Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  He was seemingly wrestling with the notion of abandoning the biographical form in favor of an historical novel about Papa. Richard had tried his hand at fiction as a young man—dense, strange novels that never found a readership. Was this some form of midlife crisis? A bid to try again what he had failed at as a young man? It made no sense at all—Richard had won awards for his Hemingway nonfiction. Novelizing Hemingway’s life could only detract from Richard’s scholarly standing.

  And Richard was engaging in furious research, more than could ever be freighted by a novel. Even now, Richard was at the Ketchum Cemetery, trying to find the name of the man or men who had dug Hemingway’s grave.

  “We know the name of the guy who dug Faulkner’s hole,” Richard had said, “but who dug Hemingway’s grave?”

  “But surely that was Papa himself?” Hannah had chirped, smiling crookedly and sheepishly shrugging.

  But Richard hadn’t smiled.

  Prof. Paulson left without a good-bye.

  The phone rang, startling her.

  “Hello?”

  The voice was husky and almost feminine: “Tell your husband to drop it. Hear? Tell Richard to give up and go the fuck home.”

  She frowned, listening to the hard breathing on the other end of the line, her heart racing.

  What in the name of God?

  Hannah remembered the stranger spying on them in the restaurant, following them back to the lodge, and later, watching their room in the parking lot.

  But she couldn’t reconcile the face and the voice.

  A woman was on the other end of the line—Hannah was nearly certain of that—but a woman with whiskey-soaked, three-pack-a-day pipes. As Hannah was deciding whether to hangup or threaten the caller with a complaint to the operator, the voice said:

  “Go home, or be sent home in a box.”

  “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

  — Dorothy Parker

  9

  THE LOST CHAPTER

  “It’s the pits, I know, but thanks for meeting me here,” Hector said. “The lodge is lousy with your would-be peers.”

  “You must feel like you’re in hell, Hector.” Dexter Evans was a Hemingway scholar from Northwestern University. He sipped his beer and looked around the dark interior of the dank, Ketchum watering hole. “None of my colleagues will ever come here,” the professor said.

  “Exactly,” Hector said. “No scholars munching on scones and sipping Darjeeling tea and pontificating about the death of the novel, or the death of the author, or some goddamn thing about ‘the accidental narrative’ whatever that is. They do so much talking, I’m surprised they have time to write anything themselves. I’m not much of a Frost fan, but old Bob once told me something I’ve liked as poets’ remarks go. Bob said, ‘Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.’ Old Bob called it right, and that’s for sure. But this dive, it’s a place where I can write without one of your cronies asking me about Key West, or about Gellhorn and Madrid.”

  “It’s bad?”

  “It’s incessant,” Hector said sourly. “It’s terrible. But as I’ve promised you, Dex—you get my Hemingway memories and only you get ’em for publication. I mean, apart from whatever drivel I put out there in my so-called keynote speech.”

  “You written that speech yet, Hec?”

  “Still have a couple of days to procrastinate. I’m workin’ on it.”

  “Can’t wait. Curious what you’ll say.”

  “Me too.”

  “You’re looking good, Hec. Better than you’ve looked in years.”

  Hector smiled. “They say stars shine brightest just before they burn out. And when was the last time we crossed paths?”

  “November, 1959.”

  “Well, ’fifty-nine was a very hard year for me. ‘Fifty-eight, too. Hell, 1957 was a fucking killer.”

  Dexter squeezed Hector’s arm. “Okay, I take it back about what I said a second ago—that younger guy over in the suit. He doesn’t fit in here. Could be an academic.”

  “Not with the cut of that suit and his hair,” Hector said. “I know him. He’s my own personal FBI tail. Named Andrew Langley. We chat from time to time. Well, I talk to him. He pretends not to hear me. Not much sense of humor in young Andy, there.”

  Dexter swallowed hard. “FBI? Really?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “You’ve always been apolitical, Hec. If anything, you seem to be regarded as a rock-ribbed conservative. Why would the Bureau be watching you?”

