Hitler’s Typewriter

It sat on a pedestal, out in the open. Anyone could touch it.

Robert Morgan Fisher

The 2021 Montana Humor Prize Winner – Fiction

Taking the security guard job was strategic.

Wallace read that a lot of effective writing was nocturnal, logged on the clock of various nightshifts: janitor, phone support, security guard. The work had to involve minimal labor, long stretches of quiet time. The security guard gig at the Hall of History didn’t pay much, but the tomblike silence of the museum in daytime boded well for his scheme. He’d show up with his laptop, make sure all the doors were locked. Then get down to the business of crafting The Great American Novel.

Ida Schott gave him the address of a uniform store and a voucher. She also handed over a set of keys, told Wallace to plan on clocking in at eight that evening. It was a five-night-a-week job—that’s all the Hall of History could afford. Hall was closed Sunday and Monday. Having a security guard was initially just for show. There’d never been a break-in, only a few crank calls with racist undertones carping about some African-American themed exhibit. A few years before, the Southern Poverty Law Center had been consulted. They recommended a slightly augmented security presence. No one listened. Elected a two-term Black president and America went tribal.

Just give ‘em the voucher, they’ll fit you with a shirt, pants, sidearm. Twelve-hour shift, bring something to read, she said, dabbing menopausal mustache after each sip of iced tea.

All right, thanks.

Since getting his MFA, Wallace Skreevey worked a number of menial jobs, all the while chipping away at the writing. He’d purposely avoided teaching. Until he published a book, the only places that would hire him were middle schools, high schools. He heard teaching was slow death to a writer and the pay was terrible, so he investigated alternative occupations. For the security guard gig, he’d had to obtain a pistol license, take a few tests. Pretty sure background check was just to make sure he was white. Security guard job sector was so vastly different from education he purposely did not mention his MFA degree—would’ve raised suspicion. Even an undergrad English degree was off-limits. Anything other than animal husbandry or petroleum science marked one as a pansy-egghead—i.e. No gun for you!

He needed to get a book written and published—fast.

Before he was thirty.

That was the deadline.

If, by his thirtieth birthday, he still didn’t have a book published… well, suicide wasn’t out of the question.

That was a joke, of course, but it also pointed to a deep-seated desperation in Wallace. Or deep-seeded as Wallace sometimes wrote. He liked to jack around with words and expressions, favor incorrect usage. He liked to argue that deep-seeded, with its tempting agricultural inference was more metaphorical (seed of the thing is deeply rooted in the soil of one’s mind, y’see?). This attitude didn’t endear him to literary magazine editors. Went a long way toward explaining his lack of publishing success.

Wallace arrived at 7:45 just as Desmond, the 72-year-old Black janitor, was leaving.

Hall of History closed at four each day. Then Desmond cleaned up the place. By the start of the night shift, everything was spotless and still. Wallace’s security guard uniform included a stylish hat, a kind of retro-chapeau once favored by highway patrolmen. Wallace jauntily tipped the hat at Desmond who was stowing mop and bucket in the lobby closet. It appeared for a moment Desmond might chuckle—but the chuckle died, softened into an inscrutable smile. Desmond sported obvious, cheap dentures.

Evenin’, said Wallace, understanding that to Desmond he probably looked like a cop caricature. Barney Fife.

Desmond nodded, eager to escape.

Hall of History was an old converted train station, railroad tracks like a surgical scar still visible along the street. Wallace watched the taillights of the janitor’s Ford pickup jounce over tracks then vanish down the avenue into a cool November night. Wallace pulled his laptop from a bag, plugged it in. While programs loaded, he went around and checked all doors and windows.

Every so often he’d stop to admire his reflection in a glass display case, draw the Smith and Wesson .38 and shout: Freeze, scumbag. Unlike the Mayberry RFD deputy, Barney Fife, Wallace wore wire- rimmed glasses, had a soul-patch and tiny teeth. Wallace removed his glasses and squinted with cynical objectivity, like a movie star sheriff. He fiddled with the cap, tilting it this way and that. He’d look pretty badass if he went ahead and shortened his blond locks into a flattop like a real Alabama sheriff.

What we have here… is a failure… to commun’cate.

He explored display cases, admired artifacts: telephones, arrowheads, guns, buggy whips, smelting paraphernalia… Some items aroused curiosity, but most display cases were locked and he didn’t possess those keys. Other displays were out in the open for anyone to touch—though there were signs requesting that patrons refrain from doing so. Wallace picked up and sniffed a high school baseball with the year 1925 written on it that smelled of earth and sweat.

