T H E W R I T E R

By Kurt Indovina

This is an excerpt from my short novella The Writer (creative title, I know). You can download the entire story as a PDF or EPUB for free. Have at it!

Little Johnny Joe gripped onto Harry’s collar with his tiny feeble hands. With every last ounce of life, he held on for as long as he could. The pouring rain washed his blood down the alleyway drains, diluting it with the dirt and grime of the city. The devil's sweat. Lightning struck, sending a crack through the night sky. A bright flash and then darkness, like a lightbulb going out in its final moment of life.

"You were the only one to stop… the only one to bring me soup… a warm cup of coffee," Little Johnny Joe croaked. Harry held him tight in his arms, drenched in the night, the rain masking his tears. "You may have never given me no spare change… but you changed my life… forever." His final breath left his body. 

Harry held Little Johnny Joe, his grip so hard it could bend steel. Contorted with rage, he shouted: "Damn those crystal demons! Damn you!" His cry reverberated off the alley walls. He wailed like a banshee. The city shook. And it should be shaking… because Harry Crock was about to knock down every damn door in town.

The writer sat in a cheap wooden chair, in front of a cheap wooden desk, surrounded by the smell of cheap cigar smoke. His agent placed the pages of the manuscript on top of the latest rejection letter. The writer's feet tapped against the linoleum floor.

The agent interlaced his fingers, leaned back in his leather chair, and looked up towards the ceiling—his gaze fixated on nothing. You could hear the creak of the rotating fan, the traffic outside, the tapping foot.

"So you don’t like it," the writer said. 

The agent continued to look up at nothing. 

"No, they don’t like it," the writer said, raising his index finger towards the ceiling, as if pointing to the gods above.

The agent, ignoring the writer, said "Maybe you should take a break," nodding to himself in agreement. "Up north, perhaps. The mountains?" he continued. "Yeah. Where people are simpler. Where things are quieter." He placed his wet, chewed, cigar between his teeth, looked down at the writer, and said: "Most importantly… don’t write."

"You want me not to write?" The writer looked as if he had just been smacked with the back of a glove.

"You need some time away from the typewriter, time away from the city. Clear your head. Actually experience something."

"Is that what they’ve been saying about me? That I’m inexperienced?" The writer stood up. "I just can’t take a break—it’d interrupt my routine." He began to pace. "I get up every morning, sit at my desk, and write. It’s what makes me a good writer. It’s like working out. If I miss a day, I’ll get weak. I’ll get—"

"Flabby, I know," the agent interjected. You’re a busy idiot is what he wanted to say. Smashing those pathetic little fingers against a typewriter doesn’t mean you're a writer. They’re just words on paper. Nothing more. Instead, the agent said: "Have you written anything that wasn’t about the city? You know, publishers are starting to look more for small town mysteries. The literary audience is moving out to the boonies. They’re getting older, slowing down. And so should you."

"Move to the boonies? Slow down?"

"It might serve some good inspiration." Everything he said was a lie. No publisher had asked him for a small town mystery. More than anything, he just needed a break from the writer.

There were dozens of writers just like him that sat in that very same chair in front of the agent. Young, inexperienced, pompous, and willing to do anything for a lucky break. Chandler, Spillane, Hammett—those were the names they aspired to be like. The agent promised their names on the cover of books—he promised them exposure, and while he lied about almost everything, there was some truth to that promise. Go into your local corner store and there you’d find 'em on the dime-shelf racks, next to the comics and the magazines. Whether the books were any good, the agent didn’t care. Nor did the publishers. Well, they had to be good enough. So when a rejection letter rolled in for the latest Harry Crock story, that’s how the agent knew something was really wrong. 

Fifty-fifty split was the deal between him and the publisher. And then a ninety-ten split between him and the writers. The writers were lucky to make enough to buy a week’s groceries, but most of them didn’t care. Most of them held down day jobs, happy just to fulfill the fantasy of being able to see their novels in stores. In most cases, after a writer’s book went to print, it was rare the agent would ever see the same writer twice. After all, he treated them much like the dime store novels they wrote: expendable and intended to be thrown away when he was done with them.

