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Overview
Fifteen years after her father's death, Hilary Hemingway receives a curious inheritance: an audio-cassette of Les, her father, telling outrageous stories about hunting with his famous older brother, Ernest Hemingway. Les clearly aims to amuse the listeners with tales of the Hemingway brothers hunting vicious ostriches, hungry crocodiles, and deadly komodo dragons, but where Les Hemingway gets serious is in defending and explaining his brother’s reputation to a contemptuous Hemingway scholar. Hilary transcribes these stories, revealing the bond between two larger-than-life brothers—and tells of her own quest to make peace with the painful parts of the Hemingway legacy.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626819160 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Diversion Books |
| Publication date: | 05/12/2015 |
| Pages: | 246 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
I remembered the bright-purple Barney tape player in my older daughter's bedroom, and went looking for it, determined to listen to the tape. I found Bear in her room, curled up with a book about-ironically enough, it would turn out-endangered species.
"Hi, Mom," she said, barely looking up from a picture of a Siberian tiger.
"Hello, sweetie," I said, sitting down on the bed beside her. I picked up the Barney tape player. "I wonder if I could borrow this."
T. L. Bear made a face. She had recently "outgrown" Barney as a result of ridicule at school. "I don't care," she said. "He's the only animal I'm glad is extinct." She looked curiously at the cassette tape in my hand. "What's that?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "Something of Grandma's."
Bear sat up. "Can I hear it, too?" She asked eagerly. Grandma had been her best friend, and she felt the loss very deeply. Only her conviction that reincarnation was real made the death bearable at all.
"Of course," I said. I popped the tape in and punched Play.
Suddenly my Dad's voice crackled out of the speaker as if he were standing in the room. I was so startled I dropped the tape player. "My God," I said. "It's Daddy. . . ."
Bear picked up the machine, pushed the Stop button, and put it back on the bed. "Was that Grandpa?" She asked.
"Yeah," I answered. There was no mistaking the energy in his voice, the way he charged every word with excitement. "That's him, all right," I told Bear, taking her hand. "You never met him, but I think he would have liked you."
She smiled and said, "I want to hear him." I punched Play and we both fell back on her bed. It had been almost fifteen years since I had heard my father's voice, but when I closed my eyes it seemed like Daddy was right there with us.
I crouched there at the bank of the creek and felt the water trickling into one boot. Nothing seemed terribly wrong. The fall I'd taken seemed lucky now. I had more cover than Papa, who was working around to the other side. When he was in position, he would signal me and we would close in on our unlucky bear. Then I caught sight of the black bulk plainly in the alder thicket fifty yards ahead. A little closer and I would have a clean shot.
Suddenly the cassette stopped. "Wait a minute," my daughter said. She held her finger on the Stop button. "You didn't say they killed animals."
"Well, I don't really know what's on this tape," I said. She still glared at me.
"All right. I know they hunted small stuff," I told her. "Dad talked about hunting birds with his brother-and they always ate what they killed." She looked at me in horror. "Oh, come on, Bear. You eat chicken, it's not that different." She rolled her eyes. I could see this wasn't going to be easy.
"He said 'bear,'" my daughter said firmly. "You know how I feel about bears, Mom."
I looked around at the dozens of stuffed animals in her room. Most of them were, in fact, bears. Sure, there were a few other animals-a tiger, a dog, a porpoise, a bird, a snake, a monkey, and a half dozen others-but bears made up the bulk of her collection. It was how she had earned her nickname. It was an odd coincidence that the first thing we heard on the tape was a story about her totem animal.
"Bears, Mom," she said again for emphasis.
"Yeah, well, it was different back then," I said, but she shook her head. It sounded feeble even to me. Killing animals for sport was wrong. It was clear to her, maybe to most people nowadays. So how could I explain a family that spent most of its free time hunting and fishing, when she had been raised to respect all living creatures and, above all, to be careful?
"Look, darling," I started, "the 1930s were a very different time. People didn't think about endangered species. People hunted for the sport-for the thrill."
"That's just so gross," she said.
I shrugged. "Well, if this tape is going to bother you, you don't have to listen."
