The Nick Adams Stories Part 15

"No."

"I wish it would."

"You're crazy, Littless."

"Maybe I am. Do I look like an idiot boy?"

"A little."

"You can make it neater. You can see to cut it with a comb."

"I'll have to make it a little better but not much. Are you hungry, idiot brother?"

"Can't I just be an un-idiot brother?"

"I don't want to trade you for a brother."

"You have to now, Nickie, don't you see? It was something we had to do. I should have asked you but I knew it was something we had to do so I did it for a surprise."

"I like it," Nick said. "The h.e.l.l with everything. I like it very much."

"Thank you, Nickie, so much. I was laying trying to rest like you said. But all I could do was imagine things to do for you. I was going to get you a chewing tobacco can full of knockout drops from some big saloon in some place like Sheboygan."

"Who did you get them from?"

Nick was sitting down now and his sister sat on his lap and held her arms around his neck and rubbed her cropped head against his cheek.

"I got them from the Queen of the Wh.o.r.es," she said. "And you know the name of the saloon?"

"No."

"The Royal Ten Dollar Gold Piece inn and Emporium."

"What did you do there?"

"I was a wh.o.r.e's a.s.sistant."

"What's a wh.o.r.e's a.s.sistant do?"

"Oh she carries the wh.o.r.e's train when she walks and opens her carriage door and shows her to the right room, it's like a lady in waiting I guess."

"What's she say to the wh.o.r.e?"

"She'll say anything that comes into her mind as long as it's polite."

"Like what, brother?"

"Like, 'Well ma'am, it must be pretty tiring on a hot day like today to be just a bird in a gilded cage.' Things like that."

"What's the wh.o.r.e say?"

"She says, 'Yes, indeedy. It sure is sweetness.' Because this wh.o.r.e I was wh.o.r.e's a.s.sistant to is of humble origin."

"What kind of origin are you?"

"I'm the sister or the brother of a morbid writer and I'm delicately brought up. This makes me intensely desirable to the main wh.o.r.e and to all of her circle."

"Did you get the knockout drops?"

"Of course. She said, 'Hon, take these little old drops.' 'Thank you,' I said. 'Give my regards to your morbid brother and ask him to stop by the Emporium anytime he is at Sheboygan.' "

"Get off my lap," Nick said.

"That's just the way they talk in the Emporium," Littless said.

"I have to get supper. Aren't you hungry?"

"I'll get supper."

"No," Nick said. "You keep on talking."

"Don't you think we're going to have fun, Nickie?"

"We're having fun now."

"Do you want me to tell you about the other thing I did for you?"

"You mean before you decided to do something practical and cut off your hair?"

"This was practical enough. Wait till you hear it. Can I kiss you while you're making supper?"

"Wait a while and I'll tell you. What was it you were going to do?"

"Well, I guess I was ruined morally last night when I stole the whiskey. Do you think you can be ruined morally by just one thing like that?"

"No. Anyway the bottle was open."

"Yes. But I took the empty pint bottle and the quart bottle with the whiskey in it out to the kitchen and I poured the pint bottle full and some spilled on my hand and I licked it off and I thought that probably ruined me morally."

"How'd it taste?"

"Awfully strong and funny and a little sick-making."

"That wouldn't ruin you morally."

"Well, I'm glad because if I was ruined morally how could I exercise a good influence on you?"

"I don't know," Nick said. "What was it you were going to do?"

He had his fire made and the skillet resting on it and he was laying strips of bacon in the skillet. His sister was watching and she had her hands folded across her knees and he watched her unclasp her hands and put one arm down and lean on it and put her legs out straight. She was practicing being a boy.

"I've got to learn to put my hands right."

"Keep them away from your head."

"I know. It would be easy if there was some boy my own age to copy."

"Copy me."

"That would be natural, wouldn't it? You won't laugh, though?"

"Maybe."

"Gee, I hope I won't start to be a girl while we're on the trip."

"Don't worry."

"We have the same shoulders and the same kind of legs."

"What was the other thing you were going to do?"

Nick was cooking the trout now. The bacon was curled brown on a fresh-cut chip of wood from the piece of fallen timber they were using for the fire and they both smelled the trout cooking in the bacon fat. Nick basted them and then turned them and basted them again. It was getting dark and he had rigged a piece of canvas behind the little fire so that it would not be seen.

