started
with this blowing."

"You think they'll come out?" the nigger asked.

"Sure," the man said. "Why not?"

"It's blowing too hard."

"They're looking for us."

"Not with it like this. What you want to lie to me for?" The nigger was talking with his mouth
almost against a sack.

"Take it easy, Wesley," the man told him.

"Take it easy, the man says," the nigger went on. "Take it easy. Take what easy? Take dyin' like
a dog easy? You got me here. Get me out."

"Take it easy," the man said, kindly.

"They ain't coming," the nigger said. "I know they ain't coming. I'm cold I tell you. I can't stand
this pain and cold I tell you."

The man sat up feeling hollow and unsteady. The nigger's eyes watched him as he rose on one knee,
his right arm dangling, took the hand of his right arm in his left hand and placed it between his
knees and then pulled himself up by the plank nailed above the gunwale until he stood, looking down
at the nigger, his right hand still held between his thighs. He was thinking that he had never really
felt pain before.

"If I keep it out straight, pulled out straight, it don't hurt so bad," he said.

"Let me tie it up in a sling," the nigger said.

"I can't make a bend in the elbow," the man said. "It stiffened that way."

"What we goin' to do?"

"Dump this liquor," the man told him. "Can't you put over what you can reach, Wesley?"

The nigger tried to move to reach a sack, then groaned and lay back.

"Do you hurt that bad, Wesley?"

"Oh God," the nigger said.

"You don't think once you moved it it wouldn't hurt so bad?"

"I'm shot," the nigger said. "I ain't going to move. The man wants me to go to dumpin' liquor
when I'm shot."

"Take it easy."

"You say that once more I go crazy."

"Take it easy," the man said quietly.

The nigger made a howling noise and shuffling with his hands on the deck picked up the
whetstone from under the coaming.

"I'll kill you," he said. "I'll cut your heart out."

"Not with no whetstone," the man said. "Take it easy, Wesley."

The nigger blubbered with his face against a sack. The man went on slowly lifting the sacked
packages of liquor and dropping them over the side.

While he was dumping the liquor he heard the sound of a motor and looking he saw a boat headed
toward them coming down the channel around the end of the key. It was a white boat with a
buff painted house and a windshield.

"Boat coming," he said. "Come on Wesley."

"I can't."

"I'm remembering from now on," the man said. "Before was different."

"Go ahead an' remember," The nigger told him. "I ain't forgot nothing either."

Working fast now, the sweat running down his face, not stopping to watch the boat coming
slowly down the channel, the man picked up the sacked packages of liquor with his good arm and
dropped them over the side.

"Roll over." He reached for the package under the nigger's head and swung it over the side. The
nigger raised himself up and looked.

"Here they are," he said. The boat was almost abeam of them.

"It's Captain Willie," the nigger said. "With a party."

In the stern of the white boat two men in flannels and white cloth hats sat in fishing chairs troll-
ing and an old man in a felt hat and a windbreaker held the tiller and steered the boat close past
the mangroves where the booze boat lay.

"What you say, Harry?" the old man called as he passed. The man called Harry waved his good arm
in reply. The boat went on past, the two men who were fishing looking toward the booze boat and
talking to the old man. Harry could not hear what they were saying.

"He'll make a turn at the mouth and come back," Harry said to the Negro. He went below and
came up with a blanket. "Let me cover you up."

"'Bout time you cover me up. They couldn't help but see that liquor. What we goin' to do?"

"Willie's a good skate," the man said. "He'll tell them in town we're out here. Those fellows
fishing ain't going to bother us. What they care about us?"

He felt very shaky now and he sat down on the steering seat and held his right arm tight between
his thighs. His knees were shaking and with the shaking he could feel the ends of the bone in his
upper arm grate. He opened his knees, lifted his arm out, and let it hang by his side. He was sitting
there, his arm hanging, when the boat passed them coming back up the channel. The two men in the fishing
chairs were talking. They had put up their rods and one of them was looking at them through a pair of
glasses. They were too far out for him to hear what they were saying. It would not have helped him if
he had heard it.

On board the charter boat South Florida, trolling down the Woman Key channel because it was too
rough to go out to the reef, Captain Willie Adams was thinking. So Harry crossed last night. That
boy's got cojones. He must have got that whole blow. She's a sea boat all right. How you suppose he
smashed his windshield? Damned if I'd cross a night like last night. Damned if I'd ever run liquor
from Cuba. They bring it all from Mariel now! Just go in and out. It's supposed to be wide open.

"What's that you say, Cap?"

"What boat is that?" asked one of the men in the fishing chairs.

"That boat?"

"Yes, that boat."

"Oh that's a Key West boat."

"What I said was, whose boat is it?"

"I wouldn't know that, Cap."

"Is the owner a fisherman?"

"Well, some say he is."

"What do you mean?"

"He does a little of everything."

"You don't know his name?"

"No sir."

"You called him Harry."

"Not me."

"I heard you call him Harry."

Captain Willie Adams took a good look at the man who was speaking to him. He saw a highcheekboned,
thin-lipped, slightly pudgy face with deep set grey eyes and a contemptuous mouth looking at him
from under a canvas hat. There was no way that Captain Willie Adams could know that this man was
regarded as irresistibly handsome by a great many women in Washington.

"I must have called him that by mistake," Captain Willie said.

"You can see that the man is wounded, Doctor," the other man said, handing the glasses to his
companion.

"I can see that without glasses," the man addressed as Doctor said. "Who is that man?"

"I wouldn't know," said Captain Willie.

"Well, you will know," the man with the contemptuous mouth said. "Write down the numbers on
the bow."

"I have them. Doctor."

"We'll go over and have a look," the Doctor said.

"Are you a doctor?" Captain Willie asked.

"Not of medicine," the grey-eyed man told him.

"If you're not a medical doctor I wouldn't go over there."

"Why not?"

"If he wanted us he would have signaled us. If he don't want us it's none of our business. Down
here everybody aims to mind their own business."

"All right. Suppose you mind yours then. Take us over to that boat."

Captain Willie continued on his way up the channel, the two-cylinder Palmer coughing steadily.

"Didn't you hear me?"

"Yes sir."

"Why don't you obey my order?"

"Who the hell you think you are?" asked Captain Willie.

"That's not the question. Do as I tell you."

"Who do you think you are?" Captain Willie asked again.

"All right. For your information I'm one of the three most important men in the United States
today."

"What the hell you doing in Key West then?"

The other man leaned forward. "He's --"--, he said impressively.

"I never heard of him," said Captain Willie.

"Well, you will," said the man called Doctor. "And so will everyone in this stinking jerkwater
little town if I have to grub it out by the roots."

"You're a nice fellow," said Captain Willie. "How did you get so important?"

"He's the most intimate friend and closest adviser of ------, said the other man.

"Nuts," said Captain Willie. "If he's all that what's he doing in Key West?"

"He's just here for a rest," the secretary explained. "He's going to be------.

"That's enough, Harris," the man called Doctor said. "Now will you take us over to that boat,"
he said smiling. He had a smile which was reserved for such occasions.

"No sir."

"Listen you half-witted fisherman. I'll make life so miserable for you--"

"Yes," said Captain Willie.

"You don't know who I am."

"None of it don't mean anything to me," said Captain Willie. "And you don't know where you
are."

"That man is a bootlegger, isn't he?"

"What do you think?"

"There's probably a reward for him."

"I doubt that."

"He's a lawbreaker."

"He's got a family and he's got to eat and feed them. Who the hell do you eat off of with people
working here in Key West for the Government for six dollars and a half a week?"

"He's wounded. That means he's been in trouble."

"Unless he shot hisself for fun."

"You can save that sarcasm. You're going over to that boat and we're going to take that man and
that boat into custody."

"Into where?"

"Into Key West."

"Are you an officer?"

"I've told you who he is," the secretary said.

"All right," said Captain Willie. He pushed the tiller hard over and turned the boat, coming so
close to the edge of the channel that the propeller threw up a circling cloud of marl.

He chugged down the channel toward where the other boat lay against the mangroves.

"Have you a gun aboard?" the man called the Doctor asked Captain Willie.

"No sir."

The two men in flannels were standing up now watching the booze boat.

"This is better fun than fishing, eh Doctor?" the secretary said.

"Fishing is nonsense," said the Doctor. "If you catch a sailfish what do you do with it? You can't
eat it. This is really interesting. I'm glad to see this at first hand. Wounded as he is that man
cannot escape. It's too rough at sea. We know his boat."

"You're really capturing him single-handed," said the secretary admiringly.

"And unarmed too," said the Doctor.

"With no G-men nonsense," said the secretary.

"Edgar Hoover exaggerates his publicity," said the Doctor. "I feel we've given him about
enough rope." Then, "Pull alongside," he said to Captain Willie.

Captain Willie threw out his clutch and the boat drifted.

"Hey," Captain Willie called to the other boat. "Keep your heads down."

"What's that?" the Doctor said angrily.

"Shut up," said Captain Willie. "Hey," he called over to the other boat. "Listen. Get on into town
and take it easy. Never mind the boat. They'll take the boat. Dump your load and get into town. I got a
guy here on board, some kind of a stool from Washington. Not a G-man. Just a stool. One of the heads
of the alphabet. More important than the President, he says. He wants to pinch you. He thinks you're a
bootlegger. He's got the numbers of the boat. I ain't never seen you so I don't know who you are. I
couldn't identify you--"

The boats had drifted apart. Captain Willie went on shouting, "I don't know where this place is
where I seen you. I wouldn't know how to get back here."

"O.K.," came a shout from the booze boat.

"I'm taking this big alphabet man fishing until dark," Captain Willie shouted.

"O.K."

"He loves to fish," Captain Willie yelled, his voice almost breaking. "But the son of a bitch
claims you can't eat 'em."

"Thanks brother," came the voice of Harry.

"That chap your brother?" asked the Doctor, his face very red but his love for information still
unappeased.

"No sir," said Captain Willie. "Most everybody goes in boats calls each other brother."

"We'll go into Key West," the Doctor said; but he said it without great conviction.

"No sir," said Captain Willie. "You gentlemen chartered me for a day. I'm going to see you get
your money's worth. You called me a halfwit but I'll see you get a full day's charter."

"He's an old man," said the Doctor to his secretary. "Should we rush him?"

"Don't you try it," said Captain Willie. "I'd hit you right over the head with this."

He showed them a length of iron pipe that he used for clubbing shark.

"Why don't you gentlemen just put your lines out and enjoy yourselves? You didn't come down here
to get in no trouble. You come down here for a rest. You say you can't eat sailfish but you won't
catch no sailfish in these channels. You'd be lucky to catch a grouper."

"What do you think?" asked the Doctor.

"Better leave him alone." The secretary eyed the iron pipe.

"Besides you made another mistake," Captain Willie went on. "Sailfish is just as good eating as
kingfish. When we used to sell them to Rios for the Havana market we got ten cents a pound same as
kings."

"Oh shut up," said the Doctor.

"I thought you'd be interested in these things as a Government man. Ain't you mixed up in the
prices of things that we eat or something? Ain't that it? Making them more costly or something.
Making the grits dearer and the grunts cheapter. Fish goin' down in price all the time."

"Oh shut up," said the Doctor.

On the booze boat Harry had the last sack over.

"Get me the fish knife," he said to the nigger.

"It's gone."

Harry pressed the self-starters and started the engines. He got the hatchet and with his left hand
chopped the anchor rope through against the bit. It'll sink and they'll grapple it when they pick up the
load, he thought. I'll run her up into the Garrison Bight and if they're going to take her they'll take
her. I got to get to a doctor. I don't want to lose my arm and the boat both. The load is worth as much
as the boat. There wasn't too much of it smashed. A little smashed can smell plenty.

He shoved the port clutch in and swung out away from the mangroves with the tide. The engines
ran smoothly. Captain Willie's boat was two miles away now headed for Boca Grande. I guess the
tide's high enough to go through the lakes now, Harry thought. He shoved in his starboard clutch and
the engines roared as he pushed up the throttle. He could feel her bow rise and the green mangroves
coasted swiftly alongside as the boat sucked the water away from their roots. I hope they don't take
her, he thought. I hope they can fix my arm. How was we to know they'd shoot at us in Mariel after
we could go and come there open for six months? That's Cubans for you. Somebody didn't pay somebody
so we got the shooting. That's Cubans all right.

"Hey Wesley," he said, looking back into the cockpit where the nigger lay with the blanket over
him. "How you feeling, Boogie?"

"God," said Wesley. "I couldn't feel no worse."

"You'll feel worse when the old doctor probes for it," Harry told him.

"You ain't human," the nigger said. "You ain't got human feelings."

That old Willie is a good skate, Harry was thinking. There's a good skate, that old Willie. We
done better to come in than to wait. It was foolish to wait. I felt so dizzy and sicklike I lost my
judgment.

Ahead now he could see the white of the La Concha hotel, the wireless masts, and the houses of
town. He could see the car ferries lying at the Trumbo dock where he would go around to head up for
the Garrison Bight. That old Willie, he thought. He was giving them hell. Wonder who those buzzards
was? Damn if I don't feel plenty bad right now. I feel plenty dizzy. We done right to come in. We
done right not to wait.

"Mr. Harry," said the nigger. "I'm sorry I couldn't help dump that stuff."

"Hell," said Harry. "Ain't no nigger any good when he's shot. You're a all right nigger,
Wesley."

Above the roar of the motors and the high, slapping rush of the boat through the water he felt a
strange hollow singing in his heart. He always felt this way coming home at the end of a trip. I hope
they can fix that arm, he thought. I got a lot of use for that arm.



The Denunciation



CHICOTE'S IN THE OLD DAYS IN MADRID was a place sort of like The Stork, without the music and
the debutantes, or the Waldorfs men's bar if they let girls in. You know, they came in, but it was a
man's place and they didn't have any status. Pedro Chicote was the proprietor and he had one of
those personalities that make a place. He was a great bartender and he was always pleasant, always
cheerful, and he had a lot of zest. Now zest is a rare enough thing and few people have it for long.
It should not be confused with showmanship either. Chicote had it and it was not faked or put on. He
was also modest, simple and friendly. He really was as nice and pleasant and still as marvelously
efficient as George, the chasseur at the Ritz bar in Paris, which is about the strongest comparison
you can make to anyone who has been around, and he ran a fine bar.

In those days the snobs among the rich young men of Madrid hung out at something called the
Nuevo Club and the good guys went to Chicote's. A lot of people went there that I did not like, the
same as at The Stork, say, but I was never in Chicote's that it wasn't pleasant. One reason was that
you did not talk politics there. There were cafes where you went for politics and nothing else but you
didn't talk politics at Chicote's. You talked plenty of the other five subjects though and in the evening
the best looking girls in the town showed up there and it was the place to start an evening from, all
right, and we had all started some fine ones from there.

Then it was the place where you dropped in to find out who was in town, or where they had gone to
if they were out of town. And if it was summer, and there was no one in town, you could always sit
and enjoy a drink because the waiters were all pleasant.

It was a club only you didn't have to pay any dues and you could pick a girl up there. It was the
best bar in Spain, certainly, and I think one of the best bars in the world, and all of us that used
to hang out there had a great affection for it.

Another thing was that the drinks were wonderful. If you ordered a martini it was made with the
best gin that money could buy, and Chicote had a barrel whisky that came from Scotland that was so
much better than the advertised brands that it was pitiful to compare it with ordinary Scotch. Well,
when the revolt started, Chicote was up at San Sebastian running the summer place he had there. He
is still running it and they say it is the best bar in Franco's Spain. The waiters took over the Madrid
place and they are still running it, but the good liquor is all gone now.

Most of Chicote's old customers are on Franco's side; but some of them are on the Government
side. Because it was a very cheerful place, and because really cheerful people are usually the
bravest, and the bravest get killed quickest, a big part of Chicote's old customers are now dead.
The barrel whisky had all been gone for many months now and we finished the last of the yellow gin
in May of 1938. There's not much there to go for now so I suppose Luis Delgado, if he had come to
Madrid a little later, might have stayed away from there and not gotten into that trouble. But when
he came to Madrid in the month of November of 1937 they still had the yellow gin and they still had
Indian quinine water. They do not seem worth risking your life for, so maybe he just wanted to have
a drink in the old place. Knowing him, and knowing the place in the old days, it would be perfectly
understandable.

They had butchered a cow at the Embassy that day and the porter had called up at the Hotel Florida
to tell us that they had saved us ten pounds of fresh meat. I walked over to get it through the
early dusk of a Madrid winter. Two assault guards with rifles sat on chairs outside the Embassy gate
and the meat was waiting at the porter's lodge.

The porter said it was a very good cut but that the cow was lean. I offered him some roasted
sunflower seeds and some acorns from the pocket of my mackinaw jacket and we joked a little
standing outside the lodge on the gravel of the Embassy driveway.

I walked home across the town with the meat heavy under my arm. They were shelling up the Gran Via
and I went into Chicote's to wait it out. It was noisy and crowded and I sat at a little table in
one corner against the sandbagged window with the meat on the bench beside me and drank a gin and
tonic water. It was that week that we discovered they still had tonic water. No one had ordered any
since the war started and it was still the same price as before the revolt. The evening papers were not
yet out so I bought three party tracts from an old woman. They were ten centavos apiece and I told her
to keep the change from a peseta. She said God would bless me. I doubted this but read the three
leaflets and drank the gin and tonic.

A waiter I had known in the old days came over to the table and said something to me.

"No," I said. "I don't believe it."

"Yes," he insisted, slanting his tray and his head in the same direction. "Don't look now. There
he is."

"It's not my business," I told him.

"Nor mine either."

He went away and I bought the evening papers which had just come in from another old woman
and read them. There was no doubt about the man the waiter had pointed out. We both knew him very
well. All I could think was: the fool. The utter bloody fool.

Just then a Greek comrade came over and sat down at the table. He was a company commander
in the Fifteenth Brigade who had been buried by an airplane bomb which had killed four other men
and he had been sent in to be under observation for a while and then sent to a rest home or something
of the sort.

"How are you, John?" I asked him. "Try one of these."

"What you call that drink, Mr. Emmunds?"

"Gin and tonic."

"What is that kind of tonic?"

"Quinine. Try one."

"Listen, I don't drink very much but is a quinine very good for fever. I try little one."

"What did the doctor say about you, John?"

"Is a no necessity see doctor. I am all right. Only I have like buzzing noises all the time in
the head."

"You have to go to see him, John."

"I go all right. But he not understand. He says I have no papers to admit."

"I'll call up about it," I said. "I know the people there. Is the doctor a German?"

"That's right," said John. "Is a German. No talk English very good."

Just then the waiter came over. He was an old man with a bald head and very old-fashioned
manners which the war had not changed. He was very worried.

"I have a son at the front," he said. "I have another son killed. Now about this."

"It is thy problem."

"And you? Already I have told you."

"I came in here to have a drink before eating."

"And I work here. But tell me."

"It is thy problem," I said. "I am not a politician."

"Do you understand Spanish, John?" I asked the Greek comrade.

"No, I understand few words but I speak Greek, English, Arabic. One time I speak good Arabic.
Listen, you know how I get buried?"

"No. I knew you were buried. That's all."

He had a dark good-looking face and very dark hands that he moved about when he talked. He
came from one of the islands and he spoke with great intensity.

"Well, I tell you now. You see I have very much experience in war. Before I am captain in
Greek army too. I am good soldier. So when I see plane come over there when we are in trenches
there at Fuentes del Ebro I look at him close. I look at plane come over, bank, turn like this" (he
turned and banked with his hands), "look down on us and I say, 'Ah ha. Is for the General Staff.
Is made the observation. Pretty soon come others.'

"So just like I say come others. So I am stand there and watch. I watch close. I look up and I
point out to company what happens. Is come three and three. One first and two behind. Is pass one
group of three and I say to company, 'See? Now is pass one formation.'

"Is pass the other three and I say to company, 'Now is hokay. Now is all right. Now is nothing
more to worry.' That the last thing I remember for two weeks."

"When did it happen?"

"About one month ago. You see is my helmet forced down over my face when am buried by bomb so I
have the air in that helmet to breathe until they dig me out but I know nothing about that. But
in that air I breathe is the smoke from the explosion and that make me sick for long time. Now am
I hokay, only with the ringing in the head. What you call this drink?"

"Gin and tonic. Schweppes Indian tonic water. This was a very fancy cafe before the war and this
used to cost five pesetas when there were only seven pesetas to the dollar. We just found out they
still have the tonic water and they're charging the same price for it. There's only a case left."

"Is a good drink all right. Tell me, how was this city before the war?"

"Fine. Like now only lots to eat."

The waiter came over and leaned toward the table.

"And if I don't?" he said. "It is my responsibility."

"If you wish to, go to the telephone and call this number. Write it down."

He wrote it down. "Ask for Pepe," I said.

"I have nothing against him," the waiter said. "But it is the Causa. Certainly such a man is
dangerous to our cause."

"Don't the other waiters recognize him?"

"I think so. But no one has said anything. He is an old client."

"I am an old client, too."

"Perhaps then he is on our side now, too."

"No," I said. "I know he is not."

"I have never denounced anyone."

"It is your problem. Maybe one of the other waiters will denounce him."

"No. Only the old waiters know him and the old waiters do not denounce."

"Bring another of the yellow gins and some bitters," I said. "There is tonic water still in the
bottle."

"What's he talk about?" asked John. "I only understand little bit."

"There is a man here that we both knew in the old days. He used to be a marvelous pigeon shot
and I used to see him at shoots. He is a fascist and for him to come here now, no matter what his
reasons, is very foolish. But he was always very brave and very foolish."

"Show him to me."

"There at that table with the flyers."

"Which one?"

"With the very brown face; the cap over one eye. Who is laughing now."

"He is fascist?"

"Yes."

"That's a closest I see fascist since Fuentes del Ebro. Is a many fascist here?"

"Quite a few from time to time."

"Is drink the same drink as you," said John. "We drink that other people think we fascists, eh?
Listen you ever been South America, West Coast, Magallanes?"

"No."

"Is all right. Only too many oc-toe-pus."

"Too many what?"

"Oc-toe-pus." He pronounced it with the accent on the toe as oc-toepus. "You know with the
eight arms."

"Oh," I said. "Octopus."

"Oc-toe-pus," said John. "You see I am diver too. Is a good place to work all right make plenty
money only too many oc-toe-pus."

"Did they bother you?"

"I don't know about that. First time I go down in Magallanes harbor I see oc-toe-pus. He is stand
on his feet like this." John pointed his fingers on the table and brought his hands up, at the same time
bringing up his shoulders and raising his eyebrows. "He is stand up taller than I am and he is look me
right in the eye. I jerk cord for them to bring me up."

"How big was he, John?"

"I cannot say absolutely because the glass in the helmet make distort a little. But the head was
big around more than four feet anyway. And he was stand on his feet like on tip-toes and look at me
like this." (He peered in my face.) "So when I get up out of water they take off the helmet and so I say
I don't go down there any more. Then the man of the job says, 'What a matter with you, John? The octoe
-pus is more afraid of you than you afraid of oc-toe-pus.' So I say to him 'Impossible!' What you
say we drink some more this fascist drink?"

"All right," I said.

I was watching the man at the table. His name was Luis Delgado and the last time I had seen himhad
been in 1933 shooting pigeons at Saint Sebastian and I remembered standing with him up on top of the
stand watching the final of the big shoot. We had a bet, more than I could afford to bet, and I
believed a good deal more than he could afford to lose that year, and when he paid coming down the
stairs, I remembered how pleasant he was and how he made it seem a great privilege to pay. Then I
remembered our standing at the bar having a martini, and I had that wonderful feeling of relief that
comes when you have bet yourself out of a bad hole and I was wondering how badly the bet had hit
him. I had shot rottenly all week and he had shot beautifully but drawn almost impossible birds and
he had bet on himself steadily.

"Should we match a duro?" he asked.

"You really want to?"

"Yes, if you like."

"For how much?"

He took out a notecase and looked in it and laughed.

"I'd say for anything you like," he said. "But suppose we say for eight thousand pesetas. That's
what seems to be there."

That was close to a thousand dollars then.

"Good," I said, all the fine inner quiet gone now and the hollow that gambling makes come back
again. "Who's matching who?"

"I'll match you."

We shook the heavy five-peseta pieces in our cupped hands; then each man laid his coin on the
back of his left hand, each coin covered with the right hand.

"What's yours?" he asked.

I uncovered the big silver piece with the profile of Alfonso XIII as a baby showing.

"Heads," I said.

"Take these damned things and be a good man and buy me a drink." He emptied out the notecase.

"You wouldn't like to buy a good Purdey gun would you?"

"No," I said. "But look, Luis, if you need some money--"

I was holding the stiffly folded, shiny-heavy-paper, green thousandpeseta notes toward him.

"Don't be silly, Enrique," he said. "We've been gambling, haven't we?"

"Yes. But we know each other quite well."

"Not that well."

"Right," I said. "You're the judge of that. Then what will you drink?"

"What about a gin and tonic? That's a marvelous drink you know."

So we had a gin and tonic and I felt very badly to have broken him and I felt awfully good to have
won the money, and a gin and tonic never tasted better to me in all my life. There is no use to lie
about these things or pretend you do not enjoy winning; but this boy Luis Delgado was a very pretty
gambler.

"I don't think if people gambled for what they could afford it would be very interesting. Do you,
Enrique?"

"I don't know. I've never been able to afford it."

"Don't be silly. You have lots of money."

"No I haven't," I said. "Really."

"Oh, everyone has money," he said. "It's just a question of selling something or other to get hold
of it."

"I don't have much. Really."

"Oh, don't be silly. I've never known an American who wasn't rich."

I guess that was the truth all right. He wouldn't have met them at the Ritz bar or at Chicote's
either in those days. And now he was back in Chicote's and all the Americans he would meet there
now were the kind he would never have met; except me, and I was a mistake. But I would have given
plenty not to have seen him in there.

Still, if he wanted to do an absolutely damn fool thing like that it was his own business. But as I
looked at the table and remembered the old days I felt badly about him and I felt very badly too that I
had given the waiter the number of the counterespionage bureau in Seguridad headquarters. He could
have had Seguridad by simply asking on the telephone. But I had given him the shortest cut to having
Delgado arrested in one of those excesses of impartiality, righteousness and Pontius Pilatry, and the
always-dirty desire to see how people act under an emotional conflict, that makes writers such
attractive friends.

The waiter came over.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"I would never denounce him myself," I said, now trying to undo for myself what I had done with
the number. "But I am a foreigner and it is your war and your problem."

"But you are with us."

"Absolutely and always. But it does not include denouncing old friends."

"But for me?"

"For you it is different."

I knew this was true and there was nothing else to say, only I wished I had never heard of any of
it.

My curiosity as to how people would act in this case had been long ago, and shamefully, satisfied.
I turned to John and did not look at the table where Luis Delgado was sitting. I knew he had been
flying with the fascists for over a year, and here he was, in a loyalist uniform, talking to three
young loyalist flyers of the last crop that had been trained in France.

None of those new kids would know him and I wondered whether he had come to try to steal a
plane or for what. Whatever he was there for, he was a fool to come to Chicote's now.

"How do you feel, John?" I asked.

"Feel good," said John. "Is a good drink hokay. Makes me feel little bit drunk maybe. Is a good
for the buzzing in the head."

The waiter came over. He was very excited.

"I have denounced him," he said.

"Well then," I said, "now you haven't any problem."

"No," he said proudly. "I have denounced him. They are on their way now to get him."

"Let's go," I said to John. "There is going to be some trouble here."

"Is best go then," said John. "Is a plenty trouble always come, even if you do best to avoid. How
much we owe?"

"You aren't going to stay?" the waiter asked.

"No."

"But you gave me the telephone number."

"I know it. You get to know too many telephone numbers if you stay around in this town."

"But it was my duty."

"Yes. Why not? Duty is a very strong thing."

"But now?"

"Well, you felt good about it just now, didn't you? Maybe you will feel good about it again.
Maybe you will get to like it."

"You have forgotten the package," the waiter said. He handed me the meat which was wrapped
in two envelopes which had brought copies of the Spur to the piles of magazines which accumulated
in one of the office rooms of the Embassy.

"I understand," I said to the waiter. "Truly."

"He was an old client and a good client. Also I have never denounced anyone before. I did not
denounce for pleasure."

"Also I should not speak cynically or brutally. Tell him that I denounced him. He hates me
anyway by now for differences in politics. He'd feel badly if he knew it was you."

"No. Each man must take his responsibility. But you understand?"

"Yes," I said. Then lied. "I understand and I approve." You have to lie very often in a war and
when you have to lie you should do it quickly and as well as you can.

We shook hands and I went out the door with John. I looked back at the table where Luis Delgado
sat as I went out. He had another gin and tonic in front of him and everyone at the table was
laughing at something he had said. He had a very gay, brown face, and shooter's eyes, and I won-
dered what he was passing himself off as.

He was a fool to go to Chicote's. But that was exactly the sort of thing that he would do in order
to be able to boast of it when he was back with his own people.

As we went out of the door and turned to walk up the street, a big Seguridad car drew up in front
of Chicote's and eight men got out of it. Six with submachine guns took up positions outside the door.
Two in plain clothes went inside. A man asked us for our papers and when I said, "Foreigners," he
said to go along; that it was all right.

In the dark going up the Gran Via there was much new broken glass on the sidewalk and much rubble
under foot from the shelling. The air was still smoky and all up the street it smelled of high
explosive and blasted granite.

"Where you go eat?" asked John.

"I have some meat for all of us, and we can cook it in the room."

"I cook it," said John. "I cook good. I remember one time when I cook on ship--"

"It will be pretty tough," I said. "It's just been freshly butchered."

"Oh no," said John. "Is a no such thing as a touch meat in a war."

People were hurrying by in the dark on their way home from the cinemas where they had stayed
until the shelling was over.

"What's a matter that fascist he come to that cafe where they know him?"

"He was crazy to do it."

"Is a trouble with a war," John said. "Is a too many people crazy."

"John," I said, "I think you've got something there."

Back at the hotel we went in the door past the sandbags piled to protect the porter's desk and I
asked for the key, but the porter said there were two comrades upstairs in the room taking a bath.
He had given them the keys.

"Go on up, John," I said. "I want to telephone."

I went over to the booth and called the same number I had given the waiter.

"Hello? Pepe?"

A thin-lipped voice came over the phone. "?Que tal Enrique?"

"Listen, Pepe, did you pick up a certain Luis Delgado at Chicote's?"

"Si, hombre, si. Sin novedad. Without trouble."

"He doesn't know anything about the waiter?"

"No, hombre, no."

"Then don't tell him. Tell him I denounced him then, will you? Nothing about the waiter."

"Why when it will make no difference? He is a spy. He will be shot. There is no choice in the
matter."

"I know," I said. "But it makes a difference."

"As you want, hombre. As you want. When shall I see thee?"

"Lunch tomorrow. We have some meat."

"And whisky before. Good, hombre, good."

"Salud, Pepe, and thank you."

"Salud, Enrique. It is nothing. Salud."

It was a strange and very deadly voice and I never got used to hearing it, but as I walked up the
stairs now, I felt much better.

All we old clients of Chicote's had a sort of feeling about the place. I knew that was why Luis
Delgado had been such a fool as to go back there. He could have done his business some place else.
But if he was in Madrid he had to go there. He had been a good client as the waiter had said and
we had been friends. Certainly any small acts of kindness you can do in life are worth doing. So
I was glad I had called my friend Pepe at Seguridad headquarters because Luis Delgado was an old
client of Chicote's and I did not wish him to be disillusioned or bitter about the waiters there
before he died.



The Butterfly and the Tank



ON THIS EVENING I WAS WALKING HOME from the censorship office to the Florida Hotel and it was
raining. So about halfway home I got sick of the rain and stopped into Chicote's for a quick one.
It was the second winter of shelling in the siege of Madrid and everything was short including
tobacco and people's tempers and you were a little hungry all the time and would become suddenly
and unreasonably irritated at things you could do nothing about such as the weather. I should
have gone on home. It was only five blocks more, but when I saw Chicote's doorway I thought I
would get a quick one and then do those six blocks up the Gran Via through the mud and rubble
of the streets broken by the bombardment.

The place was crowded. You couldn't get near the bar and all the tables were full. It was full of
smoke, singing, men in uniform, and the smell of wet leather coats, and they were handing drinks
over a crowd that was three deep at the bar.

A waiter I knew found a chair from another table and I sat down with a thin, white-faced,
Adam's-appled German I knew who was working at the censorship and two other people I did not
know. The table was in the middle of the room a little on your right as you go in.

You couldn't hear yourself talk for the singing and I ordered a gin and Angostura and put it down
against the rain. The place was really packed and everybody was very jolly; maybe getting just a little
bit too jolly from the newly made Catalan liquor most of them were drinking. A couple of people I
did not know slapped me on the back and when the girl at our table said something to me, I couldn't
hear it and said, "Sure."

She was pretty terrible looking now I had stopped looking around and was looking at our table;
really pretty terrible. But it turned out, when the waiter came, that what she had asked me was to
have a drink. The fellow with her was not very forceful looking but she was forceful enough for both
of them. She had one of those strong, semi-classical faces and was built like a lion tamer; and the
boy with her looked as though he ought to be wearing an old school tie. He wasn't though. He was
wearing a leather coat just like all the rest of us. Only it wasn't wet because they had been there
since before the rain started. She had on a leather coat too and it was becoming to the sort of face
she had.

By this time I was wishing I had not stopped into Chicote's but had gone straight on home where
you could change your clothes and be dry and have a drink in comfort on the bed with your feet up,
and I was tired of looking at both of these young people. Life is very short and ugly women are very
long and sitting there at the table I decided that even though I was a writer and supposed to have an
insatiable curiosity about all sorts of people, I did not really care to know whether these two were
married, or what they saw in each other, or what their politics were, or whether he had a little money,
or she had a little money, or anything about them. I decided they must be in the radio. Any time you
saw really strange looking civilians in Madrid they were always in the radio. So to say something I
raised my voice above the noise and asked, "You in the radio?"

"We are," the girl said. So that was that. They were in the radio.

"How are you comrade?" I said to the German.

"Fine. And you?"

"Wet," I said, and he laughed with his head on one side.

