"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife"
Ernest Hemingway's "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" opens with the half-breed, Dick Boulton, and two other Indians coming over from Indian Camp to cut logs for the Doctor, the father of Nick Adams. The logs have been "lost from the big booms...towed by the steamer Magic," and although on occasion the lumbermen might come back for them, it is more than likely they will be left to rot on the beach. Assuming this will be the case, Nick's father has no qualms about claiming the logs, but Boulton says insinuatingly, "that's a nice lot of timber you've stolen," and washes one of the logs to reveal the company name marked at its end. This makes the Doctor "very uncomfortable," and an argument ensues, after which the Doctor walks angrily back to his house.
The Doctor briefly tells his wife, who is lying in a dark room in their cottage, about his "row" with Boulton. The wife, a Christian Scientist, speaks condescendingly to her husband, telling him she hopes that he did not lose his temper. The Doctor takes his shotgun and begins to clean it, and when he is finished he loads it and puts it in the corner of the room. He then tells his wife he is going for a walk. Just before he slams the door, she calls out to him, asking him to tell Nick that she wants to see him. The Doctor finds Nick sitting in the woods, reading. He relays his wife's message, but Nick says he prefers to go with his father. At Nick's suggestion, the two set off into the woods to see some black squirrels.
The second story in the collection In Our Time, "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" was published in 1925 and is usually considered to be part of a unit with "Indian Camp," the narrative preceding it. The story continues the chronicle of Nick Adams's development into maturity. In "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," Nick's father is shown to be ineffectual when standing up against Dick Boulton, his perceived inferior, and Nick's mother is holed up in a dark,...