Short Stories

by Ernest Hemingway

  Ten years later there was nothing of the mill left except the broken white limestone of its foundations showing through the swampy second growth as Nick and Marjorie rowed along the shore. They were trolling along the edge of the channel-bank where the bottom dropped off suddenly from sandy shallows to twelve feet of dark water. They were trolling on their way to the point to set night lines for rainbow trout.

  “There’s our old ruin, Nick,” Marjorie said.

  Nick, rowing, looked at the white stone in the green trees.

  “There it is,” he said.

  “Can you remember when it was a mill?” Marjorie asked.

  “I can just remember,” Nick said.

  “It seems more like a castle,” Marjorie said.

  Nick said nothing. They rowed on out of sight of the mill, following the shore line. Then Nick cut across the bay.

  “They aren’t striking,” he said.

  “No,” Marjorie said. She was intent on the rod all the time they trolled, even when she talked. She loved to fish. She loved to fish with Nick.

  Close beside the boat a big trout broke the surface of the water. Nick pulled hard on one oar so the boat would turn and the bait spinning far behind would pass where the trout was feeding. As the trout’s back came up out of the water the minnows jumped wildly. They sprinkled the surface like a handful of shot thrown into the water. Another trout broke water, feeding on the other side of the boat.

  “They’re feeding,” Marjorie said.

  “But they won’t strike,” Nick said.

  He rowed the boat around to troll past both the feeding fish, then headed it for the point. Marjorie did not reel in until the boat touched the shore.

  They pulled the boat up the beach and Nick lifted out a pail of live perch. The perch swam in the water in the pail. Nick caught three of them with his hands and cut their heads off and skinned them while Marjorie chased with her hands in the bucket, finally caught a perch, cut its head off and skinned it. Nick looked at her fish.

  “You don’t want to take the ventral fin out,” he said. “It’ll be all right for bait but it’s better with the ventral fin in.”

  He hooked each of the skinned perch through the tail. There were two hooks attached to a leader on each rod. Then Marjorie rowed the boat out over the channel-bank, holding the line in her teeth, and looking toward Nick, who stood on the shore holding the rod and letting the line run out from the reel.

  “That’s about right,” he called.

  “Should I let it drop?” Marjorie called back, holding the line in her hand.

  “Sure. Let it go.” Marjorie dropped the line overboard and watched the baits go down through the water.

  She came in with the boat and ran the second line out the same way. Each time Nick set a heavy slab of driftwood across the butt of the rod to hold it solid and propped it up at an angle with a small slab. He reeled in the slack line so the line ran taut out to where the bait rested on the sandy floor of the channel and set the click on the reel. When a trout, feeding on the bottom, took the bait it would run with it, taking line out of the reel in a rush and making the reel sing with the click on.

  Marjorie rowed up the point a little way so she would not disturb the line. She pulled hard on the oars and the boat went way up the beach. Little waves came in with it. Marjorie stepped out of the boat and Nick pulled the boat high up the beach.

  “What’s the matter, Nick?” Marjorie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nick said, getting wood for a fire.

  They made a fire with driftwood. Marjorie went to the boat and brought a blanket. The evening breeze blew the smoke toward the point, so Marjorie spread the blanket out between the fire and the lake.

  Marjorie sat on the blanket with her back to the fire and waited for Nick. He came over and sat down beside her on the blanket. In back of them was the close second-growth timber of the point and in front was the bay with the mouth of Hortons Creek. It was not quite dark. The firelight went as far as the water. They could both see the two steel rods at an angle over the dark water. The fire glinted on the reels.

  Marjorie unpacked the basket of supper.

  “I don’t feel like eating,” said Nick.

  “Come on and eat, Nick.”

  “All right.”

  They ate without talking, and watched the two rods and the firelight in the water.

  “There’s going to be a moon tonight,” said Nick. He looked across the bay to the hills that were beginning to sharpen against the sky. Beyond the hills he knew the moon was coming up.

  “I know it,” Marjorie said happily.

  “You know everything,” Nick said.

  “Oh, Nick, please cut it out! Please, please don’t be that way!”

  “I can’t help it,” Nick said. “You do. You know everything. That’s the trouble. You know you do.”

  Marjorie did not say anything.

  “I’ve taught you everything. You know you do. What don’t you know, anyway?”

