Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost

by Winton, Tom

  “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.

  Er
nest 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.

  And as I watched, I knew it had to be divine intervention. Through the boat’s windshield, Ernest and I both saw a pinhole of white light suddenly appear in the bible-black sky. Neither of us could believe our eyes when a lone thin beam, as if from a heavenly spotlight, pushed closer and closer until it shone on the bow in front of us. And at that exact moment, all the malevolent clouds that had enveloped the entire sky began to lift. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen.

  For three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees around the Pilar, the doomsday overcast began to lift from the horizon. At first there was but a tiny sliver of bright blue everywhere the sky met the ocean. Then, as if somebody or something in the heavens were hauling up a monstrous, evil net, the clouds rose from the edge of the sea like an upside-down tornado. The higher the net’s bottom rose, the more the seas settled down. The rain suddenly subsided; the sunlight brightened, and more and more blue sky appeared. It was as if this amazing phenomenon had been choreographed. The higher the ugly clouds lifted, the bluer the ocean’s surface became.

  Then it was over.

  The heat was no longer oppressive. The trade winds had picked up, the ocean calmed down, and there was just a ruffle on its surface. Ernest and I reopened the foldout windshield so we could feel the breeze. Still holding the wheel, the skipper turned toward the stern, and I followed suit.

  The flooded deck was draining back into the sea. The water that was left was littered with soggy sandwiches, seaweed, a few full beer cans, two water bottles, and a single orange starfish.

  As he assessed the battle scene, Ernest said, “It was a test, Jack. I’ve not communicated with Him, but I know it was a test. Not for me, because I’m already gone, but for you.”

  He pushed his hair back, picked his drenched sun visor up from the floor, pulled it over his forehead and said, “Do me a favor. Grab me one of those beers. I don’t give a shit if they’re piss-warm. Give me a beer.”

  I retrieved two and popped them both open.

  As I handed one to Ernest, he turned back toward the windshield. He squinted then said, “I think I see the coast. We should be docking in Cojimar within the hour.”

  Chapter 7

  When we reached the shallows along the Cuban coastline, Ernest pointed to a beige stingray skittering along the sandy bottom. A moment later I spotted a seemingly motionless barracuda suspended in the gin-clear water. It wasn’t in the mood for company, and with one quick swipe of its tail, it zoomed out of sight. We were a hundred yards from the now dilapidated pier where Papa had tied up Pilar for twenty years. As we eased closer, three dark-skinned boys in cutoff shorts dove from what was left of the concrete structure into the warm Caribbean water.

  “Look at that,” Ernest said in a surprised and happy tone. “Cojimar doesn’t look all that different than it used to.”

  “How many years has it been?”

  “Over fifty. I left here in 1960. Hey, look over there,” he said pointing to something just beyond the seawall before us, “in the middle of that circle of pillars. It’s a bust . . . of me. See it? It’s looking right at us. I’ll be a son of a gun.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen pictures of it in books. I read that after you died your fishermen friends went around collecting old propellers, anchors, things like that. They melted them down so they could have a tribute to you made. I think that was around ‘62.”

  “I’ll bet my old skipper Gregorio Fuentes was behind that.”

  “He must have had something to do with it because I’ve seen a picture of him and some other fishermen standing in front of it.”

  Ernest paused, nodding his head while he studied the bust.

  Then he looked back toward the dock. “Looks like those kids have cleared out of the way. Let’s pull her in.”

  “The middle of the dock has collapsed,” I said. “How are we going to get to shore, swim?”

  “Hell, Jack, we’re already drenched,” he said with a chuckle. Then turning to me, looking like he knew something I didn’t, he added, “I’ve got a funny feeling we’ll get over there without swimming.”

  A minute or two later I found out he was right. After climbing out of the Pilar and tying her lines to the narrow dock, I peeked over the other side of it. A small rowboat with two oars just happened to be waiting there.

  “This just gets better and better,” I said as Ernest stepped from the gunwales onto the concrete beside me.

  “Oh yeah? Take a look at what’s waiting for us over there,” he said, jutting his head toward the shoreline.

