A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

by Norman Maclean

Suddenly, a pair of city shoes jumped into the front ring, belonging, I guessed, to one of the housemen who racked up the pool balls. His legs danced once and disappeared rhythmically into the blue. I don’t know what happened to him, but he left so suddenly that Bill must have taken him, too.

  A faded pair of Levi’s went bowlegged and kept on spreading until Mr. McBride sank down beside me. I didn’t have strength to move out of his way, so he just leaned against me. The pair of loggers that skipped in and out across the table had to belong to his red-headed son. He could make those loggers move, and I could see that it helped him and our guys to be wearing loggers and not cowboy boots. Everybody in town yelled at us stiffs from the Forest Service when we walked indoors, because admittedly the sharp caulks in the soles of our loggers left little holes in the floors, but when that fast red-headed kid jumped back to duck and counterpunch, those loggers held on the wood floor and the slick high-heeled cowboy boots trying to sidestep his counterpunches slipped and then skidded.

  It’s hard to believe, but the Canadian puttees were standing most of the time, only once in a while bending at the knee and coughing.

  All the time, sitting flat-footed next to me, was a pair of low canvas shoes with rubber soles, like a pair of girl’s basketball shoes. They just sat there flat-footed. I started to climb to my feet even before I determined to. It took me a couple of pushes and I wobbled on the way up. It was funny, but right there I thought of my Presbyterian father, and I quit wobbling.

  The cook picked up the cards and strained them through his hands. Just keeping his hands soft, I suppose.

  I hit him on the side of the head about where I thought I’d been hit. He bounced to the floor, and I went down softly. I knew that I hadn’t hit him hard. I didn’t have the strength. Mr. McBride must have been coming to, because he rolled over slightly to make room for me. I was fairly sure that the cook, who was curled up, was playing possum. I saw one of his eyes open and study me. Then, when he became sure that I was pretty much beyond recall, he jumped up and started kicking me. Among lumberjacks, this is known as “giving the guy the leather” and you not only put the boots to him when he’s down but you also rake him with the sharp caulks bristling from your soles and what you leave behind is full of dirt and takes a long time to heal. Only I wasn’t being kicked by loggers but by girl’s basketball shoes. Even so, the bastard managed to kick me once on the side of the head just about where I’d been hit and I could feel blood start down my throat again. I tried to catch one of his feet and trip him and I caught one but I couldn’t hold it.

  Then suddenly both canvas shoes went straight up in the air and I heard something crash and later I was to have it confirmed that the cook hit the wall and that Bill threw him there. Anyway, spread in front of me was a pair of loggers with a fringed double tongue. Then Bill reached over and picked me up with one arm, and before he had fully straightened he reached down again and picked up Mr. McBride with his other arm.

  He shook both arms and said, “How are you?” and we both said, as if we’d talked it over together, “Oh, we’re all right.” We both started sliding out of his arms, and he took a fast new hold on us and said, “Now, wait a minute.” Then, with his arms around us, he made us walk a few steps, and just a few steps helped to clear things up, and both of us, feeling embarrassed by being held, muttered, “Thanks, Bill,” and tried to push free, and he grinned to see us better, but he still held us tight. This time he walked us five or six steps and back again, and this time we pushed free from him and regained our manhood and tried to appear as if we were looking for more fight.

  But the fight was nearly over. Off to one side the redhead was fighting with some town guy in a buttoned shirt. Mr. McBride wobbled over and broke it up just as his son absorbed a roundhouse punch to his belly, but the old man wouldn’t let him go on, and the town guy was glad to quit on the strength of getting in the last punch. His son walked off with bowed head thinking deep thoughts, and then he whirled and ran after the town guy to start the fight over again but now the crowd came out of the shadows and held him back. The crowd that was all for war when I disappeared under the table and they disappeared into the shadows was now all for peace.