"No, no, that's not what I meant. I want to hear the story. It's just that-" Bear made a face.
"Okay then, just save judgment until we hear everything," I said, and then it occurred to me: I had to do the same. I had questions too, but mine were more personal, and a lot harder to answer.
I pushed the Play button, hoping to find the answer.
My eyes moved back down to my rifle barrel. There was mud on the last three inches. My heart hammered. If what I suspected was true, I knew that missing my footing on the edge of this creek might have just cost me my life.
Papa was too far away to signal without the bear becoming aware of both of us. He would no doubt be mad as hell if he saw my gun. If our father had taught us anything, it was to take good care of hunting rifles.
I pulled the Springfield back with my right hand, wiped the muzzle with my left. With my clean hand I upended the rifle to make absolutely certain. There, where a .30-caliber hole should have been, a plug of mud filled the bore. Ah, hell, I thought. We're dead.
I was disarmed. Helpless. The rifle would explode if I fired without cleaning out the mud first. I had no knife and Papa's wouldn't do me any good. And less than fifty yards away, old Moccasin Joe, the massive black bear, clawed at our bait. With my rifle plugged with mud, I felt as helpless as a trapped animal.
Within minutes Papa would be close enough for the bear to smell him. Then the old he-bear would probably back off and head for me. Together we would have been a fair match for him. Papa was to hold his fire and back me up. This was how he had explained it and if you knew him, you knew you had to do as Papa told you.
Why had he given me first shot? Perhaps it was to see if his little brother had it in him--to see what I'd do when the bear charged. Of course, he added to the thrill when he warned me, "Old Joe there has the stuff to make hash out of both of us. Don't miss, Baron!"
Now, blast it, I had to get the mud out of my gun if I was ever to warm myself over a campfire again, not to mention stay in Papa's good graces. Which in itself was no easy trick. If I only had a cleaning rod. But I hadn't. Nor was there any sapling nearby that might reach the length of the barrel. There were alders up where the bear was, but I was damned if I was going to walk up to the bear with a useless gun and bat him on the head.
Carefully, my eyes on the bear, I crouched lower. I had one slim chance-better than doing nothing, but not by much. Slowly, ever so slowly, I eased the bolt up, and then back. There was a small snick as the bolt came back, bringing the cartridge out of the chamber. I put my hand over this cartridge and pocketed it. I heard it click against something else. With both hands holding my gun near the center of balance, I brought it up and tried to blow through the barrel. All I got was an oily taste. The mud didn't blow out, and that was that.
I stopped the tape player and looked at my daughter. I was worried about how my oversensitive child would take it all.
She frowned at me. "Hey, why did you do that? I want to hear what happened."
"Me too. I've never heard this story."
"Why not? Why didn't Grandpa tell you?" Bear asked.
"That's a good question. I guess it's just not the kind of story he told me."
"Then who did he tell?" She demanded.
I grabbed the orange-and-white-striped tiger from her animal collection. "Well, Tiger, I think there's only one place where my father would have told this story."
"Where?" My daughter asked.
"Do you remember Grandma's big old house in Miami Beach? The house I grew up in?"
Bear shook her head no.
"Well," I began, and my mind drifted back to my childhood home, a grand old estate. I could still picture the light from Dad's outdoor hearth dancing on the tan walls and across the red-tiled patio floor. "Sometimes in the evening, Grandpa would have a drink with friends and admire the sunsets over Biscayne Bay. The water was so beautiful in the light from the setting sun-blue-green, streaked with orange . . ."
"Miami?" Bear asked. "There's too many buildings."
I smiled. "Now there are. But back then, the Miami skyline's tallest building was the Freedom Tower. It was a beautiful place to grow up. And there was a circle of writers we knew. They'd get together and Dad would build a fire, and they'd have a few drinks and swap stories."
"A fire?" Bear chortled. "In Florida?"
"It was ceremonial." I smiled at her. "It gave everybody a sense of a special evening."
"Did it work?" She asked. "Really?"
"It sure did, honey," I nodded, thinking of the many people-writers and others-who approached me after my father's death, each with the same wistful glow on his face, and told me how special those gatherings were. "It really worked. This tape has to be from one of those evenings. I don't think he talked about Ernest much otherwise."
