Hilda & Hemingway in:

"WHO THE HELL'S HEMINGWAY"

Frank Westcott

"So what you readin' today?" Hilda says, as she pours another cup of coffee into my cup. Make that, pours more coffee into my cup. Not another cup into my cup. Well, you know what I mean...

"Thanks Hilda," I say.

"She picks up the top book from the pile in front of me. "The Old Man And The Sea, For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and The Green Hills Of Africa. Now..., that might be worth readin'. Don't know about the other stuff, though. What you readin' him for? Guy couldn't write. No big words. Boring stories. All about death. Spent all his time drinking, and getting divorced, and watching bulls fight. Why don't you read somebody good like John Steinbeck? He knew mice were not men. And mice is a four letter word I don't have to shut my eyes to read. You take Hemingway, like..., who'd ever want to read about a guy spending all that time with a big old fish that the sharks get anyway, even if Tracy and Hepburn did Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? It sure wasn't a fish. Sidney Poitier, maybe."

"What about, Moby Dick?" I say. "That was a story about a fish."

"Moby Smoby. They made a movie there, and it wasn't all just about the fish, and it was about a whale anyway. Whales aren't fish. They say whales talk to each other and stuff, ask Farley Mowat, so they're not fish, they're somethin' else. And Moby Dick was different."

"Oh... how? Books all use the same letters. There's only twenty-six available. They're all written with the same letters. In English, anyway. So, what's your beef? If I want to read what I want to read. You read what you want to read and have Poitier to dinner."

"Suits me," Hilda says, and goes back behind the counter to read her Cosmopolitan.

"I take out my pad and pencil and start writing about the whale that wished he was a fish..., so he wouldn't have to talk to Hilda. I get part way through and Hilda is back.

"I bin thinkin'. Who the hell's Hemingway anyway? Just a man. Just another man who wrote books. Nothing special. Just another damn writer. That's all."

"I look up at Hilda. She's all red faced. She's angry, and saliva is dripping down the side of her mouth. Hilda wipes the saliva with her left hand, and then her hand on her apron.

"Sure glad I'm not eating anything today."

"What did you say?"

"Sure glad I'm not eating anything today."

"Why not? Having trouble stomaching what I say?"

"No. I'm having trouble watching you wipe your mouth with your hand and your hand on your apron."

"What do you want me to wipe it with? My foot?" Hilda bends over, tries to stretch her foot up to her mouth. "Won't reach. Won't fit either. I got a size ten mouth and a size twelve shoe. And at least I keep my foot out of my mouth better'n some I know."

I turn to my books.

"Look at me, Hemingway. That's what I'm gonna call you even though you don't run with bulls at Pamplona and you don't drink like a whale."

"A fish," I say.

"A whale's a..."

Hilda spins around. Then she comes back. "What you need to read stuff like that for? You don't know, do you? You're a writer. You don't need to read him or anybody else. Just do it the way you do it. Who the hell is he, anyway? You just write what you are going to write and to.....with Hemingway."

Once again, I look at Hilda. "Hilda...," I say. "You just said a few minutes ago that you were going to call me Hemingway. Now, if you're going to do that, how on earth am I going to forget about Hemingway, and remember that fish are not whales, and that you don't have to like bullfights to be a writer and all that?"

Hilda pats me on the back. "I'm going to call you Hemingway so you never forget that you're not Hemingway or anybody else, and that you just write about what you want to write about, and to heck with what other people want you to write about, or think you should write about. I really don't care if you write about bullfights, if that's what you want to write about. I just don't want to see you thinkin' that cause you haven't written anything big that you haven't got it. That's all, and that's all I'm going to say about it."

It's funny. I wanted to argue with Hilda. Probably just out of habit, yet this time, I knew she wasn't talking the way she was talking just to make conversation, or to fight over something, anything. She was talking this time, telling me something that was important for her to have me know about. I didn't argue. I didn't say anything for a moment, and simply looked out the window at the parked cars on the street in front of the café. I turned to face Hilda who was still standing beside me. She too, had turned her gaze to the street and the cars and the people walking by. I touched her arm and she looked down.

"Thanks." I said.

Hilda stroked my hair back into place. "No problem kid. Now get home and get writing. Here's some coffee to go. It's on me. I don't want to see you back here until you've finished a story."

She turned and went back to her stool by the counter and sat with her back to me, bent over, and reading her Cosmopolitan. I looked at her graying hair and the fat rolls around her waist, and how she slumped over when she read.

I left quietly carrying my books and two styrofoam cups with coffee. When I got home, I lifted one cup from atop the other. On the plastic lid of the bottom cup in black marker were the words, Go get 'em, Hem!

That night I finished a story. A very short story about a woman who cared enough to, well you know, and I slipped the story between the front doors of her café so she could read it the next morning. She'd see it when she went out to scoop the morning paper from the sidewalk, as she always did, every morning, before going back in to read her Cosmopolitan.

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