  As my brain cleared, I began to feel like the redhead, and was surprised and disappointed to see that the fight was over. This was the first fight I was ever in where there were a lot of other guys, and I hadn’t learned yet that when there are a lot of guys in a fight it usually doesn’t last long, for the simple reason that a lot of guys don’t like to fight. Only a few like to fight and know how. Most guys take a couple of punches on the nose and swallow blood and suddenly grow weak with sisterly feelings about brotherly love. All that was left of the war now that the redhead had retired was old Mr. Smith standing by the door with a bear hug on the barkeeper. This was probably the first and last time in his life that the barkeeper would walk into the arms of a man who swung a jackhammer for a living. The head of the barkeeper, which was the only part of him that could move, moved wildly. Finally his arms must have run short of blood, because the revolver dropped from his hand. Bill picked up the .38, flipped open the chamber, shook out the shells, and the war was officially over.

  My head hurt and so did my feelings. I was still trying to figure how the war could have been won without me. Mr. McBride had been out of business most of the time, too, and Mr. Smith had been standing at the door with a bear hug on the barkeeper. As in a lot of big fights, most of the fighting had been done by one fine fighter and a kid who might grow up to be one. Together they got at least two of the Hat Brims and all the housemen who racked up the pool balls and whatever customers were overcome by loyalty to the Oxford. The Canadian was sitting bent over in one of the poker chairs. He was doubled up as if he had to cough but couldn’t. Whatever he’d done was done nobly but it couldn’t have counted for much.

  The three Brims sat by themselves, with their brims pulled lower than ever, but they didn’t look badly hurt. They were showing each other their fingers. Then they went around the spectators trying to explain that they didn’t get into the fight much because they were card players and were afraid to break the bones in their hands. Probably all three of the tin-horn gamblers pimped on the side for a living. I even suspected one of them was my next-door neighbor last night, but I never got a good enough look to be sure. Mostly, I was trying to get used to the fact that no one seemed really hurt except me—and probably Mr. McBride. Even the place, which looked torn apart when Bill had pulled me from under the table, was being quickly straightened out by the barkeeper and the housemen. Customers helped set up the chairs. The rest of the regular customers started talking, and then one pair started playing pool with a loud bang of the balls. Others followed. Everyone was acting as if nothing had happened, and nothing looked as if it had.

  I spit out a clot of blood and went over and sat down by the Canadian to find out how he was. He put an arm around me and I put an arm around him, and that had to be the answer.

  It seemed suddenly like everybody in the house was Bill’s friend and they all came over to shake his hand or feel how hard his arm was. The cook got up from the floor where he had been leaning against the wall and tried to be near Bill while Bill was accepting congratulations, and clearly Bill was pleased with everything. The redhead held on to his father, but his eyes still smoldered.

  Otherwise, all was peace. I couldn’t get over it. For at least two weeks we had been building up steam, and each of us was going to win a summer’s wages by some sweep of a black cape and then we were going to clean out the town. Well, the black cape had swept and I reached inside my shirt to feel my ten-pound sugar sack, and all the money that was in it could have been put in a Bull Durham sack. We had cleaned out the town and I already knew that I’d always talk about it, but everything already was running normally again at the Oxford. Even the three tin-horn gamblers had moved back to the poker table and had started an innocent-looking game among themselves, hoping all over that some sheepherder with hi
s summer check would saunter by and they could deal him a sixth card. All the tables were being played on but the billiard table, but it was the time of night that barbers and vice-presidents of banks spend with their women before going home to their wives.

  It’s lucky for towns that good fighters first have to be fighters and that there aren’t many of those to start with. Otherwise, towns would be destroyed overnight, because in late summer every town is going to be cleaned out every night by some crew and usually is, and then the town straightens up the chairs and goes on taking the crew’s money as before.

  Bill rounded up his bunch, and herded us out like sheep. The barkeeper raised his head and said good-bye to us directly. He was selling chits to two married men who were going to get into the pinochle game.

  Mr. McBride and I were holding each other by the arm, and we felt better when we got outside. But I was hurt and everyone in the bunch knew it. They also knew I had the money. They helped me around the block and we stopped at a street corner under an arc light. I sat down on the curbing near the light and rested a few minutes before taking the sack out of my shirt. Everybody gathered close. They gathered so close Bill finally said, “Get back a bit. We can’t get enough light to see.” Then he and Mr. Smith went back to counting. I didn’t try to help them count. I didn’t think I could.

