Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Hannah and Chris were sitting in the lounge together, sipping coffee and debating story sequences, when someone mentioned off-handedly that Mary Hemingway had “finally” died.

  “Let the games begin,” the English literature professor said with a grin.

  Hannah shook her head, alone with her terrible wisdom.

  “If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”

  — Kahlil Gibran

  55

  THE BURDEN

  They buried the old woman in a plot several incongruous feet from her famous husband’s right hand, nested between twin evergreen trees.

  Mary Welsh, the middling journalist from Leech Lake, Minnesota, selected for herself a memorial marker that was the twin of the one denoting her Nobel-awarded husband’s grave. Mary was the only one of his wives who would ever be buried with Papa and with his last name.

  At their feet lay the grave of a Basque shepherd; the Hemingways were flanked by the graves of dead local chums.

  Pointing at the big flat marker, Bridget said, “Where’s Dad’s? Is it like these?”

  “No, not like these.” Hannah took her daughter’s hand.

  In a corner of the Ketchum Cemetery into which nobody but the groundskeeper would likely venture, Hannah found the small sunken plot of ground that had been dug with posthole diggers—looking like some half-assed, underfunded core sample from which some strange weed was beginning to sprout. Hannah hoicked it, hoping it wasn’t poisonous.

  A small marker stood crookedly over the tiny hole. It read in part:

  Here lies Richard Paulson

  “Much wisdom is much grief….”

  Seeing it for the first time, set in stone, Hannah regretted the spiteful epitaph she had chosen for the dead professor whose book she had midwifed. Then she remembered the one she had first proposed, half-facetiously—the one that almost made the marker salesman hang up on her: “He drank anything too thin to eat…now he’s dead as Phlebas.”

  Back at the hotel, Bridget sat on the bed, sifting through the pages of her mother’s manuscript that Hannah had sentimentally packed for her last trip to Ketchum.

  Bridget restacked the pages and lifted the pile that weighed so heavily in her hands. She bit her lip. “Is this all true, Mother?”

  “As it was told to me, yes, every word.”

  “What the hell are you going to do with the thing, Mom?”

  Hannah honestly felt as she had once told Richard: The revelation that Papa was shot by a henpecking wife would mutilate the myth. Papa’s greatness would be compromised by the tabloid madness triggered by Mary’s confession to murdering her internationally beloved husband.

  But this revelation Hannah now had within her power to reveal, was something else again.

  How would the world regard an Ernest Hemingway who was a casualty of a mercy killing? What was it Hector had said so long ago? Print the legend?

  Would euthanasia at the hands of a poorly chosen wife threaten Papa’s place in the canon? Certainly, it would be so for those critics and scholars who still clung to the “code” interpretation of Papa’s work. Euthanasia was inconsistent with stoical, laconic men who could be destroyed, but not defeated. Begging your wife to blow your head off would almost certainly something to be regarded as more than cowardly by those Papa aficionados. Maybe more cowardly than blowing out your own brains.

  Asked for his opinion, again, when they were alone after Mary’s revelation, Hector had said, “May be best to let the people have their myth, Hannah. That’s my vote. Whether Mary did it or not, Hem would have gotten around to it eventually, anyway. He’d have found a way. He rightly wanted to die.”

  Sometimes, Hannah wondered if in the end Mary had indeed conned she and Hector. What better revenge for a spiteful widow than to assume responsibility for her famous husband’s last decisive act? In essence, Mary’s claim robbed Papa of the last thing that was truly his own.

  Had Mary imagined—or worse, faked—her mercy killing of Hemingway?

  Had Mary’s demented confession been an absinthe-stoked scam?

  Hannah truly hoped so.

  Even so, it was a hell of a story—a sleazy tell-all upon which to build a tabloid career.

  But how to follow the thing up?

  Perhaps an exposé alleging a drunken, murderous Scott Fitzgerald faked his own death and burned down the Highland Hospital in a murder-nine-women-to-slay-Zelda gambit?

