The Nick Adams Stories Read online

  “I see,” Nick said.

  Just then the woman cried out.

  “Oh, Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming?” asked Nick.

  “No. I haven’t any anesthetic,” his father said. “But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important.”

  The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

  The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick’s father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

  “Those must boil,” he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father’s hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

  “You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they’re not. When they’re not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I’ll have to operate on this lady. We’ll know in a little while.”

  When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

  “Pull back that quilt, will you, George?” he said. “I’d rather not touch it.”

  Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, “Damn squaw bitch!” and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

  His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.

  “See, it’s a boy, Nick,” he said. “How do you like being an intern?”

  Nick said, “All right.” He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

  “There. That gets it,” said his father and put something into the basin.

  Nick didn’t look at it.

  “Now,” his father said, “there’s some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I’m going to sew up the incision I made.”

  Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

  His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin out in the kitchen.

  Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently.

  “I’ll put some peroxide on that, George,” the doctor said.

  He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

  “I’ll be back in the morning,” the doctor said, standing up. “The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she’ll bring everything we need.”

  He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.

  “That’s one for the medical journal, George,” he said. “Doing a Caesarian with a jackknife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.”

  Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

  “Oh, you’re a great man, all right,” he said.

  “Ought to have a look at the proud father. They’re usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs,” the doctor said. “I must say he took it all pretty quietly.”

  He pulled back the blanket from the Indian’s head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

  “Take Nick out of the shanty, George,” the doctor said.

  There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a good view of the upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian’s head back.

  It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the lake.

  “I’m terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie,” said his father, all his postoperative exhilaration gone. “It was an awful mess to put you through.”

  “Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?” Nick asked.

  “No, that was very, very exceptional.”

  “Why did he kill himself, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know, Nick. He couldn’t stand things, I guess.”

  “Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?”

  “Not very many, Nick.”

  “Do many women?”

  “Hardly ever.”

  “Don’t they ever?”

  “Oh, yes. They do sometimes.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did Uncle George go?”

  “He’ll turn up all right.”

  “Is dying hard, Daddy?”

  “No, I think it’s pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.”

  They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

  In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

  The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife

  Dick Boulton came from the Indian camp to cut up logs for Nick’s father. He brought his son Eddy and another Indian named Billy Tabeshaw with him. They came in through the back gate out of the woods, Eddy carrying the long crosscut saw. It flopped over his shoulder and made a musical sound as he walked. Billy Tabeshaw carried two big cant hooks. Dick had three axes under his arm.

  He turned and shut the gate. The others went on ahead of him down to the lake shore where the logs were buried in the sand.

  The logs had been lost from the big log booms that were towed down the lake to the mill by the steamer Magic. They had drifted up onto the beach and if nothing were done about them sooner or later the crew of the Magic would come along the shore in a rowboat, spot the logs, drive an iron spike with a ring on it into the end of each one and then tow them out into the lake to make a new boom. But the lumbermen might never come for them because a few logs were not worth the price of a crew to gather them. If no one came for them they would be left to waterlog and rot on the beach.

  Nick’s father always assumed that this was what would happen and hired the Indians to come down from the camp and cut the logs up with the crosscut saw and split them with a wedge to make cord wood and chunks for the open fireplace. Dick Boulton walked around past the cottage down to the lake. There were four big beech logs lying almost buried in the sand. Eddy hung the saw up by one of its handles in the crotch of a tree. Dick put the three axes down on the little dock. Dick was a half-breed and many of the farmers around the lake believed he was really a white man. He was very lazy but a great worker once he was started. He took a plug of tobacco out of his pocket, bit off a chew and spoke in Ojibway to Eddy and Billy Tabeshaw.

  They sunk the ends of their cant hooks into one of the logs and swung against it to loosen it in the sand. They swung their weight against the shafts of the cant hooks. The log moved in the sand. Dick Boulton turned to Nick’s father.

  “Well, Doc,” he said, “that’s a nice lot of timber you’ve stolen.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Dick,” the doctor said. “It’s driftwood.”

  Eddy and Billy Tabeshaw had rocked the log out of the wet sand and rolled it toward the water.

  “Put it right in,” Dick Boulton shouted.

  “What are you doing that for?” asked the doctor.

  “Wash it off. Clean off the sand on account of the saw. I want to see who it belongs to,” Dick said.

  The log was just awash in the lake. Eddy and Billy Tabeshaw leaned on their cant hooks, sweating in
the sun. Dick kneeled down in the sand and looked at the mark of the sealer’s hammer in the wood at the end of the log.

