All I remember from that visit was watching The Big Sleep together, just the two of us alone at Owl Farm. We savored the impeccable dialogue, the cinematography, the acting.
Jen, Will, and I returned from England and Italy right about New Year’s Day. Because we had missed Christmas and New Year’s with Hunter, we were determined to see him soon. We had planned to go up in January, but in all the turmoil of our return, we had to reschedule for mid-February.
We arrived on a Friday night. It was late afternoon when we drove up the Roaring Fork Valley and a storm was moving through. As we passed Carbondale I pulled over a few times to take photos of the wispy clouds that were clinging to the hills along the highway, and to admire Mount Sopris, partially shrouded in cloud. When we got to Owl Farm I took more photos. The light was beautiful, the soft gray of a cloudy late-winter afternoon infused with a glow from the sun coming through the patches of blue sky. I took photos of the sunset and then of Owl Farm, which looked warm and safe with its windows glowing in the winter twilight.
On Saturday afternoon Will, who was six at the time, was eating his lunch at the end of the counter in the kitchen while Hunter sat on his stool. Hunter asked Will what he was studying in school. Will said he was studying mysteries. He said that a forensic scientist had come into his school the week before to explain what he did. Will asked Hunter, “Do you know what the difference between murder and suicide is?” Hunter said, “What?” Will said, “Suicide is self-kill.” Hunter said, “That is exactly right.” Will went on to explain how a forensic investigator could tell if a death by gunshot was a murder or a suicide based on the trajectory of the bullet. Then they had a conversation about Sherlock Holmes.
Saturday night started off well. Hunter insisted we watch a movie, The Maltese Falcon, one of his favorites. It was a quiet, peaceful time that bound Will, Jen, Hunter, and me together even though we weren’t having a conversation. He was calm and present. I sat in the chair at the end of the counter, Anita was in the wingback Hunter had stolen from a Ralph Lauren store, and Jen and Will were on the couch. The movie ended and there was contentment in the air. Good movies gave Hunter a respite from his worries, some baseless and others well founded, which haunted him most of the time. He was feeling playful and he pulled a pellet gun from a cabinet under the counter where he sat. He aimed across the room and through the living room doorway at a large Tibetan gong that he had received as a Christmas gift several years earlier. The path of the pellet was unnervingly close to Anita’s head where she sat, and unnerving her was the point. He was showing off his marksmanship, but that was never sufficient with Hunter. There had to be an element of unpredictability, of the potential for injury, arrest, and a scene for Hunter to be really satisfied. I experienced it countless times, and never got used to it. Hunter needed a straight man for his act, and tonight it was Anita. She protested but that only encouraged Hunter, and he squeezed off a round that passed in front of Anita and struck the gong squarely. Anita lost her temper, stood in front of him and began yelling, accusing him of recklessness, stupidity, and cruelty. She threatened to call the police, to have his guns taken away, and to have him put in a nursing home. She announced that she’d be sleeping in the guest room downstairs.
He and I began to talk. It was sometime that night when Hunter told me that he wanted me to have certain items when he died. He pointed to the silver medallion from Oscar that was hanging on the lamp on the kitchen counter, then to the old clock from his mother, the silver julep cups, then to the silver filigreed box from his grandmother. Then he asked me to take them with me when I left for Denver the next day, everything except for the medallion. I said, half joking, “Is there something I should know?” He mumbled or didn’t respond. I packed the cups, the filigreed box, and the clock into our basket of things.
Looking back, it seems so obvious that he was planning to kill himself imminently. These items were some of his most treasured, and he had not only been telling me that he wanted me to have them when he died, but he gave them to me that night. But there was no other way. When I asked him if there was something I should know, he could not have answered me truthfully. It would have created an impossible dilemma for us both.