  “Hell, why are they watching any of us? But the Feds are doing just that…spying on Steinbeck, Thomas Mann and scores of others. Then there was that stuff in ’fifty-eight that seemed to draw me official and ongoing interest. Some things that went down in Nashville, then spread wide. A story for another time.” Hector sipped his drink and said, “Listen, Dex, reason I wanted to meet with you—”

  “The alleged manuscripts,” Dexter said. “Sí?”

  “Sí. What’s the story? What’s the true gen, to borrow a Hem phrase?”

  “Not real clear. Carlos has been named the official biographer.”

  “I heard,” Hector said. “He’ll do an unremarkable but competent job. And I suppose that’s Mary’s aim in selecting him—no surprises.”

  “Exactly. Carlos is just getting access to the posthumous stuff. Can’t quote from it, but he can characterize it. Loosely summarize it.”

  “Hem really wrote a book about me?”

  “He really intended to write a book about you. Nearly as I, or nearly as Carlos can tell, based on what he’s confided to me, the manuscript, if it exists, hasn’t surfaced. The working title was All Things Toil to Weariness.”

  Hector frowned. “Not enticing. And it sounds familiar. What’s that from?”

  “The Bible,” Dexter said. “Ecclesiastes. Same passage that gave Hem’ The Sun Also Rises.”

  “Sounds like a fucking downer.”

  Dexter hoisted his beer. “Menken said, ‘Character in decay is the theme of the great bulk of superior fiction.’”

  Hector scoffed: “Wonder how that cocksucker Menk’ would have felt if somebody had written a novel about Menken’s character in decay. Jesus.”

  “Take heart, Hector. The manuscript hasn’t surfaced. We only know of Hem’s intent from notes left on a holograph of the chapter he wrote about you for A Moveable Feast.”

  Hector nearly spit out the swig of single malt he was in the process of swallowing. “What? Last time we talked that chapter seemed a rumor, too. It really exists?”

  “I’ve seen it. Read it, actually.”

  “Christ, I need to see it, Dex. I need to read it. What’s the thing say?”

  “Nothing too damning…more portentous. A teaser for the novel, you might say. Nothing to hurt your reputation. Nothing there to get you sued. As the portraits in A Moveable Feast go, which can be acid, as you know, this sketch is mostly fond. You’ll fare relatively well if it sees print.”

  Hector shook his head. “‘Relatively well.’ That’s damning with faint praise given the knifing Hem gave Scott…gave Dos…gave poor Ford. I need to see this chapter on me. Hell, I’m owed a look.”

  “Not sure Mrs. Hemingway would agree. Mary’s talking of an omnibus of uncollected, unfinished or unprinted bits of Papa’s works. Fragments and such. This would be perfect for that.”

  “How do I reach Carlos?”

  Dexter shook his head. “He’d never give it up to you, Hector. He’s under so many strictures and cautions and legal impositions regarding the official biography, he couldn’t risk leaking you a copy. And he wouldn’t do it under any circumstance. Too much the prig.”

  “Great.”

  “But, fortunately, I have a Photostat. I’ll give it to you on condition you’ll never tell anyone you had it, and that you’ll destroy it immediately after you read it.”

  Hecto
r smiled meanly. “That last I can promise.”

  Dexter winked and slipped a folded envelope from the pocket of his suit jacket. “Here you go.”

  Hector snapped it up. “You’re a prince among scholars,” he said.

  “Now who’s damning with faint praise?” Dexter sipped more beer. “Read it later, yes? Somewhere where you can burn the bastard — not get all foggy with drink and maybe leave it here.”

  “Fat chance.”

  “It’s pithy, like most of the sketches in A Moveable Feast, but not without interest,” Dexter said, licking the beer froth from his lips. “Most of that interesting stuff is to be found in the margins. Those comprise Hem’s notes for this novel about you that he planned. It’s crazy stuff. Guess Hemingway must really have been out of his head there at the end.”

  “Yeah? What’s the gist?”

