The Blue Light Read online

week end trip. He carefully taken the case off the typewriter, and set it on the desk.

  Typewriters were honest, and dependable, not like word processors that could shut down when the power went off, although ribbon for it was getting scarce. He had purchased 5 packages of ribbon off Amazon for fifty nine cents a pack, dang near stole it, as his Dad would have said. He oiled the carrier carefully, and when he was through he looked at his watch to find it was only six o’clock in the evening.

  He finally went to sleep around eight, and rose early the next day on account of it. He spent the day working to get the house ready for winter. The following day old man Cullen showed up with a big dual wheeled truck loaded with wood, the high plywood sides of the truck loaded to the top. Nick walked out to the large truck.

  “Where do ya want’er put?”

  “Can you put it right next to the porch?”

  “Ayup, but the squirrels will probably want to winter in tha wood and ya’ll end up with’um in tha house, but suit yaself!”

  Before he could consider another option, the wiry old man was in his truck backing it up to the porch. He hit some switch in the cab, and the bed began to rise. It rose higher and higher until the wood broke loose, and slid out in a tangled pile, the pile half covered the porch, breaking a railing as it hit. He could hear the old man in the cab laughing his ass off. “I thought it would be stacked.” He said as the old man got down from the cab.

  “Don’t stack wood no more, takes too much time from cutting. If you want it stacked you’ll have to stack it yaself. That’ll be three hunert and fifty.”

  “Come in, and I’ll write you a check.”

  “Don’t take checks, ain’t no bank up here.”

  “You should have explained all this over the phone yesterday.”

  “Woulda if you’d a asked.”

  He walked into the house, and came back shortly with the old geezers money. The old man took the money, still with that evil grin on his face. He shifted his chaw, “If ya need anything else better let me know, s’posed to snow the later part of the week; weather man says.”

  “No thanks Mr. Cullen, I’m good, thanks for bringing the wood on such short notice.”

  “Yer welcome. Good luck Mr. Jordan.”

  Turn the other cheek, so Mom used to say, no sense letting my blood pressure get up over a few cords of wood.

  The old mans weather prediction was right on; it began snowing on Saturday morning, and didn’t let up until Tuesday night. He walked out on the porch, and viewed the snow covered pile of wood. At least I won’t have to carry it far; the old man actually did me a favor, unless I’m overrun with squirrels. A squirrel or two, I can put up with.

  He walked back into the house, and sat down at the desk, laid his hands on his typewriter keys, then sat and stared through the window at the snow.

  “Come on, you know you have it somewhere in your damned befuddled brain.” He said aloud to the room.” But stories don’t necessarily reside in rooms. Stories are like fire flies. You have to grab them out of the air the second they blink, and if you grab too hard, they die, and the fire goes out. Stories are a tiny seed you carefully plant in the ground, and then nurture until it can grow on its own, or a tiny multicolored grain of sand in a sea of sand, and you have to gently blow the other grains aside until there it sits, a precious jewel to be polished. Stories are like a germ, waiting for a suitable host to thrive, and grow into a huge lump, that can be shaped to ones own liking.

  After an hour, he got up from his chair, made coffee, and then puttered around the house. A story didn’t come that day or the next. Two weeks went by, and he cried in his pillow. “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Went some TV add he had seen in the past. He thought it meant something about kids, and school, but it pertained to him too.

  “Oh well hell, if it don’t happen, it just don’t happen, I’m not going to kill myself worrying about it.” He said to the squirrel who had taken to coming up on the porch. He knew he shouldn’t feed them, but they were company of a sort. The squirrel sat there with an acorn in its paws saying nothing, its little jaws busy with some morsel of food.

  What is there to say? If you are a writer, and can’t write, then are you really a writer?

  “Don’t happen, don’t happen.” He said again, and that was when the story hit him. He stopped dead still, his eyes were pointed at the squirrel, but he didn’t see it. He was looking at the story forming in his head. After five minutes standing there, he walked over to the Remington, and without sitting down, began typing. He typed a line, hit the carriage return, and then another line, then another, and another. He noticed his legs getting painful with his knees locked, and he sat down, and continued typing.

