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  Introduction

  On July 2, 1961, I was sitting in the parking lot at Convair Astronautics in San Diego, listening to music on the car radio while my older brother, Geoffrey, interviewed for a job with the company. Our father had been working there, but had suffered a breakdown and was hospitalized. Now it had fallen on Geoffrey, just graduated from Princeton, to support us for the next couple of months until he moved on to a teaching post in Turkey and I began my new life at a boarding school in Pennsylvania. He could have left then, but decided to stay on with me. I had just turned sixteen and was largely uneducated, and Geoffrey had taken it upon himself to prepare me for the academic rigors of my new school. So he was applying to fill the vacancy left by our father.

  I recount this, and remember it so vividly, because that’s where I was when the music stopped and the news came on, and I learned that Ernest Hemingway had killed himself. I would have been hard put to name many living writers, but Hemingway was famous enough that I had heard of him in the remoteness of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, where I’d lived the last five years. You saw pictures of him in magazines, at a hunting camp in Africa, casting a line from his boat in Florida, leaving Madison Square Garden after a boxing match, or just sitting at his typewriter. You understood that he was important, a figure—like Winston Churchill, or John Wayne, or Mickey Mantle.

  For all of Hemingway’s fame, few of the people I knew had actually read him. I hadn’t read much myself, only The Old Man and the Sea, which a friend’s mother gave me, and one short story, “The Killers,” that I’d happened upon in an anthology of detective fiction. Despite the title, nobody got killed, so there was no detective work, but I’d been struck by the ominous tone and the hard-boiled dialogue of the two hit men waiting for Ole Andreson in the diner, and puzzled, unsettled, by the weary resignation of the boxer in his dark room when Nick comes to warn him. It is clear this fighter isn’t going to fight. He’s not going to triumph over the bad guys. He’s giving up. And nothing is solved. The stories I was used to reading didn’t end this way.

  Geoffrey returned from his interview with good news—he’d been hired. I responded with my own, about Hemingway, and all the high spirits drained from his face. He was shocked. We drove home in silence. It was clear that my brother took this death personally, that indeed he was grieving. In the days that followed, he found a remedy for that grief in leading me through some of Hemingway’s short stories—a welcome change from the Greek tragedies he’d had me studying, Antigone and Oedipus Rex.

  The complex undercurrents of Hemingway’s stories eluded me, but I responded to the plain clarity of their narratives, and their sheer physicality: the coldness of a stream; the pounding of a tent stake into the ground; the smell of canvas inside that tent; the threading of a fishhook through a grasshopper’s thorax; the taste of syrup from a can of apricots, or how it felt to trail your hand in the water from a moving canoe. All these were familiar things to me, made fresh by the intensity and patience of the attention Hemingway brought to them. And it was a sort of revelation that things familiar to me could be the stuff of Literature, even the account of a day when nothing dramatic seemed to be happening, or very little—a man goes on a hike, sets up camp, catches some fish in the river, decides not to fish in the swamp. Or he and a friend get drunk during a storm and talk about writers they like. Or he breaks up with his girlfriend, without any fireworks; she just gets in a boat and rows away.

  My experience of Hemingway did not end with Geoffrey’s tutelage. His stories and novels figured importantly in the English courses at my new school, where he was regarded with something like reverence by boys and masters alike. I recall one of Mr. Patterson’s attempts to address our common vice of fattening our essays with poetical flourishes and creamy dollops of adverbs and adjectives poured over long sentences wandering back and forth over the page in search of an idea, like mice trying to find their way out of a maze. (Poetical flourish! Five points off.) We thought that sort of writing was literary, and it also helped get us to the finish line of the required page count. Reading our essays was, to judge from the increasingly tart comments in the margins, a burden on Mr. Patterson’s spirit. He tried to get us to edit and revise, edit and revise, but we were reluctant to murder our darlings. So one day, as part of his project to awaken our inner murderers, Mr. Patterson handed each of us two xeroxed pages, each page bearing a paragraph of prose from an unidentified writer. He would tell us only that they were taken from well-known novels. “Edit the writing,” he said, and left the room.

