SI Vault Miss Mary's Lion Ernest Hemingway December 20, 1971
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20, 1971  Miss Mary's Lion  View CoverRead All Articles View
This Issue  "I've tried for many years," he said. Then, in the
classic formula he said, "Now it is all yours."  So it was. It
was all mine on a windless morning of the last day of the month
of the next to the last month of the year.  "I want to turn this
truck in and send you one that is good," Pop had said. "They
don't trust this truck."  It was always they. They were the
people; the watu. Once they had been "the boys." They still were
to Pop. But he had either known them all when they were boys in
age or had known their fathers when their fathers were children.
Twenty years ago I had called them boys too and neither they nor
I had any thought that I had no right to. No one would have
minded if I had used the word now. But the way things were now
you did not do it. Everyone had his duties and everyone had a
name. Not to know a