Motels upped rates. Motor homes jam packed with greeting-card-ravenous readers snaked from Omaha to Oogalooga. There were Cliffs Notes digests of this brakeless ride from hell to high water.
And then, oblivion! Half out of Donner Pass, half into Death Valley, the literary freshet died.
The waterfall ran alkali dust.
The landscape was littered with white kindlings of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
I was ready to ticket a plane or jump-start a road van when my office door banged wide. There stood Folly, truly defoliated, face pale, teeth clenched, two huge shopping bags in his downslung arms.
“Folly!” I cried.
“You can say that again,” he replied.
“Come in, come in. My God, what’s wrong?”
“You name it.”
“Is that your sequel?”
“Residue,” he murmured and spilled the bags wide.
Sawdust littered the floor. Thirty pounds of finely granulated sawdust.
“Tried, but couldn’t finish,” he said.
“Inspiration pooped out? Mind block?”
“Roadblock,” he said.
He dumped what was left of one sack in a pile of shavings and pollen on my desk. I saw a flaked g, t, or h and one large the in the dust. The burden of this light stuff sank in my chair.
“Roadblock?” I bleated.
“I never figured folks might not want my bright wildflowers along the road,” Folly mourned. “I had to skip acres of farms, sometimes entire counties. Sheriffs said: Move it! Ladies’ social clubs claimed my opus was ipso facto flagrant delicti. Sex with tea! One hump or two! they yelled. Weed-pulling censors yanked my stakes, stole my stuff, as did plagiarists!”
“Plagiarists!?”
“Plot thieves, novel snatchers! Five-mile episodes vanished in Tulsa one night, showed next noon, Tallahassee to charm the alligators. Tallahassee sheriff pulled the snatch, now’s a nova, Oprah celeb! How do I prove he stole my stuff!? Tried to snatch back my pick-up-sticks, but some book-burning tea party shot my tires. I told them to shove my shingles, hoping for slivers!”
He stopped, breathless.
“Roadkill,” he whispered.
“Roadkill?” I cried.
“To top everything, Internet roadkill. Fast as I gardened my dears, Internet harvested and rebroadcast, galloping ahead, they the Roadrunner, I the Coyote trying to cut the electronic smog.
Their fireworks blazed night and noon, firing my words on a billion screens, wiping clean, firing more, like Kasparov playing Big Blue. ‘Computer Wins Chess Match!’ they cried. Hell, with two dozen high-IQ minds stuffed in the IBM circuits?
A wasps’ nest of genius against a hopeless Russian. Same for me. This little bitty Hemingway dropout against the Internet storm. That’s when I pulled up stakes and vamoosed.
“Well, that’s it,” said Folly. “Maybe you can rustle someone to finish the finale, kill the worst, bury the best. I failed. What can I say?”
“I hope you find a new job,” I offered.
“As an adjunct carpenter running a sawmill? Good for Jesus, bad for me. I’ll mail you some monthly checks, pay back the loan.”
“What’ll I do with this?” I said, my nose tickled by the fine wood pollen in the air.
“Stuff a pillow, start an ant farm.”
“It was a fine long exciting terrific novel,” I said.
“Yeah. I wonder how it would have ended.”
“If you wake some night with the answer, call.”
“Don’t wait. So long.”
And leaving the twin bags of granulated opus magnum, he left.
Elsa peered in. “What will you do with all that?” she said.
I sneezed once, twice, three times.
The desktop lay empty. Sawdust bloomed.
Elsa stared at the airborne opus.
“Gone With the Wind?” she said.
“No. Could be: Jack Kerouac On the Road.”
I blew my nose.
“Fetch the broom.”
The end
