” You won’t get any more trouble from those two.”

” No.”

” Does this happen a lot round here?”

” No.”

” Good.”

The man helped Ernie to his feet.

” Who are you?” asked Ernie.

” Does it matter?”

” No, I guess not.”

The man then picked up Joe’s shotgun and removed the two spent shells replacing them with the spent shells from his own gun.

” What’s your name, son?”

” Ernie, Ernie Miller.”

” Well I’ll be damned.”

” What?”

” Nothing. Look, when the police come tell them…” the man pointed at Joe.

” Joe, his name is Joe.”

” Tell them Joe shot the two men as he was dying. You got that, Ernie?”

” Sure.”

” Good. Now you can fill a can with some gas for me? I ran out about a
mile down the road.”

Ernie found a can and filled it and gave it to the man who then gave Ernie a ten dollar note and told him to keep the change. The man then shook Ernie’s hand and disappeared into the night.

There was no telephone at the gas station so Ernie had to wait until someone came by before the police could be informed. And as he waited, with the three bodies sprawled across the concrete of the forecourt in ever widening pools of their own blood, Ernie switched the radio back on.

- And that was a recorded interview with the novelist Ernest Hemingway.

Ernie retuned the radio until he found a live broadcast by Count Basie.

” Ernie? Ernie?!”

Ernie Miller’s head began to clear and as it did so he realised he wasn’t in his fox hole any more but out in the open. Someone was calling his name, it was Sergeant Johnson.

” Over here, Sergeant.”

” Hell, I’ve been looking all over the damned place for you, Miller. That last barrage took one hell of a toll. We’ve been ordered back to regroup. Come on.”

Ernie tried to get up but couldn’t. Both his legs were gone.

A week later, in a temporary hospital not far from Bastogne, Private Ernie Miller, wearing a newly awarded Purple Heart, was sitting up in bed reading a very short letter from his father:

Dear Son

Your picture is in the Imolna Messenger again, but this time on the
front page where it belongs. Your mother is fine, and the gas station is
as busy as ever. What a fine man Joe Mascala was to leave it to you in
his will. I guess with no children of his own and a wife who ran out on
him when she saw the kind of place he’d brought her to he probably
thought of you as family. He’d have been proud too the way you killed
those two robbers with his shotgun back in ‘32.

Anyway, son, enjoy the book.

Your loving father

Ernie could feel people standing at the foot of his bed.

” This is Private Ernie Miller, Mr Hemingway.”

Ernie looked up from his father’s letter to see a tall, bearded man smiling down at him.

” Pleased to meet you, Ernie,” said Ernest Hemingway, “say, haven’t we met somewhere before?”

” Don’t think so, Mr Hemingway. Heard you talking on the radio once though.”

” Really?”

” Yea, Kansas City.”

” Can’t say I recall.”

” No?”

” No.”

The officer who was with Hemingway intervened.

” Mr Hemingway is doing a series of profiles of soldiers for the newspapers. Would you mind if he asked you a few questions, Private Miller?”

” Nothing to say, sir.”

” Oh, are you sure?”

” Quite sure. Try Maloney, he’s only lost one leg.”

Ernest Hemingway then shook Ernie’s hand.

” It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Ernie.”

” Likewise. Oh, I wonder, would you mind signing one of your books for me?”

” No, not at all.”

Ernie handed over the copy of Death in the Afternoon that his father had sent him. Hemingway signed it with a flourish, and returned it.

” A Merry Christmas, Ernie.”

” A Merry Christmas, Mr Hemingway.”

” Please, call me Ernie.”

” A Merry Christmas, Ernie.”

When Hemingway had gone Ernie read the inscription on the flyleaf of the book:

‘ Thanks for the gas! Ernest Hemingway.’