William Johnstone - Out of the Ashes

He shook his head. Well, that was all behind him. He would, by God, get several more of those cans of wasp spray, the kind that shot a stream for about twenty feet, and clear out the little bastards from around his house. But for now, it was time to get to work.

Monday through Saturday, Ben usually rose at five-thirty. On Sundays he tried to sleep late. But unless he had been up late, which was unusual for him, his eyes almost always popped open at five-thirty, with or without the clock radio.

Ben made himself a second cup of coffee, fixed a glass of ice water, then went into his small office and took the cover off his typewriter.

Sunday was another workday for him. Another day to face the typewriter and hope the muses were flowing. He belonged to no church—no organized religion. He had attended church as a child, and as a young man, but early in his adult life a discontent with religion had grown in him. Mass hypocrisy turned him off.

Ben had a slight headache, so he took two aspirins and then wound a fresh piece of paper into the typewriter. Yeah, he remembered, he was to start a new book. He always, despite the number of books he had published, under a variety of names, viewed this moment with some anticipation and just a bit of fear. The beginnings of a new novel. Would it work? Would it jell?

Who the hell knew?

His agent said he liked everything Ben did, but agents are supposed to say things like that. What else? “Ben, you’re a lousy writer. Why don’t you give it up and become a plumber?”

Probably make just as much money. Ben smiled.

He glanced at his just-completed novel, all wrapped up for mailing. Do that in the morning, Ben thought. His books usually brought him a $3,500-$4,000 advance, a few thousand in royalties, maybe some overseas sales in the future… and that was that. Once in a blue moon, maybe a movie deal. Gravy.

He was a paperback writer; had long since given up writing for the hardcovers. He knocked out a book every four to six weeks. He would tackle anything from action books to love stories; had a pretty good men’s adventure series going for him, and was building a good reputation among the publishing companies as a steady, producing kind of writer—nothing fantastic, nothing earthshaking. The type of writer whose books sold in grocery stores, variety stores, drug stores, and other paperback outlets. Ben would never win the Nobel for fiction, for Ben did not write to change the world’s evil(?) ways. He wrote to entertain.

The world, Ben once told his agent, is someone else’s bailiwick, not mine. Just like law enforcement, people get what they want, whether they’ll admit it, or not. Same with government. Me? He laughed at his agent’s expression. I’m just a country boy trying to make a living.

That memory amused him. He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

Country boy. Yeah, he nodded his head in agreement, I’m a country boy. Maybe with a better than average degree of urbanity about me than most country boys, but nonetheless, still… just a country boy. He liked black-eyed peas and beans and corn bread and fried okra and salt-meat sandwiches. But he also liked the good wines and fine cuisine found in the fancy restaurants of the world.

And he knew he was a snob when it came to music, having sampled it all and found it lacking… except for classical.

But he loved the South—especially Louisiana, with its rich heritage and diversity of people. There wasn’t much in the way of culture where Ben lived. As a matter of fact, he often told his eastern friends, there really wasn’t any culture where he lived: no little theater, no concerts, no ballet. Ben had once mentioned Zubin Mehta to a friend and the man had thought he was talking about a new brand of chewing tobacco.

But Ben liked the people in the Delta—for the most part. He had friends here, good friends. There were some real shit-heads on both sides of the color line, but there had never been any real trouble in this part of the state.

And damned little mixing, he reminded himself.

You stay on your side of town, and I’ll stay on mine. I don’t like you much, and I know you don’t like me, but the government says we have to get along, so let’s just make the best of it.

So far, so good.

Like that black city-council member once said, “It’s better here than in a lot of places. Least we haven’t started killin’ one another—yet.”

Wise disclaimer on his part, Ben thought.

Ben believed it was probably coming to the race-war point—someday. Probably soon. And he wasn’t alone in that view.

Never married, Ben had experienced several intense love affairs that had ultimately soured, leaving him with a jaundiced eye toward everlasting love. He really didn’t trust women; and his being a hopeless romantic didn’t help matters. His books almost never had happy endings (something his agent used to bitch about). But the N.Y.C. man finally accepted that as part of Ben’s style, and assumed that Ben was not going to change.

He pulled his attention back to the typewriter and the blank paper staring at him. But nothing flowed. He turned off the typewriter, then turned it back on, listened to it hum.

Mother’s milk causes writer’s block, he recalled reading one time. Or the lack of it.

I damned sure was sick from those wasp stings.

“Come on, Ben!” he scolded himself. “Get with it.” He sighed, typed a few words, tore the paper from the machine, and wound in a fresh sheet.

That scene was repeated several times that morning, until finally Ben hit his stride, as he knew he would. He did not work from an outline, never knew where the manuscript was going, and let his characters develop themselves.

Ben settled down to write.

All the muses seemed to be working and the words were flowing well; no strain. He wrote for three hours, was satisfied with the start of his novel, and then, with a coffee taste in his mouth and a slight headache (he assumed that was from chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes), he shut it down for the morning.

Every Sunday morning Ben drove into town at about eleven o’clock to visit a friend of his who ran a service station. Every Sunday morning. Routine—almost never varied. Ben would visit for an hour, pick up the Sunday papers (three of them), and drive back home, where he would read himself to sleep, then work for several more hours in the afternoon.

Ben slipped his feet into cowboy boots, put on a long-sleeved shirt, for the day was unusually cool, and once more glanced at the calendar. The meaning of the date finally hit him.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” He smiled. “It’s my birthday. I’m forty-four years old.” He laughed, happy to be feeling good after his bout with the wasps. “Happy birthday, Ben Raines—many, many more, partner.”

Then he wondered why his parents hadn’t called. They always called early.

He glanced around his empty, silent house, the joy of the moment becoming sullied just a bit because he had no one with whom to share his one day of celebration.

He shrugged it off and locked up the house.

The term “country boy” once more entered his mind as he walked across the yard to his pickup. He hummed an old country song as he walked, one of the few country songs he liked: “A Country Boy Will Survive.”

Ben thought that ironic, since he was beginning a novel of disaster—Armageddon. The end of the world.

Getting into his pickup, he remembered both his mother and father kidding him about his return to trucks; his father saying, “Boy, you started out in trucks when you was just fourteen. Held that damned old rattletrap together with spit, prayer, and baling wire. Hell, son—you remember. It didn’t have any doors! You had the first seat belts in Illinois. You had to tie yourself in with rope to keep from falling out going around curves. Now that you’re goin’ to be a big-time writer, damned if you haven’t gone back to trucks. You’re just a farm boy at heart, Ben. Can’t ever take the country out of the boy, eh, Ben?”