Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost (5 page)

Lifting one gnarled finger from the wheel now, pointing it to the two o’clock position, he then said, “See it on the horizon, Jack?”

“No . . . I don’t see anything.”

“Look harder.  It’s a boat coming our way, a ship, either a freighter or an ocean liner.  This is one of the busiest shipping lanes there is.  I’m surprised we haven’t seen anything up till now.”

“
Ohhh
yeah, I see it.  But it’s barely a speck.”

“You spend the time out here I’ve spent you can tell what it is.  They won’t reach us for a good twenty minutes.  Anyway, getting back to what we were talking about—killing animals, mammals.  Am I sorry about killing them?  Let’s just say that near the end of my life, just before they ruined me with those frigging electro-shock treatments, I did get to the point where I preferred watching a majestic animal rather than taking it down.”

“Kind of like the old hunter thing, huh?”

“Exactly like the old hunter thing.”

“I never dreamed that ‘The’ Ernest Hemingway would ever feel that way.”

“
Hahhh
,” he laughed, “a lot of people back in the day, as well as today, would be damn surprised at how old Papa feels about a lot of things.”

“Knowing you like I do after just a short time, I’m sure people would be stunned.”

“Well, thanks friend
,
” he said looking at me over the rim of the eyeglasses he’d put on a few minutes earlier.  “What did you think of me before we met?”

“Oh hell, I don’t know how to answer that.”

“
Malarky
!
  Now spill it
Twinster
.”

“
Twinster
?
  What’s this
Twinster
stuff?”

Looking at my forehead now, nodding at it, he said, “Once that nasty gash heals, you’re going to have a damned good scar.  Whether you go cloud dancing, stay down here or whatever, it’s going to look an awful lot mine,” he said, tapping his twice.  “That’s why I called you
Twinster
.”

“Hey,” I blurted then, “you know something?  That ship, it’s getting closer now.  And it seems to be heading right for us.”

“We have plenty of time to . . . ,” then he stopped right there.  Something was weird.  He acted as if he suddenly had a premonition or a revelation.

“Son of a gun!
  You know what, Jack?  I just realized something.  We have plenty of time to get out of this cruise ship’s way, but whoever’s running it can’t see us.  Nobody can!”

“What are you talking about, they can’t see us?”

“
Come on man!
  Think about it.  Is He going to let the world see the
Pilar
back out on the ocean?”

“I’ll be damned. 
Of course not.
  That’s freaking amazing, but how does He . . . ?”

“It’s called supreme visual deception.  I heard about it upstairs.  He can put anything he wants down here, could be a mountain big as Kilimanjaro, if He doesn’t want it to be seen, it isn’t.  Amen. 
Done deal.”

Shaking his head in awe, a small ironic smile on his lips, Ernest turned the wheel to the port side.

Over the course of the next two hours, we saw a few yachts and freighters, another cruise ship, and one long yellow Cigarette boat that was hell-bent on going airborne.  We also saw
more flying fish and a school of bonito that had churned three acres of the ocean’s surface into a white froth. 

Even though we’d been standing in the shade of the cockpit the whole time, it felt like we were in the doldrums.  I don’t know how high the temperature got, but it was oppressively hot.  And it was humid.  It felt like a steamed-up locker room out there in all that sunny stillness.  I was sweating profusely, but for some reason, a Godly one I supposed, my partner’s shirt was still dry as could be.    

“Ernest,” I said, as a droplet fell from my eyebrow, “would you mind if I went below?  I’d like to lie down for a while.  We got up awfully early this morning, and this heat is . . .”

“Sure, go ahead.  But you’d better drink some of that water first.  It’s in the cooler.”

I fished a cold plastic bottle out of the ice, took two long swallows then went down below.

As I stepped into
Pilar’s
dark cabin, it felt as if I were entering a cabin of a different sort.  With its close wooden walls and ceiling, it seemed like a small, isolated North Woods cabin.  Like a place where you might find a silent monk down on his knees.  The seagoing quarters of the late great Ernest Hemingway not only had that ambience, it also seemed every bit as hallowed.  But there was something else in the belly of the
Pilar
.  Something I don’t think you’d find in a monk’s humble cabin.  There were ghosts.  Not only could I feel them, but I could see them as well.