This is a difficult truth for me to accept even now. I have told people that my only regret was that I didn’t ask him more questions, but the fact is that wasn’t the basis of our relationship. He didn’t want me to ask him questions about his childhood, about his greatest regret, his truest love, why his marriage to Sandy had failed, how he felt about his writing, his mother, his friends, Woody Creek, or sex. I wish I knew the answers to these questions, but that would not have created intimacy between us. It would have been an interview, it would have been probing for his soul, for the “real” Hunter S. Thompson. There was far more connection that November night a few months earlier when he and I watched The Big Sleep. It was something we shared together. There was no self-consciousness, no awkward and presumptuous soul probing, just our shared enthusiasm for a great movie.
I used to enjoy talking about politics with him because it was a topic we both cared very much about, and I knew enough to have an informed opinion. But the intimacy was not in the information we shared or in the opinions he expressed, and it wasn’t in any novel or contrary opinions of my own that I shared with him. I wanted to impress him with my knowledge and insight, but now I understand that all that really mattered was that we were talking together. We could have been talking about sheep farming or geologic timescales or plant fertilizer. Politics was a topic that we could talk about, but it wasn’t the content of the words, it was the act of having a conversation that connected us.
I could have regrets that we didn’t talk more, that I didn’t take his calls at three a.m. because I was just too damn tired. Had I answered the phone, though, I would have dreaded and then resented his calls and his rambling talk when I had to get up in two hours for work, knowing I would be exhausted for the next two days. Not taking these calls was an arrangement that worked for us.
In the same way, I avoided getting caught up in the endless dramas of his life. When I was younger, I would take these dramas seriously, worry about them, and try to fix them. I would offer solutions, but he didn’t want solutions. We would both get frustrated, I would give up, the particular drama would unfold or evaporate, and his life would go on its wild, bumpy, adrenaline-filled, dramatic course that he evidently preferred. I learned to keep a certain distance from the daily madness of his life.
That Sunday morning the three of us, Hunter, Jen, and I, stayed up for a while longer, and then Jen and I took Will next door to the guest cabin. It was time for Jen and Will to go to sleep for the night. I tucked them in, and Jennifer told me several times to pay attention. She said it was very important that I pay close attention to everything Hunter said and did that night. I replied that I would, not really understanding, but trusting her instincts. I returned to the house and talked with Hunter for another couple of hours.
By six a.m. I could no longer stay awake. I had been up almost twenty-four hours and I couldn’t focus. I was at the ragged end, and though he would sometimes offer me drugs to stay awake, in that way that gentlemen do when lighting up a cigarette in the presence of another, I always refused.
This was a line I would not cross. In the last few years I would have a beer with him while watching a football game, or late at night have a “biff,” a 2-1 mix of Chivas and Baileys Irish Cream, but that was the extent of my drinking with Hunter. I may have once had a hit off of a joint with him, but I was never a fan of marijuana because it made me stupid, and I wanted to be at my sharpest with my father. He had no patience for stupid people, even when they were female, young, and sexy. LSD was out as well. I had been a fan of acid in my youth, and I know it was perhaps Hunter’s favorite drug, but he never offered it, and I would not have taken it, certainly not with him. LSD is not a casual drug. It is a ceremonial drug. And I believe Hunter thought of it the same way. He called it “Walking with t
he King.”
I think Hunter preferred his family and lovers to be relatively drug-free. I think he was relieved each time I turned down the offered pipe or powder. I also think he considered the fact that I was not a drunk or drug fiend was a vindication of his parenting. That I emerged from that maelstrom of his own life appearing relatively normal filled him with wonder and pride.
That Sunday was a lovely winter day. The snow was deep and dazzling, the sky a pure blue. Jennifer and Will took advantage of the day to go sledding. The driveway up to our friend Ed Bastian’s house on the mesa was perfectly suited for sledding with several inches of new snow, slightly melted by the sun and southern exposure. They went up and down the driveway while I sat at the end of the counter with Hunter.
Around three p.m., Jen and Will came back inside, flushed and happy. Hunter and I took a break. Jennifer and Will got into the hot tub in the back room to warm up, then moved to the living room couch to play 20 Questions. Hunter was reading the paper and watching TV, I was taking pictures of a Gonzo mosaic that Jennifer had made for Hunter the previous year. It was just the three of us and Hunter, quiet and intimate, the four of us sharing the insular and warm peace of the house. I took the mosaic into the office to try to get some consistent light for the photograph. I heard a weird cry and a crack. I thought nothing of it. Hunter was famous for his peculiar vocalizations, and the thump was probably a book he had dropped or thrown.
