THE OXFORD BOOK OF

AMERICAN SHORT STORIES

, SECOND EDITION

Edited by

J oyce Carol Oates

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
 OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS ,{Y.

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Tue editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint
the following material.
James Baldwin: "Sonny's Blues," copyright 1957 by James Baldwin,
was originally published in Partisan Review. Copyright renewed.
Collected in Going to Meet the Man, published by Vintage Books.
Used by arrangement with the James Baldwin Estate.

You must not circulate this work in any other form Russell Banks: "Tue Child Screams and Looks Back at You" (pp. 139-48)
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. from The Angel on the Roof: Stories by Russell Banks. Copyright

..
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 2000 by Russell Banks. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins
The Oxford book of American short stories / edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Publishers.
p.cm.

Includes index. Donald Barthelme: "Tue School" from Amateurs by Donald Barthelme,
1. Short stories, American. I.Oates,Joyce Carol, 1938- currently collected in Sixty Stories. Copyright 1981, 1982 by Donald
PS648.SS094 2012
Barthelme, used with permission ofThe Wylie Agency LLC.
813 '.0108--dc23
2012012423
Pinckney Benedict: "Mercy" from Miracle Boy and Other Stories by
ISBN 978-0-19-974439-8
Pinckney Benedict, copyright 2010 by Pinckney Benedict. Used by
57 9 8 6
permission of the author.
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