Harry Crock’s writer (let’s call him W), however, was—for lack of a better word—arrogant, and as a side-effect, persistent, despite constant rejection.

"You know, there'll be something to say about the rural areas," said the agent. "Deep mysteries, problems, oppressive themes."

It got W thinking. The dual lives of the idyllic town folk. The simple people. Goofy, charming, low brow. Stupid. It’ll be an unsuspecting and quirky tale in a small town. Denizens, W thought.

"But what about that story," W pointed at his manuscript on the agent’s desk.

That's when the agent lost it. "Look! I only get paid if you get paid, and you can’t get paid unless you write something worth selling! Now I’ve been patient! No one else would put up with this, you hear me? Crystal demons? Little Johnny Joe? What the hell are you talking about? Now, I’m giving you a chance. More than I should. You get out of my office, you take some time off, and you don’t come back in this room unless I can sell something. Got it?"

W didn't have a response. Instead he asked for an advance, the agent said no, and then W walked out of the door.

—

Copies of Crystal Rain: A Harry Crock Story were scattered all around W's studio apartment, most of which he bought with his own money. He pulled his suitcase from the closet and set it on the bed. While packing he began to fantasize about his trip. The small town and its simple people—maybe he could convince them he was a big shot writer. Or, maybe, he could find an audience there. A taste of stardom. He removed a shirt from his suitcase to make room for more copies of his book.

He had only known the city. Born and raised. He had a limited wardrobe as a result. Clothes for the summer and then clothes for the rest of the year. That’s California for you. What did they wear in these small towns? Flannels? Sweaters? What did it matter?

He clamped the suitcase shut and looked at his portable typewriter and the stack of paper and pens next to it. Don’t write, the words of his agent echoed in his mind. But I’ll get flabby. Without a second thought, he put the typewriter in its carrying case, grabbed the paper, pens, an extra ink ribbon, and headed for the door.

W looked at himself in the mirror: a meek demeanor, hair combed with an imperfect part, white shirt buttoned up and tucked in but not ironed. "You’re just ahead of your time," he said to himself. A mantra for the days he felt rejection. Those days were often.

—

He drove and drove and drove, down the long road, twisting and turning, along the edge of the cliff. The view of the water. The surfers below. The beach crowd. The clear blue sky. He didn’t take the drive often. Why leave the city? What stories could exist beyond it? The California people? The rise of suburbia? These people turned their backs on the city and scurried away to places formed and built to keep out the undesirables, as they put it. A place for normality. Mundanity. Still, the natural beauty of the view was hard to ignore. But beyond the backdrop, the stage curtain, was an empty void. A mere veil with nothing beyond it. 

The more he drove, lost in his thoughts, the more the clear sky would fade and be replaced with more and more trees. With every mile, the forest grew thicker and thicker, the passing cars becoming less and less frequent.

He pulled into a gas station and asked the attendant if there was a town nearby. "Yessir, just a couple miles ahead—our little lovely town," he said. W nodded, then took in a deep inhale of the mountain air. Crisp and clean. You don’t get that sort of air in the city, W said. "That’s where you’re from, huh? The city? Of course you are. Should have known from your suit."

"I’m a writer," W said.

"Oh, well I'll be!" The attendee slapped his knee. W glowed. He reached into the back seat of his car, grabbed one of his novels, and handed it to the young man and told him to keep it. It’s signed, too, he made sure to tell him. He then paid for the gas, gave the attendant a wink, and drove off.

The attendant stood in a cloud of dirt holding the book. He looked down and examined the cover which read HARRY CROCK.

—

The town was rain covered, muddy, and casted in shadow from the trees arched above. He drove by a small grocery store, a post office, a diner, and a bank. Life’s essentials. He had been driving for what felt like hours, lost in the sounds of the radio and his own thoughts. He hadn’t known if it were eleven in the morning or four in the afternoon. The dreary overcast peeking through the leaves made it feel like the early evening. It made him feel like he was enclosed in a dome made of wooden pillars with a ceiling woven of leaves. Then finally, as though coming to his senses for the first time since leaving the city, he could feel his stomach grumble.

