Hunting Papa

‘Hunting Papa’ a short story by Nate Conway

The great American writer sat behind his large oak desk- you know the one. Its etched into your memory just like his strong white beard jutting into your childhood to remind you of his place in the pantheon of literature. He typed while nestled in the backwoods of Ketchum, Idaho. The solitude was good for his writing and his drinking. All the weapons in the homestead had been loaded and he had made no provisions for escape; it was here where he would make a stand no matter how great the onslaught might be.

Having borne witness to numerous fatalities during his time abroad was surely helping to create the veneer of bravado he wore like the omnipotent scarf around his neck. Do you remember the time prior to those scars? When you had both fear and hope? He was well beyond that.

The men tracking him through the snow were, as you can imagine, just like that. Hard souls with long rifles and dead eyes. Men with nothing to lose and no Gods to pray to. They were technically government contractors, but let’s not get stuck on the minutiae of specifics and instead, like his celebrated cause of death, embrace the grandiose mythology of their plight across the dense snow killing wolf for survival and deer for food. It had been three days and a hundred miles since they left. When they finally caught sight of the cabin, they made a basecamp and waited for the break of night to make there move.

The author didn’t know when they were coming only that he would be prepared when they did. Long before this all came to be, he had written the letter for reasons he never truly understood. Perhaps out of fatherly duty or legal responsibility. Do you act impulsively when confronted with an opportunity- just dive right in as he did while devising the scheme. He had planned to keep the demons at bay for as long as his solitude could endure.

Gaman. He loved the Japanese phrase meaning to endure with grace. He had reinterpreted it for his own purpose of fiery vengeance. He scoffed at the Frost poem and preferred his own prose as comfort. It was also good for his love of drink. The ghosts had become more of nuisance than anything else. This was true especially at dawn when the artist, after a bout of writing and booze, wanted to rest but the smoky spectral climbed the walls looking for a place to start the day. He was unsure of their source or legitimacy but knew they existed on some place as the ethereal guests holding brass instruments where an everyday occurrence.

Do you forget the unreal only to be reminded of it when you least expect it. Bad news, the violent impact of a car accident. The pit of fear- maybe you’ve been away from the nerve stiffening experiences for took long but the old man had, throughout his life had always been close to it’s frequency. It was part of him as were the ghosts.

The marlin above his bed concealed a machete he was gifted by a man claiming to be a Mayan king reincarnate. A fire roared and the bearskin rug on the floor had been skinned by the writer’s own hand. He had lived a thousand lives but remembered the simplest one as being the best of times. Money had corrupted most. Infidelity, war and drunken restlessness the remainder.

A few good trips on the boat stayed intact. The sound of the creature rising out the sea. A true leviathan that leapt to the block the sun only to fall back into the water. The crash of surf and the rock of the boat brought him peace and the typewriter of course; his eternal love. The only item that could stop the voices, the lawsuits and the blue suits from surrounding him was the clickety-clack. Its hum vibrated through his bones to quell the riot of his forever rolling mind.

The first man to die that day was from Indiana. Being from a flatland hadn’t provided him the opportunity for much climbing so when they descended the crag that dark morning he knew no better and slipped on damp rock which launched him headfirst down the steep embankment.

‘Dumb hoosier.’ is how Tom Long described the horrible accident. When the men finally reached his body the man from Indiana was not yet dead but maimed. He was better off dead and knew it. His pleas for mercy scattered the ghosts and pricked up the writer’s ears. They muzzled the rifle before the unmerciful death but he now knew they were close; they had finally come for him.

Trophy bison, bear and other taxidermies hung from vaulted open beam ceiling watching over the old man as he searched through the open floor plan gathering materials. He found his pipe then ambled up ‘the fucking stairs’ with a shotgun bundled under his bathrobe. Each step ached his knees and his breath ran hot from the evening’s liquor. Upon reaching the attic he took up a seat behind a mounted rifle in the attic’s apex, lit his pipe and surveyed the expanse of field and rock.

He scanned the South side of the property through the single bolt rifle’s scope to find a hawk’s nest. A rustle in the brush brought his attention to the next causality when a man appeared briefly in his lens finder only to then hastily drop out of sight. The writer always assumed they would come from the south; any good killer would. The disappearing man’s dying howls affirmed the writer’s foresight. Soon more unholy screams echoed against the granite and high grass as another man had dropped into the ground to be impaled by sharpened rocks.

‘How they kill elephants’, the old man remarked while cackling. In the laughter he was, momentarily, back on the open plains of Africa driving that machine under the red sky with her cackle laugh and holding onto her hat so it wouldn’t fly into the dangerous high grass that shook in their wake.