"You haven't got a cigarette?" he asked. I handed him my next to the last pack of cigarettes and
he took two. The forceful girl took two and the young man with the old school tie face took one.

"Take another," I shouted.

"No thanks," he answered and the German took it instead.

"Do you mind?" he smiled.

"Of course not," I said. I really minded and he knew it. But he wanted the cigarettes so badly that
it did not matter. The singing had died down momentarily, or there was a break in it as there is
sometimes in a storm, and we could all hear what we said.

"You been here long?" the forceful girl asked me. She pronounced it bean as in bean soup.

"Off and on," I said.

"We must have a serious talk," the German said. "I want to have a talk with you. When can we
have it?"

"I'll call you up," I said. This German was a very strange German indeed and none of the good
Germans liked him. He lived under the delusion that he could play the piano, but if you kept him
away from pianos he was all right unless he was exposed to liquor, or the opportunity to gossip,
and nobody had even been able to keep him away from those two things yet.

Gossip was the best thing he did and he always knew something new and highly discreditable
about anyone you could mention in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, and other political centers.
Just then the singing really started in again, and you cannot gossip very well shouting, so it
looked like a dull afternoon at Chicote's and I decided to leave as soon as I should have bought
a round myself.

Just then it started. A civilian in a brown suit, a white shirt, black tie, his hair brushed straight
back from a rather high forehead, who had been clowning around from table to table, squirted one of
the waiters with a flit gun. Everybody laughed except the waiter who was carrying a tray full of
drinks at the time. He was indignant.

"No hay derecho," the waiter said. This means, "You have no right to do that," and is the
simplest and the strongest protest in Spain.

The flit gun man, delighted with his success, and not seeming to give any importance to the fact
that it was well into the second year of the war, that he was in a city under siege where everyone was
under a strain, and that he was one of only four men in civilian clothes in the place, now squirted
another waiter.

I looked around for a place to duck to. This waiter, also, was indignant and the flit gun man squirt-
ed him twice more, lightheartedly. Some people still thought it was funny, including the forceful
girl. But the waiter stood, shaking his head. His lips were trembling. He was an old man and he had
worked in Chicote's for ten years that I knew of.

"No hay derecho, " he said with dignity.

People had laughed, however, and the flit gun man, not noticing how the singing had fallen off,
squirted his flit gun at the back of a waiter's neck. The waiter turned, holding his tray.

"No hay derecho," he said. This time it was no protest. It was an indictment and I saw three men in
uniform start from a table for the flit gun man and the next thing all four of them were going out
the revolving door in a rush and you heard a smack when someone hit the flit gun man on the mouth.

Somebody else picked up the flit gun and threw it out the door after him.

The three men came back in looking serious, tough and very righteous. Then the door revolved
and in came the flit gun man. His hair was down in his eyes, there was blood on his face, his necktie
was pulled to one side and his shirt was torn open. He had the flit gun again and as he pushed, wild-
eyed and white-faced, into the room he made one general, unaimed, challenging squirt with it, holding
it toward the whole company.

I saw one of the three men start for him and I saw this man's face. There were more men with him now
and they forced the flit gun man back between two tables on the left of the room as you go in, the
flit gun man struggling wildly now, and when the shot went off I grabbed the forceful girl by the
arm and dove for the kitchen door.

The kitchen door was shut and when I put my shoulder against it it did not give.

"Get down here behind the angle of the bar," I said. She knelt there.

"Flat," I said and pushed her down. She was furious.

Every man in the room except the German, who lay behind a table, and the public-school-looking
boy who stood in a corner drawn up against the wall, had a gun up. On a bench along the wall three
over-blonde girls, their hair dark at the roots, were standing on tiptoe to see and screaming steadily.

"I'm not afraid," the forceful one said. "This is ridiculous."

"You don't want to get shot in a cafe brawl," I said. "If that flit king has any friends here this can
be very bad."

But he had no friends, evidently, because people began putting their pistols away and somebody
lifted down the blonde screamers and everyone who had started over there when the shot came drew
back away from the flit man who lay, quietly, on his back on the floor.

"No one is to leave until the police come," someone shouted from the door.

Two policemen with rifles, who had come in off the street patrol, were standing by the door and
at this announcement I saw six men form up just like the line-up of a football team coming out of a
huddle and head out through the door. Three of them were the men who had first thrown the flit king
out. One of them was the man who shot him. They went right through the policemen with the rifles like
good interference taking out an end and a tackle. And as they went out one of the policemen got his
rifle across the door and shouted, "No one can leave. Absolutely no one."

"Why did those men go? Why hold us if anyone's gone?"

"They were mechanics who had to return to their air field," someone said.

"But if anyone's gone it's silly to hold the others."

"Everyone must wait for the Seguridad. Things must be done legally and in order."

"But don't you see that if any person has gone it is silly to hold the others?"

"No one can leave. Everyone must wait."

"It's comic," I said to the forceful girl.

"No it's not. It's simply horrible."

We were standing up now and she was staring indignantly at where the flit king was lying. His
arms were spread wide and he had one leg drawn up.

"I'm going over to help that poor wounded man. Why has no one helped him or done anything for
him?"

"I'd leave him alone," I said. "You want to keep out of this."

"But it's simply inhuman. I've nurse's training and I'm going to give him first aid."

"I wouldn't," I said. "Don't go near him."

"Why not?" She was very upset and almost hysterical.

"Because he's dead," I said.

When the police came they held everybody there for three hours. They commenced by smelling
of all the pistols. In this manner they would detect one which had been fired recently. After about
forty pistols they seemed to get bored with this and anyway all you could smell was wet leather coats.
Then they sat at a table placed directly behind the late flit king, who lay on the floor looking like
a grey wax caricature of himself, with grey wax hands and a grey wax face, and examined people's
papers.

With his shirt ripped open you could see the flit king had no undershirt and the soles of his shoes
were worn through. He looked very small and pitiful lying there on the floor. You had to step over
him to get to the table where two plain clothes policemen sat and examined everyone's identification
papers. The husband lost and found his papers several times with nervousness. He had a safe conduct
pass somewhere but he had mislaid it in a pocket and he kept on searching and perspiring until he
found it. Then he would put it in a different pocket and have to go searching again. He perspired
heavily while doing this and it made his hair very curly and his face red. He now looked as though he
should have not only an old school tie but one of those little caps boys in the lower forms wear. You
have heard how events age people. Well, this shooting had made him look about ten years younger.

While we were waiting around I told the forceful girl I thought the whole thing was a pretty good
story and that I would write it sometime. The way the six had lined up in single file and rushed that
door was very impressive. She was shocked and said that I could not write it because it would be
prejudicial to the cause of the Spanish Republic. I said that I had been in Spain for a long time and
that they used to have a phenomenal number of shootings in the old days around Valencia under the
monarchy, and that for hundreds of years before the Republic people had been cutting each other with
large knives called navajas in Andalucia, and that if I saw a comic shooting in Chicote's during the
war I could write about it just as though it had been in New York, Chicago, Key West or Marseilles.
It did not have anything to do with politics. She said I shouldn't. Probably a lot of other people will
say I shouldn't too. The German seemed to think it was a pretty good story, however, and I gave him
the last of the Camels. Well, anyway, finally, after about three hours the police said we could go.
They were sort of worried about me at the Florida because in those days, with the shelling, if
you started for home on foot and didn't get there after the bars were closed at seven-thirty, people
worried. I was glad to get home and I told the story while we were cooking supper on an electric
stove and it had quite a success.

Well, it stopped raining during the night, and the next morning it was a fine, bright, cold early
winter day and at twelve forty-five I pushed open the revolving doors at Chicote's to try a little
gin and tonic before lunch. There were very few people there at that hour and two waiters and the
manager came over to the table. They were all smiling.

"Did they catch the murderer?" I asked.

"Don't make jokes so early in the day," the manager said. "Did you see him shot?"

"Yes," I told him.

"Me too," he said. "I was just here when it happened." He pointed to a corner table. "He placed
the pistol right against the man's chest when he fired."

"How late did they hold people?"

"Oh, until past two this morning."

"They only came for the fiambre," using the Spanish slang word for corpse, the same used on
menus for cold meat, "at eleven o'clock this morning."

"But you don't know about it yet," the manager said.

"No. He doesn't know," a waiter said.

"It is a very rare thing," another waiter said. "Muy raro."

"And sad too," the manager said. He shook his head.

"Yes. Sad and curious," the waiter said. "Very sad."

"Tell me."

"It is a very rare thing," the manager said.

"Tell me. Come on, tell me."

The manager leaned over the table in great confidence.

"In the flit gun, you know," he said. "He had eau de cologne. Poor fellow."

"It was not a joke in such bad taste, you see?" the waiter said.

"It was really just gaiety. No one should have taken offense," the manager said. "Poor fellow."

"I see," I said. "He just wanted everyone to have a good time."

"Yes," said the manager. "It was really just an unfortunate misunderstanding."

"And what about the flit gun?"

"The police took it. They have sent it around to his family."

"I imagine they will be glad to have it," I said.

"Yes," said the manager. "Certainly. A flit gun is always useful."

"Who was he?"

"A cabinet maker."

"Married?"

"Yes, the wife was here with the police this morning."

"What did she say?"

"She dropped down by him and said, 'Pedro, what have they done to thee, Pedro? Who has done
this to thee? Oh, Pedro.' "

"Then the police had to take her away because she could not control herself," the waiter said.

"It seems he was feeble of the chest," the manager said. "He fought in the first days of the
movement. They said he fought in the Sierra but he was too weak in the chest to continue."

"And yesterday afternoon he just went out on the town to cheer things up," I suggested.

"No," said the manager. "You see it is very rare. Everything is muy raro. This I learn from the
police who are very efficient if given time. They have interrogated comrades from the shop where
he worked. This they located from the card of his syndicate which was in his pocket. Yesterday he
bought the flit gun and agua de colonia to use for a joke at a wedding. He had announced this in-
tention. He bought them across the street. There was a label on the cologne bottle with the address.
The bottle was in the washroom. It was there he filled the flit gun. After buying them he must have
come in here when the rain started."

"I remember when he came in," a waiter said.

"In the gaiety, with the singing, he became gay too."

"He was gay all right," I said. "He was practically floating around."

The manager kept on with the relentless Spanish logic.

"That is the gaiety of drinking with a weakness of the chest," he said.

"I don't like this story very well," I said.

"Listen," said the manager. "How rare it is. His gaiety comes in contact with the seriousness of
the war like a butterfly--"

"Oh, very like a butterfly," I said. "Too much like a butterfly."

"I am not joking," said the manager. "You see it? Like a butterfly and a tank."

This pleased him enormously. He was getting into the real Spanish metaphysics.

"Have a drink on the house," he said. "You must write a story about this."

I remembered the flit gun man with his grey wax hands and his grey wax face, his arms spread
wide and his legs drawn up and he did look a little like a butterfly; not too much, you know. But
he did not look very human either. He reminded me more of a dead sparrow.

"I'll take gin and Schweppes quinine tonic water," I said.

"You must write a story about it," the manager said. "Here. Here's luck."

"Luck," I said. "Look, an English girl last night told me I shouldn't write about it. That it
would be very bad for the cause."

"What nonsense," the manager said. "It is very interesting and important, the misunderstood
gaiety coming in contact with the deadly seriousness that is here always. To me it is the
rarest and most interesting thing which I have seen for some time. You must write it."

"All right," I said. "Sure. Has he any children?"

"No," he said. "I asked the police. But you must write it and you must call it 'The Butterfly
and the Tank.'"

"All right," I said. "Sure. But I don't like the title much."

"The title is very elegant," the manager said. "It is pure literature."

"All right," I said. "Sure. That's what we'll call it. 'The Butterfly and the Tank.'"

And I sat there on that bright cheerful morning, the place smelling clean and newly aired and
swept, with the manager who was an old friend and who was now very pleased with the literature
we were making together and I took a sip of the gin and tonic water and looked out the sandbagged
window and thought of the wife kneeling there and saying, "Pedro. Pedro, who has done this to thee,
Pedro?" And I thought that the police would never be able to tell her that even if they had the name
ofthe man who pulled the trigger.



Night Before Battle



AT THIS TIME WE WERE WORKING IN A shell-smashed house that overlooked the Casa del Campo in
Madrid. Below us a battle was being fought. You could see it spread out below you and over the hills,
could smell it, could taste the dust of it, and the noise of it was one great slithering sheet of rifle and
automatic rifle fire rising and dropping, and in it came the crack of the guns and the bubbly rumbling
of the outgoing shells fired from the batteries behind us, the thud of their bursts, and then the roll-
ing yellow clouds of dust. But it was just too far to film well. We had tried working closer but they
kept sniping at the camera and you could not work.

The big camera was the most expensive thing we had and if it was smashed we were through.

We were making the film on almost nothing and all the money was in the cans of film and the cameras.

We could not afford to waste film and you had to be awfully careful of the cameras.

The day before we had been sniped out of a good place to film from and I had to crawl back
holding the small camera to my belly, trying to keep my head lower than my shoulders, hitching along
on my elbows, the bullets whocking into the brick wall over my back and twice spurting dirt over me.

Our heaviest attacks were made in the afternoon, God knows why, as the fascists then had the sun
at their backs, and it shone on the camera lenses and made them blink like a helio and the Moors
would open up on the flash. They knew all about helios and officers' glasses from the Riff and if you
wanted to be properly sniped, all you had to do was use a pair of glasses without shading them ade-
quately. They could shoot too, and they had kept my mouth dry all day.

In the afternoon we moved up into the house. It was a fine place to work and we made a son of a
blind for the camera on a balcony with the broken latticed curtains; but, as I said, it was too far.

It was not too far to get the pine studded hillside, the lake and the outline of the stone farm
buildings that disappeared in the sudden smashes of stone dust from the hits by high explosive shells,
nor was it too far to get the clouds of smoke and dirt that thundered up on the hill crest as the bombers
droned over. But at eight hundred to a thousand yards the tanks looked like small mud-colored beetles
bustling in the trees and spitting tiny flashes and the men behind them were toy men who lay flat, then
crouched and ran, and then dropped to run again, or to stay where they lay, spotting the hillside as the
tanks moved on. Still we hoped to get the shape of the battle. We had many close shots and would get
others with luck and if we could get the sudden fountainings of earth, the puffs of shrapnel, the rolling
clouds of smoke and dust lit by the yellow flash and white blossoming of grenades that is the very
shape of battle we would have something that we needed.

So when the light failed we carried the big camera down the stairs, took off the tripod, made
three loads, and then, one at a time, sprinted across the fire-swept corner of the Paseo Rosales into
the lee of the stone wall of the stables of the old Montana Barracks. We knew we had a good place to
work and we felt cheerful. But we were kidding ourselves plenty that it was not too far.

"Come on, let's go to Chicote's," I said when we had come up the hill to the Hotel Florida.

But they had to repair a camera, to change film and seal up what we had made so I went alone.
You were never alone in Spain and it felt good for a change.

As I started to walk down the Gran Via to Chicote's in the April twilight I felt happy, cheerful
and excited. We had worked hard, and I thought well. But walking down the street alone, all my
elation died. Now that I was alone and there was no excitement, I knew we had been too far away and
any fool could see the offensive was a failure. I had known it all day but you are often deceived by
hope and optimism. But remembering how it looked now, I knew this was just another blood bath like
the Somme. The people's army was on the offensive finally. But it was attacking in a way that could
do only one thing: destroy itself. And as I put together now what I had seen all day and what I had
heard, I felt plenty bad.

I knew in the smoke and din of Chicote's that the offensive was a failure and I knew it even strong-
er when I took my first drink at the crowded bar. When things are all right and it is you that is
feeling low a drink can make you feel better. But when things are really bad and you are all right, a
drink just makes it clearer. Now, in Chicote's it was so crowded that you had to make room with your
elbows to get your drink to your mouth. I had one good long swallow and then someone jostled me so
that I spilled part of the glass of whisky and soda. I looked around angrily and the man who had
jostled me laughed.

"Hello fish face," he said.

"Hello you goat."

"Let's get a table," he said. "You certainly looked sore when I bumped you."

"Where did you come from?" I asked. His leather coat was dirty and greasy, his eyes were hollow
and he needed a shave. He had the big Colt automatic that had belonged to three other men that
I had known of, and that we were always trying to get shells for, strapped to his leg. He was very
tall and his face was smoke-darkened and grease-smudged. He had a leather helment with a heavy
leather padded ridge longitudinally over the top and a heavily padded leather rim.

"Where'd you come from?"

"Casa del Campo," he said, pronouncing it in a sing-song mocking way we had heard a page boy
use in calling in the lobby of a hotel in New Orleans one time and still kept as a private joke.

"There's a table," I said as two soldiers and two girls got up to go. "Let's get it."

We sat at this table in the middle of the room and I watched him raise his glass. His hands were
greasy and the forks of both thumbs black as graphite from the back spit of the machine gun. The
hand holding the drink was shaking.

"Look at them." He put out the other hand. It was shaking too. "Both the same," he said in that
same comic lilt. Then, seriously, "You been down there?"

"We're making a picture of it."

"Photograph well?"

"Not too."

"See us?"

"Where?"

"Attack on the farm. Three twenty-five this afternoon."

"Oh, yes."

"Like it?"

"Nope."

"Me either," he said. "Listen the whole thing is just as crazy as a bedbug. Why do they want to
make a frontal attack against positions like those? Who in hell thought it up?"

"An S.O.B. named Largo Caballero," said a short man with thick glasses who was sitting at the
table when we came over to it. "The first time they let him look through a pair of field glasses
he became a general. This is his masterpiece."

We both looked at the man who spoke. Al Wagner, the tank man, looked at me and raised what
had been his eyebrows before they were burnt off. The little man smiled at us.

"If anyone around here speaks English you're liable to get shot, comrade," Al said to him.

"No," said the little short man. "Largo Caballero is liable to be shot. He ought to be shot."

"Listen, comrade," said Al. "Just speak a little quieter, will you? Somebody might overhear you
and think we were with you."

"I know what I'm talking about," said the short man with the very thick glasses. I looked at him
carefully. He gave you a certain feeling that he did.

"Just the same it isn't always a good thing to say what you know," I said. "Have a drink?"

"Certainly," he said. "It's all right to talk to you. I know you. You're all right."

"I'm not that all right," I said. "And this is a public bar."

"A public bar is the only private place there is. Nobody can hear what we say here. What is your
unit, comrade?"

"I've got some tanks about eight minutes from here on foot," Al told him. "We are through for the
day and I have the early part of this evening off."

"Why don't you ever get washed?" I said.

"I plan to," said Al. "In your room. When we leave here. Have you got any mechanic's soap?"

"No."

"That's all right," he said. "I've got a little here with me in my pocket that I've been saving."

The little man with the thick-lensed glasses was looking at Al intently.

"Are you a party member, comrade?" he asked.

"Sure," said Al.

"I know Comrade Henry here is not," the little man said.

"I wouldn't trust him then," Al said. "I never do."

"You bastid," I said. "Want to go?"

"No," Al said. "I need another drink very badly."

"I know all about Comrade Henry," the little man said. "Now let me tell you something more
about Largo Caballero."

"Do we have to hear it?" Al asked. "Remember I'm in the people's army. You don't think it will
discourage me, do you?"

"You know his head is swelled so badly now he's getting sort of mad. He is Prime Minister and
War Minister and nobody can even talk to him any more. You know he's just a good honest trade
union leader somewhere between the late Sam Gompers and John L. Lewis but this man Araquistain
who invented him?"

"Take it easy," said Al. "I don't follow."

"Oh, Araquistain invented him! Araquistain who is Ambassador in Paris now. He made him up you
know. He called him the Spanish Lenin and then the poor man tried to live up to it and somebody
let him look through a pair of field glasses and he thought he was Clausewitz."

"You said that before," Al told him coldly. "What do you base it on?"

"Why three days ago in the Cabinet meeting he was talking about military affairs. They were
talking about this business we've got now and Jesus Hernandez, just ribbing him, you know, asked
him what was the difference between tactics and strategy. Do you know what the old boy said?"

"No," Al said. I could see this new comrade was getting a little on his nerves.

"He said, 'In tactics you attack the enemy from in front. In strategy you take him from the sides.'
Now isn't that something?"

"You better run along, comrade," Al said. "You're getting so awfully discouraged."

"But we'll get rid of Largo Caballero," the short comrade said. "We'll get rid of him right after
his offensive. This last piece of stupidity will be the end of him."

"O.K., comrade," Al told him. "But I've got to attack in the morning."

"Oh, you are going to attack again?"

"Listen, comrade. You can tell me any sort of crap you want because it's interesting and I'm
grown up enough to sort things out. But don't ask me any questions, see? Because you'll be in
trouble."

"I just meant it personally. Not as information."

"We don't know each other well enough to ask personal questions, comrade," Al said. "Why don't
you just go to another table and let Comrade Henry and me talk. I want to ask him some things."

"Salud, comrade," the little man said, standing up. "We'll meet another time."

"Good," said Al. "Another time."

We watched him go over to another table. He excused himself, some soldiers made room for
him, and as we watched we could see him starting to talk. They all looked interested.

"What do you make of that little guy?" Al asked.

"I don't know."

"Me either," Al said. "He certainly had this offensive sized up." He took a drink and showed his
hand. "See? It's all right now. I'm not any rummy either. I never take a drink before an attack."

"How was it today?"

"You saw it. How did it look?"

"Terrible."

"That's it. That's the word for it all right. It was terrible. I guess he's using strategy and tactics
both now because we are attacking from straight in front and from both sides. How's the rest of it
going?"

"Duran took the new race track. The hipodromo. We've narrowed down on the corridor that runs up
into University City. Up above we crossed the Coruna road. And we're stopped at the Cerro de
Aguilar since yesterday morning. We were up that way this morning. Duran lost over half his
brigade, I heard. How is it with you?"

"Tomorrow we're going to try those farm houses and the church again. The church on the hill, the
one they call the hermit, is the objective. The whole hillside is cut by those gullies and it's all
enfiladed at least three ways by machine-gun posts. They're dug deep all through there and it's well
done. We haven't got enough artillery to give any kind of real covering fire to keep them down and
we haven't heavy artillery to blow them out. They've got anti-tanks in those three houses and an anti
tank battery by the church. It's going to be murder."

"When's it for?"

"Don't ask me. I've got no right to tell you that."

"If we have to film it, I meant," I said. "The money from the film all goes for ambulances. We've
got the Twelfth Brigade in the counter-attack at the Argada Bridge. And we've got the Twelfth again
in that attack last week by Pingarron. We got some good tank shots there."

"The tanks were no good there," Al said.

"I know," I said, "but they photographed very well. What about tomorrow?"

"Just get out early and wait," he said. "Not too early."

"How you feel now?"

"I'm awfully tired," he said. "And I've got a bad headache. But I feel a lot better. Let's have
another one and then go up to your place and get a bath."

"Maybe we ought to eat first."

"I'm too dirty to eat. You can hold a place and I'll go get a bath and join you at the Gran Via."

"I'll go up with you."

"No. It's better to hold a place and I'll join you." He leaned his head forward on the table. "Boy
I got a headache. It's the noise in those buckets. I never hear it any more but it does something to
your ears just the same."

"Why don't you go to bed?"

"No. I'd rather stay up with you for a while and then sleep when I got back down there. I don't
want to wake up twice."

"You haven't got the horrors, have you?"

"No," he said. "I'm fine. Listen, Hank. I don't want to talk a lot of crap but I think I'm going to
get killed tomorrow."

I touched the table three times with my fingertips.

"Everybody feels like that. I've felt like that plenty of times."

"No," he said. "It's not natural with me. But where we've got to go tomorrow doesn't make sense. I
don't even know that I can get them up there. You can't make them move if they won't go. You can shoot
them afterwards. But at the time if they won't go they won't go. If you shoot them they still won't
go."

"Maybe it will be all right."

"No. We've got good infantry tomorrow. They'll go anyway. Not like those yellow bastids we
had the first day."

"Maybe it will be all right."

"No," he said. "It won't be all right. But it will be just exactly as good as I can make it. I can
make them start all right and I can take them up to where they will have to quit one at a time. Maybe
they can make it. I've got three I can rely on. If only one of the good ones doesn't get knocked out at
the start."

"Who are your good ones?"

"I've got a big Greek from Chicago that will go anywhere. He's just as good as they come. I've got
a Frenchman from Marseille that's got his left shoulder in a cast with two wounds still draining that
asked to come out of the hospital in the Palace Hotel for this show and has to be strapped in and I
don't know how he can do it. Just technically I mean. He'd break your bloody heart. He used to be a
taxi driver." He stopped. "I'm talking too much. Stop me if I talk too much."

"Who's the third one?" I asked.

"The third one? Did I say I had a third one?"

"Sure."

"Oh, yes," he said. "That's me."

"What about the others?"

"They're mechanics, but they couldn't learn to soldier. They can't size up what's happening. And
they're all afraid to die. I tried to get them over it," he said. "But it comes back on them every attack.
They look like tank men when you see them by the tanks with the helmets on. They look like tank men
when they get in. But when they shut the traps down there's really nothing inside. They aren't tank
men. And so far we haven't had time to make new ones."

"Do you want to take the bath?"

"Let's sit here a little while longer," he said. "It's nice here."

"It's funny all right, with a war right down the end of the street so you can walk to it, and then
leave it and come here."

"And then walk back to it," Al said.

"What about a girl? There's two American girls at the Florida. Newspaper correspondents.
Maybe you could make one."

"I don't want to have to talk to them. I'm too tired."

"There's the two Moor girls from Ceuta at that corner table."

He looked over at them. They were both dark and bushy-headed. One was large and one was
small and they certainly both looked strong and active.

"No," said Al. "I'm going to see plenty Moors tomorrow without having to fool with them tonight."

"There's plenty of girls," I said. "Manolita's at the Florida. That Seguridad bird she lives with
has gone to Valencia and she's being true to him with everybody."

"Listen, Hank, what are you trying to promote me?"

"I just wanted to cheer you up."

"Grow up," he said. "What's one more?"

"One more."

"I don't mind dying a bit," he said. "Dying is just a lot of crap. Only it's wasteful. The attack is
wrong and it's wasteful. I can handle tanks good now. If I had time I could make good tankists too.
And if we had tanks that were a little bit faster the anti-tanks wouldn't bother them the way it does
when you haven't got the mobility. Listen, Hank, they aren't what we thought they were though. Do
you remember when everybody thought if we only had tanks?"

"They were good at Gaudalajara."

"Sure. But those were the old boys. They were soldiers. And it was against Italians."

"But what's happened?"

"A lot of things. The mercenaries signed up for six months. Most of them were Frenchmen. They
soldiered good for five but now all they want to do is live through the last month and go home. They
aren't worth a damn now. The Russians that came out as demonstrators when the government bought
the tanks were perfect. But they're pulling them back now for China they say. The new Spaniards are
some of them good and some not. It takes six months to make a good tank man, I mean to know
anything. And to be able to size up and work intelligently you have to have a talent. We've been
having to make them in six weeks and there aren't so many with a talent."

"They make fine flyers."

"They'll make fine tank guys too. But you have to get the ones with a vocation for it. It's sort of
like being a priest. You have to be cut out for it. Especially now they've got so much anti-tank."

They had pulled down the shutters in Chicote's and now they were locking the door. No one would be
allowed in now. But you had a half an hour more before they closed.

"I like it here," said Al. "It isn't so noisy now. Remember that time I met you in New Orleans
when I was on a ship and we went in to have a drink in the Monteleone bar and that kid that looked
just like Saint Sebastian was paging people with that funny voice like he was singing and I gave him
a quarter to page Mr. B. F. Slob?"

"That's the same way you said 'Casa del Campo.'"

"Yeah," he said. "I laugh every time I think of that." Then he went on, "You see, now, they're not
frightened of tanks any more. Nobody is. We aren't either. But they're still useful. Really useful. Only
with the anti-tank now they're so damn vulnerable. Maybe I ought to be in something else. Not really.
Because they're still useful. But the way they are now you've got to have a vocation for them. You got
to have a lot of political development to be a good tank man now."

"You're a good tank man."

"I'd like to be something else tomorrow," he said. "I'm talking awfully wet but you have a right
to talk wet if it isn't going to hurt anybody else. You know I like tanks too, only we don't use them
right because the infantry don't know enough yet. They just want the old tank ahead to give them some
cover while they go. That's no good. Then they get to depending on the tanks and they won't move
without them. Sometimes they won't even deploy."

"I know."

"But you see if you had tankists that knew their stuff they'd go out ahead and develop the machine-
gun fire and then drop back behind the infantry and fire on the gun and knock it out and give
the infantry covering fire when they attacked. And other tanks could rush the machine-gun posts as
though they were cavalry. And they could straddle a trench and enfilade and put flaking fire down it.
And they could bring up infantry when it was right to or cover their advance when that was best."

"But instead?"

"Instead it's like it will be tomorrow. We have so damned few guns that we're just used as slightly
mobile armored artillery units. And as soon as you are standing still and being light artillery, you've
lost your mobility and that's your safety and they start sniping at you with the anti-tanks. And if
we're not that we're just sort of iron perambulators to push ahead of the infantry. And lately you don't
know whether the perambulator will push or whether the guys inside will push them. And you never
know if there's going to be anybody behind you when you get there."

"How many are you now to a brigade?"

"Six to a battalion. Thirty to a brigade. That's in principle."

"Why don't you come along now and get the bath and we'll go and eat?"

"All right. But don't you start taking care of me or thinking I'm worried or anything because I'm not.
I'm just tired and I wanted to talk. And don't give me any pep talk either because we've got a
political commissar and I know what I'm fighting for and I'm not worried. But I'd like things to be
efficient and used as intelligently as possible."

"What made you think I was going to give you any pep talk?"

"You started to look like it."

"All I tried to do was see if you wanted a girl and not to talk too wet about getting killed."

"Well, I don't want any girl tonight and I'll talk just as wet as I please unless it does damage to
others. Does it damage you?"

"Come on and get the bath," I said. "You can talk just as bloody wet as you want."

"Who do you suppose that little guy was that talked as though he knew so much?"

"I don't know," I said. "But I'm going to find out."

"He made me gloomy," said Al. "Come on. Let's go."

The old waiter with the bald head unlocked the outside door of Chicote's and let us out into the
street.

"How is the offensive, comrades?" he said at the door.

"It's O.K., comrade," said Al. "It's all right."

"I am happy," said the waiter. "My boy is in the One Hundred and Forty-fifth Brigade. Have you
seen them?"

"I am of the tanks," said Al. "This comrade makes a cinema. Have you seen the Hundred and
Forty-fifth?"

"No," I said.

"They are up the Extremadura road," the old waiter said. "My boy is political commissar of the
machine-gun company of his battalion. He is my youngest boy. He is twenty."

"What party are you comrade?" Al asked him.

"I am of no party," the waiter said. "But my boy is a Communist."

"So am I," said Al. "The offensive, comrade, has not yet reached a decision. It is very difficult.
The fascists hold very strong positions. You, in the rear-guard, must be as firm as we will be at
the front. We may not take these positions now but we have proved we now have an army capable
of going on the offensive and you will see what it will do."

"And the Extremadura road?" asked the old waiter, still holding on to the door. "Is it very
dangerous there?"

"No," said Al. "It's fine up there. You don't need to worry about him up there."

"God bless you," said the waiter. "God guard you and keep you."

Outside in the dark street, Al said, "Jees he's kind of confused politically, isn't he?"

"He is a good guy," I said. "I've known him for a long time."

"He seems like a good guy," Al said. "But he ought to get wise to himself politically."

The room at the Florida was crowded. They were playing the gramophone and it was full of
smoke and there was a crap game going on the floor. Comrades kept coming in to use the bathtub
and the room smelt of smoke, soap, dirty uniforms, and steam from the bathroom.

The Spanish girl called Manolita, very neat, demurely dressed, with a sort of false French chic,
with much joviality, much dignity and closely set cold eyes, was sitting on the bed talking with
an English newspaper man. Except for the gramophone it wasn't very noisy.

"It is your room, isn't it?" the English newspaper man said.

"It's in my name at the desk," I said. "I sleep in it sometimes."

"But whose is the whisky?" he asked.

"Mine," said Manolita. "They drank that bottle so I got another."

"You're a good girl, daughter," I said. "That's three I owe you."

"Two," she said. "The other was a present."

There was a huge cooked ham, rosy and white edged in a half-opened tin on the table beside my
typewriter and a comrade would reach up, cut himself a slice of ham with his pocket knife, and
go back to the crap game. I cut myself a slice of ham.

"You're next on the tub," I said to Al. He had been looking around the room.

"It's nice here," he said. "Where did the ham come from?"

"We bought it from the intendencia of one of the brigades," she said. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"Who's we?"

"He and I," she said, turning her head toward the English correspondent. "Don't you think he's
cute?"

"Manolita has been most kind," said the Englishman. "I hope we're not disturbing you."

"Not at all," I said. "Later on I might want to use the bed but that won't be until much later."

"We can have a party in my room," Manolita said. "You aren't cross are you, Henry?"

"Never," I said. "Who are the comrades shooting craps?"

"I don't know," said Manolita. "They came in for baths and then they stayed to shoot craps.
Everyone has been very nice. You know my bad news?"

"No."

"It's very bad. You knew my fiance who was in the police and went to Barcelona?"

"Yes. Sure."

Al went into the bathroom.

"Well, he was shot in an accident and I haven't any one I can depend on in police circles and
he never got me the papers he had promised me and today I heard I was going to be arrested."

"Why?"

"Because I have no papers and they say I hang around with you people and with people from the
brigades all the time so I am probably a spy. If my fiance had not gotten himself shot it would have
been all right. Will you help me?"

"Sure," I said. "Nothing will happen to you if you're all right."

"I think I'd better stay with you to be sure."

"And if you're not all right that would be fine for me, wouldn't it?"

"Can't I stay with you?"

"No. If you get in trouble call me up. I never heard you ask anybody any military questions. I
think you're all right."

"I'm really all right," she said then, leaning over, away from the Englishman. "You think it's all
right to stay with him? Is he all right?"

"How do I know?" I said. "I never saw him before."

"You're being cross," she said. "Let's not think about it now but everyone be happy and go out
to dinner."