I took the picture of the mosaic and walked out of the office to return it to its place in the living room. I looked over at Hunter in his chair and saw that his head was slumped forward on his chest. My first thought was that he had fallen asleep. I said his name. I became afraid, thinking perhaps he had had a seizure. In the last five years he had been suffering from them, a fairly common symptom of long-term alcoholism. I walked over to him, the mosaic still in my hand.
I don’t know exactly what I saw that told me he was dead. There was no blood except for a tiny trickle from his mouth.
I felt suddenly cold and began to tremble. I ran into the living room to get Jennifer. As I ran I thought something like, It has finally happened. I have expected and dreaded this day for years, and now it has happened. I babbled something to Jennifer. She came running with me; Will stayed on the couch. It wasn’t until weeks later that he told us that he had no idea what was happening. All he knew is that he had never seen his parents so scared.
We had to call the sheriff, Bob Braudis. We never considered calling 911. Hunter had put a sign on the refrigerator that had been there for years, “Do not call 911. This means you!” I grabbed the Rolodex and tried to find Braudis’s card, but I was trembling and I could barely focus. Together we found his card. Jennifer called his mobile phone.
We had brought Hunter gifts that weekend, including a reddish-orange, almost gold, silk scarf from Florence, Italy. I put it around his neck. It seemed important. I touched his head, and it was warm, but not hot as he normally was. His body was cooling. I held his head and cried out, then I kissed his head, and went back into the living room.
I suddenly had the notion that I had to mark this moment, this tectonic shift in our lives. I grabbed the nickel-plated 12-gauge shotgun from its corner in the kitchen, loaded it with as many shells as it would hold, and walked out onto the front porch. I pointed it in the air and shot each shell, one after the other. It was a salute to my father. I hadn’t planned this; it just seemed like the right thing to do. As I stood on the porch, I saw a sheriff’s deputy drive by on the road in front of the house. He turned his car around and pulled into the driveway. I took the shotgun back inside and set it down. The deputy came to the door. I assumed he had already gotten the call about Hunter, but maybe not. Maybe the shotgun blasts had gotten his attention instead. I told him what happened, and he came inside. He said, “I’d like to see the shotgun.” I pointed to where it was lying in the living room. I remember thinking, Does he think I shot Hunter?
I vaguely remember calling Anita on her cell phone and telling her that Hunter was dead. She cried out and began sobbing.
I remember looking at him sitting in the chair. I saw the .45 on the floor. It was in a pool of blood. What little blood there was had run down from his mouth, down his arm, and pooled on the floor right below his fingers. I remember how thick the blood looked, and how it seemed to have something else in it, some kind of clear or whitish fluid. I only looked at that pool for a second, but I will never forget it. Not ever.
Later I saw one of the deputies cleaning up the blood, and it occurred to me that there are so many mundane tasks after a death, things like cleaning up the blood, and laying the body out straight before it stiffens. I looked for a bullet hole above the stove. There was a deep crease in the metal hood over the stove where the bullet must have struck.
Then there were many people in the house. Deputies, Bob Braudis, the coroner. They laid Hunter on his back on the kitchen floor. At some point they put him into a long black plastic body bag and zipped it up. A grief counselor arrived and talked to Jennifer, Will, and me for a while. Braudis bear-hugged me and I felt like a boy.
At one point I remember standing around his body in the kitchen with the deputies and the sheriff. I poured biffs for all of us, and we toasted Hunter. Again, it seemed like the right thing to do.
It’s hard to describe how strange it was to see, three hours later, a news ticker scrolling across the bottom of CNN that read “Hunter S. Thompson has just died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound” as we stood next to his body on the kitchen floor in the bag. Now things became truly surreal. Two deputies blocked the driveway with their cars and stayed all night to keep people out. They stayed for several days.
