Smokin Joe™'s Page

I started this story in 1989 and rewrote it and entered it in Coppolla"s All Story Contest this past Oct. 1, 09.


This part is the end.

THE END OF IT AND THE BEING OF SOMETHING


“If the reader prefers this story maybe regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.” Ernest Hemingway 1919


Unbeknownst to me, July 2, 1961 would be my last day on earth as Ernest Hemingway.

And so my story goes; I was in bed that morning dreading getting up. I knew once my feet hit the floor the magic would be gone and I would forget most of the things that made my father’s life so good. Fore sure he had lived a good life but at the end I felt certain my mother had made life so unbearable for him that he turned spiteful and gave up on everything he had built. “I’m glad she’s dead!” My mother was standing in the opening between the dinning room and living room mocking my father. “I hate your weakness. Stop crying. You are pathetic!” She stomped away.
My father raised his head and looked at the spot my mother was in. And with the suddenness of light he put my Grandfather’s Civil War Pistil to his lips, hands shaking, eyes weeping, “sorry Bear,” pulled the trigger and left fifty seven years of his selfless life scattered throughout my mother's, "Stop! You can't sit in here!" Now, not so perfect living room.
"What's going through that head of yours?"
"I'm pissed off at the boy's. And I can't stop thinking about my dad."
"Listen, don't be mad at them. Please. I told them they could come for a visit when we were away." She tickled me and sat up. “Come on, let’s have fun today. We’re home.”
The room was black and I could just make out her shape in the dark with the slightest change of light outside through the window behind her.
"I'm serious; you've got to promise me you're not going to flip out on them."
"I don't know what I'm going to do. It just get's me in the neck when they leave the place a dump."
"Listen to me, those boys love you. It’s not a big deal." She said getting out of bed. I'm going to fix us something to eat. And don't worry; I'll have it cleaned up in no time."
"That's what I mean. Why should you clean it? They're just like their mothers, lazy and inconsiderate and it drives me crazy."
Mary switched on the hall light, "Now stop, before you end up back in the hospital."
She walked away and I could hear her in the bathroom and in the kitchen before I got myself up.
I walked through the house looking at the faint light spilling over the mountains and coming through the windows with a warm breeze that rustling the papers on my desk. I sat looking at the changing colors with the smell of warm melting snow that filled the room. I looked around my desk, sat up straight, had a good stretch and watched the birds outside darting past the windows and dive bombing each other on the deck.
Like a gift from God the story came back to me and I got caught in it like a fly in a spider’s web.
I was up late that Wednesday night on the 17th of June 1915, working on an end of the year paper for my Sophomore English class. I was so happy about there only being two more days of school left before summer vacation. I was sitting there at my desk in my room upstairs when my mother, like she always did, started in on my dad in the kitchen downstairs.
“I’m not telling you again!” Grace told my father, “You even think about taking him out of school to go to that filthy camp and you’ll be sleeping on the couch for the rest of your life! You got that straight?”
I walked over to the top of the stairs and leaned over the banister for a better listen. My sisters came out of their rooms and stood next to me. No one made a move.
“You look at me when I’m talking to you.” I could tell she was trying to keep her voice down, but it was impossible for her. She hated his guts. “I can’t stand to even look at you. I’m so mad! How dare you ask me if you can take him out of school to go hunting with two more day’s left in the school year! Have you lost your mind? He’s struggling to make his grades as it is. And do you even know his birthday is in a few weeks? How dare you.”
“Bear,” my dad was kneeling next to my bed. It was black in my room and I couldn’t see.
“Leave me alone! I’m sleeping.”
“Bear, wake up…… We’re going hunting.”
“I’m not going! I’m sleeping! Leave me a lone.” I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head.
“Shit!” I heard my dad say under his breath while he paced the room.”
“Bear.” He was leaning over me with his voice in my ear and I could feel and smell the taste of his breath. “I’ll give you twenty dollars if you get up right now.”
I rolled over and opened my eyes. He grabbed me and slung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, turned on a dime and raced downstairs, out the back door and put me in the back seat of a 1914 Ford Model T that one of his patients was waiting in. “Thanks George.”
“Don’t mention it Doc.”
My dad put a pillow under my head, through a blanket over me and scurried around the car, jumped in the front seat and we were off.
“Step on it George!”
