Rising up before her on her left, she noticed a large Spanish Colonial house with yellow shutters. A sign with the words “Hemingway Home and Museum” caught her eye, and she turned into the parking lot.
Mabel had not had what could be called an excess of education, but she remembered the name Ernest Hemingway from her schooling. She parked the scooter and took off the helmet, running her hand through her hair to fluff it. A cat sat at the entrance to the place, eyeing her with some interest. She stooped to pet it, and it wound its way in and out of her legs, mewing loudly. She was charmed.
“He’s got six toes on each foot, that one,” a voice said from somewhere above her. She looked up to see a man on the upper balcony. He laughed. “Just like the cat Papa loved. Them six-toed cats, they’re good luck, so we keep ‘em around.”
“I see,” she said, giving it a final stroke before walking through the doorway. Fishing twelve dollars and fifty cents out of her pocket, she gave the money to the woman stationed at the entrance.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said. “I’m afraid the gardens are being prepped for a wedding later tonight, but feel free to look around the museum, and the book store. Would you like a guided tour?”
“Naw,” Mabel said. “I’ll find my own way.”
“All righty then. Just remember, it’s a museum, so don’t sit on anything that’s labeled, okee dokee?”
Mabel wound her way through the house, intrigued by the many small architectural details and its general age and history. On the upstairs balcony she looked out onto the magnificent tropical garden, where masses of people were bustling about, setting up for the previously mentioned wedding.
In the bookstore, she perused the offerings, picking up a biography of Hemingway along with The Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms. These she bought, and placed carefully into the paniers on the Vespa. She had missed reading, and thought it would be good for her to have something to do during her off hours rather than stare at the walls and allow her mind to wander down dark channels.
Driving once more down Whitehead, she passed a lighthouse and several churches before coming to a dead end at the Southernmost Point in the Continental United States. Turning northeast, she soon found herself on South Beach, and parked again. Walking with her bare feet in the sand, she felt peace stealing over her once more, the motion of the waves soothing her ragged nerves. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, feeling the pull of the current washing the grains out from under the soles of her feet.
Around her, vacationers splashed and yelled and stretched out on blankets and towels, picnicking and tanning, but she stood, a solitary soul, neither vacationer nor resident, and felt the anonymity of her situation. Even Jake, whom she trusted a little more day by day, didn’t know her real name, where she had come from…or what she had done.
“Hey,” a voice by her elbow said. She turned and saw a tawny-headed, bronzed youth with a Frisbee watching her with azure eyes.
“What?” she said.
“We were just getting a group together to play some volleyball. Do you want to play?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. She hadn’t played since her 7th grade PE class, but she thought she remembered the rules. Ten minutes later she was involved in a rousing game, diving to bump the white orb back into the sky for the next person to hit over the net. They played for an hour before switching to Frisbee, which she was not very good at and wound up lobbing into the ocean more often than not. No one seemed to mind, however, and it was always retrieved in good spirit and tossed back to her.
The afternoon was highly enjoyable, and she didn’t think of the nightmare or the dead Gail even once. The young man introduced himself as Carl, and he stayed beside her for most of the time.
“Want to get some food?” he asked as the day ebbed away. It was getting late, she realized. The sun was touching the water, a brilliant orb of flame in a sky of pink and blue.
“Yeah, okay,” she answered. In a moment they were standing at the Cuban food truck, ordering sandwiches and maduros. Jane ate ravenously, as usual, and when Carl laughed at her she only stopped long enough to stick out her tongue, which made him laugh harder. As they finished, he walked her back to the Vespa, where she retrieved her helmet and prepared to put it on.
“I really enjoyed meeting you, Jane,” he said, standing very close. “Will I see you again?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Do you go to school around here?”
“No…” she hedged. “I’m first mate on Stella Luna. It’s my uncle’s boat. I’m taking a gap year.” The practiced lie fell off her lips easily, but never without a pang to her conscience.
“Great,” he said. “I go to school at the community college, and other times I’m working over at the Panini joint on Duval. I hope I see you around” She looked into his handsome face and felt a strange sensation in her chest as she struggled to think of something to say, something natural and easy, as though she was just any other girl.
“I hope so too,” she finally said. He leaned forward then, and planted a quick kiss on her cheek. Before she could respond, he was trotting away back across the beach and out of sight. She watched him go, wondering at her feelings. Finally, she strapped on the helmet and drove back to the marina, the spot on her cheek tingling all the way.
Ten
Hemingway, Mabel learned, was a real man’s man: a sportsman, a deep sea fisherman, and a big-game hunter. He was married four times and had three sons. He was an ambulance driver and a journalist as well as being a full-time writer. The black and white photographs she found of him in the middle of the biography fascinated her. She thought him very handsome.
He lived life with a rapacious appetite for adventure, was seriously wounded in WW1, had his heart broken by his nurse in Italy, and survived car crashes as well as plane crashes, brush fires, and pneumonia. In 1954, she was gratified to learn, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. To Mabel, he seemed like a very bright, hotly burning star, destined to burn out in a spectacular way.
