The Typewriter

One

The Smith Corona typewriter, silent and dust-covered in a dark corner of the basement, reminded Milo of how far he'd fallen from realizing his dream.

He shook his head with dismay. Writing had once been his great passion. But, he conceded, that was a long time ago. A time when the world might not have seen him as a short, pudgy, middle-aged man with an unfortunate comb-over and a lousy job.

Returning to the task at hand, Milo went back to pulling bath towels from the dryer, folding them, and placing them into the plastic laundry basket on top of the machine. When he had folded the last towel, he turned and looked over his shoulder.

Though he had never been an alcoholic, never taken drugs, Milo thought he understood the febrile urge that drove addicts to desperation, for he felt it now, staring at that dusty old relic in the corner.

He crossed the basement and tugged on the chain that turned on the bare light bulb hanging over the folding card table on which the typewriter had come to rest years ago.

Slapping a thick layer of dust from the office chair, he sat down and placed his fingers on the keys. With the care and reverence of an acolyte, he pushed down on the J key. The little hammer sprang up and slapped the bare rubber platen, then fell back to its original position.

Milo grinned. The concussive strike of keys never failed to thrill him. The typewriter was loud, brazen, abrasive. It announced itself. It told anyone within earshot: "Go away. I'm busy."

If creativity had a sound, he thought, it would be the sound of a typewriter.

For that reason, and many others, he loathed computers. Their soft clicks and silly electronic beeps and pings, the delicate plastic casing, and the searing white light from their monitors lacked the gravitas of a sturdy, well-built typewriter.

Without warning, tears came to his eyes.

Pull yourself together for God's sake. It's just a typewriter.

But deep down Milo knew it was more than just a typewriter. The simple machine represented something to which he had once attached significant meaning. It sat at the center of every hope he'd ever had for the future -- a future that was now neglected and covered in dust.

He lifted the lid to a box on the table. In the box was half a ream of paper, unused.

Milo rolled a sheet into the machine and pushed the carriage return lever. The platen slid to the right with a crisp zipping sound. Pausing for a moment to decide what to write, he settled on the first line from Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms (one of Milo's favorite books).

He pulled the sheet out and admired the black serif words bold against the stark white paper, just as they may have appeared when Hemingway himself first committed those words to print. He reset the paper and below Hemingway's words, Milo typed:

THE LATEST NOVEL FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR MILO MITCHELL HAS BEEN SHORTLISTED FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN LITERATURE.

Snickering at his own pathetic joke, he said out loud, "That'll be the day. The day that pigs fly and hell freezes over."

Milo was about to type something else, when he became aware of someone behind him on the basement steps. It was his wife, Elizabeth, a petite woman with red hair and a pale, freckled complexion.

"Who are you talking to?"

Springing out of the rickety office chair, Milo stood, looking as guilty as a peeping tom caught in the act.

"Myself," he said. "Nobody."

"Did you get lost? I thought you were bringing the towels upstairs."

"I was," said Milo. "I mean, I am."

Elizabeth's hazel eyes swept over her husband before landing upon the typewriter. "Didn't we get rid of that thing?"

"Still here, right where we put it."

"What are you doing?"

Milo shrugged. "Uh, nothing, really. Um...nothing."

"Okay," said Elizabeth. "Don't forget the towels."

"I won't."

He watched his wife climb the stairs. When she closed the basement door behind her, Milo turned and ripped the sheet of paper from the typewriter, crumpling it into a small tight ball.

"You almost had me," he said to the machine. "I nearly fell for it -- again. But I can't do it anymore. I won't."

Like an abbey monk, Milo Mitchell had devoted hours to the craft of fiction writing, hunched over the desk in his college dorm room, sitting at the small, cheap kitchen table in his first apartment. He filled notebooks with stories, character sketches, and outlines. He'd drunk gallons of bitter coffee to keep himself awake well into the early hours of morning, straining every synapse in his brain to produce a clever turn of phrase or a description so precise it would take one's breath away to read it.

Yet, for all his dogged pursuit of the perfect sentence, he had never sold a single story. By all financial measures, he was a failure. Which is why, over the years, the dream had grown rusty and the typewriter, relegated to the basement, collected dust. After a while there didn't seem any point in continuing.

Besides, he had a wife and two children, ten-year-old twins, Anna and Jake, around whom his life revolved. He was content. There was no longer room for obsessive hours wasted on awful stories that no one would ever read.

He turned off the light above the card table and went back over to the washer and dryer. As he was reaching for the laundry basket, he heard someone say:

"Let me give you some advice on writing, kid."