It took him back to his childhood—white boy born in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. His parents had named him after the Governor, yet he’d seen the N-word excised from the vocabulary of almost everyone seemingly overnight. Lately, however, it seemed to be making a regrettable comeback among the unevolved. The New Buffoonery.

One would think that having an MFA and growing up in such a hotbed of social change, that Wallace would’ve already written a failed, thinly-veiled autobiographical first-person novel and been well on his way to completing a second more publishable book. But Wallace was fundamentally immature, a late-bloomer. He wasn’t daunted by rejections of his short stories so much as enraged. He’d get a decline from an editor at some literary journal, then send withering vitriolic critiques of the lame stories he subsequently saw published in the very next issue. He’d use a lot of condescending twenty-dollar words (The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate always within reach) and question the manhood, womanhood—or general competence—of the editor and/or author in question.

In reading the maudlin meanderings of Ms. _______ in Vol. 35, #2 and then again with Mr. _______ in Vol. 36 #1, I was astonished and disheartened to the point of dyspepsia to see that confessional narratives about enduring the close-range, Terms of Endearment-like suffering of an estranged parent to some all-consuming, ineradicable metastasizing melanoma were not only back in style but, in fact, praxis!

He’d hurl snobby invectives, modeling himself after Ignatius O’Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. Wallace was vaguely aware of the self-sabotaging, sneering, pretentious tone of these posturings, but couldn’t help himself. He continually creamed all kinds of promising connections, ignorant of how all this might come back to haunt him. In fact, many editors had taken to deleting his submissions from their in-box or moving them, unread, to the Wacko Folder, convinced that he was some sort of potentially violent, unbalanced incel.

Still, there was New York, where the only thing that mattered was what the marketplace would bear. Wallace knew he had a voice, something to sell. It just wasn’t ready or written yet. He had exactly fourteen months before he turned thirty. He was determined to get some agent or publishing house to fall in love with him before entering his fourth decade.

Wallace knew he should get back downstairs and start writing something, but he still had eleven hours, twenty-seven minutes to go in his shift. Anyway, he liked to ease into writing.

He was yet again playing with his security guard cap, admiring his reflection in a display case when something in the glass behind him grabbed his attention: a typewriter. He spun around—

It sat on a pedestal, out in the open. Anyone could touch it. The sign above read: HITLER’S TYPEWRITER.

A black German Groma… 1930’s… made by G.F. Grosser, Markersdorf. Probably a Jew who perished, thought Wallace with solemn introspection, in one of those terrible death camps. Sign read: This machine came from Hitler’s Mountain Hide-a-way, The Eagle’s Nest near Salzburg, Austria (though Wallace was to later hear conflicting stories about it actually coming from The Wolf ’s Lair bunker in Poland—Hitler had himself a lot of hidey-holes). It’d been found among some local soldier’s long-forgotten war-booty. Carriage up top was oversized, attached in part by a pair of dark steel supports on each side. These supports reached out like a pair of fanatical arms exhorting a huge crowd to irrational hatred. The cheerful smile of the type bars fanned out below seemed incongruous with the evil directives that had no doubt been created by Der Fuhrer’s fingers on the keys.

Wallace leaned in and inhaled, thinking perhaps he might catch the sulfurous whiff of crematoria; the sinister smell of Zyklon B; the stench of mass graves. But there was only the familiar, welcome fragrance of musty, oily machinery.

It came to him very quickly, an instantaneous inspiration: he would write his magnum opus on Hitler’s typewriter! What publisher could resist? He’d layer in some gratuitous message of tolerance, rail against racism. Then came additional inspiration: he’d use a scroll of paper towels—just like Kerouac did in writing On the Road—feeding Hitler’s typewriter one continuous stream of consciousness. He’d even seen an entire shelf full of such rolls in the janitor’s closet. It was perfect. And while Wallace preferred writing on a laptop (he was definitely a child of the computer age) and ridiculed older writers who clung to their Paleolithic Underwoods, Olivettis, and Smith-Coronas, this was an opportunity too good to pass up.

Now all he needed… was a story.

Wallace was nothing if not well read. The cinder block bookshelves in his apartment paid homage to his heroes: Flannery O’Connor, William Gay, Larry Brown, Barry Hannah. There were some Yankee authors, but Wallace felt tied to the red clay of the South in a truly literary way. His parents still lived up the road in Birmingham, Dad was a retired city engineer. Two older brothers had fled north years ago. Unlike Wallace, they hated everything about Alabama and often teased him for staying.

