How I Became a Famous Novelist

by Steve Hely

  The Arrival of My Opponent

  Preston Brooks knew how to walk into a room.

  He stood there, in the doorway for a solid minute. Completely still.

  Then he began looking around. Slowly, like an alligator.

  This was all an act, of course. He was waiting for people to see him. And after a few seconds, they did.

  A guy in the audience jumped up—literally leaped out of his chair—and pointed to the stage. Preston Brooks nodded thanks, as though this guy was doing him a great favor by pointing out the stage.

  Preston strode up. I tried to look relaxed. The radio guy said a few things to him that I couldn’t hear over the sound of the filling-in audience.

  Preston’s presence, as he took his seat, was both scary and silly all at once. He gripped the chair with his hands as though it were a snake he was trying to strangle, then he lowered himself down.

  Part of me wanted to lean over and explain everything to him. All this, how I’d gotten here. He looked weaker than he had on TV, smaller. I could see his shoulders heave as he breathed. I felt I could almost smell his breath, hints of leather and apples.

  Not knowing what else to do, I poured myself a glass of water. From his shirt pocket Preston took out a leather notebook and jotted a note. He underlined it emphatically, three times. Then he folded his arms and stared forward. I did, too. I looked right into the camera and wished it wasn’t there.

  Nerves made the whole rest of the preliminaries zip by. I glanced at Tan Skirt and saw her look back at me. Suddenly Ted was introducing us. He didn’t set it up as a debate or anything, just sort of talked about how we were “two very different authors with two very different views,” and thanked us both for coming.

  Kickoff

  Ted turned to me.

  “Pete, we’ll kick things off with you. You had some interesting, and indeed controversial, things to say about Preston Brooks in a recent TV interview—some of you may have seen it. So let me ask you this—how do you think his novels are different from yours?”

  Watch the video, if you haven’t. I’m sure it’s still on there somewhere.

  On the video, my response sounds confident. I ramble a little bit, and wave my left hand too much. My voice is, weirdly, an octave too high. But basically I say what I meant to:

  I say that I have a lot of respect for Mr. Brooks—I called him this on purpose to make him sound like a boring teacher. Obviously, I say, you have to give him credit for writing all those best sellers.

  Then I say he’s brilliant at what he does. He’s absolutely brilliant at writing popular, you know, over-the-top books that, you know, women, old people, whoever, really love.

  That he’s great, truly great, at writing sentences that sound sort of grand and epic. That he’s a genius, really, at coming up with plots that make readers cry and feel moved. I compare him to the guys who write greeting cards and commercials for detergent, and say they’re all really brilliant at manipulating people.

  And that, you know, who can blame him? I don’t. That’s what people want, and he’s the best at it.

  I say that he really inspired me, his whole, you know, schtick. I say I studied him, really, to try and write The Tornado Ashes Club.

  But I say that obviously, I mean, his books are a little ridiculous. I mean, leprechauns? And cancer dads? And Katrina? And all those funerals? I mean, c’mon. It’s all a bit much.

  I was watching my target now, the woman in the tan skirt. She seemed to smile here. So I maybe got ahead of myself.

  You can spot the exact moment, right on the video, where I half-smile back at her.

  I decide to close out positive. So I say that, all in all, Preston deserves “a certain kind of respect” for what he does. After all, he’s “a brilliant, top-of-his-game con artist.”

  The audio on the tape isn’t good enough to hear this. But when I said that you could hear air going out of the room. You could feel the crowd almost recoil.

  Then one by one they spring back forward. Because they realize Preston is about to unload on me. Ted fumbled with his mic, but couldn’t interject himself in time to stop Preston with a question.

  Here’s a weird fact: looking back on it now, putting myself back in that chair as I drank water and let the words con artist sit in the air, I can’t sort out whether or not I really believed what I’d just said.

  Certainly I thought I did. But did I really? Or was I coasting by on some shell of self-deceit that I was just too cowardly to look through?

  If you’d drugged me right then, given me some truth serum or something, would I have said the same thing?

  I honestly have no idea. I can’t remember.

  Preston Unloads

  He coughed. He took his time. He kept his arms folded.

  “Until a week ago,” he said—and he said this, and everything that followed, very precisely. Very clearly. Like a distinguished Latin teacher. But he wasn’t directing it at the crowd. He was looking right at me, talking just to me, his crinkle-paper voice cutting the air.

  “Until a week ago, I’d never heard of you. Pete Tarslaw. I hadn’t heard of you or read your book.

  “But then some friends told me about you. They said you’d written a book. Then you’d gone on television and pulled some kind of stunt.

  “So I watched your television program. My daughter showed it to me. She seemed to think the whole thing was very funny. A young man poking fun at the old fart.

  “Well, I like to be a good sport. Like to be in on the fun. But I didn’t like this joke very much at all. It seemed to me, Pete Tarslaw, that you were a young man going around saying stupid things about writing. Something you didn’t know a damn thing about.”