The potshot from across the back field smashed the nearby window and snapped him back to reality. He panned the scope downward to find a man methodically shooting on the windows while rapidly reloading his Winchester rifle. The writer admired the speed of the gunslinger- ‘pretty fast Lefty’ then squeezed the trigger to place a deft bullet into the forehead of the gunslinger. As the gunmen’s body fell to the ground another would be killer tried to retreat into the base of the crag but could not outrun the writer’s bullet and fell into a bare thicket that held his lifeless body upright.

‘All is fair here boys’, Papa shouted out the window before slamming the wooden shutter closed.

Before the Above.

“You want me to find a crew to kill Hemingway?”

Is how Tom Long phrased the question to Lenny Martin after the antiques dealer, CIA informant and mob associate kept tap dancing around the subject. If that’s your resume people take time for you, even if some of the people Lenny had worked with in the past had ended up dead or in prison. But we all want something more and so did Tom Long.

“He’s an institution, an American icon.” Tom said then buried his head while trying to think of the most outrageous number he could pronounce properly.

“It’s going to be…well hot dog, you got me by the keister her Lenny, this is no walk in the park, so if that’s what your asking- the amount of money to kill a hero…”

Have you found the unexpected to become the normal?

It was there inside Johnny’s Taqueria, Laos New Mexico that they agreed upon the contract.

“A million.” Tom said.

“Done.” Lenny replied.

Tom was beside himself, this was a long time ago when a million dollars meant something, plus he figured it would be too outrageous of a price to begin with, that Lenny would have to say no, and he could go back to Florida to find something a little less intense. He was so taken aback he forgot all the rules and asked what no hitman should ever ask-

“Why?”

Why do we always want to know instead of letting it be.

“I don’t know- beyond cards and cash I’m not much of a reader but I saw somewhere that he’s a man’s man.” Lenny replied.

Idols can’t stay too long. They get scuffed, people forget about them and when they disappear, they get immortalized.

“They call him Papa” Tom added what little he knew about the writer.

“This happens…they kill the idols to keep order, reminds the people they’re mortal” Lenny said.

They’re food sat cold and outside the parking lot glared from the sun while Tom kept pressing.

“The outfit doesn’t pay like that.” He said.

“Must be a personal thing or family perhaps?”

“You don’t have to figure out why Tom, you have to figure out how.”

“Probably owes his uncle.”

“Could be Tom, who knows? Everybody or no one?”

Planning for the kill would be easy, recruiting trusted men; much harder. He knew the writer was an avid sportsman, that’s how all sportsman are: avid. Also good with weapons and ornery. Given that knowledge Tom planned for a platoon that could withstand a few casualties in order to complete the mission; a lesson he learned in the Pacific where the bodies got stacked and floated out to sea for the shark. Tom saw some of the men were still alive and feigning death in an attempt to escape but they too were bound and left for the high tide.

“He’s a mean fuck ain’t he?” Tom asked.

“I’ve never met the man.” Lenny answered and Tom left the taco joint with a hundred thousand dollars tucked into his sports coat, a snub nose thirty-eight revolver in his waistband, and a bad feeling in his stomach.

Meet Tom.

Tom has had a weapon on his person every day since joining the Marine Corps. Fake identity papers, a chip on his shoulder and alcoholic parents ensured his was to be the life of pain. He worked as a solider, a lawman or hired gun in a place that prized brawn and so Tom Long’s life was a violent one.

What’s your identity item the one thing you couldn’t escape even if you wanted to?

For Tom it was the bullet.

I prefer good pens and Papa loved the sea.

He chose Ketchum because it reminded him of his childhood in Michigan’s upper peninsulas where his father taught him to fish, to hunt and the power of nature held over man.

When the Mormon realtor drove him through the access road in the spring of 1960, he knew it was the land he would die on.

Local carpenters were hired and the writer, feeling his oats, labored alongside the workers to help the build. The dogs kept getting killed by the wolves, so he finally decided on the company of indoor cat named Juliet. The editors in New York had stopped their correspondence; the Hollywood types deemed him currently irrelevant and the banquets of Paris tickled his memory.

Had he known that the mail in Sonet County had been suspended that winter due to a mudslide on the interstate 72 he might not have felt so neglected by the industry he once loved.

There is no greater indignity that ignorance.

How many people do you ignore with the hope they don’t notice; they know, just like you do. Pray your good conscience doesn’t see that side of you.

Back to Ketchum.

Tom Long was hoping Papa couldn’t see him crouched under a boulder where the natives still had their stories etched into the stone. A tuft of snow and mud punched the air and he heard the old man egging them on.

“Come, conquistadors, show your face so I can wipe it from the Earth!” Papa called from the home. Gunshots popped from higher on the ridge as a heavyset man wearing a bandolero dashed towards the home firing a revolver in each hand.

Most of the recruits were veterans of World War Two, a few had landed, like their target albeit holding an M16 instead of a reporter’s notebook, on the shores of Normandy and had carried their Lugers and German daggers, the keepsakes of violent men, with them to Idaho for the hunt.

