The Nick Adams Stories Read online

  “I could put them in if you’ll tell me how. Do you put them in the bottle?”

  “No. In the glass. But we haven’t got any.”

  “Would there be any in the medicine cabinet?”

  “No.”

  “I could put paragoric in the bottle. They have another bottle. Or calomel. I know we’ve got those.”

  “No,” said Nick. “You try to get me about half the other bottle when they’re asleep. Put it in any old medicine bottle.”

  “I better go and watch them,” his sister said. “My, I wish we had knockout drops. I never even heard of them.”

  “They aren’t really drops,” Nick told her. “It’s chloral hydrate. Whores give it to lumberjacks in their drinks when they’re going to jack roll them.”

  “It sounds pretty bad,” his sister said. “But we probably ought to have some for in emergencies.”

  “Let me kiss you,” her brother said. “Just for in an emergency. Let’s go down and watch them drinking. I’d like to hear them talk sitting in our own house.”

  “Will you promise not to get angry and do anything bad?”

  “Sure.”

  “Nor to the horses. It’s not the horses’ fault.”

  “Not the horses either.”

  “I wish we had knockout drops,” his sister said loyally.

  “Well, we haven’t,” Nick told her. “I guess there aren’t any this side of Boyne City.”

  They sat in the woodshed and they watched the two men sitting at the table on the screen porch. The moon had not risen and it was dark, but the outlines of the men showed against the lightness that the lake made behind them. They were not talking now but were both leaning forward on the table. Then Nick heard the clink of ice against a bucket.

  “The ginger ale’s gone,” one of the men said.

  “I said it wouldn’t last,” the other said. “But you were the one said we had plenty.”

  “Get some water. There’s a pail and a dipper in the kitchen.”

  “I’ve drunk enough. I’m going to turn in.”

  “Aren’t you going to stay up for that kid?”

  “No. I’m going to get some sleep. You stay up.”

  “Do you think he’ll come in tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to get some sleep. You wake me when you get sleepy.”

  “I can stay up all night,” the local warden said. “Many’s the night I’ve stayed up all night for jack lighters and never shut an eye.”

  “Me, too,” the down-state man said. “But now I’m going to get a little sleep.”

  Nick and his sister watched him go in the door. Their mother had told the two men they could sleep in the bedroom next to the living room. They saw when he struck a match. Then the window was dark again. They watched the other warden sitting at the table until he put his head on his arms. Then they heard him snoring.

  “We’ll give him a little while to make sure he’s solid asleep. Then we’ll get the stuff,” Nick said.

  “You get over outside the fence,” his sister said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m moving around. But he might wake up and see you.”

  “All right,” Nick agreed. “I’ll get everything out of here. Most of it’s here.”

  “Can you find everything without a light?”

  “Sure. Where’s the rifle?”

  “Flat on the back upper rafter. Don’t slip or make the wood fall down, Nick.”

  “Don’t you worry.”

  She canie out to the fence at the far corner where Nick was making up his pack beyond the big hemlock that had been struck by lightning the summer before and had fallen in a storm that autumn. The moon was just rising now behind the far hills and enough moonlight came through the trees for Nick to see clearly what he was packing. His sister put down the sack she was carrying and said, “They’re sleeping like pigs, Nickie.”

  “Good.”

  “The down-state one was snoring just like the one outside. I think I got everything.”

  “You good old Littless.”

  “I wrote a note to our mother and told her I was going with you to keep you out of trouble and not to tell anybody and that you’d take good care of me. I put it under her door, it’s locked.”

  “Oh, shit,” Nick said. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Littless.”

  “Now it’s not your fault and I can’t make it worse for you.”

  “You’re awful.”

  “Can’t we be happy now?”

  “Sure.”

  “I brought the whiskey,” she said hopefully. “I left some in the bottle. One of them can’t be sure the other didn’t drink it. Anyway they have another bottle.”

  “Did you bring a blanket for you?”

  “Of course.”

  “We better get going.”

  “We’re all right if we’re going where I think. The only thing makes the pack bigger is my blanket. I’ll carry the rifle.”

  “All right. What kind of shoes have you?”

  “I’ve got my work-moccasins.”

  “What did you bring to read?”

  “Lorna Doone and Kidnapped and Wuthering Heights.”

  “They’re all too old for you but Kidnapped.”

  “Lorna Doone isn’t.”

  “We’ll read it out loud,” Nick said. “That way it lasts longer. But, Littless, you’ve made things sort of hard now and we better go. Those bastards can’t be as stupid as they act. Maybe it was just because they were drinking.”

  Nick had rolled the pack now and tightened the straps and he sat back and put his moccasins on. He put his arm around his sister. “You sure you want to go?”

  “I have to go, Nickie. Don’t be weak and undecisive now. I left the note.”

  “All right,” Nick said. “Let’s go. You can take the rifle until you get tired of it.”

  “I’m all ready to go,” his sister said. “Let me help you strap the pack.”

  “You know you haven’t had any sleep at all and that we have to travel?”

