After plucking up courage, and pondering his fate, Hemingway walked into the hotel and asked a young female army sergeant sitting behind the reception desk, if he could see Colonel Clarence Park.

” Your name, sir?”

” Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway.”

” Just one moment, Mr Hemingway.”

With that the young woman made her way down the corridor, disappearing into an office; although to Hemingway it looked more like a dining room. After a while the young woman came back and led Hemingway back down the corridor before ushering him into Colonel Park’s office.

On seeing the novelist Colonel Park strode forward, and, against military regulations, shook Hemingway’s hand and offered him a cigarette.

” No thanks, gave up years ago.”

” Mr Hemingway, I guess you know why you’re here?”

Colonel Clarence C. Park was a professional and much respected military lawyer, and something of an expert on American literature, especially the works of Mark Twain and Herman Melville. To try and put Hemingway a little at ease he asked the novelist what he thought of those two writers.

” Huck Finn is the finest book ever written, and Moby Dick the biggest and heaviest. Now Colonel can we get on with things?”

Colonel Park was rather taken aback by Hemingway’s curt rebuttal of Park’s courteous attempts at conversation, and to fill the silence that descended upon the room like a universal deafness the Colonel shook another Lucky Strike from its paper carton, lit it with a miniature flame thrower and perched himself on the edge of the desk and took a long, lung satisfying draw, exhaling as he spoke.

” Mr Hemingway, I would like to outline the charges filed against you.”

” File away, Colonel.”

Park now realised that Hemingway was very afraid, and very unsure of himself. The tough, sub Dashiel Hammett stuff was a bluff, and a bad one. Okay, Pal, thought Park, have it your own way, and then started pacing slowly around the room, never allowing Hemingway the chance of looking at him directly. He then began to read from a thick, cardboard bound file.

” That you did remove your correspondents insignia in order to assume…”

” Bullshit, Colonel.”

” At this stage, Mr Hemingway, you will allow me to read out the charges without interruption. And I am doing this as a favour to you, sir, to enable you to take in the enormity of your actions, and therefore be better prepared for tomorrow’s proceedings. Do you have legal representation, Mr Hemingway?”

” No.”

” Pity. Anyway, if you will allow me to continue?”

” Sure, sure, go on.”

Park back-tracked a few words and continued to read.

” That you did remove your correspondents insignia in order to assume command of Free French Irregular forces in Rambouillet, and that you helped to defend that town on August 19, through 20, and that you had been referred to as a Colonel and a General with said FFI, and in this capacity had persistently run patrols. Witnesses, mostly other correspondents, claim they found stocks of anti-personnel, and anti-tank grenades, plus mines, German bazookas, and sundry small arms in your various hotel rooms. These witnesses have also alleged that you maintained a map room in Rambouillet, and that a full Colonel, a real one, acted as your chief of staff, and that you declared to fellow correspondents that you no longer sent despatches.”

Park then sat back down behind his desk and lit another Lucky Strike.

” You smoke too much, Colonel.”

” I know, but what else can a guy do in Nancy in October?”

” Anything to drink in this place?”

” Not a big drinker, Mr Hemingway, but you’ll find a bottle of cognac behind a copy of, A Life of Bonaparte, on the shelves over there.

Hemingway retrieved the bottle, found a glass, and poured a hefty amount of a very fine Napoleon.

” Fancy a slug, Colonel?”

” No thanks.”

” What’ll happen if you find me guilty, assuming you haven’t already made up your mind?”

” If not sent to prison, you will, at the very least, be stripped of your correspondents credentials and shipped back to the States on the first available ship or plane. We shall also make sure the newspapers and wire services, the radio and newsreels are fully informed. The publicity will either kill your career dead, or revive it.”

” Revive it, why you…”

” Not wise to get too personal, yet, Mr Hemingway.”

” No.”

” No. Have another drink, and this time I’ll join you.”

Hemingway found another glass and poured two drinks, then asked.

” You read any Robert Frost, Colonel?”

