Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (40 page)

I called you about 11 o'clock Friday to tell you I was arriving at 6:45 Saturday morning. No answer. That took a bit of wind out of the sack and I spent the next 45 minutes dealing with Semonin and Hazlett
⁵
and finally gave up when midnight passed in the midst of a senseless argument. Then, about 4 a.m. I called you again to tell you I was coming on Saturday—no collect calls, either—and when there was no answer this time I
flew into a jealous rage like nothing I've had to deal with since I was 14 years old. And for god's sake, no matter how savage and unreasonable this sounds, don't let it prod you into one of your graphic documentaries on how “hot and wild” you were feeling about that time of night in some dank shitbog with painters sketching on the other side of the room. I can do without hearing about those things, regardless of how fine and full of life they may seem to you.

Sorry about that outburst, but that's nothing compared to what I was thinking after that second phone call. The story continues through Saturday when Paul and I sat at the airport for 3 hours waiting for someone to cancel a reservation or fail to show up for their flight. Needless to say we failed and the whole damn thing failed and all I can say now is a simple “god damn it.”

The idea was a week in New York, then to bring you back down here and head over to St. Thomas for the festival. Then back here for whatever hellish financial agonies awaited us. I started to call Saturday (when we were sure we were going to get seats) but then I had a terrible picture of the phone ringing in that apartment while I was there and both of us hoping it would stop ringing … and, frankly, I am not yet reduced to living with that kind of an image of myself … a mere jangling interruption at the other end of a black instrument.

But for all this bitching and jabbering, I found myself on Friday (and Saturday) with a violent compulsion to cover 1000 very unreasonable miles just to have you within reach. Whoever might have been there in that apartment had I managed to get a flight Friday night is goddamned lucky because I was mad enough to beat a gorilla to within an inch of his life if I could have gotten there. I came back home last night intending to write you a letter—and, indeed, had plenty of time—but realized that whatever I wrote would have to be revised this morning, and so gave it up as a very bad, frustrating, and stupid jealousy-riddled weekend. It is too bad I didn't write Friday, for it might have gone down as a classic of lascivious letters and a typewritten record of an honest—and therefore, rare—expression of this normally devious mind.

Nevertheless, I am still honest enough to say I want you to come down and, if you do nothing else, merely lie naked with me on this living room bed and stare at the sea until I get carted off to jail. As a matter of fact I'm so selfish about this that my conscience compels me to warn you that we may both have to flee the island literally at any time. So for god's sake don't bring much luggage and get a round trip ticket. As far as I know we might be here ten days or ten years … after that, god knows.

I am also honest enough to admit that wanting you over this past weekend rubbed raw some part of me that's been well-insulated for quite a
while. Whether this is good or bad, I don't really know … and whether it's ego-wise for me to admit that doesn't seem to matter right now.

BUT FOR GOD'S SAKE GET THAT DUNG-DRENCHED ARTIST OUT OF YOUR APARTMENT, GET A LOCK ON THE DOOR, QUIT THAT FRIGHTENING JOB, AND DON'T WRITE ME AS IF YOU'VE NEVER RECEIVED ANY OF MY LETTERS. (Do me a big favor and pick any sentence out of this one—doesn't matter which one—and refer to it specifically in your next letter so I can get at least a tiny sense of communication. I'm not sure, but they tell me it's important.

Majestically,
Hunter

Thompson and Conklin were preparing to sail to Spain to live with Eugene and Eleanor McGarr
.

May 25,
1960 Loíza Aldea
Puerto Rico

Dear Laurie:

This letter is written in the midst of making plans for an immediate departure for Spain. The Puerto Ricans want to put me in jail for a year—breach of peace and resisting arrest. No dice, Jack. They'll have to run me down like a black convict.

At any rate, I now have a common-law wife. Excellent girl, white, good worker, and speaks tolerable Spanish. She'll accompany me to Spain. A friend of mine from New York is there with his wife, has a 12-room house near Gibraltar on the coast. From there—god only knows.

