Papa Hemingway in Cuba Page #2

Must be awful to be that famous.

What's his wife like?

Oh, I haven't met her yet,

I'm supposed to meet her this weekend.

Oh, this weekend? I got the weekend off.

I was hoping maybe we could go to the Keys.

Well, they've invited me to the Finca.

It's their house.

I'm gonna go to their house.

Oh, wow! That's great.

- Yeah.

- We'll go another time.

God.

Gracias.

Papa working.

Miss Mary swimming.

Oh!

Oh, hello.

You must be the kid.

Uh, yeah. I guess I am.

Edmund, isn't it?

Eddie.

Hello. I'm Mary Hemingway.

Yeah, I know.

Hi.

Ah, Papa showed me your stories.

You write very well.

We're both impressed.

Thank you.

I didn't embarrass you, did I?

No, no, no. No, no.

How God made me.

My perfect pocket Rubens.

Why, thank you, kind sir.

We do have a generally

good alliance, don't we?

Based upon your great beauty

and the wondrous blondness of your hair.

Deeply rooted in his system of values,

Papa has a secret mysticism

about blonde hair.

You'd be ecstatic in a world of

female dandelions, wouldn't you, love?

Sure.

Come and have a drink.

I confess it is artificial.

It used to be a color people call titian.

But I liked to call it a nice, peanut brown.

Oh, Papa. I do believe

we've embarrassed the kid.

He'll get used to it.

I was just an ignorant bum who read a lot

at libraries to stay out of the rain.

You know, mostly

day labor jobs and flophouses.

And then, after years of hustling,

I finally managed

to weasel my way into

a job on the sports desk

of a local paper in northern California,

which was a dream,

it's just, the only problem was,

I didn't know how to write.

I mean, I could read okay, but to actually

type out sentences and spelling

and punctuation...

I didn't know anything.

In the newspaper business,

this could be a problem.

Yeah, the city editor

found it particularly amusing

when I spelled the word "maybe," M-A-B-E.

Ooh.

He called me a liar and then he fired me.

So, what did you do?

Well, I knew that I wanted to be a writer.

And the only thing I could do

was go and beg for my job back.

So, after about three days of begging,

he finally said, "Okay, fine.

You have two weeks, no pay.

"Maybe you can learn to be a writer."

Hmm.

So I worked at the paper during the day

and then at night I stayed,

typing over your short stories.

I copied them word for word.

It taught me how to type,

it taught me the English language,

it taught me spelling and grammar

and how to write dialogue.

It taught me how to see.

Smart.

It changed my life.

And did you get your job back?

Yeah.

A year later, I was on my way to Korea

as a war correspondent.

Didn't I tell you what kind of kid he'd be?

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