The boxer from Cincinnati who was trying to make his bones with the Outfit was already dead. Chazz the Mexican tracker was crawling on his belly attempting to circle around the back of the cabin when Papa’s eruption of pistol fire tore through his back. The heavy-set man, an ex-bounty hunter from Reno, reached the front door and kicked it open only to be welcomed with a shotgun blast that took off his head and left shoulder.

When the sun finally broke over the East’s horizon blood was dripping from Papa’s hand and six men lay dead. Tom rallied the remainder of the crew and they stowed away back up the crag under the cover of the arching granite.

The great writer’s hands shook while he poured the bourbon.

Clickety-clack, he returned to writing, the trembling stopped, and the words being to flow. He kept writing until the booze and blood loss made him sleep. In his rest a marlin came to him to remind him he was only sixty-two and had more life to live but the old man in the dream shoved the talking fish back into the sea. As he pushed he felt the fish’s scales and a deep sense of regret drew him into the current whereupon he reemerged on the shores of Key West.

A cigar always tasted better with my feet in the sand.

He walked along the endless coastline of his fevered dream until the sand beneath him turned to snow. The horizon flipped and suddenly he was young and at home in Illinois. The streets were wide and the stars above shined for his approval.

Back in Ketchum the men who could sleep did. Bobby DaRosa could not sleep nor stop talking incessantly so Tom Long killed him at half past noon. None of the five remaining men blinked an eye, in fact they were surprised it hadn’t happened sooner to the braggart from Jersey. Nor did they consider calling off the mission as the consequences surely outweighed the risk.

‘Better to die with your boots on’ is how Tom described it to the men who were crouching around the new plot. Marshall Tanner, the former Marine sniper, began to explain the tactic.

“Bait then wait.” He said, then spat a wad of tobacco onto the dirt.

“If takes the first nibble Tully will take the shot one, and I will take shot two. Crossfire. Now somebody a little more experienced may see it for what it is and then counter. Typically, that’s when we take the shot, fake the bait, kill ‘em on the counter. We may not need that but if we do it’s the same deal Tully pulls first and then me.”

“He’s done pretty well so far” Joaquim, a half Sioux, half Korean, all mean, cowboy spoke for the first time since they had embarked on the trip.

“Of course he has, he’s Papa.” Tom responded.

That’s how they talked back then, low and slow or fast and furious but only when it was warranted. Stop flapping your gums was a motto and cigarettes were encouraged by doctors; a different era, long forgotten when damaged men came home to build small castles. But not these men, for these types of men the war never ended. They took up the careers of intimidation and fear; bodyguards, private eyes and mercenaries. All were drifters with either no family, or family they would speak of, and adrift without an enemy, they traveled the states seeking new conflict. America never failed to deliver for them.

Ketchum reminded Papa of his summer trips to the upper peninsula of Michigan where his father taught him to fish, to hunt and the power of nature held over man.

He was making tea, reminiscing about that place, just after waking. He washed his face and redressed the wound on his shoulder. The winter birds perched on the porch to wait for their daily feeding but the writer could not safely leave the home. He watched instead as they chirped and hopped along to wash themselves in a melting icicle. They were his favorite type of bird as they stayed and hunkered down for the harsh season when most had migrated south. The tea cup sat steaming next to a loaded revolver. The writer took a sip of the drink and was back in his childhood home under the kitchen table. His father home drunk and happy with a dead rabbit under the fold of his arm.

For such a difficult man Papa’s father had a gentle touch with the knife. He was also a patient teacher so it was a mystery to his son as why the father could never hold him in a caring way. A firm handshake was as far as the affection went and even those were few and far between- upon graduation, the first grandson and home from the Italian front. Papa remembered that vividly coming back to the States happy to be alive and bored to death all at once.

A loud explosion spewed dirt from the front yard to scatter the birds.

Savages I thought they’d have the decency to wait until dark.

They had not and the gunfire from the crag above began to indiscriminately pelt the home. Papa did not take the bait and run to his sniper’s nest but instead, infuriated by the uncivil attach he raced out of the North entrance and began to make his way around the home’s fauna to where the fuselage of bullets reigned down.

Tully heard the footsteps of the plodding man but took a half second to long to draw. That was all the time needed for a bullet to sink in and then out of his thigh. The snow blotched with blood. And the wounded man dropped to his back and returned fire. Five bangs and then it all went silent. Everybody listening.

Can you hear it?

Where’s it coming from?

And when?

