The Nick Adams Stories Read online

  “Let’s have another drink,” Nick said.

  Bill poured it out. Nick splashed in a little water.

  “If you had gone on that way we wouldn’t be here now,” Bill said.

  That was true. His original plan had been to go down home and get a job. Then he had planned to stay in Charlevoix all winter so he could be near Marge. Now he did not know what he was going to do.

  “Probably we wouldn’t even be going fishing tomorrow,” Bill said. “You had the right dope, all right.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” Nick said.

  “I know. That’s the way it works out,” Bill said.

  “All of a sudden everything was over,” Nick said. “I don’t know why it was. I couldn’t help it. Just like when the three-day blows come now and rip all the leaves off the trees.”

  “Well, it’s over. That’s the point,” Bill said.

  “It was my fault,” Nick said.

  “It doesn’t make any difference whose fault it was,” Bill said.

  “No, I suppose not,” Nick said.

  The big thing was that Marjorie was gone and that probably he would never see her again. He had talked to her about how they would go to Italy together and the fun they would have. Places they would be together. It was all gone now. Something gone out of him.

  “So long as it’s over that’s all that matters,” Bill said. “I tell you, Wemedge, I was worried while it was going on. You played it right. I understand her mother is sore as hell. She told a lot of people you were engaged.”

  “We weren’t engaged,” Nick said.

  “It was all around that you were,”

  “I can’t help it,” Nick said. “We weren’t.”

  “Weren’t you going to get married?” Bill asked.

  “Yes. But we weren’t engaged,” Nick said.

  “What’s the difference?” Bill asked judicially.

  “I don’t know. There’s a difference.”

  “I don’t see it,” said Bill.

  “All right,” said Nick. “Let’s get drunk.”

  “All right,” Bill said. “Let’s get really drunk.”

  “Let’s get drunk and then go swimming,” Nick said.

  He drank off his glass.

  “I’m sorry as hell about her but what could I do?” he said. “You know what her mother was like!”

  “She was terrible,” Bill said.

  “All of a sudden it was over,” Nick said. “I oughtn’t to talk about it.”

  “You aren’t,” Bill said. “I talked about it and now I’m through. We won’t ever speak about it again. You don’t want to think about it. You might get back into it again.”

  Nick had not thought about that. It had seemed so absolute. That was a thought. That made him feel better.

  “Sure,” he said. “There’s always that danger.”

  He felt happy now. There was not anything that was irrevocable. He might go into town Saturday night. Today was Thursday.

  ‘There’s always a chance,” he said.

  “You’ll have to watch yourself,” Bill said.

  “I’ll watch myself,” he said.

  He felt happy. Nothing was finished. Nothing was ever lost. He would go into town on Saturday. He felt lighter, as he had felt before Bill started to talk about it. There was always a way out.

  “Let’s take the guns and go down to the point and look for your dad,” Nick said.

  “All right.”

  Bill took down the two shotguns from the rack on the wall. He opened a box of shells. Nick put on his Mackinaw coat and his shoes. His shoes were stiff from the drying. He was still quite drunk but his head was clear.

  “How do you feel?” Nick asked.

  “Swell. I’ve just got a good edge on.” Bill was buttoning up his sweater.

  “There’s no use getting drunk.”

  “No. We ought to get outdoors.”

  They stepped out the door. The wind was blowing a gale.

  “The birds will lie right down in the grass with this,” Nick said.

  They struck down toward the orchard.

  “I saw a woodcock this morning,” Bill said.

  “Maybe we’ll jump him,” Nick said.

  “You can’t shoot in this wind,” Bill said.

  Outside now the Marge business was no longer so tragic. It was not even very important. The wind blew everything like that away.

  “It’s coming right off the big lake,” Nick said.

  Against the wind they heard the thud of a shotgun.

  “That’s Dad,” Bill said. “He’s down in the swamp.”

  “Let’s cut down that way,” Nick said.

  “Let’s cut across the lower meadow and see if we jump anything,” Bill said.

  “All right,” Nick said.

  None of it was important now. The wind blew it out of his head. Still he could always go into town Saturday night. It was a good thing to have in reserve.

  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 everytime 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 big 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, pulled 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 conciousness 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 real 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 watched 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. Wemedg,” 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 t
omorrow,” Nick said. “Let’s talk about my mermaid.”

  “We’re through with your mermaid.”

  “All right,” Nick said. “You and Odgar go on 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 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, blinking 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 spotlight 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 into 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.