The Consequences of Being Ernest

By Tom Hawks

Merriam Press Fiction Series. A dark, sad, comedic, fictional account of a man who believes he is the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway. "Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Hemingway died on July 2, 1961, at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, from a self-inflicted wound to the head. "I was born on May 2, 1962, in Oak Lawn, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, exactly 10 months to the day after Hemingway's death. "My name is Edsel Michael Hunter. My father, who worked in the automobile industry in Chicago, named me after a failed automobile. I suppose I was doomed from the start, as the very word 'Edsel' became a popular symbol for failure in American society, and I was destined to be its poster child. "I have a confession to make. For better or worse, I am the reincarnation of the great twentieth century American writer, Ernest Hemingway. You may not believe it, but I know it's true. And, no, I am not insane..."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Merriam Press
• Release date: Jan 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781576384800

Tom Hawks

Tom Hawks was born and raised in the Chicago, Illinois area. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice Sciences from Illinois State University and is also a graduate of the Chicago Police Academy. He has worked as a Police Officer in the Chicago area and in private security, prior to entering the Casino Gaming industry, as a Casino Surveillance Director and Regulator. Tom has lived and worked for over two decades in the casino surveillance and gaming regulatory fields for both commercially-owned Casino Hotel Resorts, as well as, Native American Tribes, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana. He is an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction in U.S. history, military arts and sciences, law enforcement, crime, criminology, leadership principles, Native American philosophy and Zen Buddhist philosophy. He considers himself to be a writer, philosopher, a student of Native American history, culture and philosophy and a student of Zen Buddhist history, culture and philosophy. He is also a modern-day cowboy, a poet, a peaceful warrior and a student of life. He believes that he was destined to be a writer, a philosopher, a Buddhist monk, a hermit, a Mountain Man or all of the above combined. He is a simple man with a simple plan, who proudly lives and will proudly die by The Code of the West. Tom’s life heroes and mentors include: his dad, his son, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, the legendary Lakota Sioux warrior Crazy Horse, Henry David Thoreau, singer/song-writer/novelist and Calypso poet Jimmy Buffett and every dog and horse he has ever had the pleasure to share his life with. Tom has lived in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Illinois. He currently resides in Arizona. His philosophy and way of living his life can be summed up in one word: Simplify. Author note: Tom Hawks died in November 2017 at his own hand after an extended period of depression. He will be forever missed by his readers and those who knew him as the man he was.

Book preview

The Consequences of Being Ernest

The Consequences of Being Ernest

Tom Hawks

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Fiction No. 3

Bennington, Vermont

2016

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First eBook Edition

Copyright © 2016 by Tom Hawks

Additional material copyright of named contributors.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The views expressed are solely those of the author.

ISBN 9781576384800

This work was designed, produced, and published in the United States of America by the Merriam Press, 133 Elm Street, Suite 3R, Bennington VT 05201.

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Notice

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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Dedication

To my father, who taught me that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

To my mother, who taught me if you can dream it, you can do it.

To my wife, who’s hung in there and stayed with me through this wild, crazy, and, often times, bumpy ride. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

To my son, who is the great pride of my life. Please always remember, and never forget: Carpe diem; seize the day. It’s your turn now.

To my great uncle, Charles Denman, who bravely fought for his country on the European front during World War II and lived to tell about it.

To Jimmy Buffet, whose Calypso poet songs, lifestyle, philosophy, attitudes and latitudes have had a profound impact on the way I’ve lived my life.

To Joseph Marshall III, whose American Indian oral and written story-telling traditions, history lessons and spiritual wisdom have affected and influenced me deeply to a higher level of understanding and thought on the meaning of being a man, a warrior, a leader and a compassionate human being.

To Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), for being the voice and the great-grandfather to all of our kindred spirits.

And, finally, to Ernest Miller Hemingway, for showing me the way.

A dark, sad, comedic, fictional account

of a man who believes he is

the reincarnation of Earnest Hemingway.

Introduction

Tubac, Arizona, July 2, 2014, Population 1191

This is the end. Or maybe it’s just another beginning. The American Indians believe that life is not a straight linear line from birth to death, but, rather, life is a circle with no beginning and no end. They call it The Circle of Life; like the change of the seasons, one moves in life from spring to summer to autumn to winter, and back around to be reborn and start over again. I know this to be true, because it is happening to me now, just as the Creator of all things has planned it to be. My soul is just along for the ride. I know it is my destiny to fulfill.

