<i>This story originally appeared in the Sunday, May 18, 2003 edition of The Kansas City Star</p><p></p><p>Sportswriter Wright Thompson and photographer John Sleezer traveled to Cuba earlier this year for The Star's special baseball sections. While there - and this was before political tensions re-emerged between Cuba and the United States - they tracked the legacy of Ernest Hemingway for Star Magazine. </p><p></p><p>SAN FRANCISCO DE PAULA, Cuba - He should be home any minute. Everything is waiting. Teams of maids polish the chrome on his boat, clean the leaves from his pool and sweep the dust from the floor of his home. There's a rocking chair in Ernest Hemingway's living room embroidered with the words "Poor Old Papa." </p><p></p><p>The rest of the things in the house are shrines to the life that brought him from the city desk of The Kansas City Star to a quiet lookout in the hills outside Havana. </p><p></p><p>The ceramic that Pablo Picasso made for him is in the study. His bullfight posters are on the wall. His books fill up shelves, which fill up rooms. Three pairs of penny loafers are drying by the window. The closet is full of boots and a war correspondent uniform, should he ever need to cover another war. </p><p></p><p>There's his typewriter, a classic Royal, waiting. It's on top of some shelves; he writes standing up. There are pictures of his boys and of his wife. The bar is still stocked, should he ever want to entertain or simply drink alone. The dining room table is set for three. </p><p></p><p>But the boys have grown up. The booze is undrinkable and the labels faded by the hot Cuban summers. The boat is dry-docked, where the tennis court used to be. No one swims in the pool anymore; the water is all gone. When things got bad, he had to be supervised while swimming; his wife, Mary, was afraid he'd drown in a drunken stupor. </p><p></p><p>He's gone, dead from a single shotgun blast to the head, not so long after leaving this, his home for two decades, for a bunker in Idaho. The house, which he gave to the Cuban government in his will, is almost as he left it, still waiting patiently for his return. </p><p></p><p>The typewriter is silent, as it was often toward the end. Now it has an alarm, to prevent one of the tourists from trying to make off with it. The tourists come often, to his home here in the country, to the Havana bars where he left his talent and his money, to Pamplona in Spain, or Harry's Bar in Venice, or Sloppy Joe's in Key West. For a man whose life sometimes swallowed his work, it's not surprising that the places he visited and lived have become almost more important than his words. </p><p></p><p>All over the world, shrines like this one have been turned into magnets for Hemingway stalkers and their money. </p><p></p><p>So they come, searching. </p><p></p><p>Three tour-bus loads at the moment, from the United States. They paid their money to get on the grounds - $2 to look around, more if you want to take pictures. For a professional film crew, it's five bills. That's more than an average Cuban makes in three years. </p><p></p><p>Maybe they come for Ernest Hemingway, the writer. Maybe they are searching for something in themselves, something missing from their DSL-lives and fast-food dreams, something wild and free and brave. </p><p></p><p>The boat stopped in April 1928, en route from France to America. He was just becoming famous, and Ernest Hemingway was taken to room 511 of Havana's Hotel Ambos Mundos. The windows opened to a Havana harbor scene, with the fort in the distance. Hemingway lived a life of great views. He stayed only two days that trip but was hooked. When he returned four years later, he requested the same room.