EVERYTHING STUCK TO HIM

出自《当我们在谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》

作者 ｜ 雷蒙德·卡佛

（实在找不到原画师是谁了sry，图片禁止任何形式的AI学习）

1、

She's in Milan for Christmas and wants to know what it was like when she was a kid.

Tell me, she says. Tell me what it was like when I was a kid. She sips Strega, waits, eyes him closely.

She is a cool, slim, attractive girl, a survivor from top to bottom.

That was a long time ago. That was twenty years ago, he says.

You can remember, she says. Go on.

What do you want to hear? he says. What else can I tell you? I could tell you about something that happened when you were a baby. It involves you, he says. But only in a minor way.

Tell me, she says. But first fix us another so you won’t have to stop in the middle.

Strega /ˈstrɛɡə/ 一种意大利药草利口酒

2、He comes back from the kitchen with drinks, settles into his chair, begins.

They were kids themselves, but they were crazy in love, this eighteen-year-old boy and this seventeen-year-old girl when they married. Not all that long afterwards they had a daughter.

The baby came along in late November during a cold spell that just happened to coincide with the peak of the waterfowl season. The boy loved to hunt, you see. That’s part of it.

The boy and girl, husband and wife, father and mother, they lived in a little apartment under a dentist’s office. Each night they cleaned the dentist’s place upstairs in exchange for rent and utilities. In summer they were expected to maintain the lawn and the flowers. In winter the boy shoveled snow and spread rock salt on the walks. Are you still with me? Are you getting the picture?

I am, she says.

3、

That’s good, he says. So one day the dentist finds out they were using his letterhead for their personal correspondence. But that’s another story.

He gets up from his chair and looks out the window. He sees the tile rooftops and the snow that is falling steadily on them.

Tell the story, she says.

The two kids were very much in love. On top of this they had great ambitions. They were always talking about the things they were going to do and the places they were going to go.

4、

Now the boy and girl slept in the bedroom, and the baby slept in the living room. Let’s say the baby was about three months old and had only just begun to sleep through the night.

On this one Saturday night after finishing his work upstairs, the boy stayed in the dentist’s office and called an old hunting friend of his father’s.

Carl, he said when the man picked up the receiver, believe it or not, I’m a father.

Congratulations, Carl said. How is the wife?

She’s fine, Carl. Everybody’s fine.

That’s good, Carl said, I’m glad to hear it. But if you called about going hunting, I’ll tell you something. The geese are flying to beat the band. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many. Got five today. Going back in the morning, so come along if you want to.

I want to, the boy said.