Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost (4 page)

The second floor bedroom was situated in a back corner of the Spanish Colonial house.  Like all the other rooms it had high ceilings and dark wood floors.  It seemed very odd to me that instead of a ceiling fan above the bed, there was a large chandelier. But that really didn’t matter.  I slept with all the windows wide open, as well as the two doors leading out to the veranda.  And boy, did I sleep. 

As soon as I hit that mattress, I was out like a KO’d boxer.  And it’s a good thing because before I knew it, I heard Ernest’s voice again.  I couldn’t see him because it was still dark as a moonless midnight, but I heard him standing over me.

“Wake up, Jack.  Come on.  You can’t sleep your life away. 
Heh
,
heh
,
heh
!  Whoops, sorry about that.  I couldn’t resist.”

“Very funny, Ernest.
  What the hell time is it?”

“It’s about four-thirty.”

“Four-thirty!
  Are you kidding me?  Come on, let me go back to sleep.”

“Forget about the time.  Hurry up and get dressed.  Breakfast is ready, and you and I are going on a little trip.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright . . . just give me a few minutes.  I’ll be right down.”

“Okay.  And don’t worry about making the bed or anything.  All that will be taken care of.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” I said as Ernest stepped out of the dark room.

“I’m glad of that,” he shot back as he started high-tailing it down the stairs like an excited kid, “because you
ain’t
seen
nuthin
’ yet, kiddo. 
Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

As much as I didn’t want to, I then reached over and turned on the bedside lamp.  I squinted at the nightstand where I’d piled my clothes the night before.  Then I squinted even more, and it had nothing to do with the intrusive light.  My clothes had disappeared.  In their place was a neatly folded change of clothes.  There were clean skivvies, a pair of
Hemingwayesque
khaki Bermudas, and a beige light-weight safari shirt.  I couldn’t believe it.  But the real kicker came when I slung my legs off the bed to stand up.  Feeling something beneath my feet, I spread them open and there was a brand spanking new pair of size-eleven deck shoes.  

Ernest and I hardly talked during breakfast.  We were too busy working over a tall stack of pancakes drenched in hot syrup.  We didn’t need to talk.  We were getting along just fine.

When we finally sat back in our chairs at the long dining room table, our bellies full, slurping the last of our coffee, I said, “Okay, Ernest, what’s the surprise?  What do you have planned for today?”

“Are you all done?” 

“Yeah, I’m good to go.”

“Then let’s take off.  I want to show you rather than tell you.”

Dressed in clean, roped-up shorts and a white Guaynabo, Ernest rose from the table.  Rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, he said, “Get that cooler on the counter over there . . . it’s full of
sandwiches, fruit, beer, water and ice.  It’s somewhat heavy, but we’re just going a few blocks.  I’ll get the thermos of coffee.”

When we stepped out of the house into the darkness, all was quiet.  The sky was clear, and the sliver of a moon had migrated across it.  We trekked up the wide concrete walkway, and before locking the gate behind, Ernest turned and took one final look at his house.  After standing there for a moment with the Thermos dangling from his hand, he said, “They were good years here in Key West.  Damn good years.”  Then there was more silence.

It was as if he were looking at a close friend in a casket for the last time.  I knew he was dealing with memories—waiting for them to pass—waiting for their nostalgic hurt to wear off.  When we finally did walk away, neither of us said a word.  All that could be heard was our footsteps on the sidewalk as we coursed the brick wall out front.  And there was more of the same as we continued past long, darkened rows of conch houses.

As we walked on in silence, I thought about the man alongside me.  Although I had just hooked up with him the day before, I’d not only witnessed some of his emotional displays, but I’d felt them as well.  To say I was surprised by his heartfelt actions would be a huge understatement.  After all, Ernest Hemingway—the man, the myth, the legend he’d become—had been forged from more than just his literary accomplishments.  He was supposed to have been a hard man, with thick skin and calluses on his knuckles and heart.  But I already knew differently.  That was not the Ernest Hemingway I was walking with in the pre-dawn darkness.  This man had neither a stainless steel persona nor heart.