I went over to the crap game.

"You want to go out to dinner?"

"No, comrade," said the man handling the dice without looking up. "You want to get in the
game?"

"I want to eat."

"We'll be here when you get back," said another crap shooter. "Come on, roll, I've got you
covered."

"If you run into any money bring it up here to the game."

There was one in the room I knew besides Manolita. He was from the Twelfth Brigade and he
was playing the gramophone. He was a Hungarian, a sad Hungarian, not one of the cheerful kind.

"Salud camarade," he said. "Thank you for your hospitality."

"Don't you shoot craps?" I asked him.

"I haven't that sort of money," he said. "They are aviators with contracts. Mercenaries … They
make a thousand dollars a month. They were on the Teruel front and now they have come here."

"How did they come up here?"

"One of them knows you. But he had to go out to his field. They came for him in a car and the
game had already started."

"I'm glad you came up," I said. "Come up any time and make yourself at home."

"I came to play the new discs," he said. "It does not disturb you?"

"No. It's fine. Have a drink."

"A little ham," he said.

One of the crap shooters reached up and cut a slice of ham.

"You haven't seen this guy Henry around that owns the place, have you?" he asked me.

"That's me."

"Oh," he said. "Sorry. Want to get in the game?"

"Later on," I said.

"O.K.," he said. Then his mouth full of ham, "Listen you tar heel bastid. Make your dice hit the
wall and bounce."

"Won't make no difference to you, comrade," said the man handling the dice.

Al came out of the bathroom. He looked all clean except for some smudges around his eyes.

"You can take those off with a towel," I said.

"What?"

"Look at yourself once more in the mirror."

"It's too steamy." he said. "To hell with it, I feel clean."

"Let's eat," I said. "Come on, Manolita. You know each other?"

I watched her eyes run over Al.

"How are you?" Manolita said.

"I say that is a sound idea," the Englishman said. "Do let's eat. But where?"

"Is that a crap game?" Al said.

"Didn't you see it when you came in?"

"No," he said. "All I saw was the ham."

"It's a crap game."

"You go and eat," Al said. "I'm staying here."

As we went out there were six of them on the floor and Al Wagner was reaching up to cut a slice
of ham.

"What do you do, comrade?" I heard one of the flyers say to Al.

"Tanks."

"Tell me they aren't any good any more," said the flyer.

"Tell you a lot of things," Al said. "What you got there? Some dice?"

"Want to look at them?"

"No," said Al. "I want to handle them."

We went down the hall, Manolita, me and the tall Englishman, and found the boys had left already
for the Gran Via restaurant. The Hungarian had stayed behind to replay the new discs. I was
very hungry and the food at the Gran Via was lousy. The two who were making the film had already
eaten and gone back to work on the bad camera.

This restaurant was in the basement and you had to pass a guard and go through the kitchen and
down a stairs to get to it. It was a racket.

They had a millet and water soup, yellow rice with horse meat in it, and oranges for dessert.
There had been another dish of chickpeas with sausage in it that everybody said was terrible but it
had run out. The newspaper men all sat at one table and the other tables were filled with officers and
girls from Chicote's, people from the censorship, which was then in the telephone building across the
street, and various unknown citizens.

The restaurant was run by an anarchist syndicate and they sold you wine that was all stamped with
the label of the royal cellars and the date it had been put in the bins. Most of it was so old that it
was either corked or just plain faded out and gone to pieces. You can't drink labels and I sent three
bottles back as bad before we got a drinkable one. There was a row about this.

The waiters didn't know the different wines. They just brought you a bottle of wine and you took
your chances. They were as different from the Chicote's waiters as black from white. These waiters
were all snotty, all over-tipped and they regularly had special dishes such as lobster or chicken that
they sold extra for gigantic prices. But these had all been bought up before we got there so we just
drew the soup, the rice and the oranges. The place always made me angry because the waiters were a
crooked lot of profiteers and it was about as expensive to eat in, if you had one of the special dishes,
as 21 or the Colony in New York.

We were sitting at the table with a bottle of wine that just wasn't bad, you know you could taste
it starting to go, but it wouldn't justify making a row about, when Al Wagner came in. He looked
around the room, saw us and came over.

"What's the matter?" I said.

"They broke me," he said.

"It didn't take very long."

"Not with those guys," he said. "That's a big game. What have they got to eat?"

I called a waiter over.

"It's too late," he said. "We can't serve anything now."

"This comrade is in the tanks," I said. "He has fought all day and he will fight tomorrow and he
hasn't eaten."

"That's not my fault," the waiter said. "It's too late. There isn't anything more. Why doesn't the
comrade eat with his unit? The army has plenty of food."

"I asked him to eat with me."

"You should have said something about it. It's too late now. We are not serving anything any
more."

"Get the head waiter."

The headwaiter said the cook had gone home and there was no fire in the kitchen. He went away.
They were angry because we had sent the bad wine back.

"The hell with it," said Al. "Let's go somewhere else."

"There's no place you can eat at this hour. They've got food. I'll just have to go over and suck up
to the headwaiter and give him some more money."

I went over and did just that and the sullen waiter brought a plate of cold sliced meats, then half
a spiny lobster with mayonnaise, and a salad of lettuce and lentils. The headwaiter sold this out of his
private stock which he was holding out either to take home, or sell to late comers.

"Cost you much?" Al asked.

"No," I lied.

"I'll bet it did," he said. "I'll fix up with you when I get paid."

"What do you get now?"

"I don't know yet. It was ten pesetas a day but they've raised it now I'm an officer. But we
haven't got it yet and I haven't asked."

"Comrade," I called the waiter. He came over, still angry that the headwaiter had gone over his
head and served Al. "Bring another bottle of wine, please."

"What kind?"

"Any that is not too old so that the red is faded."

"It's all the same."

I said the equivalent of like hell it is in Spanish, and the waiter brought over a bottle of Chateau
Mouton-Rothschild 1906 that was just as good as the last claret we had was rotten.

"Boy that's wine," Al said. "What did you tell him to get that?"

"Nothing. He just made a lucky draw out of the bin."

"Most of that stuff from the palace stinks."

"It's too old. This is a hell of a climate on wine."

"There's that wise comrade," Al nodded across at another table.

The little man with the thick glasses that had talked to us about Largo Caballero was talking with
some people I knew were very big shots indeed.

"I guess he's a big shot," I said.

"When they're high enough up they don't give a damn what they say. But I wish he would have
waited until after tomorrow. It's kind of spoiled tomorrow for me."

I filled his glass.

"What he said sounded pretty sensible," Al went on. "I've been thinking it over. But my duty is
to do what I'm ordered to do."

"Don't worry about it and get some sleep."

"I'm going to get in that game again if you'll let me take a thousand pesetas," Al said. "I've got a
lot more than that coming to me and I'll give you an order on my pay."

"I don't want any order. You can pay me when you get it."

"I don't think I'm going to draw it," Al said. "I certainly sound wet, don't I? And I know gambl-
ing's bohemianism too. But in a game like that is the only time I don't think about tomorrow."

"Did you like that Manolita girl? She liked you."

"She's got eyes like a snake."

"She's not a bad girl. She's friendly and she's all right."

"I don't want any girl. I want to get back in that crap game."

Down the table Manolita was laughing at something the new Englishman had said in Spanish.
Most of the people had left the table.

"Let's finish the wine and go," Al said. "Don't you want to get in that game?"

"I'll watch you for a while," I said and called the waiter over to bring us the bill.

"Where you go?" Manolita called down the table.

"To the room."

"We come by later on," she said. "This man is very funny."

"She is making most awful sport of me," the Englishman said. "She picks up on my errors in
Spanish. I say, doesn't leche mean milk?"

"That's one interpretation of it."

"Does it mean something beastly too?"

"I'm afraid so," I said.

"You know it is a beastly language," he said. "Now Manolita, stop pulling my leg. I say stop it."

"I'm not pulling your leg," Manolita laughed. "I never touched your leg. I am just laughing about
the leche."

"But it does mean milk. Didn't you just hear Edwin Henry say so?"

Manolita started to laugh again and we got up to go.

"He's a silly piece of work," Al said. "I'd almost like to take her away because he's so silly."

"You can never tell about an Englishman," I said. It was such a profound remark that I knew we
had ordered too many bottles. Outside, in the street, it was turning cold and in the moonlight the
clouds were passing very big and white across the wide, building-sided canyon of the Gran Via and
we walked up the sidewalk with the day's fresh shell holes neatly cut in the cement, their rubble still
not swept away, on up the rise of the hill toward the Plaza Callao where the Florida Hotel faced
down the other little hill where the wide street ran that ended at the front.

We went past the two guards in the dark outside the door of the hotel and listened a minute in the
doorway as the shooting down the street strengthened into a roll of firing, then dropped off.

"If it keeps up I guess I ought to go down," Al said listening.

"That wasn't anything," I said. "Anyway that was off to the left by Carabanchel."

"It sounded straight down in the Campo."

"That's the way the sound throws here at night. It always fools you."

"They aren't going to counterattack us tonight," Al said. "When they've got those positions and we
are up that creek they aren't going to leave their positions to try to kick us out of that creek."

"What creek?"

"You know the name of that creek."

"Oh. That creek."

"Yeah. Up that creek without a paddle."

"Come on inside. You didn't have to listen to that firing. That's the way it is every night."

We went inside, crossed the lobby, passing the night watchman at the concierge's desk and the
night watchman got up and went with us to the elevator. He pushed a button and the elevator came
down. In it was a man with a white curly sheep's wool jacket, the wool worn inside, a pink bald
head, and a pink, angry face. He had six bottles of champagne under his arms and in his hands and
he said, "What the hell's the idea of bringing the elevator down?"

"You've been riding in the elevator for an hour," the night watchman said.

"I can't help it," said the wooly jacket man. Then to me, "Where's Frank?"

"Frank who?"

"You know Frank," he said. "Come on, help me with this elevator."

"You're drunk," I said to him. "Come on, skip it and let us get upstairs."

"So would you be drunk," said the white woolly jacket man. "So would you be drunk comrade
old comrade. Listen, where's Frank?"

"Where do you think he is?"

"In this fellow Henry's room where the crap game is."

"Come on with us," I said. "Don't fool with those buttons. That's why you stop it all the time."

"I can fly anything," said the woolly jacket man. "And I can fly this old elevator. Want me to
stunt it?"

"Skip it," Al said to him. "You're drunk. We want to get to the crap game."

"Who are you? I'll hit you with a bottle full of champagne wine."

"Try it," said Al. "I'd like to cool you, you rummy fake Santa Claus."

"A rummy fake Santa Claus," said the bald man. "A rummy fake Santa Claus. And that's the
thanks of the Republic."

We had gotten the elevator stopped at my floor and were walking down the hall. "Take some
bottles," said the bald man. Then, "Do you know why I'm drunk?"

"No."

"Well, I won't tell you. But you'd be surprised. A rummy fake Santa Claus. Well well well.
What are you in, comrade?"

"Tanks."

"And you, comrade?"

"Making a picture."

"And I'm a rummy fake Santa Claus. Well. Well. Well. I repeat. Well. Well. Well."

"Go and drown in it," said Al. "You rummy fake Santa Claus."

We were outside the room now. The man in the white woolly coat took hold of Al's arm with his
thumb and forefinger.

"You amuse me, comrade," he said. "You truly amuse me."

I opened the door. The room was full of smoke and the game looked just as when we had left it
except the ham was all gone off the table and the whisky all gone out of the bottle.

"It's Baldy," said one of the crap shooters.

"How do you do, comrades," said Baldy, bowing. "How do you do? How do you do? How do
you do?"

The game broke up and they all started to shoot questions at him.

"I have made my report, comrades," Baldy said. "And here is a little champagne wine. I am no
longer interested in any but the picturesque aspects of the whole affair."

"Where did your wingmen muck off to?"

"It wasn't their fault," said Baldy. "I was engaged in contemplating a terrific spectacle and I was
ob-livious of the fact that I had any wingmen until all of those Fiats started coming down over, past
and under me and I realized that my trusty little air-o-plane no longer had any tail."

"Jees I wish you weren't drunk," said one of the flyers.

"But I am drunk," said Baldy. "And I hope all you gentlemen and comrades will join me because
I am very happy tonight even though I have been insulted by an ignorant tank man who has called me
a rummy fake Santa Claus."

"I wish you were sober," the other flyer said. "How'd you get back to the field?"

"Don't ask me any questions," Baldy said with great dignity. "I returned in a staff car of the
Twelfth Brigade. When I alighted with my trusty para-chute there was a tendency to regard me as a
criminal fascist due to my inability to master the Lanish Spanguage. But all difficulties were smoothed
away when I convinced them of my identity and I was treated with rare consideration. Oh boy you
ought to have seen that Junker when she started to burn. That's what I was watching when the Fiats
dove on me. Oh boy I wish I could tell you."

"He shot a tri-moter Junker down today over the Jarama and his wingmen mucked off on him and
he got shot down and bailed out," one of the flyers said. "You know him. Baldy Jackson."

"How far did you drop before you pulled your rip cord, Baldy?" asked another flyer.

"All of six thousand feet and I think my diaphragm is busted loose in front from when she came
taut. I thought it would cut me in two. There must have been fifteen Fiats and I wanted to get
completely clear. I had to fool with the chute plenty to get down on the right side of the river.
I had to slip her plenty and I hit pretty hard. The wind was good."

"Frank had to go back to Alcala," another flyer said. "We started a crap game. We got to get
back there before daylight."

"I am in no mood to toy with the dice," said Baldy. "I am in a mood to drink champagne wine out
of glasses with cigarette butts in them."

"I'll wash them," said Al.

"For Comrade Fake Santa Claus," said Baldy. "For old Comrade Claus."

"Skip it," said Al. He picked up the glasses and took them to the bathroom.

"Is he in the tanks?" asked one of the flyers.

"Yes. He's been there since the start."

"They tell me the tanks aren't any good any more," a flyer said.

"You told him that once," I said. "Why don't you lay off? He's been working all day."

"So have we. But I mean really they aren't any good, are they?"

"Not so good. But he's good."

"I guess he's all right. He looks like a nice fellow. What kind of money do they make?"

"They got ten pesetas a day," I said. "Now he gets a lieutenant's pay."

"Spanish lieutenant?"

"Yes."

"I guess he's nuts all right. Or has he got politics?"

"He's got politics."

"Oh, well," he said. "That explains it. Say Baldy, you must have had a hell of a time bailing out
with that wind pressure with the tail gone."

"Yes, comrade," said Baldy.

"How did you feel?"

"I was thinking all the time, comrade."

"Baldy, how many bailed out of the Junker?"

"Four," said Baldy, "out of a crew of six. I was sure I'd killed the pilot. I noticed when he quit
firing. There's a co-pilot that's a gunner too and I'm pretty sure I got him too. I must have because he
quit firing too. But maybe it was the heat. Anyhow four came out. Would you like me to describe the
scene? I can describe the scene very well."

He was sitting on the bed now with a large water glass of champagne in his hand and his pink
head and pink face were moist with sweat.

"Why doesn't anyone drink to me?" asked Baldy. "I would like all comrades to drink to me and
then I will describe the scene in all its horror and its beauty."

We all drank.

"Where was I?" asked Baldy.

"Just coming out of the McAlester Hotel," a flyer said. "In all your horror and your beauty--don't clown,
Baldy. Oddly enough we're interested."

"I will describe it," said Baldy. "But first I must have more champagne wine." He had drained
the glass when we drank to him.

"If he drinks like that he'll go to sleep," another flyer said. "Only give him half a glass."

Baldy drank it off.

"I will describe it," he said. "After another little drink."

"Listen, Baldy, take it easy will you? This is something we want to get straight. You got no ship
now for a few days but we're flying tomorrow and this is important as well as interesting."

"I made my report," said Baldy. "You can read it out at the field. They'll have a copy."

"Come on, Baldy, snap out of it."

"I will describe it eventually," said Baldy. He shut and opened his eyes several times, then said,
"Hello Comrade Santa Claus" to Al. "I will describe it eventually. All you comrades have to do is
listen."

And he described it.

"It was very strange and very beautiful," Baldy said and drank off the glass of champagne.

"Cut it out, Baldy," a flyer said.

"I have experienced profound emotions," Baldy said. "Highly profound emotions. Emotions of
the deepest dye."

"Let's get back to Alcala," one flyer said. "That pink head isn't going to make sense. What about
the game?"

"He's going to make sense," another flyer said. "He's just winding up."

"Are you criticizing me?" asked Baldy. "Is that the thanks of the Republic?"

"Listen, Santa Claus," Al said. "What was it like?"

"Are you asking me?" Baldy stared at him. "Are you putting questions to me? Have you ever
been in action, comrade?"

"No," said Al. "I got these eyebrows burnt off when I was shaving."

"Keep your drawers on, comrade," said Baldy. "I will describe the strange and beautiful scene.
I'm a writer, you know, as well as a flyer."

He nodded his head in confirmation of his own statement.

"He writes for the Meridian, Mississippi, Argus," said a flyer. "All the time. They can't stop
him."

"I have talent as a writer," said Baldy. "I have a fresh and original talent for description. I have
a newspaper clipping which I have lost which says so. Now I will launch myself on the description."

"O.K. What did it look like?"

"Comrades," said Baldy. "You can't describe it." He held out his glass.

"What did I tell you?" said a flyer. "He couldn't make sense in a month. He never could make
sense."

"You," said Baldy, "you unfortunate little fellow. All right. When I banked out of it I looked
down and of course she had been pouring back smoke but she was holding right on her course to get
over the mountains. She was losing altitude fast and I came up and over and dove on her again. There
were still wingmen then and she'd lurched and started to smoke twice as much and then the door of
the cockpit came open and it was just like looking into a blast furnace, and then they started to come
out. I'd half rolled, dove, and then pulled up out of it and I was looking back and down and they were
coming out of her, out through the blast furnace door, dropping out trying to get clear, and the chutes
opened up and they looked like great big beautiful morning glories opening up and she was just one
big thing of flame now like you never saw and going round and round and there were four chutes just
as beautiful as anything you could see just pulling slow against the sky and then one started to burn at
the edge and as it burned the man started to drop fast and I was watching him when the bullets started
to come by and the Fiats right behind them and the bullets and the Fiats."

"You're a writer all right," said one flyer. "You ought to write for War Aces. Do you mind
telling me in plain language what happened?"

"No," said Baldy. "I'll tell you. But you know, no kidding, it was something to see. And I never
shot down any big tri-motor Junkers before and I'm happy."

"Everybody's happy, Baldy. Tell us what happened, really."

"O.K." said Baldy. "I'll just drink a little wine and then I'll tell you."

"How were you when you sighted them?"

"We were in a left echelon of V's. Then we went into a left echelon of echelons and dove onto
them with all four guns until you could have touched them before we rolled out of it. We crippled
three others. The Fiats were hanging up in the sun. They didn't come down until I was sightseeing all
by myself."

"Did your wingmen muck off?"

"No. It was my fault. I started watching the spectacle and they were gone. There isn't any
formation for watching spectacles. I guess they went on and picked up the echelon. I don't know.
Don't ask me. And I'm tired. I was elated. But now I'm tired."

"You're sleepy you mean. You're rum-dumb and sleepy."

"I am simply tired," said Baldy. "A man in my position has the right to be tired. And if I become
sleepy I have the right to be sleepy. Don't I Santa Claus?" he said to Al.

"Yeah," said Al. "I guess you have the right to be sleepy. I'm even sleepy myself. Isn't there
going to be any crap game?"

"We got to get him out to Alcala and we've got to get out there too," a flyer said.

"Why? You lost money in the game?"

"A little," said Al.

"You want to try to pass for it once?" the flyer asked him.

"I'll shoot a thousand," Al said.

"I'll fade you," the flyer said. "You guys don't make much, do you?"

"No," said Al. "We don't make much."

He laid the thousand-peseta note down on the floor, rolled the dice between his palms so they
clicked over and over, and shot them out on the floor with a snap. Two ones showed.

"They're still your dice," the flyer said, picking up the bill and looking at Al.

"I don't need them," said Al. He stood up.

"Need any dough?" the flyer asked him. Looking at him curiously.

"Got no use for it," Al said.

"We've got to get the hell out to Alcala," the flyer said. "We'll have a game some night soon.
We'll get hold of Frank and the rest of them. We could get up a pretty good game. Can we give
you a lift?"

"Yes. Want a ride?"

"No," Al said. "I'm walking. It's just down the street."

"Well, we're going out to Alcala. Does anybody know the password for tonight?"

"Oh, the chauffeur will have it. He'll have gone by and picked it up before dark."

"Come on, Baldy. You drunken sleepy bum."

"Not me," said Baldy. "I am a potential ace of the people's army."

"Takes ten to be an ace. Even if you count Italians. You've only got one, Baldy."

"It wasn't Italians," said Baldy. "It was Germans. And you didn't see her when she was all hot
like that inside. She was a raging inferno."

"Carry him out," said a flyer. "He's writing for that Meridian, Mississippi, paper again. Well,
so long. Thanks for having us up in the room."

They all shook hands and they were gone. I went to the head of the stairs with them. The elevator
was no longer running and I watched them go down the stairs. One was on each side of Baldy and he
was nodding his head slowly. He was really sleepy now.

In their room the two I was working on the picture with were still working over the bad camera.
It was delicate, eye-straining work and when I asked, "Do you think you'll get her?" the tall one
said, "Yes. Sure. We have to. I make a piece now which was broken."

"What was the party?" asked the other. "We work always on this damn camera."

"American flyers," I said. "And a fellow I used to know who's in tanks."

"Goot fun? I am sorry not to be there."

"All right," I said. "Kind of funny."

"You must get sleep. We must all be up early. We must be fresh for tomorrow."

"How much more have you got on that camera?"

"There it goes again. Damn such shape springs."

"Leave him alone. We finish it. Then we all sleep. What time you call us?"

"Five?"

"All right. As soon as is light."

"Good night."

"Salud. Get some sleep."

"Salud," I said. "We've got to be closer tomorrow."

"Yes," he said. "I have thought so too. Much closer. I am glad you know."

Al was asleep in the big chair in the room with the light on his face. I put a blanket over him but
he woke.

"I'm going down."

"Sleep here. I'll set the alarm and call you."

"Something might happen with the alarm," he said. "I better go down. I don't want to get there
late."

"I'm sorry about the game."

"They'd have broke me anyway," he said. "Those guys are poisonous with dice."

"You had the dice there on that last play."

"They're poisonous fading you too. They're strange guys too. I guess they don't get overpaid. I
guess if you are doing it for dough there isn't enough dough to pay for doing it."

"Want me to walk down with you?"

"No," he said, standing up, and buckling on the big web-belted Colt he had taken off when he came
back after dinner to the game. "No, I feel fine now. I've got my perspective back again. All you
need is a perspective."

"I'd like to walk down."

"No. Get some sleep. I'll go down and I'll get a good five hours' sleep before it starts."

"That early?"

"Yeah. You won't have any light to film by. You might as well stay in bed." He took an envelope out
of his leather coat and laid it on the table. "Take this stuff, will you, and send it to my brother
in N.Y. His address is on the back of the envelope."

"Sure. But I won't have to send it."

"No," he said. "I don't think you will now. But there's some pictures and stuff they'll like to
have. He's got a nice wife. Want to see her picture?"

He took it out of his pocket. It was inside his identity book.

It showed a pretty, dark girl standing by a rowboat on the shore of a lake.

"Up in the Catskills," said Al. "Yeah. He's got a nice wife. She's a Jewish girl. Yes," he said.

"Don't let me get wet again. So long, kid. Take it easy. I tell you truly I feel O.K. now. And I didn't
feel good when I came out this afternoon."

"Let me walk down."

"No. You might have trouble coming back through the Plaza de Espana. Some of those guys are
nervous at night. Good night. See you tomorrow night."

"That's the way to talk."

Upstairs in the room above mine, Manolita and the Englishman were making quite a lot of noise.
So she evidently hadn't been arrested.

"That's right. That's the way to talk," Al said. "Takes you sometimes three or four hours to get
so you can do it though."

He'd put the leather helmet on now with the raised padded ridge and his face looked dark and I
noticed the dark hollows under his eyes.

"See you tomorrow night at Chicote's," I said.

"That's right," he said, and wouldn't look me in the eye. "See you tomorrow night at Chicote's."

"What time?"

"Listen, that's enough," he said. "Tomorrow night at Chicote's. We don't have to go into the
time." And he went out.

If you hadn't known him pretty well and if you hadn't seen the terrain where he was going to attack
tomorrow, you would have thought he was very angry about something. I guess somewhere inside of him-
self he was angry, very angry. You get angry about a lot of things and you, yourself, dying uselessly is
one of them. But then I guess angry is about the best way that you can be when you attack.



Under the Ridge



IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY WITH THE DUST blowing, we came back, dry-mouthed, nose-clogged and
heavy-loaded, down out of the battle to the long ridge above the river where the Spanish troops lay
in reserve.

I sat down with my back against the shallow trench, my shoulders and the back of my head against
the earth, clear now from even stray bullets, and looked at what lay below us in the hollow.

There was the tank reserve, the tanks covered with branches chopped from olive trees. To their left
were the staff cars, mud-daubed and branch-covered, and between the two a long line of men carrying
stretchers wound down through the gap to where, on the flat at the foot of the ridge, ambulances were
loading. Commissary mules loaded with sacks of bread and kegs of wine, and a train of ammunition
mules, led by their drivers, were coming up the gap in the ridge, and men with empty stretchers were
walking slowly up the trail with the mules.

To the right, below the curve of the ridge, I could see the entrance to the cave where the brigade
staff was working, and their signaling wires ran out of the top of the cave and curved on over the
ridge in the shelter of which we lay.

Motorcyclists in leather suits and helmets came up and down the cut on their cycles or, where it
was too steep, walking them, and leaving them beside the cut, walked over to the entrance to the cave
and ducked inside. As I watched, a big Hungarian cyclist that I knew came out of the cave, tucked
some papers in his leather wallet, walked over to his motorcycle and, pushing it up through the stream
of mules and stretcher-bearers, threw a leg over the saddle and roared on over the ridge, his machine
churning a storm of dust.

Below, across the flat where the ambulances were coming and going, was the green foliage that marked
the line of the river. There was a large house with a red tile roof and there was a gray stone mill,
and from the trees around the big house beyond the river came the flashes of our guns. They were fir-
ing straight at us and there were the twin flashes, then the throaty, short bung-bung of the three-inch
pieces and then the rising cry of the shells coming toward us and going on over our heads. As always,
we were short of artillery. There were only four batteries down there, when there should have been
forty, and they were firing only two guns at a time. The attack had failed before we came down.

"Are you Russians?" a Spanish soldier asked me.

"No, Americans," I said. "Have you any water?"

"Yes, comrade." He handed over a pigskin bag. These troops in reserve were soldiers only in name
and from the fact that they were in uniform. They were not intended to be used in the attack, and
they sprawled along this line under the crest of the ridge, huddled in groups, eating, drinking and
talking, or simply sitting dumbly, waiting. The attack was being made by an International Brigade.
We both drank. The water tasted of asphalt and pig bristles.

"Wine is better," the soldier said. "I will get wine."

"Yes. But for the thirst, water."

"There is no thirst like the thirst of battle. Even here, in reserve, I have much thirst."

"That is fear," said another soldier. "Thirst is fear."

"No," said another. "With fear there is thirst, always. But in battle there is much thirst even when
there is no fear."

"There is always fear in battle," said the first soldier.

"For you," said the second soldier.

"It is normal," the first soldier said.

"For you."

"Shut your dirty mouth," said the first soldier. "I am simply a man who tells the truth."

It was a bright April day and the wind was blowing wildly so that each mule that came up the gap
raised a cloud of dust, and the two men at the ends of a stretcher each raised a cloud of dust that
blew together and made one, and below, across the flat, long streams of dust moved out from the
ambulances and blew away in the wind.

I felt quite sure I was not going to be killed on that day now, since we had done our work well in
the morning, and twice during the early part of the attack we should have been killed and were not;
and this had given me confidence. The first time had been when we had gone up with the tanks and
picked a place from which to film the attack. Later I had a sudden distrust for the place and we had
moved the cameras about two hundred yards to the left. Just before leaving, I had marked the place in
quite the oldest way there is of marking a place, and within ten minutes a six-inch shell had lit on
the exact place where I had been and there was no trace of any human being ever having been there.

Instead, there was a large and clearly blasted hole in the earth.

Then, two hours later, a Polish officer, recently detached from the batalion and attached to the
staff, had offered to show us the positions the Poles had just captured and, coming from under the lee
of a fold of hill, we had walked into machine-gun fire that we had to crawl out from under with our
chins tight to the ground and dust in our noses, and at the same time made the sad discovery that the
Poles had captured no positions at all that day but were a little further back than the place they had
started from. And now, lying in the shelter of the trench, I was wet with sweat, hungry and thirsty and
hollow inside from the now-finished danger of the attack.

"You are sure you are not Russians?" asked a soldier. "There are Russians here today."

"Yes. But we are not Russians."

"You have the face of a Russian."

"No," I said. "You are wrong, comrade. I have quite a funny face but it is not the face of a
Russian."

"He has the face of a Russian," pointing at the other one of us who was working on a camera.

"Perhaps. But still he is not Russian. Where you from?"

"Extremadura," he said proudly.

"Are there any Russians in Extremadura?" I asked.

"No," he told me, even more proudly. "There are no Russians in Extremadura, and there are no
Extremadurans in Russia."

"What are your politics?"

"I hate all foreigners," he said.

"That's a broad political program."

"I hate the Moors, the English, the French, the Italians, the Germans, the North Americans and the
Russians."

"You hate them in that order?"

"Yes. But perhaps I hate the Russians the most."

"Man, you have very interesting ideas," I said. "Are you a fascist?"

"No. I am an Extremaduran and I hate foreigners."

"He has very rare ideas," said another soldier. "Do not give him too much importance. Me, I like
foreigners. I am from Valencia. Take another cup of wine, please."

I reached up and took the cup, the other wine still brassy in my mouth. I looked at the Extremaduran.
He was tall and thin. His face was haggard and unshaven, and his cheeks were sunken. He stood straight
up in his rage, his blanket cape around his shoulders.

"Keep your head down," I told him. "There are many lost bullets coming over."

"I have no fear of bullets and I hate all foreigners," he said fiercely.

"You don't have to fear bullets," I said, "but you should avoid them when you are in reserve. It
is not intelligent to be wounded when it can be avoided."

"I am not afraid of anything," the Extremaduran said.

"You are very lucky, comrade."

"It's true," the other, with the wine cup, said. "He has no fear, not even of the aviones."

"He is crazy," another soldier said. "Everyone fears planes. They kill little but make much fear."

"I have no fear. Neither of planes nor of nothing," the Extremaduran said. "And I hate every
foreigner alive."

Down the gap, walking beside two stretcher-bearers and seeming to pay no attention at all to
where he was, came a tall man in International Brigade uniform with a blanket rolled over his
shoulder and tied at his waist. His head was held high and he looked like a man walking in his
sleep.

He was middle-aged. He was not carrying a rifle and, from where I lay, he did not look wounded.
I watched him walking alone down out of the war. Before he came to the staff cars he turned to
the left and his head still held high in that strange way, he walked over the edge of the ridge
and out of sight.

The one who was with me, busy changing film in the hand cameras, had not noticed him.

A single shell came in over the ridge and fountained in the dirt and black smoke just short of the
tank reserve.

Someone put his head out of the cave where brigade headquarters was and then disappeared inside.
I thought it looked like a good place to go, but knew they would all be furious in there because
the attack was a failure, and I did not want to face them. If an operation was successful they were
happy to have motion pictures of it. But if it was a failure everyone was in such a rage there was
always a chance of being sent back under arrest.

"They may shell us now," I said.

"That makes no difference to me," said the Extremaduran. I was beginning to be a little tired of
the Extremaduran.

"Have you any more wine to spare?" I asked. My mouth was still dry.

"Yes, man. There are gallons of it," the friendly soldier said. He was short, big-fisted and very
dirty, with a stubble of beard about the same length as the hair on his cropped head. "Do you think
they will shell us now?"

"They should," I said. "But in this war you can never tell."

"What is the matter with this war?" asked the Extremaduran angrily. "Don't you like this war?"

"Shut up!" said the friendly soldier. "I command here, and these comrades are our guests."

"Then let him not talk against our war," said the Extremaduran. "No foreigners shall come here
and talk against our war."

"What town are you from, comrade?" I asked the Extremaduran.

"Badajoz," he said. "I am from Badajoz. In Badajoz, we have been sacked and pillaged and our
women violated by the English, the French and now the Moors. What the Moors have done now is no
worse than what the English did under Wellington. You should read history. My great-grandmother
was killed by the English. The house where my family lived was burned by the English."

"I regret it," I said. "Why do you hate the North Americans?"

"My father was killed by the North Americans in Cuba while he was there as a conscript."

"I am sorry for that, too. Truly sorry. Believe me. And why do you hate the Russians?"

"Because they are the representatives of tyranny and I hate their faces. You have the face
of a Russian."

"Maybe we better get out of here," I said to the one who was with me and who did not speak
Spanish. "It seems I have the face of a Russian and it's getting me into trouble."

"I'm going to sleep," he said. "This is a good place. Don't talk so much and you won't get into
trouble."

"There's a comrade here that doesn't like me. I think he's an anarchist."

"Well, watch out he doesn't shoot you, then. I'm going to sleep."

Just then two men in leather coats, one short and stocky, the other of medium height, both with
civilian caps, flat, high-cheekboned faces, wooden-holstered Mauser pistols strapped to their legs,
came out of the gap and headed toward us.

The taller of them spoke to me in French. "Have you seen a French comrade pass through here?"
he asked. "A comrade with a blanket tied around his shoulders in the form of a bandoleer? A comrade
of about forty-five or fifty years old? Have you seen such a comrade going in the direction away
from the front?"

"No," I said. "I have not seen such a comrade."

He looked at me a moment and I noticed his eyes were a grayish-yellow and that they did not
blink at all.

"Thank you, comrade," he said, in his odd French, and then spoke rapidly to the other man with
him in a language I did not understand. They went off and climbed the highest part of the ridge,
from where they could see down all the gullies.