Chapter
6

Inside that quiet cabin I first saw one of Hem’s long gone writer friends.  John Dos
Passos
, the illegitimate socialist son of an industrialist supporter, was sitting with his wife, Katy, on a green sofa.  They each had a drink in hand and both looked very happy.  I saw a young Ernest sitting at a small desk down there.  He was scribbling notes about a battle he had recently fought from his deck-mounted fighting chair.  I could see members of his “mob” and the
Pilar’s
crew crowded in the cabin.  They were toasting drinks to another successful day’s fishing.  Then I noticed that Ernest had moved.  He was now sitting, smiling, and joking with his last three wives at the small dining table.  Then, up ahead, I heard something else.  Sounds were coming from beyond an open doorway leading to the sleeping quarters.  They were moans.

All at once a faint chorus of pleasurable female moans wafted into the room.  It filled the air and lingered like a soft, satisfied hum.  For some reason none of the other guests seemed to notice. 

Not believing my ears, I smacked the side of my head a few times.  It wasn’t until I started walking toward the portal that the gentle choir grew fainter.  When I stepped into the miniature bedroom, the sound ceased completely.  Just like that, there was silence again.  But as I stood between the two small beds, there was something else in the air—something every bit as unnerving as what I’d just heard.  It was a smell, a scent.  Permeating the eerie silence was a combination of fragrances—a sweet, subtle mélange of many different perfumes.   

Whoosh,
I thought,
I’d better get some sleep.  This heat’s getting to me more than I realized.         

I took one last gulp from the water I’d been carrying and put the empty bottle on a table; then I lay down on one of the bunks.  The bed was not very long.  I had to jackknife my legs at the knees to fit on it.  But that didn’t matter.  After only a few minutes of trying to decide whether or not I was losing my head or what I had just witnessed had in fact been real, I fell into a dreamy state of unconsciousness.  Then my subconscious took over.  And that mysterious, uncontrollable part of the human mind started sending me messages. 

I dreamed of an incredibly beautiful lady.  She was the type of woman who made men howl in the privacy of their own secret dreams.  Long, thick, auburn hair streamed down both sides of her fresh-cream face, and her exotic emerald eyes held me a willing prisoner.  She had a rare strain of beauty that not only tortures men with desire but overwhelms them with an unexplainable jealousy as well—a jealousy rooted in the realization that she belongs to someone else and cannot be theirs.  Though she was a bit on the tall side, she moved like a ballerina.  As she approached me, her every move was gilded with grace.

I was lying flat on my back in a hospital bed, and it was pretty dark in the room.  The heart monitor alongside the bed only beeped once every two seconds.  Its digits and graph glowed green.  A respirator helped me breathe, and all kinds of tubes and needles were shoved and poked into me. 

Even had my eyes been open, I’d have barely seen the woman in the faint green glow of the machine.  But I could see her in my dream, striding toward me in black heels, snug jeans, and a man-tailored shirt that she filled out like no man on earth could. 

She sat alongside me on the narrow bed.  And with her face tinged in green, she gently stroked my hair back.  As she lovingly slid a hand over my head, careful not to touch my bandaged gash, there were tears glistening in her eyes.

“Jack,” she said, “come back honey.  Don’t you dare leave me; we have far too many memories to make yet.”

This woman in my dream seemed so familiar.  I knew her face, her body, her walk, her gestures and her voice.  Somehow, I knew I loved her.  I didn’t know why because I couldn’t place her.  And that hurt deeply.  I felt as empty as a long-dead, hollow tree.  I ached to hear her speak again.  I needed to hear more.  Finally, she drew a deep breath and prepared to speak. 