It is a cold, clear star-filled night in the high Sonoran desert of southeastern Arizona, as I sit alone in my small, crumbling desert-sand colored adobe shack on the edge of a tiny artist community named Tubac. The irony is not lost on me that it will end here, in a town named after a Tohono O’odham Nation American Indian word, Tchoowaka, legendarily translated into English as meaning, The Place of Rotting Corpses.

I’m sitting in my great-grandfather’s antique rocking chair made of cherry wood and wicker. It was made in the 1890s, so it’s about one-hundred and twenty years old; about as old as I feel at this point in my sad, dreary life. I am fifty-two years old, going on one-hundred and twenty.

I have my chair pulled up close to the old, beehive fireplace, with my long legs and large feet propped up close to the flames of the smoldering mesquite wood.

The deep, strong wood scent lingers through the house, as does the smell of sage.

Several generations of my family were rocked to sleep in this chair as a baby, the last being my own son, who is now a young man himself, living a life of adventure, just as his father once did. Live hard, work hard, play hard and die hard. That is what a man is born to do.

Across my lap rests one of my few prized possessions; a model 1894 Winchester 30-30 western carbine rifle, with its saddle ring still intact. It was made before the beginning of World War II, in 1940. I marvel at the simple beauty of its craftsmanship, as it sits before me, all clean, oiled up and ready for its intended purpose; to kill. It is truly a work of art to behold.

I open the lever-action rifle and place one three inch long brass and lead 150 grain power-point cartridge into the chamber. I close the chamber and slowly pull back and cock the hammer. I place the butt of the gun on the dirty carpeted floor, as I lean forward in the chair and place the end of the barrel to my forehead. All that is left to do in my life is one simple action; to pull the trigger.

Do I have the guts? Am I who I think I am? If I am, then there is only one choice left to make to finally prove it once and for all to myself and to the world. I look into the mirror on my wall to my left, and I see him. I think to myself that now I know what he must have truly felt in those last final moments. I smile as the words of William Shakespeare are spoken out loud from my dry mouth in a raspy and tired voice I barely recognize as my own, Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.

Chapter 1: The Heart is a Lonely Man Named Hunter

It does not require many words to speak the truth.

—Chief Joseph, Nez Perce

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Hemingway died on July 2, 1961, at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head that blew off half of his face and the back of his head.

I was born on May 2, 1962, in Oak Lawn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, exactly ten months to the day after Hemingway’s death.

My name is Edsel Michael Hunter. Yes, my father, who worked in the automobile industry in Chicago at the time, named me after a failed automobile. I suppose I was doomed from the start, as the very word Edsel became a popular symbol for failure in American society, and I was destined to be its poster child.

I have a confession to make. For better or worse, my name is Edsel Michael Hunter, and I am the reincarnation of the great twentieth century American writer, Ernest Hemingway. You may not believe it, but I know it’s true. And, no, I am not insane.

So this is my story, and I’m sticking to it. You may be skeptical now, as I was too at the beginning, but you will slowly realize that everything I am going to tell you is true; every damn word of it. So, like the bumper sticker says, Get in, sit down, shut up, hold on, and go along for the ride. It gets a little wild and bumpy, at times along the way, like everyone’s life does, but I guarantee that you will enjoy the tale.

Like I said, it all started for me on May 2, 1962, in the Chinese year of the Tiger. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, and America was enjoying the surreal fairytale days of Camelot. But it was all about to turn to shit.

The country was on the verge of being pulled into the muck and turmoil of the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia, and President Kennedy, himself, was about to have his own head blown off. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested later that afternoon and charged with the murder that night. However, justice would be swiftly served in the name of one Jack Ruby two days later, who shot and killed Oswald before a trial could take place. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed with the conclusion that Oswald fired the shots that killed the president, but also concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, a mystery that was never completely solved or proven. A man’s death, it seems, just like his life is never simple. Death remains a mystery to us all, until it comes knocking one day on our own door.

Meanwhile, the country would soon spend the next ten years embroiled in a senseless and politically-motivated civil war that killed over 58,000 of America’s youth and deeply divided and disjointed the entire population of the United States for years to come. The art of war, it seems, is no art at all. Art is beautiful, not horrific. Art is life, not death. However, in the United States of America, we have quickly sky-rocketed to fame as one of the most violent societies in the history of the world, where death chases folly, and folly chases death. And the chase never ends.

Chapter 2: Haunting Waters

There is no death… only a change of worlds.

