Every time I go to click, "Quit Safari," I feel like such a failure. For a flash of a moment I'm standing there in the veldt, pith helmet in hand, sweating in my jodhpurs, and I'm looking around at the rest of the group and I can just see the same condemnation and letdown in all of their eyes. "Jonsen flinched. He lost his nerve. Several of us might be dead or dying by now, if Krenshaw hadn't downed that charging rhino with one heroic last-second shot!"
And I know they're right. I haven't got it in me. I'm no mighty hunter. I look up with one last hope, not daring to hope - at Mary.
She's staring right at me. She holds my gaze for one crumbling second, before she turns her head aside, looks down and away. Ashamed.
And I quit safari.
4 comments:
"Papa" would have been proud of this one.
You've reminded me of the excellent short story that no doubt put that image in my mind! Thank you.
I always did rate his short stories better than his books.
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" instantly came to mind.
Fitzgerald is that way for me too.
His short stories I mean.
Wish me luck for I was about to start For Whom the Bell Tolls.
or Island in the Stream.
Haven't decided yet.
Good luck!
Never read either. I have read The Sun Also Rises, and that contains a passage I love that stuck in my mind, something a picnic in the country, and they chill the wine in a mountain stream 'til it's icy cold and it makes their eyes ache.
Now, I'm sure I must have read parts of Bell. I don't recall so much as a word or a scene.
I thought Rogers and Parton did an ace job with their adaptation of Stream. Never read the original, in fact, I didn't even realize it was based on a Hemingway.
I may need to check that out.
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