When she got to the end of the biography and learned that he—like his father, sister, and brother—had committed suicide, she found tears rolling down her cheeks, much to Jake’s consternation. When he asked if she was all right, she merely pointed to the page and shook her head.
Finished with the biography, she moved on to The Old Man and the Sea with great interest, and found the story of Santiago and his battle with the great fish to be keenly poignant, but it wasn’t until she dove into A Farewell to Arms that she fell truly in love. There, she read:
“The world breaks every one and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
She wanted very badly to be one of those broken strong ones, one of those that life sets out to kill in a hurry. She would be brave like that, she thought, taking strength from the words. She felt Hemingway had written them just for her, as though he had seen, from his broad wooden desk, through the decades to her particular situation, and had typed the sentence down for her eyes to see.
She read the passage out loud to Jake and he nodded thoughtfully, saying that he had always enjoyed Hemingway much more than other writers in high school although he could not remember much about what he had written. This, Mabel did not understand. She wept when she finished A Farewell to Arms at the sheer, naked pain conveyed in the few words that were used, and marveled once more at the artistic elevation of the simplest themes, of love and fear and courage and disappointment.
The next time Jake gave her the day off, she went straight to the museum and bought three more Hemingway novels. His life in Cuba became of particular interest to her, and when she learned that there was a museum there as well, she begged to go.
“Jake, it’s only ninety miles. Can’t we get there easily enough?” she
asked one day when they were sailing past the condominiums and rental houses with their SAIL STELLA LUNA banner draped over the side of the boat, trying to drum up business on a slow Monday afternoon.
“Cuba?” he asked, adjusting the mainsail and tying the line. “You want to go to Cuba?”
“Yes. Badly. You could get us there, couldn’t you?”
“In theory, it should be easy enough. Take about fifteen hours, though. And those seas can get pretty rough.”
“But you could do it, right?”
“I don’t honestly know, Jane. I’ve never tried it.”
“Can we? Please? Pretty please?”
He laughed at her then, and the tattered paperback she held in her hand.
“How many times you read that now?” he nodded towards the book.
“This one? Three times now. It’s my favorite.”
“What is it?”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls. Listen to this” she said, flipping to a marked page and reading aloud: “There probably still is God after all, although we have abolished him. Do you believe in God, Jake?”
“I do,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I have to.”
“I’ve never heard him or seen him do anything for me,” she said thoughtfully. “But I suppose he might still be out there, just watching. Maybe just watching and wondering how we will react to the things we go through…maybe if you’re especially brave, he’ll talk to you.”
“I’ve been brave,” Jake said.
“When were you most brave?” she asked.
“Once I was out on the water, by myself, with a storm rolling in. I thought I was a goner for sure; it whipped the waves up over the deck and tilted me so far over I thought we’d go keel-up, but somehow we didn’t, and I made it out. I kept my head. That was pretty brave. But I didn’t hear God talk.”
“Maybe it was just very stupid.”
“Sometimes the two are very similar,” he agreed. “I’ve been braver than that, though.”
“Really? Tell me.”
Jake stood at the wheel then, thinking. She did not interrupt with more questions, but sat on the deck and watched the pastel-colored condos flow past on the shore. She could tell when someone was thinking, and she knew when it was important, somehow.
“I was brave when my wife died. For her,” he finally said. “I had to be. She was scared, but I told her there was a God and that she’d go to him and be okay. Maybe that was the most brave I’ve been.”
“Is it brave to believe in god, or cowardly?” she wondered aloud.
“I never thought about it. I need to believe in God because I told Lila he was there and I don’t want to be a liar.”
“Maybe he is always talking,” Mabel said. “Maybe we’re just not able to hear. It reminds me of this,” she flipped to another ticked page and read "Because thou art a miracle of deafness; It is not that thou art stupid. Thou art simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear music. Neither can he hear the radio. So he might say, never having heard them, that such things do not exist.”
“Yeah, maybe it’s like that,” Jake said, turning about to head back to the marina. “That Hemingway, he was a pretty smart fellow.”
“Yes, he was,” she said. “He did everything on his terms.”
They sailed in silence then for a while, each one lost in thought.
“Hey,” Mabel said finally. “What if I learn to sail really, really well, so I can help on the trip across? Would you agree to go then? To Cuba, I mean?”
“Jane,” he said. “You need a passport to go to Cuba. Do you have a passport?”
She looked at him then, mouth slightly open, crestfallen.
“We could get one, easily enough,” he said. “But there’s the small matter of a birth certificate, and your last name, which even I still don’t know.”
“Right,” she said softly. “Right. I hadn’t even thought of it. I’m stupid.”
“You’re hardly stupid,” he said. “You were just excited. But how about it…we can get one, right? It will take a couple of months, but it’s no problem—”
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”
“But why—”
“Don’t ask me why not, please, Jake. Please. I just can’t.” She clasped the book to her chest, head down, and hoped he wouldn’t press it. He was silent for a while, steering and making small adjustments as they coasted along.
“Jane, I’m going to make you a promise,” he finally said. “I’ll get you to Cuba one day, you wait and see. We’ll make it happen somehow.”
