OFF KEY WEST

“OFF-KEY” WEST

The small wooden boat sailed gently in from the west, atop amber waves under a falling red sun, ferrying on old man reluctantly returning from the sea. He made anchor alongside the rotting dock, coiled his ropes and furled his scrappy sail, and stepped ashore to greet a stranger known as me.

“Welcome back to Key West, Mr. Hemmingway,” I greeted him as he approached to shake my hand. “Welcome home.”

“First of all, this is no longer ‘home’, young lad. I am only here extending a professional courtesy, to speak to one who wishes me to speak.  And secondly, I’m also here because it’s been a while since last I had a good cold drink.”

He looked older than I had imagined. In silence we left the dock, and strolled leisurely north on Duval Street, amidst a sea of young and old, casual locals and gaudy dressed tourists, people with dreams lost and dreams still to be won. The thunder of motorcycles and the roar of jet airplanes overhead occasionally quelled the sounds of drunken revelry that engulfed the varied populace, all types from faraway places, but none as far as this old man returning from the sea.

Some of the multitude screamed into the night as they left the harbor of bars and taverns, and precariously navigated the crowded streets with drinks in hand. “WHOOOOO!” and “OH YEAH!” and “PARTY!” were their ignorant pleas.

“Look how they defile the English language” was the only comment he made, shaking his head in disgust.

We sauntered to the hangout of his youth, “Sloppy Joe’s Tavern” on the corner of Southard and Duval. There was a line for admission, and absent were his former associates and friends long since gone. So I suggested a small little bar around the corner, for some comradeship, coalescence, and conversation, and with the most unenthusiastic of nods he humbly agreed.

The place was a literal hole in a wall, five foot wide by ten feet deep, with a legal capacity of ten. A sign on the awning notes “reservations required”, but none are ever needed. It boasts of being the smallest bar in the United States, and no one disagrees.  

The place was empty, except for the bartender named Dan, who, along with the allure of two lone wooden stools, welcomed us to stay. The walls were painted in pastels of aqua, yellow and lavender, and littered with graffiti of quotes, rhymes and vulgarity, much like the scribbling often found on the bathroom walls of seedy bars. The desecration was even encouraged by the bartender, who would often hand his drunken patrons a felt tip pen.

“Everyone wants to be a writer,” Ernest sighed.

“Speaking of such, Mr. Hemmingway, tell me what are some of the major detriments to writing?”

“Politics, women, drink, money, and ambition,” he said with conviction. “And the lack of politics, women, drink, money, and ambition.”

I ordered a local pale ale and he a Coke.  I was surprised at his choice of beverage.

“I thought you were a renowned drinker?” I asked.

“That is all legend and lore, the product of uncreative reporters who add spice in lieu of prose to the bland stories they write.”

The bartender quickly served our drinks. Ernest took one taste and asked, “Where is the rum?”

“Sorry sir,” he replied, and added a rather healthy dose of Jamaican rum to the drink of the old sailor.

“So then you really do drink?”

“Drinking won’t kill me. Not living will.”

I hadn’t the heart to remind him that he had been dead since before I was born, so I took a sip of my beer and asked if he would like to visit his old house, where he spent nine fortuitous years in the Thirties, and penned many a novel.

“No,” he replied. “They turned that damned estate into a bloody museum. Can you believe it? The tourists flock there like sharks to the carcass of a wounded fish. Can’t get any privacy whatsoever.”

“I saw it today. It’s beautiful.”

He turned to me with disappointment in his eyes and sorrow in his voice, and remarked, “Aye, so you are ‘one of them’ too…”

  Right then I thought I lost him forever. I came to Key West for a little reprise from writing, to surrender to indulgence, and to visit the home of Hemmingway, hoping to gain insight and inspiration. But walking these streets with the silent old novelist, I knew this was not the Key West of old, the enchanted island he once adored. And now sitting beside him, with shoulders hunched and eyes gazed toward a strange horizon, I felt he would never truly reveal his most treasured thoughts. In his mind I was just a curious day-tripper who had taken a tour of the estate. Then he spoke.

“How about the urinal?”

“Excuse me?”

“The urinal at the house. In the garden. Is it still there?”

“Yes, it is” I replied, and with that his face smiled like a fiendish schoolboy and his heart started to grin. He told me the story of the urinal, how it was both a gift for his beloved multitude of cats as well as a symbol of defiance to his second wife Pauline. She had made the ill-fated decision to install a below ground swimming pool on the premises without his consent when he was conducting business one spring in Europe. At a cost of more than twice the price of the house, it drained nearly all of their savings, and was hardly ever used, since the salt water would perpetually turn rancid and need to be constantly drained. Then when Sloppy Joe’s was being moved from Southard Street to Duval, Hemmingway asked his friend and owner if he could take one of the tavern’s urinals which were being discarded. “Why on earth would you want that?” the owner asked, bemused. “Because I pissed hundreds of dollars in there through all my years frequenting your establishment, and I feel as though I paid for it already” was Hemmingway’s reply. Late one night he lugged the heavy porcelain artifact home and placed it in a grassy area beside the pool, filling it with water for his five dozen cats to drink. Being a woman of high society, Pauline was outraged, and demanded the urinal be removed from the property. “I’ll get rid of it when you get rid of the pool” he told her. Both the pool and the urinal stayed.