“So Doc, let me get this straight, you and Ernest are taking the 3:45 a.m. train to New York? And another train to Boston just to go fishing? Know wonder Grace wants to kill you all the time.”
“I know, it’s too bad for me she hates everything I love.”
“Why’d you get married then?”
“To have the greatest son in the world. And to go fishing and hunting in the greatest places in the world with me….. I guess.
“He’s a smart kid too.”
“He’s the only thing in my life that makes any sense right now.” I heard my dad say, “He’s my best friend.” He started choking up.
“Come on Doc. none of that. Please.”
We pulled up to the train station platform.
“George, you’re the best. I owe you for this one”
“No Doc. You’re the best. And I owe you more than you will ever know. Have a great trip and I’ll see you back here in three week.” The man patted me on the shoulder and shook my hand. “Keep your dad out of trouble young Ernest and have a good trip. And see to it he gets back here to us safe and sound. OK?”
My dad gave the train engineer our tickets with a few bags and we climbed on board and went looking for our cabin and crashed.
That day when I woke up my dad was snoring to beat the band. We had a small cabin with stacked bunks and I laid there resting head on hand propped up on my elbow looking out the only window in the room. It seemed to me that we were going about fifty to six miles an hour by the way trees wheezed by with green fields, picturess lakes, through valleys we rolled, over hills, rocking from side to side the train made a rhythmic ca clank ca clank sound that sent a vibration right through you.
My dad was sleeping on his back and he looked like a big old toad catching flies. And talk about loud, all wedged between the wall and the mattress when I left the room and went looking the dinning car.
I found the restaurant and made our order. I loved the fact that my dad was a doctor because people treated doctors like kings back then and they were always eager to do anything for him at a moments notice and I always made sure to take full advantage of it when I was with him and needed something. I walked back to our room swerving from wall to wall through the train, opening the heavy sliding doors, stepping from one car to the next in the open air carefully maneuvering over the couplers into the section our room was in.
When I got there my dad was gone. Finally, he showed up with a strange women and they were laughing and hanging all over one another. The woman was very pretty and built to please. Even though I had never met this person I finally recognized her from pictures my dad had hidden in his desk from his ten year college reunion, at Oberlin College, just outside of Cleveland Ohio, Class of 1893. My dad had three good stories about the reunion that he loved to tell when he was around his college pals.
“Hi Bear. Pleased to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.” The woman was drunk.
“Thank you.”
“Ernest, you are never going to guess,” my dad was drunk as well and I couldn’t figure out how he had gotten that way so fast,” It just so happens Miss Davis is going to Boston as well. What a coincidence.”
I can’t begin to tell you how mad I was at him for bringing her; I thought it was going to be just me and him on this trip. Now I had to share him with her and she was a tall drink of water, to say the least. I really thought I would be alone for the rest of the trip. My dad had a bad habit of disappearing. He would say, “I need my Clarence time. I don’t know what else to tell you.” It drove my mother crazy.
We switched trains in New York and for the whole ride to Boston my dad, Cathy and I played Gin Rummy. “What’s the name of the Game?” Cathy would say,” sticking the winning card just in her hand and she’d push it down with her elbow laughing at the two Hemingway losers, “Gin!” She’d lean over the booths table picking up our money with my dad and I fixated on her bouncing breasts hanging out of her shirt sticking in our faces.
Cathy turned out to be the best person and I liked her a lot. She was so good looking for someone forty three years old. I would look at my dad sitting next to her and find it hard to believe that they were the same age.
Looking back I could see why Clarence was head over heels for her.
When we got off the train at Boston’s South Station Doctor Sullivan was there smiling with his arms wide open when he saw my dad. “Chuck Hemingway, my best friend in the whole world. You look like you’re getting younger.”
Clarence and Doctor Sullivan embraced and my dad started to cry.
“The old softy is sill as sentimental as ever,” Cathy said putting her arms around both of them. I looked for Doctor Sullivan’s son Bucky. Bucky and I were the same age, almost to the day, but his birthday was on the 4th of July, a week and a half before mine, which made him older and that meant a lot to kids in South Boston. You could be an hour older than someone in Southie and that made you their boss. It was like a law there. No ifs ands or buts. .You just lived with it. Or you got your ass kicked.
“Doctor Sullivan, where’s Bucky?”
“He’s still in school Ernest, but he should be home by the time we get there.”
