THE Nick Adams STORIES (11 page)

The hired girl did not say anything but went into the main part of the house, shutting the door after her.

“You better pick up the full and the empty bottles,” the down-state man said. “There isn't enough of this to do any good. You want a drink of it?”

“No thanks. I've got to work today.”

“I'll take one,” the down-state man said, “it hasn't been shared right.”

“I didn't drink any of it after you left,” the local warden said doggedly.

“Why do you keep on with that bullshit?”

“It isn't bullshit.”

The down-state man put the bottle down. “All right,” he said to the hired girl, who had opened and shut the door behind her. “What did she say?”

“She has a sick headache and she can't see you. She says you have a warrant. She says for you to search the place if you want to and then go.”

“What did she say about the boy?”

“She hasn't seen the boy and she doesn't know anything about him.”

“Where are the other kids?”

“They're visiting at Charlevoix.”

“Who are they visiting?”

“I don't know. She doesn't know. They went to the dance and they were going to stay over Sunday with friends.”

“Who was that kid that was around here yesterday?”

“I didn't see any kid around here yesterday.”

“There was.”

“Maybe some friend of the children asking for them. Maybe some resorter's kid. Was it a boy or a girl?”

“A girl about eleven or twelve. Brown hair and brown eyes. Freckles. Very tanned. Wearing overalls and a boy's shirt. Barefooted.”

“Sounds like anybody,” the hired girl said. “Did you say eleven or twelve years old?”

“Oh, shit,” said the man from down state. “You can't get anything out of these mossbacks.”

“If I'm a mossback what's he?” the hired girl looked at the local warden. “What's Mr. Evans? His kids and me went to the same schoolhouse.”

“Who was the girl?” Evans asked her. “Come on, Suzy. I can find out anyway.”

“I wouldn't know,” Suzy, the hired girl, said, “it seems like all kinds of people come by here now. I feel just like I'm in a big city.”

“You don't want to get in any trouble, do you, Suzy?” Evans said.

“No, sir.”

“I mean it.”

“You don't want to get in any trouble either, do you?” Suzy asked him.

Out at the barn after they were hitched up the down-state man said, “We didn't do so good, did we?”

“He's loose now,” Evans said. “He's got grub and he must have his rifle. But he's still in the area. I can get him. Can you track?”

“No. Not really. Can you?”

“In snow,” the other warden laughed.

“But we don't have to track. We have to think out where he'll be.”

“He didn't load up with all that stuff to go south. He'd just take a little something and head for the railway.”

“I couldn't tell what was missing from the woodshed. But he had a big pack load from the kitchen. He's heading in somewhere. I got to check on all his habits and his friends and where he used to go. You block him off at Charlevoix and Petoskey and St. Ignace and Sheboygan. Where would you go if you were him?”

“I'd go to the Upper Peninsula.”

“Me, too. He's been up there, too. The ferry is the easiest place to pick him up. But there's an awful big country between here and Sheboygan and he knows that country, too.”

“We better go down and see Packard. We were going to check that today.”

“What's to prevent him going down by East Jordan and Grand Traverse?”

“Nothing. But that isn't his country. He'll go some place that he knows.”

Suzy came out when they were opening the gate in the fence.

“Can I ride down to the store with you? I've got to get some groceries.”

“What makes you think we're going to the store?”

“Yesterday you were talking about going to see Mr. Packard.”

“How are you going to get your groceries back?”

“I guess I can get a lift with somebody on the road or coming up the lake. This is Saturday.”

“All right. Climb up,” the local warden said.

“Thank you, Mr. Evans,” Suzy said.

At the general store and post office Evans hitched the team at the rack and he and the down-state man stood and talked before they went in.

“I couldn't say anything with that damned Suzy.”

“Sure.”

“Packard's a fine man. There isn't anybody better-liked in this country. You'd never get a conviction on that trout business against him. Nobody's going to scare him and we don't want to antagonize him.”

“Do you think he'll cooperate?”

“Not if you act rough.”

“We'll go see him.”

Inside the store Suzy had gone straight through past the glass showcases, the opened barrels, the boxes, the shelves of canned goods, seeing nothing nor anyone until she came to the post office with its lockboxes and it's general delivery and stamp window. The window was down and she went straight on to the back of the store. Mr. Packard was opening a packing box with a crowbar. He looked at her and smiled.

“Mr. John,” the hired girl said, speaking very fast. “There's two wardens coming in that's after Nickie. He cleared out last night and his kid sister's gone with him. Don't let on about that. His mother knows it and it's all right. Anyhow she isn't going to say anything.”

“Did he take all your groceries?”

“Most of them.”

“You pick out what you need and make a list and I'll check it over with you.”

“They're coming in now.”

“You go out the back and come in the front again. I'll go and talk to them.”

Suzy walked around the long frame building and climbed the front steps again. This time she noticed everything as
she came in. She knew the Indians who had brought in the baskets and she knew the two Indian boys who were looking at the fishing tackle in the first showcases on the left. She knew all the patent medicines in the next case and who usually bought them. She had clerked one summer in the store and she knew what the penciled code letters and numbers meant that were on the cardboard boxes that held shoes, winter overshoes, wool socks, mittens, caps and sweaters. She knew what the baskets were worth that the Indians had brought in and that it was too late in the season for them to bring a good price.

“Why did you bring them in so late, Mrs. Tabeshaw?” she asked.