He once considered changing his first name from Wallace to Welty, in honor of Eudora as well as to shed the politically incorrect baggage of George Wallace. But the pen name Welty Skreevey, while distinctive, scanned a tad creepy.

A wife, home, kids, stability—these were all things he expected to magically accrue upon publication of his first novel just before his thirtieth birthday. In this way, his twenties felt like a prolonged wait for a seat in a five-star restaurant: tedious but worth it. He often imagined his party about to be called, table of success being set.

Wallace removed his uniform, carefully hung it. Water roach scuttled across the floor. Using an old literary journal, he scooped it up and tossed it out the front door. He switched on the bedside fan. Now it seemed the roomed smelled of water roaches. In his underwear and T-shirt, he lay back on the bed, fingers clasped behind his head. Wallace plotted and schemed at the ceiling.

There were two things he needed to acquire tout suite: ribbon for the Groma and a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

He asked Ida Schott about the typewriter the next day. He was arriving, she was leaving. Ida filled him in: the machine had sat forgotten in the basement for years but as soon as they’d put it on display it became the most popular exhibit.

Every day someone calls or asks me if they can type a letter on Hitler’s typewriter! Ida sighed. The ribbon don’t exist no more.

But Wallace quickly located a Groma ribbon online. It was easy. Ida had, understandably, not looked very hard. He’d seen her entering data, eyes wild with technophobic terror. But Wallace knew you could find anything on the Internet. When Mein Kampf and the ribbon arrived via UPS on the very same day a week later, Wallace took it as a positive omen.

The reason Wallace needed Mein Kampf was because he felt it would help him assume and conquer the spirit of the typewriter, and also to inform and influence the tone of his own story—whatever that turned out to be. Wallace’s intention was to take ‘Dolf ’s bombastic ballyhoo and turn it on its head; spin it to serve his own purposes in much the same way Hitler twisted quotes from The Bible. He rehearsed this rationale out loud when he wasn’t writing, pretending he was being interviewed on TV.

Wallace knew that even if his own prose turned out to be prosaic, the saving grace would be that the tome had been written on Adolf Hitler’s typewriter.

That was his central conceit, his safety net.

The first night of writing, Wallace’s hands trembled as he threaded the ribbon and banged out a sample page. I have a dream! he wrote. I have been to the mountain top! He could almost see Hitler writhing with apoplexy. After applying a few drops of Royal Typewriter Oil, the Groma worked wonderfully. He giggled and shivered in anticipation as he removed the single sheet, then inserted the end of the paper towel scroll. The texture of the paper towel stock was sturdy and brown (further irony!). He typed the title:

MEIN STRUGGLE

By Wallace Skreevey

Wallace had given the title a lot of thought. The literal English translation of Mein Kampf was My Struggle—but it had already been used as a novel title by someone. Wallace’s hybridized version, Mein Struggle, worked. All part of his strategy: mock the man and his book on the very typewriter he once used.

He knew there had to be a story of substance underneath the gimmick. He was intuitive about fiction, could feel when a story was truly gaining traction. He may have been socially inept when it came to editors, but Wallace was nothing if not a competent writer.

Hitler didn’t actually write Mein Kampf on the Groma. There were pictures on the Internet of that particular typewriter, a portable Remington, and it didn’t look at all like the Groma. The Remington was more compact and unremarkable. Some German banker had loaned it to Hitler. This Groma, however, had an innate grandiosity about it; Hitler should have written Mein Kampf on it. Each night, Wallace would thread the precious ribbon and paper towel roll back into the Groma, sit back and read a few pages of Mein Kampf. For example: The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. Then he’d shake his head in bewildered disgust and pick up where he’d left off.

The book started writing itself; all the conceptual decisions— some rather arbitrarily arrived at—managed to fall into place and he was off and running. He sat in a straight-backed chair that had once belonged to the father of jazz, W.C. Handy. Wallace liked to imagine the chair served as some sort of prophylactic spiritual protection against any remnant toxic Ju-Ju emanating from the Nazi typewriter.

It was a joy to write on the Groma. It was loud, tactile, mechanical—he felt industrious, as if he were manning the assembly line of some old-fashioned idea factory. Theme, Protagonist, Voice, Tense—all took care of themselves. He felt… guided. It was downright spooky.