He ordered another rum and Coke and asked if I had seen the wine cellar. I nodded yes. Once again he told a story with an old man’s pride and a young boy’s glee.  When he was divorcing Pauline and moving to Cuba, he was in a quandary over what to do with his rare and precious collection of wines that he amassed on his travels throughout the world. He didn’t want to bequeath them to her, and was unable to bring them to Cuba because of the strict trade embargos. One day, when his soon-to-be-ex was visiting family on the mainland, he invited a few friends over for a “wine tasting”. Three days later, all the bottles were consumed without remorse.

It was past midnight now. The revelry in the streets continued unabated.

But aside from the melancholy of story-telling, a heavy air of despair still surrounded him.

“Do you know what bothers me the most?” he asked, as he downed his fourth drink, and with emphasis, placed the empty glass of ice upon the wooden bar. “I haven’t written a critically-acclaimed novel since The Old Man and The Sea.”

“Well you’ve been dead for over half a century,” I said in an attempt to console. “It’s understandable.”

“A mere triviality, my friend, but still no excuse. Once the passion is ignited, the flame forever burns inside.”

We finished our drinks and I paid the tab, happy to have shared his company, but still with an empty void unfilled by the much desired insight.  As we took to the street, loud tourists, oblivious to the greatness of this once great man, walked by in drunken ignorance. Then suddenly a great beam of brightness flashed upon Hemmingway’s face, and even I could see the magnificent glow of light.

“Follow the Light!” he said as if commanding, his eyes now beaming and a grin etched sturdily upon his face.

“Where?” said I.

“Home! The Light will take us home!”

I followed Ernest through dark side streets and around strange corners, past seedy bars and homeless persons. Then I saw the Light.

It was the beacon of the Key West lighthouse, and I remembered how the tour guide said earlier today that the Hemmingway Estate rested directly on a straight line between Sloppy Joe’s and the lighthouse, and after a late night of indulgence, all Hemmingway had to do was look for the flashing beacon to find his way home.

“What about the tourists?” I asked. “I thought you didn’t want to go back to your house because of the tourists?”

“We’ll sneak up the side street, and stay out of sight behind the tall iron fence. I want to see the cats.’

Sixty one polydactyl cats still live on the premises, roughly the same amount as when he called 901 Whitehead home. They are all the descendants of the very first six-toed feline he befriended on a fishing boat and brought to Key West seven decades ago. These great descendants welcomed him with purrs and tails raised high, rubbing themselves against his calves as if they had known the old man beyond the barrier of time. For nearly fifteen minutes he coddled and played with the cats, rolling and crawling with them in the dark shadows of the now gray lawn. He spoke words that were loving and gingerly. Finally he rose and spoke to me.

“It’s late. I must be getting on.”

We walked in silence for several long minutes. Then I asked him a question.

“Today I finished reading  ‘The Old Man and The Sea’. What does the giant marlin represent, as well as the sharks, and the fierce determination of the fishermen to risk life for the death of a fish?” I always believed a meaning hid everywhere and behind everything in life.

“Sometimes a marlin is just a marlin, a shark just a shark, an old man just an old man out at sea. Not everything has meaning. But everything has a purpose.”

The words echoed in my head as we approached the dock where I had first met him in the early part of night. Standing there in booming silence, he looked out at the vast sea with great yearning, his back to the little town he once called home. He appeared stronger now, and suddenly rejuvenated, younger in the late hours than he seemed earlier in the day. And he spoke to me for the last time.

 “To quote Thomas Mann, ‘you can never go home.’  Always look forward, old chum, with everything you decide to do.  Yesterday is only a memory. Never let the memories become greater than the dreams.”

Then the master wordsmith said to the fledgling writer, “And don’t read what the critics might write, or the listen to what the so-called enlightened ones wish to say. Trust your own convictions, the course you have set upon life’s great ocean. Cast logic and reason to the ocean tides, for you have no use for them. Your intuition and your heart are the only navigational tools you will ever need to get you where you wish to go.”

With a bit of wisdom delivered, he got into his old wooden boat, untied the mooring, unfurled his weather-torn sail, and took seat amongst sea worn wood, fraying rope, and graying oars, with a cold bottle of water and a brand new bottle  of rum.  

“And one more equally important piece of advice, my friend: never drink cheap rum.”

         With a wink and a grin, he rowed peacefully back into the black tranquil sea, eastward towards a rising moon and the other side of a dream.