Short Stories

by Ernest Hemingway

  About nine o’clock in the morning they would start using the X-ray machine, and then the radio, which, by then, was only getting Hailey, became useless. Many people in Hailey who owned radios protested about the hospital’s X-ray machine which ruined their morning reception, but there was never any action taken, although many felt it was a shame the hospital could not use their machine at a time when people were not using their radios.

  About the time when it became necessary to turn off the radio Sister Cecilia came in.

  “How’s Cayetano, Sister Cecilia?” Mr. Frazer asked.

  “Oh, he’s very bad.”

  “Is he out of his head?”

  “No, but I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m very worried about him, and do you know that absolutely no one has come to see him? He could die just like a dog for all those Mexicans care. They’re really dreadful.”

  “Do you want to come up and hear the game this afternoon?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I’d be too excited. I’ll be in the chapel praying.”

  “We ought to be able to hear it pretty well,” Mr. Frazer said. “They’re playing out on the coast and the difference in time will bring it late enough so we can get it all right.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t do it. The world series nearly finished me. When the Athletics were at bat I was praying right out loud: ‘Oh, Lord, direct their batting eyes! Oh, Lord, may he hit one! Oh, Lord, may he hit safely!’ Then when they filled the bases in the third game, you remember, it was too much for me. ‘Oh, Lord, may he hit it out of the lot! Oh, Lord, may he drive it clean over the fence!’ Then you know when the Cardinals would come to bat it was simply dreadful. ‘Oh, Lord, may they not see it! Oh, Lord, don’t let them even catch a glimpse of it! Oh, Lord, may they fan!’ And this game is even worse. It’s Notre Dame. Our Lady. No, I’ll be in the chapel. For Our Lady. They’re playing for Our Lady. I wish you’d write something sometime for Our Lady. You could do it. You know you could do it, Mr. Frazer.”

  “I don’t know anything about her that I could write. It’s mostly been written already,” Mr. Frazer said. “You wouldn’t like the way I write. She wouldn’t care for it either.”

  “You’ll write about her sometime,” Sister said. “I know you will. You must write about Our Lady.”

  “You’d better come up and hear the game.”

  “It would be too much for me. No, I’ll be in the chapel doing what I can.”

  That afternoon they had been playing about five minutes when a probationer came into the room and said, “Sister Cecilia wants to know how the game is going?”

  “Tell her they have a touchdown already.”

  In a little while the probationer came into the room again.

  “Tell her they’re playing them off their feet,” Mr. Frazer said.

  A little later he rang the bell for the nurse who was on floor duty. “Would you mind going down to the chapel or sending word down to Sister Cecilia that Notre Dame has them fourteen to nothing at the end of the first quarter and that it’s all right. She can stop praying.”

  In a few minutes Sister Cecilia came into the room. She was very excited. “What does fourteen to nothing mean? I don’t know anything about this game. That’s a nice safe lead in baseball. But I don’t know anything about football. It may not mean a thing. I’m going right back down to the chapel and pray until it’s finished.”

  “They have them beaten,” Frazer said. “I promise you. Stay and listen with me.”

  “No. No. No. No. No. No. No,” she said. “I’m going right down to the chapel to pray.”

  Mr. Frazer sent down word whenever Notre Dame scored, and finally, when it had been dark a long time, the final result.

  “How’s Sister Cecilia?”

  “They’re all at chapel,” she said.

  The next morning Sister Cecilia came in. She was very pleased and confident.

  “I knew they couldn’t beat Our Lady,” she said. “They couldn’t. Cayetano’s better too. He’s much better. He’s going to have visitors. He can’t see them yet, but they are going to come and that will make him feel better and know he’s not forgotten by his own people. I went down and saw that O’Brien boy at Police Headquarters and told him that he’s got to send some Mexicans up to see poor Cayetano. He’s going to send some this afternoon. Then that poor man will feel better. It’s wicked the way no one has come to see him.”

  That afternoon about five o’clock three Mexicans came into the room.

  “Can one?” asked the biggest one, who had very thick lips and was quite fat.

  “Why not?” Mr. Frazer answered. “Sit down, gentlemen. Will you take something?”

  “Many thanks,” said the big one.

  “Thanks,” said the darkest and smallest one.