"What were you going to do?" he asked again. Littless leaned forward and spat toward the fire.

"How was that?"

"You missed the skillet anyway."

"Oh, it's pretty bad. I got it out of the Bible. I was going to take three spikes, one for each of them, and drive them into the temples of those two and that boy while they slept."

"What were you going to drive them in with?"

"A m.u.f.fled hammer."

"How do you m.u.f.fle a hammer?"

"I'd m.u.f.fle it all right."

"That nail thing's pretty rough to try."

"Well, that girl did it in the Bible and since I've seen armed men drunk and asleep and circulated among them at night and stolen their whiskey why shouldn't I go the whole way, especially if I learned it in the Bible?"

"They didn't have a m.u.f.fled hammer in the Bible."

"I guess I mixed it up with m.u.f.fled oars."

"Maybe. And we don't want to kill anybody. That's why you came along."

"I know. But crime comes easy for you and me, Nickie. We're different from the others. Then I thought if I was ruined morally I might as well be useful."

"You're crazy, Littless," he said. "Listen, does tea keep you awake?"

"I don't know. I never had it at night. Only peppermint tea."

"I'll make it very weak and put canned cream in it."

"I don't need it, Nickie, if we're short."

"It will just give the milk a little taste."

They were eating now. Nick had cut them each two slices of rye bread and he soaked one slice for each in the bacon fat in the skillet. They ate that and the trout that were crisp outside and cooked well and very tender inside. Then they put the trout skeletons in the fire and ate the bacon made in a sandwich with the other piece of bread, and then Littless drank the weak tea with the condensed milk in it and Nick tapped two slivers of wood into the holes he had punched in the can.

"Did you have enough?"

"Plenty. The trout was wonderful and the bacon, too. Weren't we lucky they had rye bread?"

"Eat an apple," he said. "Maybe we'll have something good tomorrow. Maybe I should have made a bigger supper, Littless."

"No. I had plenty."

"You're sure you're not hungry?"

"No. I'm full. I've got some chocolate if you'd like some."

"Where'd you get it?"

"From my savior."

"Where?"

"My savior. Where I save everything."

"Oh."

"This is fresh. Some is the hard kind from the kitchen. We can start on that and save the other for sometime special. Look, my savior's got a drawstring like a tobacco pouch. We can use it for nuggets and things like that. Do you think we'll get out west, Nickie, on this trip?"

"I haven't got it figured yet."

"I'd like to get my savior packed full of nuggets worth sixteen dollars an ounce."

Nick cleaned up the skillet and put the pack in at the head of the lean-to. One blanket was spread over the browse bed and he put the other one on it and tucked it under on Littless's side. He cleaned out the two-quart tin pail he'd made tea in and filled it with cold water from the spring. When he came back from the spring his sister was in the bed asleep, her head on the pillow she had made by rolling her blue jeans around her moccasins. He kissed her but she did not wake and he put on his old Mackinaw coat and felt in the packsack until he found the pint bottle of whiskey.

He opened it and smelled it and it smelled very good. He dipped a half a cup of water out of the small pail he had brought from the spring and poured a little of the whiskey in it. Then he sat and sipped this very slowly, letting it stay under his tongue before he brought it slowly back over his tongue and swallowed it.

He watched the small coals of the fire brighten with the light evening breeze and he tasted the whiskey and cold water and looked at the coals and thought. Then he finished the cup, dipped up some cold water and drank it and went to bed. The rifle was under his left leg and his head was on the good hard pillow his moccasins and the rolled trousers made and he pulled his side of the blanket tight around him and said his prayers and went to sleep.

In the night he was cold and he spread his Mackinaw coat over his sister and rolled his back over closer to her so that there was more of his side of the blanket under him. He felt for the gun and tucked it under his leg again. The air was cold and sharp to breathe and he smelled the cut hemlock and balsam boughs. He had not realized how tired he was until the cold had waked him. Now he lay comfortable again feeling the warmth of his sister's body against his back and he thought, I must take good care of her and keep her happy and get her back safely. He listened to her breathing and to the quiet of the night and then he was asleep again.