Free The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter by Craig Lancaster Page A

want to know the truth.
    “What I meant was, have you ever written one?”
    I tugged at the collar of my robe. “Hell, no. I wouldn’t know where to begin.” The truth of the matter is that I wrote the equivalent of a book damn near every couple of months, it seemed, but that was easy. Everything happened in front of my face, and I regurgitated it in five-hundred-word chunks.
    “I want to write a book,” he said.
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. And I want you to help me.”
    I laughed at the idea of my being helpful with such a thing, and he cringed, and in covering up I cracked a joke—“I could write a book about grabbing ass”—that just made it worse.
    “I’m serious,” he said.
    “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said.
    “I don’t know. My story. A cautionary tale. Something like that. I’ve got a good story. I need help with the words, though.”
    Shit, yes, he had a good story. That had never been in dispute. I’d been approached by a publisher back in the immediate post-Barcelona days about writing a quickie Hugo biography. It wasn’t so much for my blinding literary skill as for my fairly unfettered access to Hugo. I’d dropped the subject after Frank Feeney snorted. “Biography? He’s goddamn seventeen years old. He’s barely lived.”
    The living wasn’t a problem now. The focus and motivation after all his other short-circuited aspirations, I feared, would be.
    “S o . . . motivational?” I asked. “Or biography? Maybe both?”
    “I don’t know. I mean, I think I can tell people what it’s like when, you kno w . . . ”
    “Things don’t work out?” I finished for him, and he looked wounded.
    “Yeah.”
    “Hugo, I don’t know. I’m not the best person for something like this. I don’t know jack about getting a book published.”
    “Yeah, but you were there. You know the story. I trust you.”
    “When did you get this idea?” I asked.
    “A while ago.”
    “When?”
    “I’ve been thinking about it since, you know.”
    I knew. Since Frank had pulled the plug on him that day after our trip to Billings Clinic.
    “Are you prepared to be honest about everything?” I asked.
    Hugo leaned in, and those eyes cut deeper into me. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, there’s some not-so-good stuff.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Some stuff I’ve never heard you acknowledge. Publishers like that stuff. Did you read Andre Agassi’s book?”
    Hugo shook his head.
    “He came clean about some things. He also came up with some details about things that were common knowledge. Ernest Hemingway talked about how writing is opening up a vein and bleeding onto the page. You prepared to do that?”
    Hugo seemed to shrink with every word, something that didn’t surprise me. It was typical of him, really. He got an idea into his head, became fixated with the result, and didn’t think through the process of getting there.
    “ I’d like to try,” he said.
    I stood and walked over to the bookshelf. I scanned the rows and plucked a few books down. The Agassi memoir. Some others, too, either autobiography or biography. Ali. Keyshawn Johnson. Jack Nicklaus. I gave them to Hugo.
    “Some research. Read them, get a feel for the form,” I said.
    “So you’ll help me?”
    As if he had any doubt. As if I could tell him no.
    “I’ll do what I can,” I said. “I want you to do the writing—”
    “No, Mark, I need you to—”
    “Hold on,” I said. “Just listen to me now. I want you to write some stuff for me. Don’t worry about order or making it all fit together or whatever. Just write what you’re feeling, on whatever topic. Bring it to me, and I’ll check it out. If I think I can help you, I will. You understand?”
    “Yeah, great,” he said. “That’s awesome.”
    “No guarantees.” I tried to effect a stern look in the face of the easy Hugo charm.
    “Right. I got you,” he said.
    I came out of the bedroom not fifteen minutes later, fresh out of the shower and with the day’s clothes on