Green Shadows, White Whales

“Okay, H.G., shut your eyes and relax, total relaxation, easy does it, easy, easy, nice and soft and slow and easy,” he murmured, as my eyes shut and my head lolled. He kept speaking and I kept listening, nodding my head gently and he talked on, holding my hands and breathing his mellow Scotch in my face and I felt my bones go loose in my flesh and my flesh lounge out under my skin and it was easy and nice and sleepy and at last John said: “Are you under, kid?”

“Way under, John,” I whispered.

“That’s the way. Good. Fine. Now listen here, H.G., while you’re there and relaxed, is there any one message you want to tell me so I can tell yourself? Give instructions, as it were, for self-improvement or behavior tomorrow? Spit it out. Tell me. And I’ll instruct you. But easy does it. Well …?”

I thought. My head swayed. My eyelids were heavy.

“Just one thing,” I said.

“And what’s that, kid?”

“Tell me—”

“Yes?”

“Instruct me to—”

“What, kid?”

“Write the greatest, most wonderful, finest screenplay in the history of the world.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Tell me that, John, and I’ll be happy …,” I said, asleep, deep under, waiting.

“Well,” said John. He leaned close. His breath was like an aftershave on my cheeks and chin. “Here’s what you do, kid.”

“Yes?” I said.

“Write the damnedest, finest, most wonderful screenplay ever to be written or seen.”

“I will, John,” I said.

Chapter 9 (#ulink_0f987a95-819b-510d-9eca-9b0bfc5880a4)

It’s not often in the life of a writer lightning truly strikes. And I mean, there he is on the steeple, begging for creative annihilation, and the heavens save up spit and let him have it. In one great hot flash, the lightning strikes. And you have an unbelievable tale delivered in one beauteous blow and are never so blessed again.

And here’s how the lightning struck.

I had been hard at it with harpoon and typewriter for three hours out at Courtown House when the telephone rang. John, Ricki, and I had gathered for lunch and another try at trapping the pale flesh of the great Beast. We looked up, glad for the interruption.

John seized the phone, listened, and gave a great gasping cry.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned!”

Each word was exquisitely pronounced—no, not pronounced: yelled—into the telephone.

“Well, I’ll be absolutely and completely goddamned!”

It seemed that John had to shout all the way to New York City and beyond. Now, gripping the phone, he looked out across the green meadows in December light as if somehow, too, he might stare long distance at that man he was yelling at so far away.

“Tom, is it really you?” he cried.

The phone buzzed: yes, it was really Tom.

John held the phone down and shouted the same way at Ricki, at the far end of the dining room table. I sat between, half buttering my toast.

“It’s Tom Hurley, calling from Hollywood!”

Ricki gave him one of her elusive, haunted smiles and looked down again at her scrambled eggs.

“Well, for God’s sake, Tom!” said John. “What are you up to? What are you doing?”

The phone buzzed.

“Uh-huh,” said John, emphatically, listening. “Uh-huh! Uh-huh!” He nodded. “Good, Tom. Fine, Fine. Lisa, yes, I remember Lisa. Lovely girl. When? Well, that’s wonderful, Tom, for both of you!”

The telephone talked for a long moment. John looked at me and winked.

“Well, it’s the hunt season here, Tom, yes, great fox-hunting country. Ireland’s the best in the world. Fine jumps, Tom, you’d love it!”

Ricki looked up again at this. John glanced away from her, out at the swelling green hills.

“It’s the loveliest land in creation, Tom. I’m going to live here forever!”

Ricki started eating rapidly, looking down.

“They have great horses here, Tom,” said John. “And you know horses better than I do. Well, you ought to come over and just lay your eyes on the beauties!”

I heard the voice on the phone say it wished it could.

John gazed at the green fields. “I’m riding with the Waterford Hunt Thursday, Tom. What the hell … hell, why don’t you just fly over to hunt with me?”

The voice on the phone laughed.

Ricki let her fork drop. “Christ,” she muttered. “Here it comes!”

John ignored her, gazed at the hills and said:

“I mean it, be our houseguest, bring Lisa too!”

The voice on the phone laughed, not so loud this time.

“Tom, look,” John pursued, “I need to buy one or two more horses to race or maybe breed, you could help me pick. Or—”

John stared out the window. Beyond, a hound trotted by on the green field. John sat up suddenly, as if the animal were inspiration.

“Tom, I’ve just got the damnedest wildest idea. Listen, you do want to bring Lisa along, yes? Okay, pile her into a plane tomorrow, fly to Shannon—Shannon, Tom—and I’ll come to Shannon myself to drive you here to Kilcock. But listen, Tom, after you’ve been here a week we’ll have a hunt wedding!”