“Too much fun Fourth of July,” the Indian woman laughed.

“How's Billy?” Suzy asked.

“I don't know, Suzy. I no see him four weeks now.”

“Why don't you take them down to the hotel and try and sell them to the resorters?” Suzy said.

“Maybe,” Mrs. Tabeshaw said. “I took once.”

“You ought to take them every day.”

“Long walk,” Mrs. Tabeshaw said.

While Suzy was talking to the people she knew and making a list of what she needed for the house the two wardens were in the back of the store with Mr. John Packard.

Mr. John had gray-blue eyes and dark hair and a dark mustache and he always looked as though he had wandered into a general store by accident. He had been away from northern Michigan once for eighteen years when he was a young man and he looked more like a peace officer or an honest gambler than a storekeeper. He had owned good saloons in his time and run them well. But when the country had been lumbered off he had stayed and bought farming land. Finally when the county had gone local option he had bought this store. He
already owned the hotel. But he said he didn't like a hotel without a bar and so he almost never went near it. Mrs. Packard ran the hotel. She was more ambitious than Mr. John and Mr. John said he didn't want to waste time with people who had enough money to take a vacation anywhere in the country they wanted and then came to a hotel without a bar and spent their time sitting on the porch in rocking chairs. He called the resorters “change-of-lifers” and he made fun of them to Mrs. Packard but she loved him and never minded when he teased her.

“I don't mind if you call them change-of-lifers,” she told him one night in bed. “I had the damn thing but I'm still all the woman you can handle, aren't I?”

She liked the resorters because some of them brought culture and Mr. John said she loved culture like a lumberjack loved Peerless, the great chewing tobacco. He really respected her love of culture because she said she loved it just like he loved good bonded whiskey and she said, “Packard, you don't have to care about culture. I won't bother you with it. But it makes me feel wonderful.”

Mr. John said she could have culture until hell wouldn't hold it just so long as he never had to go to a Chautauqua or a Self-Betterment Course. He had been to camp meetings and a revival but he had never been to a Chautauqua. He said a camp meeting or a revival was bad enough but at least there was some sexual intercourse afterward by those who got really aroused although he never knew anyone to pay their bills after a camp meeting or a revival. Mrs. Packard, he told Nick Adams, would get worried about the salvation of his immortal soul after she had been to a big revival by somebody like Gypsy Smith, that great evangelist, but finally it would turn out that he, Packard, looked like Gypsy Smith and everything would be fine finally. But a Chautauqua was something strange. Culture maybe was better than religion, Mr. John thought.
But it was a cold proposition. Still they were crazy for it. He could see it was more than a fad, though.

“It's sure got a hold on them,” he had told Nick Adams. “It must be sort of like the Holy Rollers only in the brain. You study it sometime and tell me what you think. You going to be a writer you ought to get in on it early. Don't let them get too far ahead of you.”

Mr. John liked Nick Adams because he said he had original sin. Nick did not understand this but he was proud.

“You're going to have things to repent, boy,” Mr. John had told Nick. ‘'That's one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.”

“I don't want to do anything bad,” Nick had said.

“I don't want you to,” Mr. John had said. “But you're alive and you're going to do things. Don't you lie and don't you steal. Everybody has to lie. But you pick out somebody you never lie to.”

“I'll pick out you.”

“That's right. Don't you ever lie to me no matter what and I won't lie to you.”

“I'll try,” Nick had said.

“That isn't it,” Mr. John said, “it has to be absolute.”

“All right,” Nick said. “I'll never lie to you.”

“What became of your girl?”

“Somebody said she was working up at the Soo.”

“She was a beautiful girl and I always liked her,” Mr. John had said.

“So did I,” Nick said.

“Try and not feel too bad about it.”

“I can't help it,” Nick said. “None of it was her fault. She's just built that way. If I ran into her again I guess I'd get mixed up with her again.”

“Maybe not.”

“Maybe too. I'd try not to.”

Mr. John was thinking about Nick when he went out to the back counter where the two men were waiting for him. He looked them over as he stood there and he didn't like either of them. He had always disliked the local man Evans and had no respect for him but he sensed that the down-state man was dangerous. He had not analyzed it yet but he saw the man had very flat eyes and a mouth that was tighter than a simple tobacco chewer's mouth needed to be. He had a real elk's tooth too on his watch chain. It was a really fine tusk from about a five-year-old bull, it was a beautiful tusk and Mr. John looked at it again and at the over-large bulge the man's shoulder holster made under his coat.

“Did you kill that bull with that cannon you're carrying around under your arm?” Mr. John asked the down-state man.

The down-state man looked at Mr. John unappreciatively.

“No,” he said. “I killed that bull out in the thoroughfare country in Wyoming with a Winchester 45-70.”

“You're a big-gun man, eh?” Mr. John said. He looked under the counter. “Have big feet, too. Do you need that big a cannon when you go out hunting kids?”

“What do you mean, kids,” the down-state man said. He was one ahead.

“I mean the kid you're looking for.”

“You said, kids,” the down-state man said.

Mr. John moved in. It was necessary. “What's Evans carry when he goes after a boy who's licked his own boy twice? You must be heavily armed, Evans. That boy could lick you, too.”

“Why don't you produce him and we could try it,” Evans said.

“You said, kids, Mr. Jackson” the down-state man said. “What made you say that?”

“Looking at you, you cock-sucker,” Mr. John said. “You splayfooted bastard.”