  A yellow 1953 Chevrolet was parked there. The black letters on its side read Havana Taxi.

  “Come on. Let’s get into this teacup and row over there. I’d love to hang around a while, stop into La Terraza for a drink, but like I said, we’ve got to meet somebody in Havana.”

  During the cab ride to Havana, Ernest and I didn’t exchange a single word. The old taxi driver with dried-leather skin and tight gray rings for hair would have surely heard us talking. With seemingly nobody but me in the back seat, he’d have thought I was loco. He’d probably have gunned the ancient Chevy to the nearest loony bin rather than the El Floridita bar. Who knows? He might also have signed himself in after hearing two different voices coming from just one crazy gringo turista.

  As we motored through the streets of Old Havana, Ernest did tap me on the shoulder a few times. Although some of the grand old buildings had been restored, many in the area were in a state of ill repair. Each time he spotted an exceptionally decrepit one, he’d shake his head and point toward it. Then he’d look back at me with a mournful look as if asking, what the hell has happened here?

  But the taxi ride was short. And before I knew it, the driver was braking in front of the El Floridita on Monserrate Street. I didn’t know what to do when the little man looked over his shoulder at me as if he expected to be paid.

  Uh oh, I thought, doesn’t he know about the divine plan? I don’t have a dime in my pocket. What’s next?

  Not knowing what else to do, I gave him a wink as if to say, You know what’s going down here. He just narrowed his eyes and said something in Spanish that I didn’t understand.

  Just as I was thinking, Oh shit, he doesn’t have a clue, the curbside door next to Ernest opened up. Here I was three feet away from it when my invisible friend opens it and steps out. With surprising speed, the driver jerked his eyes toward the door then back at me. They were no longer narrowed. They were now wide as barroom coasters.

  “Vamos! Vamos!” he began to shout as if I were some kind of voodoo prince. Quickly, I slid across the seat toward the open door. In one well-practiced motion—faster than the speed of light—he made the sign of the cross and started babbling away. I couldn’t understand his words, but I darn well knew that he was praying. I sprung out of that cab, and the instant I closed the door, he peeled out of there like he’d come out of an Indie 500 pit stop.

  As he sped down Monseratte Street, Ernest and I just stood on the sidewalk cracking up. Because I appeared to be standing there alone popping a gut all by myself, I was on the receiving end of more than a few strange
looks from the people walking by. But I couldn’t help it. The poor cab driver was frantic. He was zipping around cars on that narrow cobblestone street like a desperate, dying sinner with but five minutes to find a confessional booth.

  After we calmed down some, I followed Ernest through the El Floridita’s front door. He lumbered right over to the hallowed corner of the bar where on countless nights he had presided over the rich, the famous, and the not so famous. Here it was half a century after his demise, and his stool was still reserved in his honor. For years, absolutely nobody had been allowed to sit there. But what was really strange on this day was that packed as the bar was, two deep in places, the stools on both sides of Ernest’s were also vacant. I couldn’t help but to think there had been yet another divine intervention.

  As Ernest sat on his and I climbed on the one to his left, he looked beyond me then jutted his head. “Would you look at this? I’ll be a son of a gun . . . it’s a statue of me.”

  I couldn’t miss the full-size, bronze Ernest. He seemed to be standing sentinel—watching intently all that was going on before him. With his back to the wall, with one foot on the railing, and with an elbow on the wooden bar top, there was an unfriendly look on his face. He appeared to be challenging somebody—staring them down.

  “Wow, Ernest,” I said, still gazing at the statue, “somebody did one heck of a job with that!”

  The tourist couple alongside me stopped their conversation. After giving each other a funny look, they stared at me from the corners of their eyes.

  “Oh . . . excuse me. Sorry. Just thinking out loud is all.”

  Then I turned back to the real Ernest and heard him chortle.

  “Okay, mister hotshot,” I whispered, “real funny.”

  He good-naturedly waved me off, and then I checked out the surroundings. “You know, this is a pretty nice place. Look at the high ceilings and fancy settings on all the tables. And these bartenders, they all wear red jackets. A regular guy like me isn’t used to this . . . .”