So here we are, finally.  The first — the very first — of the famous short, declarative sentences.  So first that, until the publication of The First Forty-nine in 1938, few people would even have read it, for it pre-dates even In Our Time; it comes from a small book entitled Three Stories and Ten Poems, which, while Hem’s first official published work, had only a private, limited run of 300 copies (and is still not available to read anywhere online).

How interesting that it’s about, more or less, an uncouth, asshole Canadian.

Okay, well, not really.  The asshole part, I mean.  You can’t really blame Jim Gilmore for his shortcomings.  He is simply a product of his time and environment:

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.

Jim’s a blacksmith (even though Hemingway is clear to tell us he doesn’t exactly ‘look like a blacksmith’), and he likes deer hunting and drinking whiskey.  Pretty self-explanatory — he’s a rough and tumble guy.

But then we have poor Liz Coates, who is in love with Jim, but, of course, since she’s young and naive, she’s in love with ‘an idea of Jim,’ and not Jim himself.  The whole crux of the story is when Liz finds out that her ‘idea of Jim’ is nothing like the ‘real Jim’ (a lesson most women probably end up learning in similar fashion at some point when they’re young, hence Hemingway writing about it):

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.”

*

They sat down in the shelter of the warehouse and Jim pulled Liz close to him.  She was frightened.  One of Jim’s hands went inside her dress and stroked over her breast and the other hand was in her lap . . . the hemlock planks of the dock were hard and splintery and cold and Jim was heavy on her and he had hurt her.  Liz pushed him, she was so uncomfortable and cramped.  Jim was asleep.  He wouldn’t move.  She worked out from under him and sat up and straightened her skirt and coat and tried to do something with her hair . . . Liz leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.  He was still asleep.  She lifted his head a little and shook it.  He rolled his head over and swallowed.  Liz started to cry . . .

“Jim,” she said, “Jim.  Please, Jim.”

Jim stirred and curled a little tighter.

Note the change in descriptive language before and after the ‘event;’ at first it’s ’shining eyes’ and cutesy ‘rumpled hair,’ but after it’s the ‘hard, splintery, cold’ planks of the docks, and he has hurt her.  Also, the last line of the story is “A cold mist was coming up through the woods from the bay.”  So, as painful (and maybe by today’s standards, obvious) as it may be, the story is basically thus — Liz learns a lesson the hard way: get to know a man before falling in love with him.

Photo Credit: DaddyNewt