  This was something new. We were supposed to study writers, to discern their “hidden meanings” and admire their skill in hiding those meanings so cunningly, so frustratingly, from us. We had never been invited to edit a writer, to correct a writer, as Mr. Patterson corrected our products, in blue ink, with his elegant fountain pen.

  The first paragraph filled most of the page. I worked hesitantly at first, then with a sort of blasphemous glee. I was correcting a well-known novel! In truth the writing was terrible, long-winded, bloated, and clunky, and I found a mean new pleasure in punishing it for its sins, slashing out words and phrases and even entire sentences, breaking the interminable paragraph into two. My final version, I thought, was much better.

  Then I turned to the other passage. I had never read it before, but I suspected it was from Hemingway. I did my best with it, but really there was nothing necessary to edit. Even with the license Mr. Patterson had granted us, and the aggressive, vengeful spirit this had kindled in me, I could not bring myself to do more than add a few commas, just to show I’d done something. It had its own tone—music—integrity. It did not invite tinkering. Perhaps I was still under the spell of my brother’s teaching, his loving respect for Hemingway’s prose. Perhaps I am still, because to this day I would not alter a word of that passage, which, as Mr. Patterson informed us when he returned, was the opening paragraph of A Farewell to Arms. We would read that novel later in the year. The other passage was an excerpt from something by James Fenimore Cooper, I forget the title, which we did not read.

  Hemingway figured not only in our classes but in our lives, as the exemplar of a certain kind of manhood. We knew about him: that he had fought and been wounded in World War I, and witnessed and written about other wars; that he’d been a sportsman, a shooter of big animals and fisher of big fish; a lover of boxing and bullfights; and, judging from his many marriages, a lover of women. Even after his death, he was a commanding presence. We tried not to write like him, knowing we’d be caught out and mocked for it, but even in our conscious disavowal of influence we acknowledged the singular, infectious power of his style. In the same way, my roommate and I evolved a form of satiric banter in what we took to be the Hemingway manner, even in parody giving homage.

  Our English masters generally favored assigning Hemingway’s stories over the novels, as the stories lent themselves more easily to classroom discussion, where each could be looked at as a whole in the course of two or three days rather than in parts, over weeks. How I loved those stories. I loved their exactitude, their purity of line, their trust in the reader—that same quality of trust I found later in the stories of Chekhov and Joyce and Katherine Ann Porter. Important things are left unsaid, yes—what did Ole Andreson do to put those two killers on his trail?—but they are there to be felt, intuited, the writer inviting the reader to complete the circle from the arc that is given, to conspire with the story in imagining what preceded it, and what might follow.

  I have read Hemingway’s stories many times over the years, given them to my children, offered them in my classes, and the best of them are still as fresh to me as the first time I read them. In his later work, especially the novels, we can see Hemingway the writer sometimes yielding to the persona he developed, that we boys aspired to: tough, taciturn, knowing, self-sufficient, superior. This could bleed into the work, painting his leading men in caricature. But in the stories collected here you will find almost nothing of that. Indeed, I am struck most forcefully by their humanity, their feeling for human fragility. I think of Peduzzi, the self-appointed fishing guide in “Out of Season,” cadging drinks from the young married couple he’s latched onto, looked down on by his fellow villagers, avoided by his own daughter. Reduced as he knows himself to be, he is still allowed the dignity of joy, on his own terms: “The sun shone while he drank. It was wonderful. This was a great day, after all. A wonderful day.”

