Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost

C
hapter 1

Other than my wife, I hadn’t told a soul about it.  I was afraid to.  Nobody wants to be labeled a kook.  Nobody likes being stared at from the corners of dubious eyes.  But now, after all I’ve been through, I couldn’t care less what people think.  For reasons I will explain later, I am now sure that in July of last year, I spent four days with Ernest Hemingway. 

Granted, Papa had been dead for five decades.  I realize that.  But a force far stronger than any of us mortals know did bring us together.  Odd as it sounds, I’m as sure I was with him as I am that your eyes are narrowing as you read these words.  Bear with me.  If you will hear my story, I think you, too, will believe it.

To begin with, I haven’t always been a Hemingway aficionado.  Sure, I did read
The Old Man and the Sea
when I was eleven years old.  But after that, like most young men on the lower half of the social ladder, the closest thing to literature I ever read was the sports pages.  That was about it, that and an occasional peek at
Playboy Magazine
. 

But then a funny thing happened when I was in my early thirties.  I started making trips to the local library.  And soon after that there was always a stack of books alongside my recliner.  Since I, like Hemingway, had a great love for sport fishing and certainly didn’t mind knocking back a few brews from time to time, I started taking a keen interest in the man and his work. 

The more I read about him, the more I realized he and I weren’t all that dissimilar.  Oh, I never had the kind of money he did or a boat as fine as the
Pilar
.  I never traveled the world or earned fame the way he did.  But deep inside, I believed that along with our common interests, we had also thought along similar lines.  Considering that our births were seventy years apart, and so were our worlds, I thought that our many likenesses were quite odd.  I suspected that Hemingway, just like I do, would have had a serious problem living in this maddening twenty-first century world. 

But despite all we had in common, I always doubted that, had I ever met the man, I would have actually liked him.  I wanted to believe I would, but after reading so much about his overblown macho attitude, I didn’t think so.  In the farthest stretches of my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined that I’d someday find out.

Last July, I had to be airlifted from my home to a hospital in West Palm Beach after a highly-unlikely accident.  I had just bought a utility trailer for my lawn care business and backed it into my driveway.  The trailer was fully enclosed with a metal roof and sides.  After lowering the tailgate, I set up a makeshift ramp using two wooden boards.  I then cranked up my rider mower and tried to drive it up the incline.  But it was steeper than I’d realized.  After two failed attempts to get the mower’s front wheels over the very top of the ramp and into the level bed of the trailer, I had to throw it into reverse and back the powerful machine down again.  Going backwards on such a sharp angle was quite precarious.  My better judgment kept giving me hell—telling me I shouldn’t be doing this; I should drive over to Home Depot and buy two longer boards.  But I didn’t listen.  It was a Saturday afternoon, and because we’d had a lot of rain all week, there were still three lawns I simply had to get done.

On my third attempt, I revved the mower up really high and sped up the ramp.  Scary as it was, all went well until the front wheels finally did clear the top of the ramp.  Just as that happened, I realized my head was about to slam into the leading edge of the roof. 

It all happened so fast.  Reflexively I jerked my head to the right, but that didn’t help.  Fast as I’d been driving the mower, it kept right on going, all the way into the trailer.  It’s amazing my neck didn’t snap.  Instead, with my head lodged against the roof and the mower continuing forward, I was literally pulled out of the seat—by my head. 

And that wasn’t the end of it.  After the mower passed beneath my legs, there was nowhere to go but down.  Back first, I fell between the two boards onto the concrete driveway.  As the back of my head slammed onto the driveway, I heard a sickening thud like a gourd smashing against a wall.  Then the lights went out.  Everything went black.  I didn’t even hear Blanche’s screams when she came out of the house to see what had happened.                                        

I went into a deep coma and remained there for four days.  No matter what the doctors tried, they couldn’t get me to respond.  My eyes wouldn’t open.  I did not respond to questions.  I didn’t flinch, grimace, or react in any way when they administered pain tests.  I don’t recall any of it.  The only thing I do remember is spending those four days with Ernest Hemingway.

Right after I’d lost consciousness, a speck of white light appeared in the center of all the blackness.  The glow spread quickly, and soon everything was bright and sunny.  I was walking through a neighborhood of old but well-maintained homes.  Some were small, some were larger, but they all were a mix of Bahamian and New England architecture.  I was across the street from the houses, on a sidewalk infested with camera-toting tourists in gaudy tropical shirts.  Right alongside me there was a long brick wall.   

As if I were doing some funky, clumsy dance, I dodged and side-stepped one person after the next.  I’d never seen so many belly-bags in my life and could not fathom how anybody could wear such a silly-looking contraption.  But the strange thing was, as ridiculous as these people seemed, they were all giving
me
funny looks. 