  “Thanks, no,” said the thin one. “It mounts to my head.” He tapped his head.

  The nurse brought some glasses. “Please give them the bottle,” Frazer said. “It is from Red Lodge,” he explained.

  “That of Red Lodge is the best,” said the big one. “Much better than that of Big Timber.”

  “Clearly,” said the smallest one, “and costs more too.”

  “In Red Lodge it is of all prices,” said the big one.

  “How many tubes has the radio?” asked the one who did not drink.

  “Seven.”

  “Very beautiful,” he said. “What does it cost?”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Frazer said. “It is rented.”

  “You gentlemen are friends of Cayetano?”

  “No,” said the big one. “We are friends of he who wounded him.”

  “We were sent here by the police,” the smallest one said.

  “We have a little place,” the big one said. “He and I,” indicating the one who did not drink. “He has a little place too,” indicating the small, dark one. “The police tell us we have to come—so we come.”

  “I am very happy you have come.”

  “Equally,” said the big one.

  “Will you have another little cup?”

  “Why not?” said the big one.

  “With your permission,” said the smallest one.

  “Not me,” said the thin one. “It mounts to my head.”

  “It is very good,” said the smallest one.

  “Why not try some,” Mr. Frazer asked the thin one. “Let a little mount to your head.”

  “Afterwards comes the headache,” said the thin one.

  “Could you not send friends of Cayetano to see him?” Frazer asked.

  “He has no friends.”

  “Every man has friends.”

  “This one, no.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He is a cardplayer.”

  “Is he good?”

  “I believe it.”

  “From me,” said the smallest one, “he won one hundred and eighty dollars. Now there is no longer one hundred and eighty dollars in the world.”

  “From me,” said the thin one, “he won two hundred and eleven dollars. Fix yourself on that figure.”

  “I never played with him,” said the fat one.

  “He must be very rich,” Mr. Frazer suggested.

  “He is poorer than we,” said the little Mexican. “He has no more than the shirt on his back.”

  “And that shirt is of little value now,” Mr. Frazer said. “Perforated as it is.”

  “Clearly.”

  “The one who wounded him was a cardplayer? “

  “No, a beet worker. He has had to leave town.”

  “Fix yourself on this,” said the smallest one. “He was the best guitar player ever in this town. The finest.”

&
nbsp; “What a shame.”

  “I believe it,” said the biggest one. “How he could touch the guitar.”

  “There are no good guitar players left?”

  “Not the shadow of a guitar player.”

  “There is an accordion player who is worth something,” the thin man said.

  “There are a few who touch various instruments,” the big one said. “You like music?”

  “How would I not?”

  “We will come one night with music? You think the sister would allow it? She seems very amiable.”

  “I am sure she would permit it when Cayetano is able to hear it.”

  “Is she a little crazy?” asked the thin one.

  “Who?”

  “That sister?”

  “No,” Mr. Frazer said. “She is a fine woman of great intelligence and sympathy.”

  “I distrust all priests, monks, and sisters,” said the thin one.

  “He had bad experiences when a boy,” the smallest one said.

  “I was acolyte,” the thin one said proudly. “Now I believe in nothing. Neither do I go to mass.”

  “Why? Does it mount to your head?”

  “No,” said the thin one. “It is alcohol that mounts to my head. Religion is the opium of the poor.”

  “I thought marijuana was the opium of the poor,” Frazer said.

  “Did you ever smoke opium?” the big one asked.

  “No.”

  “Nor I,” he said. “It seems it is very bad. One commences and cannot stop. It is a vice.”

  “Like religion,” said the thin one.

  “This one,” said the smallest Mexican, “is very strong against religion.”

  “It is necessary to be very strong against something,” Mr. Frazer said politely.

  “I respect those who have faith even though they are ignorant,” the thin one said.

  “Good,” said Mr. Frazer.

  “What can we bring you?” asked the big Mexican. “Do you lack for anything?”

  “I would be glad to buy some beer if there is good beer.”

  “We will bring beer.”

  “Another copita before you go?”

  “It is very good.”

  “We are robbing you.”

  “I can’t take it. It goes to my head. Then I have a bad headache and sick at the stomach.”

  “Good-bye, gentlemen.”

  “Good-bye and thanks.”