"There is the true face of Russians," the Extremaduran said.

"Shut up!" I said. I was watching the two men in the leather coats. They were standing there, under
considerable fire, looking carefully over all the broken country below the ridge and toward the
river.

Suddenly one of them saw what he was looking for, and pointed. Then the two started to run like
hunting dogs, one straight down over the ridge, the other at an angle as though to cut someone off.
Before the second one went over the crest I could see him drawing his pistol and holding it ahead of
him as he ran.

"And how do you like that?" asked the Extremaduran.

"No better than you," I said.

Over the crest of the parallel ridge I heard the Mausers' jerky barking. They kept it up for more
than a dozen shots. They must have opened fire at too long a range. After all the burst of shooting
there was a pause and then a single shot.

The Extremaduran looked at me sullenly and said nothing. I thought it would be simpler if the
shelling started. But it did not start.

The two in the leather coats and civilian caps came back over the ridge, walking together, and
then down to the gap, walking downhill with that odd bent-kneed way of the two-legged animal
coming down a steep slope. They turned up the gap as a tank came whirring and clanking down and
moved to one side to let it pass.

The tanks had failed again that day, and the drivers coming down from the lines in their leather
helmets, the tank turrets open now as they came into the shelter of the ridge, had the straight-
ahead stare of football players who have been removed from a game for yellowness.

The two flat-faced men in the leather coats stood by us on the ridge to let the tank pass.

"Did you find the comrade you were looking for?" I asked the taller one of them in French.

"Yes, comrade. Thank you," he said and looked me over very carefully.

"What does he say?" the Extremaduran asked.

"He says they found the comrade they were looking for," I told him. The Extremaduran said
nothing.

We had been all that morning in the place the middle-aged Frenchman had walked out of. We had been
there in the dust, the smoke, the noise, the receiving of wounds, the death, the fear of death,
the bravery, the cowardice, the insanity and failure of an unsuccessful attack. We had been there on
that plowed field men could not cross and live. You dropped and lay flat; making a mound to shield
your head; working your chin into the dirt; waiting for the order to go up that slope no man could go
up and live.

We had been with those who lay there waiting for the tanks that did not come; waiting under the in
rushing shriek and roaring crash of the shelling; the metal and the earth thrown like clods from a dirt
fountain; and overhead the cracking, whispering fire like a curtain. We knew how those felt, waiting.
They were as far forward as they could get. And men could not move further and live, when the order
came to move ahead.

We had been there all morning in the place the middle-aged Frenchman had come walking away from.
I understood how a man might suddenly, seeing clearly the stupidity of dying in an unsuccessful
attack; or suddenly seeing it clearly, as you can see clearly and justly before you die; seeing its
hopelessness, seeing its idiocy, seeing how it really was, simply get back and walk away from it as
the Frenchman had done. He could walk out of it not from cowardice, but simply from seeing too
clearly; knowing suddenly that he had to leave it; knowing there was no other thing to do.

The Frenchman had come walking out of the attack with great dignity and I understood him as a
man. But, as a soldier, these other men who policed the battle had hunted him down, and the death he
had walked away from had found him when he was just over the ridge, clear of the bullets and the
shelling, and walking toward the river.

"And that," the Extremaduran said to me, nodding toward the battle police.

"Is war," I said. "In war, it is necessary to have discipline."

"And to live under that sort of discipline we should die?"

"Without discipline everyone will die anyway."

"There is one kind of discipline and another kind of discipline," the Extremaduran said. "Listen
to me. In February we were here where we are now and the fascists attacked. They drove us from the
hills that you Internationals tried to take today and that you could not take. We fell back to here;
to this ridge. Internationals came up and took the line ahead of us."

"I know that," I said.

"But you do not know this," he went on angrily. "There was a boy from my province who became
frightened during the bombardment, and he shot himself in the hand so that he could leave the
line because he was afraid."

The other soldiers were all listening now. Several nodded.

"Such people have their wounds dressed and are returned at once to the line," the Extremaduran
went on. "It is just."

"Yes," I said. "That is as it should be."

"That is as it should be," said the Extremaduran. "But this boy shot himself so badly that the
bone was all smashed and there surged up an infection and his hand was amputated."

Several soldiers nodded.

"Go on, tell him the rest," said one.

"It might be better not to speak of it," said the cropped-headed, bristly-faced man who said he
was in command.

"It is my duty to speak," the Extremaduran said.

The one in command shrugged his shoulders. "I did not like it either," he said. "Go on, then. But
I do not like to hear it spoken of either."

"This boy remained in the hospital in the valley since February," the Extremaduran said. "Some
of us have seen him in the hospital. All say he was well liked in the hospital and made himself as
useful as a man with one hand can be useful. Never was he under arrest. Never was there anything to
prepare him."

The man in command handed me the cup of wine again without saying anything. They were all
listening; as men who cannot read or write listen to a story.

"Yesterday, at the close of day, before we knew there was to be an attack. Yesterday, before the
sun set, when we thought today was to be as any other day, they brought him up the trail in the gap
there from the flat. We were cooking the evening meal and they brought him up. There were only four
of them. Him, the boy Paco, those two you have just seen in the leather coats and the caps, and an
officer from the brigade. We saw the four of them climbing together up the gap, and we saw Paco's
hands were not tied, nor was he bound in any way.

"When we saw him we all crowded around and said, 'Hello, Paco. How are you, Paco? How is
everything, Paco, old boy, old Paco?'

"Then he said, 'Everything's all right. Everything is good except this'-- and showed us the
stump.

"Paco said, 'That was a cowardly and foolish thing. I am sorry that I did that thing. But I try to be
useful with one hand. I will do what I can with one hand for the Cause.'"

"Yes," interrupted a soldier. "He said that. I heard him say that."

"We spoke with him," the Extremaduran said. "And he spoke with us. When such people with the leather
coats and the pistols come it is always a bad omen in a war, as is the arrival of people with map
cases and field glasses. Still we thought they had brought him for a visit, and all of us who had
not been to the hospital were happy to see him, and as I say, it was the hour of the evening meal
and the evening was clear and warm."

"This wind only rose during the night," a soldier said.

"Then," the Extremaduran went on somberly, "one of them said to the officer in Spanish, 'Where
is the place?'

"'Where is the place this Paco was wounded?' asked the officer."

"I answered him," said the man in command. "I showed the place. It is a little further down than
where you are."

"Here is the place," said a soldier. He pointed, and I could see it was the place. It showed
clearly that it was the place.

"Then one of them led Paco by the arm to the place and held him there by the arm while the other
spoke in Spanish. He spoke in Spanish, making many mistakes in the language. At first we wanted to
laugh, and Paco started to smile. I could not understand all the speech, but it was that Paco must
be punished as an example, in order that there would be no more self-inflicted wounds, and that all
others would be punished in the same way.

"Then, while the one held Paco by the arm; Paco, looking very ashamed to be spoken of this way when
he was already ashamed and sorry; the other took his pistol out and shot Paco in the back of the
head without any word to Paco. Nor any word more."

The soldiers all nodded.

"It was thus," said one. "You can see the place. He fell with his mouth there. You can see it."

I had seen the place clearly enough from where I lay.

"He had no warning and no chance to prepare himself," the one in command said. "It was very
brutal."

"It is for this that I now hate Russians as well as all other foreigners," said the Extremaduran.
"We can give ourselves no illusions about foreigners. If you are a foreigner, I am sorry. But for
myself, now, I can make no exceptions. You have eaten bread and drunk wine with us. Now I think
you should go."

"Do not speak in that way," the man in command said to the Extremaduran. "It is necessary to be
formal."

"I think we had better go," I said.

"You are not angry?" the man in command said. "You can stay in this shelter as long as you
wish. Are you thirsty? Do you wish more wine?"

"Thank you very much," I said. "I think we had better go."

"You understand my hatred?" asked the Extremaduran.

"I understand your hatred," I said.

"Good," he said and put out his hand. "I do not refuse to shake hands. And that you, personally,
have much luck."

"Equally to you," I said. "Personally, and as a Spaniard."

I woke the one who took the pictures and we started down the ridge toward brigade headquarters.
The tanks were all coming back now and you could hardly hear yourself talk for the noise.

"Were you talking all that time?"

"Listening."

"Hear anything interesting?"

"Plenty."

"What do you want to do now?"

"Get back to Madrid."

"We should see the general."

"Yes," I said. "We must."

The general was coldly furious. He had been ordered to make the attack as a surprise with one
brigade only, bringing everything up before daylight. It should have been made by at least a division.
He had used three battalions and held one in reserve. The French tank commander had got drunk to be
brave for the attack and finally was too drunk to function. He was to be shot when he sobered up.
The tanks had not come up in time and finally had refused to advance, and two of the battalions had
failed to attain their objectives. The third had taken theirs, but it formed an untenable salient. The
only real result had been a few prisoners, and these had been confided to the tank men to bring back
and the tank men had killed them. The general had only failure to show, and they had killed his
prisoners.

"What can I write on it?" I asked.

"Nothing that is not in the official communique. Have you any whisky in that long flask?"

"Yes."

He took a drink and licked his lips carefully. He had once been a captain of Hungarian Hussars, and
he had once captured a gold train in Siberia when he was a leader of irregular cavalry with the Red
Army and held it all one winter when the thermometer went down to forty below zero. We were good
friends and he loved whisky, and he is now dead.

"Get out of here now," he said. "Have you transport?"

"Yes."

"Did you get any pictures?"

"Some. The tanks."

"The tanks," he said bitterly. "The swine. The cowards. Watch out you don't get killed," he said.

"You are supposed to be a writer."

"I can't write now."

"Write it afterwards. You can write it all afterwards. And don't get killed. Especially, don't get
killed. Now, get out of here."

He could not take his own advice because he was killed two months later. But the oddest thing about that
day was how marvelously the pictures we took of the tanks came out. On the screen they advanced over the
hill irresistibly, mounting the crests like great ships, to crawl clanking on toward the illusion of victory we
screened.

The nearest any man was to victory that day was probably the Frenchman who came, with hishead held high,
walking out of the battle. But his victory only lasted until he had walked halfwaydown the ridge. We saw
him lying stretched out there on the slope of the ridge, still wearing hisblanket, as we came walking down
the cut to get into the staff car that would take us to Madrid.



Nobody Ever Dies



THE HOUSE WAS BUILT OF ROSE-COLORED plaster that had peeled and faded with the dampness and
from its porch you could see the sea, very blue, at the end of the street. There were laurel trees along the
sidewalk that grew high enough to shade the upper porch and in the shade it was cool. A mockingbird
hung in a wicker cage at a corner of the porch, and it was not singing now, nor even chirping, be-
cause a young man of about twenty-eight, thin, dark, with bluish circles under his eyes and a stubble
of beard, had just taken off a sweater that he wore and spread it over the cage. The young man was
standing now, his mouth slightly open, listening. Someone was trying the locked and bolted front door.

As he listened he heard the wind in the laurels close beside the porch, the horn of a taxi coming a-
long the street and the voices of the children playing in a vacant lot. Then he heard a key turn again in
the lock of the front door. He heard it unlock the door, heard the door pulled against the bolt, and then
the lock being turned again. At the same time he heard the sound of a bat against a baseball and shrill
shouting in Spanish from the vacant lot. He stood there, moistening his lips, and listened while
someone tried the back door.

The young man, who was named Enrique, took off his shoes and, putting them down carefully, moved soft-
ly along the tiling of the porch until he could look down at the back door. There was no one there.
He slipped back to the front of the house and, keeping out of sight, looked down the street.

A Negro in a narrow-brimmed flat-topped straw hat and a gray alpaca coat and black trousers
was walking along the sidewalk under the laurel trees. Enrique watched, but there was no one else.
He stood there for some time watching and listening, then he took his sweater off the bird cage and put
it on.

He had been sweating heavily while he had been listening and now he was cold in the shade and the cool
northeast wind. The sweater covered a leather shoulder holster, the leather ringed and saltwhitened
with perspiration, that he wore with a forty-five-caliber Colt pistol which, by its constant pres-
sure, had given him a boil a little below his armpit. He lay down on a canvas cot now close to the
wall of the house. He was still listening.

The bird chirped and hopped about the cage and the young man looked up at it. Then he got up and
unhooked the door of the cage and opened it. The bird cocked his head at the open door and drew
it back, then jerked his head forward again, his bill pointing at an angle.

"Go on," the young man said softly. "It's not a trick."

He put his hand into the cage and the bird flew against the back, fluttering against the withes.

"You're silly," the young man said. He took his hand out of the cage. "I'll leave it open."

He lay face down on the cot, his chin on his folded arms, and he was still listening. He heard the
bird fly out of the cage and then he heard him sing in one of the laurel trees.

"It was foolish to keep the bird if the house is supposed to be empty," he thought. "It is just
such foolishness that makes all the trouble. How can I blame others when I am that stupid?"

In the vacant lot the boys were still playing baseball and it was quite cool now. The young man
unbuckled the leather shoulder holster and laid the big pistol by his leg. Then he went to sleep.

When he woke it was dark and the street light on the corner shone through the leaves of the laurels.
He stood up and walked to the front of the house and, keeping in the shadow and the shelter of
the wall, looked up and down the street. A man in a narrow-brimmed, flat-topped straw hat stood
under a tree on the comer. Enrique could not see the color of his coat or trousers, but he was a
Negro.

Enrique went quickly to the back of the porch but there was no light there except that which
shone on the weedy field from the back windows of the next two houses. There could be any number
of people in the back. He knew that, since he could no longer really hear as he had in the afternoon,
because a radio was going in the second house away.

Suddenly there came the mechanical crescendo of a siren and the young man felt a prickling wave
go over his scalp. It came as suddenly as a person blushes, it felt like prickly heat, and it was
gone as quickly as it came. The siren was on the radio; it was part of an advertisement, and the
announcer's voice followed, "Gavis tooth paste. Unaltering, insuperable, the best."

Enrique smiled in the dark. It was time someone should be coming now.

After the siren on the recorded announcements came a crying baby which the announcer said would
be satisfied with Malta-Malta, and then there was a motor horn and a customer who demanded green
gas. "Don't tell me any stories. I asked for green gas. More economical, more mileage. The best."

Enrique knew all the advertisements by heart. They had not changed in the fifteen months that he
had been away at war; they must still be using the same discs in the broadcasting station, and still
the siren had deceived him and given him that thin, quick prickle across the scalp that was as def-
inite a reaction to danger as a bird dog stiffening to the warm scent of quail.

He had not had that prickle when he started. Danger and the fear of it had once made him feel
empty in his stomach. They had made him feel weak as you are weak with a fever, and he had known
the inability to move; when you must force movement forward by legs that feel as dead as though they
were asleep. That was all gone now, and he did without difficulty whatever he should do. The prick-
ling was all that remained of the vast capacity for fear some brave men start with. It was his only
remaining reaction to danger except for the perspiring which, he knew, he would always have, and
now it served as a warning and nothing more.

As he stood, looking out at the tree where the man with the straw hat sat now, on the curb, a stone
fell on the tiled floor of the porch. Enrique looked for it against the wall but did not find it. He
passed his hands under the cot but it was not there. As he knelt, another pebble fell on the tiled floor,
bounced and rolled into the corner toward the side of the house and into the street. Enrique picked it
up. It was a smooth-feeling ordinary pebble and he put it in his pocket and went inside the house and
down the stairs to the back door.

He stood to one side of the door and took the Colt out of the holster and held it, heavy in his right
hand.

"The victory," he said very quietly in Spanish, his mouth disdaining the word, and shifted softly
on his bare feet to the other side of the door.

"To those who earn it," someone said outside the door. It was a woman's voice, giving the
second half of the password, and it spoke quickly and unsteadily.

Enrique drew back the double bolt on the door and opened it with his left hand, the Colt still in
his right.

There was a girl there in the dark, holding a basket. She wore a handkerchief over her head. "Hel-
lo," he said and shut the door and bolted it. He could hear her breathing in the dark. He took
the basket from her and patted her shoulder.

"Enrique," she said, and he could not see the way her eyes were shining nor the look on her face.

"Come upstairs," he said. "There is someone watching the front of the house. Did he see you?"

"No," she said. "I came across the vacant lot."

"I will show him to you. Come up to the porch."

They went up the stairs, Enrique carrying the basket. He put it down by the bed and walked to the
edge of the porch and looked. The Negro who wore the narrow-brimmed flat-topped straw hat was
gone.

"So," Enrique said quietly.

"So what?" asked the girl, holding his arm now and looking out.

"So he is gone. What is there to eat?"

"I am sorry you were here alone all day" she said. "It was so stupid that I had to wait until it was
dark to come. I have wanted to come all day."

"It was stupid to be here at all. They brought me here from the boat before daylight and left me,
with a password and nothing to eat, in a house that is watched. You cannot eat a password. I should
not be put in a house that is being watched for other reasons. It is very Cuban. But at least, in the
old days we ate. How are you, Maria?"

In the dark she kissed him, hard, on the mouth. He felt the tight-pressed fullness of her lips and
the way her body shivered against his and then came the stab of white pain in the small of his back.

"Ayee! Be careful."

"What is it?"

"The back."

"What of the back? Is it a wound?"

"You should see it," he said.

"Can I see it now?"

"Afterwards. We must eat and get out of here. What have they stored here?"

"Too many things. Things left over from the failure of April. Things kept for the future."

"The long-distant future," he said. "Did they know it was watched?"

"I am sure not."

"What is there?"

"There are some rifles in cases. There are boxes of ammunition."

"Everything should be moved tonight." His mouth was full. "There will be years of work before
we will need this again."

"Do you like the escabeche?"

"It's very good; sit here close."

"Enrique," she said, sitting tight against him. She put a hand on his thigh and with the other she
stroked the back of his neck. "My Enrique."

"Touch me carefully," he said, eating. "The back is bad."

"Are you happy to be back from the war?"

"I have not thought about it," he said.

"Enrique, how is Chucho?"

"Dead at Lerida."

"Felipe?"

"Dead. Also at Lerida."

"And Arturo?"

"Dead at Teruel."

"And Vicente?" she asked in a flat voice, her two hands folded on his thigh now.

"Dead. At the attack across the road at Celadas."

"Vicente is my brother." She sat stiff and alone now, her hands away from him.

"I know," said Enrique. He went on eating.

"He is my only brother."

"I thought you knew," said Enrique.

"I did not know and he is my brother."

"I am sorry, Maria. I should have said it another way."

"And he is dead? You know he is dead? It is not just a report?"

"Listen. Rogello, Basilio, Esteban, Fel and I are alive. The others are dead."

"All?"

"All," said Enrique.

"I cannot stand it," said Maria. "Please, I cannot stand it."

"It does no good to discuss it. They are dead."

"But it is not only that Vicente is my brother. I can give up my brother. It is the flower of our
party."

"Yes. The flower of the party."

"It is not worth it. It has destroyed the best."

"Yes. It is worth it."

"How can you say that? That is criminal."

"No. It is worth it."

She was crying now and Enrique went on eating. "Don't cry," he said. "The thing to do is to
think how we can work to take their places."

"But he is my brother. Don' you uderstand? My brother."

"We are all brothers. Some are dead and others still live. They send us home now, so there will
be some left. Otherwise there would be none. Now we must work."

"But why were they all killed?"

"We were with an attack division. You are either killed or wounded. We others have been
wounded."

"How was Vicente killed?"

"He was crossing the road when he was struck by machine-gun fire from a farmhouse on the
right. The road was enfiladed from that house."

"Were you there?"

"Yes. I had the first company. We were on his right. We took the house but it took some time. They
had three machine guns there. Two in the house, one in the stable. It was difficult to approach. We
had to get a tank up to put fire on the window before we could rush the last gun. I lost eight men.
It was too many."

"And where was that?"

"Celadas."

"I never heard of it."

"No," said Enrique. "The operation was not a success. No one will ever hear of it. That was
where Vicente and Ignacio were killed."

"And you say such things are justified? That men like that should die in failures in a foreign
country?"

"There are no foreign countries, Maria, where people speak Spanish. Where you die does not
matter, if you die for liberty. Anyway, the thing to do is live and not to die."

"But think of who have died--away from here--and in failures."

"They did not go to die. They went to fight. The dying is an accident."

"But the failures. My brother is dead in a failure. Chucho in a failure. Ignacio in a failure."

"They are just a part. Some things we had to do were impossible. Many that looked impossible
we did. But sometimes the people on your flank would not attack. Sometimes there was not enough
artillery. Sometimes we were ordered to do things not in sufficient force--as at Celadas. Those
make the failures. But in the end, it was not a failure."

She did not answer and he finished eating.

The wind was fresh now in the trees and it was cold on the porch. He put the dishes back in the
basket and wiped his mouth on the napkin. He wiped his hands carefully and then put his arm around
the girl. She was crying.

"Don't cry, Maria," he said. "What has happened has happened. We must think of what there is
to do. There is much to do."

She said nothing and he could see her face in the light from the street lamp looking straight
ahead.

"We must check all romanticism. This place is an example of that romanticism. We must stop
terrorism. We must proceed so that we will never again fall into revolutionary adventurism."

The girl still said nothing and he looked at her face that he had thought of all the months when
he had thought of anything except his work.

"You talk like a book," she said. "Not like a human being."

"I am sorry," he said. "It is only lessons I have learned. It is things I know must be done. To me
it is more real than anything."

"All that is real to me are the dead," she said.

"We honor them. But they are not important."

"You talk like a book again," she said angrily. "Your heart is a book."

"I am sorry, Maria. I thought you would understand."

"All I understand is the dead," she said.

He knew this was not true because she had not seen them dead as he had in the rain in the olive
groves of the Jarama, in the heat in the smashed houses of Quijorna, and in the snow at Teruel. But
he knew that she blamed him for being alive when Vicente was dead and suddenly--in the small and
unconditioned human part of him which was left, and which he did not realize was still there--he was
hurt deeply.

"There was a bird," he said. "A mockingbird in a cage."

"Yes."

"I let it go."

"Aren't you kind!" she said scornfully. "Are soldiers all sentimental?"

"I am a good soldier."

"I believe it. You talk like one. What kind of soldier was my brother?"

"Very good. Gayer than me. I was not gay. It is a lack."

"But you practice self-criticism and you talk like a book."

"It would be better if I were gayer," he said. "I could never learn it."

"And the gay ones are all dead."

"No," he said. "Basilio is gay."

"Then he'll die," she said.

"Maria? Do not talk like that. You talk like a defeatist."

"You talk like a book," she told him. "Please do not touch me. You have a dry heart and I hate
you."

Now he was hurt again, he who had thought that his heart was dry, and that nothing could hurt
ever again except the pain, and sitting on the bed he leaned forward.

"Pull up my sweater," he said.

"I don't want to."

He pulled up the back and leaned over. "Maria, look there," he said. "That is not from a book."

"I cannot see," she said. "I do not want to see."

"Put your hand across the lower back."

He felt her fingers touch that huge sunken place a baseball could have been pushed through, that
grotesque scar from the wound the surgeon had pushed his rubber-gloved fist through in cleaning,
which had run from one side of the small of his back through to the other. He felt her touch it and he
shrank quickly inside. Then she was holding him tight and kissing him, her lips an island in the sudden
white sea of pain that came in a shining, unbearable, rising, blinding wave and swept him clean. The
lips there, still there; then overwhelmed, and the pain gone as he sat, alone, wet with sweat and Maria
crying and saying, "Oh, Enrique. Forgive me. Please forgive me."

"It is all right," Enrique said. "There is nothing to forgive. But it was not out of any book."

"But does it hurt always?"

"Only when I am touched or jarred."

"And the spinal cord?"

"It was touched a very little. Also the kidneys, but they are all right. The shell fragment went in
one side and out the other. There are other wounds lower down and on my legs."

"Enrique, please forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive. But it is not nice that I cannot make love and I am sorry that I am not
gay."

"We can make love after it is well."

"Yes."

"And it will be well."

"Yes."

"And I will take care of you."

"No. I will take care of you. I do not mind this thing at all. Only the pain of touching or jarring.
It does not bother me. Now we must work. We must leave this place now. Everything that is here must
be moved tonight. It must be stored in a new and unsuspected place and in one where it will not
deteriorate. It will be a long time before we will need it. There is much to be done before we will
ever reach that stage again. Many must be educated. These cartridges may no longer serve by then.
This climate ruins the primers. And we must go now. I am a fool to have stayed here this long and the
fool who put me here will answer to the committee."

"I am to take you there tonight. They thought this house was safe for you to stay today."

"This house is a folly."

"We will go now."

"We should have gone before."

"Kiss me, Enrique."

"We'll do it very carefully," he said.

Then, in the dark on the bed, holding himself carefully, his eyes closed, their lips against each
other, the happiness there with no pain, the being home suddenly there with no pain, the being alive
returning and no pain, the comfort of being loved and still no pain; so there was a hollowness of
loving, now no longer hollow, and the two sets of lips in the dark, pressing so that they were happily
and kindly, darkly and warmly at home and without pain in the darkness, there came the siren cutting,
suddenly, to rise like all the pain in the world. It was the real siren, not the one of the radio. It
was not one siren. It was two. They were coming both ways up the street.

He turned his head and then stood up. He thought that coming home had not lasted very long.

"Go out the door and across the lot," he said. "Go. I can shoot from up here and make a
diversion."

"No, you go," she said. "Please, I will stay here to shoot and they will think you're inside."

"Come on" he said. "We'll both go. There's nothing to defend here. This stuff is useless. It's
better to get away."

"I want to stay," she said. "I want to protect you."

She reached for the pistol in the holster under his arm and he slapped her face. "Come on. Don't
be a silly girl. Come on!"

They were going down the stairs now and he felt her close beside him. He swung the door open
and together they stepped out the door and were clear of the building. He turned and locked the
door.

"Run, Maria," he said. "Across the lot in that direction. Go!"

"I want to go with you."

He slapped her again quickly. "Run. Then dive in the weeds and crawl. Forgive me, Maria. But
go. I go the other way. Go," he said. "Damn you. Go."

They started into the weeds at the same time. He ran twenty paces and then, as the police
cars stopped in front of the house, the sirens dying, he dropped flat and started to crawl.

The weed pollen was dusty in his face and as he wriggled steadily along, the sand-burrs stabbing
his hands and knees sharply and minutely, he heard them coming around the house. They had
surrounded it.

He crawled steadily, thinking hard, giving no importance to the pain.

"But why the sirens?" he thought. "Why no third car from the rear? Why no spotlight or a search-
light on this field? Cubans," he thought. "Can they be this stupid and theatrical? They must have
thought there was no one in the house. They must have come only to seize the stuff. But why the
sirens?"

Behind him he heard them breaking in the door. They were all around the house. He heard two
blasts on a whistle from close to the house and he wriggled steadily on.

"The fools," he thought. "But they must have found the basket and the dishes by now. What
people! What a way to raid a house!"

He was almost to the edge of the lot now and he knew that he must rise and make a dash across the
road for the far houses. He had found a way of crawling that hurt little. He could adjust himself to
almost any movement. It was the brusque changes that hurt, and he dreaded rising to his feet.

In the weeds he rose on one knee, took the shock of the pain, held through it, and then brought it
on again as he drew the other foot alongside his knee in order to rise.

He started to run toward the house across the street, at the back of the next lot, when the clicking
on of the searchlight caught him so that he was full in the beam, looking toward it, the blackness a
sharp line on either side.

The searchlight was from the police car that had come silently, without siren, and posted itself at
one back corner of the lot.

As Enrique rose to his feet, thin, gaunt, sharply outlined in the beam, pulling at the big pistol
in the holster under his armpit, the submachine guns opened on him from the darkened car.

The feeling is that of being clubbed across the chest and he only felt the first one. The other
clubbing thuds that came were echoes.

He went forward onto his face in the weeds and as he fell, or perhaps it was between the time the
searchlight went on and the first bullet reached him, he had one thought. "They are not so stupid.
Perhaps something can be done with them."

If he had had time for another thought it would have been to hope there was no car at the other
corner. But there was a car at the other corner and its searchlight was going over the field. Its wide
beam was playing over the weeds, where the girl, Maria, lay hidden. In the dark car the machine
gunners, their guns poised, followed the sweep of the beam with the fluted, efficient ugliness of the
Thompson muzzles.

In the shadow of the tree, behind the darkened car from which the searchlight played, there was a
Negro standing. He wore a flat-topped, narrow-brimmed straw hat and an alpaca coat. Under his shirt
he wore a string of blue voodoo beads. He was standing quietly watching the lights working.
The searchlights played on over the weedfield where the girl lay flat against the ground, her chin
in the earth. She had not moved since she heard the burst of firing. She could feel her heart beating
against the ground.

"Do you see her?" asked one of the men in the car.

"Let them beat through the weeds for the other side," the lieutenant in the front seat said. "Hola,"
he called to the Negro under the tree. "Go to the house and tell them to beat toward us through the
weeds in extended order. Are there only the two?"

"Only two," the Negro said in a quiet voice. "We have the other one."

"Go."

"Yes sir, Lieutenant," the Negro said.

Holding his straw hat in both hands he started to run along the edge of the field toward the house
where, now, lights shone from all the windows.

In the field the girl lay, her hands clasped across the top of her head. "Help me to bear this," she
said into the weeds, speaking to no one, for there was no one there. Then, suddenly, personally,
sobbing, "Help me, Vicente. Help me, Felipe. Help me, Chucho. Help me, Arturo. Help me now,
Enrique. Help me."

At one time she would have prayed, but she had lost that and now she needed something.

"Help me not to talk if they take me," she said, her mouth against the weeds. "Keep me from talking,
Enrique. Keep me from ever talking, Vicente."

Behind her she could hear them going through the weeds like beaters in a rabbit drive. They
were spread wide and advancing like skirmishers, flashing their electric torches in the weeds.

"Oh, Enrique," she said, "help me."

She brought her hands down from her head and clenched them by her sides. "It is better so," she
thought. "If I run they will shoot. It will be simpler."

Slowly she got up and ran toward the car. The searchlight was full on her and she ran seeing
only it, into its white, blinding eye. She thought this was the best way to do it.

Behind her they were shouting. But there was no shooting. Someone tackled her heavily and she
went down. She heard him breathing as he held her.

Someone else took her under the arm and lifted her. Holding her by the two arms they walked her
toward the car. They were not rough with her, but they walked her steadily toward the car.

"No," she said. "No. No."

"It's the sister of Vicente Irtube," said the lieutenant. "She should be useful."

"She's been questioned before," said another.

"Never seriously."

"No," she said. "No. No." She cried aloud, "Help me, Vicente! Help me, help me, Enrique!"

"They're dead," said someone. "They won't help you. Don't be silly."

"Yes," she said. "They will help me. It is the dead that will help me. Oh, yes, yes, yes!
It is our dead that will help me!"

"Take a look at Enrique then," said the lieutenant. "See if he will help you. He's in the back of
that car."

"He's helping me now," the girl, Maria, said. "Can't you see he's helping me now? Thank you,
Enrique. Oh, thank you!"

"Come on," said the lieutenant. "She's crazy. Leave four men to guard the stuff and we will send
a truck for it. We'll take this crazy up to headquarters. She can talk up there."

"No," said Maria, taking hold of his sleeve. "Can't you see everyone is helping me now?"

"No," said the lieutenant. "You are crazy."

"No one dies for nothing," said Maria. "Everyone is helping me now."

"Get them to help you in about an hour," said the lieutenant.

"They will," said Maria. "Please don't worry. Many, many people are helping me now."

She sat there holding herself very still against the back of the seat. She seemed now to have a
strange confidence. It was the same confidence another girl her age had felt a little more than
five hundred years before in the market place of a town called Rouen.

Maria did not think of this. Nor did anyone in the car think of it. The two girls named Jeanne and
Maria had nothing in common except this sudden strange confidence which came when they needed it.
But all of the policemen in the car felt uncomfortable about Maria now as she sat very straight
with her face shining in the arc light.

The cars started and in the back seat of the front car men were putting the machine guns back into
the heavy canvas cases, slipping the stocks out and putting them in their diagonal pockets, the
barrels with the handgrips in the big flapped pouch, the magazines in the narrow webbed pockets.
The Negro with the flat straw hat came out from the shadow of the house and hailed the first car.
He got up into the front seat, making two who rode there beside the driver, and the four cars
turned on to the main road that led toward the sea-drive into La Havana.

Sitting crowded on the front seat of the car, the Negro reached under his shirt and put his fingers
on the string of blue voodoo beads. He sat without speaking, his fingers holding the beads. He had
been a dock worker before he got a job as a stool pigeon for the Havana police and he would get
fifty dollars for this night's work. Fifty dollars is a lot of money now in La Havana, but the
Negro could no longer think about the money. He turned his head a little, very slowly, as they came
onto the lighted driveway of the Malecon and, looking back, saw the girl's face, shining proudly,
and her head held high.

The Negro was frightened and he put his fingers all the way around the string of blue voodoobeads
and held them tight. But they could not help his fear because he was up against an older magic now.



The Good Lion



ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A LION that lived in Africa with all the other lions. The other lions
were all bad lions and every day they ate zebras and wildebeests and every kind of antelope. Some-
times the bad lions ate people too. They ate Swahilis, Umbulus and Wandorobos and they especially
liked to eat Hindu traders. All Hindu traders are very fat and delicious to a lion.

But this lion, that we love because he was so good, had wings on his back. Because he had
wings on his back the other lions all made fun of him.

"Look at him with the wings on his back," they would say and then they would all roar with
laughter.

"Look at what he eats," they would say because the good lion only ate pasta and scampi because
he was so good.

The bad lions would roar with laughter and eat another Hindu trader and their wives would drink
his blood, going lap, lap, lap with their tongues like big cats. They only stopped to growl with
laughter or to roar with laughter at the good lion and to snarl at his wings. They were very bad
and wicked lions indeed.

But the good lion would sit and fold his wings back and ask politely if he might have a Negroni
or an Americano and he always drank that instead of the blood of the Hindu traders. One day he
refused to eat eight Masai cattle and only ate some tagliatelli and drank a glass of pomodoro.
This made the wicked lions very angry and one of the lionesses, who was the wickedest of them all
and could never get the blood of Hindu traders off her whiskers even when she rubbed her face in
the grass, said, "Who are you that you think you are so much better than we are? Where do you come
from, you pasta-eating lion? What are you doing here anyway?" She growled at him and they all
roared without laughter.