  First, they gave each of us the money he had bet. Then Bill asked, “Any objection if we split our winnings even nine ways, no matter what each of the nine bet? We are one crew, aren’t we?” Heads nodded, and he started to sit down again. Then he got up and made what was a speech for him. “And a pretty damn good crew. We always did what we had to.” Besides, none of us could do the arithmetic to figure out exactly each one’s share.

  Bill sat down to finish counting our winnings, and we stood around and didn’t know what to do but to admire ourselves. I suppose factually we were probably not much to brag about. We were fairly representative of early Forest Service crews as I came to know them—maybe not even that good, because the war had ended less than a year before and many of the best men had not yet returned to the woods, and the earth was still pretty much in the care of the old with corrugated skin and ***tiny steps and young punks looking for a fight and gassed Canadians and anonymous lookouts who had to be there but can’t be remembered. Not one had ever seen the inside or the outside of a school of forestry. But, as Bill said, we were a pretty good crew and we did what we had to do and loved the woods without thinking we owned them, and each of us liked to do at least one thing especially well—liked to swing a jackhammer and feel the earth overpowered by dynamite, liked to fight, liked to heal the injuries of horses, liked to handle groceries and tools and tie knots. And nearly all of us liked to work. When you think about it, that’s a lot to say about a bunch of men.

  At the moment, in our hearts we felt indissoluble, although in our heads we knew that after tonight we might never see one another again. We were summer workers. We belonged to no union, no lodge, and most of us had no families and no church. In late spring, we had landed jobs in a new outfit called the United States Forest Service which we vaguely knew Teddy Roosevelt had helped to get going and which somehow made us feel proud and tough and always looking for trouble of some sort, like fires, dynamite, and rattlesnakes on mountains too high to have any. Besides doing what we had to, we did a few other things, like playing practical jokes and distilling dried apricots and having some troubles among ourselves. And at the end we banded together to clean out the town—probably something also that had to be done for us to become a crew. For most of us, this momentary social unit the crew was the only association we had ever belonged to, although somehow it must have been for more time than a moment. Here I am over half a century later trying to tell you about it.

  While the ranger and Mr. Smith finished counting, the moths fried on the arc light over us and the blood again slid inside my head.

  Bill said to Mr. Smith, “You announce it.” Mr. Smith stood up and announced, “The total is $64.80. Split nine ways, that’s $7.20 apiece.” Everybody said “Wow” and forgot all about $7.20 being several hundred dollars short of summer expectations.

  Bill divided the money and Mr. Smith said, “Now for the ranch hands and the whores.” Some wanted to reverse the order, and then, since we were a crew, they suddenly got solicitous about me, but in succession. “How you feeling, kid?” “You sure took a beating but you got the dough.” “Good going, kid.” And then Bill said, “We’ll walk you back to your hotel.”

  “Hell, no,” I said, “The night is but a pup.”

  Bill said, “You’ve had a big night. Now take it easy. But I want you to come to the corral before noon tomorrow and help me saddle up.”

  Then everybody said, again not together but one after another, “We’ll walk you back to your hotel.”

  So they walked me back, and when we got in front of my twenty-five-cent lodging for the night, we all put our arms around each other but none of us tried to sing because none of us could carry a tune. Instead, we stood in a circle with heads bowed like a college glee club just before beginning to hum. Then I suddenly felt weak and turned away and started up an uncarpeted stair and was too tired and disappointed in myself to say, “So long.”

  I rolled over against the plaster wall for comfort. In the center of my brain the pain from the side of my head met the pain from the front of my head. Never before had I taken two beatings in two days. I felt especially sensitive to pain, being young and used to winning. Though it was dark in the room, I squeezed my eyes extra tight hoping to keep out the sight of my lying on the Chinaman’s floor with toothpicks in my hair. And I tried to squeeze out the sight of my head leaning over the table ready to be punched. My head shook in revulsion and tried to back away from what it did not see coming. I thought, it was the biggest fight I was ever in, and I swung only one punch. Thoughts came slowly, so it was some time before I followed up with the next thought, “But if a man had only one punch to give for his country, I sure picked a good target.” When I quit pulling my head back from my thoughts, I could feel the muscles in my neck relax and I fell asleep.

