any kind of mad lion-tamer cage-filler-upper, you'd have been in the toilet two days ago. You think I don't know all about you?'
'There's not much to know,' I said, sheepishly.
'Like hell there isn't. Listen.' Crumley took another swig, shut his eyes, and read the details off the back of his eyelids.
'One block from your apartment's a liquor store, and an ice cream parlor, and next to that a Chinese grocery. They all think you're mad. The Nut, they call you. The Fool, on occasion. You talk loud and lots. They hear. Every time you sell a story to Weird Tales or Astonishing Stories, it's all over the pier because you open your window and yell. Christ. But the bottom line is, kid, they like you. You got no future, sure, they all agree, because who in hell is really going to go and land on the moon, when? Between now and the year 2000, will anyone give a damn about Mars? Only you, Flash Gordon. Only crazy nut you, Buck Rogers.'
I was blushing furiously, head down, half-angry and somewhat embarrassed but somehow pleased at all this attention. I had been called Flash and Buck often, but somehow when Crumley did it, it went right by without wounding.
Crumley opened his eyes, saw my blush, and said, 'Now, cut that out.'
'Why would you have known all this about me, a long time before the old man was,' I stopped and changed it, 'before he died?'
'I'm curious about everything.'
'Most people aren't. I discovered that when I was fourteen. Everybody else gave up toys that year. I told my folks, no toys, no Christmas. So they kept on giving me toys every year. The other boys got shirts and ties. I took astronomy. Out of four thousand students in my high school there were only fifteen other boys and fourteen girls who looked at the sky with me. The rest were out running around the track and watching their feet. So, it follows that…'
I turned instinctively, for something had stirred in me. I found myself wandering across the kitchen.
'I got a hunch,' I said. 'Could I…?'
'What?' said Crumley.
'You got a workroom here?'
'Sure. Why?' Crumley frowned with faint alarm.
That only made me push a bit harder. 'Mind if I see?'
'Well…'
I moved in the direction toward which Crumley's eyes had darted.
The room was right off the kitchen. It had once been a bedroom but now it was empty except for a desk, a chair, and a typewriter on the desk.
'I knew it,' I said.
I went to stand behind the chair and look at the machine which was not an old beat-up Underwood Standard, but a fairly new Corona with a fresh ribbon in it, and a stack of yellow sheets waiting to one side.
'That explains why you look at me the way you do,' I said. 'Lord, yes, always tilting your head this way and that, scowling, narrowing your eyes!'
'Trying to X-ray that big head of yours, see if there's a brain in there, and how it does what it does,' said Crumley, tilting his head now to the left, now to the right.
'Nobody knows how the brain works, not writers, no one. All I do is throw up every morning, clean up at noon.'
'Bullshit,' said Crumley, gently.
'Truth.'
I looked at the desk, which had three drawers on either side of the cubby.
I put my hand out and down toward the bottom drawer on the left.
Crumley shook his head.
I shifted and reached over to touch the bottom drawer on the right.
Crumley nodded.
I pulled the drawer open, slowly.
Crumley exhaled.
There was a manuscript there in an open-top box. It looked to be about 150 to 200 pages, beginning on page one, with no title page.
'How long's this been down here in the bottom drawer?' I asked. 'Pardon.'
'It's all right,' said Crumley. 'Five years.'
'You're going to finish it now,' I said.
'Like hell I am. Why?'
'Because I told you so. And I know.'
'Shut the drawer,' said Crumley.
'Not just yet.' I pulled out the chair, sat, and rolled a sheet of yellow paper into the machine.
I typed five words on one line and then shifted down and wrote three more words.
Crumley squinted over my shoulder and read them aloud, quietly.
'Death Is a Lonely Business.' He took a breath and finished it. 'By Elmo Crumley.' He had to repeat it. 'By Elmo Crumley, by God.'
'There.' I placed my new title page down on top of his waiting manuscript and slid the drawer shut. 'That's a gift. I'll find another title for my book.
Now, you'll have to finish it.'
I rolled another sheet of paper into the machine and asked, 'What was the number of the last page on the bottom of your manuscript?'
'One hundred sixty-two,' said Crumley.
I typed 163 and left the paper in the machine.
'There,' I said. 'It's waiting. Tomorrow morning you get out of bed, walk to the machine, no phone calls, no newspaper reading, don't even go to the bathroom, sit down, type, and Elmo Crumley is immortal,' 'B.S.,' said Crumley, but ever so quietly.
'God promises. But you got to work.'
I got up and Crumley and I stood looking at his Corona as if it were the only child he would ever have.
'You giving me orders, kid?' said Crumley.
'No. Your brain is, if you'd just listen.'
Crumley backed off, walked into the kitchen, got some more beer. I waited by his desk until I heard the back screen door bang.
I found Crumley in his garden letting the whirlaround water-tosser cover his face with cooling raindrops, for the day was warm now and the sun out full here on the rim of fog country.
'What is it,' said Crumley, 'forty stories you sold so far?'
'At thirty bucks apiece, yeah. The Rich Author.'
'You are rich. I stood down at the magazine rack at Abe's Liquor yesterday and read that one you wrote about the man who finds he has a skeleton inside him and it scares hell out of him. Christ, it was a beaut. Where in hell do you get ideas like that?'
'I got a skeleton inside me,' I said.
'Most people never notice.' Crumley handed me a beer and watched me make yet another face. 'The old man…'
'William Smith?'
'Yeah, William Smith, the autopsy report came in this morning. There was no water in his lungs.'
'That means he didn't drown. That means he was killed up on the canal bank and shoved down into the cage after he was dead. That proves…'