"My father lives in a city where he stands under the clock tower and looks down on a thousand
pigeons, all of whom are his subjects. When they fly they make a noise like a rushing river. There are
more palaces in my father's city than in all of Africa and there are four great bronze horses that face
him and they all have one foot in the air because they fear him.

"In my father's city men go on foot or in boats and no real horse would enter the city for fear of
my father."

"Your father was a griffon," the wicked lioness said, licking her whiskers.

"You are a liar," one of the wicked lions said. "There is no such city."

"Pass me a piece of Hindu trader," another very wicked lion said. "This Masai cattle is too
newly killed."

"You are a worthless liar and the son of a griffon," the wickedest of all the lionesses said. "And
now I think I shall kill you and eat you, wings and all."

This frightened the good lion very much because he could see her yellow eyes and her tail going
up and down and the blood caked on her whiskers and he smelled her breath which was very bad
because she never brushed her teeth ever. Also she had old pieces of Hindu trader under her claws.

"Don't kill me," the good lion said. "My father is a noble lion and always has been respected
and everything is true as I said."

Just then the wicked lioness sprang at him. But he rose into the air on his wings and circled the
group of wicked lions once, with them all roaring and looking at him. He looked down and thought,
"What savages these lions are."

He circled them once more to make them roar more loudly. Then he swooped low so he could look at
the eyes of the wicked lioness who rose on her hind legs to try and catch him. But she missed him
with her claws. "Adios," he said, for he spoke beautiful Spanish, being a lion of culture. "Au-revoir,"
he called to them in his exemplary French.

They all roared and growled in African lion dialect.

Then the good lion circled higher and higher and set his course for Venice. He alighted in the
Piazza and everyone was delighted to see him. He flew up for a moment and kissed his father on
both cheeks and saw the horses still had their feet up and the Basilica looked more beautiful
than a soapbubble. The Campanile was in place and the pigeons were going to their nests for the
evening.

"How was Africa?" his father said.

"Very savage, father," the good lion replied.

"We have night lighting here now," his father said.

"So I see," the good lion answered like a dutiful son.

"It bothers my eyes a little," his father confided to him. "Where are you going now, my son?"

"To Harry's Bar," the good lion said.

"Remember me to Cipriani and tell him I will be in some day soon to see about my bill," said his father.

"Yes, father," said the good lion and he flew down lightly and walked to Harry's Bar on his own four paws.

In Cipriani's nothing was changed. All of his friends were there. But he was a little changed himself from
being in Africa.

"A Negroni, Signor Barone?" asked Mr. Cipriani.

But the good lion had flown all the way from Africa and Africa had changed him.

"Do you have any Hindu trader sandwiches?" he asked Cipriani.

"No, but I can get some."

"While you are sending for them, make me a very dry martini." He added, "With Gordon's gin."

"Very good," said Cipriani. "Very good indeed."

Now the lion looked about him at the faces of all the nice people and he knew that he was at home but that
he had also traveled. He was very happy.



The Faithful Bull



ONE TIME THERE WAS A BULL AND HIS name was not Ferdinand and he cared nothing for flowers.
He loved to fight and he fought with all the other bulls of his own age, or any age, and he was
a champion.

His horns were as solid as wood and they were as sharply pointed as the quill of a porcupine.

They hurt him, at the base, when he fought and he did not care at all. His neck muscles lifted
in a great lump that is called in Spanish the morillo and this morillo lifted like a hill when
he was ready to fight. He was always ready to fight and his coat was black and shining and his
eyes were clear.

Anything made him want to fight and he would fight with deadly seriousness exactly as some people
eat or read or go to church. Each time he fought he fought to kill and the other bulls were not
afraid of him because they came of good blood and were not afraid. But they had no wish to provoke
him. Nor did they wish to fight him.

He was not a bully nor was he wicked, but he liked to fight as men might like to sing or to be the
King or the President. He never thought at all. Fighting was his obligation and his duty and his joy.
He fought on the stony, high ground. He fought under the cork-oak trees and he fought in the good
pasture by the river. He walked fifteen miles each day from the river to the high, stony ground and
he would fight any bull that looked at him. Still he was never angry.

That is not really true, for he was angry inside himself. But he did not know why, because he
could not think. He was very noble and he loved to fight.

So what happened to him? The man who owned him, if anyone can own such an animal, knew what
a great bull he was and still he was worried because this bull cost him so much money by fighting
with other bulls. Each bull was worth over one thousand dollars and after they had fought the
great bull they were worth less than two hundred dollars and sometimes less than that.

So the man, who was a good man, decided that he would keep the blood of this bull in all of his
stock rather than send him to the ring to be killed. So he selected him for breeding.

But this bull was a strange bull. When they first turned him into the pasture with the breeding
cows, he saw one who was young and beautiful and slimmer and better muscled and shinier and more
lovely than all the others. So, since he could not fight, he fell in love with her and he paid no
attention to any of the others. He only wanted to be with her, and the others meant nothing to
him at all.

The man who owned the bull ranch hoped that the bull would change, or learn, or be different than
he was. But the bull was the same and he loved whom he loved and no one else. He only wanted to
be with her, and the others meant nothing to him at all.

So the man sent him away with five other bulls to be killed in the ring, and at least the bull could
fight, even though he was faithful. He fought wonderfully and everyone admired him and the man who
killed him admired him the most. But the fighting jacket of the man who killed him and who is called
the matador was wet through by the end, and his mouth was very dry.

"Que toro mas bravo," the matador said as he handed his sword to his sword handler. He handed it
with the hilt up and the blade dripping with the blood from the heart of the brave bull who no
longer had any problems of any kind and was being dragged out of the ring by four horses.

"Yes. He was the one the Marques of Villamayor had to get rid of because he was faithful," the
sword handler, who knew everything, said.

"Perhaps we should all be faithful," the matador said.



Get a Seeing-Eyed Dog



"AND WHAT DID WE DO THEN?" HE asked her. She told him.

"That part is very strange. I can't remember that at all."

"Can you remember the safari leaving?"

"I should. But I don't. I remember the women going down the trail to the beach for the water with
the pots on their heads and I remember the flock of geese the toto drove back and forth to the water.
I remember how slowly they all went and they were always going down or coming up. There was a
very big tide too and the flats were yellow and the channel ran by the far island. The wind blew all
the time and there were no flies and no mosquitoes. There was a roof and a cement floor and the poles
that held the roof up, and the wind blew through them all the time. It was cool all day and lovely and
cool at night."

"Do you remember when the big dhow came in and careened on the low tide?"

"Yes, I remember her and the crew coming ashore in her boats and coming up the path from the
beach, and the geese were afraid of them and so were the women."

"That was the day we caught so many fish but had to come in because it was rough."
[
"I remember that."

"You're remembering well today," she said. "Don't do it too much."

"I'm sorry you didn't get to fly to Zanzibar," he said. "That upper beach from where we were
was a fine place to land. You could have landed and taken off from there quite easily."

"We can always go to Zanzibar. Don't try to remember too much today. Would you like me to
read to you? There's always something in the old New Yorkers that we missed."

"No, please don't read," he said. "Just talk. Talk about the good days."

"Do you want to hear about what it's like outside?"

"It's raining," he said. "I know that."

"It's raining a big rain," she told him. "There won't be any tourists out with this weather. The
wind is very wild and we can go down and sit by the fire."

"We could anyway. I don't care about them any more. I like to hear them talk."

"Some of them are awful," she said. "But some of them are quite nice. I think it's really the
nicest ones that go out to Torcello."

"That's quite true," he said. "I hadn't thought of that. There's really nothing for them to see
unless they are a bit too nice."

"Can I make you a drink?" she asked. "You know how worthless a nurse I am. I wasn't trained
for it and I haven't any talent. But I can make drinks."

"Let's have a drink."

"What do you want?"

"Anything," he said.

"I'll make a surprise. I'll make it downstairs."

He heard the door open and close and her feet on the stairs and he thought, I must get her to go on
a trip. I must figure out some way to do it. I have to think up something practical. I've got this now for
the rest of my life and I must figure out ways not to destroy her life and ruin her with it. She has been
so good and she was not built to be good. I mean this sort of good. I mean good every day and dull
good.

He heard her coming up the stairs and noticed the difference in her tread when she was carrying
two glasses and when she had walked down barehanded. He heard the rain on the windowpane and he
smelled the beech logs burning in the fireplace. As she came into the room he put his hand out for
the drink and closed his hand on it and felt her touch the glass with her own.

"It's our old drink for out here," she said. "Campari and Gordon's with ice."

"I'm certainly glad you're not a girl who would say 'on the rocks'"

"No," she said. "I wouldn't ever say that. We've been on the rocks."

"On our own two feet when the chips were down and for keeps," he remembered. "Do you
remember when we barred those phrases?"

"That was in the time of my lion. Wasn't he a wonderful lion? I can't wait till we see him."

"I can't either," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"Do you remember when we barred that phrase?"

"I nearly said it again."

"You know," he told her, "we're awfully lucky to have come here. I remember it so well that it
is palpable. That's a new word and we'll bar it soon. But it really is wonderful. When I hear the rain
I can see it on the stones and on the canal and on the lagoon, and I know the way the trees bend in
every wind and how the church and the tower are in every sort of light. We couldn't have come to a
better place for me. It's really perfect. We've got the good radio and a fine tape recorder and I'm
going to write better than I ever could. If you take your time with the tape recorder you can get the
words right. I can work slow and I can see the words when I say them. If they're wrong I hear them
wrong and I can do them over and work on them until I get them right. Honey, in lots of ways we
couldn't have it better."

"Oh, Philip--"

"Shit," he said. "The dark is just the dark. This isn't like the real dark. I can see very well inside
and now my head is better all the time and I can remember and I can make up well. You wait and see.
Didn't I remember better today?"

"You remember better all the time. And you're getting strong."

"I am strong," he said. "Now if you--"

"If me what?"

"If you'd go away for a while and get a rest and a change from this."

"Don't you want me?"

"Of course I want you, darling."

"Then why do we have to talk about me going away? I know I'm not good at looking after you but I
can do things other people can't do and we do love each other. You love me and you know it and
we know things nobody else knows."

"We do wonderful things in the dark," he said.

"And we did wonderful things in the daytime too."

"You know I rather like the dark. In some ways it is an improvement."

"Don't lie too much," she said. "You don't have to be so bloody noble."

"Listen to it rain," he said. "How is the tide now?"

"It's way out and the wind has driven the water even further out. You could almost walk to
Burano."

"All except one place," he said. "Are there many birds?"

"Mostly gulls and terns. They are down on the flats and when they get up the wind catches them."

"Aren't there any shore birds?"

"There are a few working on the part of the flats that only comes out when we have this wind
and this tide."

"Do you think it will ever be spring?"

"I don't know," she said. "It certainly doesn't act like it."

"Have you drunk all your drink?"

"Just about. Why don't you drink yours?"

"I was saving it."

"Drink it up," she said. "Wasn't it awful when you couldn't drink at all?"

"No, you see," he said. "What I was thinking about when you went downstairs was that you could
go to Paris and then to London and you'd see people and could have some fun and then you'd
come back and it would have to be spring by then and you could tell me all about everything."

"No," she said.

"I think it would be intelligent to do," he said. "You know this is a long sort of stupid business
and we have to learn to pace ourselves. And I don't want to wear you out. You know--"

"I wish you wouldn't say 'you know' so much."

"You see? That's one of the things. I could learn to talk in a non-irritating way. You might be
mad about me when you came back."

"What would you do nights?"

"Nights are easy."

"I'll bet they are. I suppose you've learned how to sleep too."

"I'm going to," he told her and drank half the drink. "That's part of The Plan. You know this is how
it works. If you go away and have some fun then I have a good conscience. Then for the first time
in my life with a good conscience I sleep automatically. I take a pillow which represents my good
conscience and I put my arms around it and off I go to sleep. If I wake up by any odd chance I just
think beautiful happy dirty thoughts. Or I make wonderful fine good resolutions. Or I remember things.
You know I want you to have fun--"

"Please don't say 'you know'"

"I'll concentrate on not saying it. It's barred but I forget and let the bars down. Anyway I don't
want you just to be a seeing-eyed dog."

"I'm not and you know it. Anyway it's seeing-eye not seeing-eyed."

"I knew that," he told her. "Come and sit here, would you mind very much?"

She came and sat by him on the bed and they both heard the rain hard against the pane of the window
and he tried not to feel her head and her lovely face the way a blind man feels and there was no other
way that he could touch her face except that way. He held her close and kissed the top of her head.
I will have to try it another day, he thought. I must not be so stupid about it. She feels so lovely
and I love her so much and have done her so much damage and I must learn to take good care of her in
every way I can. If I think of her and of her only, everything will be all right.

"I won't say 'you know' all the time any more," he told her. "We can start with that."

She shook her head and he could feel her tremble.

"You say it all you want," she said and kissed him.

"Please don't cry, my blessed," he said.

"I don't want you to sleep with any lousy pillow," she said.

"I won't. Not any lousy pillow."

Stop it, he said to himself. Stop it right now.

"Look, tu," he said. "We'll go down now and have lunch in our old fine place by the fire and I'll tell
you what a wonderful kitten you are and what lucky kittens we are."

"We really are."

"We'll work everything out fine."

"I just don't want to be sent away."

"Nobody is ever going to send you away."

But walking down the stairs feeling each stair carefully and holding to the banister he thought, I
must get her away and get her away as soon as I can without hurting her. Because I am not doing too
well at this. That I can promise you. But what else can you do? Nothing, he thought. There's nothing
you can do. But maybe, as you go along, you will get good at it.



A Man of the World



THE BLIND MAN KNEW THE SOUNDS OF all the different machines in the Saloon. I don't know how
long it took him to learn the sounds of the machines but it must have taken him quite a time because
he only worked one saloon at a time. He worked two towns though and he would start out of The
Flats along after it was good and dark on his way up to Jessup. He'd stop by the side of the
road when he heard a car coming and their lights would pick him up and either they would stop
and give him a ride or they wouldn't and would go on by on the icy road. It would depend on how
they were loaded and whether there were women in the car because the blind man smelled plenty
strong and especially in winter. But someone would always stop for him because he was a blind man.

Everybody knew him and they called him Blindy which is a good name for a blind man in that part of
the country, and the name of the saloon that he threw his trade to was The Pilot. Right next to it
was another saloon, also with gambling and a dining room, that was called The Index. Both of these
were the names of mountains and they were both good saloons with old-days bars and the gambling was
about the same in one as in the other except you ate better in The Pilot probably, although you got
a better sizzling steak at The Index. Then The Index was open all night long and got the early morning
trade and from daylight until ten o'clock in the morning the drinks were on the house. They were the
only saloons in Jessup and they did not have to do that kind of thing. But that was the way they were.
Blindy probably preferred The Pilot because the machines were right along the left-hand wall as
you came in and faced the bar. This gave him better control over them than he would have had at The
Index where they were scattered on account it was a bigger place with more room. On this night it
was really cold outside and he came in with icicles on his mustache and small pus icicles out of both
eyes and he didn't look really very good. Even his smell was froze but that wasn't for very long and
he started to put out almost as soon as the door was shut. It was always hard for me to look at him but
I was looking at him carefully because I knew he always rode and I didn't see how he would be
frozen up so bad. Finally I asked him.

"Where you walk from, Blindy?"

"Willie Sawyer put me out of his car down below the railway bridge. There weren't no more
cars come and I walked in."

"What did he put you afoot for?" somebody asked.

"Said I smelled too bad."

Someone had pulled the handle on a machine and Blindy started listening to the whirr. It came up
nothing. "Any dudes playing?" he asked me.

"Can't you hear?"

"Not yet."

"No dudes, Blindy, and it's a Wednesday."

"I know what night it is. Don't start telling me what night it is."

Blindy went down the line of machines feeling in all of them to see if anything had been left in
the cups by mistake. Naturally there wasn't anything, but that was the first part of his pitch. He
came back to the bar where we were and Al Chaney asked him to have a drink.

"No," Blindy said. "I got to be careful on those roads."

"What you mean those roads?" somebody asked him. "You only go on one road. Between here
and The Flats."

"I been on lots of roads," Blindy said. "And any time I may have to take off and go on more."

Somebody hit on a machine but it wasn't any heavy hit. Blindy moved on it just the same. It was
a quarter machine and the young fellow who was playing it gave him a quarter sort of reluctantly.
Blindy felt it before he put it in his pocket.

"Thank you," he said. "You'll never miss it."

The young fellow said, "Nice to know that," and put a quarter back in the machine and pulled
down again.

He hit again but this time pretty good and he scooped in the quarters and gave a quarter to
Blindy."

"Thanks," Blindy said. "You're doing fine."

"Tonight's my night," the young fellow who was playing said.

"Your night is my night," Blindy said and the young fellow went on playing but he wasn't doing
any good any more and Blindy was so strong standing by him and he looked so awful and finally the
fellow quit playing and came over to the bar. Blindy had run him out but he had no way of noticing it
because the fellow didn't say anything, so Blindy just checked the machines again with his hand and
stood there waiting for someone else to come in and make a play.

There wasn't any play at the wheel nor at the crap table and at the poker game there were just
gamblers sitting there and cutting each other up. It was a quiet evening on a week night in town and
there wasn't any excitement. The place was not making a nickel except at the bar. But at the bar it
was pleasant and the place had been nice until Blindy had come in. Now everybody was figuring they
might as well go next door to The Index or else cut out and go home.

"What will yours be, Tom?" Frank the bartender asked me. "This is on the house."

"I was figuring on shoving."

"Have one first then."

"The same with ditch," I said. Frank asked the young fellow, who was wearing heavy Oregon
Cities and a black hat and was shaved clean and had a snow-burned face, what he would drink and
the young fellow took the same. The whisky was Old Forester.

I nodded to him and raised my drink and we both sipped at the drinks. Blindy was down at the
far end of the machines. I think he figured maybe no one would come in if they saw him at the door.
Not that he was self-conscious.

"How did that man lose his sight?" the young fellow asked me.

"In a fight," Frank told him.

"I wouldn't know," I told him.

"Him fight?" the stranger said. He shook his head.

"Yeah," Frank said. "He got that high voice out of the same fight. Tell him, Tom."

"I never heard of it."

"No. You wouldn't of," Frank said. "Of course not. You wasn't here, I suppose. Mister, it was a night
about as cold as tonight. Maybe colder. It was a quick fight too. I didn't see the start of it. Then
they come fighting out of the door of The Index. Blackie, him that's Blindy now, and this other boy
Willie Sawyer, and they were slugging and kneeing and gouging and biting and I see one of Blackie's
eyes hanging down on his cheek. They were fighting on the ice of the road with the snow all banked
up and the light from this door and The Index door, and Hollis Sands was right behind Willie Sawyer
who was gouging for the eye and Hollis kept hollering, 'Bite it off! Bite it off just like it was a
grape!" Blackie was biting onto Willie Sawyer's face and he had a good holt and it give way with a
jerk and then he had another good holt and they were down on the ice now and Willie Sawyer was goug-
ing him to make him let go and then Blackie gave a yell like you've never heard. Worse than when they
cut a boar."

Blindy had come up opposite us and we smelled him and turned around.

"'Bite it off just like it was a grape,'" he said in his high-pitched voice and looked at us, moving
his head up and down. "That was the left eye. He got the other one without no advice. Then he stomped
me when I couldn't see. That was the bad part." He patted himself.

"I could fight good then," he said. "But he got the eye before I knew even what was happening. He got
it with a lucky gouge. Well," Blindy said without any rancor, "that put a stop to my fighting days."

"Give Blackie a drink," I said to Frank.

"Blindy's the name, Tom. I earned that name. You seen me earn it. That's the same fellow who put me
adrift down the road tonight. Fellow bit the eye. We ain't never made friends."

"What did you do to him?" the stranger asked.

"Oh, you'll see him around," Blindy said. "You'll recognize him any time you see him. I'll let it
come as a surprise."

"You don't want to see him," I told the stranger.

"You know that's one of the reasons I'd like to see sometimes," Blindy said. "I'd like to just have
one good look at him."

"You know what he looks like," Frank told him. "You went up and put your hands on his face once."

"Did it again tonight too," Blindy said happily. "That's why he put me out of the car. He ain't got
no sense of humor at all. I told him on a cold night like this he'd ought to bundle up so the whole
inside of his face wouldn't catch cold. He didn't even think that was funny. You know that Willie
Sawyer he'll never be a man of the world."

"Blackie, you have one on the house," Frank said. "I can't drive you home because I only live just
down the road. But you can sleep in the back of the place."

"That's mighty good of you, Frank. Only just don't call me Blackie. I'm not Blackie any more.
Blindy's my name."

"Have a drink, Blindy."

"Yes, sir," Blindy said. His hand reached out and found the glass and he raised it accurately to
the three of us.

"That Willis Sawyer," he said. "Probably alone home by himself. That Willie Sawyer he don'tknow how
to have any fun at all."



Summer People



HALFWAY DOWN THE GRAVEL ROAD FROM Hortons Bay, the town, to the lake there was a spring.
The water came up in a tile sunk beside the road, lipping over the cracked edge of the tile and
flowing away through the close growing mint into the swamp. In the dark Nick put his arm down
into the spring but could not hold it there because of the cold. He felt the featherings of
the sand spouting up from the spring cones at the bottom against his fingers. Nick thought,
I wish I could put all of myself in there. I bet that would fix me. He pulled his arm out
and sat down at the edge of the road. It was a hot night.

Down the road through the trees he could see the white of the Bean house on its piles over the
water. He did not want to go down to the dock. Everybody was down there swimming. He did not
want Kate with Odgar around. He could see the car on the road beside the warehouse. Odgar and
Kate were down there. Odgar with that fried-fish look in his eye every time he looked at Kate. Didn't
Odgar know anything? Kate wouldn't ever marry him. She wouldn't ever marry anybody that didn't
make her. And if they tried to make her she would curl up inside of herself and be hard and slip away.
He could make her do it all right. Instead of curling up hard and slipping away she would open out
smoothly, relaxing, untightening, easy to hold. Odgar thought it was love that did it. His eyes got
walleyed and red at the edges of the lids. She couldn't bear to have him touch her. It was all in his
eyes. Then Odgar would want them to be just the same friends as ever. Play in the sand. Make mud
images. Take all-day trips in the boat together. Kate always in her bathing suit. Odgar looking at her.

Odgar was thirty-two and had been twice operated on for varicocele. He was ugly to look at and
everybody liked his face. Odgar could never get it and it meant everything in the world to him. Every
summer he was worse about it. It was pitiful. Odgar was awfully nice. He had been nicer to Nick than
anybody ever had. Now Nick could get it if he wanted it. Odgar would kill himself, Nick thought, if
he knew it. I wonder how he'd kill himself. He couldn't think of Odgar dead. He probably wouldn't
do it. Still people did. It wasn't just love. Odgar thought just love would do it. Odgar loved her
enough, God knows. It was liking, and liking the body, and introducing the body, and persuading, and
taking chances, and never frightening, and assuming about the other person, and always taking never
asking, and gentleness and liking, and making liking and happiness, and joking and making people not
afraid. And making it all right afterwards. It wasn't loving. Loving was frightening. He, Nicholas
Adams, could have what he wanted because of something in him. Maybe it did not last. Maybe he
would lose it. He wished he could give it to Odgar, or tell Odgar about it. You couldn't ever tell
anybody about anything. Especially Odgar. No, not especially Odgar. Anybody, anywhere. That had
always been his first mistake, talking. He had talked himself out of too many things. There ought to be
something you could do for the Princeton, Yale and Harvard virgins, though. Why weren't there any
virgins in state universities? Coeducation maybe. They met girls who were out to marry and the girls
helped them along and married them. What would become of fellows like Odgar and Harvey and
Mike and all the rest? He didn't know. He hadn't lived long enough. They were the best people in the
world. What became of them? How the hell could he know. How could he write like Hardy and
Hamsun when he only knew ten years of life. He couldn't. Wait till he was fifty.

In the dark he kneeled down and took a drink from the spring. He felt all right. He knew he was
going to be a great writer. He knew things and they couldn't touch him. Nobody could. Only he did not
know enough things. That would come all right. He knew. The water was cold and made his eyes
ache. He had swallowed too big a gulp. Like ice cream. That's the way with drinking with your nose
underwater. He'd better go swimming. Thinking was no good. It started and went on so. He walked
down the road, past the car and the big warehouse on the left where apples and potatoes were loaded
onto the boats in the fall, past the white-painted Bean house where they danced by lantern light
sometimes on the hardwood floor, out on the dock to where they were swimming.

They were all swimming off the end of the dock. As Nick walked along the rough boards high
above the water he heard the double protest of the long springboard and a splash. The water lapped
below in the piles. That must be the Ghee, he thought. Kate came up out of the water like a seal and
pulled herself up the ladder.

"It's Wemedge," she shouted to the others. "Come on in, Wemedge. It's wonderful."

"Hi, Wemedge," said Odgar. "Boy it's great."

"Where's Wemedge?" It was the Ghee, swimming far out.

"Is this man Wemedge a nonswimmer?" Bill's voice very deep and bass over the water.

Nick felt good. It was fun to have people yell at you like that. He scuffed off his canvas shoes, pull-
ed his shirt over his head and stepped out of his trousers. His bare feet felt the sandy planks of the
dock. He ran very quickly out the yielding plank of the springboard, his toes shoved against the end of
the board, he tightened and he was in the water, smoothly and deeply, with no consciousness of the
dive. He had breathed in deeply as he took off and now went on and on through the water, holding his
back arched, feet straight and trailing. Then he was on the surface, floating face down. He rolled over
and opened his eyes. He did not care anything about swimming, only to dive and be underwater.

"How is it, Wemedge?" The Ghee was just behind him.

"Warm as piss," Nick said.

He took a deep breath, took hold of his ankles with his hands, his knees under his chin, and sank
slowly down into the water. It was warm at the top but he dropped quickly into cool, then cold. As he
neared the bottom it was quite cold. Nick floated down gently against the bottom. It was marly and his
toes hated it as he uncurled and shoved hard against it to come up to the air. It was strange coming up
from underwater into the dark. Nick rested in the water, barely paddling and comfortable. Odgar and
Kate were talking together up on the dock.

"Have you ever swum in a sea where it was phosphorescent, Carl?"

"No." Odgar's voice was unnatural talking to Kate.

We might rub ourselves all over with matches, Nick thought. He took a deep breath, drew his
knees up, clasped tight and sank, this time with his eyes open. He sank gently, first going off to one
side, then sinking head first. It was no good. He could not see underwater in the dark. He was right to
keep his eyes shut when he first dove in. It was funny about reactions like that. They weren't always
right, though. He did not go all the way down but straightened out and swam along and up through the
cool, keeping just below the warm surface water. It was funny how much fun it was to swim underwater
and how little fun there was in plain swimming. It was fun to swim on the surface in the ocean. That
was the buoyancy. But there was the taste of the brine and the way it made you thirsty. Fresh water
was better. Just like this on a hot night. He came up for air just under the projecting edge of the
dock and climbed up the ladder.

"Oh, dive, Wemedge, will you?" Kate said. "Do a good dive." They were sitting together on the
dock leaning back against one of the big piles.

"Do a noiseless one, Wemedge," Odgar said.

"All right."

Nick, dripping, walked out on the springboard, remembering how to do the dive. Odgar and Kate watch-
ed him, black in the dark, standing at the end of the board, poise and dive as he had learned from
watching a sea otter. In the water as he turned to come up to the air Nick thought, Gosh, if I could
only have Kate down here. He came up in a rush to the surface, feeling water in his eyes and ears. He
must have started to take a breath.

"It was perfect. Absolutely perfect," Kate shouted from the dock.

Nick came up the ladder.

"Where are the men?" he asked.

"They're swimming way out in the bay," Odgar said.

Nick lay down on the dock beside Kate and Odgar. He could hear the Ghee and Bill swimming
way out in the dark.

"You're the most wonderful diver, Wemedge," Kate said, touching his back with her foot. Nick
tightened under the contact.

"No," he said.

"You're a wonder, Wemedge," Odgar said.

"Nope," Nick said. He was thinking, thinking if it was possible to be with somebody underwater, he
could hold his breath three minutes, against the sand on the bottom, they could float up together,
take a breath and go down, it was easy to sink if you knew how. He had once drunk a bottle of milk
and peeled and eaten a banana underwater to show off, had to have weights, though, to hold him down,
if there was a ring at the bottom, something he could get his arm through, he could do it all right.
Gee, how it would be, you couldn't ever get a girl though, a girl couldn't go through with it, she'd
swallow water, it would drown Kate, Kate wasn't really any good underwater, he wished there was a
girl like that, maybe he'd get a girl like that, probably never, there wasn't anybody but him that
was that way underwater. Swimmers, hell, swimmers were slobs, nobody knew about the water but him,
there was a fellow up at Evanston that could hold his breath six minutes but he was crazy. He
wished he was a fish, no he didn't. He laughed.

"What's the joke, Wemedge?" Odgar said in his husky, near-to-Kate voice.

"I wished I was a fish," Nick said.

"That's a good joke," said Odgar.

"Sure," said Nick.

"Don't be an ass, Wemedge," said Kate.

"Would you like to be a fish, Butstein?" he said, lying with his head on the planks, facing away
from them.

"No," said Kate. "Not tonight."

Nick pressed his back hard against her foot.

"What animal would you like to be, Odgar?" Nick said.

"J. P. Morgan," Odgar said.

"You're nice, Odgar," Kate said. Nick felt Odgar glow.

"I'd like to be Wemedge," Kate said.

"You could always be Mrs. Wemedge," Odgar said.

"There isn't going to be any Mrs. Wemedge," Nick said. He tightened his back muscles. Kate had both
her legs stretched out against his back as though she were resting them on a log in front of a fire.

"Don't be too sure," Odgar said.

"I'm awful sure," Nick said. "I'm going to marry a mermaid."

"She'd be Mrs. Wemedge," Kate said.

"No she wouldn't," Nick said. "I wouldn't let her."

"How would you stop her?"

"I'd stop her all right. Just let her try it."

"Mermaids don't marry," Kate said.

"That'd be all right with me," Nick said.

"The Mann Act would get you," said Odgar.

"We'd stay outside the four-mile limit," Nick said. "We'd get food from the rumrunners. You could
get a diving suit and come and visit us, Odgar. Bring Butstein if she wants to come. We'll be at
home every Thursday afternoon."

"What are we going to do tomorrow?" Odgar said, his voice becoming husky, near to Kate again.

"Oh, hell, let's not talk about tomorrow," Nick said. "Let's talk about my mermaid."

"We're through with your mermaid."

"All right," Nick said. "You and Odgar go and talk. I'm going to think about her."

"You're immoral, Wemedge. You're disgustingly immoral."

"No, I'm not. I'm honest." Then, lying with his eyes shut, he said, "Don't bother me. I'm thinking
about her."

He lay there thinking of his mermaid while Kate's insteps pressed against his back and she and
Odgar talked.

Odgar and Kate talked but he did not hear them. He lay, no longer thinking, quite happy.

Bill and the Ghee had come out of the water farther down the shore, walked down the beach up to the
car and then backed it out onto the dock. Nick stood up and put on his clothes. Bill and the Ghee
were in the front seat, tired from the long swim. Nick got in behind with Kate and Odgar. They leaned
back. Bill drove roaring up the hill and turned onto the main road. On the main highway Nick could
see the lights of other cars up ahead, going out of sight, then blinding as they mounted a hill, blink-
ing as they came near, then dimmed as Bill passed. The road was high along the shore of the lake. Big
cars out from Charlevoix, rich slobs riding behind their chauffeurs, came up and passed, hogging the
road and not dimming their lights. They passed like railway trains. Bill flashed the spotlights on cars
alongside the road in the trees, making the occupants change their positions. Nobody passed Bill from
behind, although a spotlight played on the back of their heads for some time until Bill drew away. Bill
slowed, then turned abruptly onto the sandy road that ran up through the orchard to the farmhouse. The
car, in low gear, moved steadily up through the orchard. Kate put her lips to Nick's ear.

"In about an hour, Wemedge," she said. Nick pressed his thigh hard against hers. The car circled
at the top of the hill above the orchard and stopped in front of the house.

"Aunty's asleep. We've got to be quiet," Kate said.

"Good night, men," Bill whispered. "We'll stop by in the morning."

"Good night, Smith," whispered the Ghee. "Good night, Butstein."

"Good night, Ghee," Kate said.

Odgar was staying at the house.

"Good night, men," Nick said. "See you, Morgen."

"Night, Wemedge," Odgar said from the porch.

Nick and the Ghee walked down the road into the orchard. Nick reached up and took an apple from one of
the Duchess trees. It was still green but he sucked the acid juice from the bite and spat out the pulp.

"You and the Bird took a long swim, Ghee," he said.

"Not so long, Wemedge," the Ghee answered.

They came out from the orchard past the mailbox onto the hard state highway. There was a cold
mist in the hollow where the road crossed the creek. Nick stopped on the bridge.

"Come on, Wemedge," the Ghee said.

"All right," Nick agreed.

They went on up the hill to where the road turned into the grove of trees around the church. There
were no lights in any of the houses they passed. Hortons Bay was asleep. No motor cars had passed
them.

"I don't feel like turning in yet," Nick said.

"Want me to walk with you?"

"No, Ghee. Don't bother."

"All right."

"I'll walk up as far as the cottage with you," Nick said. They unhooked the screen door and went
into the kitchen. Nick opened the meat safe and looked around.

"Want some of this, Ghee?" he said.

"I want a piece of pie," the Ghee said.

"So do I," Nick said. He wrapped up some fried chicken and two pieces of cherry pie in oiled
paper from the top of the icebox.

"I'll take this with me," he said. The Ghee washed down his pie with a dipper full of water from the
bucket.

"If you want anything to read. Ghee, get it out of my room," Nick said. The Ghee had been looking at
the lunch Nick had wrapped up.

"Don't be a damn fool, Wemedge," he said.

"That's all right. Ghee."