"Why not? Didn't he like him?"
"He liked him fine. Ernest was his big brother. He was sixteen years older than Dad, his hero when he was young. It's not that he had anything against him. Just that he didn't bring him up unless someone asked. I think-" I tried to sort it through in my own mind before answering. "I think your grandpa thought that the older-brother part of Ernest was special, something nobody else knew about, no matter how famous Ernest got. Maybe Daddy wanted to keep something for himself."
"Hey," my daughter interrupted, "this tape started halfway through. No wonder we're confused."
"No kidding. Here, let a professional fix it." I pulled the tape out of the machine and looked at the side on which my father's name was printed. "Whoops," I said. "Not only halfway through, but the wrong side. Let's flip it and start at the beginning." I turned the cassette over and put it back into the machine. I pressed Rewind, and for a moment we both just giggled. My daughter settled into my lap, and then I pushed Play.
Almost immediately my father's laughter filled the room. There was a sound that must have been the snap of pine crackling from the fire and we suddenly heard other voices. I listened until I made out who they were. There was the deep laugh of Charlie Willeford-Uncle Charlie was what my sister and I called him. Willeford was a Miami novelist whom I remember most for his warm good cheer and walrus mustache.
Also on the tape was the smooth cigarette-voice of my mother. And finally a mystery guest-someone I couldn't place. But there was a quality to his laugh that I didn't like. He always started to laugh a half-second after everyone else, as if he had been waiting to see if whatever was said was really funny. Or worse, as if he was waiting for permission-waiting to see if that's what Dad wanted him to do. And there was a practiced quality to the laugh, as if he had tried it out at home until it sounded the way he wanted it to. It was a lot to get from an old tape of a man's laugh, I know. But I didn't like him. I can't explain it any better than that.
A professor, I thought. Another wannabe Hemingway aficionado. But what the heck. Dad had had some strange guests over the years, from Jeane Dixon to Janet Reno. There were even some nice professors, like the guy who ran the art department at the University of Miami. Maybe I was wrong about this guy.
I tried to picture my old house as I listened to the tape. We had a lovely Spanish-style home filled with antiques, oriental rugs, and grand paintings. Of course as a child I thought this stuff was old and moldy and scary. But for the writers who visited, the house had a real mystique. Dad held his outdoor bonfires on a hibachi grill every Friday night, fueling it with dried pine and sea grape leaves. The group would stare out at Biscayne Bay and drink cocktails. When the sun set, they would toast the magical colors. That's when the stories would begin.
On the tape, the professor's voice came through unusually clear. "But Les, even on that last trip to Spain, Ernest seemed passionately devoted to that young bullfighter, Antonio Ordoñez. He sat for hours at his bedside."
"Oh Lord, here we go," I heard my mother mutter before Dad jumped in.
"Here's the thing," my dad said patiently. "Papa was a great man for putting himself in the other person's position. I think, in a sense, he was trying to psych himself into being able to write something where he was a young bullfighter. He was trying to really get inside the kid's skin."
"So you don't believe that Ernest's preoccupation with a macho lifestyle masked any kind of latent homosexual-"
There was a loud laugh that stopped the professor. Charlie Willeford spoke up. "You poor bastard. You're hanging yourself."
And then my father's voice: "Oh balls, Charlie, you brought him here, so i'll be nice. God's truth man, Papa was not a homosexual. Latent or late-blooming."
"Hear, hear," my mother muttered.
"But he did have an enormous ability to care about both males and females-not in an erotic way but in a 'You are a fellow human being' way. And when he cared for somebody, he cared as completely as you can care for a human being."
The professor began again. "Forgive me, but ah-I just believe the reading public may have the wrong image of Papa. It's important for the hunting stories-"
Dad cut him off. "Only a damn fool pictures Papa in hot- pink anything. Do you understand me?" There was real heat in Dad's words.
"Of course, Les. Naturally. I only meant to say-"
"Is that clear, God damn it?"
"Yes, absolutely. Sorry, Les." The professor backed off.
"Good. Because it's important for you to remember that nobody ever called him Mama."