  “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 anyone would really do a thing like that.”

  “No?” the doctor said.

  “No. I can’t really believe that anyone 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.”

  Ten Indians

  After one Fourth of July, Nick, driving home late from town in the big wagon with Joe Garner and his family, passed nine drunken Indians along the road. He remembered there were nine because Joe Garner, driving along in the dusk, pulled up the horses, jumped down into the road and dragged an Indian out of the wheel rut. The Indian had been asleep, face down in the sand. Joe dragged him into the bushes and got back up on the wagon box.

  “That makes nine of them,” Joe said, “just between here and the edge of town.”

  “Them Indians,” said Mrs. Garner.

  Nick was on the back seat with the two Garner boys. He was looking out from the back seat to see the Indian where Joe had dragged him alongside of the road.

  “Was it Billy Tabeshaw?” Carl asked.

  “No.”

  “His pants looked mighty like Billy.”

  “All Indians wear the same kind of pants.”

  “I didn’t see him at all,” Frank said. “Pa was down into the road and back up again before I seen a thing. I thought he was killing a snake.”

  “Plenty of Indians’ll kill snakes tonight, I guess,” Joe Garner said.

  “Them Indians,” said Mrs. Garner.

  They drove along. The road turned off from the main highway and went up into the hills. It was hard pulling for the horses and the boys got down and walked. The road was sandy. Nick looked back from the top of the hill by the schoolhouse. He saw the lights of Petoskey and, off across Little Traverse Bay, the lights of Harbor Springs. They climbed back in the wagon again.

  “They ought to put some gravel on that stretch,” Joe Garner said. The wagon went along the road through the woods. Joe and Mrs. Garner sat close together on the front seat. Nick sat between the two boys. The road came out into a clearing.

  “Right here was where Pa ran over the skunk.”

  “It was further on.”

  “It don’t make no difference where it was,” Joe said without turning his head. “One place is just as good as another to run over a skunk.”

  “I saw two skunks last night,” Nick said.

  “Where?”

  “Down by the lake. They were looking for dead fish along the beach.”

  “They were coons probably,” Carl said.

  “They were skunks. I guess I know skunks.”

  “You ought to,” Carl said. “You got an Indian girl.”

  “Stop talking that way, Carl,” said Mrs. Garner.

  “Well, they smell about the same.”

  Joe Garner laughed.

  “You stop laughing, Joe,” Mrs. Garner said. “I won’t have Carl talk that way.”

  “Have you got an Indian girl, Nickie?” Joe asked.

  “No.”

  “He has too, Pa,�
�� Frank said. “Prudence Mitchell’s his girl.”

  “She’s not.”

  “He goes to see her every day.”

  “I don’t.” Nick, sitting between the two boys in the dark, felt hollow and happy inside himself to be teased about Prudence Mitchell. “She ain’t my girl,” he said.

  “Listen to him,” said Carl. “I see them together every day.”

  “Carl can’t get a girl,” his mother said, “not even a squaw.”

  Carl was quiet.

  “Carl ain’t no good with girls,” Frank said.

  “You shut up.”

  “You’re all right, Carl,” Joe Garner said. “Girls never got a man anywhere. Look at your pa.”

  “Yes, that’s what you would say,” Mrs. Garner moved close to Joe as the wagon jolted. “Well, you had plenty of girls in your time.”

  “I’ll bet Pa wouldn’t ever have had a squaw for a girl.”

  “Don’t you think it,” Joe said. “You better watch out to keep Prudie, Nick.”

  His wife whispered to him and Joe laughed.

  “What you laughing at?” asked Frank.

  “Don’t you say it, Garner,” his wife warned. Joe laughed again.

  “Nickie can have Prudence,” Joe Garner said. “I got a good girl.”

  “That’s the way to talk,” Mrs. Garner said.

  The horses were pulling heavily in the sand. Joe reached out in the dark with the whip.

  “Come on, pull into it. You’ll have to pull harder than this tomorrow.”

  They trotted down the long hill, the wagon jolting. At the farmhouse everybody got down. Mrs. Garner unlocked the door, went inside, and came out with a lamp in her hand. Carl and Nick unloaded the things from the back of the wagon. Frank sat on the front seat to drive to the barn and put up the horses. Nick went up the steps and opened the kitchen door. Mrs. Garner was building a fire in the stove. She turned from pouring kerosene on the wood.

  “Good-by, Mrs. Garner,” Nick said. “Thanks for taking me.”

  “Oh, shucks, Nickie.”

  “I had a wonderful time.”

  “We like to have you. Won’t you stay and eat some supper?”