—Chief Seattle, Duwamish-Suquamish

I would experience my own first brush with death at the ripe old age of two. As a boy, just like Ernest Hemingway, I was inherently attracted to water at an early age. In my first encounter with water, I attempted to launch my sailboat, a small piece of plywood I had found in my dad’s garage, into the deep blue depths of our backyard swimming pool.

My oldest sister, Carole, luckily happened to see me launch my little vessel and watched in horror as I immediately sank to the bottom of our pool. My sister, reacting quickly, ran to the deck of the pool, and seeing me helplessly hovering along the bottom rapidly running out of breath, dove into the pool and brought me back up to the surface. She lay me on the deck on my back and immediately began pushing up and down on my chest, until I spit up a lung full of pool water and turned on my side, coughing, choking and finally catching my breath. My big sister, Carole, saved my young hide, and she has never let me forget it, even though I was too young to remember the whole affair. It was a perennial favorite at story time at family get-togethers and holiday parties for years to come. The story becoming more dramatic and my sister more heroic, as the years went by. To tell you the truth, sometimes, I think she pushed me in.

To quote Norman Maclean, as he so gracefully wrote in the last line of his 1976 masterpiece novella, A River Runs Through It, to this day, I am haunted by waters.

Chapter 3: The Young Man and the Sea

There is no one who does not eat and drink, but there are few who can really know flavor.

—Confucius

After that brief near-fatal drowning incident in my own backyard pool, I led a fairly normal childhood growing up in suburban Chicago. It wasn’t until the sixth grade, when I was twelve years old, that things began to get weird.

I was forced to attend a Catholic grade school by the name of Saint Michael’s, and I was assigned by my ancient English teacher, Sister Mary Morris, an eighty- year-old can of whoop-ass dressed in a Catholic Flying Nun’s penguin suit, to read Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, The Old Man and the Sea, and complete a book report and speech on the book and it’s author.

I read the short book over one weekend, and was enthralled by the character; Santiago, the old Cuban, and his triumphant battle with the massive sword fish out past the Gulf Stream in his tiny skiff all alone. It was a simple, yet epic story of man against fish, man against nature, and man against himself. Santiago won the battle against the fish after three long days and nights at sea, only to lose the ensuing battle with the many sharks as they attacked, battered, ate and destroyed the flesh of the eighteen foot long sword fish tethered to the side of the old man’s boat, as he sailed back to his home in Havana Harbor.

By the time he pulled the small boat ashore, all that was left of the once great fish was his bare, white skeleton. Santiago had won the biggest battle of all, though; the battle of man versus himself. As Hemingway so simply and gracefully wrote of the old man’s struggle with the fish, the elements, and the odds against him, Santiago stated softly aloud, Fish, I’ll stay with you until I am dead; The moral of the story being to never give up, ever, no matter how difficult and desperate the journey becomes.

So, at twelve years old, I was quite quiet and shy, but I faced my fears, as Santiago would, by standing up in front of my friends, classmates and the evil tyrant, Sister Mary Morris, and mumbled and stumbled red-faced and tongue-tied through my book report on The Old Man and the Seaand the research I had collected about the book’s iconic author, Ernest Hemingway. I even boldly went so far as to compare myself to the author at the end of my speech, when I announced that I had the same initials as Earnest Miller Hemingway. My name being Edward (I was ashamed to call myself Edsel) Michael Hunter, EMH and EMH were cut from the same cloth. In my young, twelve-year-old mind, we were both larger than life and had no fear of death. Hemingway became my biggest hero, and I knew then I wanted to be just like him. It wasn’t until a few years later, though, that I started to hear the voices and see the visions.

Chapter 4: Up in Michigan/Down in Florida

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

—Henry David Thoreau

In the next few years, through the rest of grade school and high school, I read every Hemingway book he had written in his life, and also read the many chronicles and biographies of his stoic and heroic existence and life of adventure and fame, both the fact and the fiction.

It was during these years that my family, being fairly well off financially due to my father’s career success in the automobile business in Chicago, that we summered at our cabin on a lake up in northern Michigan in a town named Bellaire and spent Christmas and Easter vacations staying at a ritzy hotel in Key West, Florida.

I remember my family touring Hemingway’s home (with its descendants of his many six-toed cats) turned into a museum and cheesy tourist trap in Key West, and I visited many Hemingway haunts in both Key West and up in northern Michigan. I swam in Walloon Lake, took car and boat trips to Charlevoix, Horton’s Bay and Petoskey, Michigan and fished and hunted with my father in many of Hemingway’s favorite rivers and streams and forests of the Great White North. I was retracing the footsteps of my hero in what Hemingway lovingly called, The Last Good Country.

It was on one of these fishing