  He typed until his eyes began to grow weary, and then plopped on the bed, almost a hundred sheets in a neat stack on his desk. He was tired, but afraid to go to sleep err the story evaporate into thin air, and the firefly stop shining.

  He awakened when it was still dark outside. He raked the coals in the stove, and then lay in kindling. The kindling caught immediately, and the room began to grow warm, as he threw coffee grounds into the blackened coffee pot, and sat that on the stove. He dived back under the covers, as he waited for the coffee to come to a boil. Boiled coffee is the best when there’s no woman in the nest. He smiled at the thought. Was he really smiling? Yes he was. Do I remember the story? Yes, I do, it hasn’t left me. He had almost gone back to sleep when he heard the sheesh of the coffee hitting the top of the stove. He ran over in his sock feet to grab at the handle, forgetting that the handle was hot.

  “That’s a damned hot pot you have there my dear lady! Gotta remember that.”

  He plunged his burned fingers under the faucet of ice cold water, and then found his cup near the sink. He poured the rich brown liquid into his cup, and then smelled the steam coming off the top of the cup. He put his warm house shoes on, and then walked over to the bed, and threw one of the heavy blankets around his shoulders before he sat down at his desk. He sipped the coffee which was getting cool enough to drink, and began typing again. By nine o’clock he had fifteen more pages added to the stack. He laughed loudly, he exulted, he was writing, and on his way to another million best seller. He laughed again, long and loud as he pounded out the story of the century on the old Remington. The days grew shorter, and colder, but he didn’t notice as his fingers flew over the keys of the Remington, until finally he wrote ‘The End’ to a six hundred page novel.

  “Eat this Donald, you sawed off dick head, and maybe you money grabbers might even decide to call off the dogs. With a novel like this I can go to any publisher I want. This time I’m calling the shots!” He fingered the thick manuscript, all edited and in order. The snow had stopped, and the days were getting longer. He poured over the manuscript in the coming days to make absolutely sure that every word was correct, and there was no misspelling or typo’s.

  The snow was about gone, as he prepared to go back to New York. He set the cabin in order, cranked up the generator, and charged the battery on his car, and then the next day he locked the house, and turned the car down the mountain, His manuscript tucked neatly in two large sealed envelopes of three hundred pages each. He meant to have the copyright page registered with the office of copyright so none of those evil bastards could steal it from him. No way he was going to let that happen. Nosiree Bob.

  He drove into the town of Keene, but saw no one. He intended to get junk food for the long trip back to New York. He drove up to the ancient combined service station/ store, but saw no one, and the lights inside were off. He thought maybe the owner was trying to save money, or that he was sick, but when he pushed on the door, it swung open. Right away he noticed the air. It smelled like something had died in the store.

  Where the hell is the owner? Man it stinks in here. “Anybody here?” He called loudly, but got no answer. He also noticed the electricity was off on the cold drink locker. Not knowing what else to do he grabbed a couple candy bars, and a
bag of Fritos, and left a five dollar bill on the counter by the cash register. He had no time to run anybody down to pay, not with a fresh million seller manuscript burning his pocket, and waiting to explode on the world with a bang.

  He started the car, and headed out of the little one horse town. Something niggled at his mind, way in the back, but he steered it back to the manuscript riding in the front seat beside him. Things must be going my way, not a single station wagon load of kids to slow me down.

  He made good time until he came to the next town which had a population of about thirty five thousand. Cars were parked askew and junk along with trash and papers littered the streets with not a human in sight. A dog leisurely crossed in front of him. At the next light which was not working he was supposed to hook the road that would take him to the freeway, and home to New York. He was just at the corner when a shopping cart ran in front of his car. His mind went crazy as he thought he saw someone driving it. He screeched to a stop, and then realized it was being blown by the wind. A big sign was lashed to the cart that read ‘Senor Basket ball