“No. You came back to find out.”
“Look, Littless. I know a place back by the slashing we came through where we can get berries. 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.”
Crossing the Mississippi
The Kansas City train stopped at a siding just east of the Mississippi River and Nick looked out at the road that was half a foot deep with dust. There was nothing in sight but the road and a few dust-grayed trees. A wagon lurched along through the ruts, the driver slouching with the jolts of his spring seat and letting the reins hang slack on the horses’ backs.
Nick looked at the wagon and wondered where it was going, whether the driver lived near the Mississippi and whether he ever went fishing. The wagon lurched out of sight up the road and Nick thought of the World Series game going on in New York. He thought of Happy Felsch’s home run in the first game he had watched at the White Sox Park, Slim Solee swinging far forward, his knee nearly touching the ground and the white dot of the ball on its far trajectory toward the green fence at center field, Felsch, his head down, tearing for the stuffed white square at first base and then the exulting roar from the spectators as the ball landed in a knot of scrambling fans in the open bleachers.
As the train started and the dusty trees and brown road commenced to move past, the magazine vendor came swaying down the aisle.
“Got any dope on the Series?” Nick asked him.
“White Sox won the final game,” the news butcher answered, making his way down the aisle of the chair car with the sea-legs roll of a sailor. His answer gave Nick a comfortable glow. The White Sox had licked them. It was a fine feeling. Nick opened his Saturday Evening Post and commenced reading, occasionally looking out of the window to watch for any glimpse of the Mississippi. Crossing the Mississippi would be a big event he thought, and he wanted to enjoy every minute of it.
The scenery seemed to flow past in a stream of road, telegraph poles, occasional houses and flat brown fields. Nick had expected bluffs for the Mississippi shore but finally, after an endless seeming bayou had poured past the window, he could see out of the window the engine of the train curving out onto a long bridge above a broad, muddy brown stretch of water. Desolate hills were on the far side that Nick could now see and on the near side a flat mud bank. The river seemed to move solidly downstream, not to flow but to move like a solid, shifting lake, swirling a little where the abutments of the bridge jutted out. Mark Twain, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and LaSalle crowded each other in Nick’s mind as he looked up the flat, brown plain of slow-moving water. Anyhow I’ve seen the Mississippi, he thought happily to himself.
III WAR
Night Before Landing
Walking around the deck in the dark Nick passed the Polish officers sitting in a row of deck chairs. Someone was playing the mandolin. Leon Chocianowicz put out his foot in the dark.
“Hey, Nick,” he said, “where you going?”
“Nowhere. Just walking.”
“Sit here. There’s a chair.”
Nick sat in the empty chair and looked out at the men passing against the light from the sea. It was a warm night in June. Nick leaned back in the chair.
“Tomorrow we get in,” Leon said. “I heard it from the wireless man.”
“I heard it from the barber,” Nick said.
Leon laughed and spoke in Polish to the man in the next deck chair. He leaned forward and smiled at Nick.
“He doesn’t speak English,” Leon said. “He says he heard it from Gaby.”
“Where’s Gaby?”
“Up in a lifeboat with somebody.”
“Where’s Galinski?”
“Maybe with Gaby.”
“No,” said Nick. “She told me she couldn’t stand him.”
Gaby was the only girl on the boat. She had blonde hair which was always coming down, a loud laugh, a good body, and a bad odor of some sort. An aunt, who had not left her cabin since the boat sailed, was taking her back to her family in Paris. Her father had something to do with the French Line and she dined at the captain’s table.
“Why doesn’t she like Galinski?” Leon asked.
“She said he looked like a porpoise,’
Leon laughed again. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go find him and tell him.”
They stood up and walked over to the rail. Overhead the lifeboats were swung out ready to be lowered. The ship was listed, the decks slanted and the lifeboats hung slanted and widely swinging. The water slipped softly, great patches of phosphorescent kelp churned out and sucked and bubbled under.
“She makes good time,” Nick said, looking down at the water.
“We’re in the Bay of Biscay,” Leon said. “Tomorrow we ought to see the land.”
They walked around the deck and down a ladder back to the stern to watch the wake phosphorescent and turning like plowed land in perspective. Above them was the gun platform with two sailors walking up and down beside the gun black against the faint glow from the water.
“They’re zigzagging,” Leon watched the wake.
“All day.”
“They say these boats carry the German mails and that’s why they’re never sunk.”
“Maybe,” said Nick. “I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t either. But it’s a nice idea. Let’s go find Galinski.”
They found Galinski in his cabin with a bottle of cognac. He was drinking out of a tooth mug.
“Hello, Anton.”
“Hello, Nick. Hello, Leon. Haff a drink.”
“You tell him, Nick.”
“Listen, Anton. We’ve got a message for you from a beautiful lady.”
“I know your beautiful lady. You take that beautiful lady and stick her up a funnel.”
Lying on his back he put his feet against the springs and mattress of the upper berth and pushed.
“Carper!” he shouted. “Hey, Carper! Wake up and drink.”