  Maybe a breathless account of Virginia Woolf’s murder by drowning at the hand of cousin (and retrospective Jack the Ripper suspect) James Kenneth Stephens?

  Or maybe something worse: Make a case that it wasn’t Papa dead under Mary’s bedroom that July morning in 1961. He faked his death and is risen—let the rickety Papa sightings commence.

  Hell, Hannah knew another fiction writer of similar vintage who had done just that, bless his dark heart.

  It would be a dirty, if lucrative, career.

  Lightning flashed through half-closed blinds. A gusty wind lashed rain against the glass.

  The eternal quandary loomed: publish or perish?

  Hannah said, “I’ve never been able to decide, Bridget. So I’m leaving this for you. You take care of it. Keep it…destroy it…use it. I leave it in your hands.”

  Bridget nodded. Then she said, “Did you ever finish that novel you started with Hector’s help?” Hannah shook her head again, unable to look her daughter in the eye.

  “We dance around in a ring and suppose,

  While the secret sits in the middle and knows.”

  — Robert Frost

  56

  NIGHT TRAIN

  (Winter 2010)

  That night, the rain still falling following her mother’s funeral, Bridget MacArthur dreamed about Papa:

  The red-jacketed porter stowed Bridget’s big bags and the small valise containing her mother’s manuscript of Mary’s tale that crescendoed with the real story—how it truly was—that morning of July 2, 1961.

  Her compartment was small, but roomy enough for Bridget to stretch out her legs during the long journey on the night train from Paris to Switzerland.

  Bridget took a long last look at the small valise, then checked her watch: thirty minutes until scheduled departure.

  She wandered out under the Gare de Lyon’s glass dome, through which she could faintly see the fast-moving storm clouds, nearly invisible in the gathering dusk. Occasionally she glanced back at the men and women empty-handedly boarding and vacating the Paris-Lausanne Express.

  Roaming amid the newsstands and snack carts, Bridget bought a couple of magazines and a bottle of Evian water. As she sipped her bottled water, she peered up at the smartly dressed diners in the Train Bleu Restaurant. The pigeons that flew in under the glass canopy with the trains foraged around her feet. She crumbled up some bread from her sandwich bun and sprinkled them at her feet for the birds.

  Bridget watched the diners in the Train Bleu, and wondered if the two of them would ever have the money to eat there.

  She heard the last call to board and dashed back to her train car, taking the steps two at a time. The porter quickly moved aside to make room for her as she vaulted up and past him. Bridget held her breath as she turned sideways, squeezing by the other riders negotiating the narrow vestibule.

  She closed her eyes as she entered her lonely compartment, raising her head to the level at which she guessed the shelf was, upon which the porter had placed the valise containing the manuscript.

  Bridget opened her eyes and saw that the valise was missing.

  A contented sigh.

  She sat down, curling her legs up under herself, and stared at the empty space where she had left the bag.

  Bridget smiled, hugging herself and imagining how pleased Papa would be when he met her train in the morning and heard what she had done.

  THE END

  “Do you suppose you could ask Edgar’s boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I am
an enemy alien. It’s getting tiresome.”

  — John Steinbeck,

  writing to Attorney

  General Francis

  Biddle in 1942

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Print the Legend is a work of fiction, but like Head Games and Toros & Torsos, it is constructed upon a foundation of unsettling historical fact and cold-eyed supposition, nearly all of which is based on official documents and public records.

  Countless nonfiction books were consulted during the composition of this novel, but most useful was Michael Reynolds’ multi-volume biography of Hem including The Young Hemingway; Hemingway: The Paris Years; Hemingway the American Homecoming; Hemingway: The 1930s and Hemingway: The Final Years.

  Want to really know Hem? Seek out Reynolds’s books—they are definitive.

