“Is it fun?”
“Oh, Wemedge. I’ve wanted it so. I’ve needed it so.”
They lay together in the blankets. Wemedge slid his head down, his nose touching along the line of the neck, down between her breasts. It was like piano keys.
“You smell so cool,” he said.
He touched one of her small breasts with his lips gently. It came alive between his lips, his tongue pressing against it. He felt the whole feeling coming back again and, sliding his hands down, moved Kate over. He slid down and she fitted close in against him. She pressed tight in against the curve of his abdomen. She felt wonderful there. He searched, a little awkwardly, then found it. He put both hands over her breasts and held her to him. Nick kissed hard against her back. Kate’s head dropped forward.
“Is it good this way?” he said.
“I love it. I love it. I love it. Oh, come, Wemedge. Please come. Come, come. Please, Wemedge. Please, please, Wemedge.”
“There it is,” Nick said.
He was suddenly conscious of the blanket rough against his bare body.
“Was I bad, Wemedge?” Kate said.
“No, you were good,” Nick said. His mind was working very hard and clear. He saw everything very sharp and clear. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“I wish we could sleep here all night.” Kate cuddled against him.
“It would be swell,” Nick said. “But we can’t. You’ve got to get back to the house.”
“I don’t want to go,” Kate said.
Nick stood up, a little wind blowing on his body. He pulled on his shirt and was glad to have it on. He put on his trousers and shoes.
“You’ve got to get dressed, Stut,” he said. She lay there, the blankets pulled over her head.
“Just a minute,” she said. Nick got the lunch from over the hemlock. He opened it up.
“Come on, get dressed, Stut,” he said.
“I don’t want to,” Kate said. “I’m going to sleep here all night.” She sat up in the blankets. “Hand me those things, Wemedge.”
Nick gave her the clothes.
“I’ve just thought of it,” Kate said. “If I sleep out here they’ll just think that I’m an idiot and came out here with the blankets and it will be all right.”
“You won’t be comfortable,” Nick said.
“If I’m uncomfortable I’ll go in.”
“Let’s eat before I have to go,” Nick said.
“I’ll put something on,” Kate said.
They sat together and ate the fried chicken and each ate a piece of cherry pie.
Nick stood up, then kneeled down and kissed Kate.
He came through the wet grass to the cottage and upstairs to his room, walking carefully not to creak. It was good to be in bed, sheets, stretching out full length, dipping his head in the pillow. Good in bed, comfortable, happy, fishing tomorrow, he prayed as he always prayed when he remembered it, for the family, himself, to be a great writer, Kate, the men, Odgar, for good fishing, poor old Odgar, poor old Odgar, sleeping up there at the cottage, maybe not fishing, maybe not sleeping all night. Still there wasn’t anything you could do, not a thing.
The Last Good Country
“NICKIE,” HIS SISTER SAID TO HIM. “LISten to me, Nickie.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
He was watching the bottom of the spring where the sand rose in small spurts with the bubbling water. There was a tin cup on a forked stick that was stuck in the gravel by the spring and Nick Adams looked at it and at the water rising and then flowing clear in its gravel bed beside the road.
He could see both ways on the road and he looked up the hill and then down to the dock and the lake, the wooded point across the bay and the open lake beyond where there were white caps running. His back was against a big cedar tree and behind him there was a thick cedar swamp. His sister was sitting on the moss beside him and she had her arm around his shoulders.
“The’re waiting for you to come home to supper,” his sister said. “There’s two of them. They came in a buggy and they asked where you were.”
“Did anybody tell them?”
“Nobody knew where you were but me. Did you get many, Nickie?”
“I got twenty-six.”
“Are they good ones?”
“Just the size they want for the dinners.”
“Oh, Nickie, I wish you wouldn’t sell them.”
“She gives me a dollar a pound,” Nick Adams said.
His sister was tanned brown and she had dark brown eyes and dark brown hair with yellow streaks in it from the sun. She and Nick loved each other and they did not love the others. They always thought of everyone else in the family as the others.
“They know about everything, Nickie,” his sister said hopelessly. “They said they were going to make an example of you and send you to the reform school.”
“They’ve only got proof on one thing,” Nick told her. “But I guess I have to go away for a while.”
“Can I go?”
“No. I’m sorry, Littless. How much money have we got?”
“Fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents. I brought it.”
“Did they say anything else?”
“No. Only that they were going to stay till you came home.”
“Our mother will get tired of feeding them.”
“She gave them lunch already.”
“What were they doing?”
“Just sitting around on the screen porch. They asked our mother for your rifle but I’d hid it in the woodshed when I saw them by the fence.”
“Were you expecting them?”
“Yes. Weren’t you?”
“I guess so. Goddam them.”
“Goddam them for me, too,” his sister said. “Aren’t I old enough to go now? I hid the rifle. I brought the money.”
“I’d worry about you,” Nick Adams told her. “I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Sure you do.”
“If there’s two of us they’d look harder. A boy and a girl show up.”
“I’d go like a boy,” she said. “I always wanted to be a boy anyway. They couldn’t tell anything about me if my hair was cut.”
“No,” Nick Adams said. “That’s true.”
“Let’s think something out good,” she said. “Please, Nick, please. I could be lots of use and you’d be lonely without me. Wouldn’t you be?”
“I’m lonely now thinking about going away from you.”
“See? And we may have to be away for years. Who can tell? Take me, Nickie. Please take me.” She kissed
