by H. K. Bush
Blank Slate Press
Saint Louis, MO 63116
Copyright © 2017 H. K. Bush
All rights reserved.
Blank Slate Press is an imprint of Amphorae Publishing Group, LLC www.amphoraepublishing.com
Publisher’s Note: This book is a work of the imagination. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. While some of the characters and incidents portrayed here can be found in historical or contemporary accounts, they have been altered and rearranged by the author to suit the strict purposes of storytelling. The book should be read solely as a work of fiction.
For information, contact:
Blank Slate Press
4168 Hartford Street, Saint Louis, MO 63116
www.amphoraepublishing.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover Design by Kristina Blank Makansi
Cover art: IStock
Set in Adobe Caslon Pro and Avenir Next Ultra Light
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939478
ISBN: 9781943075324
For Hiroko and the entire Hara clan
THE HEMINGWAY FILES
Note to the reader:
The following story is based on actual events and real historical personalities. Some of the names and locations have been changed for the sake of privacy. Professor Martin Dean’s untimely demise almost a year ago has meant that the final responsibility for publishing these documents has fallen to me, his second cousin and closest living relative.
I realize that as the information contained herein becomes widely available, academic specialists in a variety of fields will subject it to further scrutiny, and opinions will vary as to its accuracy. Indeed, I have already shared the contents with several colleagues who are well-known authorities on the authors discussed. While I am confident in the tale’s accounts of key events and personalities, having done a thorough fact checking myself, I do recognize the need for scholarly interrogation of the book’s central claims and overall historicity. And so I welcome all doubts and debate, and I look forward to the amiable conversations with my fellow researchers that will certainly ensue.
And yet, although factuality and narrative accuracy are crucial, I would advise readers to embrace the “story-truth” revealed here: that we remember the dead—return to their great written works—and reconnect with the invigorating power of the words, and the letters, that they have left behind for us, the living. Like my distant cousin Professor Dean, I have dedicated my own life to precisely these ideals.
—HKB, July 4, 2016
The package arrived in my departmental mailbox some time before Christmas break, but I didn’t see it until several weeks later, well after New Year’s Day of 2011—a rather unfortunate circumstance, since its arrival during Advent would have boosted my flagging affinities for the miraculous. Now I am revising this preface one last time, just over a year later, in spring of 2012, my mundane life having been permanently jolted by the parcel’s marvelous contents.
The package contained, in short, and to paraphrase Prince Hamlet, “words, words, words”—the luminous sort of words upon which we have built our civilization. Or, as my former student Jack Springs described the gift in his last letter to me, it was “a box full of nothing but words.” There may have been madness in the box—but as I eventually learned, method as well.
As that last reference might suggest, I am, and have been for the majority of my life, an English teacher, a mid-to-late career professor here at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, steady and politic, a woodworker and fisherman in my spare time, nearing the end of a long and (some would say) productive career. For reasons that evade me, and that in fact do give me some regret, I’ve never married, nor have I ever come close to approaching that foreign land of husband or father.
Some may argue that in fact I have fathered a certain kind of offspring, at least insofar as I have fostered a faith of sorts: the religion of great literature, the solemn belief in the ennobling power of words. On my best days, I’ve provoked in young minds a passion for the written word, the compositions of our great artists. But perhaps “midwife” would be more appropriate. Either way, it all sounds rather grand, I suppose. The reality of my days is much less romantic: I teach my classes, some brilliant, others desultory. I search for signs of life among pages and pages of student writing, from freshmen to doctoral candidates, pages often defaced by coffee stains, colas, tobacco, or the eccentricities of faulty, bargain-priced printers. It is often most exciting, and also most horrifying, during the humdrum act of grading freshman papers, performed ostensibly in the study of the most majestic expressions ever penned by human hands. Because it is among the youngest that we are occasionally rewarded with the briefest glimmers of promise and, every so often, even genius. And so in due course, I assign grades—and attend meetings about various departmental and administrative issues, hold office hours, advise English majors and listen to the unexceptional details of their everyday lives, and try to carry on some of my own research and writing. Almost all of these tasks involve the free market commerce of the mother tongue; I’m a purveyor of what are sometimes called the English language arts, including both the ridiculous and the sublime. My life is disciplined and predictable, some might even say boring, but I’ve grown comfortable with it.
And so it was on that frosty morning in January, a little over a year ago, that I found myself returning, after a long absence, to my campus office on the fourth floor of Ballantine Hall. There was quite literally not a single other person around. Classes were a week away, and most of my colleagues were either still out of town in warmer climes, at home enjoying a second cup of coffee, or safe between the blankets, sleeping an extra hour or two. At least eight inches of snow covered the ground, but I forged through it, intent on a day at the office, as is my habit, knowing that a huge amount of holiday mail would be waiting for me. I was drawn to campus by the promise of the mailbox.