I heard Charlie chuckle and say, "Sic 'em, Les."
"Yes, I know, I apologize," the professor was saying.
"They called him Papa. It's not a nickname he chose. People chose it for him-they called him that because that's who he was. Totally masculine, a guy who cared about the people around him and tried to show them what he could, what he knew about. My brother taught me more about hunting, fishing, and fighting than our father ever did. He lived up to the name Papa-and all that it implied. Always."
"I'm sorry, I'll stick to hunting questions," the professor said in a voice that would have buttered toast. "I read your account of the rabbit shoot in your biography, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway."
"Sure you did. Are you asking permission to steal it?"
"No, no, of course not. I would, of course, paraphrase."
"I see. I suppose you've got a tape recorder on now. Recording an interview doesn't make you a writer. It makes you a leech." There was a small round of snickers from the others in the group.
"Well-actually, I do have a recorder."
"Great. So much for live it, feel it, then write it." There was a pause. In the background somebody lit a match and then coughed-Mom lighting a cigarette? Then Dad went on to the professor, "You don't get out much, do you?"
"What's wrong, Les, don't trust that pasty Chicago glow?" Charlie laughed.
"Charlie, you're also an English teacher-remind me again why I put up with you?"
"You like my books."
"Damn right. Good books, too."
I could picture Dad in his sweat-soaked Cuban guayabera shirt standing by the fire. Massive arms folded, he'd be staring hard at this awkward and pale professor in the flickering light. He didn't mean to, but he looked just like his brother, with the salt-and-pepper beard, the broad Hemingway jaw, and those wide, muscular shoulders.
"What do you think you're going to accomplish with that tape recorder, Doctor?"
"Well, I can't very well go back in time to hunt with Ernest. So I was hoping to capture you."
There was a giggle from Mom. "Les, don't be so hard on the man. We're all here for a good time. If the professor wants to advance his career, why not share a few of Papa's hunting stories? I think," she paused, "we could all enjoy it."
"Thank you, yes, that's very kind," the professor said.
Willeford made a strange throat-clearing noise that might have covered a snort of laughter. "Yes, you know how eager Hemingway fans can be. Go on, Les. Tell him about-the lost safari."
Lost safari? What were they talking about? I saw my daughter stare up at me, eyes aglow. I shrugged that I didn't know either, and we both leaned in a little to hear better.
"God damn it, Charlie-"
"What fun-please, let's hear it, Les," my mother added.
There was a pause. The fire crackled and somebody moved a chair. Then I heard a growling sound-my father. "All right, Herr Doktor Professor," my father finally said. "They've talked me into it. Una noche de verdades oscuras. You do speak Spanish, right?"
"Oh yes, certainly-claro que sí." The professor gave a nervous laugh, his first genuine one. There was a rustling, probably caused by the pulling of the recorder from its hiding place.
Dad spoke into the mike. "Test-test, one, two, three. Okay, Doctor Sony? Where do you want me to start, Charles?"
"Crocodiles," Willeford said. He sounded as if he was coughing, and this time I was sure he was trying not to laugh.
"Yes, that's my favorite part," my mother chimed in. "Tell about the crocodiles, Les."
I smiled and looked at my daughter. She was listening intently to the tape. Almost as intently as she watched TV, with a far-off stare, taking in my father's words and seeing them in her mind. I wondered if she had caught on to what seemed obvious to me-that my mom and Uncle Charlie were setting up Dad. Dad didn't like the professor, that was clear. Mom and Charlie had figured that out and had decided to have some fun. This had to be some kind of joke.
"Uh-" I heard my father say. He cleared his throat. "All right, God damn it. Crocodiles." And I heard him take a breath. I could almost see his forehead furrow and his hands come up as they always did to help him tell a story.
It had been far too many years since I had heard my dad tell one of his famous stories-and as far as I knew, I had never heard this one. Something inside me fluttered. I settled back and listened.
Reprinted from Hunting with Ernest Hemingway by Hilary Hemingway and Jeffrey P. Lindsay by permission of Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2000 by Hilary Hemingway and Jeffrey P. Lindsay. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.