"All right. Only don't be a damn fool," the Ghee said. He opened the screen door and went out across
the grass to the cottage. Nick turned off the light and went out, hooking the screen door shut. He
had the lunch wrapped up in a newspaper and crossed the wet grass, climbed the fence and went up
the road through the town under the big elm trees, past the last cluster of R.F.D. mailboxes at the
crossroads and out onto the Charlevoix highway. After crossing the creek he cut across a field, skirted
the edge of the orchard, keeping to the edge of the clearing, and climbed the rail fence into the wood
lot. In the center of the wood lot four hemlock trees grew close together. The ground was soft with
pine needles and there was no dew. The wood lot had never been cut over and the forest floor was
dry and warm without underbrush. Nick put the package of lunch by the base of one of the hemlocks
and lay down to wait. He saw Kate coming through the trees in the dark but did not move. She did not
see him and stood a moment, holding the two blankets in her arms. In the dark it looked like some
enormous pregnancy. Nick was shocked. Then it was funny.

"Hello, Butstein," he said. She dropped the blankets.

"Oh, Wemedge. You shouldn't have frightened me like that. I was afraid you hadn't come."

"Dear Butstein," Nick said. He held her close against him, feeling her body against his, all the
sweet body against his body. She pressed close against him.

"I love you so, Wemedge."

"Dear, dear old Butstein," Nick said.

They spread the blankets, Kate smoothing them flat.

"It was awfully dangerous to bring the blankets," Kate said.

"I know," Nick said. "Let's undress."

"Oh, Wemedge."

"It's more fun." They undressed sitting on the blankets. Nick was a little embarrassed to sit there
like that.

"Do you like me with my clothes off, Wemedge?"

"Gee, let's get under," Nick said. They lay between the rough blankets. He was hot against her
cool body, hunting for it, then it was all right.

"Is it all right?"

Kate pressed all the way up for answer.

"Is it fun?"

"Oh, Wemedge. I've wanted it so. I've needed it so."

They lay together in the blankets. Wemedge slid his head down, his nose touching along the line
of the neck, down between her breasts. It was like piano keys.

"You smell so cool," he said.

He touched one of her small breasts with his lips gently. It came alive between his lips, his
tongue pressing against it. He felt the whole feeling coming back again and, sliding his hands down,
moved Kate over. He slid down and she fitted close in against him. She pressed tight in against the
curve of his abdomen. She felt wonderful there. He searched, a little awkwardly, then found it. He put
both hands over her breasts and held her to him. Nick kissed hard against her back. Kate's head
dropped forward.

"Is it good this way?" he said.

"I love it. I love it. I love it. Oh, come, Wemedge. Please come. Come, come. Please, Wemedge.
Please, please, Wemedge."

"There it is," Nick said.

He was suddenly conscious of the blanket rough against his bare body.

"Was I bad, Wemedge?" Kate said.

"No, you were good," Nick said. His mind was working very hard and clear. He saw everything
very sharp and clear. "I'm hungry," he said.

"I wish we could sleep here all night." Kate cuddled against him.

"It would be swell," Nick said. "But we can't. You've got to get back to the house."

"I don't want to go," Kate said.

Nick stood up, a little wind blowing on his body. He pulled on his shirt and was glad to have it
on. He put on his trousers and shoes.

"You've got to get dressed, Stut," he said. She lay there, the blankets pulled over her head.

"Just a minute," she said. Nick got the lunch from over the hemlock. He opened it up.

"Come on, get dressed, Stut," he said.

"I don't want to," Kate said. "I'm going to sleep here all night." She sat up in the blankets.
"Hand me those things, Wemedge."

Nick gave her the clothes.

"I've just thought of it," Kate said. "If I sleep out here they'll just think that I'm an idiot and came
out here with the blankets and it will be all right."

"You won't be comfortable," Nick said.

"If I'm uncomfortable I'll go in."

"Let's eat before I have to go," Nick said.

"I'll put something on," Kate said.

They sat together and ate the fried chicken and each ate a piece of cherry pie.

Nick stood up, then kneeled down and kissed Kate.

He came through the wet grass to the cottage and upstairs to his room, walking carefully not to creak.
It was good to be in bed, sheets, stretching out full length, dipping his head in the pillow. Good in
bed, comfortable, happy, fishing tomorrow, he prayed as he always prayed when he remembered it, for
the family, himself, to be a great writer, Kate, the men, Odgar, for good fishing, poor old Odgar,
poor old Odgar, sleeping up there at the cottage, maybe not fishing, maybe not sleeping all night.
Still there wasn't anything you could do, not a thing.


Originally published in The Nick Adams Stories, this short story was left uncompleted by Hemingway



The Last Good Country



"NICKIE," HIS SISTER SAID TO HIM. "LISten to me, Nickie."

"I don't want to hear it."

He was watching the bottom of the spring where the sand rose in small spurts with the bubbling
water. There was a tin cup on a forked stick that was stuck in the gravel by the spring and Nick
Adams looked at it and at the water rising and then flowing clear in its gravel bed beside the road.
He could see both ways on the road and he looked up the hill and then down to the dock and the
lake, the wooded point across the bay and the open lake beyond where there were white caps running.
His back was against a big cedar tree and behind him there was a thick cedar swamp. His sister was
sitting on the moss beside him and she had her arm around his shoulders.

"The're waiting for you to come home to supper," his sister said. "There's two of them. They
came in a buggy and they asked where you were."

"Did anybody tell them?"

"Nobody knew where you were but me. Did you get many, Nickie?"

"I got twenty-six."

"Are they good ones?"

"Just the size they want for the dinners."

"Oh, Nickie, I wish you wouldn't sell them."

"She gives me a dollar a pound," Nick Adams said.

His sister was tanned brown and she had dark brown eyes and dark brown hair with yellow streaks in
it from the sun. She and Nick loved each other and they did not love the others. They always thought
of everyone else in the family as the others.

"They know about everything, Nickie," his sister said hopelessly. "They said they were going to
make an example of you and send you to the reform school."

"They've only got proof on one thing," Nick told her. "But I guess I have to go away for a
while."

"Can I go?"

"No. I'm sorry, Littless. How much money have we got?"

"Fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents. I brought it."

"Did they say anything else?"

"No. Only that they were going to stay till you came home."

"Our mother will get tired of feeding them."

"She gave them lunch already."

"What were they doing?"

"Just sitting around on the screen porch. They asked our mother for your rifle but I'd hid it in the
woodshed when I saw them by the fence."

"Were you expecting them?"

"Yes. Weren't you?"

"I guess so. Goddam them."

"Goddam them for me, too," his sister said. "Aren't I old enough to go now? I hid the rifle. I
brought the money."

"I'd worry about you," Nick Adams told her. "I don't even know where I'm going."

"Sure you do."

"If there's two of us they'd look harder. A boy and a girl show up."

"I'd go like a boy," she said. "I always wanted to be a boy anyway. They couldn't tell anything
about me if my hair was cut."

"No," Nick Adams said. "That's true."

"Let's think something out good," she said. "Please, Nick, please. I could be lots of use and
you'd be lonely without me. Wouldn't you be?"

"I'm lonely now thinking about going away from you."

"See? And we may have to be away for years. Who can tell? Take me, Nickie. Please take me."

She kissed him and held onto him with both her arms. Nick Adams looked at her and tried to think
straight. It was difficult. But there was no choice.

"I shouldn't take you. But then I shouldn't have done any of it," he said. "I'll take you. Maybe
only for a couple of days, though."

"That's all right," she told him. "When you don't want me I'll go straight home. I'll go home
anyway if I'm a bother or a nuisance or an expense."

"Let's think it out," Nick Adams told her. He looked up and down the road and up at the sky
where the big high afternoon clouds were riding and at the white caps on the lake out beyond the
point.

"I'd go through the woods down to the inn beyond the point and sell her the trout," he told his
sister. "She ordered them for dinners tonight. Right now they want more trout dinners than chicken
dinners. I don't know why. The trout are in good shape. I gutted them and they're wrapped in
cheesecloth and they'll be cool and fresh. I'll tell her I'm in some trouble with the game wardens and
that they're looking for me and I have to get out of the country for a while. I'll get her to give me a
small skillet and some salt and pepper and some bacon and some shortening and some corn meal. I'll
get her to give me a sack to put everything in and I'll get some dried apricots and some prunes and
some tea and plenty of matches and a hatchet. But I can only get one blanket. She'll help me because
buying trout is just as bad as selling them."

"I can get a blanket," his sister said. "I'll wrap it around the rifle and I'll bring your moccasins
and my moccasins and I'll change to different overalls and a shirt and hide these so they'll think I'm
wearing them and I'll bring soap and a comb and a pair of scissors and something to sew with and
Lorna Doone and Swiss Family Robinson."

"Bring all the .22's you can find," Nick Adams said. Then quickly, "Come on back. Get out of
sight." He had seen a buggy coming down the road.

Behind the cedars they lay flat against the springy moss with their faces down and heard the soft
noise of the horses' hooves in the sand and the small noise of the wheels. Neither of the men in the
buggy was talking but Nick Adams smelled them as they went past and he smelled the sweated horses.
He sweated himself until they were well past on their way to the dock because he thought they might
stop to water at the spring or to get a drink.

"Is that them, Littless?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said.

"Crawl way back in," Nick Adams said. He crawled back into the swamp, pulling his sack of fish.
The swamp was mossy and not muddy there. Then he stood up and hid the sack behind the trunk of a
cedar and motioned the girl to come further in. They went into the cedar swamp, moving as softly
as deer.

"I know the one," Nick Adams said. "He's a no good son of a bitch."

"He said he'd been after you for four years."

"I know."

"The other one, the big one with the spit tobacco face and the blue suit, is the one from down
state."

"Good," Nick said. "Now we've had a look at them I better get going. Can you get home all
right?"

"Sure. I'll cut up to the top of the hill and keep off the road. Where will I meet you tonight,
Nickie?"

"I don't think you ought to come, Littless."

"I've got to come. You don't know how it is. I can leave a note for our mother and say I went
with you and you'll take good care of me."

"All right," Nick Adams said. "I'll be where the big hemlock is that was struck by lightning. The
one that's down. Straight up from the cove. Do you know the one? On the short cut to the road."

"That's awfully close to the house."

"I don't want you to have to carry the stuff too far."

"I'll do what you say. But don't take chances, Nickie."

"I'd like to have the rifle and go down now to the edge of the timber and kill both of those bas-
tards while they're on the dock and wire a piece of iron on them from the old mill and sink them in
the channel."

"And then what would you do?" his sister asked. "Somebody sent them."

"Nobody sent that first son of a bitch."

"But you killed the moose and you sold the trout and you killed what they took from your boat."

"That was all right to kill that."

He did not like to mention what that was, because that was the proof they had.

"I know. But you're not going to kill people and that's why I'm going with you."

"Let's stop talking about it. But I'd like to kill those two sons of bitches."

"I know," she said. "So would I. But we're not going to kill people, Nickie. Will you promise
me?"

"No. Now I don't know whether it's safe to take her the trout."

"I'll take them to her."

"No. They're too heavy. I'll take them through the swamp and to the woods in back of the hotel.

You go straight to the hotel and see if she's there and if everything's all right. And if it is
you'll find me there by the big basswood tree."

"It's a long way there through the swamp, Nicky."

"It's a long way back from reform school, too."

"Can't I come with you through the swamp? I'll go in then and see her while you stay out and
come back out with you and take them in."

"All right," Nick said. "But I wish you'd do it the other way."

"Why, Nickie?"

"Because you'll see them maybe on the road and you can tell me where they've gone. I'll see you
in the second-growth wood lot in back of the hotel where the big basswood is.
"
Nick waited more than an hour in the second-growth timber and his sister had not come. When
she came she was excited and he knew she was tired.

"They're at our house," she said. "They're sitting out on the screen porch and drinking whiskey
and ginger ale and they've unhitched and put their horses up. They say they're going to wait till you
come back. It was our mother told them you'd gone fishing at the creek. I don't think she meant to.
Anyway I hope not."

"What about Mrs. Packard?"

"I saw her in the kitchen of the hotel and she asked me if I'd seen you and I said no. She said she
was waiting for you to bring her some fish for tonight. She was worried. You might as well take them
in."

"Good," he said. "They're nice and fresh. I repacked them in ferns."

"Can I come in with you?"

"Sure," Nick said.

The hotel was a long wooden building with a porch that fronted on the lake. There were wide
wooden steps that led down to the pier that ran far out into the water and there were natural cedar
railings alongside the steps and natural cedar railings around the porch. There were chairs made of
natural cedar on the porch and in them sat middle-aged people wearing white clothes. There were
three pipes set on the lawn with spring water bubbling out of them, and little paths led to them. The
water tasted like rotten eggs because these were mineral springs and Nick and his sister used to drink
from them as a matter of discipline. Now coming toward the rear of the hotel, where the kitchen was,
they crossed a plank bridge over a small brook running into the lake beside the hotel, and slipped into
the back door of the kitchen.

"Wash them and put them in the ice box, Nickie," Mrs. Packard said. "I'll weigh them later."

"Mrs. Packard," Nick said. "Could I speak to you a minute?"

"Speak up," she said. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

"If I could have the money now."

Mrs. Packard was a handsome woman in a gingham apron. She had a beautiful complexion and
she was very busy and her kitchen help were there as well.

"You don't mean you want to sell trout. Don't you know that's against the law?"

"I know," Nick said. "I brought you the fish for a present. I mean my time for the wood I split
and corded."

"I'll get it," she said. "I have to go to the annex."

Nick and his sister followed her outside. On the board sidewalk that led to the icehouse from the
kitchen she stopped and put her hands in her apron pocket and took out a pocketbook.

"You get out of here," she said quickly and kindly. "And get out of here fast. How much do you
need?"

"I've got sixteen dollars," Nick said.

"Take twenty," she told him. "And keep that tyke out of trouble. Let her go home and keep an eye
on them until you're clear."

"When did you hear about them?"

She shook her head at him.

"Buying is as bad or worse than selling," she said. "You stay away until things quiet down.
Nickie, you're a good boy no matter what anybody says. You see Packard if things get bad. Come
here nights if you need anything. I sleep light. Just knock on the window."

"You aren't going to serve them tonight are you, Mrs. Packard? You're not going to serve them
for the dinners?"

"No," she said. "But I'm not going to waste them. Packard can eat half a dozen and I know other
people that can. Be careful, Nickie, and let it blow over. Keep out of sight."

"Littless wants to go with me."

"Don't you dare take her," Mrs. Packard said. "You come by tonight and I'll have some stuff
made up for you."

"Could you let me take a skillet?"

"I'll have what you need. Packard knows what you need. I don't give you any more money so
you'll keep out of trouble."

"I'd like to see Mr. Packard about getting a few things."

"He'll get you anything you need. But don't you go near the store, Nick."

"I'll get Littless to take him a note."

"Anytime you need anything," Mrs. Packard said. "Don't you worry. Packard will be studying
things out."

"Good-bye, Aunt Halley."

"Good-bye," she said and kissed him. She smelt wonderful when she kissed him. It was the way
the kitchen smelled when they were baking. Mrs. Packard smelled like her kitchen and her kitchen
always smelled good.

"Don't worry and don't do anything bad."

"I'll be all right."

"Of course," she said. "And Packard will figure out something."

They were in the big hemlocks on the hill behind the house now. It was evening and the sun was
down beyond the hills on the other side of the lake.

"I've found everything," his sister said. "It's going to make a pretty big pack, Nickie."

"I know it. What are they doing?"

"They ate a big supper and now they're sitting out on the porch and drinking. They're telling
each other stories about how smart they are."

"They aren't very smart so far."

"They're going to starve you out," his sister said. "A couple of nights in the woods and you'll be
back. You hear a loon holler a couple of times when you got an empty stomach and you'll be back."

"What did our mother give them for supper?"

"Awful," his sister said.

"Good."

"I've located everything on the list. Our mother's gone to bed with a sick headache. She wrote
our father."

"Did you see the letter?"

"No. It's in her room with the list of stuff to get from the store tomorrow. She's going to have to
make a new list when she finds everything is gone in the morning."

"How much are they drinking?"

"They've drunk about a bottle, I guess."

"I wish we could put knockout drops in it."

"I could put them in if you'll tell me how. Do you put them in the bottle?"

"No. In the glass. But we haven't got any."

"Would there be any in the medicine cabinet?"

"No."

"I could put paregoric in the bottle. They have another bottle. Or calomel. I know we've got
those."

"No," said Nick. "You try to get me about half the other bottle when they're asleep. Put it in any
old medicine bottle."

"I better go and watch them," his sister said. "My, I wish we had knockout drops. I never even
heard of them."

"They aren't really drops," Nick told her. "It's chloral hydrate. Whores give it to lumberjacks in
their drinks when they're going to jack roll them."

"It sounds pretty bad," his sister said. "But we probably ought to have some for in emergencies."

"Let me kiss you," her brother said. "Just for in an emergency. Let's go down and watch them
drinking. I'd like to hear them talk sitting in our own house."

"Will you promise not to get angry and do anything bad?"

"Sure."

"Nor to the horses. It's not the horses' fault."

"Not the horses either."

"I wish we had knockout drops," his sister said loyally.

"Well, we haven't," Nick told her. "I guess there aren't any this side of Boyne City."

They sat in the woodshed and they watched the two men sitting at the table on the screen porch.

The moon had not risen and it was dark, but the outlines of the men showed against the lightness that
the lake made behind them. They were not talking now but were both leaning forward on the table.

Then Nick heard the clink of ice against a bucket.

"The ginger ale's gone," one of the men said.

"I said it wouldn't last," the other said. "But you were the one said we had plenty."

"Get some water. There's a pail and a dipper in the kitchen."

"I've drunk enough. I'm going to turn in."

"Aren't you going to stay up for that kid?"

"No. I'm going to get some sleep. You stay up."

"Do you think he'll come in tonight?"

"I don't know. I'm going to get some sleep. You wake me when you get sleepy."

"I can stay up all night," the local warden said. "Many's the night I've stayed up all night for
jack lighters and never shut an eye."

"Me, too," the down-state man said. "But now I'm going to get a little sleep."

Nick and his sister watched him go in the door. Their mother had told the two men they could sleep
in the bedroom next to the living room. They saw when he struck a match. Then the window was dark
again. They watched the other warden sitting at the table until he put his head on his arms. Then
they heard him snoring.

"We'll give him a little while to make sure he's solid asleep. Then we'll get the stuff," Nick
said.

"You get over outside the fence," his sister said. "It doesn't matter if I'm moving around. But he
might wake up and see you."

"All right," Nick agreed. "I'll get everything out of here. Most of it's here."

"Can you find everything without a light?"

"Sure. Where's the rifle?"

"Flat on the back upper rafter. Don't slip or make the wood fall down. Nick."

"Don't you worry."

She came out to the fence at the far corner where Nick was making up his pack beyond the big
hemlock that had been struck by lightning the summer before and had fallen in a storm that autumn.
The moon was just rising now behind the far hills and enough moonlight came through the trees for
Nick to see clearly what he was packing. His sister put down the sack she was carrying and said,

"They're sleeping like pigs, Nickie."

"Good."

"The down-state one was snoring just like the one outside. I think I got everything."

"You good old Littless."

"I wrote a note to our mother and told her I was going with you to keep you out of trouble and not
to tell anybody and that you'd take good care of me. I put it under her door. It's locked."

"Oh, shit," Nick said. Then he said, "I'm sorry, Littless."

"Now it's not your fault and I can't make it worse for you."

"You're awful."

"Can't we be happy now?"

"Sure."

"I brought the whiskey," she said hopefully. "I left some in the bottle. One of them can't be sure
the other didn't drink it. Anyway they have another bottle."

"Did you bring a blanket for you?"

"Of course."

"We better get going."

"We're all right if we're going where I think. The only thing that makes the pack bigger is my
blanket. I'll carry the rifle."

"All right. What kind of shoes have you?"

"I've got my work-moccasins."

"What did you bring to read?"

"Lorna Doone and Kidnapped and Wuthering Heights."

"They're all too old for you but Kidnapped."

"Lorna Doone isn't."

"We'll read it out loud," Nick said. "That way it lasts longer. But, Littless, you've made things
sort of hard now and we better go. Those bastards can't be as stupid as they act. Maybe it was just
because they were drinking."

Nick had rolled the pack now and tightened the straps and he sat back and put his moccasins on.
He put his arm around his sister. "You sure you want to go?"

"I have to go, Nickie. Don't be weak and indecisive now. I left the note."

"All right," Nick said. "Let's go. You can take the rifle until you get tired of it."

"I'm all ready to go," his sister said. "Let me help you strap the pack."

"You know you haven't had any sleep at all and that we have to travel?"

"I know. I'm really like the snoring one at the table says he was."

"Maybe he was that way once, too," Nick said. "But what you have to do is keep your feet in
good shape. Do the moccasins chafe?"

"No. And my feet are tough from going barefoot all summer."

"Mine are good, too," said Nick. "Come on. Let's go."

They started off walking on the soft hemlock needles and the trees were high and there was no
brush between the tree trunks. They walked uphill and the moon came through the trees and showed
Nick with the very big pack and his sister carrying the .22 rifle. When they were at the top of the hill
they looked back and saw the lake in the moonlight. It was clear enough so they could see the dark
point, and beyond were the high hills of the far shore.

"We might as well say good-bye to it," Nick Adams said.

"Good-bye, lake," Littless said. "I love you, too."

They went down the hill and across the long field and through the orchard and then through a rail
fence and into a field of stubble. Going through the stubble field they looked to the right and saw the
slaughterhouse and the big barn in the hollow and the old log farmhouse on the other high land that
overlooked the lake. The long road of Lombardy poplars that ran to the lake was in the moonlight.

"Does it hurt your feet, Littless?" Nick asked.

"No," his sister said.

"I came this way on account of the dogs," Nick said. "They'd shut up as soon as they knew it
was us. But somebody might hear them bark."

"I know," she said. "And as soon as they shut up afterwards they'd know it was us."

Ahead they could see the dark of the rising line of hills beyond the road. They came to the end of
one cut field of grain and crossed the little sunken creek that ran down to the springhouse. Then they
climbed across the rise of another stubble field and there was another rail fence and the sandy road
with the second-growth timber solid beyond it.

"Wait till I climb over and I'll help you," Nick said. "I want to look at the road."

From the top of the fence he saw the roll of the country and the dark timber by their own house
and the brightness of the lake in the moonlight. Then he was looking at the road.

"They can't track us the way we've come and I don't think they would notice tracks in this deep
sand," he said to his sister. "We can keep to the two sides of the road if it isn't too scratchy."

"Nickie, honestly I don't think they're intelligent enough to track anybody. Look how they just
waited for you to come back and then practically got drunk before supper and afterwards."

"They came down to the dock," Nick said. "That was where I was. If you hadn't told me they
would have picked me up."

"They didn't have to be so intelligent to figure you would be on the big creek when our mother
let them know you might have gone fishing. After I left they must have found all the boats were there
and that would make them think you were fishing the creek. Everybody knows you usually fish below
the grist mill and the cider mill. They were just slow thinking it out."

"All right," Nick said. "But they were awfully close then."

His sister handed him the rifle through the fence, butt toward him, and then crawled between the
rails. She stood beside him on the road and he put his hand on her head and stroked it.

"Are you awfully tired, Littless?"

"No. I'm fine. I'm too happy to be tired."

"Until you're too tired you walk in the sandy part of the road when; their horses made holes in
the sand. It's so soft and dry tracks won't show and I'll walk on the side where it's hard."

"I can walk on the side, too."

"No. I don't want you to get scratched."

They climbed, but with constant small descents, toward the height of land that separated the two
lakes. There was close, heavy, second-growth timber on both sides of the road and blackberry and
raspberry bushes grew from the edge of the road to the timber. Ahead they could see the top of each
hill as a notch in the timber. The moon was well on its way down now.

"How do you feel, Littless?" Nick asked his sister.

"I feel wonderful. Nickie, is it always this nice when you run away from home?"

"No. Usually it's lonesome."

"How lonesome have you ever been?"

"Bad black lonesome. Awful."

"Do you think you'll get lonesome with me?"

"No."

"You don't mind you're with me instead of going to Trudy?"

"What do you talk about her for all the time?"

"I haven't been. Maybe you were thinking about her and you thought I was talking."

"You're too smart," Nick said. "I thought about her because you told me where she was and
when I knew where she was I wondered what she would be doing and all that."

"I guess I shouldn't have come."

"I told you that you shouldn't have come."

"Oh, hell," his sister said. "Are we going to be like the others and have fights? I'll go back now.
You don't have to have me."

"Shut up," Nick said.

"Please don't say that, Nickie. I'll go back or I'll stay just as you want. I'll go back whenever
you tell me to. But I won't have fights. Haven't we seen enough fights in families?"

"Yes," said Nick.

"I know I forced you to take me. But I fixed it so you wouldn't get in trouble about it. And I did
keep them from catching you."

They had reached the height of land and from here they could see the lake again although from here
it looked narrow now and almost like a big river.

"We cut across country here," Nick said. "Then we'll hit that old logging road. Here's where
you go back from if you want to go back."

He took off his pack and put it back into the timber and his sister leaned the rifle on it.

"Sit down, Littless, and take a rest," he said. "We're both tired."

Nick lay with his head on the pack and his sister lay by him with her head on his shoulder.

"I'm not going back, Nickie, unless you tell me to," she said. "I just don't want fights. Promise
me we won't have fights?"

"Promise."

"I won't talk about Trudy."

"The hell with Trudy."

"I want to be useful and a good partner."

"You are. You won't mind if I get restless and mix it up with being lonesome?"

"No. We'll take good care of each other and have fun. We can have a lovely time."

"All right. We'll start to have it now."

"I've been having it all the time."

"We just have one pretty hard stretch and then a really hard stretch and then we'll be there. We
might as well wait until it gets light to start. You go to sleep, Littless. Are you warm enough?"

"Oh, yes, Nickie. I've got my sweater."

She curled up beside him and was asleep. In a little while Nick was sleeping, too. He slept for
two hours until the morning light woke him.

Nick had circled around through the second-growth timber until they had come onto the old
logging road.

"We couldn't leave tracks going into it from the main road," he told his sister.

The old road was so overgrown that he had to stoop many times to avoid hitting branches.

"It's like a tunnel," his sister said.

"It opens up after a while."

"Have I ever been here before?"

"No. This goes up way beyond where I ever took you hunting."

"Does it come out on the secret place?"

"No, Littless. We have to go through some long bad slashings. Nobody gets in where we're going."

They kept on along the road and then took another road that was even more overgrown. Then they
came out into a clearing. There was fireweed and brush in the clearing and the old cabins of the
logging camp. They were very old and some of the roofs had fallen in. But there was a spring by the
road and they both drank at it. The sun wasn't up yet and they both felt hollow and empty in the
early morning after the night of walking.

"All this beyond was hemlock forest," Nick said. "They only cut it for the bark and they never
used the logs."

"But what happens to the road?"

"They must have cut up at the far end first and hauled and piled the bark by the road to snake it
out. Then finally they cut everything right to the road and piled the bark here and then pulled out."

"Is the secret place beyond all this slashing?"

"Yes. We go through the slashing and then some more road and then another slashing and then we
come to virgin timber."

"How did they leave it when they cut all this?"

"I don't know. It belonged to somebody that wouldn't sell, I guess. They stole a lot from the edges
and paid stumpage on it. But the good part's still there and there isn't any passable road into
it."

"But why can't people go down the creek? The creek has to come from somewhere?"

They were resting before they started the bad traveling through the slashing and Nick wanted to
explain.

"Look, Littless. The creek crosses the main road we were on and it goes through a farmer's land.
The farmer has it fenced for a pasture and he runs people off that want to fish. So they stop at the
bridge on his land. On the section of the creek where they would hit if they cut across his pasture on
the other side from his house he runs a bull. The bull is mean and he really runs everybody off. He's
the meanest bull I ever saw and he just stays there, mean all the time, and hunts for people. Then after
him the farmer's land ends and there's a section of cedar swamp with sink holes and you'd have to
know it to get through. And then, even if you know it, it's bad. Below that is the secret place. We're
going in over the hills and sort of in the back way. Then below the secret place there's real swamp.
Bad swamp that you can't get through. Now we better start the bad part."

The bad part and the part that was worse were behind them now. Nick had climbed over many logs that
were higher than his head and others that were up to his waist. He would take the rifle and lay it
down on the top of the log and pull his sister up and then she would slide down on the far side
or he would lower himself down and take the rifle and help the girl down. They went over and around
piles of brush and it was hot in the slashing, and the pollen from the ragweed and the fireweed dusted
the girl's hair and made her sneeze.

"Damn slashings," she said to Nick. They were resting on top of a big log ringed where they sat
by the cutting of the barkpeelers. The ring was gray in the rotting gray log and all around were other
long gray trunks and gray brush and branches with the brilliant and worthless seeds growing.

"This is the last one," Nick said.

"I hate them," his sister said. "And the damn weeds are like flowers in a tree cemetery if nobody
took care of it."

"You see why I didn't want to try to make it in the dark."

"We couldn't."

"No. And nobody's going to chase us through here. Now we come into the good part."

They came from the hot sun of the slashings into the shade of the great trees. The slashings had
run up to the top of a ridge and over and then the forest began. They were walking on the brown forest
floor now and it was springy and cool under their feet. There was no underbrush and the trunks of the
trees rose sixty feet high before there were any branches. It was cool in the shade of the trees and high
up in them Nick could hear the breeze that was rising. No sun came through as they walked and Nick
knew there would be no sun through the high top branches until nearly noon. His sister put her hand in
his and walked close to him.

"I'm not scared, Nickie. But it makes me feel very strange."

"Me, too," Nick said. "Always."

"I never was in woods like these."

"This is all the virgin timber left around here."

"Do we go through it very long?"

"Quite a way."

"I'd be afraid if I were alone."

"It makes me feel strange. But I'm not afraid."

"I said that first."

"I know. Maybe we say it because we are afraid."

"No. I'm not afraid because I'm with you. But I know I'd be afraid alone. Did you ever come
here with anyone else?"

"No. Only by myself."

"And you weren't afraid?"

"No. But I always feel strange. Like the way I ought to feel in church."

"Nickie, where we're going to live isn't as solemn as this, is it?"

"No. Don't you worry. There it's cheerful. You just enjoy this, Littless. This is good for you.
This is the way forests were in the olden days. This is about the last good country there is left.
Nobody gets in here ever."

"I love the olden days. But I wouldn't want it all this solemn."

"It wasn't all solemn. But the hemlock forests were."

"It's wonderful walking. I thought behind our house was wonderful. But this is better. Nickie, do
you believe in God? You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"I don't know."

"All right. You don't have to say it. But you don't mind if I say my prayers at night?"

"No. I'll remind you if you forget."

"Thank you. Because this kind of woods makes me feel awfully religious."

"That's why they build cathedrals to be like this."

"You've never seen a cathedral, have you?"

"No. But I've read about them and I can imagine them. This is the best one we have around
here."

"Do you think we can go to Europe some time and see cathedrals?"

"Sure we will. But first I have to get out of this trouble and learn how to make some money."

"Do you think you'll ever make money writing?"

"If I get good enough."

"Couldn't you maybe make it if you wrote cheerfuller things? That isn't my opinion. Our mother
said everything you write is morbid."

"It's too morbid for the St. Nicholas," Nick said. "They didn't say it. But they didn't like it."

"But the St. Nicholas is our favorite magazine."

"I know," said Nick. "But I'm too morbid for it already. And I'm not even grown-up."

"When is a man grown-up? When he's married?"

"No. Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you
to the penitentiary."

"I'm glad you're not grown-up then."

"They're not going to send me anywhere," Nick said. "And let's not talk morbid even if I write
morbid."

"I didn't say it was morbid."

"I know. Everybody else does, though."

"Let's be cheerful, Nickie," his sister said. "These woods make us too solemn."

"We'll be out of them pretty soon," Nick told her. "Then you'll see where we're going to live.
Are you hungry, Littless?"

"A little."

"I'll bet," Nick said. "We'll eat a couple of apples."

They were coming down a long hill when they saw sunlight ahead through the tree trunks. Now,
at the edge of the timber, there was wintergreen growing and some partridgeberries and the forest
floor began to be alive with growing things. Through the tree trunks they saw an open meadow that
sloped to where white birches grew along the stream. Below the meadow and the line of the birches
there was the dark green of a cedar swamp and far beyond the swamp there were dark blue hills.
There was an arm of the lake between the swamp and the hills. But from here they could not see it.
They only felt from the distances that it was there.

"Here's the spring," Nick said to his sister. "And here's the stones where I camped before."

"It's a beautiful, beautiful place, Nickie," his sister said. "Can we see the lake, too?"

"There's a place where we can see it. But it's better to camp here. I'll get some wood and we'll
make breakfast."

"The firestones are very old."

"It's a very old place," Nick said. "The firestones are Indian."

"How did you come to it straight through the woods with no trail and no blazes?"

"Didn't you see the direction sticks on the three ridges?"

"No."

"I'll show them to you sometime."

"Are they yours?"

"No. They're from the old days."

"Why didn't you show them to me?"

"I don't know," Nick said. "I was showing off I guess."

"Nickie, they'll never find us here."

"I hope not," Nick said.


At about the time that Nick and his sister were entering the first of the slashings the warden who
was sleeping on the screen porch of the house that stood in the shade of the trees above the lake was
wakened by the sun that, rising above the slope of open land behind the house, shone full on his face.

During the night the warden had gotten up for a drink of water and when he had come back fromthe kitch-
en he had lain down on the floor with a cushion from one of the chairs for a pillow. Now he waked,
realized where he was, and got to his feet. He had slept on his right side because he had a .38
Smith and Wesson revolver in a shoulder holster under his left armpit. Now, awake, he felt for the
gun, looked away from the sun, which hurt his eyes, and went into the kitchen where he dipped up a
drink of water from the pail beside the kitchen table. The hired girl was building a fire in the stove
and the warden said to her, "What about some breakfast?"

"No breakfast," she said. She slept in a cabin out behind the house and had come into the kitchen
a half an hour before. The sight of the warden lying on the floor of the screen porch and the nearly
empty bottle of whiskey on the table had frightened and disgusted her. Then it had made her angry.