  “I know. I’m really like the snoring one at the table says he was.”

  “Maybe he was that way once, too,” Nick said. “But what you have to do is keep your feet in good shape. Do the moccasins chafe?”

  “No. And my feet are tough from going barefoot all summer.”

  “Mine are good, too,” said Nick. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  They started off walking on the soft hemlock needles and the trees were high and there was no brush between the tree trunks. They walked uphill and the moon came through the trees and showed Nick with the very big pack and his sister carrying the .22 rifle. When they were at the top of the hill they looked back and saw the lake in the moonlight. It was clear enough so they could see the dark point, and beyond were the high hills of the far shore.

  “We might as well say goodby to it,” Nick Adams said.

  “Goodby, lake,” Littless said. “I love you, too.”

  They went down the hill and across the long field and through the orchard and then through a rail fence and into a field of stubble. Going through the stubbie field they looked to the right and saw the slaughterhouse and the big barn in the hollow and the old log farmhouse on the other high land that overlooked the lake. The long road of Lombardy poplars that ran to the lake was in the moonlight.

  “Does it hurt your feet, Littless?” Nick asked.

  “No,” his sister said.

  “I came this way on account of the dogs,” Nick said. “They’d shut up as soon as they knew it was us. But somebody might hear them bark.”

  “I know,” she said. “And as soon as they shut up afterwards they’d know it was us.”

  Ahead they could see the dark of the rising line of hills beyond the road. They came to the end of one cut field of grain and crossed the little sunken creek that ran down to the springhouse. Then they climbed across the rise of another stubble field and there was another rail fence and the sandy road with the second-growth timber solid beyond it.

&n
bsp; “Wait till I climb over and I’ll help you,” Nick said. “I want to look at the road.”

  From the top of the fence he saw the roll of the country and the dark timber by their own house and the brightness of the lake in the moonlight. Then he was looking at the road.

  “They can’t track us the way we’ve come and I don’t think they would notice tracks in this deep sand,” he said to his sister. “We can keep to the two sides of the road if it isn’t too scratchy.”

  “Nickie, honestly I don’t think they’re intelligent enough to track anybody. Look how they just waited for you to come back and then practically got drunk before supper and afterwards.”

  “They came down to the dock,” Nick said. “That was where I was. If you hadn’t told me they would have picked me up.”

  “They didn’t have to be so intelligent to figure you would be on the big creek when our mother let them know you might have gone fishing. After I left they must have found all the boats were there and that would make them think you were fishing the creek. Everybody knows you usually fish below the grist mill and the cider mill. They were just slow thinking it out.”

  “All right,” Nick said. “But they were awfully close then.”

  His sister handed him the rifle through the fence, butt toward him, and then crawled between the rails. She stood beside him on the road and he put his hand on her head and stroked it.

  “Are you awfully tired, Littless?”

  “No. I’m fine. I’m too happy to be tired.”

  “Until you’re too tired you walk in the sandy part of the road where their horses made holes in the sand, it’s so soft and dry tracks won’t show and I’ll walk on the side where it’s hard.”

  “I can walk on the side, too.”

  “No. I don’t want you to get scratched.”

  They climbed, but with constant small descents, toward the height of land that separated the two lakes. There was close, heavy, second-growth timber on both sides of the road and blackberry and raspberry bushes grew from the edge of the road to the timber. Ahead they could see the top of each hill as a notch in the timber. The moon was well on its way down now.

  “How do you feel, Littless?” Nick asked his sister.

  “I feel wonderful. Nickie, is it always this nice when you run away from home?”

  “No. Usually it’s lonesome.”

  “How lonesome have you ever been?”

  “Bad black lonesome. Awful.”

  “Do you think you’ll get lonesome with me?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t mind you’re with me instead of going to Trudy?”

  “What do you talk about her for all the time?”

  “I haven’t been. Maybe you were thinking about her and you thought I was talking.”

  “You’re too smart,” Nick said. “I thought about her because you told me where she was and when I knew where she was I wondered what she would be doing and all that.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have come.”

  “I told you that you shouldn’t come.”

  “Oh, hell,” his sister said. “Are we going to be like the others and have fights? I’ll go back now. You don’t have to have me.”

  “Shut up,” Nick said.

  “Please don’t say that, Nickie. I’ll go back or I’ll stay just as you want. I’ll go back whenever you tell me to. But I won’t have fights. Haven’t we seen enough fights in families?”

  “Yes,” said Nick.

  “I know I forced you to take me. But I fixed it so you wouldn’t get in trouble about it. And I did keep them from catching you.”

  They had reached the height of land and from here they could see the lake again although from here it looked narrow now and almost like a big river.

  “We cut across country here,” Nick said. “Then we’ll hit that old logging road. Here’s where you go back from if you want to go back.”

  He took off his pack and put it back into the timber and his sister leaned the rifle on it.

  “Sit down, Littless, and take a rest,” he said. “We’re both tired.”

  Nick Jay with his head on the pack and his sister lay by him with her head on his shoulder.