  “Oh, shut up,” Marjorie said. “There comes the moon.”

  They sat on the blanket without touching each other and watched the moon rise.

  “You don’t have to talk silly,” Marjorie said. “What’s really the matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you know.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Go on and say it.”

  Nick looked on at the moon, coming up over the hills.

  “It isn’t fun anymore.”

  He was afraid to look at Marjorie. Then he looked at her. She sat there with her back toward him. He looked at her back. “It isn’t fun anymore. Not any of it.”

  She didn’t say anything. He went on. “I feel as though everything was gone to hell inside of me. I don’t know, Marge. I don’t know what to say.”

  He looked on at her back.

  “Isn’t love any fun?” Marjorie said.

  “No,” Nick said. Marjorie stood up. Nick sat there, his head in his hands.

  “I’m going to take the boat,” Marjorie called to him. “You can walk back around the point.”

  “All right,” Nick said. “I’ll push the boat off for you.”

  “You don’t need to,” she said. She was afloat in the boat on the water with the moonlight on it. Nick went back and lay down with his face in the blanket by the fire. He could hear Marjorie rowing on the water.

  He lay there for a long time. He lay there while he heard Bill come into the clearing walking around through the woods. He felt Bill coming up to the fire. Bill didn’t touch him, either.

  “Did she go all right?” Bill said.

  “Yes,” Nick said, lying, his face on the blanket.

  “Have a scene?”

  “No, there wasn’t any scene.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Oh, go away, Bill! Go away for a while.”

  Bill selected a sandwich from the lunch basket and walked over to have a look at the rods.

  The Three-Day Blow

  The rain stopped as Nick turned into the road that went up through the orchard. The fruit had been picked and the fall wind blew through the bare trees. Nick stopped and picked up a Wagner apple from beside the road, shiny in the brown grass from the rain. He put the apple in the pocket of his Mackinaw coat.

  The road came out of the orchard on to the top of the hill. There was the cottage, the porch bare, smoke coming from the chimney. In back was the garage, the chicken coop and the second-growth timber like a hedge against the woods behind. The big trees swayed far over in the wind as he watched. It was the first of the autumn storms.

  As Nick crossed the open field above the orchard the door of the cottage opened and Bill came out. He stood on the porch looking out.

&nb
sp; “Well, Wemedge,” he said.

  “Hey, Bill,” Nick said, coming up the steps.

  They stood together, looking out across the country, down over the orchard, beyond the road, across the lower fields and the woods of the point to the lake. The wind was blowing straight down the lake. They could see the surf along Ten Mile point.

  “She’s blowing,” Nick said.

  “She’ll blow like that for three days,” Bill said.

  “Is your dad in?” Nick said.

  “No. He’s out with the gun. Come on in.”

  Nick went inside the cottage. There was a big fire in the fireplace. The wind made it roar. Bill shut the door.

  “Have a drink?” he said.

  He went out to the kitchen and came back with two glasses and a pitcher of water. Nick reached the whisky bottle from the shelf above the fireplace.

  “All right?” he said.

  “Good,” said Bill.

  They sat in front of the fire and drank the Irish whisky and water.

  “It’s got a swell, smoky taste,” Nick said, and looked at the fire through the glass.

  “That’s the peat,” Bill said.

  “You can’t get peat into liquor,” Nick said.

  “That doesn’t make any difference,” Bill said.

  “You ever seen any peat?” Nick asked.

  “No,” said Bill.

  “Neither have I,” Nick said.

  His shoes, stretched out on the hearth, began to steam in front of the fire.

  “Better take your shoes off,” Bill said.

  “I haven’t got any socks on.”

  “Take them off and dry them and I’ll get you some,” Bill said. He went upstairs into the loft and Nick heard him walking about overhead. Upstairs was open under the roof and was where Bill and his father and he, Nick, sometimes slept. In back was a dressing room. They moved the cots back out of the rain and covered them with rubber blankets.

  Bill came down with a pair of heavy wool socks.

  “It’s getting too late to go around without socks,” he said.

  “I hate to start them again,” Nick said. He pulled the socks on and slumped back in the chair, putting his feet up on the screen in front of the fire.

  “You’ll dent in the screen,” Bill said. Nick swung his feet over to the side of the fireplace.

  “Got anything to read?” he asked.