"What do you mean, no breakfast?" the warden said, still holding the dipper.

"Just that."

"Why?"

"Nothing to eat."

"What about coffee?"

"No coffee."

"Tea?"

"No tea. No bacon. No corn meal. No salt. No pepper. No coffee. No Borden's canned cream.
No Aunt Jemima buckwheat flour. No nothing."

"What are you talking about? There was plenty to eat last night."

"There isn't now. Chipmunks must have carried it away."

The warden from down state had gotten up when he heard them talking and had come into the
kitchen.

"How do you feel this morning?" the hired girl asked him.

The warden ignored the hired girl and said, "What is it, Evans?"

"That son of a bitch came in here last night and got himself a pack load of grub."

"Don't you swear in my kitchen," the hired girl said.

"Come out here," The down-state warden said. They both went out on the screen porch and shut
the kitchen door.

"What does that mean, Evans?" The down-state man pointed at the quart of Old Green River
which had less than a quarter left in it. "How skunk-drunk were you?"

"I drank the same as you. I sat up by the table--"

"Doing what?"

"Waiting for the goddam Adams boy if he showed."

"And drinking."

"Not drinking. Then I got up and went in the kitchen and got a drink of water about half past four
and I lay down here in front of the door to take it easier."

"Why didn't you lie down in front of the kitchen door?"

"I could see him better from here if he came."

"So what happened?"

"He must have come in the kitchen, through a window maybe, and loaded that stuff."

"Bullshit."

"What were you doing?" the local warden asked.

"I was sleeping the same as you."

"Okay. Let's quit fighting about it. That doesn't do any good."

"Tell that hired girl to come out here."

The hired girl came out and the down-state man said to her, "You tell Mrs. Adams we want to
speak to her."

The hired girl did not say anything but went into the main part of the house, shutting the door after
her.

"You better pick up the full and the empty bottles," the down-state man said. "There isn't enough
of this to do any good. You want a drink of it?"

"No thanks. I've got to work today."

"I'll take one," the down-state man said. "It hasn't been shared right."

"I didn't drink any of it after you left," the local warden said doggedly.

"Why do you keep on with that bullshit?"

"It isn't bullshit."

The down-state man put the bottle down. "All right," he said to the hired girl, who had opened
and shut the door behind her. "What did she say?"

"She has a sick headache and she can't see you. She says you have a warrant. She says for you to
search the place if you want to and then go."

"What did she say about the boy?"

"She hasn't seen the boy and she doesn't know anything about him."

"Where are the other kids?"

"They're visiting at Charlevoix."

"Who are they visiting?"

"I don't know. She doesn't know. They went to the dance and they were going to stay over
Sunday with friends."

"Who was that kid that was around here yesterday?"

"I didn't see any kid around here yesterday."

"There was."

"Maybe some friend of the children asking for them. Maybe some resorter's kid. Was it a boy or
a girl?"

"A girl about eleven or twelve. Brown hair and brown eyes. Freckles. Very tanned. Wearing
overalls and a boy's shirt. Barefooted."

"Sounds like anybody," the girl said. "Did you say eleven or twelve years old?"

"Oh, shit," said the man from down state. "You can't get anything out of these mossbacks."

"If I'm a mossback what's he?" The hired girl looked at the local warden. "What's Mr. Evans?
His kids and me went to the same schoolhouse."

"Who was the girl?" Evans asked her. "Come on, Suzy. I can find out anyway."

"I wouldn't know," Suzy, the hired girl, said. "It seems like all kinds of people come by here
now. I just feel like I'm in a big city."

"You don't want to get in any trouble, do you, Suzy?" Evans said.

"No, sir."

"I mean it."

"You don't want to get in any trouble either, do you?" Suzy asked him.

Out at the barn after they were hitched up the down-state man said, "We didn't do so good, did
we?"

"He's loose now," Evans said. "He's got grub and he must have his rifle. But he's still in the
area. I can get him. Can you track?"

"No. Not really. Can you?"

"In snow," the other warden laughed.

"But we don't have to track. We have to think out where he'll be."

"He didn't load up with all that stuff to go south. He'd just take a little something and head for
the railway."

"I couldn't tell what was missing from the woodshed. But he had a big pack load from the kitchen.
He's heading in somewhere. I got to check on all his habits and his friends and where he used
to go. You block him off at Charlevoix and Petoskey and St. Ignace and Sheboygan. Where would you
go if you were him?"

"I'd go to the Upper Peninsula."

"Me, too. He's been up there, too. The ferry is the easiest place to pick him up. But there's an
awful big country between here and Sheboygan and he knows that country, too."

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

"What's to prevent him going down by East Jordan and Grand Traverse?"

"Nothing. But that isn't his country. He'll go some place that he knows."

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

"Can I ride down to the store with you? I've got to get some groceries."

"What makes you think we're going to the store?"

"Yesterday you were talking about going to see Mr. Packard."

"How are you going to get your groceries back?"

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

"All right. Climb up," the local warden said.

"Thank you, Mr. Evans," Suzy said.

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

"I couldn't say anything with that damned Suzy."

"Sure."

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

"Do you think he'll cooperate?"

"Not if you act rough."

"We'll go see him."

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

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

"Did he take all your groceries?"

"Most of them."

"You pick out what you need and make a list and I'll check it over with you."

"They're coming in now."

"You go out the back and come in the front again. I'll go and talk to them."

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

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

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

"How's Billy?" Suzy asked.

"I don't know, Suzy. I no see him four weeks now."

"Why don't you take them down to the hotel and try to sell them to the resorters?" Suzy said.

"Maybe," Mrs. Tabeshaw said. "I took once."

"You ought to take them every day."

"Long walk," Mrs. Tabeshaw said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't want to do anything bad," Nick had said.

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

"I'll pick out you."

"That's right. Don't you ever lie to me no matter what and I won't lie to you."

"I'll try," Nick had said.

"That isn't it," Mr. John said. "It has to be absolute."

"All right," Nick said. "I'll never lie to you."

"What became of your girl?"

"Somebody said she was working up at the Soo."

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

"So did I," Nick said.

"Try and not feel too bad about it."

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

"Maybe not."

"Maybe too. I'd try not to."


Mr. John was thinking about Nick when he went out to the back counter where the two men were
waiting for him. He looked them over as he stood there and he didn't like either of them. He had
always disliked the local man Evans and had no respect for him but he sensed that the downstate man
was dangerous. He had not analyzed it yet but he saw the man had very flat eyes and a mouth that was
tighter than a simple tobacco chewer's mouth needed to be. He had a real elk's tooth too on his watch
chain. It was a really fine tusk from about a five-year-old bull. It was a beautiful tusk and Mr. John
looked at it again and at the over-large bulge the man's shoulder holster made under his coat.

"Did you kill that bull with that cannon you're carrying around under your arm?" Mr. John asked
the down-state man.

The down-state man looked at Mr. John unappreciatively.

"No," he said. "I killed that bull out in the thoroughfare country in Wyoming with a Winchester
45-70."

"You're a big-gun man, eh?" Mr. John said. He looked under the counter. "Have big feet, too.
Do you need that big a cannon when you go out hunting kids?"

"What do you mean, kids," the down-state man said. He was one ahead.

"I mean the kid you're looking for."

"You said kids," the down-state man said.

Mr. John moved in. It was necessary. "What's Evans carry when he goes after a boy who's
licked his own boy twice? You must be heavily armed, Evans. That boy could lick you, too."

"Why don't you produce him and we could try it," Evans said.

"You said kids, Mr. Jackson," the down-state man said. "What made you say that?"

"Looking at you, you cock-sucker," Mr. John said. "You splayfooted bastard."

"Why don't you come out from behind that counter if you want to talk like that?" the down-state
man said.

"You're talking to the United States Postmaster," Mr. John said. "You're talking without wit-
nesses except for Turd-Face Evans. I suppose you know why they call him Turd-Face. You can
figure it out. You're a detective."

He was happy now. He had drawn the attack and he felt now as he used to feel in the old days
before he made a living from feeding and bedding resorters who rocked in rustic chairs on the front
porch of his hotel while they looked out over the lake.

"Listen, Splayfoot, I remember you very well now. Don't you remember me, Splayzey?"

The down-state man looked at him. But he did not remember him.

"I remember you in Cheyenne the day Tom Horn was hanged," Mr. John told him. "You were
one of the ones that framed him with promises from the association. Do you remember now? Who
owned the saloon in Medicine Bow when you worked for the people that gave it to Tom? Is that why
you ended up doing what you're doing? Haven't you got any memory?"

"When did you come back here?"

"Two years after they dropped Tom."

"I'll be goddamned."

"Do you remember when I gave you that bull tusk when we were packing out from Greybull?"

"Sure. Listen, Jim, I got to get this kid."

"My name's John," Mr. John said. "John Packard. Come on in back and have a drink. You want
to get to know this other character. His name is Crut-Face Evans. We used to call him Turd-Face. I
just changed it now out of kindness."

"Mr. John," said Mr. Evans. "Why don't you be friendly and cooperative."

"I just changed your name, didn't I?" said Mr. John. "What kind of cooperation do you boys
want?"

In the back of the store Mr. John took a bottle off a low shelf in the corner and handed it to the
down-state man.

"Drink up, Splayzey," he said. "You look like you need it."

They each took a drink and then Mr. John asked, "What are you after this kid for?"

"Violation of the game laws," the down-state man said.

"What particular violation?"

"He killed a buck deer the twelfth of last month."

"Two men with guns out after a boy because he killed a deer the twelfth of last month," Mr. John
said.

"There've been other violations."

"But this is the one you've got proof of."

"That's about it."

"What were the other violations?"

"Plenty."

"But you haven't got proof."

"I didn't say that," Evans said. "But we've got proof on this."

"And the date was the twelfth?"

"That's right," said Evans.

"Why don't you ask some questions instead of answering them?" the down-state man said to his part-
ner. Mr. John laughed. "Let him alone, Splayzey," he said. "I like to see that great brain work."

"How well do you know the boy?" the down-state man asked.

"Pretty well."

"Ever do any business with him?"

"He buys a little stuff here once in a while. Pays cash."

"Do you have any idea where he'd head for?"

"He's got folks in Oklahoma."

"When did you see him last?" Evans asked.

"Come on, Evans," the down-state man said. "You're wasting our time. Thanks for the drink,
Jim."

"John," Mr. John said. "What's your name, Splayzey?"

"Porter. Henry J. Porter."

"Splayzey, you're not going to do any shooting at that boy."

"I'm going to bring him in."

"You always were a murderous bastard."

"Come on, Evans," the down-state man said. "We're wasting time in here."

"You remember what I said about the shooting," Mr. John said very quietly.

"I heard you," the down-state man said.

The two men went out through the store and unhitched their light wagon and drove off. Mr. John
watched them go up the road. Evans was driving and the down-state man was talking to him.

"Henry J. Porter," Mr. John thought. "The only name I can remember for him is Splayzey. He had
such big feet he had to have made-to-order boots. Splayfoot they called him. Then Splayzey. It was
his tracks by the spring where that Nester's boy was shot that they hung Tom for. Splayzey. Splayzey
what? Maybe I never did know. Splayfoot Splayzey. Splayfoot Porter? No, it wasn't Porter."

"I'm sorry about those baskets, Mrs. Tabeshaw," he said. "It's too late in the season now and
they don't carry over. But if you'd be patient with them down at the hotel you'd get rid of them."

"You buy them, sell at the hotel," Mrs. Tabeshaw suggested.

"No. They'd buy them better from you," Mr. John told her. "You're a fine looking woman."

"Long time ago," Mrs. Tabeshaw said.

"Suzy, I'd like to see you," Mr. John said.

In the back of the store he said, "Tell me about it."

"I told you already. They came for Nickie and they waited for him to come home. His youngest
sister let him know they were waiting for him. When they were sleeping drunk Nickie got his stuff and
pulled out. He's got grub for two weeks easy and he's got his rifle and young Littless went with him."

"Why did she go?"

"I don't know, Mr. John. I guess she wanted to look after him and keep him from doing anything
bad. You know him."

"You live up by Evans's. How much do you think he knows about the country Nick uses?"

"All he can. But I don't know how much."

"Where do you think they went?"

"I wouldn't know, Mr. John. Nickie knows a lot of country."

"That man with Evans is no good. He's really bad."

"He isn't very smart."

"He's smarter than he acts. The booze has him down. But he's smart and he's bad, I used to
know him."

"What do you want me to do."

"Nothing, Suzy. Let me know about anything."

"I'll add up my stuff, Mr. John, and you can check it."

"How are you going home?"

"I can get the boat up to Henry's Dock and then get a rowboat from the cottage and row down
and get the stuff. Mr. John, what will they do with Nickie?"

"That's what I'm worried about."

"They were talking about getting him put in the reform school."

"I wish he hadn't killed that buck."

"So does he. He told me he was reading in a book about how you could crease something with a bullet
and it wouldn't do any harm. It would just stun it and Nickie wanted to try it. He said it was a damn
fool thing to do. But he wanted to try it. Then he hit the buck and broke its neck. He felt awful a-
bout it. He felt awful about trying to crease it in the first place."

"I know."

"Then it must have been Evans found the meat where he had it hung up in the old springhouse.
Anyway somebody took it."

"Who could have told Evans?"

"I think it was just that boy of his found it. He trails around after Nick all the time. You never see
him. He could have seen Nickie kill the buck. That boy's no good, Mr. John. But he sure can trail
around after anybody. He's liable to be in this room right now."

"No," said Mr. John. "But he could be listening outside."

"I think he's after Nick by now," the girl said.

"Did you hear them say anything about him at the house?"

"They never mentioned him," Suzy said.

"Evans must have left him home to do the chores. I don't think we have to worry about him till
they get home to Evans's."

"I can row up the lake to home this afternoon and get one of our kids to let me know if Evans
hires anyone to do the chores. That will mean he's turned that boy loose."

"Both the men are too old to trail anybody."

"But that boy's terrible, Mr. John, and he knows too much about Nickie and where he would go.
He'd find them and then bring the men up to them."

"Come in back of the post office," Mr. John said.

Back of the filing slits and the lockboxes and the registry book and the flat stamp books in place
along with the cancellation stamps and their pads, with the General Delivery window down, so that
Suzy felt again the glory of office that had been hers when she had helped out in the store, Mr. John
said, "Where do you think they went, Suzy?"

"I wouldn't know, true. Somewhere not too far or he wouldn't take Littless. Somewhere that's
really good or he wouldn't take her. They know about the trout for trout dinners, too, Mr. John."

"That boy?"

"Sure."

"Maybe we better do something about the Evans boy."

"I'd kill him. I'm pretty sure that's why Littless went along. So Nickie wouldn't kill him."

"You fix it up so we keep track of them."

"I will. But you have to think out something, Mr. John. Mrs. Adams, she's just broke down. She
just gets a sick headache like always. Here. You better take this letter."

"You drop it in the box," Mr. John said. "That's United States mail."

"I wanted to kill them both last night when they were asleep."

"No," Mr. John told her. "Don't talk that way and don't think that way."

"Didn't you ever want to kill anybody, Mr. John?"

"Yes. But it's wrong and it doesn't work out."

"My father killed a man."

"It didn't do him any good."

"He couldn't help it."

"You have to learn to help it," Mr. John said. "You get along now, Suzy."

"I'll see you tonight or in the morning," Suzy said. "I wish I still worked here, Mr. John."

"So do I, Suzy. But Mrs. Packard doesn't see it that way."

"I know," said Suzy. "That's the way everything is."

Nick and his sister were lying on a browse bed under a lean-to that they had built together on the
edge of the hemlock forest looking out over the slope of the hill to the cedar swamp and the blue hills
beyond.

"If it isn't comfortable, Littless, we can feather in some more balsam on that hemlock. We'll be
tired tonight and this will do. But we can fix it up really good tomorrow."

"It feels lovely," his sister said. "Lie loose and really feel it, Nickie."

"It's a pretty good camp," Nick said. "And it doesn't show. We'll only use little fires."

"Would a fire show across to the hills?"

"It might," Nick said. "A fire shows a long way at night. But I'll stake out a blanket behind it.
That way it won't show."

"Nickie, wouldn't it be nice if there wasn't anyone after us and we were just here for fun?"

"Don't start thinking that way so soon," Nick said. "We just started. Anyway if we were just
here for fun we wouldn't be here."

"I'm sorry, Nickie."

"You don't need to be," Nick told her. "Look, Littless, I'm going down to get a few trout for
supper."

"Can I come?"

"No. You stay here and rest. You had a tough day. You read a while or just be quiet."

"It was tough in the slashings, wasn't it? I thought it was really hard. Did I do all right?"

"You did wonderfully and you were wonderful making camp. But you take it easy now."

"Have we got a name for this camp?"

"Let's call it Camp Number One," Nick said.

He went down the hill toward the creek and when he had come almost to the bank he stopped and
cut himself a willow stick about four feet long and trimmed it, leaving the bark on. He could see
the clear fast water of the stream. It was narrow and deep and the banks were mossy here before
the stream entered the swamp. The dark clear water flowed fast and its rushing made bulges on the
surface. Nick did not go close to it as he knew it flowed under the banks and he did not want to
frighten a fish by walking on the bank.

There must be quite a few up here in the open now, he thought. It's pretty late in the summer.

He took a coil of silk line out of a tobacco pouch he carried in the left breast pocket of his shirt
and cut a length that was not quite as long as the willow stick and fastened it to the tip where he had
notched it lightly. Then he fastened on a hook that he took from the pouch; then holding the shank of
the hook he tested the pull of the line and the bend of the willow. He laid his rod down now and went
back to where the trunk of a small birch tree, dead for several years, lay on its side in the grove of
birches that bordered the cedars by the stream. He rolled the log over and found several earthworms
under it. They were not big. But they were red and lively and he put them in a flat round tin with holes
punched in the top that had once held Copenhagen snuff. He put some dirt over them and rolled the log
back. This was the third year he had found bait at this same place and he had always replaced the log
so that it was as he had found it.

Nobody knows how big this creek is, he thought. It picks up an awful volume of water in that bad
swamp up above. Now he looked up the creek and down it and up the hill to the hemlock forest where
the camp was. Then he walked to where he had left the pole with the line and the hook and baited the
hook carefully and spat on it for good luck. Holding the pole and the line with the baited hook in his
right hand he walked very carefully and gently toward the bank of the narrow, heavy-flowing stream.

It was so narrow here that his willow pole would have spanned it and as he came close to the bank
he heard the turbulent rush of the water. He stopped by the bank, out of sight of anything in the
stream, and took two lead shot, split down one side, out of the tobacco pouch and bent them on the
line about a foot above the hook, clinching them with his teeth.

He swung the hook on which the two worms curled out over the water and dropped it gently in so
that it sank, swirling in the fast water, and he lowered the tip of the willow pole to let the current
take the line and the baited hook under the bank. He felt the line straighten and a sudden heavy
firmness. He swung up on the pole and it bent almost double in his hand. He felt the throbbing, jerking
pull that did not yield as he pulled. Then it yielded, rising in the water with the line. There was a
heavy wildness of movement in the narrow, deep current, and the trout was torn out of the water and,
flopping in the air, sailed over Nick's shoulder and onto the bank behind him. Nick saw him shine in
the sun and then he found him where he was tumbling in the ferns. He was strong and heavy in Nick's
hands and he had a pleasant smell and Nick saw how dark his back was and how brilliant his spots
were colored and how bright the edges of his fins were. They were white on the edge with a black
line behind and then there was the lovely golden sunset color of his belly. Nick held him in his right
hand and he could just reach around him.

He's pretty big for the skillet, he thought. But I've hurt him and I have to kill him.

He knocked the trout's head sharply against the handle of his hunting knife and laid him against
the trunk of a birch tree.

"Damn," he said. "He's a perfect size for Mrs. Packard and her trout dinners. But he's pretty big
for Littless and me."

I better go upstream and find a shallow and try to get a couple of small ones, he thought. Damn,
didn't he feel like something when I horsed him out though? They can talk all they want about playing
them but people that have never horsed them out don't know what they can make you feel. What if it
only lasts that long? It's the time when there's no give at all and then they start to come and what they
do to you on the way up and into the air.

This is a strange creek, he thought. It's funny when you have to hunt for small ones.

He found his pole where he had thrown it. The hook was bent and he straightened it. Then he
picked up the heavy fish and started up the stream.

There's one shallow, pebbly part just after she comes out of the upper swamp, he thought. I can get
a couple of small ones there. Littless might not like this big one. If she gets homesick I'll have
to take her back. I wonder what those old boys are doing now? I don't think that goddam Evans kid
knows about this place. That son of a bitch. I don't think anybody fished in here but Indians. You
should have been an Indian, he thought. It would have saved you a lot of trouble.

He made his way up the creek, keeping back from the stream but once stepping onto a piece of bank
where the stream flowed underground. A big trout broke out in a violence that made a slashing
wake in the water. He was a trout so big that it hardly seemed he could turn in the stream.

"When did you come up?" Nick said when the fish had gone under the bank again further
upstream. "Boy, what a trout."

At the pebbly shallow stretch he caught two small trout. They were beautiful fish, too, firm and
hard and he gutted the three fish and tossed the guts into the stream, then washed the trout careful-
ly in the cold water and then wrapped them in a small faded sugar sack from his pocket.

It's a good thing that girl likes fish, he thought. I wish we could have picked some berries. I
know where I can always get some, though. He started back up the hill slope toward their camp. The
sun was down behind the hill and the weather was good. He looked out across the swamp and up in
the sky, above where the arm of the lake would be, he saw a fish hawk flying.

He came up to the lean-to very quietly and his sister did not hear him. She was lying on her side,
reading. Seeing her, he spoke softly not to startle her. "What did you do, you monkey?"

She turned and looked at him and smiled and shook her head.

"I cut it off," she said.

"How?"

"With a scissors. How did you think?"

"How did you see to do it?"

"I just held it out and cut it. It's easy. Do I look like a boy?"

"Like a wild boy of Borneo."

"I couldn't cut it like a Sunday-school boy. Does it look too wild?"

"No."

"It's very exciting," she said. "Now I'm your sister but I'm a boy, too. Do you think it will
change me into a boy?"

"No."

"I wish it would."

"You're crazy, Littless."

"Maybe I am. Do I look like an idiot boy?"

"A little."

"You can make it neater. You can see to cut it with a comb."

"I'll have to make it a little better but not much. Are you hungry, idiot brother?"

"Can't I just be an un-idiot brother?"

"I don't want to trade you for a brother."

"You have to now, Nickie, don't you see? It was something we had to do. I should have asked
you but I knew it was something we had to do so I did it for a surprise."

"I like it," Nick said. "The hell with everything. I like it very much."

"Thank you, Nickie, so much. I was laying trying to rest like you said. But all I could do was
imagine things to do for you. I was going to get you a chewing tobacco can full of knockout drops
from some big saloon in some place like Sheboygan."

"Who did you get them from?"

Nick was sitting down now and his sister sat on his lap and held her arms around his neck and
rubbed her cropped head against his cheek.

"I got them from the Queen of the Whores," she said. "And you know the name of the saloon?"

"No."

"The Royal Ten Dollar Gold Piece Inn and Emporium."

"What did you do there?"

"I was a whore's assistant."

"What's a whore's assistant do?"

"Oh, she carries the whore's train when she walks and opens her carriage door and shows her to
the right room. It's like a lady in waiting I guess."

"What's she say to the whore?"

"She'll say anything that comes into her mind as long as it's polite."

"Like what, brother?"

"Like, 'Well ma'am, it must be pretty tiring on a hot day like today to be just a bird in a gilded
cage.' Things like that."

"What's the whore say?"

"She says, 'Yes, indeedy. It sure is sweetness.' Because this whore I was whore's assistant to is
of humble origin."

"What kind of origin are you?"

"I'm the sister or the brother of a morbid writer and I'm delicately brought up. This makes me
intensely desirable to the main whore and to all of her circle."

"Did you get the knockout drops?"

"Of course. She said, 'Hon, take these little old drops.' 'Thank you,' I said! 'Give my regards to
your morbid brother and ask him to stop by the Emporium anytime he is at Sheboygan.'"

"Get off my lap," Nick said.

"That's just the way they talk in the Emporium," Littless said.

"I have to get supper. Aren't you hungry?"

"I'll get supper."

"No," Nick said. "You keep on talking."

"Don't you think we're going to have fun, Nickie?"

"We're having fun now."

"Do you want me to tell you about the other thing I did for you?"

"You mean before you decided to do something practical and cut off your hair?"

"This was practical enough. Wait till you hear it. Can I kiss you while you're making supper?"

"Wait a while and I'll tell you. What was it you were going to do?"

"Well, I guess I was ruined morally last night when I stole the whiskey. Do you think you can be
ruined morally by just one thing like that?"

"No. Anyway the bottle was open."

"Yes. But I took the empty pint bottle and the quart bottle with the whiskey in it out to the kitchen
and I poured the pint bottle full and some spilled on my hand and I licked it off and I thought that
probably ruined me morally."

"How'd it taste?"

"Awfully strong and funny and a little sick-making."

"That wouldn't ruin you morally."

"Well, I'm glad because if I was ruined morally how could I exercise a good influence on you?"

"I don't know," Nick said. "What was it you were going to do?"

He had his fire made and the skillet resting on it and he was laying strips of bacon in the skillet.
His sister was watching and she had her hands folded across her knees and he watched her unclasp
her hands and put one arm down and lean on it and put her legs out straight. She was practicing being
a boy.

I've got to learn to put my hands right."

"Keep them away from your head."


"I know. It would be easy if there was some boy my own age to copy."

"Copy me."

"That would be natural, wouldn't it? You won't laugh, though?"

"Maybe."

"Gee, I hope I won't start to be a girl while we're on the trip."

"Don't worry."

"We have the same shoulders and the same kind of legs."

"What was the other thing you were going to do?"

Nick was cooking the trout now. The bacon was curled brown on a fresh-cut chip of wood from the
piece of fallen timber they were using for the fire and they both smelled the trout cooking in the
bacon fat. Nick basted them and then turned them and basted them again. It was getting dark and he
had rigged a piece of canvas behind the little fire so that it would not be seen.

"What were you going to do?" he asked again. Littless leaned forward and spat toward the fire.

"How was that?"

"You missed the skillet anyway."

"Oh, it's pretty bad. I got it out of the Bible. I was going to take three spikes, one for each of
them, and drive them into the temples of those two and that boy while they slept."

"What were you going to drive them in with?"

"A muffled hammer."

"How do you muffle a hammer?"

"I'd muffle it all right."

"That nail thing's pretty rough to try."

"Well, that girl did it in the Bible and since I've seen armed men drunk and asleep and circu-
lated among them at night and stolen their whiskey why shouldn't I go the whole way, especially
if I learned it in the Bible?"

"They didn't have a muffled hammer in the Bible."

"I guess I mixed it up with muffled oars."

"Maybe. And we don't want to kill anybody. That's why you came along."

"I know. But crime comes easy for you and me, Nickie. We're different from the others. Then I
thought if I was ruined morally I might as well be useful."

"You're crazy, Littless," he said. "Listen, does tea keep you awake?"

"I don't know. I never had it at night. Only peppermint tea."

"I'll make it very weak and put canned cream in it."

"I don't need it, Nickie, if we're short."

"It will just give the milk a little taste."

They were eating now. Nick had cut them each two slices of rye bread and he soaked one slice for
each in the bacon fat in the skillet. They ate that and the trout that were crisp outside and cooked
well and very tender inside. Then they put the trout skeletons in the fire and ate the bacon made in
a sandwich with the other piece of bread, and then Littless drank the weak tea with the condensed milk
in it and Nick tapped two slivers of wood into the holes he had punched in the can.

"Did you have enough?"

"Plenty. The trout was wonderful and the bacon, too. Weren't we lucky they had rye bread?"

"Eat an apple," he said. "Maybe we'll have something good tomorrow. Maybe I should have
made a bigger supper, Littless."

"No. I had plenty."

"You're sure you're not hungry?"

"No. I'm full. I've got some chocolate if you'd like some."

"Where'd you get it?"

"From my savior."

"Where?"

"My savior. Where I save everything."

"Oh."

"This is fresh. Some is the hard kind from the kitchen. We can start on that and save the other for
sometime special. Look, my savior's got a drawstring like a tobacco pouch. We can use it for nuggets
and things like that. Do you think we'll get out west, Nickie, on this trip?"

"I haven't got it figured yet."

"I'd like to get my savior packed full of nuggets worth sixteen dollars an ounce."

Nick cleaned up the skillet and put the pack in at the head of the leanto. One blanket was spread
over the browse bed and he put the other one on it and tucked it under on Littless's side. He cleaned
out the two-quart tin pail he'd made tea in and filled it with cold water from the spring. When he
came back from the spring his sister was in the bed asleep, her head on the pillow she had made by
rolling her blue jeans around her moccasins. He kissed her but she did not wake and he put on his old
Mackinaw coat and felt in the packsack until he found the pint bottle of whiskey.

He opened it and smelled it and it smelled very good. He dipped a half a cup of water out of the
small pail he had brought from the spring and poured a little of the whiskey in it. Then he sat and
sipped this very slowly, letting it stay under his tongue before he brought it slowly back over his
tongue and swallowed it.

He watched the small coals of the fire brighten with the light evening breeze and he tasted the
whiskey and cold water and looked at the coals and thought. Then he finished the cup, dipped up some
cold water and drank it and went to bed. The rifle was under his left leg and his head was on the good
hard pillow his moccasins and the rolled trousers made and he pulled his side of the blanket tight
around him and said his prayers and went to sleep.

In the night he was cold and he spread his Mackinaw coat over his sister and rolled his back over
closer to her so that there was more of his side of the blanket under him. He felt for the gun and
tucked it under his leg again. The air was cold and sharp to breathe and he smelled the cut hemlock
and balsam boughs. He had not realized how tired he was until the cold had waked him. Now he lay
comfortable again feeling the warmth of his sister's body against his back and he thought, I must take
good care of her and keep her happy and get her back safely. He listened to her breathing and to the
quiet of the night and then he was asleep again.

It was just light enough to see the far hills beyond the swamp when he woke. He lay quietly and
stretched the stiffness from his body. Then he sat up and pulled on his khaki trousers and put on his
moccasins. He watched his sister sleeping with the collar of the warm Mackinaw coat under her chin
and her high cheekbones and brown freckled skin light rose under the brown, her chopped-off hair
showing the beautiful line of her head and emphasizing her straight nose and her close-set ears. He
wished he could draw her face and he watched the way her long lashes lay on her cheeks.

She looks like a small wild animal, he thought, and she sleeps like one. How would you say her head
looks, he thought. I guess the nearest is that it looks as though someone had cut her hair off on a
wooden block with an ax. It has a sort of a carved look. He loved his sister very much and she loved
him too much. But, he thought, I guess those things straighten out. At least I hope so.

There's no sense waking anyone up, he thought. She must have been really tired if I'm as tired as
I am. If we are all right here we are doing just what we should do: staying out of sight until things
quiet down and that down-state man pulls out. I've got to feed her better, though. It's a shame I
couldn't have outfitted really good.

We've got a lot of things, though. The pack was heavy enough. But what we want to get today is
berries. I better get a partridge or a couple if I can. We can get good mushrooms, too. We'll have to
be careful about the bacon but we won't need it with the shortening. Maybe I fed her too light last
night. She's used to lots of milk, too, and sweet things. Don't worry about it. We'll feed good. It's a
good thing she likes trout. They were really good. Don't worry about her. She'll eat wonderfully. But,
Nick, boy, you certainly didn't feed her too much yesterday. Better to let her sleep than to wake her
up now. There's plenty for you to do.

He started to get some things out of the pack very carefully and his sister smiled in her sleep.
The brown skin came taut over her cheekbones when she smiled and the undercolor showed. She did
not wake and he started to prepare to make breakfast and get the fire ready. There was plenty of wood
cut and he built a very small fire and made tea while he waited to start breakfast. He drank his tea
straight and ate three dried apricots and he tried to read in Lorna Doone. But he had read it and it
did not have magic any more and he knew it was a loss on this trip.

Late in the afternoon, when they had made camp, he had put some prunes in a tin pail to soak and
he put them on the fire now to stew. In the pack he found the prepared buckwheat flour and he put it
out with an enameled saucepan and a tin cup to mix the flour with water to make a batter. He had the
tin of vegetable shortening and he cut a piece off the top of an empty flour sack and wrapped it around
a cut stick and tied it tight with a piece of fish line. Littless had brought four old flour sacks and
he was proud of her.

He mixed the batter and put the skillet on the fire, greasing it with the shortening which he spread
with the cloth on the stick. First it made the skillet shine darkly, then it sizzled and spat and he
greased again and poured the batter smoothly and watched it bubble and then start to firm around the
edges. He watched the rising and the forming of the texture and the gray color of the cake. He loosened
it from the pan with a fresh clean chip and flipped it and caught it, the beautiful browned side up, the
other sizzling. He could feel its weight but see it growing in buoyancy in the skillet.

"Good morning," his sister said. "Did I sleep awfully late?"

"No, devil."

She stood up with her shirt hanging down over her brown legs.

"You've done everything."

"No. I just started the cakes."

"Doesn't that one smell wonderful? I'll go to the spring and wash and come and help."

"Don't wash in the spring."

"I'm not white man," she said. She was gone behind the lean-to.

"Where did you leave the soap?" she asked.

"It's by the spring. There's an empty lard bucket. Bring the butter, will you. It's in the spring."

"I'll be right back."

There was a half a pound of butter and she brought it wrapped in the oiled paper in the empty
lard bucket.

They ate the buckwheat cakes with butter and Log Cabin syrup out of a tin Log Cabin can. The
top of the chimney unscrewed and the syrup poured from the chimney. They were both very hungry
and the cakes were delicious with the butter melting on them and running down into the cut places
with the syrup. They ate the prunes out of the tin cups and drank the juice. Then they drank tea
from the same cups.

"Prunes taste like a celebration," Littless said. "Think of that. How did you sleep, Nickie?"

"Good."

"Thank you for putting the Mackinaw on me. Wasn't it a lovely night, though?"

"Yes. Did you sleep all night?"