  I’m indebted to my wife, Debbie, and our daughters Madeleine and Yeats, for their love and support, and for making room for the writing. It truly wouldn’t be possible without them.

  Grateful thanks to my editor, John Schoenfelder, for his belief, dedication, unstinting hard work, inspiration, and for invoking the name of E. Howard Hunt.

  Continuing thanks to Svetlana Pironko and Michael O’Brien, who set me on this path.

  Thanks also to Madeira James for all her great work on my website, and to Recorded Books’ Tom Stechschulte, the “voice” of Hector Lassiter.

  I’m also indebted to all the independent bookshops and mystery specialty stores and booksellers who have taken the Hector Lassiter series to their hearts and urged the novels on their customers, as well as librarians who’ve recommended the books to their patrons.

  Finally, much gratitude to Valerie Hemingway, and especially to the late-George Plimpton for sharing their personal Ernest Hemingway memories with me.

  When The Garden of Eden was finally released as a painfully bowdlerized novel, a pacer racetrack’s promotional scheme brought several celebrities through my Ohio hometown. Most attending reporters bee-lined to fashion designer Oleg Cassini and billiard player Steve Mizerak. I, alone, gravitated to Plimpton, spending much time discussing The Garden of Eden, its ties to Hemingway’s short story “The Sea Change,” the art of interviewing, and all manner of Hemingway anecdotes from Hem’s one true interviewer.

  Only in retrospect do we see the moments that most matter: for me, that was one.

  I interviewed Valerie Hemingway upon the release of her own memoir, Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways (Ballantine Books, 2004) and her memories and insights into Mary Hemingway’s personality were invaluable.

  For those who doubt aspects of this story as regards Hoover-era FBI harassment of novelists and poets, the most cursory of Google searches will reveal acres of information regarding J. Edgar Hoover’s insane and contemptible campaign to stalk and cow pivotal twentieth-century American authors and performing artists.

  For a more detailed account of the FBI’s surveillance of many of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists, poets and painters, see Herbert Mitgang’s Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America’s Greatest Authors (Donald L. Fine, Inc., 1988).

  Those around Hem at the time believed he was paranoid or deluded when he insisted he was under constant FBI surveillance. Now we know that the FBI was not only always dogging Hem’s steps, but Hoover’s agents followed him straight into the Mayo Clinic and are reported to have consulted with Ernest Hemingway’s physicians.

  As has been ruefully noted by pivotal Hemingway biographers, “even paranoids have real enemies.”

  AFTERWORD

  (Reader caution: The following author essay presumes you have now read the novel; there are crucial spoilers regarding Print the Legend ahead.)

  The Secret History Behind

  Print the Legend

  By Craig McDonald

  This novel in part explores the possibility Ernest Hemingway was murdered by his fourth and last wife, Mary Hemingway.

  This is a notion that’s hung in my head for some time. In fact, the seeds were sown decades ago: A freshman English class—two of the assigned texts were Hemingway’s In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises.

  Those two books constituted my first exposure to Hemingway’s writing, as well as to the circumstances of his death.

  Something in the way my college instructor laid it all out in background left the nascent journalist and natural cynic in me wondering:

  “Mary and Ernest Hemingway’s marriage was a very bad one…. Hemingway’s doctor once visited the house in Cuba and found the couple holding one another at bay with shotguns…. Hemingway was mentally ill…profoundly paranoid. He believed the FBI was watching him. We now know the FBI was watching him of course, but still….”

  With Ernest dead, Mary deftly became Papa’s literary executrix, making edits to his books, rearranging elements, designing his dust jackets and even titling the books we now know as A Moveable Feast and Islands In the Stream.

  I was pursuing a dual major back then—journalism and English. My curiosity was piqued; I began to do some more digging outside class and assigned curriculum.

  Turned out, Mary and some friends actually cleaned up the death scene themselves. Turned out, Mary participated in a kind of hasty roundtable with the local law to determine if further investigation into the circumstances of Hem’s death was warranted. Very odd, very unusual.