Eleven
Jake wanted to take a vacation. Business had been good for months, but he was tired. He wanted a break from the demands of customers who thought he ought to be able to conjure dolphins from the waves with a tip of his hat or treated him as though he was part of the package tour. After one trying day in which a bleached-blond retired woman in a thong came on strong to him for the entire three hours they were out, he said he was taking some time off.
“Let’s go to The Dry Tortugas,” he suggested to Mabel as he lay outstretched on the deck, drinking a beer. “For the weekend. It’s not far, and it will be a good chance for you to practice your sailing skills.”
“You didn’t appreciate Susan’s advances?” she teased. He sighed.
“It wasn’t like I was disgusted by them or anything,” he said. “I’m not made of stone, after all. She just wasn’t my type. Like, at all. I just wasn’t getting through to her, was I?”
“Definitely not,” Mabel smiled. “When she said you should meet her for drinks tonight, I thought you might take her up on it, just to shut her up, though.”
“If she’s as aggressive in bed as she is with the flirting, I would be right to be afraid,” he laughed, and then winced. “Okay, that wasn’t nice. Let’s talk about the Tortugas.”
“All right,” Mabel said. “How far away are they?”
“About seventy miles to the west. There’s a ferry that takes people there in a couple of hours, but it will take us considerably longer if we sail it exclusively. We have to pack all the provisions that we’re going to need, because there’s nothing once you get there except beauty.”
“Have you been before?”
“Several times. But it’s been years since the last time. Still, it’ll be an adventure for us, right? Just what we need.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said. “I read that Hemingway liked to fish the Tortugas with his mob of friends back in the 1930s. Let’s do it.”
They took a couple of days to gather their provisions, loading up Stella Luna with coolers full of ice and the fridge with food and bait. Water bottles they bought in bulk from the big box store, trying to predict accurately how much they would need for a week, though they were only planning to stay for the weekend. Weather, Jake said, could be a tricky thing, and they needed to be prepared for the eventuality of not getting back as expected. They planned to fish but took along plenty of protein bars and other dry goods in case nothing was biting (unlikely, Jake said, but you never know).
Jake bought Mabel a fishing pole like his; a seven foot long Penn Squall that looked ready to take on any fish in the Gulf. Mabel posed with it as Hemingway would have; expecting to catch anything the waters could dish out. Jake took her picture and laughed at her and said they weren’t equipped to deal with tarpon or marlin, so best to hope for snapper or grouper at the most and leave the rest alone. She thought of Santiago and his battle with the great fish, and vowed to be at least as indomitable if the time came.
“Just don’t hook me,” he laughed, as she practiced small casts into the harbor while he organized their tackle and found places for all the water bottles that were currently underfoot.
“Maybe I’ll catch a shark when we’re out,” Mabel said, her line stretched between two neighboring sailboats.
“You can catch anything you like except in some places by the islands.”
“Why?”
“It’s a preserve. Lots of protected space
s, you know?”
“Oh. I get it.” Her line suddenly jerked and she sat up. “I think I caught something. Look, Jake. A fishy.”
As she reeled in and the line broke the surface of the water, they both laughed as they saw the tiny grunt dangling from the end.
“Dang,” she said. “I didn’t think anything would go for that big shrimp here in the harbor.”
“Here, let me take it off,” Jake said, grabbing the line and bringing it in close. He carefully extracted the hook and tossed the fish back into the water, where it slowly disappeared once more.
“Poor thing,” Mabel said. “I guess it got a good meal out of the trauma, though.”
“Yeah, don’t waste any more bait, huh?” Jake said, patting her on the back. “We’re going to need that before the trip is over.”
“Right.” She reeled in the rest of the line and set the pole in the hold with Jake’s. “What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Go through the first-aid kit,” he said, pointing. “Make sure we’ve got everything we need.”
“Aye aye, captain,” she said, saluting smartly with a smile on her face. “When will we set sail tomorrow?”
“I want to get an early start. What do you say to six thirty?”
“Sounds good to me.”
The next morning Mabel was awoken by Jake rummaging around for his clothes, and she sat up, stretching. A thrum of excitement was flowing through her at the prospect of the journey, and she dressed hurriedly and splashed her face with water in the tiny washroom.
Once on deck, she untied the lines and wound them around the cleats, and Jake motored Stella Luna out of the harbor and into the Gulf.
The May morning was beautifully clear, with the temps in the mid-eighties already, but the breeze that ruffled Mabel’s hair was fresh and cool. She breathed deeply, and marveled anew at her good fortune. Here she was, with a good man who treated her well and expected nothing but hard work in return, living life on the cerulean sea. If the bad dreams that plagued her nights would only dry up, things would be perfect.
She had ceased looking over her shoulder for the authorities many weeks before. Social services did not haunt her thoughts anymore, and she told herself that any cops in Oklahoma who might want to connect her with the death of Gail must surely have given up. The niggling idea that she ought to tell Jake the truth about her life (and her name) never left her, though, and she stuffed it down, telling herself that she would, when the time was right.
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