” Some, but I have to say I find his imagery a little too romantic, without the danger that Whitman brings to imagery, the danger of people, of involvement, of not holding back.”

Park slugged his cognac back in one.

” Good to see a man with a thirst.”

” Never touched the stuff at all until this year, still don’t drink much of it, but I can see how a man can get the taste.”

” Never trust a man that doesn’t drink my grandfather used to say.”

” A wise man I’m sure.”

” Indeed he was. Taught me one hell of a lot about warfare. Wish to God he hadn’t at times.”

” You had a rough time in the first war I hear?”

” Rough? No, not rough, not compared to millions of others. Mine was a short and painful little war, but not rough. Quite enjoyable at times, and very rewarding in the end.”

” Paying for it now?”

” You mean I got a taste but not enough to satisfy, hence my alleged actions here?”

” Maybe?”

” You a shrink too, Colonel?”

” You get to know a good deal about the human condition working for an organisation like this one, believe me.”

” The human condition? Let me tell you about the human condition, Colonel. My old man was a doctor, and a damned good one too. The only mistake he ever made was marrying my mother. I tell you, Colonel, that bitch ruined his life, made him question every goddam thing he ever did. But who’s to say what I might have been had I popped out of some other woman? I might have ended up a lawyer pretending to be a Colonel pretending to be a soldier.”

” Hardly bears thinking about does it, but tell me more about your father.”

” Hell, you even sound like a shrink now. Like I said, he was a good doctor, and had a good list of patients, but he always made a point of looking after those who couldn’t afford a doctor, and in Oak Park that meant the Indians on the reservations on the north side of Horton Lake, and in the woods, Cherokee mostly but with the fire long gone, and most of the men toothless and drunk, with the best building skyscrapers in Chicago, and the woman pregnant most of the time from those who were too lazy to find a job. And the old man used to go out in his boat and take me with him, and he’d treat whoever needed treatment, and never charge a blind cent which made the Bitch as angry as Hell I can tell you. I remember one day in the early spring we set out because the old man had heard from a hunter that a young pregnant woman was in a bad way, needed help fast. We found her writhing in this filthy bed in a broken down log cabin. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, with black hair, and eyes that never left my face, and a mouth that wanted to scream, but there were no women around to hear her scream the scream that meant new life, just a drunk husband twice her age asleep in his own vomit. The old man gave him one hell of a kick and asked him why the hell he hadn’t called him, but the bastard just took another slug from his bottle of bad whiskey and fell asleep again. Then the old man gave the girl an examination, and I could hear him suck the air in through his teeth and shake his head. Then he turned and looked at me.

- Son, we’ve got a bad one and no mistake. I’ve got to cut her to get the baby out or they’ll both die. Do you understand?

- Yes, Pa.

- Good boy. Now I want you to go behind the bed and hold the girl’s hands hard while I put a morphine pad over her mouth. Now, she’s going to think I’m trying to kill her and will probably struggle hard, but you hold onto her, son, until she’s out. Got that?

- Yes, Pa.

And she did, too, struggle that is, and scream for real this time, and her husband came to and went for the old man with a knife when he saw him cut her but the sight of the blood made the punk again and pass right out in the dirt. But the old man did a good job. Delivered a perfect baby boy, then sowed the girl up neat as a carpet seam. We gave the baby to an old woman we found sitting outside the cabin, and the old man told her to look after the girl, and get one of the elders to give her husband a lecture on being a father, and the old girl clucked like a hen when the old man put that baby in her arms. We heard a few days later that the girl and her baby were okay, but that the husband had cut his throat because my old man had touched his wife. All the old man
could say was good riddance, and I guess he was right. How’s that for the human condition, Colonel?”

” Have another drink, Mr Hemingway?”

” No thanks, think I’ll get to bed.”

” Sleep well. See you in the morning at nine, prompt.”

But Hemingway didn’t sleep much that night for thinking about that Indian girl and his father, who’d spoiled everything by shooting himself.