  The shotgun used in the commission of his “suicide” was destroyed, ostensibly so it couldn’t be a “morbid souvenir,” but accounts of how that destruction happened tellingly conflict: some say a family friend did the deed; others, that Hem’s sons cut up, repeatedly drove over it and then buried the twisted remains of the shotgun.

  At this writing in 2015, there’s actually strong debate about what kind of gun Papa allegedly used to do the bloody deed.

  This much is certain: the only person in the house with Hemingway at the time of his shooting was Mary Welsh Hemingway.

  Mary, whom to my budding journalist’s mind, stood to gain from the death in myriad ways. (That old saw luckless Richard Paulson invokes: Follow the money.)

  Mary, who cleaned up the crime scene, and who helped forestall an official inquiry into Hem’s death. Mary, who made a point of locking up Hemingway’s guns, then leaving the key to their hiding place in plain view on a mantel where Hemingway purportedly found them with such bloody consequences promptly upon his return from the Mayo Clinic.

  “Nobody,” Mary would later be quoted as saying, “had a right to deny a man access to his possessions.”

  The notion of a possible murder—at very last, an assisted suicide—seized my imagination, and never truly let go.

  Now, so many years after the seed of doubt was planted, comes this re-issue of Print the Legend, exploring the possibility Hemingway’s death was “the last salvo” in a protracted domestic drama.

  The novel also draws on official documents to bolster the case that Hemingway was indeed a longtime target of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover—part of a much larger Bureau-run program directed against America’s greatest writers of the twentieth century.

  Shortly after Print the Legend’s 2010 release, even longtime crony and Hemingway chronicler A.E. Hotchner came around to the notion Hoover’s FBI pushed Papa to self-destruction.

  Fact or fiction?

  Sometimes lies are confused for the truth; perception is reality.

  History, it’s been said, is too often little more than a lie agreed upon.

  Bearing all that in mind, as the man said, when legend becomes fact, print the legend.

  —Craig McDonald, March 2015

  Reading Group Questions/Topics for Discussion

  1. On the first night back from the Mayo Clinic—the eve of his death—Ernest Hemingway’s last wife, Mary, left keys on a window ledge that afforded Ernest access to guns she’s earlier locked away from him. How do you regard this act?

  2. When she eventually acknowledged Ernest’s death was not the result of a gun cleaning accident as she origi
nally contended, asked to explain allowing Hemingway to get at those fateful keys, Mary said, “Nobody has a right to deny a man access to his possessions.” What do you make of her assertion?

  3. Many around Hemingway at the end thought his obsession with FBI spying was a symptom of his increasing mental illness. We now know the FBI was monitoring Hemingway and followed him into the Mayo Clinic. Do you think it possible Hemingway was more rational than friends and family believed him to be?

  4. It is argued in Print the Legend that authors and their critics/scholars have a symbiotic relationship. Do you think authors bend or shape their works in ways that court such academic attention?

  5. We are now fairly deep into the Lassiter series. Did this book change your opinion or view of Hector in any way?

  6. Did any of Hector’s actions or choices in Print the Legend particularly surprise you?

  7. Confronted with an alternative explanation for Hemingway’s death, Hector argues the publicly accepted account of Hem’s suicide should stand. Do you share his opinion?

  8. What are your thoughts about Hannah’s eventual decision spinning out of her perception of the “true” circumstances of Hem’s death?

  9. The closing pages of Print the Legend would appear to contradict the conclusion of the first Hector Lassiter novel, Head Games. What do you make of this contradiction?

  10. Which conclusion—Hector’s ultimate fate as explained in Head Games, or the version in Print the Legend—do you prefer?

  11. If you accept Print the Legend’s implications regarding Hector’s fate, what do you think became of Hector after 1967?

  12. How did your attitude toward Hannah change over the course of the novel?