In Our Time Read online

  "It belongs to White and McNally," he said, standing up and brushing off his trousers knees.

  The doctor was very uncomfortable.

  "You'd better not saw it up then, Dick," he said, shortly.

  "Don't get huffy, Doc," said Dick. "Don't get huffy. I don't care who you steal from. It's none of my business."

  "If you think the logs are stolen, leave them alone and take your tools back to the camp," the doctor said. His face was red.

  "Don't go off at half cock, Doc," Dick said. He spat tobacco juice on the log. It slid off, thinning in the water. "You know they're stolen as well as I do. It don't make any difference to me."

  "All right. If you think the logs are stolen, take your stuff and get out."

  "Now, Doc--"

  "Take your stuff and get out."

  "Listen, Doc."

  "If you call me Doc once again, I'll knock your eye teeth down your throat."

  "Oh, no, you won't, Doc."

  Dick Boulton looked at the doctor. Dick was a big man. He knew how big a man he was. He liked to get into fights. He was happy. Eddy and Billy Tabeshaw leaned on their cant-hooks and looked at the doctor. The doctor chewed the beard on his lower lip and looked at Dick Boulton. Then he turned away and walked up the hill to the cottage. They could see from his back how angry he was. They all watched him walk up the hill and go inside the cottage.

  Dick said something in Ojibway. Eddy laughed but Billy Tabeshaw looked very serious. He did not understand English but he had sweat all the time the row was going on. He was fat with only a few hairs of mustache like a Chinaman. He picked up the two cant-hooks. Dick picked up the axes and Eddy took the saw down from the tree. They started off and walked up past the cottage and out the back gate into the woods. Dick left the gate open. Billy Tabeshaw went back and fastened it. They were gone through the woods.

  In the cottage the doctor, sitting on the bed in his room, saw a pile of medical journals on the floor by the bureau. They were still in their wrappers unopened. It irritated him.

  "Aren't you going back to work, dear?" asked the doctor's wife from the room where she was lying with the blinds drawn.

  "No!"

  "Was anything the matter?"

  "I had a row with Dick Boulton."

  "Oh," said his wife. "I hope you didn't lose your temper, Henry."

  "No," said the doctor.

  "Remember, that he who ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city," said his wife. She was a Christian Scientist. Her Bible, her copy of Science and Health and her Quarterly were on a table beside her bed in the darkened room.

  Her husband did not answer. He was sitting on his bed now, cleaning a shotgun. He pushed the magazine full of the heavy yellow shells and pumped them out again. They were scattered on the bed.

  "Henry," his wife called. Then paused a moment. "Henry!"

  "Yes," the doctor said.

  "You didn't say anything to Boulton to anger him, did you?"

  "No," said the doctor.

  "What was the trouble about, dear?"

  "Nothing much."

  "Tell me, Henry. Please don't try and keep anything from me. What was the trouble about?"

  "Well, Dick owes me a lot of money for pulling his squaw through pneumonia and I guess he wanted a row so he wouldn't have to take it out in work."

  His wife was silent. The doctor wiped his gun carefully with a rag. He pushed the shells back in against the spring of the magazine. He sat with the gun on his knees. He was very fond of it. Then he heard his wife's voice from the darkened room.

  "Dear, I don't think, I really don't think that any one would really do a thing like that."

  "No?" the doctor said.

  "No. I can't really believe that any one would do a thing of that sort intentionally."

  The doctor stood up and put the shotgun in the corner behind the dresser.

  "Are you going out, dear?" his wife said.

  "I think I'll go for a walk," the doctor said.

  "If you see Nick, dear, will you tell him his mother wants to see him?" his wife said.

  The doctor went out on the porch. The screen door slammed behind him. He heard his wife catch her breath when the door slammed.

  "Sorry," he said, outside her window with the blinds drawn.

  "It's all right, dear," she said.

  He walked in the heat out the gate and along the path into the hemlock woods. It was cool in the woods even on such a hot day. He found Nick sitting with his back against a tree, reading.

  "Your mother wants you to come and see her," the doctor said.

  "I want to go with you," Nick said.

  His father looked down at him.

  "All right. Come on, then," his father said. "Give me the book, I'll put it in my pocket."

  "I know where there's black squirrels, Daddy," Nick said.

  "All right," said his father. "Let's go there."

  Chapter III

  We were in a garden at Mons. Young Buckley came in with his patrol from across the river. The first German I saw climbed up over the garden wall. We waited till he got one leg over and then potted him. He had so much equipment on and looked awfully surprised and fell down into the garden. Then three more came over further down the wall. We shot them. They all came just like that.

  The End of Something

  In the old days Hortons Bay was a lumbering town. No one who lived in it was out of sound of the big saws in the mill by the lake. Then one year there were no more logs to make lumber. The lumber schooners came into the bay and were loaded with the cut of the mill that stood stacked in the yard. All the piles of lumber were carried away. The big mill building had all its machinery that was removable taken out and hoisted on board one of the schooners by the men who had worked in the mill. The schooner moved out of the bay toward the open lake carrying the two great saws, the travelling carriage that hurled the logs against the revolving, circular saws and all the rollers, wheels, belts and iron piled on a hull-deep load of lumber. Its open hold covered with canvas and lashed tight, the sails of the schooner filled and it moved out into the open lake, carrying with it everything that had made the mill a mill and Hortons Bay a town.

  The one-story bunk houses, the eating-house, the company store, the mill offices, and the big mill itself stood deserted in the acres of sawdust that covered the swampy meadow by the shore of the bay.

  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 n
ot 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 fire-light 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 fire-light 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 any more."

  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 any more. 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.

  Chapter IV

  It was a frightfully hot day. We'd jammed an absolutely perfect barricade across the bridge. It was simply priceless. A big old wrought-iron grating from the front of a house. Too heavy to lift and you could shoot through it and they would have to climb over it. It was absolutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out along and worked on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle. Their officers were very fine. We were frightfully put out when we heard the flank had gone, and we had to fall back.

  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.

  "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 s
ocks 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 for 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?"