K- 1 6 0 7 5 2 6
V
 HILLS LIKE \VHITE ELEPHANTS 355

Hills Like White Elephants
The hills across the valley of the Ebro were lang and white. On this side
there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of
rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm
shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings ofbamboo beads,
hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American
and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. lt
was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty min
utes. lt stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid.
"What should we drink?" the girl asked. She had taken offher hat and
put it on the table.
"It's pretty hot," the man said.
"Let's drink beer."
"Dos cervezas," the man said into the curtain.
"Big ones?" a woman asked from the doorway.
"Yes. Two big ones."
Tue woman brought two glasses ofbeer and two feit pads. She put the
felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the
girl. Tue girl was looking off at the line ofhills. They were white in the sun
and the country was brown and dry.
"They look like white elephants," she said.
'Tve never seen one," the man drank his beer.
"No, you wouldn't have."
"I might have," the man said. "Just because you say I wouldn't have
doesn't prove anything."
Tue girl looked at the bead curtain. "They've painted something on
it," she said. "What does it say?"
"Anis del Toro. It's a drink."
"Could we try it?"
Tue man called "Listen" through the curtain. Tue woman came out
from the bar.
"Four reales."
"We want two Anis del Toro."
354
""\Vith water?"
WDo you want it with water?"
MI don't know," the girl said. "Is it good with water?"
wlt's all right."
"You want them with water?" asked the woman.
WYes, with water."
wlt tastes like licorice," the girl said and put the glass down.
WThat's the way with everything."
"Yes," said the girl. "Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the
things you've waited so Iong for, like absinthe."
"Oh, cut it out."
"You started it," the girl said. "I was being amused. I was having a fine
time..,
"\Vell, Iet's try and have a fine time."
"All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white ele
phants. \Vasn't that bright?"
"That was bright."
"I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it- look at
things and try new drinks?"
"I guess so."
Tue girl Iooked across at the hills.
"They're Iovely hills," she said. "They don't really look like white ele-
phants. I just meant the coloring oftheir skin through the trees."
"Should we have another drink?"
"All right."
Tue warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
"Tue beer's nice and cool," the man said.
"It's lovely," the girl said.
"It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig," the man said. "It's not
really an operation at all."
Tue girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
"I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. lt's really not anything. It's just to
!et the air in."
Tue girl did not say anything.
"I'Il go with you and I'II stay with you all the time. They just let the air
in and then it's all perfectly natural."
356 ER;-.;EST HL\l!NG\\'AY
"Then what will we do afterward?"
"\\Te'll be fine afterward.Just like we were before."
"What makes you think so?"
"That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's madc
us unhappy."
Tue girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold o:
two of the strings of beads.
"And you think then we'll be all right and be happy?"
"I know we will. You don't have to be afraid.l've known lots of people
that have clone it."
"So have I," said the girl. "And afterward they were all so happy."
"\\Tell," the man said, "if you don'twant to you don't have to. I wouldn't
have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple:
"And you really want to?"
"I think it's the best thing to do. But I don't want you to do it if you
don't really want to."
"And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and
you'll love me?"
"I love you now. You know I love you."
"I know. But ifl do it, then it will be nice again ifl say things are like
white elephants, and you'll like it?"
'Tll love it. I love it now but I just can't think about it. You know hml"
I get when I worry."
"If I do it you won't ever worry?"
"I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple."
"Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't care about me."
"Weil, I care about you."
"Oh, yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything
will be fine."
"I don't want you to do it if you feel that way."
Tue girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the
other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far
away, beyond the river, were mountains. Tue shadow of a cloud moved
across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.
HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS 357
"And we could have all this," she said. "And we could have everything
and every day we make it more impossible."
"\\'hat did you say?"
"I said we could have everything."
"\\'e can have everything."
"No, we can't."
we can have the whole world."
"No, we can't."
"We can go everywhere."
"No, we can't. lt isn't ours any more."
"It's ours."
"No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back."
"But they haven't taken it away."
"We'll wait and see."
"Come on back in the shade," he said. "You mustn't feel that
way."
"I don't feel any way," the girl said. "I just know things."
"I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do-"
"Nor that isn't good for me," she said. "I know. Could we have
another beer?"
"All right. But you've got to realize-"
"I realize," the girl said. "Can't we maybe stop talking?"
They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the
dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.
"You've got to realize," he said, "that I don't want you to do it if you
don't want to. I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means
anything to you."
"Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get along."
"Ofcourse it does. But I don't want anybody but you. I don't want any
one else. And I know it's perfectly simple."
"Yes, you know it's perfectly simple."
"It's all right for you to say that, but I do know it."
"Would you do something forme now?"
"I' d do anything for you."
"Would you please please please please please please please stop
talking?"
358 ERNEST HEi\lINGWAY
He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of
the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had
spent nights.
"But I don't want you to," he said, "I don't care anything about it."
'Tll scream," the girl said.
The woman came out through the curtains with two glasses ofbeer
and put them down on the damp feit pads.
"The train comes in five minutes," she said.
"What did she say?" asked the girl.
"That the train is coming in five minutes."
Tue girl smiled brightly at the woman, to thank her.
'Td better take the bags over to the other side of the station," the m.1.n
said. She smiled at him.
"All right. Then come back and we'll finish the beer."
He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station
to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the tr.1.in.
Coming back, he walked through the barroom, where people waiting
for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked J.t
the people. They were all walting reasonably for the train. He went out
through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.
"Do you feel better?" he asked.
"I feel fine," she said. "Thei-e's nothing wrang with me. I feel fine."
LANGSTON HUGHES
(1902-1967)
Bri/li,mt i11 11arratio11, powcrful in impact, tlzis storyJromTheWays ofWhite
Folks (1934) camwt suggcst tlze remarkable virtuosity of tlzat volume of
;/:,irt_fictio11, wlziclz portrays, witlz sympatlzy, rage, horror, and satiric lzumor,
tl:, m,mifold relatio11s bctwcrn American blacks and whites. Any 1111111ber of
;t,1ri,sfro111 tlze book miglzt lzave been c/10se11 to represe11t it, including its most
,m1bitio11s co11c/11di11g work, tlze 11ear-11ovella "Father and S011."
Lmgsto,1 Huglzes is nwst celebrated as a poet, but lzis ge11i11s cut across
.1 mm1ber of genres i11c/11di11g short fiction, novels, and playsi during the
1930s, as tlze most popular writer co1111ected with the Harlem Renaissance,
li, became sometlzing of a public .figure, working as a journalist, lecturing,
jozmdi11g black tlzeatres, and bringing out antlwlogies of black writing. Born
in ]oplin, Missouri, Huglzes lived variously in Detroit, Cleveland, New York,
and Chicagoi his ide11ti.ficatio11 was "the bard of Harlem." Among African
J.merican 11riters of our time, 110 one has been more honored than Hughes.
His output was considerable: more than thirty-.five books. Of these, in
addition to Tue \Vays of White Folks, the most signi.ficant are the poetry
collectionsTueWeary Blues (1926), The Dream Keeper (1932), Montage
of a Dream Deferred (1951), and The Panther and the Lash (1967)i
the novel Not Without Laughter (1930)i the humorous sketches Simple
Speaks His Mind (1950)i and the autobiographical The Big Sea (1940)
and I Wonder as I Wander (1956).
359