The Typewriter

Five

Milo Mitchell waved goodbye to his twin children as he watched his wife back the car down the driveway early that Saturday morning.

"Say hi to everyone for me!" He turned and headed back into the now quiet house.

The first few minutes alone in the house left Milo feeling uneasy. He couldn't remember a time when it wasn't filled with the sound of his children's voices or of Elizabeth instructing them through some life skill, like eating peas with a fork, or the constant undercurrent of noise from the television, which was on morning, noon, and night.

To stifle the silence, Milo went into the kitchen and put a cup of instant oatmeal into the microwave. While the microwave nuked the oatmeal, he ran the coffeemaker. For the first time ever, he enjoyed the whirring and gurgling that came from inside the machine's plastic housing. The temporary caterwauling chased away the disorienting quiet and put his mind at ease. Now, feeling more at home in his home, he sat down to a quick but satisfying breakfast.

*****

With breakfast done and the kitchen cleaned up, Milo went downstairs to the basement. He headed straight for the table and typewriter in the corner.

He assessed what he had, and what he needed, in order to reacquaint himself with the one activity in life that made any sense to him. He started with the dusty box of paper next to the typewriter. It might be bad luck to use old paper that had sat untouched for so long. He'd buy new paper for his new project. In fact, he would get all new supplies -- new pencils, new pens, maybe a new coffee mug to hold all the coffee he anticipated drinking over the next forty-eight hours.

He turned out the light. Fifteen minutes later, Milo was in the car and driving into the neighboring town of Eden, on his way to a big box office supply store. There he'd find the tools he needed to scrap the rust from his dream.

Returning to his house with a ream of paper, a box of ten Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils, a pack of three Easy Flow pens with red ink, and a pocket dictionary, Milo pulled from the bag the one item he prized above everything else he bought that day.

A single spool of black typewriter ribbon.

If he hadn't seen it in the store, he wouldn't have believed it existed. The only one of its kind, it hung from a peg board display in a back corner among wooden rulers and large pink erasers. He considered the ribbon's discovery a good sign, a positive omen of the fortuitous weekend ahead.

After cleaning the corner of the basement, and setting up the table with his new supplies, Milo Mitchell sat at his Smith Corona typewriter and began to write.