He kept the story simple: main character, antagonist; that third wild card character (a beautiful, crazy woman) to serve as the final leg of the stool, preventing the story from falling on its ass. Every novel has a Big Idea and while away from his job at the museum, Wallace gave a lot of thought to the Big Idea of Mein Struggle. He settled on something solid—not too clichéd or platitudinous. The main character ran with it—guided and romanced by the woman, of course—and he made sure the bad guy (and it was a guy) remained believable, likeable. No mustache twirling. He dreamed up a town from his childhood, a place his family often passed through, stopping only for ice cream. He’d always been charmed and curious about the town—now he filled it with his imagination until it came to life and took on a personality of its own. There were moments of violence on the page as well as bigotry, betrayal, vengeance, hot sex, high comedy, poignant internal reflection. Everything felt organic and correct. Narrative flowed like a river in springtime.

The joy of it continued, unabated, for weeks… months.

He’d start writing at 9 p.m. each night, thermos of coffee at his side, and plow straight through until 4 a.m., stopping only to go to the bathroom.

Story continued to spool off in his head. It was like trance-writing, very little revision or correction. Servicing the racism and intolerance angle was easy—as long as he steered clear of sanctimony. Entire sequences and scenes spewed forth fully formed and Wallace often had little or no memory of having actually written them. From 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. he’d read over what he’d typed that night and make any necessary line edits with a pencil. Then he’d put the W.C. Handy chair back where it belonged and carefully remove the ribbon and scroll. He hid them way in the back of a hard-to-reach cabinet in the kitchen just outside Ida’s office upstairs. One needed a stepladder to reach it. Unless one were specifically looking for something in that cabinet, there’s no way anyone would ever find it. He intended at some point to retype the novel into his laptop. But that would happen after he finished the sacred scroll.

He pictured himself posing with the scroll in his Paris Review interview.

Writing on the Groma was so pleasurable and exhilarating, he even considered stealing it. Writing without it began to seem impossible—yet, he wondered if maybe it was just this particular book. Perhaps the Groma was analogous to a secret lover he’d always recall with great longing and lust. Then he’d remember: This is Hitler’s typewriter, man. Get a grip!

By May, he’d filled almost an entire paper towel roll, creating what he estimated would eventually be almost 300 double-spaced single pages on his laptop.

Wallace was, as he liked to joke to himself, on a roll.

The spark of a genius exists in the brain of the truly creative man from the hour of his birth.

Almost there. Any day now…

It was a night like any other. Wallace arrived as Desmond was leaving. He checked all the doors and windows, practiced drawing his .38, then headed to the hiding place.

Not there. The ribbon was still visible, but no scroll.

At first, he thought maybe he’d accidentally stored everything in the wrong cabinet but a quick inspection of every door and drawer turned up nothing. Wallace felt a cramp of panic that something so personal and naked had possibly been discovered and viewed by another human being. Being a reticent man of the South, he hadn’t told anyone about Mein Struggle, not even his few friends—certainly not his family. When his parents had heard about his getting hired on at the Hall of History, they nodded politely and looked down at the floor as if it were a portal into the next twenty years, displaying a vision of Wallace as a pudgy security guard pushing fifty, on track for a modest pension. He knew that’s what they were thinking and he relished the idea of proving them wrong.

But where had his masterpiece run off to?

He searched Ida Schott’s office, including every drawer and found nothing useful except a bottle of amphetamines. He pocketed a few. He considered calling her at home, then thought better of it. He allowed himself to believe that no one, upon finding the scroll, clearly marked with his typewritten prose, would discard it. It had to be somewhere. It would turn up. He’d ask Ida about it. Worst-case scenario, he’d be given a reprimand for what he’d done but certainly she would return the fruits of his labor to him. He even entertained an idea that maybe Ida had discovered it, taken it home and was reading Mein Struggle at that very moment. He imagined her admiring his muscled prose—perhaps phoning up unexpected connections she might have in the publishing world. That was certainly possible, right?

Wallace paced and fretted the entire night. He searched every inch of the museum, including the janitor’s closet, hoping maybe Desmond had come across the roll and moved it downstairs. But there was no sign of it. When his shift was over, he stuck around until Ida arrived to open up the museum.

What are you still doin’ here? she said. Everything all right?

Wallace started to answer but the roar of a nearby garbage truck drowned him out. He waited for the hydraulic racket to pass.

I’m missing something I left here and was wondering if you’d seen it.

The garbage truck began its beep!-beep!-beep! back-up like a loud, alarmed bird. Ida motioned for them to go inside and talk.

She took the stairs up to her office with Wallace close behind.