  “Only the paper.”

  “What did the Cards do?”

  “Dropped a double header to the Giants.”

  “That ought to cinch it for them.”

  “It’s a gift,” Bill said. “As long as McGraw can buy every good ball player in the league there’s nothing to it.”

  “He can’t buy them all,” Nick said.

  “He buys all the ones he wants,” Bill said. “Or he makes them discontented so they have to trade them to him.”

  “Like Heinie Zim,” Nick agreed.

  “That bonehead will do him a lot of good.”

  Bill stood up.

  “He can hit,” Nick offered. The heat from the fire was baking his legs.

  “He’s a sweet fielder, too,” Bill said. “But he loses ball games.”

  “Maybe that’s what McGraw wants him for,” Nick suggested.

  “Maybe,” Bill agreed.

  “There’s always more to it than we know about,” Nick said. “Of course. But we’ve got pretty good dope for being so far away.”

  “Like how much better you can pick them if you don’t see the horses.”

  “That’s it.”

  Bill reached down the whisky bottle. His big hand went all the way around it. He poured the whisky into the glass Nick held out.

  “How much water?”

  “Just the same.”

  He sat down on the floor beside Nick’s chair.

  “It’s good when the fall storms come, isn’t it?” Nick said.

  “It’s swell.”

  “It’s the best time of year,” Nick said.

  “Wouldn’t it be hell to be in town?” Bill said.

  “I’d like to see the World Series,” Nick said.

  “Well, they’re always in New York or Philadelphia now,” Bill said. “That doesn’t do us any good.”

  “I wonder if the Cards will ever win a pennant?”

  “Not in our lifetime,” Bill said.

  “Gee, they’d go crazy,” Nick said.

  “Do you remember when they got going that once before they had the train wreck?”

  “Boy!” Nick said, remembering.

  Bill reached over to the table under the window for the book that lay there, face down, where he had put it when he went to the door. He held his glass in one hand and the book in the other, leaning back against Nick’s chair.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Richard Feverel”

  “I couldn’t get into it.”

  “It’s all right,” Bill said. “It ain’t a bad book, Wemedge.”

  “What else have you got I haven’t read?” Nick asked.

  “Did you read the Forest Lovers?”

  “Yup. That’s the one where they go to bed every night with the naked sword between them.”

  “That’s a good book, Wemedge,”

  “It’s a swell book. What I couldn’t ever understand was what good the sword would do. It would have to stay edge up all the time because if it went over flat you could roll right over it and it wouldn’t make any trouble.”

  “It’s a symbol,” Bill said.

  “Sure,” said Nick, “but it isn’t practical.”

  “Did you ever read Fortitude?”

  “It’s fine,” Nick said. “That’s a real book. That’s where his old man is after him all the time. Have you got anymore by Walpole?”

  “The Dark Forest,” Bill said. “It’s about Russia.”

  “What does he know about Russia?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t know. You can’t ever tell about those guys. Maybe he was there when he was a boy. He’s got a lot of dope on it.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” Nick said.

  “I’d like to meet Chesterton,” Bill said.

  “I wish he was here now,” Nick said. “We’d take him fishing to the ’Voix tomorrow.”

  “I wonder if he’d like to go fishing,” Bill said.

  “Sure,” said Nick. “He must be about the best guy there is. Do you remember the Flying Inn?”

  “‘If an angel out of heaven

  Gives you something else to drink,

  Thank him for his kind intentions;

  Go and pour them down the sink.’’’

  “That’s right,” said Nick. “I guess he’s a better guy than Walpole.”

  “Oh, he’s a better guy, all right,” Bill said.

  “But Walpole’s a better writer.”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “Chesterton’s a classic.”

  “Walpole’s a classic, too,” Bill insisted.

  “I wish we had them both here,” Nick said. “We’d take them both fishing to the ’Voix tomorrow.”

  “Let’s get drunk,” Bill said.

  “All right,” Nick agreed.

  “My old man won’t care,” Bill said.

  “Are you sure?” said Nick.

  “I know it,” Bill said.

  “I’m a little drunk now,” Nick said.

  “You aren’t drunk,” Bill said.

  He got up from the floor and reached for the whisky bottle. Nick held out his glass. His eyes fixed on it while Bill poured.

  Bill poured the glass half full of whisky.