The cooler I’d been lugging was now getting heavier with each step.  The muscles in my arms had stretched to new lengths.  As we crossed yet another street, I was just about to tell Ernest that I needed to put it down, but I didn’t.  There were docks and black water before us.  In the darkness I could just make out about a half dozen boats.  We were close enough now to hear the gentle slap of water on their hulls.

“
Looky
there, Jack,” Ernest said, as we stepped onto the wooden platform, “third one down
   . . .
on the right.”

Still in a predawn half-trance, I could not believe my eyes.  Tied to the dock just up ahead, her cabin gently lit by a single light bulb, was the
Pilar
. 

I turned to Ernest alongside me and said, “Come on . . . get out of here!  It can’t be.”

He said nothing, but there was a smile across his face as wide as the yacht’s beam.  Unable to hold back his excitement any longer, he sped up in that rolling gait of his.  With heavy heels plunking the wooden planks, Hem moved with the renewed energy of an old man being reunited with something he had loved deeply for a long, long time.  

The closer I got, the more magnificent his thirty-eight-foot fishing boat looked.  With her low gunwales, she seemed to straddle the water rather than float upon it.  Faint light from the bare bulb atop a piling mirrored off her freshly-painted, black hull, and the wooden cabin shone as if the varnish had not yet dried.  The
Pilar
looked brand new—like she must have looked in 1934 when her maiden voyage took her from Brooklyn’s Wheeler Shipyard to a waiting Ernest in Miami.

By the time I reached the boat, Ernest was already on the wide, green deck near the stern.  He was checking out the ladder-back fighting chair—swiveling and sliding it—as if preparing once again to do battle with the finned Goliaths of the South Seas. 

“Oh,” he finally said. “Sorry . . . here, give me the cooler.”

I swung it over the transom to him; then I climbed aboard.  She was like something out of a museum and in all reality was.  For the fifty years since Ernest’s death,
Pilar
had been dry-
docked alongside his Cuban home.  Recently it had been restored along with the house which was now open to the public.

As Ernest kicked over the seventy-five horsepower Chrysler engine, I heard him say in a gentle tone, “That a girl.  Papa’s taking you home.”

She purred in the darkness like a reliable friend.  With her gurgling prop and the low rumble of the exhaust, it was as if
Pilar
were telling us she was raring to go.  Feeling the engine’s powerful vibration beneath my feet, I poked around the deck until the skipper, without looking over his shoulder, said, “Come on, Jack, untie the lines.  We’re going to Cuba.”

It wasn’t long before the first pale gray light of a new day appeared on the port side.  Standing alongside Ernest at the helm, I opened the Thermos and poured a steamy cup of coffee.  I offered it to
Hem
, but he waved me off.  Looking around as I took a sip, I thought how nothing on earth offers as much hope as daybreak on the ocean.  Then I turned to watch the boat’s wake spreading behind us.  The lights of Key West were quickly drowning in the ocean behind us. 

“Cuba’s about ninety miles, right Ernest?”

“That’s a positive.  We should reach
Cojimar
in about six hours.  Once we get there, it’s only a ten minute taxi ride to Havana.”

“So we’re going to Havana?”

“We’ll be spending the night at my old place, the
Finca
Vigia
, but we’re going to Havana first.”        

“What are we going to do in Havana?” I asked, taking another sip of the strong coffee.

“That’s going to be another surprise, Jack.  But I’ll tell you this much, we’re going to the
Floridita
Bar.  We have to meet somebody there.”

“Somebody I know?”

“You know
of
him, but that’s it.  I’m not going to tell you anymore.  But don’t worry, I guarantee we’ll have a good time.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Hey,” Ernest then blurted, pointing through the now open windshield, “look there . . . just to the left.”

We were well in the Gulf Stream by now, and a sailfish was quickly closing on a hapless ballyhoo.  The rising sun had colored the water pink, and the sailfish cut through the surreal surface like a heat-seeking torpedo.  Spending more time out of the water than in it, the frantic skittering baitfish changed directions twice, but it didn’t have a chance.  The sail closed in; its beak rose from the water as it opened its mouth.  Then smash!  The water erupted with a showery explosion, and pink, sunlit droplets splayed in every direction.  It was the kind of vision that remains stamped in a fisherman’s mind till the day of his very last cast.

