The Strange Country, Ernest Hemingway

“The Strange Country” comprises four chapters of an uncompleted novel that Hemingway worked on at intervals in 1946-1947 and 1950-1951. These scenes represent preliminary material for an early version of Islands in the Stream, which was published posthumously in 1970. Hemingway apparently discarded these chapters when he changed the direction of the novel as he worked on it. Readers will note the reuse of names subsequently given to other characters in the final version of Islands in the Stream. None of these rearrangements diminishes the unity and integrity of “The Strange Country.”

The Strange Country

MIAMI WAS HOT AND MUGGY AND THE land wind that blew from the Everglades brought mosquitoes even in the morning.
“We’ll get out as soon as we can,” Roger said. “I’ll have to get some money. Do you know anything about cars?”
“Not very much.”

“You might look and see what there is advertised in the classified in the paper and I’ll get some money here to Western Union.”
“Can you get it just like that?”
“If I get the call through in time so my lawyer can get it off.”

They were up on the thirteenth floor of a hotel on Biscayne Boulevard and the bellboy had just gone down for the papers and some other purchases. There were two rooms and they overlooked the bay, the park and the traffic passing on the Boulevard. They were registered under their own names.

“You take the corner one,” Roger had said. “It will have a little breeze in it maybe. I’ll get on the telephone in the other room.”
“What can I do to help?”
“You run through the classifieds on motorcars for sale in one paper and I’ll take the other.”

“What sort of a car?”
“A convertible with good rubber. The best one we can get.”
“How much money do you think we’ll have?”
“I’m going to try for five thousand.”
“That’s wonderful. Do you think you can get it?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get going on him now,” Roger said and went into the other room. He shut the door and then opened it. “Do you still love me?”
“I though that was all settled,” she said. “Please kiss me now before the boy comes back.”

“Good.”
He held her solidly against him and kissed her hard.
“That’s better,” she said. “Why did we have to have separate rooms?”
“I thought I might have to be identified to get the money.”
“Oh.”

“If we have any luck we won’t have to stay in these.”
“Can we really do it all that fast?”
“If we have any luck.”
“Then can we be Mr. and Mrs. Gilch?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Gilch.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Brat-Gilch.”

“I’d better make the call.”
“Don’t stay away an awfully long time though.”

They had lunch at a seafood restaurant owned by Greeks. It was an air-conditioned oasis against the heavy heat of the town and the food had certainly originally come out of the ocean but it was to Eddy’s cooking of the same things as old re-used grease is to fresh browned butter. But there was a good bottle of really cold, dry, resiny tasting Greek white wine and for dessert they had cherry pie.

“Let’s go to Greece and the islands,” she said.
“Haven’t you ever been there?”
“One summer. I loved it.”
“We’ll go there.”

By two o’clock the money was at the Western Union. It was thirty-five hundred instead of five thousand and by three-thirty they had bought a used Buick convertible with only six thousand miles on it. It had two good spares, set-in well fenders, a radio, a big spotlight, plenty of luggage space in the rear and it was sand colored.

By five-thirty they had made various other purchases, checked out of the hotel and the doorman was stowing their bags into the back of the car. It was still deadly hot.
Roger, who was sweating heavily in his heavy uniform, as suitable to the subtropics in summer as shorts would be to Labrador in winter, tipped the doorman and got into the car and they drove along Biscayne Boulevard and turned west to get onto the road to Coral Gables and the Tamiami Trail.

“How do you feel?” he asked the girl.
“Wonderful. Do you think it’s true?”
“I know it’s true because it’s so damned hot and we didn’t get the five thousand.”
“Do you think we paid too much for the car?”
“No. Just right.”
“Did you get the insurance?”
“Yes. And joined the A.A.A.”

“Aren’t we fast?”
“We’re terrific.”
“Have you got the rest of the money?”
“Sure. Pinned in my shirt.”
“That’s our bank.”
“It’s all we’ve got.”
“How do you think it will last?”
“It won’t have to last. I’ll make some more.”