  Dexter smiled crookedly, looking dubious. “Something about you and Hem and these murders tied to surrealist painting and photography.”

  Hector’s stomach kicked. Hector was writing that very book—only he was calling it Toros & Torsos. And Hector was writing the “novel” with an eye toward self-protection, obfuscation and revenge.

  “Can you believe it?” Dexter said, “I mean, conceptually, it sounds crazy as hell.”

  Hector chewed his lip and forced a smile. “Damned if it doesn’t.”

  ***

  Returning to the Sun Valley Lodge, Hector drifted toward the lounge, thinking he’d get a drink and read the chapter Hem had written about him.

  He stopped in his tracks. Two men were sitting at a corner table, engaged in intense discussion. One was the scholar Hector had seen the other night—the one he’d held the door for who’d been accompanied by the pretty, pregnant blond.

  The other man was Donovan Creedy. It had been many years, but Hector recognized Creedy well enough after all.

  The FBI agent hadn’t spotted Hector yet. Hector covered his face with the folded manuscript and backed into the lobby.

  “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

  — Winston Churchill

  10

  COMMAND PERFORMANCE

  Richard was passing the front desk, returning from the cemetery and a last, preparatory meeting with the man, when the desk clerk said, “Mr. Paulson, I have a note you’re to call Mrs. Hemingway immediately. She said you have the number.”

  Cursing, Richard began patting pockets. He certainly hoped he had the phone number on him. He didn’t want to make the call in front of Hannah…didn’t want her overhearing Mary’s end of the conversation.

  Even over the phone, the old bitch was typically raw and demanding. Foul-mouthed and given to giving orders. She treated Richard as though the time she was allotting him to interview her for her biography was done as some kind of favor to him…like he was a flunky. Mary made it all sound like a tedious imposition, but, hell, she was the one who initiated the project, after all.

  Well, more or less.

  Richard had put out feelers for an interview with Mary for a bigger Hemingway book, but then Mary had come back at him with this counter proposal: “You can have my whole story, Dick. You, and just you gets it. But it’s my story you’ll write. My life.”

  They had barely signed the papers for that authorized biography when the salty, boozy old bitch announced she was concomitantly working on her memoir. Two-faced old whore.

  Richard unfolded the stained cocktail napkin with Mary’s number written there and dialed. He expected some assistant to answer, but it was Mary at the other end, already slurring at this hour of the morning. Already at the Bloody Marys, the lush.

  The thought of a morning pick-me-up made Richard wet his lips. He could go for a screwdriver—get his Vitamin C that way.

  Mary said, “Today when you come up, I’m thinking I want you to bring that gal of yours along. Your wife, I mean. The pretty little blonde.”

  Richard scowled. Why would Mary want Hannah along? He tried to remember what he’d told Mary of Hannah. Had he ever given Mary a physical description? They’d talked a few times, both of them worse for alcohol, so maybe he had said something about Hannah’s looks. Hell, he must have.

  He shook his head, said, “She’s pregnant. Very, very pregnant, so I don’t know if she’ll have the stamina to—”

  “Nonsense,” Mary said. “She’ll be taking it easy in a chair. Besides, Hannah writes a little herself and I think it might be good to have a woman to help you with telling my side of the story. Some of the stuff only another woman will grasp. I don’t trust a man, working alone, to do me justice. I see this as a partnership between you and your wife, Richard. I see Hannah as, well, as a kind of interpreter or bridge between you and me. A pathfinder for you when it comes to dealing with some of my more complex sides. I know how you Hemingway scholars are—it’s all Papa Papa Papa. Jesus, I don’t want to get lost in my own book.”

  Richard had to stifle a guffaw at that. Complex sides? The old bitch was an open book, so far as Richard was concerned. Mary was a middling journalist and camp follower who used her body to break stories during World War II. She had a middling prose style, a middling intellect and middling college training. Hell, she came from a middling wide spot in the road.

  Richard couldn’t conceive of any phase of Mary’s personality or aspect he couldn’t easily grasp. The notion he needed Hannah riding shotgun for insight into another woman’s personality was not only daft, it was fucking insulting.