He exited his car, looked around, and made his first observation: no sidewalks—just mud covered paths imprinted with boot tracks. A woman stood across the road—it was hard to tell if she was even breathing. She was looking right at W, bewilderment on her face. He waved. She didn’t wave back. So he walked into the diner.

He looked different from everyone else. His face seemed more rectangular, probably because he was the only one with a clean shave; no one else wore a suit or a white button up shirt, and his tie alone was enough to turn heads. Baseball caps rotated, chairs creaked, and leather upholstery crinkled. Whispers ensued like a whistling wind in the distance.

None of its decorations made sense, especially the carpet that was nailed to the wall. Still, it left an impression, which is more than most places in the city could. There was an open seat at the counter, so W took it. The waitress set a mug down and filled it with coffee as if obligatory. She greeted him with a nod and slid him a menu. That’s when he heard the low and steady breathing next to him. In… and out. In… and out. A low hum, deep from within a man’s chest. He could sense that whoever it was, they were staring at him. In this moment, W could have either retreated into his feeble form, or learn to embrace it. So he straightened his back and realized he had to get into character. In his mind, he became the detective in a small town, determined to get to the bottom of a mystery, just like Harry Crock. The only way W was going to get by with all eyes on him, in a place he clearly didn’t belong, was to not be himself at all.

The waitress returned, flipped open a spiral notebook, and said "Alright city slicker, what’ll be?"

"City slicker? What gave it away?" W asked.

"Call it a lucky guess," she said. "You could say it’s the suit, or you could say it’s that I know every person who’s ever lived in this town." She could have been anywhere between the age of thirty to sixty. Her shape was unspecific, and though her face was defined, the skin showed wear. Maybe it was the smoking. Maybe it was the town's drinking water. 

W ordered the tuna melt. She didn’t have to write it down.

W’s cool and collected character was barely holding on. The moment she turned away, he fell back into his measly writer-self, like he was bearing the weight of another person and finally dropped its dead weight. His posture collapsed. He opened his notebook and began to write:

The roads were cracked and old. The sidewalks were nothing but mud. The buildings were held together by wood and nails and had a century’s worth of wear on them. Lean on them the wrong way and you might lose a piece of this town’s history. It was old, dilapidated, covered in a layer of the elements, and held together with a prayer. And yet the air was crisp. Clean. A natural freshness that hasn’t been suffocated by industrialization, replaced with concrete and the pollution of man. It hadn’t been robbed of its natural characteristics. Instead, the hand prints here are that of passion. Survival.

Across the road a woman appeared to be on an afternoon hike. She looked at me, waved, and shouted hello. A smile as welcoming as the sun peeking through the trees above, carrying a soft warmth as it shined on my skin. I waved back and smiled. It triggered a forgotten sensation in my cheeks. Muscles I hadn’t used in years.

I entered the diner and its patrons  greeted me with subtle nods and howyoudos. I nodded back and sat down at the bar. The waitress greeted me and filled my mug with coffee to the brim. It’s like she already knew how I liked it. When my eyes met hers, all I could think about was how lucky this little town was to have a girl like her to pour them a cup of coffee everyday. She smiled, bright white teeth, paired with her natural colored creamy skin. No makeup. Just unadulterated beauty.

"We don’t get newcomers here often, you must be from the big city."

"What gave it away?" I asked.

"That dashing outfit and the sprinkle of melancholy it’s left on your face. Or, maybe it was just a lucky guess." 

I was entranced by the way her lips moved

"You one of them seance reporters?"

Like being snapped out of a trance, W looked over to the heavy breather next to him. "Pardon?" He was a large burly fellow, suspenders tight, holding his patched-up pants over his protruding gut.

"Seance reporter. You one of em?" the man asked.

"Do you mean census?" W asked back.

The man’s eyebrows raised with an excuse-me sorta look, then looked off ahead, and took a long sip from his mug.