"I'm still asleep. Nickie, can we stay here always?"

"I don't think so. You'd grow up and have to get married."

"I'm going to get married to you anyway. I want to be your common-law wife. I read about it in
the paper."

"That's where you read about the Unwritten Law."

"Sure. I'm going to be your common-law wife under the Unwritten Law. Can't I, Nickie?"

"No."

"I will. I'll surprise you. All you have to do is live a certain time as man and wife. I'll get them
to count this time now. It's just like homesteading."

"I won't let you file."

"You can't help yourself. That's the Unwritten Law. I've thought it out lots of times. I'll get
cards printed Mrs. Nick Adams, Cross Village, Michigan--common-law wife. I'll hand these out to a
few people openly each year until the time's up."

"I don't think it would work."

"I've got another scheme. We'll have a couple of children while I'm a minor. Then you have to
marry me under the Unwritten Law."

"That's not the Unwritten Law."

"I get mixed up on it."

"Anyway, nobody knows yet if it works."

"It must," she said. "Mr. Thaw is counting on it."

"Mr. Thaw might make a mistake."

"Why Nickie, Mr. Thaw practically invented the Unwritten Law."

"I thought it was his lawyer."

"Well, Mr. Thaw put in the action anyway."

"I don't like Mr. Thaw," Nick Adams said.

"That's good. There's things about him I don't like either. But he certainly made the paper more
interesting reading, didn't he?"

"He gives the others something new to hate."

"They hate Mr. Stanford White, too."

"I think they're jealous of both of them."

"I believe that's true, Nickie. Just like they're jealous of us."

"Think anybody is jealous of us now?"

"Not right now maybe. Our mother will think we're fugitives from justice steeped in sin and
iniquity. It's a good thing she doesn't know I got you that whiskey."

"I tried it last night. It's very good."

"Oh, I'm glad. That's the first whiskey I ever stole anywhere. Isn't it wonderful that it's good? I
didn't think anything about those people could be good."

"I've got to think about them too much. Let's not talk about them," Nick said.

"All right. What are we going to do today?"

"What would you like to do?"

"I'd like to go to Mr. John's store and get everything we need."

"We can't do that."

"I know it. What do you plan to really do?"

"We ought to get some berries and I ought to get a partridge or some partridges. We've always
got trout. But I don't want you to get tired of trout."

"Were you ever tired of trout?"

"No. But they say people get tired of them."

"I wouldn't get tired of them," Littless said. "You get tired of pike right away. But you never get
tired of trout nor of perch. I know, Nickie. True."

"You don't get tired of walleyed pike either," Nick said. "Only of shovelnose. Boy, you sure get
tired of them."

"I don't like the pitchfork bones," his sister said. "It's a fish that surfeits you."

"We'll clean up here and I'll find a place to cache the shells and we'll make a trip for berries
and try to get some birds."

"I'll bring two lard pails and a couple of the sacks," his sister said.

"Littless," Nick said. "You remember about going to the bathroom, will you please?"

"Of course."

"That's important."

"I know it. You remember, too."

"I will."

Nick went back into the timber and buried the carton of .22 long-rifles and the loose boxes of .22
shorts under the brown-needled floor at the base of a big hemlock. He put back the packed needles he
had cut with his knife and made a small cut as far up as he could reach on the heavy bark of the tree.
He took a bearing on the tree and then came out onto the hillside and walked down to the lean-to.

It was a lovely morning now. The sky was high and clear blue and no clouds had come yet. Nick
was happy with his sister and he thought, no matter how this thing comes out we might as well have a
good happy time. He had already learned there was only one day at a time and that it was always the
day you were in. It would be today until it was tonight and tomorrow would be today again. This was
the main thing he had learned so far.

Today was a good day and coming down to the camp with his rifle he was happy although their trouble
was like a fishhook caught in his pocket that pricked him occasionally as he walked. They left the
pack inside the lean-to. There were great odds against a bear bothering it in the daytime because
any bear would be down below feeding on berries around the swamp. But Nick buried the bottle of
whiskey up behind the spring. Littless was not back yet and Nick sat down on the log of the fallen tree
they were using for firewood and checked his rifle. They were going after partridges so he pulled out
the tube of the magazine and poured the long-rifle cartridges into his hand and then put them into a
chamois pouch and filled the magazine with .22 shorts. They made less noise and would not tear the
meat up if he could not get head shots.

He was all ready now and wanted to start. Where's that girl anyway, he thought. Then he thought,
don't get excited. You told her to take her time. Don't get nervous. But he was nervous and it made
him angry at himself.

"Here I am," his sister said. "I'm sorry that I took so long. I went too far away, I guess."

"You're fine," Nick said. "Let's go. You have the pails?"

"Uh huh, and covers, too."

They started down across the hill to the creek. Nick looked carefully up the stream and along the
hillside. His sister watched him. She had the pails in one of the sacks and carried it slung over her
shoulder by the other sack.

"Aren't you taking a pole, Nickie?" she asked him.

"No. I'll cut one if we fish."

He moved ahead of his sister, holding the rifle in one hand, keeping a little way away from the
stream. He was hunting now.

"It's a strange creek," his sister said.

"It's the biggest small stream I've ever known," Nick told her.

"It's deep and scary for a little stream."

"It keeps having new springs," Nick said. "And it digs under the bank and it digs down. It's
awful cold water, Littless. Feel it."

"Gee," she said. It was numbing cold.

"The sun warms it a little," Nick said. "But not much. We'll hunt along easy. There's a berry
patch down below."

They went along down the creek. Nick was studying the banks. He had seen a mink's track and shown
it to his sister and they had seen tiny rubycrowned kinglets that were hunting insects and let the
boy and girl come close as they moved sharply and delicately in the cedars. They had seen cedar
waxwings so calm and gentle and distinguished moving in their lovely elegance with the magic wax
touches on their wing coverts and their tails, and Littless had said, "They're the most beautiful,
Nickie. There couldn't be more simply beautiful birds."

"They're built like your face," he said.

"No, Nickie. Don't make fun. Cedar waxwings make me so proud and happy that I cry."

"When they wheel and light and then move so proud and friendly and gently," Nick said.

They had gone on and suddenly Nick had raised the rifle and shot before his sister could see
what he was looking at. Then she heard the sound of a big bird tossing and beating its wings on
the ground. She saw Nick pumping the gun and shoot twice more and each time she heard another
pounding of wings in the willow brush. Then there was the whirring noise of wings as large brown
birds burst out of the willows and one bird flew only a little way and lit in the willows and with
its crested head on one side looked down, bending the collar of feathers on his neck where the other
birds were still thumping. The bird looking down from the red willow brush was beautiful, plump,
heavy and looked so stupid with his head turned down and as Nick raised his rifle slowly, his sister
whispered, "No, Nickie. Please no. We've got plenty."

"All right," Nick said. "You want to take him?"

"No, Nickie. No."

Nick went forward into the willows and picked up the three grouse and batted their heads against
the butt of the rifle stock and laid them out on the moss. His sister felt them, warm and fullbreasted
and beautifully feathered.

"Wait till we eat them," Nick said. He was very happy.

"I'm sorry for them now," his sister said. "They were enjoying the morning just like we were."

She looked up at the grouse still in the tree.

"It does look a little silly still staring down," she said.

"This time of year the Indians call them fool hens. After they've been hunted they get smart.

They're not the real fool hens. Those never get smart. They're willow grouse. These are ruffled
grouse."

"I hope we'll get smart," his sister said. "Tell him to go away, Nickie."

"You tell him."

"Go away, partridge."

The grouse did not move.

Nick raised the rifle and the grouse looked at him. Nick knew he could not shoot the bird without
making his sister sad and he made a noise blowing out so his tongue rattled and lips shook like a
grouse bursting from cover and the bird looked at him fascinated.

"We better not annoy him," Nick said.

"I'm sorry, Nickie," his sister said. "He is stupid."

"Wait till we eat them," Nick told her. "You'll see why we hunt them."

"Are they out of season, too?"

"Sure. But they are full grown and nobody but us would ever hunt them. I kill plenty of great
horned owls and a great horned owl will kill a partridge every day if he can. They hunt all the time
and they kill all the good birds."

"He certainly could kill that one easy," his sister said. "I don't feel bad any more. Do you want a
bag to carry them in?"

"I'll draw them and then pack them in the bag with some ferns. It isn't so far to the berries now."

They sat against one of the cedars and Nick opened the birds and took out their warm entrails and
feeling the inside of the birds hot on his right hand he found the edible parts of the giblets and
cleaned them and then washed them in the stream. When the birds were cleaned he smoothed their
feathers and wrapped them in ferns and put them in the flour sack. He tied the mouth of the flour sack
and two corners with a piece of fish line and slung it over his shoulder and then went back to the
stream and dropped the entrails in and tossed some bright pieces of lung in to see the trout rise in
the rapid heavy flow of the water.

"They'd make good bait but we don't need bait now," he said. "Our trout are all in the stream
and we'll take them when we need them."

"This stream would make us rich if it was near home," his sister said.

"It would be fished out then. This is the last really wild stream there is except in another awful
country to get to beyond the foot of the lake. I never brought anybody here to fish."

"Who ever fishes it?"

"Nobody I know."

"Is it a virgin stream?"

"No. Indians fish it. But they're gone now since they quit cutting hemlock bark and the camps
closed down."

"Does the Evans boy know?"

"Not him," Nick said. But then he thought about it and it made him feel sick. He could see the
Evans boy.

"What're you thinking, Nickie?"

"I wasn't thinking."

"You were thinking. You tell me. We're partners."

"He might know," Nick said. "Goddam it. He might know."

"But you don't know that he knows?"

"No. That's the trouble. If I did I'd get out."

"Maybe he's back at camp now," his sister said.

"Don't talk that way. Do you want to bring him?"

"No," she said. "Please, Nickie, I'm sorry I brought it up."

"I'm not," Nick said. "I'm grateful. I knew it anyway. Only I'd stopped thinking about it. I have
to think about things now the rest of my life."

"You always thought about things."

"Not like this."

"Let's go down and get the berries anyway," Littless said. "There isn't anything we can do now
to help, is there?"

"No," Nick said. "We'll pick the berries and get back to camp."

But Nick was trying to accept it now and think his way all the way through it. He must not get in
a panic about it. Nothing had changed. Things were just as they were when he had decided to come
here and let things blow over. The Evans boy could have followed him here before. But it was very
unlikely. He could have followed him one time when he had gone in from the road through the Hodges'
place, but it was doubtful. Nobody had been fishing the stream. He could be sure of that. But the
Evans boy did not care about fishing.

"All that bastard cares about is trailing me," he said.

"I know it, Nickie."

"This is three times he's made trouble."

"I know it, Nickie. But don't you kill him."

That's why she came along, Nick thought. That's why she's here. I can't do it while she's along.
"I know I mustn't kill him," he said. "There's nothing we can do now. Let's not talk about it."
"As long as you don't kill him," his sister said. "There's nothing we can't get out of and nothing
that won't blow over."

"Let's get back to camp," Nick said.

"Without the berries?"

"We'll get the berries another day."

"Are you nervous, Nickie?"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"But what good will we be back at camp?"

"We'll know quicker."

"Can't we just go along the way we were going?"

"Not now. I'm not scared, Littless. And don't you be scared. But something's made me nervous."

Nick had cut up away from the stream into the edge of the timber and they were walking in the
shade of the trees. They would come onto the camp now from above.

From the timber they approached the camp carefully. Nick went ahead with the rifle. The camp
had not been visited.

"You stay here," Nick told his sister. "I'm going to have a look beyond." He left the sack with
the birds and the berry pails with Littless and went well upstream. As soon as he was out of sight
of his sister he changed the .22 shorts in the rifle for the long-rifles. I won't kill him, he
thought, but anyway it's the right thing to do. He made a careful search of the country. He saw
no sign of anyone and he went down to the stream and then downstream and back up to the camp.

"I'm sorry I was nervous, Littless," he said. "We might as well have a good lunch and then we
won't have to worry about a fire showing at night."

"I'm worried now, too," she said.

"Don't you be worried. It's just like it was before."

"But he drove us back from getting the berries without him even being here."

"I know. But he's not been here. Maybe he's never even been to this creek ever. Maybe we'll
never see him again."

"He makes me scared, Nickie, worse when he's not here than when he's here."

"I know. But there isn't any use being scared."

"What are we going to do?"

"Well, we better wait to cook until night."

"Why did you change?"

"He won't be around here at night. He can't come through the swamp in the dark. We don't have
to worry about him early in the mornings and late in the evening nor in the dark. We'll have to be like
the deer and only be out then. We'll lay up in the daytime."

"Maybe he'll never come."

"Sure. Maybe."

"But I can stay though, can't I?"

"I ought to get you home."

"No. Please, Nickie. Who's going to keep you from killing him then?"

"Listen, Littless, don't ever talk about killing and remember I never talked about killing. There
isn't any killing nor ever going to be any."

"True?"

"True."

"I'm so glad."

"Don't even be that. Nobody ever talked about it."

"All right. I never thought about it nor spoke about it."

"Me either."

"Of course you didn't."

"I never even thought about it."

No, he thought. You never even thought about it. Only all day and all night. But you mustn't think
about it in front of her because she can feel it because she is your sister and you love each other.

"Are you hungry, Littless?"

"Not really."

"Eat some of the hard chocolate and I'll get some fresh water from the spring."

"I don't have to have anything."

They looked across to where the big white clouds of the eleven o'clock breeze were coming up
over the blue hills beyond the swamp. The sky was a high clear blue and the clouds came up white
and detached themselves from behind the hills and moved high in the sky as the breeze freshened and
the shadows of the clouds moved over the swamp and across the hillside. The wind blew in the trees
now and was cool as they lay in the shade. The water from the spring was cold and fresh in the tin
pail and the chocolate was not quite bitter but was hard and crunched as they chewed it.

"It's as good as the water in the spring where we were when we first saw them," his sister said.

"It tastes even better after the chocolate."

"We can cook if you're hungry."

"I'm not if you're not."

"I'm always hungry. I was a fool not to go on and get the berries."

"No. You came back to find out."

"Look, Littless. I know a good place back by the slashing we came through where we can get ber-
ries. I'll cache everything and we can go in there through the timber all the way and pick a couple
of pails full and then we'll have them ahead for tomorrow. It isn't a bad walk."

"All right. But I'm fine."

"Aren't you hungry?"

"No. Not at all now after the chocolate. I'd love to just stay and read. We had a nice walk when
we were hunting."

"All right," Nick said. "Are you tired from yesterday?"

"Maybe a little."

"We'll take it easy. I'll read Wuthering Heights."

"Is it too old to read out loud to me?"

"No."

"Will you read it?"

"Sure."



An African Story



HE WAS WAITING FOR THE MOON TO RISE and he felt Kibo's hair rise under his hand as he stroked him
to be quiet and they both watched and listened as the moon came up and gave them shadows. His arm
was around the dog's neck now and he could feel him shivering. All of the night sounds had stop-
ped. They did not hear the elephant and David did not see him until the dog turned his head and
seemed to settle into David. Then the elephant's shadow covered them and he moved past making no
noise at all and they smelled him in the light wind that came down from the mountain. He smelled
strong but old and sour and when he was past David saw that the left tusk was so long it seemed
to reach the ground.

They waited but no other elephants came by and then David and the dog started off running in the
moonlight. The dog kept close behind him and when David stopped the dog pressed his muzzle into
the back of his knee.

David had to see the bull again and they came up on him at the edge of the forest. He was tra-
veling toward the mountain and slowly moving into the steady night breeze. David came close enough
to see him cut off the moon again and to smell the sour oldness but he could not see the right
tusk. He was afraid to work closer with the dog and he took him back with the wind and pushed him
down against the base of a tree and tried to make him understand. He thought the dog would stay and
he did but when David moved up toward the bulk of the elephant again he felt the wet muzzle against
the hollow of his knee.

The two of them followed the elephant until he came to an opening in the trees. He stood there
moving his huge ears. His bulk was in the shadow but the moonlight would be on his head. David
reached behind him and closed the dog's jaws gently with his hand and then moved softly and un-
breathing to his right along the edge of the night breeze, feeling it on his cheek, edging with
it, never letting it get between him and the bulk until he could see the elephant's head and the
great ears slowly moving. The right tusk was as thick as his own thigh and it curved down almost
to the ground.

He and Kibo moved back, the wind on his neck now, and they backtracked out of the forest and into
the open park country. The dog was ahead of him now and he stopped where David had left the two
hunting spears by the trail when they had followed the elephant. He swung them over his shoulder
in their thong and leather cup harness and, with his best spear that he had kept with him all the
time in his hand, they started on the trail for the shamba. The moon was high now and he wondered
why there was no drumming from the shamba. Something was strange if his father was there and there
was no drumming.

David had felt the tiredness as soon as they had picked up the trail again.

For a long time he had been fresher and in better shape than the two men and impatient with their
slow trailing and the regular halts his father made each hour on the hour. He could have moved ahead
much faster than Juma and his father but when he started to tire they were the same as ever and at noon
they took only the usual five-minute rest and he had seen that Juma was increasing the pace a little.
Perhaps he wasn't. Perhaps it had only seemed faster but the elephant dung was fresher now although
it was not warm yet to the touch. Juma gave him the rifle to carry after they came upon the last pile of
dung but after an hour he looked at him and took it back. They had been climbing steadily across a
slope of the mountain but now the trail went down and from a gap in the forest he saw broken country
ahead. "Here's where the tough part starts, Davey," his father said.

It was then he knew that he should have been sent back to the shamba once he had put them on the
trail. Juma had known it for a long time. His father knew it now and there was nothing to be done.
It was another of his mistakes and there was nothing to do now except gamble.

David looked down at the big flattened circle of the print of the elephant's foot and saw where
the bracken had been pressed down and where a broken stem of a weed was drying. Juma picked it up
and looked at the sun. Juma handed the broken weed to David's father and his father rolled it in his
fingers. David noticed the white flowers that were drooped and dying. But they still had not dried in
the sun nor shed their petals.

"It's going to be a bitch," his father said. "Let's get going."

Late in the afternoon they were still tracking through the broken country. He had been sleepy now
for a long time and as he watched the two men he knew that sleepiness was his real enemy and he
followed their pace and tried to move through and out of the sleep that deadened him. The two men
relieved each other tracking on the hour and the one who was in second place looked back at him at
regular intervals to check if he was with them. When they made a dry camp at dark in the forest he
went to sleep as soon as he sat down and woke with Juma holding his moccasins and feeling his bare
feet for blisters. His father had spread his coat over him and was sitting by him with a piece of
cold cooked meat and two biscuits. He offered him a water bottle with cold tea.

"He'll have to feed, Davey," his father said. "Your feet are in good shape. They're as sound as
Juma's. Eat this slowly and drink some tea and go to sleep again. We haven't any problems."

"I'm sorry I was so sleepy."

"You and Kibo hunted and traveled all last night. Why shouldn't you be sleepy? You can have a
little more meat if you want it."

"I'm not hungry."

"Good. We're good for three days. We'll hit water again tomorrow. Plenty of creeks come off
the mountain."

"Where's he going?"

"Juma thinks he knows."

"Isn't it bad?"

"Not too bad, Davey."

"I'm going back to sleep," David had said. "I don't need your coat."

"Juma and I are all right," his father said. "I always sleep warm you know."

David was asleep even before his father said good night. Then he woke once with the moonlight on his
face and he thought of the elephant with his great ears moving as he stood in the forest, his head
hung down with the weight of the tusks. David thought then in the night that the hollow way he felt
as he remembered him was from waking hungry. But it was not and he found that out in the next three
days.

The next day was very bad because long before noon he knew that it was not just the need for sleep
that made the difference between a boy and men. For the first three hours he was fresher than they
were and he asked Juma for the .303 rifle to carry but Juma shook his head. He did not smile and
he had always been David's best friend and had taught him to hunt. He offered it to me yesterday,
David thought, and I'm in better shape today than I was then. He was, too, but by ten o'clock he knew
the day would be as bad or worse than the day before.

It was as silly for him to think that he could trail with his father as to think he could fight with
him. He knew too that it was not just that they were men. They were professional hunters and he knew
now that was why Juma would not even waste a smile. They knew everything the elephant had done,
pointed out the signs of it to each other without speaking, and when the tracking became difficult his
father always yielded to Juma. When they stopped to fill the water bottles at a stream his father said,
"Just last the day out, Davey." Then when they were past the broken country and climbing toward the
forest the tracks of the elephant turned off to the right onto an old elephant trail. He saw his father
and Juma talking and when he got up to them Juma was looking back over the way they had come and then
at a far distant stony island of hills in the dry country and seemed to be taking a bearing of this a-
gainst the peaks of three far blue hills on the horizon.

"Juma knows where he's going now," his father explained. "He thought he knew before but then
he dropped down into this stuff." He looked back at the country they had come through all day.

"Where he's headed now is pretty good going but we'll have to climb."

They climbed until it was dark and then made another dry camp. David killed two spur fowl with his
slingshot out of a small flock that had walked across the trail just before the sunset. The birds
had come into the old elephant trail to dust, walking neatly and plumply, and when the pebble broke
the back of one and the bird began to jerk and toss with its wings thumping, another bird ran forward
to peck at it and David pouched another pebble and pulled it back and sent it against the ribs of the
second bird. As he ran forward to put his hand on it the other birds whirred off. Juma had looked back
and smiled this time and David picked up the two birds, warm and plump and smoothly feathered, and
knocked their heads against the handle of his hunting knife.

Now where they were camped for the night his father said, "I've never seen that type of francolin
quite so high. You did very well to get a double on them."

Juma cooked the birds spitted on a stick over the coals of a very small fire. His father drank a
whiskey and water from the cup top on his flask as they lay and watched Juma cook. Afterward Juma
gave them each a breast with the heart in it and ate the two necks and backs and the legs himself.

"It makes a great difference, Davey," his father said. "We're very well off on rations now."

"How far are we behind him?" David asked.

"We're quite close," his father said. "It depends on whether he travels when the moon comes up.

It's an hour later tonight and two hours later than when you found him."

"Why does Juma think he knows where he's going?"

"He wounded him and killed his askari not too far from here."

"When?"

"Five years ago, he says. That may mean anytime. When you were still a toto he says."

"Has he been alone since then?"

"He says so. He hasn't seen him. Only heard of him."

"How big does he say he is?"

"Close to two hundred. Bigger than anything I've ever seen. He says there's only been one
greater elephant and he came from near here too."

"I'd better get to sleep," David said. "I hope I'll be better tomorrow."

"You were splendid today," his father said. "I was very proud of you. So was Juma."

In the night when he woke after the moon was up he was sure they were not proud of him except per-
haps for his dexterity in killing the two birds. He had found the elephant at night and followed him
to see that he had both of his tusks and then returned to find the two men and put them on the trail.
David knew they were proud of that. But once the deadly following started he was useless to them
and a danger to their success just as Kibo had been to him when he had gone up close to the elephant
in the night, and he knew they must each have hated themselves for not having sent him back when
there was time. The tusks of the elephant weighed two hundred pounds apiece. Ever since these tusks
had grown beyond their normal size the elephant had been hunted for them and now the three of them
would kill him for them.

David was sure that they would kill him now because he, David, had lasted through the day and
kept up after the pace had destroyed him by noon. So they probably were proud of him doing that. But
he had brought nothing useful to the hunt and they would have been far better off without him. Many
times during the day he had wished that he had never betrayed the elephant and in the afternoon he
remembered wishing that he had never seen him. Awake in the moonlight he knew that was not true.

The next morning they were following the spoor of the elephant on an old elephant trail that was
a hard-packed worn road through the forest. It looked as though elephants had traveled it ever since
the lava had cooled from the mountain and the trees had first grown tall and close.

Juma was very confident and they moved fast. Both his father and Juma seemed very sure of them-
selves and the going on the elephant road was so easy that Juma gave him the .303 to carry as they
went on through the broken light of the forest. Then they lost the trail in smoking piles of fresh
dung and the flat round prints of a herd of elephants that had come onto the elephant road from the
heavy forest on the left of the trail. Juma had taken the .303 from David angrily. It was afternoon
before they worked up to the herd and around it, seeing the gray bulks through the trees and the
movement of the big ears and the searching trunks coiling and uncoiling, hearing the crash of branches
broken, the crash of trees pushed over, the rumbling in the bellies of the elephants and the slap and
thud of the dung falling.

They had found the trail of the old bull finally and when it turned off onto a smaller elephant
road Juma had looked at David's father and grinned showing his filed teeth and his father had nodded
his head. They looked as though they had a dirty secret, just as they had looked when he had found
them that night at the shamba.

It was not very long before they came on the secret. It was off to the right in the forest and the
tracks of the old bull led to it. It was a skull as high as David's chest and white from the sun and
the rain. There was a deep depression in the forehead and a ridge ran from between the bare white eye
sockets and flared out in empty broken holes where the tusks had been chopped away.

Juma pointed out where the great elephant they were trailing had stood while he looked down at the
skull and where his trunk had moved it a little way from the place it had rested on the ground and
where the points of his tusks had touched the ground beside it. He showed David the single hole in the
big depression in the white bone of the forehead and then the four holes close together in the bone
around the earhole. He grinned at David and at his father and took a .303 solid from his pocket and
fitted the nose into the hole in the bone of the forehead.

"Here is where Juma wounded the big bull," his father said. "This was his askari. His friend, real-
ly, because he was a big bull too. He charged and Juma knocked him down and finished him in the
ear."

Juma was pointing out the scattered bones and how the big bull had walked among them. Juma
and David's father were both very pleased with what they had found.

"How long do you suppose he and his friend had been together?" David asked his father.

"I haven't the faintest idea," his father said. "Ask Juma."

"You ask him, please."

His father and Juma spoke together and Juma had looked at David and laughed.

"Probably four or five times your life, he says," David's father told him. "He doesn't know or
care really."

I care, David thought. I saw him in the moonlight and he was alone but I had Kibo. Kibo has me
too. The bull wasn't doing any harm and now we've tracked him to where he came to see his dead
friend and now we're going to kill him. It's my fault. I betrayed him.

Now Juma had worked out the trail and motioned to his father and they started on.

My father doesn't need to kill elephants to live, David thought. Juma would not have found him if
I had not seen him. He had his chance at him and all he did was wound him and kill his friend. Kibo
and I found him and I never should have told them and I should have kept him secret and had him al-
ways and let them stay drunk at the beer shamba. Juma was so drunk we could not wake him. I'm going
to keep everything a secret always. I'll never tell them anything again. If they kill him Juma will
drink his share of the ivory or just buy himself another goddamn wife. Why didn't you help the
elephant when you could? All you had to do was not go on the second day. No, that wouldn't have
stopped them. Juma would have gone on. You never should have told them. Never, never tell them.
Try and remember that. Never tell anyone anything ever. Never tell anyone anything again.

His father waited for him to come up and said very gently, "He rested here. He's not traveling as
he was. We'll be up on him anytime now."

"Fuck elephant hunting," David had said very quietly.

"What's that?" his father asked.

"Fuck elephant hunting," David said softly.

"Be careful you don't fuck it up," his father had said to him and looked at him flatly.

That's one thing, David had thought. He's not stupid. He knows all about it now and he will
never trust me again. That's good. I don't want him to because I'll never ever tell him or
anybody anything again, never anything again. Never ever never.

In the morning he was on the far slope of the mountain again. The elephant was no longer trav-
eling as he had been but was moving aimlessly now, feeding occasionally and David had known
they were getting close to him.

He tried to remember how he had felt. He had no love for the elephant yet. He must remember that.
He had only a sorrow that had come from his own tiredness that had brought an understanding of
age. Through being too young, he had learned how it must be to be too old.

He was lonesome for Kibo and thinking of how Juma killing the elephant's friend had turned him
against Juma and made the elephant his brother. He knew then how much it meant to him to have seen
the elephant in the moonlight and to have followed him and come close to him in the clearing so that
he had seen the great tusks. But he did not know that nothing would ever be as good as that again.
Now he knew they would kill the elephant and there was nothing he could do about it. He had betra-
yed the elephant when he had gone back to tell them at the shamba. They would kill me and they
would kill Kibo if we had ivory, he had thought, and known it was untrue.

Probably the elephant is going to find where he was born and they'll kill him there. That's all
they'd need to make it perfect. They'd like to have killed him where they killed his friend. That
would be a big joke. That would have pleased them. The goddamned friend killers.

They had moved to the edge of thick cover now and the elephant was close ahead. David could
smell him and they could all hear him pulling down branches and the snapping that they made. His
father put his hand on David's shoulder to move him back and have him wait outside and then he took
a big pinch of ashes from the pouch in his pocket and tossed it in the air. The ash barely slanted
toward them as it fell and his father nodded at Juma and bent down to follow him into the thick
cover. David watched their backs and their asses go in and out of sight. He could not hear them move.

David had stood still and listened to the elephant feeding. He could smell him as strongly as he
had the night in the moonlight when he had worked up close to him and had seen his wonderful tusks.
Then as he stood there it was silent and he could not smell the elephant. Then there had been a high
squealing and smashing and a shot by the .303, then the heavy rocking double report of his father's
.450, then the smashing and crashing had gone on going steadily away and he had gone into the heavy
growth and found Juma shaken and bleeding from his forehead all down over his face and his father
white and angry.

"He went for Juma and knocked him over," his father had said. "Juma hit him in the head."

"Where did you hit him?"

"Where I fucking well could," his father had said. "Get on the blood spoor."

There was plenty of blood. One stream as high as David's head that had squirted bright on trunks
and leaves and vines and another much lower that was dark and foul with stomach content.

"Lung and gut shot," his father said. "We'll find him down or anchored—I hope the hell," he
added.

They found him anchored, in such suffering and despair that he could no longer move. He had
crashed through the heavy cover where he had been feeding and crossed a path of open forest and
David and his father ran along the heavily splashed blood trail. Then the elephant had gone on into
thick forest and David had seen him ahead standing gray and huge against the trunk of a tree. David
could only see his stern and then his father moved ahead and he followed and they came alongside the
elephant as though he was a ship and David saw the blood coming from his flanks and running down
his sides and then his father raised his rifle and fired and the elephant turned his head with the
great tusks moving heavy and slow and looked at them and when his father fired the second barrel
the elephant seemed to sway like a felled tree and came smashing down toward them. But he was not
dead. He had been anchored and now he was down with his shoulder broken. He did not move but his
eye was alive and looked at David. He had very long eyelashes and his eye was the most alive thing
David had ever seen.

"Shoot him in the earhole with the three oh three," his father said. "Go on."

"You shoot him," David had said.

Juma had come up limping and bloody, the skin of his forehead hanging down over his left eye,
the bone of his nose showing and one ear torn and had taken the rifle from David without speaking
and pushed the muzzle almost into the earhole and fired twice, jerking the bolt and driving it forward
angrily. The eye of the elephant had opened wide on the first shot and then started to glaze and blood
came out of the ear and ran in two bright streams down the wrinkled gray hide. It was different
colored blood and David had thought I must remember that and he had but it had never been of any use
to him. Now all the dignity and majesty and all the beauty were gone from the elephant and he was a
huge wrinkled pile.

"Well, we got him, Davey, thanks to you," his father had said. "Now we'd better get a fire going
so I can put Juma back together again. Come here, you bloody Humpty Dumpty. Those tusks will keep."

Juma had come to him grinning, bringing the tail of the elephant that had no hairs on it at all.
They had made a dirty joke and then his father had begun to speak rapidly in Swahili. How far to
water? How far will you have to go to get people to get those tusks out of here? How are you, you
worthless old pig fucker? What have you broken?

With the answers known his father had said, "You and I will go back to get the packs where we drop-
ped them. Juma can get wood and have the fire ready. The medical kit is in my pack. We have to
get the packs before it's dark. He won't infect. It's not like claw wounds. Let's go."

That evening as David had sat by the fire he had looked at Juma with his stitched-up face and his
broken ribs and wondered if the elephant had recognized him when he had tried to kill him. He hoped
he had. The elephant was his hero now as his father had been for a long time and he had thought, I
didn't believe he could do it when he was so old and tired. He would have killed Juma, too. But he
didn't look at me as though he wanted to kill me. He only looked sad the same way I felt. He visited
his old friend on the day he died.

David remembered how the elephant lost all dignity as soon as his eye had ceased to be alive and
how when his father and he had returned with the packs the elephant had already started to swell,
even in the cool evening. There was no more true elephant; only the gray wrinkled swelling dead
body and the huge mottled brown and yellow tusks that they had killed him for. The tusks were stained
with dried blood and he scraped some off with his thumbnail like a dried piece of sealing wax and
put it in the pocket of his shirt. That was all he took from the elephant except the beginning of
the knowledge of loneliness.

After the butchery his father tried to talk to him that night by the fire.

"He was a murderer you know, Davey," he had said. "Juma says nobody knows how many people he has
killed."

"They were all trying to kill him, weren't they?"

"Naturally," his father had said, "with that pair of tusks."

"How could he be a murderer then?"

"Just as you like," his father had said. "I'm sorry you got so mixed up about him."

"I wish he'd killed Juma," David said.

"I think that's carrying it a little far," his father said. "Juma's your friend, you know."

"Not any more."

"No need to tell him so."

"He knows it," David had said.

"I think you misjudge him," his father said and they had left it there.

Then when they were finally back safely with the tusks after all the things that had happened and
the tusks were propped against the wall of the stick and mud house, leaning there with their points
touching, the tusks so tall and thick that no one could believe them even when they touched them and
no one, not even his father, could reach to the top of the bend where they curved in for the points to
meet, there when Juma and his father and he were heroes and Kibo was a hero's dog and the men who
had carried the tusks were heroes, already slightly drunk heroes and to be drunker, his father had said,
"Do you want to make peace, Davey?"

"All right," he said because he knew this was the start of the never telling that he had decided on.

"I'm so glad," his father said. "It's so much simpler and better."

Then they sat on old men's stools under the shade of the fig tree with the tusks against the wall of
the hut and drank beer from gourd cups that were brought by a young girl and her younger brother, the
servant of heroes, sitting in the dust by the heroic dog of a hero who held an old cockerel, newly
promoted to the standing of the heroes' favorite rooster. They sat there and drank beer while the big
drum started and the ngoma began to build.