Ernest Hemingway

THE GARDEN OF EDEN
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Chapter Twenty

DAVID HAD FINISHED writing and he was empty and hollow- feeling from having driven himself long past the point where he should have stopped. He did not think it mattered that day because it was the exhaustion part of the story and so he had felt the tiredness as soon as they had picked up the trail again. For a long time he had been fresher and in better shape than the two men and impatient with their slow trailing and the regular halts his father made each hour on the hour. He could have moved ahead much faster than Juma and his father but when he started to tire they were the same as ever and at noon they took only the usual five minute rest and he had seen that Juma was increasing the pace a little. Perhaps he wasn't. Perhaps it had only seemed faster but the dung was fresher now although it was not warm yet to the touch. Juma gave him the rifle to carry after they came on the last pile of dung but after an hour he looked at him and took it back. They had been climbing steadily across a slope of the mountain but now the trail went down and from a gap in the forest he saw the broken country ahead.

"Here's where the tough part starts, Davey," his father said.

It was then he knew that he should have been sent back to the shamba once he had put them on the trail. Juma had known it for a long time. His father knew it now and there was nothing to be done. It was another of his mistakes and there was nothing to do now except gamble. David looked down at the big flattened circle of the print of the elephant foot and saw where the bracken had been pressed down and where a broken stem of a flowering weed was drying beyond the break. Juma picked it up and looked at the sun. Juma handed the broken weed to David's father and his father rolled it in his fingers. David noticed the white flowers that were drooped and drying. But they still had not dried in the sun nor shed their petals.

"It's going to be a bitch," his father said. "Let's get going."

Late in the afternoon they were still tracking through the broken country. He had been sleepy now for a long time and as he watched the two men he knew that sleepiness was his real enemy and he followed their pace and tried to move through and out of the sleep that deadened him. The two men relieved each other tracking on the hour and the one who was in second place looked back at him at regular intervals to check if he was with them. When they made a dry camp at dark in the forest again he went to sleep as soon as he sat down and woke with Juma holding his moccasins and feeling his bare feet for blisters. His father had spread his coat over him and was sitting by him with a piece of cold cooked meat and two biscuits. He offered him a water bottle with cold tea.

"He'll have to feed, Davey," his father said. "Your feet are in good shape. They're as sound as Juma's. Eat this slowly and drink some tea and go to sleep again. We haven't any problem."

"I'm sorry I was so sleepy."

(...)

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