Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost (13 page)

When I finally lay on my side and tried to sleep, I wasn’t exactly the picture of contentment either.  An unruly crowd of uncertain thoughts kept merry-go-rounding in and out of my head. 

Is Ernest’s work with me going to be finished tonight?  Will there be a tomorrow?  Has he been ordered back to the hereafter but doesn’t have the heart to tell me?  Maybe that’s it!  He’s not worried about where we’re going; he’s upset that we’re not going.  When is it going to happen? 
Any minute now?
  Am I going to make it back to the mortal world and be with Blanche again?  God, I hope so.  But what if that doesn’t happen?  Am I going to ascend to eternal happiness or spend all of eternity in hell’s scorching flames?  I can’t even imagine how hot it must be down there.  Doesn’t your skin eventually melt off your bones?  Oh shit, this is crazy.  I can’t keep . . . .  

Eventually, I fell off
.

Chapter 1
4

In the darkness, as if it were bashful, dawn’s first faint, gray light revealed a small hint of the horizon.  The dim glow seemed to be lifting the very edge of night’s long, black skirt as it peeked from beneath it.  I’d just opened my eyes and ears.  The first sounds I heard were shallow water rushing over rocks and a choir of a thousand chirping crickets.  After that I smelled something.  It was the rich aroma of logs burning in a nearby fireplace.  As I lay there on my side, the pale glow on the horizon afforded just enough light to reveal two huge silhouettes on either side of it.  They were mountains, twins, and early morning as it was, they appeared to be black.  It was cool outside, but I was cocooned in a sleeping bag.  Beneath my hip there was a hard wooden floor, and I was peering beneath the bottom of a deck’s railing.  When I raised my head to have a better look around, I heard Ernest’s voice.

“Morning, Jack.”

I turned my head up and around, and there he was sitting upright on a long wooden bench.  After trying to focus on him a little better in the darkness, I said, “Hey, Ernest, how are you doing?”

“I’m okay, all things considered.”

“Where are we?” I asked, sitting up.

“Ketchum.
  Ketchum, Idaho. 
My last home.
  We’re on the second floor deck.  Did you sleep well?  It seemed like you did.”

“Idaho, huh?
  Hmmm, somehow I’m not surprised,” I said, surveying the surroundings a little more.  “Yeah, I had a little trouble falling off in New York last night.  But after that, I slept alright.”

I got up and sat on the bench beside him.  Hunched over with my elbows on my knees, I turned to look at him.  “Why are we out here?  How come we didn’t sleep inside?”

“I didn’t want to go inside until it got light out.”

Being it was so early and I’d just woken up, my mind wasn’t yet running on all its cylinders.  I missed his point completely.  Not yet realizing the reason for his apprehension, I tried to be funny.

“You didn’t want to go inside until it was light?  What are you afraid of . . . ghosts or something?”

“Yes,” he said, “As a matter of fact I am.  But not the kind you’re talking about.  What I’m not looking forward to are the reminders inside and the memories of my last morning here.”

“Oh, shit, Ernest.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t realize.  I’m not awake yet.  Forgive me, man.”

“
Aaaaaahhh
, forget about it, Jack,” he waved me off. “I’ll be okay.”

Neither of us said anything for a while after that.  The silence probably didn’t last more than ten or twenty seconds but seemed longer.  I felt like an A-1 shit.

Finally Ernest said, “This coffee was sitting here when we arrived, with this extra cup. 
How about some?”

“You bet,” I said.

As he poured the steaming liquid into a cup, I looked at the tall metal flask he was tilting.  I’d seen Ernest with it before in old black and white photographs inside books.  I also remembered reading somewhere that for many years he’d taken it with him on many of his trips.   

After
we
both took a sip of the coffee, he said, “Well, Jacky my boy, today is going to be it.  I don’t know when we’ll part ways, but it can happen any time.  It could be in five minutes.  It could be tonight after you go to sleep.  Either way I just want to tell you that I’ve really enjoyed being with you.  We’ve had a few laughs, haven’t we?”

“We sure have.  And I want to tell you it’s been an honor to meet you.”

“Oh shit, Jack, don’t start getting all sappy on me now.”

“Alright,” I said, raising my eyes from my coffee to the new pink light now splaying on the mountains, “but I just wanted you to know that.  It has been an honor and a learning experience.
Damned frightening at times and more fun than a barrel of monkeys at others.”

“Well . . . if you do get to write that book He has in mind, do a good job.  You’ve got the writer in you, Jack.  I know that now.”

“You do, do you?” I said, looking him square in those brown eyes of his.  “How do you know?  You haven’t seen me write a single syllable.”

“See that magenta light,” he said, pointing to the top edge of the sun now shining on the horizon.  “The Man responsible for that and all the other beauty on this planet has allowed me access to some of your thoughts.”

Straightening up on the wooden bench now, I spun around.

“You mean you’ve been reading my mind all this time? 
Ever since we met in front of your House in Key West?”

“Come on now, pay attention to the details.  Always observe the details.  You know what they say about them.”  Lifting his white eyebrows now and speaking more slowly, he went on, “What I said was, He has allowed me access to
some
of your thoughts.  And a few of the times when I got inside your head, I saw some very creative and insightful thoughts.”

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Ernest, but this gets freakier and freakier.”

He said nothing.  He just looked at me as if he knew exactly what I was going to say next.

“You’re in there again, aren’t you?”

“Go ahead, Mister Phelan,” he said teasingly.  “What did you want to say?”

“Oh, so it’s
Mister Phelan
now?”