I had something stored in the kitchen cabinet—did you come across it?

What exactly?

A copy of a book I’m writing, he said, carefully. Then with a chuckle: Figured it’d be safe in the Hall of History.

They entered the kitchen.

It was right up there, he pointed.

Ida craned her neck, raised up on tiptoes, then looked at him quizzically.

Can’t say I’ve ever opened that cabinet.

She entered the office, hung her purse on a hook.

What kinda book? she said.

A novel.

A novel—really? Ida was impressed at first, then seemed to wonder if it wasn’t some kind of deranged manifesto. You say you kept a copy… here?

I did.

What did it look like?

You’d know it if you saw it. It’s paper, you know?

I mean, was it on a—oh, that’s right, you just said it was paper.

Yeah, it’s pretty clear what it’d be.

So you printed it out and stored a copy here?

Yeah. Something like that.

She filled a coffee pot from the water cooler. Wallace was ready to explode with fear. He felt it best to leave right away. As he turned to exit, she said:

Ask Desmond tonight, okay? If anyone’s seen it, it’s him.

Wallace usually went straight home and slept, but today sleep was impossible.

He just lay there on his narrow single bed all day, completely freaked out. He’d doze for a few minutes, then wake with a start, jump up, yank the shade and stare out the window at the line of sweetgum trees across the street. When he did sleep, random passages from Mein Kampf haunted his dreamscape, including images of Adolf Hitler saluting him and jeering: A man does not die for something which he himself does not believe in!

At 3 p.m. he had a shot of whiskey to steady his nerves, washed down two of Ida Schott’s uppers. He hadn’t even changed out of his security guard uniform—though he had removed his gun holster before lying down. Now he put it back on, drew the revolver a couple of times out of habit and headed out the door. He hadn’t eaten for 24 hours. On the drive over, Mein Kampf rode shotgun in Wallace’s beat-to-hell VW Jetta, taunting him.

He parked some distance away and waited.

Presently, the day’s last visitors to the Hall of History emerged, got in their cars and drove off. Then Ida Schott appeared, locked the door and left. After a few minutes, along came Desmond in his Ford pickup. Wallace got out, put on his security guard cap, shoved Mein Kampf into his waistband and approached Desmond who was slowly searching his ring for the right key.

Hold up a minute, Desmond.

Desmond turned, curious and wary.

Yeah?

Uh, listen, I had something stored in a cabinet in the kitchen and I was wondering if you mighta seen it.

Kitchen, y’say?

Yeah. It was like a roll of paper towels in the upper cabinet. With… writing on it?

Desmond stroked his chin, then remembered:

Oh yeah! I used that up last night.

Whaddya mean used it up?

Wallace thought he might faint.

Yes sir. Loadin’ the water cooler, spilled a mess of water all over.

Why didn’t you use a mop? Wallace’s voice was tiny with shock. He began to shrink into himself.

Already put away the mop—didn’t wanna go back down. I got more paper towels if you want.

Desmond started to insert the key—Wallace stopped him.

Desmond, how’d you know there was a roll of paper towels in that cabinet?

I know everything about this place.

Desmond was starting to get annoyed, he tried to reinsert his key and again Wallace stopped him.

Desmond gave Wallace a stern look.

Need to get to work.

Desmond, listen to me. Where’d you put the paper towels?

In the garbage! he pointed out back. Where do ya think, man?

But Wallace was already leading Desmond to the dumpster.

Show me.

It’s not there now.

Wallace stopped.

Whaddya mean?

Garbage picked up this morning. See?

Dumpster was indeed empty. Wallace drew his gun.

Whoa boy! Desmond raised his hands. Now you hang on! What you doin’!?

Get in the truck.

What?!

GET IN THE DAMN TRUCK!

They pulled out onto the avenue in the pickup, Desmond behind the wheel. Wallace had the gun trained on Desmond. His eyes glistened with hopped up, sleep-deprived rage. His lips were pursed and chalk-white. He had cottonmouth.

Did you notice anything unusual about the paper towels, Desmond? Did you?

Desmond gave Wallace a sideways glance that said: You crazy. Desmond drove a few blocks then slowed and said, Where to?

City dump. Turn right here, then go straight.

Desmond complied. He said: Put away the gun, boy.

Please don’t call me boy.

Okay, man. Put down the gun. Hit a bump you gonna blow off my head.

Wallace aimed the gun away.

All right.

