Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

my legs off the bed to stand up.  Feeling something beneath my feet, I spread them open and there was a brand spanking new pair of size-eleven deck shoes.  
    Ernest and I hardly talked during breakfast.  We were too busy working over a tall stack of pancakes drenched in hot syrup.  We didn’t need to talk.  We were getting along just fine.
    When we finally sat back in our chairs at the long dining room table, our bellies full, slurping the last of our coffee, I said, “Okay, Ernest, what’s the surprise?  What do you have planned for today?”
    “Are you all done?” 
    “Yeah, I’m good to go.”
    “Then let’s take off.  I want to show you rather than tell you.”
    Dressed in clean, roped-up shorts and a white Guaynabo, Ernest rose from the table.  Rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, he said, “Get that cooler on the counter over there . . . it’s full of sandwiches, fruit, beer, water and ice.  It’s somewhat heavy, but we’re just going a few blocks.  I’ll get the thermos of coffee.”
    When we stepped out of the house into the darkness, all was quiet.  The sky was clear, and the sliver of a moon had migrated across it.  We trekked up the wide concrete walkway, and before locking the gate behind, Ernest turned and took one final look at his house.  After standing there for a moment with the Thermos dangling from his hand, he said, “They were good years here in Key West.  Damn good years.”  Then there was more silence.
    It was as if he were looking at a close friend in a casket for the last time.  I knew he was dealing with memories—waiting for them to pass—waiting for their nostalgic hurt to wear off.  When we finally did walk away, neither of us said a word.  All that could be heard was our footsteps on the sidewalk as we coursed the brick wall out front.  And there was more of the same as we continued past long, darkened rows of conch houses.
    As we walked on in silence, I thought about the man alongside me.  Although I had just hooked up with him the day before, I’d not only witnessed some of his emotional displays, but I’d felt them as well.  To say I was surprised by his heartfelt actions would be a huge understatement.  After all, Ernest Hemingway—the man, the myth, the legend he’d become—had been forged from more than just his literary accomplishments.  He was supposed to have been a hard man, with thick skin and calluses on his knuckles and heart.  But I already knew differently.  That was not the Ernest Hemingway I was walking with in the pre-dawn darkness.  This man had neither a stainless steel persona nor heart.
    The cooler I’d been lugging was now getting heavier with each step.  The muscles in my arms had stretched to new lengths.  As we crossed yet another street, I was just about to tell Ernest that I needed to put it down, but I didn’t.  There were docks and black water before us.  In the darkness I could just make out about a half dozen boats.  We were close enough now to hear the gentle slap of water on their hulls.
    “ Looky there, Jack,” Ernest said, as we stepped onto the wooden platform, “third one down    . . . on the right.”
    Still in a predawn half-trance, I could not believe my eyes.  Tied to the dock just up ahead, her cabin gently lit by a single light bulb, was the Pilar . 
    I turned to Ernest alongside me and said, “Come on . . . get out of here!  It can’t be.”
    He said nothing, but there was a smile across his face as wide as the yacht’s beam.  Unable to hold back his excitement any longer, he sped up in that rolling gait of his.  With heavy heels plunking the wooden planks, Hem moved with the renewed energy of an old man being reunited with something he had loved deeply for a long, long time.  
    The closer I got, the more magnificent his thirty-eight-foot fishing boat looked.  With her low gunwales, she seemed to straddle the water rather than float upon it.  Faint light from the bare bulb atop a