  I think of the old widower in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” drinking his loneliness away, or trying to, and the tender forbearance of the older waiter, who is struggling with his own loneliness and despair. Or the young war veteran Harold Krebs in “Soldier’s Home,” proud of having been a good soldier, now inert in his mother’s house, teasing his sister, asking for the car keys, ogling high school girls. Or Manuel, the failing bullfighter in “The Undefeated.” Still recovering from a goring, he signs up for another bullfight. He is not a great toreador, but he has great moments, and that is his tragedy—he cannot let go of a life that gives him those
moments, yet he hasn’t enough of them to prosper; or, we can imagine, to survive. Even after he’s gored again, even from his hospital bed, he can’t help saying to his friend, “Wasn’t I going good, Manos?” His dream keeps him going, and will probably kill him. There’s a dark humor here, a humor without cruelty, that we find elsewhere in these stories. Young Nick Adams in “Indian Camp,” having witnessed the suicide of a man unable to bear the pain of his wife in labor, is heading home across the lake with his doctor father: “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.” Ah. Perfect.

  Robert Frost said that the hope of a poet is to write a few poems good enough that they get stuck so deep they can’t be pried out again. I can say the same thing about these stories. They are stuck that deep in me.

  Tobias Wolff

  UP IN MICHIGAN

  Many women feel that Hemingway hated women and wrote adversely about them. I would ask his detractors, female or male, to read this story. Could you in all honor say that this was a writer who didn’t understand women’s emotions and who hated women?

  —Edna O’Brien

  Up in Michigan (1923)

  Jim Gilmore came to Hortons Bay from Canada. He bought the blacksmith shop from old man Horton. Jim was short and dark with big mustaches and big hands. He was a good horseshoer and did not look much like a blacksmith even with his leather apron on. He lived upstairs above the blacksmith shop and took his meals at D. J. Smith’s.

  Liz Coates worked for Smith’s. Mrs. Smith, who was a very large clean woman, said Liz Coates was the neatest girl she’d ever seen. Liz had good legs and always wore clean gingham aprons and Jim noticed that her hair was always neat behind. He liked her face because it was so jolly but he never thought about her.

  Liz liked Jim very much. She liked it the way he walked over from the shop and often went to the kitchen door to watch for him to start down the road. She liked it about his mustache. She liked it about how white his teeth were when he smiled. She liked it very much that he didn’t look like a blacksmith. She liked it how much D. J. Smith and Mrs. Smith liked Jim. One day she found that she liked it the way the hair was black on his arms and how white they were above the tanned line when he washed up in the washbasin outside the house. Liking that made her feel funny.

  Hortons Bay, the town, was only five houses on the main road between Boyne City and Charlevoix. There was the general store and post office with a high false front and maybe a wagon hitched out in front, Smith’s house, Stroud’s house, Dillworth’s house, Horton’s house and Van Hoosen’s house. The houses were in a big grove of elm trees and the road was very sandy. There was farming country and timber each way up the road. Up the road a ways was the Methodist church and down the road the other direction was the township school. The blacksmith shop was painted red and faced the school.

  A steep sandy road ran down the hill to the bay through the timber. From Smith’s back door you could look out across the woods that ran down to the lake and across the bay. It was very beautiful in the spring and summer, the bay blue and bright and usually whitecaps on the lake out beyond the point from the breeze blowing from Charlevoix and Lake Michigan. From Smith’s back door Liz could see ore barges way out in the lake going toward Boyne City. When she looked at them they didn’t seem to be moving at all but if she went in and dried some more dishes and then came out again they would be out of sight beyond the point.

  All the time now Liz was thinking about Jim Gilmore. He didn’t seem to notice her much. He talked about the shop to D. J. Smith and about the Republican Party and about James G. Blaine. In the evenings he read The Toledo Blade and the Grand Rapids paper by the lamp in the front room or went out spearing fish in the bay with a jacklight with D. J. Smith. In the fall he and Smith and Charley Wyman took a wagon and tent, grub, axes, their rifles and two dogs and went on a trip to the pine plains beyond Vanderbilt deer hunting. Liz and Mrs. Smith were cooking for four days for them before they started. Liz wanted to make something special for Jim to take but she didn’t finally because she was afraid to ask Mrs. Smith for the eggs and flour and afraid if she bought them Mrs. Smith would catch her cooking. It would have been all right with Mrs. Smith but Liz was afraid.

