Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

“Mr. Stanley of New Orleans, however preachy and inspiring he may have been while speaking about the Bible, consorted with a very rough trade, and as I remember him, he was drunk a lot and not particularly nice to Stanley, whom he ordered about like a servant. Sometimes I saw Stanley in such a dejected state after leaving his cabin that I wondered what verbal abuses and curses his father had heaped on him; sometimes I wondered if he had laid hands on the boy, for I saw Stanley once with a pretty bruised-up eye. From what I remember, his father was plain mean and cantankerous. That he left out.”

She looked at him quizzically.

“Then why would he write so respectfully about him?”

“Why? I suppose he liked the air of respectability that being with a riverboat trader conferred, and maybe he didn’t suffer as much as I seem to remember. Or maybe he was just trying to cover the tracks of his youthful misjudgment. In any case, Mr. Stanley was not the saint that his adopted son mostly made him out to be.” Then: “May I?”

And he poured himself some whiskey from a decanter.

“Now, once we had parted we sometimes corresponded. Stanley was so appreciative of my writing that I sent him old pieces from my early days — that is true — and in the meantime I learned something about his later doings up in Arkansas and the malaria he’d caught. The truth is I never expected to see him again, as we pilots were used to fleeting friendships. Sometimes you saw the same folks over and over again, and sometimes you didn’t; that was the long and short of that kind of life. And maybe I was a little curious about him, maybe even worried — for he had no one but Mr. Stanley to depend upon, which was not much, in my opinion. Then a year went by, and I was sitting in the pilots’ association house in New Orleans, killing time, when in walked Stanley, a bit down on his luck. He was all skin and bones, and the peachiness of his complexion had turned pale. Anyway, I took him out for a good meal and some drinking, and perhaps we did speak about Cuba and his plans to go there and look for Mr. Stanley; frankly, I could not understand why he should even bother, but his heart seemed set on it. He asked me if I would care to come along with him. Well, that was not the foremost thing on my mind. Hostilities were about to begin between the Confederacy and the Union. And with the commercial steamboat trade coming to a dead halt, I was trying to figure out just what I would do with myself — maybe head back up to St. Louis with Mother Clemens, who was visiting me at the time.

“But shortly thereafter, Stanley came down with a bad bout of malaria. Coming out of it a few days later, he was still determined to book passage for Cuba. Now, I have never been a particularly kind fellow — though I thought I was doing right by Stanley by putting him up at my hotel — but as I thought about my friend, in his feebleness, making that journey alone, I began to have second thoughts. Maybe there was something about my brother Henry that I saw in him, and maybe I was thinking that by helping Stanley I might find a little peace of mind. In any case, I was restless and curious about the world, and I did not mind the idea of traveling abroad for a short time. And I was not sure if I wanted to set out straightaway upriver, so I kind of made up my mind to go along with him; all that is true.

“Stanley, I noticed, seemed to think it appropriate to invent other motivations — a girl, as I recall, and some fascination of mine with the island. The truth is that in those days I had met many a southerner who had dealings in Cuba, and all of them had some nice things to say about it and some things that were not so nice: but leaving it to fate, I eventually determined to go.

“And it is true that Stanley met my mother — I found it touching to read about her in Stanley’s words after so many years; and it is true that she was none too pleased by my sudden decision. However we each remembered it, I do not regret the wonderful exhilaration of setting out to a new and unknown place — that alone, despite the nuisances and discomforts of any voyage, made it all worthwhile. I do not regret a single night spent out on the deck looking at the moon reflecting on the water or at the dusting of the stars.”

He lit another cigar.

“Havana itself was a strange, majestic, and run-down city, much as Stanley described it, and our hotel, which I revisited a few years back during my journey there with Henry Rogers, was a tolerable enough place run by a somewhat eccentric southern lady who saw ghosts. In fact, the city was filled to the brim with southerners, and there was a lot of talk among them about how Cuba really belonged to us and how once the Civil War was over the matter would be settled for good. I kind of liked the intrigue — the feeling that every stranger might be a spy — but poor Stanley remained a bundle of nerves and mainly worried about locating his so-called father. I will not comment about his description of our doings in Havana as we tried to track his father down except to say that they are generally true. We did indeed make a call upon a businessman’s family who lived above the city, and there was some truth in the statement that I had once met a girl who happened to live there, but romance was not much on my mind in those days. We did meet with a certain Captain Bailey, who had known Mr. Stanley; we visited his old offices and wandered about the American docks of Havana harbor. We did find a man, a dissipated drunk, who knew Mr. Stanley’s whereabouts. All that is true, Dolly, though construed through the peculiarities of Stanley’s voice.

“Once we reached Limonar by train, we were helped by a French Haitian planter named Mr. Bertrand, who put us up for the night and rented us some horses, and we rode out through a beautiful and rigorous track of mysterious jungle and encountered an escaped slave there. That is all true. And indeed we met Mr. Davis on the plantation-house porch and were shortly led inside, where the reunion between father and son took place. At first we were treated grandly, and the elder Mr. Stanley could not have been more kind to his namesake. Often he called him ‘my dear protégé’ and said things that would ingratiate himself to Stanley, praising his abilities to high heaven. But from the beginning he made it clear to Stanley that he was only a visitor and could expect his hospitality for no more than a week or so, though we were given the run of the place.

“In fact, Dolly, during our days there, Mr. Stanley did his best to make himself scarce. I had the feeling that he really wanted no part of Henry and certainly had no intention of adopting him. I further imagine that he believed Stanley had come all that way only to lay claim to his estate.

“It wasn’t long before the elder Mr. Stanley began to consider Henry’s presence more than just a nuisance: My guess is that when he sent Stanley up into the backwaters of Arkansas he never expected — or particularly wanted — to see him again.

“In any event, Dolly, Stanley’s depiction of their wonderfully earnest and close relationship, suddenly dismantled by fate, was a fantasy, as was his depiction of Mr. Stanley’s death.”

“He didn’t die?” Dolly asked.

“No! The picaresque episode in which Stanley described our party being waylaid by bandits and his father being shot through the neck was another of his inventions. The elder Mr. Stanley was never wounded, never lingered for days with fever from infection, never died; there was no funeral, no lead coffin to ship back to New Orleans. We did go out riding one day to visit a plantation, on a ‘farewell’ tour of that wild region that Mr. Davis had initiated, as we were obviously growing bored by our confinement on the mill. Indeed, we did set out along a narrow trail and were accosted by bandits. Those details were as Stanley recorded them. Our progress was halted by some of the most grisly and menacing fellows I have ever seen. They surrounded us and demanded a watch and whatever monies we had. But once Mr. Stanley and Mr. Davis produced their pistols and some shots were exchanged — not a single bullet hitting its mark, on account of the rearing horses — we began to gallop away, back toward the mill and safety. I can remember hanging on to my horse for dear life, Dolly! The bandits, for which that region was known, scattered into the woods. Only the elder Mr. Stanley suffered an injury, and a minor one at that. For as we retreated along the narrow trail, with gunshots sounding behind us, Mr. Stanley’s horse threw him from his saddle roughly to the ground, and his left shoulder was badly dislocated as a result.