Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost Read online

  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.

  I looked toward an open doorway and instantly knew where it led. Sensing that the front hallway was just beyond it—the vestibule where Ernest ended his own life—I was not ready to look in there. Slowly I turned away.

  Alongside that doorway there was a 1950’s style dining room set. Just beyond it, beneath one of the panoramic windows, a wide magazine rack had been built into the wall. Made of wood and looking like a rack from a public library, it was half filled with old copies of Look and Life magazines, yellow-bordered National Geographics, and various other publications.

  Hearing Ernest’s slow creaking footsteps above me, I stepped over to the room’s only interior wall. It was solid stone. I ran my finger tips across one of the rocks and felt its hard, gray roughness. There was a fireplace at the bottom of the wall, and above it a portrait of an up-in-age Ernest. Next to the picture were two, mounted antelope heads. Like motionless sentinels, they seemed to be watching over the room with their dark glass eyes.

  I was thinking how practical the backless bench sitting right in front of the fireplace was when I heard Ernest coming down the stairs.

  He was holding up something small and looking at it closely as he descended the last few steps.

  “Look at this,” he said taking his eyes off it and looking over at me now.

  “It’s a pencil, Ernest,” I came back in a tone that said, so what? “And it looks like somebody has sharpened it down to a nub.”

  “It’s not just a pencil, Jack,” he said coming up to me. “It’s the last pencil I ever used. I found it upstairs lying alongside my typewriter.”

  “Let’s see. Hmmm . . . the point’s pretty worn. One or two more sharpenings and you would have been down to the metal eraser holder.”

  With just an inch of the green painted wood remaining, I wondered how Ernest ever managed to write with it in his big, meaty fingers. But this trivial thought had a short life. It vanished as I suddenly realized the significance of what was in my hand. The simple instrument I was holding had been used to scrawl the very last words of one of the most influential writers of all time. As I carefully handed the green stub back to Ernest, I said, “That’s right; I read somewhere that you based the success of your writing sessions on how many of these you went through.”

  “Yup,” he said looking at it one more time. “I always considered a five-pencil morning a good one.”

  He then stepped over to the dining table, and with his lips slightly pulled into a satisfied, ironic smile, he said, “I’ll leave it here for now. The house is in the hands of the Nature Conservancy now. If they want to put it back upstairs by the typewriter, they will. The main thing is that folks who come to visit can see this and realize its significance.”

  The contented look on Ernest Hemingway’s face then began to fade. And it disappeared completely as he placed the pencil on the table. Suddenly he looked solemn. He knew it was time. Slowly, painstakingly, he turned toward the open doorway. As if in a gloomy trance, he stared into the hallway. A long moment passed. His eyes didn’t blink, flinch, move or quiver. They just stared. Finally he said, “Here goes.”

  Then he took three slow steps and entered the hallway.

  Immediately I walked over to a blue sofa by one of the windows and sat down. I neither wanted to see his reaction in that vestibule, nor did I have any right to.

  It was quiet enough to hear a piece of straw fall on the carpet. I looked this way and that; I looked out the back window and then out the front one. I tried to focus on the mountains. I wanted to take my attention into them and away from this sad moment. I didn’t want to hear my friend’s sobs, but I did. I only heard three, and they were low, but they seemed to reverberate in the narrow hall.

  When the sobs ceased, I felt relieved. Hopefully the worst was over. It was quiet again. A minute, two, five passed as I wondered what he was doing in there. I waited another few minutes—still nothing. I was concerned now, very concerned. Another eerie feeling wafted into the room then, and it hung in the stillness. I waited a bit longer.

  “Ernest,” I finally said. “Are you okay?”

  Still nothing but silence.

  Louder I said, “Ernest, are you alright in there?”

  It was downright spooky now, and the concern in my voice had been replaced with alarm.

  Still no answer. I’d had enough.

  Pushing myself up and off the sofa, I rushed across the room as I shouted “ERNEST! ANSWER ME! ARE YOU STILL THERE?”

  As I reached the doorway, the palms of my hands slammed into its frame to help stop my momentum. I looked inside. Ernest was not there. He was gone. He’d vanished. I didn’t go into the hall. The thought entered my mind, but it didn’t stay there. To step inside seemed like a blasphemous intrusion of a sacred place. And there was no need to.

  The moment I dismissed that thought, something else hit me. I realized that Ernest wasn’t coming back. But there was no time to mourn his loss or start worrying about what was in store for me. Everything around me suddenly started spinning. I gripped the doorframe harder, but it wasn’t enough. My legs wanted to buckle. The room whirred around like the inside of an F5 tornado. There was a deafening noise. It sounded as if a hundred angry propellers were being pushed to the limit inside the room. The blue sofa, gray stone wall, dining set, pictures, brown animal heads, and all the rest whirled so fast they blended into a blur of colors. I couldn’t hold on any longer. The spinning force was now too much. I lost my grip and was flung to the floor as if I’d been thrown from a possessed, runaway merry-go-round. Slam! I hit the floor hard. The concussion was so forceful that my head and body bounced off the carpet as if I’d fallen from a tall building. My arms and legs splayed as if there were no bones in them.