It was very warm, but the afternoon breeze blowing in from the ocean made it almost comfortable.  Riding in on the wind was an exotic mix of aromas.  As if returning from a long voyage, the soul-healing smell of tropical seawater was greeted and kissed by the perfume scent of jasmine and frangipani.  Most every yard in the neighborhood was aglow with colorful flowers—red, white, yellow, pink, lavender, and multiple pastels.  And the green fronds of towering palm trees rattled in the wind like frantic castanets. 

With a dull ache in both the front and back of my head, I stepped to the right edge of the sidewalk, rose to my toes, and peeked over that privacy wall.  Putting my hands on the top layer of bricks, I looked through the shade of the dense tropical flora.  There was a mini-estate there.  For the second time in my life, I admired the stately home with its airy, wrap-around porches on both floors.  I imagined Ernest Hemingway, decades earlier, standing on the second floor portico looking out to the nearby lighthouse.  Then I shifted my eyes to the right of the house, toward the shimmering aquamarine waters of the swimming pool.  That’s when I noticed somebody standing beside me.

The guy was right smack next to me, as if he were my date.  I was just about to tell him to give me a little breathing room, but I didn’t.  He beat me to the punch.  He spoke first.

“I hate that goddamned pool!  Twenty-thousand dollars she
pissed
away on it.  Can you imagine?  That’s two-and-a-half times what her uncle paid for the whole damn place—house
and
property
.”

Oh, wonderful!
I’m thinking by now,
Here we go!  I’ve got myself one of those burnt out Hemingway wannabes here
. 

I was going to walk away without even acknowledging the guy, but I couldn’t help myself.  I had to take just one look at this clown first. 

Peering from the corners of my eyes, I slowly turned my head.  The first thing I noticed was that he was about my height—nothing unusual about that.  But when his face came into full view I jumped as if I’d been goosed by a highly-charged, electrified thumb. 

Jerking my chin in and my head back in one lightning-quick motion, my eyebrows sprung to my hairline.  My eyes froze open—almost as wide as my mouth did.  I shook my head—hard, as if listening for loose screws.  Then I said, “My good God! 
It is you
!  Now I know I’m losing it!

Ernest Hemingway was dressed just like you’d expect him to be.  His powder blue Guaynabo shirt had long sleeves, and a knotted rope held up his khaki Bermuda shorts.  Above worn leather sandals, his calves were still impressive, but that was where any similarities to the robust, macho Ernest Hemingway of myth and legends ended. 

Just like his thick wide beard, the hair on his head was all white.  It was combed down and to the side to cover his receded hairline.  On the left side of his forehead, the scar he’d received many years earlier from a fallen Paris skylight was still plenty visible.  It was the size of a healthy garden slug, and it protruded like a nasty, pink blister. 

Bulging from his waist, was the same paunch he’d had throughout the second half of his life, but his once powerful shoulders and chest were somewhat shrunken.  His face was old and craggy.  There were liver spots beneath his sideburns and pre-cancerous pink blotches on his ruddy cheeks and forehead.   But his eyes were different.  They were the same dark brown they’d always been, but now, unlike after his late-life electro-shock treatments, they looked well-rested and raring to go.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said, eyeballing some of the tourists now.  “But you’d better not let
them
see you talking to me.  Look to the side or something.  They can’t see me, only you can.  They’ll think you’re some kind of a nut job, Jack.”

Jack!
I thought.
  He called me Jack!  No, he must have been using the name as a figure of speech
. 

“Surprised that I know your name, huh?” he said now.  “Well don’t be.  I’ve been sent here for a reason . . . Jack Phelan.  I’m not down here for a holiday.  Well, let me correct that, I am here on a holiday but it’s a working holiday.”

“A working holiday?
  What are you talking about?”

“You’re in a coma, Jack.  As we speak, you’re actually lying in a coma.  I’ve been sent here to help determine if you should come out of it or . . . or, if you should pass on and enter the hereafter.  Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be making that decision.  I’m just here to gather information and relay it back to the true decision maker.”

“Come on.  This is ludicrous.  I’m not in any coma.  I’ve got to be dreaming.  This can’t be happening.”

“Oh but it is happening, my friend.  I’ll explain more to you later.” Ernest said as he turned his head and his attention to a giant banyan tree in his front yard.  “Son of a bitch, that thing must be sixty feet tall now.  It wasn’t six when we planted it.”

Though we had been standing in its shade, and the breeze was blowing even harder now, I could feel myself beginning to perspire.  The wall had been a bit cool to the touch when I first put my palms on it, but now I could feel them perspiring.