  Richard said, “I really think Hannah needs her bed rest now. The baby is our first priority. It’s the most important thing in our world right now.”

  The expected words. He thought he’d delivered them with what sounded like raw passion.

  “Hannah’s fine, Dick. Sturdier than you think.” Mary paused, then said, “I really have envisioned this as a package deal, Richard. There are other scholars with writer wives in town, you know. I could ask one of those writing couples if you don’t think Hannah will go for it.”

  “How do you know Hannah writes? How do you know anything about her?”

  He could hear the smile in Mary’s voice: “This is my town, Dick, I hear things.”

  Richard kicked the bottom of the front desk, startling the clerk. Smiling through gritted teeth, Richard said, “No, it’s fine. I will have Hannah there. I just want it clear—this is my book. I don’t work in collaboration.”

  Mary said, “I’ll be very much looking forward to meeting Hannah today. Please tell her that.”

  “The writer’s very attempt to portray reality often leads him to a distorted view of it.”

  — Gabriel García Márquez

  11

  ECHOES

  Hector had ordered a bottle of Rioja Alta and he sat in the parlor of Suite 206, legs stretched out on the sofa and a big fire going. He had tuned the radio to a station that played only classical music. He lit a cigarette, sipped his wine and then carefully unfolded the copy of what was purported to be Hem’s lost A Moveable Feast chapter and began to read….

  BOOK TWO:

  A MOVEABLE FEAST

  (THE LOST CHAPTER)

  CHRISTMAS EVE AT LE SELECT MONTPARNASSE

  It was another winter, the first since we had returned from Toronto, and money was even tighter than it had been the previous year and now it was Christmas Eve and I had not yet found a gift for my wife or for our child. Our money was mostly going for little chunks of charcoal or sometimes for some wood and for food for our baby. I was eating one meal a day so my wife could eat two. Because we were then very poor I had stayed away from writing in the cafés to save money and it had been several days, perhaps even a couple of weeks, since I had had a real drink.

  I found Hector in Le Select, where we’d agreed the previous night to meet. It was just after ten and we’d both finished our mornings’ writing. It was Christmas Eve and both of us being from the states, Christmas was still an important holiday for us. Hector was an only child from coastal Texas, so maybe Christm
as was a little less important for him than for me. But only just a little.

  I had grown up in the Midwest. There we had lived with seasons and Christmas was snow and family and a tree in the parlor. Christmas was gift exchanges and church services and the women of the family around the piano…a good fire and holiday food that always left one feeling too full and a little sick and perhaps even a little ashamed for having eaten too much.

  I thought of the Christmases past that morning with Hector and thought I wouldn’t have felt ashamed, at least not that morning, for having a too-full or at least even a full stomach.

  “Lasso” was tall and slender and the one of us around the quarter whom Gertrude—whose authority on such matters one might be forgiven for doubting—insisted could have had a career in cinema with his “good looks and rich baritone” and “athletic bearing.” He had a good smile and dimples and the palest blue eyes that would have been striking in a woman’s face, or an actor’s. But Hector was not a woman and he was not a cinema star (and some would say, not even a true or at least an honest writer, though some might later call him a credible actor).

  But he was then a good and loyal friend and he was celebrating a book contract and so I could kid myself he was buying the drinks in celebration that morning and not treating me. Hector was writing for the crime pulp magazines back home, and making good money. Everyone called him a crime writer but he was really a writer who wrote stories with crime and the best of his stories might have fit well in a collection of stories such as “The Killers,” if I had yet written that story. Or with many of Faulkner’s short stories with criminal or rather crime elements.

  But Hector was publishing his stories with some regularity then, and he had recently sold the first of his first fine crime novels. He had some money and he was thinking of moving out of the Quarter and perhaps even away from Paris. He spoke of perhaps going back home and to the Florida Keys where, he insisted, the living was even cheaper than in Paris and where it was so warm, all the time, that the houses didn’t have fireplaces or even radiators.