“How about some of that coffee?”
Ernest asked
,
his eyes still fixed on the rippling water.

“Sure.  Sorry.  I didn’t know if . . . .”

“That’s fine.  There’s another cup in that cabinet—beneath the counter in front of you.”

As I handed Ernest the coffee in an old metal cup, his eyes were squinting in the new sunshine.  “You know, Jack,” he said, “Mother Nature is a chameleon.  Sometimes, when she shows her beautiful side, her kindness and generosity can be limitless.  Other times, forget it; she can be one heartless, malevolent whore.”

“I think I know exactly what you mean.” 

He reached for a green visor hanging next to him on the cabin wall.  Letting go of the wheel for a moment as he slid the visor onto his head and adjusted it, he said, “Have you ever seen a
lion take down a zebra?  How about a pack of coyotes finishing off a fawn, or a shark rip apart a hooked marlin?  It’s all about survival.  But wow, it can be incredibly cruel.”

“Have you ever asked Him about that?  Why things couldn’t have been set up differently?”

“No, but you know what . . . I will.”

I thought about what he’d just said for a moment.  Then, knowing that Ernest had ended thousands of lives with his guns and fishing rods, I asked him something against my better judgment.

“I’ve never been a hunter, Ernest, although I too love to fish.  You’ve been both.  Have you ever regretted taking the lives of so many animals?”

Instantly I was sorry I’d asked him that. 

Still looking at me, his eyes narrowed.  Beneath the visor I saw his forehead all scrunched up.  Had I not known the real Ernest Hemingway, I’d have thought he just might be getting ready to let go of the wheel and nail me with a hard right.

After a short eternity, he’d finally turned away.  His gaze returned to the wide, watery horizon beyond the bow, and the angry expression on his face evolved into something else.  His stormy look lost its ferociousness.  The undulating muscles protruding from his jaw were no longer flexing.  The initial impact of my question was waning.  I couldn’t tell if he was going to ignore my question about killing animals or if he was hunting for just the right words to answer it.  Either way I wished I could take it back. 

Still looking straight ahead, he held the metal cup in my direction and said, “Would you give me one more small splash, Jack?”

“Sure.  You bet.”

I poured a bit from the thermos and handed it back.  He took a sip, rested the cup on the counter behind the wheel, and said, “No, I don’t regret what I’ve done.  I loved what I was doing.  Considering who I was at the time, hunting and fishing were perfectly fine.  It was the right thing to do, fulfill my deepest passions.  But I’ll grant you this . . . you did hit a sore spot.”

I looked down.  Then like a small boy who was sorry for something he shouldn’t have done, I said in a low tone, “I had no right asking . . . .”

“Forget it.  Don’t let it eat at you, Jack.  It was a perfectly legitimate question.  It stung like a mean-assed wasp, but it was legitimate.  As a matter of fact, it was a good sign.  A writer must ask the tough questions.  It’s the only way to get to the heart of the truth.”

“Well, I’m still not too happy,” I said, lifting my head to the windshield just in time to see a flying fish skitter across the water’s indigo surface.  The sun was higher now, allowing the water to take back its natural color.  We’d been running for close to an hour, and the Gulf Stream beneath us was very deep—deep as the feelings that Ernest was about to express.

“Fish,” he said, nodding to where the flying fish had just ended its flight, “I don’t mind killing fish.  Sure, just as I have written, when you’ve battled a big one for a long time—he on one end of the line, you on the other, you can’t help but to feel connected to him by more than just the line.  You respect that fish, and he respects you.  It’s a personal thing, and the longer the fight goes on the more you respect each other.  The crew and your friends—they can be right alongside the chair with you, but it’s still just you and that fish.  You can actually grow to love a giant marlin, tuna, or swordfish.  And as much as you want to get the gaff into him, once you’ve caught many big fish, you begin to feel somewhat sentimental about ending such a magnificent animal’s life.  Smaller fish . . . I still don’t much care.  As long as you’re going to put it to some kind of use, that’s fine.  Remember, Jack, the nervous system of a fish is not all that well developed, and it’s not a very deep thinker.  Sure a fish can be wary.  It can be anxious.  It can
fight.  It can kill.  But it’s all about instincts, not about thinking things out.  They don’t have that capability.”