We both just looked at each other now.  It was as if we were wrestling with our eyes to see who would give up first.  But that didn’t happen.  Neither of us surrendered.  Instead, at the exact same instant, we both let out a long, loud breath.  “
Pfffffffff
,” we sounded like air rushing out of two overinflated balloons.  Then we let loose.  We cracked up the way two close friends on the same humorous wavelength sometimes do.  With his belly bouncing with each laugh, Ernest gave me a little whack in the back of the head.

“Hey!  How do you know it doesn’t still hurt back there,” I snapped, and we laughed even harder. 

When finally we calmed down, we were gasping for air and panting like two marathon dropouts.  I wiped the tears from my eyes and managed to say, “Okay, okay, give me a for instance.  Give me one example of what I’ve been thinking.  Tell me something.  C’mon, let’s hear it.”

With his belly still wobbling he said, “Alright, I’ll give you just one.  Let me calm down here; this is serious stuff.  Okay, are you ready?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.  Go ahead.”

He raised his eyes to the small roof over the porch and kept them there a moment before shifting them back toward me.  “Okay, I think I’ve got it right.  Here goes.” 

At first I thought he was setting me up.  I wasn’t sure, but I thought he might go for an encore and try to make me laugh again.  But he didn’t.  When Ernest spoke, the tone of his dead-serious voice put me to mind of the one time I heard him speak before we had met.  A few years earlier, I’d heard an old scratchy recording of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.  As he spoke now, he used the same low, measured tone he did back then.  His diction was actually reverent when he repeated the very first thought I’d had that morning.  The illustrious literary giant looked out toward the new sun.  With his craggy face and white beard tinted pink from the light, he put me to mind of Mount Rushmore in the early morning.  But just as quickly as that vision had come, it disappeared when he spoke.

Slowly he said, “In the darkness, as if it were bashful, dawn’s first faint gray light revealed a small hint of the horizon.  The dim glow seemed to be lifting the very edge of night’s long, black skirt as it peeked from beneath it.” 

Ernest then turned his head back toward me, and a small smile rose on his face as he quietly nodded his head.  As if I were his protégé and as if he were damned proud of me, he then said, “Put thoughts like that on paper, Jack, and you’ll have something.  That is
excellent
stuff.  A tad overdressed for me, but it’s your style.  And it’s a very, very good one.”  

“You really do like it don’t you?”

“Yes . . . .  I do.  And if you get to write His book, if you get that chance, always dig deep for your words like you did for those.  Your sentences can’t always be that flowery; only at certain times should they be.  But don’t worry, Jack, you’ve got good instincts.  And they’ll guide you.”

Without realizing it, I turned my cup in my hands and watched the coffee slosh just as I’d seen Ernest do a few times. 

“Thanks, Ernest,” I said.  “Thanks for your confidence.”  Then, looking at him again, I asked, “Do you think He’s going to let me stay?  Do you think He’ll overlook the things I’ve done in my past life?”

“That I don’t know.  I don’t know all the sins or infractions you’ve committed.  We can never be sure about what He might do.  But the way I see it, He must have known about your past before sending me down here.”

“I sure hope you’re right.”

“I think I am.  I also think He could have found out about your writing capabilities on His own.  But He’s got a big heart.  Sure, He respects my opinion, and the feedback I give Him carries some weight, but I know, like I told you before, sending me here was a gift of sorts.  Three days ago was the fiftieth anniversary of . . . of what I did to myself in the vestibule of this very house.”

Ernest fell silent again.  He was painfully ruminating over that most desperate of all solutions he chose that July morning so long ago.  I said nothing.  I looked out at the swirling, rushing river before us.  Then I focused my eyes beyond it to the mountain peaks and said, “Are you ready to go inside?”

He cleared his throat then took his time getting his battered old body up from the bench.  Then in an uncharacteristically uncertain tone he said, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s do it.”

Chapter 1
5

The side of the deck we were on sat on a small hill.  Ernest and I climbed over the railing then crab-walked down the steep slope.  Reaching the bottom he said, “We’ve got to go in the back door.  That’s what Mary used as the main entrance after I died.  She no longer would use the front entrance.  She didn’t want to walk through the foyer where I pulled both triggers that last morning.”

Knowing there was nothing to say, I only nodded.  With but a single long shadow following us on the damp grass, we made our way to a door alongside a pile of seasoned firewood.  Ernest held onto the knob for a moment before turning it.  He stroked the door with his eyes from the bottom to the top then held his gaze there.  He took a deep breath and slowly released it.  Then he said, “Okay, here we go.” 

Ernest acted as if he hadn’t heard it, but the instant he turned that knob and gently pushed the door
in,
I heard the high-pitched cry of an eagle.  It was directly over our heads and not very high up.  Considering the intensity of this soul-stirring moment, I could only take a quick look at it.  I couldn’t tell the exact species of the bird, but it was an eagle.  And the real kicker was that it was all white—a pure white eagle.  Its body and wide, motionless wings were tinted pink in the sun’s early light, but it was definitely white.  Large like a bald eagle, it was even more majestic.  My memory was far from perfect, but I swore there was no such thing as a white eagle.  And as it glided in a circular pattern overhead, I noticed something else very peculiar.  One of its large yellow eyes was trained right on us.  As awestruck as I was, I still followed Ernest into the quiet house.  

The inside walls were a blonde wood, and just like Ernest’s other homes the furnishings were spare and uncluttered. 

“I want to go upstairs first.” he said without turning to me.

Patting the back of his shoulder, I said, “Go ahead.  I’ll wait down here.” 

He still didn’t turn around, but he thanked me.  And in that rolling gait of his, he lumbered across the thin carpet and up the stairs.

Slowly I ambled around the living room.  There were large picture windows on three of the walls.  They allowed plenty of light and views of the mountains that were to die for.  All the windows and light walls may have made the room feel airier than it actually was, but the ambience was still somber and funereal.  It felt as if I were standing in a well-lit mausoleum.  Then it got worse.