But she didn’t.  She ran out of time because I was literally bounced right out of my dream.  There was a thunderous thud.  The entire top half of my body lifted high off the mattress and then slammed back onto it.  It felt like the
Pilar
had fallen off the roof of a three story building.  The hull beneath the bunk crashed on the water as if it were concrete.  My entire body jarred.  And when I awoke, I immediately realized how lucky I’d been to land back on the padded mattress. 

Then the bow rose again.  It lifted so high it seemed we were about to go airborne. 

“Ernest!  Ernest!” I hollered as I fought my way into the adjoining cabin, heading for the doorway. 

All the guests were gone, and the floor there was soaked with water.  Spanning my arms out like wings, trying to prevent myself from slamming into a wall or anything else, I sloshed my way toward the exit.  I looked like an inexperienced daredevil walking a high wire as the bow lifted higher, and the thirty-eight foot hull rocked and rolled.  I knew she was about to crash down again.

With my sneakers, socks and the bottoms of my pant legs now soaked, I opened the door to the deck.  More water, gallons and gallons of it, rushed in.

The wind was howling louder than I’d ever heard it before.  But with Ernest standing right there at the helm, I was able to hear his desperate voice.  “Close that door, quick!  The cabin’s going to fill up with this damn water!”

By the time I managed to close it behind me, two full beer cans had washed below with the deluge of water.  The cooler, upended on the deck, was lying open in a foot of water.  Obviously, when I was down below and the boat slammed hard down, a monster wave had washed over the bow and cockpit.  I didn’t know which was louder, that wind or the deafening torrents of rain pounding away at the ocean’s surface.   

With the sky now as black as a midnight eclipse, I shouted to Ernest, “My good God, what’s happening out here?”

“The Bermuda Triangle!
  We’re in it!  Never saw anything like this in my life!  Here, quick, get this on,” he yelled, flinging an orange lifejacket at me.  “Don’t bother buckling it! Just slip it on.  We’re dropping over the edge of this gargantuan wave right now, and the boat’s heavy as a pack of pregnant elephants!”

I couldn’t see the wave before us, but just like Ernest, I felt the bow begin to drop.  Down, down, down, into the hellacious blackness we plunged.  It seemed like forever as we waited for the impact.  The
Pilar
was nosing almost straight down, like a hell-bound kamikaze.

“I don’t know why He’s doing this!” Ernest hollered, his thin hair lifting in the tremendous wind.

Then we hit the trough.  There was a BOOM!  The concussion was bone-rattling. 

It felt like we were in a ten-ton runaway elevator that had crashed at the bottom of a death-black shaft.  My legs were about to buckle from the tremendous force.  They didn’t, but the boat then listed hard to the right.  I couldn’t hold on any longer. 

As I flew into the cockpit wall, I swore I heard Lucifer’s demonic laugh.  Ernest somehow managed to hold onto the wheel, but his legs swung from beneath him and slammed into the cabin door.  He howled in pain, and since he hadn’t let go of the wheel, the boat jerked even more sharply to the side, and it swayed even more dangerously.  I thought every plank and board in the hull would explode into splinters.  The vessel jounced very, very hard, and it shuddered as if terrified.  Up against the wall like I was, I heard and felt the wood creaking and straining.

Ernest had pulled himself back to his feet and was giving it all he had at the helm.  Dark as it was, I was close enough to see him as he fought to gain control.  His face and eyes were so intent you’d have thought the old man was fighting for his own life.  But he wasn’t.  He was already set for all eternity.  He had his place in the hereafter.  No, Ernest Hemingway was not fighting for himself.  He was trying to save both me and his beloved
Pilar
from certain disaster.

Angry thunder grumbled loud overhead, and the whole boat trembled again.  Then a bolt of bright lightning flashed so close that the electricity raised the wet hair on my neck and arms.  It’s short, erratic light lit up Ernest’s rugged old face for just a split second.  And as I looked at his white hair, beard, wrinkles, and scars, I suddenly felt a deep love for this man.  And I suddenly believed he’d somehow get us out of this mess.  But before he could, something very strange happened.  I witnessed a miracle.