It has long been my habit to work in the mornings. I am fond of the ambient drone of a computer or a mini-refrigerator, the stillness of letterhead, paper clips, and file folders, and I certainly relish the fact that almost no other professors (and absolutely no students) haunt the hallways before 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. I savor the monastic tone of an academic environment—the shelves of volumes, the piles of unread manuscripts and publishers’ catalogues, the odor of slow deterioration, the decay of acidic paper and day-old coffee. And I relish the romance of a stack of unopened mail. I wonder—what secrets might be hidden between the worthless leaflets, the random advertisements from sellers of casebooks and curricula, the slick fliers for overpriced documentary films on authors of marginal accomplishment? Often nothing of value emerges, but until one works his way through it all, slowly and patiently, at least a sliver of possibility remains that some buried treasure will emerge.
Having been in upstate New York visiting my aging mother, I had not been to the office in over three weeks. And as it turned out, a major discovery was to be unearthed from among that early morning’s rather large stack of mail, all of it stored neatly in my mailbox on that early Monday morning after Twelfth Night. As the first human visitor of the year, I was like one of the mysterious magi from the east, and the departmental office was shadowy, its doors locked and its confines silent as the stars on that far-off winter’s night. I used my master key to unlock the windowless door and collect the ample plunder of mail hidden within, a booty that included dozens of letters and memos, several boxes of books, and various issues of periodicals and journals. From there, I carried it all to the frigid end of a long corridor, where stood my office.
Entering, I paused to savor the sunlight beginning to
emerge through my south-facing window. The trees were bare that bitter morning, with the exception of a few stingy old oaks, which were about as forlorn as trees are ever likely to be. As I stood looking out into the glade below, the office seemed to yawn, as if waking from a long winter’s nap.
I settled the mail on a side table, stuck my gloves in my coat pockets, and shrugged off my coat, hanging it, along with my hat and scarf, on the hook behind my door. Next I flipped on the small space heater hidden beneath my desk—which was, technically, against university rules— and grabbed my carafe, headed back down the hallway to fill it with tap water, then returned to plug in the coffee maker in preparation for a long morning of work.
My empty stomach, by and by, began to pronounce its primal warblings, so I pulled out my brown bag egg sandwich, settled into the easy chair in the corner, and began sorting through my mound of mail. Halfway through, I discovered my prize (“some have greatness thrust upon them”): a mid-sized cardboard box, easy to overlook, the kind commonly used by publishers to send out manuscripts or examination copies of textbooks. In the upper left hand corner was the only outward clue: “Jack Springs,” the name of a favorite former student scrawled in black. It immediately struck me as odd that it had been sent from Kessler Boulevard in Indianapolis, instead of from Washington state, where Jack had been teaching for over a decade, and where, I would learn later, he composed its contents.
Inside I discovered several items: each with a large yellow Post-it note affixed to the front. On top was what appeared to be a book wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string; its note read, “Open me first.” Beneath it was a business-sized envelope with “Professor Martin Dean” written on it along with a note reading, “Open me second”; and then came a medium-sized package wrapped in the same brown paper, also tied with string, and sporting a note instructing me to “Open me third.” I also found another, smaller box, gift-wrapped in Christmas paper, its dimensions suggestive of a wallet or keychain. Taped to it was the final note, demanding “Open me last, after reading the story.”
Now duty bound by the domineering tone of a Post-it note, I unwrapped the first package and was pleasantly surprised to discover what turned out to be a worn copy of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Opening the cover, I was stunned to discover that it was not only a first edition, but was inscribed with a personal message:
Dear Eloise,
I send my warmest greetings
(unlike the last time!).
Yours Always,
Ernest Hemingway, October 7, 1952
Signed and dated by the great author, Papa himself! This was a marvelous gift for anyone, but unlike some of the other things Jack had sent in recent years, this one was really worth a lot of money—possibly thousands of dollars at auction.
I settled the tattered novel, the package with Jack’s manuscript, and the smaller, gift-wrapped box on my worktable beside me, then opened the letter envelope, and pulled out the note, which read:
December 13, 2010
Danforth Springs
1247 Kessler Boulevard
Indianapolis, Indiana
Dear Professor Dean:
It is with the utmost regret that I write to you today on behalf of my son Jack. As you are undoubtedly aware, Jack has been suffering this past year with an aggressive and largely untreatable form of cancer. It has only been in the past few months that the disease has made it impossible for him to carry on with his work at the university. He came home to Indianapolis in late September of this year to be with his family for what little time might remain for him. His mother Hannah and I, and his sister Susan, have had the privilege of spending these final weeks in the company of a young man who, as you know, had a rare gift for language and storytelling, a jovial gift of humor, and a kind of grace under pressure that we usually reserve for heroes in fairy tales. Only in Jack’s case, the grace was real.
