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Hunter and his bride, Anita, in
2003.
Photo by Louisa Davidson |
ASPEN, Colo. -- Hunter S. Thompson heard
the ice clinking.
The literary champ was sitting in his
command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in
his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot
through the mouth hours earlier.
But a small circle of family and friends
gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses
full of his favored elixir — Chivas Regal on ice.
"It was very loving. It was not a
panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita
Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments
since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like
Hunter wanted. He was in control here."
Anita Thompson also echoes the comments
that have been made by Hunter Thompson's son and daughter-in-law:
That her husband's suicide did not come from the bottom
of the well, but was a gesture of strength and ultimate
control made as his life was at a high-water mark.
"This is a triumph of his, not a
desperate, tragic failure," Anita Thompson said by
phone, recounting that she was sitting in her husband's
chair he called his catbird seat in the Rockies.
She added: "He lived a beautiful
life and he lived it on his own terms, all the way from
the very beginning to the very end."
Anita Thompson, like her husband's other
close relatives, understood how Hunter Thompson wanted
to make his ultimate exit.
"I always knew that Hunter was going
to die before me," Anita Thompson, 32, said of her
67-year-old husband. "I'd accepted that. I just did
not know it was going to be like this. I would rather
have him back."
Yet Anita Thompson quickly came to embrace
Hunter Thompson's gesture with a .45-caliber handgun.
She was at the gym when her husband took
his life. And when family friend and Pitkin County Sheriff
Bob Braudis confirmed the news, her mind raced. "I
have enough will power," she thought. "I can
turn back time. No, no, no. This is not right. This can't
happen."
But upon seeing Hunter Thompson's body,
she embraced him. "Since he'd done this, I did not
want to make it difficult for his spirit," she said.
"I wanted to make it loving."
Anita Thompson believes she will stay
on at the expansive property and famous house that was
an ever-changing archive of political, literary and name-your-category
items. And she will continue to help administer Hunter
Thompson's works.
"I'm going to keep on working for
Hunter," she said. "He wanted this. He made
sure that I was in place to continue on. I'll just do
my job until I can be with him again."
She adds, citing the property's nickname:
"It will remain Owl Farm. It will remain Hunter Thompson's
Owl Farm."
The last book they had read out loud together
was parts of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a dense
classic that explores the fragility of civilization by
one of Hunter Thompson's favorite authors. Yet, said Anita
Thompson, "He thinks Conrad is funny."
Anita Thompson and her husband had a small
tiff that afternoon. Hunter Thompson told her to leave
the kitchen that was known across the world as his funky
and sacred work space. A weird look came across his face.
"I don't know why he wanted me to
leave the room," she said. "It's all speculation.
He'd never asked me to leave the room before."
But Anita Thompson did not go to the office
with Hunter Thompson's son, as he had requested. Instead,
she left the house.
"I'm going to get my gym bag. I'm going," she
recalled. "He said, 'I don't want you to leave the
house.'"
But she went to the gym. At 5:16 p.m.,
according to her cell-phone display, she called and spoke
with Hunter Thompson for 10 minutes and 22 seconds.
Hunter Thompson put almost everyone on
speakerphone. But he picked up the handset to speak with
his wife.
"I knew it was odd, first of all,
that he picked up with the handset ... I thought, 'That's
sweet,'" she said.
The talk was good.
"He said, 'I want you to come home
after you work out. Come home and we'll work on a column,'"
she recalled.
The conversation, however, never really
ended. Before formal goodbyes, Anita Thompson heard a
clicking sound. She thought Hunter Thompson might have
put down the handset and was typing. Or maybe it was the
television. She waited. Maybe a minute passed.
"He did not say anything about killing
himself," she said.
The official time of death is 5:42 p.m.
But did Hunter Thompson shoot himself
while on the phone with his wife?
"I did not hear any bang," she
says, noting that Hunter Thompson's son, who was in the
house at the time, believed that a book had fallen when
he heard the shot.
Anita Thompson can imagine what was going
through Hunter Thompson's mind before the fatal shot:
My beloved son, grandson and daughter-in-law are here.
I'm in my perch. The fireplace has fire.
"I don't know if it mattered if I
was here," Anita Thompson says. "I just like
to think, and believe in my heart, he felt happy in his
life."
A woman at the gym saw Anita Thompson
in the bathroom. She asked if Hunter Thompson was OK.
Anita Thompson pretty much blew it off. Rumors about Hunter
Thompson were always in the air. Anita Thompson replied,
"Oh yeah," but added, "he's been pretty
stressed out lately."
A strange look was on the woman's face.
She told Anita Thompson to check her phone messages. The
woman said she would stay at her side.
Now she was shaking, and could barely
dial.
There was a message from Juan Thompson,
Hunter's son. "Anita, you have to come home now,
he's dead."
Anita Thompson then spoke to the sheriff
on the phone.
Had Hunter Thompson intended for his wife
of two years to be in the house?
"I don't know, and it's not that
important," Anita Thompson says. "I know he
loved me. There's no question ... I know he did not want
me to find him alone. He knew I was opposed to it."
After wading through the police officers
outside, Anita Thompson recalls seeing her husband's dead
body for the first time. "He was sitting in the chair
when they brought me in, and I got to hug him and kiss
him and rub his legs," she said. "All the anger
was gone when I saw him."
Anita Thompson does not know why Hunter
Thompson chose the .45 from his vast collection of guns.
But he was deft with his death. "He did not destroy
his face," Anita Thompson says. "He did it in
his mouth. His face was beautiful. It was quick. It was
not grisly or gruesome by any means. That's probably why
he took that gun. He spared us a gruesome scene."
She adds: "His face did look calm
and peaceful. He looked content. Like he wanted it."
For Tuesday's cremation, Anita Thompson
dressed her husband. He was wearing a light blue, seersucker
suit, a Tilly hat and his reading glasses, which he had
on when he died. He had asked her to include a lock of
her hair with him on this occasion. She complied, and
more, cutting off her one-foot long blonde ponytail.
Anita Thompson is depending on mundane
chores, but also family, friends and the estimated 50
messages a day.
"Being alone with Hunter in our bedroom,
and I've been reading his letters to me," she added.
"They have a different charge now. He wrote the most
beautiful love letters I have ever seen ... I'm so lucky."
Then there was the flag. Hunter Thompson
is an Air Force veteran. And following protocol, according
to Anita Thompson, a deputy coroner from neighboring Garfield
County presented her with a U.S. flag. It now hangs on
a storyboard in the kitchen area, normally used for Hunter
Thompson's works in progress. A white, silk scarf that
the Dalai Lama presented to Hunter Thompson — the
two men looked alike — drapes over the flag.
The house is filled to the brim with flowers
— especially orchids, Hunter Thompson's favorite.
"It's nice in here," says Anita
Thompson. "He would like it. He does like it, I guess."
Yes, Anita Thompson says, the landmark
writer is nearby. "Mainly in moments when you're
quiet, you can feel him; it's a different energy than
when he was in his body," she says. "It's in
the chest. It's all encompassing, but just for a second.
It's beautiful."
Hunter Thompson was huge on swimming for
his exercise. But he was also known for his love of fine
whiskey, and to put it far too mildly, for experimenting
with most every intoxicant known to man.
"He loved his body, look what he
did to it," Anita Thompson jokes. She then adds a
line that maybe even she fails, on its face, to grasp
the significance of: "He gave his body everything
it wanted."
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