The Old Man and Ray

Ray was wildly flipping off the the Hemingway House. 

"You sonuvabitch," he scowled. "He didn't have a pot to piss in and look what you did. He lost his knife. His harpoon. He broke his tiller. ... He lost his oar!"

He sat there steaming mad and indignant, passionately shaking his middle finger at the house. 

We were in Key West staying in a little cottage directly across the street from the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum. When in Rome and all that, I told Ray he should read the Old Man and the Sea. So we rode our rental bikes to Key West Island Bookstore on Fleming Street and I bought it for him.

He read most of it that afternoon lounging by the pool. We were sitting on the porch of our cottage that evening when he finished it. And slowly, surely, across from Hemingway's home with his second wife Pauline, he started to lose it. 

I was doing a good job of holding it together until he mentioned the oar. As if the oar was really just the last straw. I started to laugh, which is exactly what someone wants to hear when they're angry.  

This what I love about literature. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry. It makes you flip off the old Hemingway homestead.

"Well, I guess he should be pleased with himself," Ray said, his anger smoothing out.  "Eighty years later and people are still reading his little book and feeling sorry for that old man."

But a few minutes later his anger returned and he started cursing Hemingway again. 

"You bastard. I hope you're happy," he sneered. "And another thing, I've never been so mad at sharks in my life! Sharks are complete monsters. Hemingway could have saved me an afternoon of reading by just writing a few paragraphs about what a-holes sharks are. Would have saved us both a lot of time!"

I starting laughing again. 

Anyway, I think he liked the book. 

Ray on Hemingway's balcony, 2016, one day before the meltdown.