  All the time Jim was gone on the deer hunting trip Liz thought about him. It was awful while he was gone. She couldn’t sleep well from thinking about him but she discovered it was fun to think about him too. If she let herself go it was better. The night before they were to come back she didn’t sleep at all, that is she didn’t think she slept because it was all mixed up in a dream about not sleeping and really not sleeping. When she saw the wagon coming down the road she felt weak and sick sort of inside. She couldn’t wait till she saw Jim and it seemed as though everything would be all right when he came. The wagon stopped outside under the big elm and Mrs. Smith and Liz went out. All the men had beards and there were three deer in the back of the wagon, their thin legs sticking stiff over the edge of the wagon box. Mrs. Smith kissed D. J. and he hugged her. Jim said “Hello, Liz,” and grinned. Liz hadn’t known just what would happen when Jim got back but she was sure it would be something. Nothing had happened. The men were just home, that was all. Jim pulled the burlap sacks off the deer and Liz looked at them. One was a big buck. It was stiff and hard to lift out of the wagon.

  “Did you shoot it, Jim?” Liz asked.

  “Yeah. Ain’t it a beauty?” Jim got it onto his back to carry to the smokehouse.

  That night Charley Wyman stayed to supper at Smith’s. It was too late to get back to Charlevoix. The men washed up and waited in the front room for supper.

  “Ain’t there something left in that crock, Jimmy?” D. J. Smith asked, and Jim went out to the wagon in the barn and fetched in the jug of whiskey the men had taken hunting with them. It was a four-gallon jug and there was quite a little slopped back and forth in the bottom. Jim took a long pull on his way back to the house. It was hard to lift such a big jug up to drink out of it. Some of the whiskey ran down on his shirt front. The two men smiled when Jim came in with the jug. D. J. Smith sent for glasses and Liz brought them. D. J. poured out three big shots.

  “Well, here’s looking at you, D. J.,” said Charley Wyman.

  “That damn big buck, Jimmy,” said D. J.

  “Here’s all the ones we missed, D. J.,” said Jim, and downed his liquor.

  “Tastes good to a man.”

  “Nothing like it this time of year for what ails you.”

  “How about another, boys?”

  “Here’s how, D. J.”

  “Down the creek, boys.”

  “Here’s to next year.”

  Jim began to feel great. He loved the taste and the feel of whiskey. He was glad to be back to a comfortable bed and warm food and the shop. He had another drink. The men came in to supper feeling hilarious but acting very respectable. Liz sat at the table after she put on the food and ate with the family. It was a good dinner. The men ate seriously. After supper they went into the front room again and Liz cleaned off with Mrs. Smith. Then Mrs. Smith went upstairs and pretty soon Smith came out and went upstairs too. Jim and Charley were still in the front room. Liz was sitting in the kitchen next to the stove pretending to read a book and thinking about Jim. She didn’t want to go to bed yet because she knew Jim would be coming out and she wanted to see him as he went out so she could take the way he looked up to bed with her.

  She was thinking about him hard and then Jim came out. His eyes were shining and his hair was a little rumpled. Liz looked down at her book. Jim came over back of her chair and stood there and she could feel him breathing and then he put his arms around her. Her breasts felt plump and firm and the nipples were erect under his hands. Liz was terribly frightened, no one had ever touched her, but she thought, “He’s come to me finally. He’s really come.”

  She held herself stiff because she was so frightened and did not know anything else to do and then Jim held her tight against the chair and kissed her. It was such a sharp, aching, hurting feeling that she thought she couldn’t stand it. She felt Jim right through the back of the chair and she couldn’t stand it and then something clicked inside of her and the feeling was warmer and softer. Jim held her tight hard against the chair and she wanted it now and Jim whispered, “Come on for a walk.”