Read Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost for Free Online

animal’s life.  Smaller fish . . . I still don’t much care.  As long as you’re going to put it to some kind of use, that’s fine.  Remember, Jack, the nervous system of a fish is not all that well developed, and it’s not a very deep thinker.  Sure a fish can be wary.  It can be anxious.  It can fight.  It can kill.  But it’s all about instincts, not about thinking things out.  They don’t have that capability.”
    Lifting one gnarled finger from the wheel now, pointing it to the two o’clock position, he then said, “See it on the horizon, Jack?”
    “No . . . I don’t see anything.”
    “Look harder.  It’s a boat coming our way, a ship, either a freighter or an ocean liner.  This is one of the busiest shipping lanes there is.  I’m surprised we haven’t seen anything up till now.”
    “ Ohhh yeah, I see it.  But it’s barely a speck.”
    “You spend the time out here I’ve spent you can tell what it is.  They won’t reach us for a good twenty minutes.  Anyway, getting back to what we were talking about—killing animals, mammals.  Am I sorry about killing them?  Let’s just say that near the end of my life, just before they ruined me with those frigging electro-shock treatments, I did get to the point where I preferred watching a majestic animal rather than taking it down.”
    “Kind of like the old hunter thing, huh?”
    “Exactly like the old hunter thing.”
    “I never dreamed that ‘The’ Ernest Hemingway would ever feel that way.”
    “ Hahhh ,” he laughed, “a lot of people back in the day, as well as today, would be damn surprised at how old Papa feels about a lot of things.”
    “Knowing you like I do after just a short time, I’m sure people would be stunned.”
    “Well, thanks friend , ” he said looking at me over the rim of the eyeglasses he’d put on a few minutes earlier.  “What did you think of me before we met?”
    “Oh hell, I don’t know how to answer that.”
    “ Malarky !   Now spill it Twinster .”
    “ Twinster ?   What’s this Twinster stuff?”
    Looking at my forehead now, nodding at it, he said, “Once that nasty gash heals, you’re going to have a damned good scar.  Whether you go cloud dancing, stay down here or whatever, it’s going to look an awful lot mine,” he said, tapping his twice.  “That’s why I called you Twinster .”
    “Hey,” I blurted then, “you know something?  That ship, it’s getting closer now.  And it seems to be heading right for us.”
    “We have plenty of time to . . . ,” then he stopped right there.  Something was weird.  He acted as if he suddenly had a premonition or a revelation.
    “Son of a gun!   You know what, Jack?  I just realized something.  We have plenty of time to get out of this cruise ship’s way, but whoever’s running it can’t see us.  Nobody can!”
    “What are you talking about, they can’t see us?”
    “ Come on man!   Think about it.  Is He going to let the world see the Pilar back out on the ocean?”
    “I’ll be damned.  Of course not.   That’s freaking amazing, but how does He . . . ?”
    “It’s called supreme visual deception.  I heard about it upstairs.  He can put anything he wants down here, could be a mountain big as Kilimanjaro, if He doesn’t want it to be seen, it isn’t.  Amen.  Done deal.”
    Shaking his head in awe, a small ironic smile on his lips, Ernest turned the wheel to the port side.
    Over the course of the next two hours, we saw a few yachts and freighters, another cruise ship, and one long yellow Cigarette boat that was hell-bent on going airborne.  We also saw more flying fish and a school of bonito that had churned three acres of the ocean’s surface into a white froth. 
    Even though we’d been standing in the shade of the cockpit the whole time, it felt like we were in the doldrums.  I don’t know how high the temperature got, but it was oppressively hot.  And it was humid.  It felt like a steamed-up locker