  It was late in the morning when I woke, and I felt just a little better and, while I washed from the pitcher, I was glad there was no mirror. As I awoke, I wanted to take one step from the bed and be with Bill at the corral, but when I jumped into my clothes I looked again at my watch and asked myself, “What’s your rush?” Also I realized that some of the sickness might go from my stomach if I had “a little something for breakfast,” as my mother would say. It was ten when I got to the Greek restaurant, and the girl from Darby was on shift.

  She seated me at a table in a dark corner, started to the front counter to get me a menu and then came back. “I knew you were in for big trouble last night,” she said. “You’d better come and let me wash you off.” Then she led me into the ladies’ room and locked the door and made me sit down on the cover of the toilet, which to my surprise looked the same as the men’s toilet. From there I could lean my head over the basin, and she washed all my head, including my hair. “Don’t argue,” she said. “You must have rolled in the dirt.”

  “Sawdust,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. I was becoming embarrassed by getting the motherly treatment and also by the prospect of being seen coming out of a ladies’ toilet with my hair dripping, but she wouldn’t let loose of me. She opened her purse and took out a little tube of something—cold cream, probably—and dabbed some of whatever it was on the cut in my forehead. Then she took a comb from her purse and parted my dripping hair, using her apron to dry my face. When she leaned over I could see that her freckles enlarged as they went down her neck and that her breasts were all brown. “There you are,” she said, and let loose of my neck and I tried not to be seen with her as I came out of the ladies’ toilet, but she didn’t seem to give a damn.

  She acted as if it was all business until I finished breakfast. Then she said, looking down at me the way waitresses do while prete
nding they are looking for dirty dishes, “There’s a friend of yours sitting in the alley. I think you had better go out to see him.”

  “Who?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he’s one of your crew.” Knowing she didn’t have to say any more, she picked up the dishes and I paid the check and then she led me through the kitchen and opened the door to the alley.

  He was sitting on a cardboard box full of old newspapers. Although his head was bowed, without doubt it was the cook’s because in a world of men with black hats he was always bare-headed with a tuft at the top. One of the old newspapers was on the ground between his feet and he was bent over as if he were reading it except that blood dropped on it from his unseen face. I walked over slowly toward him to be sure about the blood.

  “What happened?” I asked. “I’m broke,” he said, never raising his head. “But are you hurt?” I asked. “I’m broke,” he repeated.

  “How come?” I asked. “I’m broke. They rolled me,” he replied. “Who?” I asked. He looked up at me and when his head was lifted the blood ran down his lip into his mouth.

  Finally he said, “She was as crooked as a tub of guts.”

  Having scanned that line before, I didn’t wait to ask, “Was she just a little whore?” He replied, “I don’t feel hurt. I feel broke. I need money to get to Butte.” I repeated, “Was it a little whore who rolled you?” He replied, “She had a big guy with her. They beat hell out of me and took my money.” I asked, “Did he have a hairy ass?” He replied, “I didn’t see his ass.” “Well,” I told him, “it is hairy.”

  Then I said to myself, “don’t be such a wise guy,” and a great shame swept over me for asking him a show-off question that he couldn’t possibly answer. By this time blood had spread into the corners of his mouth. Then I think it was my father who spoke out of the whirlwind of my mind, and said unto me, as if he had just written the Bible, “Be ye compassionate.” My father reserved the right to speak to me on any occasion and on any subject, even if he knew nothing about it. It was his voice that went on to talk to me about card playing, and in summary he said I should not rejoice because someone with great gifts in handling cards turned out not to be even a good card player on account of something little (so he said) inside him. Although my father knew absolutely nothing about cards, what he said sounded like him, including his not knowing anything about cards or the cook.