  Then the lights went out. Everything went black.

  Chapter 16

  There was no light at the end of a tunnel, only that blackness. I couldn’t feel any sensations in my body or mind, only nothingness. I have no idea how long I remained that way, but I don’t think it was very long. Suddenly I heard something. At first it was very faint, as if it had come from a distant place. Slowly it came closer. I didn’t try to determine what it was because I still couldn’t think. I was just there and so was the sound. It was a series of faint beeps. Then they became a wee bit louder as if they’d moved closer. It was then that I felt something—two things really.

  My eyelids flinched, and
as I tried to help them open, I felt a pressure on my temples. Finally managing a slight squint, I could see through my eyelashes a dim light. Then I saw a hand in front of my eyes. It was a palm, and it was close. Its owner had his thumb and middle finger resting on my temples. The man said something I couldn’t make out; then he slowly pulled his hand away. I could see better now. My ability to think was improving as well. My thoughts formed very slowly at first as if I were coming out of a long drunken stupor, but I was thinking.

  I knew I was on my back in a hospital room. Then I realized the beeping sound was coming from a heart monitor. My eyelids parted some more, and I saw the man who’d lifted his hand. He had on a white coat. He was a doctor. And he was smiling at me.

  In a soft voice he said, “Welcome back, Jack.”

  Sitting beside me on the bed, he was leaning in front of me. I couldn’t see anything else. While his words, Welcome back, Jack, echoed in my consciousness, I suddenly realized something. He’d spoken with a Spanish accent.

  As I studied the doctor’s face, I felt my eyes moving. His eyes were dark and so was his skin. He had a lean handsome face, perfect white teeth, and black hair combed straight back.

  I looked at the nameplate on his chest. In the green glow of the monitor, I could just make it out. It said, “Dr. Humberto Salazar.”

  Had I the strength I would have jumped right out of that bed. I could not believe who I was looking at. The more my eyes bulged, the more Humberto’s smile widened.

  “Get plenty of rest, my friend,” he said. ”I will check back with you later.”

  Then he looked at me approvingly, winked, and strode out of the room.

  I now saw somebody else approaching. She too sat alongside me on the mattress. It was Blanche. She looked so tired yet still so beautiful.

  “Ohhh God, Jacky . . . I love you; I love you; I love you!” she said.

  Her eyes were as warm as they’d always been. No, they even warmer. Moist with tears of relief now, they sparkled like glittering emeralds. With her long auburn hair curtaining my face, she slowly lowered her cheek to mine. When our faces touched, I felt her tears on my skin and smelled the familiar scent of orange blossom on her neck. With her breasts soft against my chest, she rocked me, and I felt the weight of all the worry she had been carrying.

  Leaning back, she looked at me again. Gently she stroked my hair. “I was so, so worried, honey. I wouldn’t have wanted to go on without you. I couldn’t have. We have far too many memories to make yet.”

  “You can’t imagine how glad I am to be back, Blanche.”

  “I can’t?” she said, as she softly caressed a bandage on the left side of my forehead.

  “I’m sorry . . . . Of course you can.”

  We then looked into each other’s eyes and shared heartfelt smiles. I wanted this intimate moment—this indescribable feeling of relief—to last forever, but it didn’t. We were interrupted by yet another voice.

  “Blanche, I have to run along now. I’ve got to check on some other patients.”

  “Oh!” Blanche said turning her head toward the lady who’d just gotten up from a chair. “Jacky, I want you to meet Desiree. She’s a nurse here. I’d never have made it through the past four days without her.”

  Desiree, I thought, where do I know that name from?

  “Hi, Jack,” she said stepping close enough to the bed that I could see her. “I’m so glad you’re doing better.”

  As I took her extended hand, I saw that she was tall and blonde. She had a harried yet kind look on her face, and her nametag said Desiree McCandless, RN. Somehow I sensed that I’d seen her before. I didn’t have a clue as to where, but I knew we had met somewhere. Trying to bring her back was like struggling to recall a face from an old, obscure dream. I couldn’t do it for the life of me. But then she helped me.

  Just as Blanche looked back down at me, Nurse McCandless gave me a quick wink like the doctor had.

  She said, “See you guys later,” then turned and walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  “Blanche,” I said jerking my head up from the pillow, “I know her!”

  “You know her?” she said as a concerned look spread over her face. “What are you talking about, Jack? You know her? You don’t know her, honey”

  Propping myself up on my elbows now, I said, “Yeah, I do know her. She’s the waitress who served me and Ernest drinks at Sloppy Joe’s.”