“Ernest,” my dad said, “I have a surprise for you. We’re going fishing for Blue Fin Tuna off the tip of Cape Cod, thanks to Doctor Sullivan here.”
“NO WAY!” We’re going to Stellwagen Bank?” I jumped and started running around throwing my fists up. I was coming out of my skin. This trip was getting better and better. “This is so great!”
“Yes Sir, we’re going. You’re mother is going to kill me, but who cares, we’re going.” My dad made a worried face at Doctor Sullivan. ” Yes sir, we’re going and we’re going to celebrate your sixteenth birthday the right way! Sully wrote last week and said the Tuna are back and the Stripers are running in the Harbor. Their catching thirty five pounders on light fly fishing tackle rods off the beach in front of Doc’s house. And he said the tuna are over a thousand pounds and they jump out of the water chasing the bait fish.”
“No way! This is so so great.”
“I wanted to surprise you for your sixteenth birthday, I love you very much son.” He hugged me and starting crying.
Cathy and Doc Sullivan made sad faces and smiled at each other shaking their heads.
“That’s right Ernest, we’re going for the big ones so get plenty of sleep tonight we’re shipping out bright and early,” Doc Sullivan said.
“Is Cathy going too?”
“I wish I could Ernest, but this is a guy thing. Cathy said, “besides I have some family and friends in Boston that I need to catch up with.”
We jumped into the doctor’s brand new Ford Model T that a small Irishmen who looked and sounded like he just got off the boat drove.
From South Station to South Boston we may have seen one other car that day making our way over dirt roads and cobblestone streets to the Doctors Home, beeping at all kinds of horse and buggies to get out of the way. What a blast.
”It’s Doc Sullivan,” they all shouted out. “Hi Doc, Nice car. Can I have a ride,” the pretty girls would say,” driving up Broadway, we turned onto L Street and drove to the top and you could see the ocean from up there down in front of you sparkling with no waves.
At the bottom of the hill was Pleasure Bay with Castle Island just to the left of us.
“What’s that over there? I asked Doc Sullivan about the Island with the Fort on it.
”Why that’s Castle Island. And the Fort is the eighth to be built on the island. It contains over 172,687 linear feet of hammered granite extracted from Quincy quarry just on the other side of the Bay. The fortress was built under the guides of Colonel Sylvanus Thayer between 1834 and 1851.
“Who’s is that?” I pointed to the motor boat tied to the dock, “Is that yours too?”
“Yes it is.”
The boat looked like it was sitting in a glass wine. It was so beautiful, shinny and white, tied up to this massive narrow brand new dock that jetted out fifty yards into the bay. My dad and I stood there numb; we had never seen anything like it before. Sure you might read about a nice private ship back then but to see one in person with the sun shining on it in water that looked like blue glass was something out of this world.
The boat was a 62 foot American gasoline powered Motor boat, built at Morris Heights, New York and finished the year before in 1914. Doctor Sullivan had dedicated the boat to his late wife Margery who died in 1899 while giving birth to Bucky. He would never marry again. Doc had the named Madge II in big letters on the stern to remind everyone it was her ship. And she was his women.
“Boy, someone’s doing well for themselves.” My dad’s head was being squeezed by envy.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, there’s no money in Oak Park, or Chicago, or Milwaukee, or Detroit for a doctor. You’d be better off living in a hut in Africa treating the natives. At least in Africa you would have the greatest animals in the world to hunt and the people over there would treat you like a King.” (That was when I got stung by the African bug) Doc seemed to be getting a little mad at my dad. “There’s a ton of rich Jews in this town that need a good doctor and are willing to pay for it. I’ve told you a hundred times I can set you up with your own practice in Roxbury and you’ll make a fortune over night. Instead you’d rather waste you talent in the middle of nowhere USA.”
I could see my dad thinking, his eyes drifting off to the place where he hide his hopes and dreams. But unfortunately for Clarence he had his leg in a trap that my mother had set for him and no matter how hard he tried he never could get himself free.
He looked at his best friend John Sullivan and thought, I was the one with the dream and I let it slip though my fingers. Clarence Hemingway looked around at what his friend had carved out for himself, a home on the ocean, the new car and boat, a great kid and more tail then he knew what to do with. And what do I have? A horse and buggy and a wife as cold as ice.
I was looking at my old hands typing away and I thought about when my dad and I were up at the cabin fishing the lake. “Dad, do you ever think about the world and your place in it?”