Over the edge of the upper bunk looked a face, it was a round face with steel-rimmed spectacles.
“Don’t ask me to drink when I’m drunk.”
“Come on down and drink,” Galinski bellowed.
“No,” from the upper berth. “Give me the liquor up here.”
He had rolled over against the wall again.
“He’s been drunk for two weeks,” Galinski said.
“I’m sorry,” came the voice from the upper berth. “That can’t be an accurate statement because I only met you ten days ago.”
“Haven’t you been drunk for two weeks, Carper,” Nick said.
“Of course,” the Carper said, talking to the wall. “But Galinski has no right to say so.”
Galinski jogged him up and down by pushing with his feet.
“I take it back, Carper,” he said. “I don’t think you’re drunk.”
“Don’t make ridiculous statements,” the Carper said faintly.
“What are you doing, Anton,” Leon asked.
“Thinking about my girl in Niagara. Falls.”
“Come on, Nick,” said Leon. “We’ll leave this porpoise.”
“Did she tell you I was a porpoise?” Galinski asked. “She told me I was a porpoise. You know what I said to her in French. ‘Mademoiselle Gaby, you have got nothing that has any interest for me.’ Take a drink, Nick.”
He reached out the bottle and Nick swallowed some of
the brandy.
“Leon?”
“No. Come on, Nick. We’ll leave him.”
“I go on duty with the men at midnight,” Galinski said.
“Don’t get drunk,” Nick said.
“I have never been drunk.”
In the upper bunk the Carper muttered something.
“What you say, Carper?”
“I was calling on God to strike him.”
“I have neffer been drunk,” Galinski repeated and poured the tooth mug half full of cognac.
“Go on, God,” the Carper said. “Strike him.”
“I have neffer been drunk. I have neffer slept with a woman.”
“Come on. Do your stuff, God. Strike him.”
“Come on, Nick. Let’s get out.”
Galinski handed the bottle to Nick. He took a swallow and followed the tall Pole out.
Outside the door they heard Galinski’s voice shouting, “I have neffer been drunk. I have neffer slept with a woman. I have neffer told a lie.”
“Strike him,” came the Carper’s thin voice. “Don’t take that stuff from him, God. Strike him.”
“They’re a fine pair,” Nick said.
“What about this Carper? Where does he come from?”
“He was two years in the ambulance before. They sent him home. He got fired out of college and now he’s going back.”
“He drinks too much.”
“He isn’t happy.”
“Let’s get a bottle of wine and sleep out in a lifeboat.”
“Come on.”
They stopped at the smoking room bar and Nick bought a bottle of red wine. Leon stood at the bar, tall in his French uniform, inside the smoking room two big poker games were going on. Nick would have liked to play but not on the last night. Everybody was playing. It was smoky and hot with all the portholes closed and shuttered. Nick looked at Leon. “Want to play?”
“No. Let’s drink the wine and talk.”
“Let’s get two bottles then.”
They went out of the hot room onto the deck carrying the bottles. It was not hard to climb out onto one of the lifeboats although it scared Nick to look down at the water as he climbed out on the davits. Inside the boat they made themselves comfortable with life belts to lie back against the thwarts. There was a feeling of being between the sea and the sky. It was not like being on the throbbing of the big boat.
“This is good,” said Nick.
“I sleep in one of these every night.”
“I’d be afraid I’d walk in my sleep,” Nick said. He was uncorking the wine. “I sleep on the deck.”
He handed the bottle to Leon. “Keep this and open the other bottle for me,” the Pole said.
“You take it,” Nick said. He drew the cork from the second bottle and clinked it across the dark with Leon. They drank.
“You’ll get better wine than this in France,” Leon said.
“I won’t be in France.”
“I forgot. I wish we were going to soldier together.”
“I wouldn’t be any good,” Nick said. He looked over the gunwale of the boat at the dark water below. He had been frightened coming out on the davits.
“I wonder if I’ll be scared,” he said.
“No,” Leon said. “I don’t think so.”
“It will be fun to see all the planes and that stuff.”
“Yes,” said Leon. “I am going to fly as soon as I can transfer.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mustn’t think about being scared.”
“I don’t. Really I don’t. I never worry about it. I just thought because it made me feel funny coming out onto the boat just now.”
Leon lay on his side, the bottle straight up beside his head.
“We don’t have to think about being scared,” he said. “We’re not that kind.”
“The Carper’s scared,” Nick said.
“Yes. Galinski told me.”
“That’s what he was sent back for. That’s why he’s drunk all the time.”
“He’s not like us,” Leon said. “Listen, Nick. You and me, we’ve got something in us.”
“I know. Ífeel that way. Other people can get killed but not me. I feel that absolutely.”
“That’s it. That’s what we’ve got.”
“I wanted to get into the Canadian army but they wouldn’t take me.”
“I know. You told me.”
They both drank. Nick lay back and looked at the cloud of smoke from the funnel against the sky. The sky was beginning to lighten. Maybe the moon was going to come up.