Eventually the deputies loaded his body into the back of a Suburban. I found a boom box, one of his compilation CDs, “Where were you when the fun stopped?,” started the music, and placed the boom box in the back of the Suburban by Hunter’s body. The driver took him to Grand Junction, a two-hour drive from Woody Creek, for the autopsy, and he played the CD over and over all the way there.
By the next day, the news trucks were parked at the driveway entrance, their satellite antennas raised to the sky. Over the next few weeks, hundreds of letters poured in, most from people I did not know, expressing sympathy, and how Hunter’s life and writings had affected their lives.
I thought many times about the lack of blood and how peaceful he looked. His eyes were closed, he looked asleep except for the trickle of blood from his lips. When people heard that he shot himself in the head they assumed it was horribly bloody, like something you might see in the movies, or like Hemingway with the shotgun. But no, it was surgical, precise. I think about how much time he must have spent over the years planning exactly how he would kill himself. He had worked out what kind of gun, what kind of bullet, and where exactly to aim it so that there was no chance of surviving, and yet also so there would be minimal blood. The deputies recovered the slug. I still haven’t seen it. I imagine it’s in an evidence locker somewhere in the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office.
—
A CLOUD OF GRIEF descended. I have scattered memories of scenes, incidents, but I don’t remember times. Was it a day, a week, or a month? I don’t remember. I saw many people, but I don’t remember who. I remember the sanctuary of the cabin where Jennifer, Will, and I could be alone. I remember a children’s grief therapist in Aspen, I remember sitting around the big round table in the living room with some of Hunter’s old friends trying to plan the memorial. I remember Jennifer and me being interviewed in the cabin by the Rocky Mountain News, and how carefully we chose our words. Jennifer took care of me: she bought me some clothes since we had only planned on a short weekend, she answered the phone, made sure I ate, kept the reporters away, and made sure the cabin was a sanctuary for the three of us.
That first week there was so much to deal with, so many decisions to make, and somehow we made them. Then everything became cloudy. I took a month off of work, slept a lot, took long baths, wan
dered around in a stupor. I returned to work, but I can’t remember much at all. I was barely functioning, and only after nine months was my brain mostly back to normal. I didn’t need concentration or memory, though, to help plan the funeral. It had to be both spectacular and true.
TEN
THE FUNERAL
TO HIS CLOSEST FRIENDS, to his brother Davison, to Deb, to me, and to his grandson, Hunter was a man, and it was the death of that man we loved that we grieved because we would not have his presence again.
To others who knew him through his writing or through stories about him, he was a symbol, a physical manifestation of a spirit of rebellion. He made excessive drug use a part of his public persona. He expressed a ferocious idealism and a willingness to make his point using hyperbole and vicious satire. He was a literary freedom fighter who inspired either admiration or rage depending on your allegiance and perspective. He either was Jesus in the temple, raging at the money changers, or he was the devil himself.
He was also the truth teller, the shaman, the witch doctor, the outsider whose bizarre and unconventional behavior was tolerated because of his role in the tribe as the intermediary between our world and the realm of the gods who would give to us, through him, wisdom, special powers, benedictions, warnings, or curses.
In Aspen he was the fierce elder warrior chieftain to whom the community looked to enforce justice. The Lisl Auman case, in which a young woman was wrongfully sentenced to life in prison because a crazy acquaintance shot and killed a Denver police officer, is a perfect example. An injustice was brought to his attention. The more he looked into it, the clearer it became. At some point he took it on as his cause, he rallied his warriors, in this case lawyers, journalists, and celebrities. After a long, difficult campaign that eventually went to the Colorado Supreme Court, his warriors were victorious, Lisl Auman’s conviction was overturned, and she was freed. Was he solely responsible? Of course not. There were many people who each did their part to ensure the victory, but without his leadership and inspiration, his determination to see justice done, and his ability to persuade others to see the importance of the cause, it wouldn’t have happened.
Stories I Tell Myself Page 21