  They went out and there was supper and then the radio, turned to be as quiet as possible and still be heard, and the stations finally signing off in this order: Denver, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Mr. Frazer received no picture of Denver from the radio. He could see Denver from the Denver Post, and correct the picture from The Rocky Mountain News. Nor did he ever have any feel of Salt Lake City or Los Angeles from what he heard from those places. All he felt about Salt Lake City was that it was clean, but dull, and there were too many ballrooms mentioned in too many big hotels for him to see Los Angeles. He could not feel it for the ballrooms. But Seattle he came to know very well, the taxicab company with the big white cabs (each cab equipped with radio itself) he rode in every night out to the roadhouse on the Canadian side where he followed the course of parties by the musical selections they phoned for. He lived in Seattle from two o’clock on, each night, hearing the pieces that all the different people asked for, and it was as real as Minneapolis, where the revellers left their beds each morning to make that trip down to the studio. Mr. Frazer grew very fond of Seattle, Washington.

  The Mexicans came and brought beer but it was not good beer. Mr. Frazer saw them but he did not feel like talking, and when they went he knew they would not come again. His nerves had become tricky and he disliked seeing people while he was in this condition. His nerves went bad at the end of five weeks, and while he was pleased they lasted that long yet he resented being forced to make the same experiment when he already knew the answer. Mr. Frazer had been through this all before. The only thing which was new to him was the radio. He played it all night long, turned so low he could barely hear it, and he was learning to listen to it without thinking.

  Sister Cecilia came into the room about ten o’clock in the morning on that day and brought the mail. She was very handsome, and Mr. Frazer liked to see her and to hear her talk, but the mail, supposedly coming from a different world, was more important. However, there was nothing in the mail of any interest.

  “You look so much better,” she said. “You’ll be leaving us soon.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Frazer said. “You look very happy this morning.”

  “Oh, I am. This morning I feel as though I might be a saint.”

  Mr. Frazer was a little taken aback at this.

  “Yes,” Sister Cecila went on. “That’s what I want to be. A saint. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to be a saint. When I was a girl I thought if I renounced the world and went into the convent I would be a saint. That was what I wanted to be and that was what I thought I had to do to be one. I expected I would be a saint. I was absolutely sure I would be one. For just a moment I thought I was one. I was so happy and it seemed so simple and easy. When I awoke in the morning I expected I would be a saint, but I wasn’t. I’ve never become one. I want so to be one. All I want is to be a saint. That is all I’ve ever wanted. And this morning I feel as though I might be one. Oh, I hope I will get to be one.”

  “You’ll be one. Everybody gets what they want. That’s what they always tell me.”

  “I don’t know now. When I was a girl it seemed so simple. I knew I would be a saint. Only I believed it took time when I found it did not happen suddenly. Now it seems almost impossible.”

  “I’d say you had a good chance.”

  “Do you really think so? No, I don’t want just to be encouraged. Don’t just encourage me. I want to be a saint. I want so to be a saint.”

  “Of course you’ll be a saint,” Mr. Frazer said.

  “No, probably I won’t be. But, oh, if I could only be a saint! I’d be perfectly happy.”

  “You’re three to one to be a saint.”

  “No, don’t encourage me. But, oh, if I could only be a saint! If I could only be a saint!”

  “How’s your friend Cayetano?”

  “He’s going to get well but he’s paralyzed. One of the bullets hit the big nerve that goes down through his thigh and that leg is paralyzed. They only found it out when he got well enough so that he could move.”

  “Maybe the nerve will regenerate.”

  “I’m praying that it will,” Sister Cecilia said. “You ought to see him.”

  “I don’t feel like seeing anybody.”

  “You know you’d like to see him. They could wheel him in here.”

  “All right.”

  They wheeled him in, thin, his skin transparent, his hair black and needing to be cut, his eyes very laughing, his teeth bad when he smiled.

  “Hola, amigo! Que tal?”

  “As you see,” said Mr. Frazer. “And thou?”

  “Alive and with the leg paralyzed.”

  “Bad,” Mr. Frazer said. “But the nerve can regenerate and be as good as new.”

  “So they tell me.”

  “What about the pain?”

  “Not now. For a while I was crazy with it in the belly. I thought the pain alone would kill me.”

  Sister Cecilia was observing them happily.

  “She tells me you never made a sound,” Mr. Frazer said.