“Have you got a girl, Leon?”
“No.”
“None at all?”
“No.”
“I got one,” Nick said.
“You live with her?”
“We’re engaged.”
“I never slept with a girl.”
“I’ve been with them in houses.”
Leon took a drink. The bottle angled blackly from his mouth against the sky.
“That isn’t what I mean. I done that. I don’t like it. I mean sleep all night with one you love.”
“My girl would have slept with me.”
“Sure. If she loved you she’d sleep with you.”
“We’re going to get married.”
“Nick Sat Against the Wall…”
Nick sat against the wall of the church where they had dragged him to be clear of machine-gun fire in the street. Both legs stuck out awkwardly. He had been hit in the spine. His face was sweaty and dirty. The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot. Rinaldi, big-backed, his equipment sprawling, lay face downward against the wall. Nick looked straight ahead brilliantly. The pink wall of the house opposite had fallen out from the roof, and an iron bedstead hung twisted toward the street. Two Austrian dead lay in the rubble in the shade of the house. Up the street were other dead. Things were getting forward in the town. It was going well. Stretcherbearers would be along any time now. Nick turned his head and looked down at Rinaldi. “Senta, Rinaldi, senta. You and me, we’ve made a separate peace.” Rinaldi lay still in the sun, breathing with difficulty. “We’re not patriots.” Nick turned his head away, smiling sweatily. Rinaldi was a disappointing audience.
Now I Lay Me
That night we lay on the floor in the room and I listened to the silkworms eating. The silkworms fed in racks of mulberry leaves and all night you could hear them eating and a dropping sound in the leaves. I myself did not want to sleep because I had been living for a long time with the knowledge that if I ever shut my eyes in the dark and let myself go, my soul would go out of my body. I had been that way for a long time, ever since I had been blown up at night and felt it go out of me and go off and then come back. I tried never to think about it, but it had started to go since, in the nights, just at the moment of going off to sleep, and I could only stop it by a very great effort. So while now I am fairly sure that it would not really have gone out, yet then, that summer, I was unwilling to make the experiment.
I had different ways of occupying myself while I lay awake. I would think of a trout stream I had fished along when I was a boy and fish its whole length very carefully in my mind, fishing very carefully under all the logs, all the turns of the bank, the deep holes and the clear shallow stretches, sometimes catching trout and sometimes losing them. I would stop fishing at noon to eat my lunch, sometimes on a log over the stream, sometimes on a high bank under a tree, and I always ate my lunch very slowly and watched the stream below me while I ate. Often I ran out of bait because I would take only ten worms with me in a tobacco tin when I started. When I had used them all I had to find more worms, and sometimes it was very difficult digging in the bank of the stream where the cedar trees kept out the sun and there was no grass but only the bare moist earth and often I could find no worms. Always, though, I found some kind of bait, but one time in the swamp I could find no bait at all and had to cut up o
ne of the trout I had caught and use him for bait.
Sometimes I found insects in the swamp meadows, in the grass or under ferns, and used them. There were beetles and insects with legs like grass stems, and grubs in old rotten logs, white grubs with brown pinching heads that would not stay on the hook and emptied into nothing in the cold water, and wood ticks under logs where sometimes I found angleworms that slipped into the ground as soon as the log was raised. Once I used a salamander from under an old log. The salamander was very small and neat and agile and a lovely color. He had tiny feet that tried to hold on to the hook, and after that one time I never used a salamander, although I found them very often. Nor did I use crickets, because of the way they acted about the hook.
Sometimes the stream ran through an open meadow, and in the dry grass I would catch grasshoppers and use them for bait and sometimes I would catch grasshoppers and toss them into the stream and watch them float along, swimming on the stream and circling on the surface as the current took them, and then disappear as a trout rose. Sometimes I would fish four or five different streams in the night, starting as near as I could get to their source and fishing them downstream. When I had finished too quickly and the time did not go, I would fish the stream over again, starting where it emptied into the lake and fishing back upstream, trying for all the trout I had missed coming down. Some nights, too, I made up streams, and some of them were very exciting, and it was like being awake and dreaming. Some of those streams I still remember and think that I have fished in them, and they are confused with streams I really know. I gave them all names and went to them on the train and sometimes walked for miles to get to them.
But some nights I could not fish, and on those nights I was cold-awake and said my prayers over and over and tried to pray for all the people I had ever known. That took up a great amount of time, for if you try to remember all the people you have ever known, going back to the earliest thing you remember—which was, with me, the attic of the house where I was born and my mother and father’s wedding cake in a tin box hanging from one of the rafters, and, in the attic, jars of snakes and other specimens that my father had collected as a boy and preserved in alcohol, the alcohol sunken in the jars so the backs of some of the snakes and specimens were exposed and had turned white—if you thought back that far, you remembered a great many people. If you prayed for all of them, saying a Hail Mary and an Our Father for each one, it took a long time and finally it would be light, and then you could go to sleep, if you were in a place where you could sleep in the daylight.
The Nick Adams Stories Page 12