“You are funny Bear,” he said, “everyone thinks about who they are and how great it would be to travel and be somebody. When I was very small, younger than you, I was going to be a Doctor and travel the world. Right after college your grandmother and grandfather gave me a ticket to China, and they begged me and begged me to get on that ship and sail.”
“No way,” I was thirteen at the time and I was so impressed by my father. He was rowing the boat and I was sitting on a board just under him pressed up against his leg listening, and he told me everything. How after college he was a week away from leaving and Grace got so mad because he was leaving and how she said he promised they would get married after college and how in her room, with her parents downstairs, things happen, and they happened again right after that. And the next day they happened again and again and again and it felt so good he changed his mind and decided to stay and marry her.
“And besides,” he side, “If I had gotten on that ship and gone to China you may not have been born and I wouldn’t have the greatest son in the world.
“Dad I love you.” I turned around and gave him the biggest huge.
I felt so sad for him whenever I thought about that time on the lake.
When we turned away from the boat in the ocean and saw the front of Doc’s home our jaws dropped…again. It was huge. I thought to myself this man has everything?
John Sullivan was a first generation Irish American whose parents come over from Belfast in 1866, a few years after the Civil War ended, to work in the textile factories in Fall River Massachusetts, but after landing at Ellis Island they found their way to South Boston and never left.
John was a very good student and did his undergraduate studies at Boston College before going to Rush Medical College in Chicago where he and Clarence were roommates and they soon became best friends.
I looked over the typewriter at the valley bending and rubbing my knees under the desk. I laughed out loud thinking of the great time I had in Boston with Bucky Sullivan the day before my sixteenth birthday.
Bucky was in the kitchen having a drink when we walked in with our bags.
“It’s about time,” he said, looking at me and he put his arm around my shoulder, “Let’s go,” and steered me out the back door.
“Don’t forget we’re leaving at three in the morning. It’s going to take all day to get to Stellwagen,”
“I know, I’m just going to show The Bear Man around,” Bucky said. “Don’t worry about us, pay attention to your own affairs.”
“What can I get you my good friend?” Doc said to Clarence.
“What do you have?” Clarence said, “Do you think the boy’s are going to be alright?”
“We’ve got Whiskey, Beer, Cigar’s, Cigarettes, morphine, women, you name it.”
Doc smiled, “It’s hard to tell. But let’s not let worrying about them ruin our night. They’re big strong young men who know how to fight. I’m hopeful they’re going to be alright and have a good time.”
Bucky stopped me on his massive new porch that rapped around the house and we listened to them in the kitchen. “Way to go dad.” Bucky said looking through the open kitchen window, before the last word left his mouth we were running off the porch for the beach.
“Nice going,” Clarence said to his friend.
“They don’t know what we where taking about. Listen, my good friend. Have I got a good night planned for us. Put those two right out of your head. We’ll be spending plenty of time with them tomorrow.”
“Morphine?” I said to Bucky, “Have you ever done Morphine?”
“No! And stay away from that junk. The only thing that stuff is good for is getting you sick and making you sleep all day.”
We ran up to the top of Broadway and met Bucky’s friends, Bucky stretched our plan on the dirt, and we ran for the Castle.

I looked at the clock, it was six in the morning when Mary came up behind me and started rubbing my shoulders. “How’s the story going?”
“Not bad.”
“Do you think you’re ready for something to eat?”
“I don’t know,” I said “I’ve got my dad sitting on my brain right now. I think I’m going to see if I can’t fix the rifle before I eat, if you don’t mind?”
“No, not at all.” She put her arms around my neck. “I’m so happy you’re home and writing about your dad. Today is going to be a good day. I can feel it. How’s about you fix the gun and I’ll clean the house and meet you back here in an hour?
“Deal.”
My blood was boiling walking through the mess on the first floor. The game room was a sty and there were empty beer bottles hidden everywhere.
I stood at my gun cabinet and looked at all my rifles covered with black carbine residue and I wished I had those sons of bitches there so I could let them have it. If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a thousand times to clean the guns before they put them away.
I grabbed the double barrel twelve gauge shotgun that my dad gave me at my sixteenth birthday party when we got back from our Boston trip.
I’m going to skip the mental breakdown my mother hand when we got back from Boston and walked through the kitchen door. She was wickeder than The Forces of Nature.