San Juan is rotten. Highest cost of living anywhere in the Western Hemisphere except Caracas. I live 15 miles from town, on the beach, 4-room house, motor scooter, no job, writing free-lance stuff for Stateside newspapers, also fiction, so many bugs I can barely breathe, wife here and cooking, no money, vagrant artist from New York also living here, has sailboat, all in all life is not bad.

I have made friends with the negroes, the lizards, and the postal inspector. Now racking my former employer up with the labor relations board. Fabulous sunsets. Terrible food. Cheap rum. Eat much rice and more spaghetti, drink rain-water. We are only white people in Spanish-speaking negro community of Loíza Aldea. Life is not dull.

What the hell is this “answer to life” you're jabbering about? Try to put it on paper and help me get a grip on things. My life is a wild merry-go-round
and I'm beginning to feel like a big hungry jack-rabbit, hopping from one part of the world to another in a frenzy of greed and violence.

Look up a friend of mine [at Eglin] named Banks Shepherd. He's a captain and he'll probably be in the purchasing office. If not, look in the Base Directory: William Banks (or W.B.) Shepherd. You may like him and you may not—try it and see.

No word from Ann Frick since December. Sealey never answered the two letters I wrote him, and I damn well won't try again until he reciprocates. Who the hell is he engaged to?

Next letter will probably be from Spain, so write me there and avoid waste of time. HST

c/o McGarr
Calle del Copo 21
Pedregalejo, Malaga
España

Tell Shirley
⁶
to watch out for that “un-tapped power.” I don't know what it means, but it sounds ominous.

Cheers:
Hunter

Mrs. Thompson's son had just sold two articles to the New York
Herald Tribune:
one on voodoo in Puerto Rico, the other on the island of Vieques
.

July 2, 1960
Hamilton, Bermuda

Dear Home:

The Louisville link of the Thompson dynasty has acquitted itself manfully. We now have passports, enough money to eat for a few days, and the assurance that our mail is getting through. This may not seem like much to you there in the midwestern-south, but out here it's extremely important.

All in all, I can offer nothing but apologies for my recent implications that anything was amiss on that end of the service-line. You will, of course, send more copies of my articles (5).

The checks ($35) literally saved our lives. We've been living in a place, paying nothing, and telling the man the check was going to arrive any day.
My check from the
Courier
($40) went to San Juan and has not yet arrived. Your (and Memo's) check made it possible for me to pay this man and avoid the beach or the caves for a sleeping place. We are now sleeping in a basement of a very exclusive set of cottages. Semonin is sleeping in the park, and we are all fairly well off if it doesn't last too long.

The passports, as I said before, were priceless. The only thing that amazes me is that air mail from St. Thomas took as long as Parcel Post. Maybe I'm wrong, but the madras presents were mailed the day before the suitcase. Seems to me that air mail should have been a bit faster.

Still waiting for two checks from
Courier
, one from
Baltimore Sun
, one from
Milwaukee Journal
, two from
Herald Tribune
, and one from
Times
. Don't know when these will ever get to me, but right now I feel extremely successful, without being able to afford the price of a single beer. Strange, but characteristic.

None of us have the faintest idea what we're doing here, but I suppose—since I'm on the verge of being a money-making writer—I have at least a tentative grip on the dark spectre of reality. If I can live this way and support myself at the same time, I'll give the system a ten-point handicap and still bet it can't beat me. […]

It continually amazes me that I am not yet 23, because I usually feel years older than most of the people I'm with regardless of their age. At any rate, it's another birthday and I've lost a bit more of my hair. If I could think of a way to do it right now, I'd head back to Louisville, sit on the porch drinking beer, drive around Cherokee Park for a few nights, and try to sink back as far as I could into the world that did its best to make me. It's not hard to get tired of interminable palms and poinciana, and I could do at the moment with a single elm tree on a midnight street in the Highlands.