“It will have to last for a while.”
“It will.”
“Roger.”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Do you love me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say it.”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to damn well find out.”
“I love you. Hard. Hard. Hard.”
“You keep that up. That will be a big help to me.”

“Why don’t you say you love me?”
“Let’s wait.”
She had been holding her hand on his thigh while he drove and now she took it away.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll wait.”

They were driving west now on the broad Coral Gables road through the flat heat-stricken outskirts of Miami, past stores, filling stations and markets with cars with people going home from the city passing them steadily. Now they passed Coral Gables to their left with the buildings that looked out of the Basso Veneto rising from the Florida prairie and ahead the road stretched straight and heat-welted across what had once been the Everglades. Roger drove faster now and the movement of the car through the heavy air made the air cool as it came in through the scoop in the dash and the slanted glass of the ventilators.

“She’s a lovely car,” the girl said. “Weren’t we lucky to get her?”
“Very.”
“We’re pretty lucky don’t you think?”
“So far.”
“You’ve gotten awfully cautious on me.”

“Not really.”
“But we can be jolly can’t we?”
“I’m jolly.”
“You don’t sound awfully jolly.”
“Well maybe then I’m not.”
“Couldn’t you be though? You see I really am.”
“I will be,” Roger said. “I promise.”

Looking ahead at the road he had driven so many times in his life, seeing it stretch ahead, knowing it was the same road with the ditches on either side and the forest and the swamps, knowing that only the car was different, that only who was with him was different, Roger felt the old hollowness coming inside of him and knew he must stop it.

“I love you, daughter,” he said. He did not think it was true. But it sounded all right as he said it. “I love you very much and I’m going to try to be very good to you.”
“And you’re going to be jolly.”

“And I’m going to be jolly.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Have we started already?”
“We’re on the road.”
“When will we see the birds?”
“They’re much further in this time of year.”
“Roger.”
“Yes, Bratchen.”

“You don’t have to be jolly if you don’t feel like it. We’ll be jolly enough. You feel however you feel and I’ll be jolly for us both. I can’t help it today.”
He saw on ahead where the road turned to the right and ran northwest through the forest swamp instead of west. That was good. That was really much better. Pretty soon they would come to the big osprey’s nest in the dead cypress tree. They had just passed the place where he had killed the rattlesnake that winter driving through here with David’s mother before Andrew was born.

That was the year they both bought Seminole shirts at the trading post at Everglades and wore them in the car. He had given the big rattlesnake to some Indians that had come in to trade and they were pleased with the snake because he had a fine hide and twelve rattles and Roger remembered how heavy and thick he was when he lifted him with his huge, flattened head hanging and how the Indian smiled when he took him. That was the year they shot the wild turkey as he crossed the road that early morning coming out of the mist that was just thinning with the first sun, the cypresses showing black in the silver mist and the turkey brown-bronze and lovely as he stepped onto the road, stepping high-headed, then crouching to run, then flopping on the road.

“I’m fine,” he told the girl. “We get into some nice country now.”
“Where do you think we’ll get to tonight?”
“We’ll find some place. Once we get to the gulf side this breeze will be a sea breeze instead of a land breeze and it will be cool.”
“That will be lovely,” the girl said. “I hated to think of staying the first night in that hotel.”

“We were awfully lucky to get away. I didn’t think we could do it that quickly.”
“I wonder how Tom is.”
“Lonely,” Roger said.
“Isn’t he a wonderful guy?”

“He’s my best friend and my conscience and my father and my brother and my banker. He’s like a saint. Only jolly.”
“I never knew anybody as fine,” she said. “It breaks your heart the way he loves you and the boys.”
“I wish he could have them all summer.”
“Won’t you miss them terribly?”
“I miss them all the time.”

They had put the wild turkey in the back of the seat and he had been so heavy, warm and beautiful with the shining bronze plumage, so different from the blues and blacks of a domestic turkey, and David’s mother was so excited she could hardly speak. And then she had said, “No. Let me hold him. I want to see him again. We can put him away later.” And he had put a newspaper on her lap and she had tucked the bird’s bloodied head under his wing, folding the wing carefully over it, and sat there stroking and smoothing