Free Hemingway's Ghost by Layton Green Page B

with a credit card. They all cringed as it creaked open.
    They did four different things: Ernie flicked the light and locked the door behind them, Champ took the Ouija Board out of a burlap sack and started arranging it on the brick floor, Papa lit a cigarette and pulled out his flask of whiskey that was engraved with a cheap likeness of the Man’s face, and Bumby went to read the love letter again.
    “I told you not to touch that until we decide what to do about it,” Papa said, as Bumby pried loose a brick in the corner and pulled out an envelope whose seal had stood for decades until broken by the six of them last week. An envelope whose location had been revealed to them by the Man himself, speaking from the mysterious ether to which the Ouija Board granted access. They had left it there for the time being because they couldn’t agree on who should keep it. Their fear that someone else might steal it was eclipsed by their fear that one of them might sell the letter behind the others’ backs.
    Papa said, “I’ve been making inquiries in Miami. We’ll have a buyer before long.”
    “A buyer,” Bumby murmured to himself. He held the letter in his palms, cradling it as gently as possible, as he read words from the master that no living person outside of that room had ever seen.
    “We’re not selling it yet,” Champ said, his reverence for the letter trumped by his yearning to buy a proper fishing boat. Champ and Ernie were day laborers for a construction company owned by a Mexican, which embarrassed Champ. Champ spent all his hard-earned money in the island’s dive bars, and he was also embarrassed that he couldn’t afford anything other than his twenty-year-old pontoon boat. If he ever hooked a marlin, he knew he would end up upside down on a rock in the Bermuda Triangle. “There’s got to be more,” he said, “and we’ll sell everything together.”
    Papa blew smoke in Champ’s face. “I said I’m lining up a buyer, pisshead. It takes time. It’s not like selling a goddamned baseball card.”
    Champ was Ernie’s best friend, and Ernie’s stomach clenched as the smoke swirled in Champ’s face. Ernie knew in theory he could take Papa in a fight, but Ernie was a physical coward outside of the boxing ring, where there were no rules or referees. “So who’s the buyer?”
    “Don’t you worry about that. A contact from the joint is all you need to know.”
    “Yeah, well, we’re doing the transaction together. All four of us.”
    Papa showed his teeth and said nothing. Ernie hated him for it, but hated himself more. The truth was that the Man would have thought Ernie to be the lowest of men, the kind of man who ran from the battlefield.
    Champ finished setting up the Ouija Board and they all gathered around it. It had belonged to Champ’s grandfather. The wooden board was splintering at the edges, the Gothic lettering fading. It had been Bumby’s idea, one night when they were all plastered at Sloppy’s: why not try and contact the Man to whom they spent their lives in dedication, and what better place to do it than at his former residence? They had nothing better to do, other than chase wrinkled whores down Duval.
    None of them had actually expected anything to happen, none of them thought they would hear from a tortured revenant who claimed to be the ghost of the Man himself.
    Bumby’s nervous eyes flitted over the small group, no doubt realizing that the last time they were here there had been six of them. Now Max and Scotty were lying on their dead broke backs in the Key West cemetery.
    Champ placed the planchette in the center of the board, and they all hovered over it, each placing a fingertip on the plastic wedge. They moved the planchette around in circles to warm it up, then eased off the pressure, letting their fingertips rest lightly on the piece.
    “Who’s first?” Champ whispered.
    “Stop whispering,” Papa said. “There’s no one else here.”
    “
He’s
here,” Ernie said.