As a passing thought—something I would ordinarily be too self-conscious to mention—thanks very much for giving me a good home and a happy, hectic childhood that I never tire of remembering.

Much love,
Hunter

^*
still no word on possible rides to Europe. Maybe tomorrow.

Thompson, Conklin, and Semonin sailed from San Juan to St. Thomas on a forty-seven-foot sloop as crew hands. They were dropped off in Bermuda with no money. Marooned in Bermuda, Thompson thought of Kennedy, with whom he had left nearly all of his belongings
.

July 16,
1960 Hamilton, Bermuda

Dear Editor:

My name is HS Thompson and I would like to work for the
San Juan Star
. Perhaps you've heard of me. I'm a well-known voodoo writer and not the sort of fellow to pay a car rental bill. Please offer me a job so I can get down to work and really make steam. I understand Puerto Rico is a wonderful place to live and full of artists, thinkers, and other useless types. My information comes from three fellows I met in an asylum in upstate New York. I was there seeing a friend of mine named Carl Solomon,
⁷
and I met some people named Sala, Klemmens and Kazin.
⁸
They were good fellows and I could understand most of what they said. […]

The
Trib
bought both my things on Puerto Rico.

Now for the story of our heinous defeat.

Semonin has already given up and flown back to New York, where he will seek employment. And probably ask you for a reference. We are about ready to follow suit, but I hate giving up so much that I don't know if I can go back there. This Bermuda thing has been a nightmare of gargantuan proportions. I'm enclosing a story that I wrote for the local daily,
⁹
but believe me it doesn't give more than a quick glance at the real situation. Semonin slept in a public park—taking a shower each morning at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club—and Sandy & I have been sleeping in a basement on the outskirts of Hamilton. All efforts at departure have failed. The Britishers have threatened to deport us and seem to take it as a tremendous joke that three young Americans are starving in the streets of Hamilton. They refuse to let us work (immigration) & they tell us we have to get out immediately. Lack of funds is a crime here and they've hounded us unmercifully.

After an agonizing reappraisal, I think the duffel bag and the box and the books and anything else should be sent to:

The
Portable Faulkner Reader
is stuffed into the side pocket of the KLM bag. I was reading “The Bear” again just before I left. Read it.

Paul will send instructions as to his paint-box.

Don't insure anything. Just send the bastards the cheapest way you can.

Keep reading Fitzgerald. They say he had the “pure narrative gift,” and if you can do it 74% as well, you can write anything.

Understand your book bounced.
¹⁰
When it bounces twice more, you'll be even with me. The agent read my long/short story “No Vire U” and said she found it “absolutely charming.” The novel, she said, was not quite up to that level. For whatever it may be worth to you, take her address:

Elizabeth McKee
30 E. 60th St.
NYC

she's Styron's
agent, so I guess
she's reputable.

God knows how many times my book has bounced.
Auntie Mame
bounced 19 times. Keep hustling.

Am working on a short story now that should do the trick. If nothing else, it should be “absolutely charming.” I'm a pretty charming fellow.

I want you to stress to Dorvillier that I
never
told the
Courier-Journal
I worked for the
Star
. I think you'll understand my concern about this. I don't want Dorvillier to think I've been trading on his (or the
Star
's) name in any way, shape or form. The return address, which was always c/o Semonin, was the only link they ever had with the
Star
.

I've been explaining this to the
Courier
, but I don't want Dorvillier thinking I was dealing behind his back. I repeat: my concern about this is very genuine. I didn't need the
Star
in the past, I don't need them now, and I don't expect to need it in the future. (Switching tense, there. Bad news) (not tense at all, is it?) (balls)

Tell Dana
¹¹
hello, also little Dana and Kathy. Hear Bone is leaving. San Juan is bad news for the bachelors. Don't worry, I'll spread this. Heading back to New York on Tuesday. Shameful defeat. Will get to Europe soon. Not the Congo—at least, not with Sandy. There's a new wave in the world these days, Kennedy, and I'm just a single, hideous symptom.