  “Sloppy Joe’s? Ernest? Jack, honey, what in the heck are you talking about?”

  “Sloppy Joe’s . . . in Key West. You know where it is. We’ve been there together. I was just down there again a few days ago. I was with . . . with . . . well . . . with Ernest Hemingway.”

  “Ernest Hemingway! Oh God, Jack, you need some rest. Don’t talk like that, please. You’re scaring me.”

  Sitting straight up now, bouncing her upturned palms as she spoke, and fighting to keep her composure, she said, “Look . . . you’ve suffered a concussion. You’ve been unconscious for a long time. You must have dreamt all that.”

  The newfound relief was gone from her face now. The look that replaced it, I was certain, was the same fearful one she’d worn the whole time I was out cold.

  “You’ve got to believe me, Blanche. I met the doctor, too. Ernest and I also went to Cuba, and Doctor Salazar was our bartender down there.”

  “Oh Mother of God, Jack, you’d better get some rest. Please, hon . . . get some rest now. I’ll be back in a little while. I’ve got to go down to the cafeteria. I haven’t eaten anything since early this morning.”

  She leaned down and kissed me. Then she raised her head back up and said, “I’ll be back soon. You get some sleep now.”

  I did get some sleep, but she didn’t go anywhere near the cafeteria.

  Chapter 17

  After two more days in the hospital, I was allowed to go home. I wasn’t happy that Blanche had gone to talk to Doctor Salazar even though I knew he must have done his best to smooth things out. But there was something else that bothered me even more. The fact that my own wife wouldn’t believe I’d spent four days with Ernest really burned my ass. I realized what I’d told her wasn’t easy to swallow. But we’d been together twenty-five years—married for all but two of them—and never once had we doubted each other. That may sound like something out of a storybook marriage, but it’s true. I’ve never known two people who’d been closer than Blanche and I. But for the first three weeks I was home, our bond, our unshakable trust, showed signs of deteriorating. After that things got even worse.

  The events of my days with Ernest Hemingway came back to me slowly. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring them all back at once. I’d remember an incident or two that occurred in Key West, as well as the other three places, but it wouldn’t all come back in one tidy package. It was nerve-racking.

  Every day, as things came back to me, I told Blanche about them. But she wouldn’t buy any of it. On top of that, Doctor Salazar told me I shouldn’t go back to work at my landscaping business for at least a month. And that didn’t help matters. With the house seething with tension, we would have been better off being apart for a good part of each day. Blanche did return to her secretarial job at Luberdoff and Ackerly Accounting, but six weeks before my accident, they were forced to cut her hours. Thankfully the company was good enough to continue paying for our medical insurance, but now Blanche was only working four hours each morning. We were together all the rest of the time. Under normal conditions that would have been fine, but there was that tension. And it was pulling tighter and tighter.

  Money was getting tighter as well. We were working-class people and didn’t have all that much money put aside. That, too, did nothing to ease our anxiety. Neither did the first time I heard Blanche whispering into the telephone. I’d been in the spare bedroom trying to work on the computer, and she didn’t hear me making my way up the carpeted hallway.

  In a low tone that sounded both desperate and conspiratorial, she said, “T
his isn’t easy to take.”

  Freezing in my tracks, I listened. She was sitting in the living room just beyond the archway.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  Then a moment of silence passed before she spoke again.

  “He’s still delusional. He won’t let go of this damned Hemingway fantasy. I don’t know how much longer I can take it. It’s like I’m living with a stranger.”

  She then listened to whoever was on the other end. I just stood there listening to nothing. It took all the willpower I could muster not to storm in there, grab the phone, and ask who the hell was on the other end. But I didn’t.

  “Thanks for listening to me,” Blanche finally said. “I needed to talk to someone.”

  Then she hung up.

  “Who in the hell was that!” I demanded, stomping into the living room.

  “Nobody. Just . . . just Susanne, Susanne Santos, from work. What were you doing anyway? Hiding in there? Spying on me? You scared me half to death barging in here like that. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “You’re going to tell me what to do?” I said, widening my eyes and standing over her now. “You’re talking to God knows who, and I’m the one sneaking around? I don’t think so. Now who the hell was that?”

  Rising to her feet now she shot back, “I told you. Now get out of the way. And don’t you stand over me like that ever again!”

  Storming toward the kitchen then, she bumped my shoulder with hers. She picked up her purse from the table, came back out, and dug her eyes deep into mine as she rushed for the door.

  Blanche came back a short while later. Needing to get out of there, she just went for a ride. But we didn’t talk for the rest of the evening and half of the next day.

  After I returned to work, things didn’t get much better. And during the next two months, there were many more trying scenarios. Sometimes, even when things seemed to be going a little better, the smallest spark would set one of us off. Either Blanche or I would explode. The other would retaliate. Then one of us would either take off or go to a separate room. Either way, we’d both stew for what seemed like an eternity.