Papa accidentally snapped a limb and the gunfire immediately resumed. Tully was lying on his stomach crawling through the briars enraged at himself for ‘letting that fat old fucking writer’ catch him off guard. Tom, a patient killer, waited on the hillside, taking potshots and moving his position frequently. Papa though was all heart and sprung from behind a tall fir to open fire on where he believed Tully to be. The shots dug into the empty grass and his robe became entangled with the bare tree. A bullet flew close overhead. Papa cursed the robe while trying to escape it’s python like grip on his shoulders. He saw the flash of a muzzle from nearby, held up his hands for protection and soon two fingers from his left hand hit the dirt. He turned to make a run for the North entrance when Tully emerged to block his route. Both opened fire and when the smoke cleared Tully lay dead. The shots from above returned. Papa limped away in his bloody boxer briefs swearing up a storm. A vulture above started to circle the clear sky above.

When Papa gets inside he roars with laughter. Blood drops onto the hardwood floors and the old man stands as a Matador in the center of the home.

“Ole.” he shouts waving a bloodied rag. He dodges imaginary bulls as the gunfire from outside increases its velocity. Papa runs to the window.

“Ole! You ignorant beasts I am the Matador of Seville!” He shouts only to be met with a barrage of bullets. Inside he continues the dance of the Matador into the bathroom. He dresses the missing fingers in gauze and takes a long pull from a brandy bottle.

I need a shave.

Shaving cream fills his cheeks but before he can bring the razor to his face the door behind him smashes to bits by a plump faced man wearing a boulder hat, Harry ‘the butcher’ Myles. The infamous hitman fired a quick shot that is knocked off its trajectory by the falling door frame and the writer swiped his straight razor across the Englishman’s neck.

Whatever it was or came to be its better than sitting around waiting to die.

The professional killer who made his name with a meat cleaver gasped on the floor desperately trying to hold the wound together before Papa permanent ended him with a few bashes from a nearby barstool.

No Englishman will end the Matador.

The writer returned to shaving with the dead man and the broken door behind him. He scrapped off the shaving cream around his neckline to leave his beard intact, wiped away the remainder of the lotion and then dabbed some aftershave on.

Hard to shave with three fingers.

Outside the three men crouched by a fallen oak trying to figure out how their best laid plans were waylaid. A white moon rose above the darkened forest. The coyotes howled in the distance and the cold wind began to glide through their worn clothes. Joaquim could smell a dinner cooking.

“Wordman is cooking potatoes.” He said.

“All I smell is manure.” Marshall replied and Tom remained staring at the low lights coming from the ranch.

The writer was indeed boiling potatoes and smoking his pipe with a dead man on his floor and Verdi playing softly on the record player. When Chazz appeared bloodied and armed at his front door Papa was unsure if the man was truly alive or just another ghost from his past. A blast of buckshot knocked Papa to the floor confirming the assumed dead man was very much alive. The writer crawled for his fallen weapon as the intruder leapt over the fallen detritus raising a blade high over his head. Tom heard the blast of the shotgun and ran to the sound.

“You two stay here and wait for my signal.” Tom shouted while running.

Joaquim and Marshall obliged and Tom Long disappeared into the shadows of the low fir trees.

The Sioux and the military man took up positions under the cover of brush, aimed their rifles and waited.

Tom opened his periscope and peered into the home.

“Well I’ll be.” He said to himself.

Inside he could catch fleeting images of the writer eating potatoes, an enormous rifle by his side, a glass of bourbon and two dead men stacked upon one another on the front porch.

“He’s as ruthless as the rest of us.” Tom noted.

He closed his periscope then dashed closer to the home and he felt back there again running on the sand of the Pacific; fearless and determined with cause. Leaping over rock and fallen tree he reached the front entrance and took cover under the dead.

“Fool.” Is what the writer said and then tossed the match that ignited the flame. The lifeless and Tom Long instantly became ablaze.

“I’d say that’s our sign eh Tonto?” Marshall called to Joaquim.

In response Joaquim reached behind his back and flicked a tomahawk 20 yards into Marshall’s skull. The proud man had regretted the move even as the weight of the weapon left his hand, but it was far to late to stop the inertia, and Marshall was dead. Joaquim’s pure instinct had killed the man and now left them down yet another attacker. He pulled the axe from the head and walked toward the flaming porch.

Inside the Wagner was playing on a record player and the writer was howling. The flames began to lick the entranceway.

Joaquim crawled into a window then silently walked through the ghosts and shadows until he found Papa at the table in front of his type writer. The Sioux listened to the man’s last hopes before watching the Great American Writer pick up the shotgun that ended his own life.

The sonic blast shook the home.

That night Joaquim extinguished the fire inside the home, dug a shallow mass grave for the dead, and left the writer dead in front of the typewriter.

After finishing his tasks another dawn rose so Joaquim found shelter in a cave. He followed this pattern across the route, only traveling at nights until he reached the Greyhound Bus station in Ketchum. He left town never to speak of the event again although a few days later he would see a newspaper headline about a Great American writer who had gone mad and killed himself.

Some folk prefer myth over truth.

‘Hunting Papa’, a short story by Nate Conway

nate@nateconway.com