W put his pen back on the paper:

Her lips were soft, full, and awfully distracting. It reminded me of how long it had been since I had pressed mine against—

"Whatcha write about?" You could hear the big burly man press air through his nostrils, whistling out and brushing against his big white mustache.

Ink bled out on the notebook from the nib.

W paused to think on how to respond, and then answered "I write about people’s lives."

"Well there’s plenty of those to write about! We all got one, till we don’t, ya know?" He squinted his eyes and narrowed his focus until nodding and looking off again. "Say, maybe you’ll write bout my life," and sipped from his mug.

Things like this didn't happen in the city. W had sat next to thousands upon thousands— maybe tens of thousands—of people in bars, coffee shops, bus stops, news stands, and so on, but never had he encountered anyone so willing to ask him who he was and what he did. In the city, everyone is so self-absorbed in their own world, wallowing through their own lives, their daily routines, and their commutes. They stop by diners to fuel up like automobiles—to recharge. Then they race off to the next obligation, never expressing a care in the world for someone else’s career or the man sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with them. They’re not living in the moment, but in a constant chase of the next thing. And yet, here W sits, only minutes after walking into a diner in a small town, conversing with a stranger about his career. His craft. His life. Quirky, W thought. Charming. Absolutely endearing.

"What kind of stories do you have?" W asked.

The man’s eyebrows rose up again, this time in surprise, and pointed to himself. His bottom lip curled out, emerging from the white bushy beard that masked the bottom half of his face. He sat there, looking at nothing, as if retracing all his stories.

On the wall next to him, dozens of photographs were pinned and taped to the wooden paneling. He tapped his fingers against one of the pictures. A photo of himself kneeling in the snow next to a dead bear. In the picture, the man was smiling, posing with the bear, elbow resting on its lifeless torso.

"You see that picture there? I killed that bear… with my BARE HANDS!" He raised his calloused mitts in a strangling motion.

"He’s telling the truth," a voice shouted from a corner of the diner. Then another person hollered in corroboration.

"It’s true. I’d know. I shot that picture myself," said an older man, a double barrel shotgun by his side.

"Why didn’t you use your gun to kill the bear?" W asked.

"Oh, I don’t shoot guns, just pictures," he answered.

The whole diner erupted with everyone regaling the story, as though they were all there, agreeing with uh-huhs and that’s-rights. All the attention turned to W who, only a few moments ago, might as well have been a passing wind entering from the outside breeze.

"So that’s why you’re here, mister? To tell our stories?" The gunman leaned in, hands planted on the counter.

"Well, I came here for an escape, to… I guess, yeah, see if there’s a story to tell here."

"You must be one of them slick city folk writing for the magazines," said the gunman.

"I don’t write for the magazines," W said, waving his hand as if swatting away the assumption. "I write novels."

The room awed.

"Wow, ain’t that something. You must be smart," a voice in the diner said.

"I just share information. I let the world speak and I listen. That’s all," said W.

The waitress set W's tuna melt down in front of him.

"Where you staying?" the bear killer asked, chin raised with inquiry.

"Nowhere yet. I just drove into town."

W looked down at his lunch. It looked as if someone had sneezed tuna salad between two slices of bread and then punched it onto a plate.

"Best tuna melt in town," said a wrinkled old woman sitting alone at a table for two. She held a wedge of her sandwich up in cheer. It was dripping.

"The only tuna melt in town," said the waitress, followed with a drag from her cigarette.

There was a story here. After all, stories happen to those willing to tell them, W would often remind himself, and one was happening before him. The story of a quirky town, idyllic and simple, until something is unearthed that upheaves its quiet and quaint eccentricities. The simple minds and simple lives of simple folk, until it ain't so simple no more.

"Well, I got a cabin that ain’t gettin no use. Name's Gordy. It’s all yours, if ya want," said Gordy, the bear killer.

W picked up his tuna melt, stared at with uncertainty, and then looked at Gordy and said "why the hell not?" and took a hard bite of the soggy sandwich.

—

END OF THE EXCERPT

To read the rest of Hotel Lost, you may download a PDF or EPUB below. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Don’t get too lost.