With great sadness, I must now tell you that Jack passed away, on the early morning of Dec. 7 to be precise. I am just now trying to deal with the kinds of things that no parent should ever face. Among those matters is the delivery of Jack’s letter to you, along with the three other items enclosed here. Jack was extremely insistent about my sending these things to you as soon after his death as I might be able to do so. I recognize the value of the rare Hemingway volume, which Jack showed me with pride, but I have no idea as to the contents of the other two enclosures, nor of his letter to you, which is, of course, a matter of privacy. Jack wanted it that way, and whether you should ever choose to reveal any of the contents to me or his mother is completely up to you.
As for the items enclosed with this letter— he wanted you to have them on condition of his death only, and not a moment before. Even on the morning of the day he died, he repeated these instructions to me, though he was fitful, and in what seemed to be unendurable pain. Evidently these were materials of some great importance— at least in his fevered imagination. In the future, should you decide to share with us the nature of those contents, we will of course be your willing and eager listeners. But for now, I am honoring my son’s dying request that they be delivered to you unopened and unexamined.
Professor Dean, I think you should know that he spoke of you with the utmost respect and admiration. You had a profound and lasting impact on his life, and he admired you greatly, though you may not have realized it at the time.
I apologize for my brevity here, but we are daily—and indeed even hourly—struggling to deal with this horrific set of events, especially my wife, who is simply overwhelmed. The funeral was just two days ago, and it is an unspeakable day in the life of any parent.
If I can ever be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Danforth Springs
And so it was with this letter that I learned on that snowy morning back in January of 2011, that Jack Springs was prematurely dead at the age of 44. Like his father and mother, I felt the horror of parental grief sweep over me— the horror that there is something unnatural, even unjust, about losing a child as admirable and as brilliant as I knew Jack to be. The elders consider it to be their rightful honor to precede the young into death, that undiscovered country, to pioneer as it were, but sadly, this is not always our privilege. And perhaps, as many believe, it is life’s greatest tragedy.
Two items remained: the neatly wrapped manuscript, dimpled and rustic-looking, and on top of it the mysterious box, wrapped in cheap holiday paper, red with white stripes, like candy canes. This prize bore a cheerful, royal blue ribbon on top—red, white, and blue—very American, I thought. Again I glanced at its imperial Post-it note, where Jack commanded me again from the land of the dead: “Open me last, after reading the story.”
I seemed to intuit, and would learn soon enough, that for me, an aging academic getting too set in his old ways, stodgy and unsurprising in my lonely life among books, the joyfully wrapped box contained a key that could magically unlock a mysterious doorway in my life, an entrance into a new world, like the wardrobe leading into Narnia, the rabbit hole into Wonderland. But like Jack’s distraught father, I complied with the simple instructions and left it unopened—for the moment.
Instead, Jack’s holy parchment beckoned me, and it now gathered my fullest attention. Slowly, I worked the string that held the manuscript together. Finding it knotted in such a way that I was unable to untie it, I reached for the pocketknife that I keep handy on my desk, for just such tasks, and I severed the cord. The paper fell away, and I held in my hands a neat manuscript, printed out in the gentle, fourteen-point font that my old eyes prefer. On top, a single sheet was stapled to yet another business envelope, with a few pages inside. Its message was scribbled unevenly, all in upper case lettering, with a bold, black pen:
READ MY LETTER,
THEN THE MANUSCRIPT,
BEFORE OPENING THE SMALL BOX.
ejs
One must be struck by the sheer insistence of Jack’s repetitive instruc
tions; it was a carefully conceived scheme, and he had it all planned out, as the unfolding of the tale will elaborate. And so I did everything in the precise order he prescribed, and I’ll ask my readers to do the same, as I present the materials exactly as I received them myself. First came his poignant letter to me, appended below. Ornery editor that I am, I have silently corrected stylistic blunders and several minor typographical errors within the letter, as I have done throughout the full manuscript. Otherwise, it read precisely as follows:
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,—
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
Emily Dickinson
Dear Marty,
It’s the day after Labor Day, 2010, up here in the Pacific Northwest, and like a labor of love, or maybe the labor pains of childbirth, this story is finally being delivered. A box full of nothing but words. But these words are not just for you; they are to be made public, eventually. This is my letter to the world, wrote Sister Emily. And, as Mabel Loomis Todd did for sweet Emily, I’d like to ask you to do me a favor: in the near future, please prepare my manuscript for the world to read, as my editor, or literary executor, if you prefer. Don’t worry, there’s something in it for you. A labourer is worthy of his hire (KJV).
Parts of the story have been hibernating in a file on my hard drive for a very long time now. Some of it describes the quiet lives we lead as English professors—lives like yours and mine. But my mundane life suddenly got all mixed up with some adventures in the Far East, all recorded herein. My story includes fond reminiscences of Sensei and meandering visions of Mika, two characters you’ll get to know in due course.
Sensei. Mika. Sometimes I just speak those names out loud, into thin air.