Wallace already regretted doing this, but when Desmond had explained, so cavalierly, how he’d used hundreds of hours of Wallace’s labor to mop up a water spill… this seemed like the only practical thing to do. It was a mistake, Wallace knew that, but at this point he had to salvage what he could. And if he wound up finishing Mein Struggle in jail, so be it.

It occurred to Wallace that Desmond still didn’t understand why he should care so much about a lost roll of paper towels, so he explained the entire situation to him: He started with being a writer; how he took the security guard job to enable that; about finding Hitler’s typewriter and getting inspired.

Desmond wore a look of confused amusement.

Well, come to think of it, I did notice a bit of writin’ on the, um, paper towels…

And?

Not my style. I’m more Walter Mosely, Ta-Nehisi Coates…

Wallace had no words.

How come you didn’t use typewriter paper?

Never you mind. Here it is.

They entered the malodorous city dump just as several garbage trucks were exiting. Nothing but trash, carrion birds, rats and the almost audible gnaw of decay for miles. Desmond’s truck bucked on the potholed road.

Where to? said Desmond.

Wallace waved the gun. Just drive around, see if you recognize any of our garbage.

Desmond snorted.

You think this is funny?! said Wallace.

I think it’s funny to expect me to recognize the garbage.

Just keep lookin’.

There was only an hour of daylight left. Wallace peered through the windshield. Miles of debris, the crumbs of human existence. He began to lose hope.

Pull over here, he said.

Desmond pulled over, put it in park and killed the engine. They sat there. Wallace didn’t want to get out and face the smell but there was no choice.

Desmond leaned down, squinted.

Hey, what’s that book?

Huh?

In your pants.

Wallace handed the book over to Desmond.

He read aloud—

Mein Kampf.

—then gave a low whistle, shot Wallace a disapproving look.

You in over your head.

I ain’t a Nazi, man.

Then what the fuck?

Research. This was like his… rules. It’s complicated. My book was the opposite.

Wallace holstered his gun in a gesture of goodwill.

Look, I’m sorry I forced you to come here, Desmond. Would you please help me find it?

Okayyy…

They got out.

Wallace started toward the nearest mountain of trash, eyes focused on each item of garbage, holding out hope that somehow he’d immediately find his lost tome and they could get the hell out of there. The smell was unbelievably rank. He tried to picture how and where a garbage truck containing Hall of History spilth and filth might’ve dumped its contents—

Door slam, engine start-up. Desmond floored the pickup in reverse, then whipped it around and fishtailed away, kicking up a cloud of dust. Wallace ran after, yelled for Desmond to stop. He drew
and aimed the pistol at the truck’s rear tires, finger to trigger—then abruptly raised the pistol and held his fire.

First intelligent thing he’d done that day.

Wallace cursed loudly and began kicking garbage. He pulled the copy of Mein Kampf from his waistband, flung it high up into the air, took aim and fired the pistol at it. He did this three times until the book was shot clean through. A seagull, of all things, swooped down. Wallace fired at that too and missed. Then a rat appeared and he missed that too.

He felt like the lone survivor of a dystopian war. Cordite and putrefaction punished his nose, mouth, throat.

It was still light enough that he could search the ground in front of him. And he did so for a few minutes, heart racing at the sight of anything even remotely resembling a length of brown paper towel. Very soon, however, he simply stopped looking and his eyes turned upward to register a bony quarter-moon caught in the bare branches of a distant chinaberry tree.

No way he’d recover the manuscript.

He tried to tell himself the world was probably better off without it. At that moment, some hobo was probably wiping his ass with Wallace’s precious words.

Wallace looked past, over endless mounds of garbage half-expecting to see a salvageable wet brown scroll. Distant siren grew louder, far-off flash of blue and red.

He’d poured what he thought was his soul into the writing of a novel. It’d been prematurely consigned to the stinking trash heap of history. He held the gun with both hands, aimed it up under his chin.

This is how ‘Dolf must have done it, he guessed. Eva at his side there in the bunker. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Out of bullets.

The struggle would apparently continue.

Robert Morgan Fisher

About the Author

Robert Morgan Fisher won the 2018 Chester Himes Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the 2019 John Steinbeck Award and Runner-up for the 2021 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Prize. His fiction and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He’s also written for TV, radio and film. Robert holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and is currently on the teaching faculty of Antioch University in several capacities. Since 2016, Robert has led the UCLA Wordcommandos, an acclaimed twice-weekly writing workshop for veterans with PTSD. He often writes companion songs to his short stories. Both his music and fiction have won many awards. Robert also voices audiobooks.
http://robertmorganfisher.com