To distinguish them from previously published works, all the new materials in this book have been printed in a special “oblique” type. If the decision to publish them at all is questioned, justification is available. For one thing, the plan for rearranging the Nick Adams stories coherently benefits from material that fills substantial gaps in the narrative. Further, all this new fiction relates in one way or another to events in the author’s life, in which his readers continue to be interested. Last and most important is the fact that these pieces throw new light on the work and personality of one of our foremost writers and genuinely increase our understanding of him. The typography suggests an oblique introduction, but a warm reception is expected.
—PHILIP YOUNG
BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES
BAKER, CARLOS. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969.
HEMINGWAY, LEICESTER. My Brother, Ernest Hemingway. New York: World Publishing Company, 1962.
MONTGOMERY, CONSTANCE CAPPEL. Hemingway in Michigan. New York: Fleet Press Corporation, 1966.
SANFORD, MARCELLINE HEMINGWAY. At the Hemingways: A Family Portrait. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962.
Contents
Preface
THE NORTHERN WOODS
Three Shots
Indian Camp
The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife
Ten Indians
The Indians Moved Away
ON HIS OWN
The Light of the World
The Battler
The Killers
The Last Good Country
Crossing the Mississippi
WAR
Night Before Landing
“Nick Sat Against the Wall …”
Now I Lay Me
A Way You’ll Never Be
In Another Country
A SOLDIER HOME
Big Two-Hearted River
The End of Something
The Three-Day Blow
Summer People
COMPANY OF TWO
Wedding Day
On Writing
An Alpine Idyll
Cross-Country Snow
Fathers and Sons
About the e-Book
THE NORTHERN WOODS
Three Shots
Nick was undressing in the tent. He saw the shadows of his father and Uncle George cast by the fire on the canvas wall. He felt very uncomfortable and ashamed and undressed as fast as he could, piling his clothes neatly. He was ashamed because undressing reminded him of the night before. He had kept it out of his mind all day.
His father and uncle had gone off across the lake after supper to fish with a jack light. Before they shoved the boat out his father told him that if any emergency came up while they were gone he was to fire three shots with the rifle and they would come right back. Nick went back from the edge of the lake through the woods to the camp. He could hear the oars of the boat in the dark. His father was rowing and his uncle was sitting in the stern trolling. He had taken his seat with his rod ready when his father shoved the boat out. Nick listened to them on the lake until he could no longer hear the oars.
Walking back through the woods Nick began to be frightened. He was always a little frightened of the woods at night. He opened the flap of the tent and undressed and lay very quietly between the blankets in the dark. The fire was burned down to a bed of coals outside. Nick lay still and tried to go to sleep. There was no noise anywhere. Nick felt if he could only hear a fox bark or an owl or anything he would be all right. He was not afraid of anything definite as yet. But he was getting very afraid. Then suddenly he was afraid of dying. Just a few weeks before at home, in church, they had sung a hymn, “Some day the silver cord will break.” While they were singing the hymn Nick had realized that some day he must die. It made him feel quite sick, it was the first time he had ever realized that he himself would have to die sometime.
That night he sat out in the hall under the night light trying to read Robinson Crusoe to keep his mind off the fact that some day the silver cord must break. The nurse found him there and threatened to tell his father on him if he did not go to bed. He went in to bed and as soon as the nurse was in her room came out again and read under the hall light until morning.