The craziest thing about that whole trip is that no one ever found out about it. It was the best secret I’ve ever kept.
I gave the rifle a good look and tried to open the barrel but it was jammed. I walked over to the back of the house with the rifle and pulled the overhead door open and got hit by the sun. I shielded my eyes and looked at the mountains blanketed with color, filled my lungs and I walked over to the edge of the lawn feeling good, especially when I heard Maggie the neighbors yellow Lab. bark behind me. I know she was running fast and going to try to knock me over so I turned down low, put the rifle down and she came running at me with her tail swinging. I was so happy to see her with a big stick in her mouth.
Just before she got to me she dropped the stick and jumped up on me and we rolled around on the edge of the lawn, and everything was perfect. “It’s so good to see you.” She was licking my face, standing on my chest. “I missed you.”
I grabbed the stick “You want to play? She was spinning around with me lying on my side propped up on an elbow with a big smile. “You’re such a good girl.” I was rubbing her head.
I threw the stick and she chased it while I picked up the rifle and tried to get the barrel unlocked, braced myself and pulled the trigger. “Sons of Bitches.” I yelled and its echoes bounced back from the valley with the dog looking up at me with the stick in her month. “One minute honey.” I looked down at her trying with all my might to open the barrel. “For crying out loud. What the hell did they do to this G.D. gun?”
Finally, I gave up and threw the stick way down into the valley. I stood there marveling at the dog’s athleticism racing down the slope through the brush hunting for the stick before I went back in the house.
As soon as I saw the mess a bolt of anger went through me. Now I was mad at everything; I was mad at the boys for having the party. I was mad at myself for getting out of shape. I was mad at my publisher for not agreeing to release the book in Cuba. I was mad!
I sat down next to the gun case breathing hard, trying to catch my breath, looking through the opened door at the valley past the lawn. I started taking long slow deep breaths, trying to get myself back to center. Trying to let it go. Trying to stay in the moment of that picture perfect day.
I remembered the rifle was standing up between my legs when the dog came running at me with the stick. I knew she was going to jump on me so I started to stand. She leapt in my lap and the gun fired.
When I look back at it, it must have been the dogs paw hitting the trigger that set off the rifle. Or maybe it was an act of God and it was my time.
Nonetheless; It was a big accident and I’m sorry if it caused anyone any pain.
I looked at the body on the floor and felt so relieved I would never be Ernest Hemingway again.
I waited there nervously for God.
At first it went the brightest blue you’ve ever seen before God came at me with a fury. And every punch he through had my name on it. He knocked my life as Ernest Hemingway this way and that way before he finally calmed down and put me in line.
I stood there in the short line with all the others before we started moving. And know one made a sound in there while we walked and waited in the hot, cold, dry, black desert filled with millions of screaming babies and every last one of us was scared out of our wits.
I stood there looking at all of them crying about their life’s while they pointed fingers at the things that made it all so hard, and all so bad, and all so wrong for them. It was the mother, the father, the wife, the kids, the booze, the butts. And it was all about not keeping the willpower. And it was all about not having the guts to get their glory. It was all sour grapes. And they wailed and they begged for another chance to live the way it took to get it right. “Let me prove myself like you know I can.”
And it was all about another shot of life for fear of their perdition.

At that time, Boston was in the middle of a heat wave and Harry was in his friend Al’s car with his head under the dashboard installing the radio.
Al was in the passenger seat handling the tools. A hand reached up blindly,
“Pass the tape – shit!”
“What?” Al stuck his head down and tried to see.
“I just skinned my G.D. knuckle.” Harry sucked on his hand, finished, pulled himself out and up and started fiddling with the radio knobs.
It was all static.
“What the hell. That son of a bitch Murphy better not have sold me a bum radio.”
“Relax, I’ll get it,” and Harry went back down and under and pushed and pulled at the wires until Elvis came out of the speaker in the dash.
“We have late breaking news,” the disc jockey broke in, “Ernest Hemingway is dead.”
“No shit, I wonder what happened.”
“Wait a minute!” Harry gave Al a mean face.
“According to the wire he shot himself in the head with a shotgun.”
“What a piece of shit!”
“The mother fucker quitter,” Harry slammed the steering wheel. “That pisses me off.”
Harry’s older sister waddled up the driveway nine months pregnant.
“Hey, Maria, Hemingway just killed himself.”
“I’m happy for him,” she kept walking.