  “I’m not going back, Nickie, unless you tell me to,” she said. “I just don’t want fights. Promise me we won’t have fights?”

  “Promise.”

  “I won’t talk about Trudy.”

  “The hell with Trudy.”

  “I want to be useful and a good partner.”

  “You are. You won’t mind if I get restless and mix it up with being lonesome?”

  “No. We’ll take good care of each other and have fun. We can have a lovely time.”

  “All right. We’ll start to have it now.”

  “I’ve been having it all the time.”

  “We just have one pretty hard stretch and then a really hard stretch and then we’ll be there. We might as well wait until it gets light to start. You go to sleep, Littless. Are you warm enough?”

  “Oh yes, Nickie. I’ve got my sweater.”

  She curled up beside him and was asleep. In a little while Nick was sleeping, too. He slept for two hours until the morning light woke him.

  Nick had circled around through the second-growth timber until they had come onto the old logging road.

  “We couldn’t leave tracks going into it from the main road,” he told his sister.

  The old road was so overgrown that he had to stoop many times to avoid hitting branches.

  “it’s like a tunnel,” his sister said.

  “It opens up after a while.”

  “Have I ever been here before?”

  “No. This goes up way beyond where I ever took you hunting.”

  “Does it come out on the secret place?”

  “No, Littless. We have to go through some long bad slashings. Nobody gets in where we’re going.”

  They kept on along the road and then took another road that was even more overgrown. Then they came out into a clearing. There was fireweed and brush in the clearing and the old cabins of the logging camp. They were very old and some of the roofs had fallen in. But there was a spring by the road and they both drank at it. The sun wasn’t up yet and they both felt hollow and empty in the early morning after the night of walking.

  “All this beyond was hemlock forest,” Nick said. “They only cut it for the bark and they never used the logs.”

  “But what happens to the road?”

  “They must have cut up at the far end first and hauled and piled the bark by the road to snake it out. Then finally they cut everything right to the road and piled the bark here and then pulled out.”

  “Is the secret place beyond all this slashing?”

  “Yes. We go through the slashing and then some more road and then another slashing and then we come to virgin timber.”

  “How did they leave it when they cut all this?”

  “I don’t know, it belonged to somebody that wouldn’t sell, I guess. They stole a lot from the edges and paid stumpage on it. But the good part’s still there and there isn’t any passable road into it.”

  “But why can’t people go down the creek? The creek has to come from somewhere?”

  They were resting before they started the bad traveling through the slashing and Nick wanted to explain.

  “Look, Littless. The creek crosses the main road we were on and it goes through a farmer’s land. The farmer has it fenced for a pasture and he runs people off that want to fish. So they stop at the bridge on his land. On the section of the creel: where they would hit if they cut across his pasture on the other side from his house he runs a bull. The bull is mean and he really runs everybody off. He’s the meanest bull I ever saw and he just stays there, mean all the time, and hunts for people. Then after him the farmer’s land ends and there’s a section of cedar swamp with sink holes and you’d have to know it to get through. And then, even if you know it, it’s bad. Below that is the secret place. We’re going in over th
e hills and sort of in the back way. Then below the secret place there’s real swamp. Bad swamp that you can’t get through. Now we better start the bad part.”

  The bad part and the part that was worse were behind them now. Nick had climbed over many logs that were higher than his head and others that were up to his waist. He would take the rifle and lay it down on the top of the log and pull his sister up and then she would slide down on the far side or he would lower himself down and take the rifle and help the girl down. They went over and around piles of brush and it was hot in the slashing, and the pollen from the ragweed and the fireweed dusted the girl’s hair and made her sneeze.

  “Damn slashings,” she said to Nick. They were resting on top of a big log ringed where they sat by the cutting of the barkpeelers. The ring was gray in the rotting gray log and all around were other long gray trunks and gray brush and branches with the brilliant and worthless weeds growing.

  “This is the last one,” Nick said.

  “I hate them,” his sister said. “And the damn weeds are like flowers in a tree cemetery if nobody took care of it.”

  “You see why I didn’t want to try to make it in the dark.”

  “We couldn’t.”

  “No. And nobody’s going to chase us through here. Now we come into the good part.”

  They came from the hot sun of the slashings into the shade of the great trees. The slashings had run up to the top of a ridge and over and then the forest began. They were walking on the brown forest floor now and it was springy and cool under their feet. There was no underbrush and the trunks of the trees rose sixty feet high before there were any branches. It was cool in the shade of the trees and high up in them Nick could hear the breeze that was rising. No sun came through as they walked and Nick knew there would be no sun through the high top branches until nearly noon. His sister put her hand in his and walked close to him.

  “I’m not scared, Nickie. But it makes me feel very strange.”

  “Me, too,” Nick said. “Always.”

  “I never was in woods like these.”

  “This is all the virgin timber left around here.”

  “Do we go through it very long?”

  “Quite a way.”

  “I’d be afraid if I were alone.”

  “It makes me feel strange. But I’m not afraid.”