THE Nick Adams STORIES Read Online Free PDF

besides his farm. Everything had been put back into the farm. One of the boys wanted to go on farming but the others overruled him and the farm was sold. It did not bring one half as much as everyone expected.
    The Green boy, Eddy, who had wanted to go on farming, bought a piece of land over back of Spring Brook. The other two boys bought a poolroom in Pellston. They lost money and were sold out. That was the way the Indians went.

II ON HIS OWN

The Light of the World
    When he saw us come in the door the bartender looked up and then reached over and put the glass covers on the two free-lunch bowls.
    â€œGive me a beer,” I said. He drew it, cut the top off with the spatula and then held the glass in his hand. I put the nickel on the wood and he slid the beer toward me.
    â€œWhat’s yours?” he said to Tom.
    â€œBeer.”
    He drew that beer and cut it off and when he saw the money he pushed the beer across to Tom.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Tom asked.
    The bartender didn’t answer him. He just looked over our heads and said, “What’s yours?” to a man who’d come in.
    â€œRye,” the man said. The bartender put out the bottle and glass and a glass of water.
    Tom reached over and took the glass off the free-lunch bowl. It was a bowl of pickled pig’s feet and there was a wooden thing that worked like a scissors, with two wooden forks at the end to pick them up with.
    â€œNo,” said the bartender and put the glass cover back on the bowl. Tom held the wooden scissors fork in his hand. “Put it back,” said the bartender.
    â€œYou know where,” said Tom.
    The bartender reached a hand forward under the bar, watching us both. I put fifty cents on the wood and he straightened up.
    â€œWhat was yours?” he said.
    â€œBeer,” I said, and before he drew the beer he uncovered both the bowls.
    â€œYour goddam pig’s feet stink,” Tom said, and spit what he had in his mouth on the floor. The bartender didn’t say anything. The man who had drunk the rye paid and went out without looking back.
    â€œYou stink yourself,” the bartender said. “All you punks stink.”
    â€œHe says we’re punks,” Tommy said to me.
    â€œListen,” I said. “Let’s get out.”
    â€œYou punks clear the hell out of here,” the bartender said.
    â€œI said we were going out,” I said. “It wasn’t your idea.”
    â€œWe’ll be back,” Tommy said.
    â€œNo you won’t,” the bartender told him.
    â€œTell him how wrong he is,” Tom turned to me.
    â€œCome on,” I said.
    Outside it was good and dark.
    â€œWhat the hell kind of place is this?” Tommy said.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Let’s go down to the station.”
    We’d come in that town at one end and we were going out the other. It smelled of hides and tan bark and the big piles of sawdust. It was getting dark as we came in and now that it was dark it was cold and the puddles of water in the road were freezing at the edges.
    Down at the station there were five whores waiting for the train to come in, and six white men and four Indians. It was crowded and hot from the stove and full of stale smoke. As we came in nobody was talking and the ticket window was down.
    â€œShut the door, can’t you?” somebody said.
    I looked to see who said it. It was one of the white men. He wore stagged trousers and lumbermen’s rubbers and a Mackinaw shirt like the others, but he had no cap and his face was white and his hands were white and thin.
    â€œAren’t you going to shut it?”
    â€œSure,” I said, and shut it.
    â€œThank you,” he said. One of the other men snickered.
    â€œEver interfere with a cook?” he said to me.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou interfere with this one,” he looked at the cook. “He likes it.”
    The cook looked away from him,