  His words, or at least the sound of them, had a grip on me. To try and wrestle out I offered a snarky smile to the audience.

  No one returned it.

  “You think I’m a con artist. You think I’m some Typewriter Johnson who puts pen to paper to sell armadillo soap. Well, I think that’s a shame, a real shame. But I’m not surprised.”

  Here Preston looked away from me for the first time. He studied his shoes for a moment, then looked at the crowd. He knew how to stretch the time. Ted certainly wasn’t moving.

  “You know, my daughters tell me there’s a drug now called Ecstasy. Imagine that. Ecstasy. The feeling I learned from a Shenandoah sunrise, or from gazing at Giorgione’s La Tempesta, the feeling I had when I looked at my young bride, people get that feeling now from a drug.”

  He let that linger. I thought I saw an opportunity here. So I leaned into my microphone and made my First Joke:

  “I don’t really see how that’s relevant,” I said.

  Nobody laughed.

  Preston Brooks let the room not-laugh for a while.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ll tell you why that’s relevant.

  “You seem to me like a lot of young men. And that’s no crime. I was young and dumb once, too.

  “So maybe you’re young, and dumb. Maybe you’ve never done anything hard. Maybe you’ve never sweated. Or seen a wasted life at the other end of a bar. Or seen worry in a father’s eye in a hospital hallway.

  “Maybe you’ve never put your hand on the feet, the cold toes, put your fingers through the cold toes of your wife, who’s died, alone, before you could get there. And now you touch the metal on the gurney, and now you touch her toes, and they’re both cold now.

  “Maybe you’ve never heard the shots—clickclick … BOOM, clickclick … BOOM—when they fire over a coffin with a flag draped on it.

  “Maybe you’ve never seen an old man in Louisiana, sitting on a patch-tar roof. And he’s weeping, a grown man weeping, a man who’s seen a bushelful of bad things in his day, they’re written on his face, but he’s weeping like a little boy over a dog that’s gone drowned.

  “Maybe you’ve never felt the squeeze of a child’s palm on your pinkie and your ring finger, as she tries to squeeze an extra bit of something, love maybe, ri
ght out of you.

  “Maybe you’ve never lived in a place where you can hear the whine of oil derricks, and the people in town depend on each other, in relationships as deep and necessary as the animals on a reef.

  “Maybe you’ve never felt that worry, that absolute sick, churning worry, when the bills come in and sit on the kitchen table until you’re afraid to open envelopes, and your damn car won’t work, and you’ll have to take the bus three and a half hours, the prison bus, the shame of the prison bus, to visit your son who’s locked up, just so you can sit and watch him lie to you, watch him tell you lies about how it’s ‘not so bad’ inside, lie to you while you can see in his eyes that every day is killing your boy a cruel slow death. A death like Jesus himself died. And you just don’t know what to do but beat your hands bloody against the cracked wall.”

  He took a breath.

  “Maybe you’ve never sat at a bar, four whiskeys in, your whole life undone, but you sit there, tears streaming down your face, trying to write one true sentence ON A NAPKIN!”

  That part rose into a crescendo. When he was done he slumped back into his chair for a minute, his eyes wet. He waited for a moment, as though refilling with indignation.

  “Well I’ve felt that. Or something like it. I’ve felt that. I’ve listened to that. And my readers have, too.

  “But you think I’m a con artist.”

  He unfolded his arms and let them lie upturned on the table.

  “Truth is, I’m not surprised. Sad. Not surprised. Your generation is like that.” Then he turned to the audience and smiled.

  “You’ll forgive me for saying that—your generation. I know I sound like an old man on a bus bench eating half a tuna sandwich. Well hell, I am an old man. Maybe not on a bus bench. Maybe no tuna sandwich.”

  He let the audience laugh for a minute. Then he snapped back at me.

  “I’ve known clever young men like you, in love with no God save for your own cleverness. You’re always looking for the falseness in everything. You’re used to falseness. You grew up with that lie machine, the television. It’s no wonder then that you look for liars everywhere. You make a sport of it. You chase priests and poets and policemen, writers, too. And when you find one, and catch him, you rub his face in the mud and dance about.

  “The truth is, you have been cheated. You’ve had it too easy. You’ve never done anything hard. You’ve coasted by on sacrifices bought and borrowed.”

  Here I don’t know what I was thinking. But I leaned forward again and interjected my Second Joke. And I’m embarrassed to report it, but it’s on the video so I may as well.

  “Our generation has, too, had it hard,” I said. “What about the tech bubble?”

  No one laughed.

  After a solid eight seconds, Preston smiled a little.

  “Jokes. Well all right. Young people should make jokes.”

  I thought maybe he was going to let me off with that. He did not. He pointed at me.

  “Maybe you think anything earnest must be a joke. But you are wrong, damn wrong. Maybe you think I take things too seriously. But you’re wrong there, too.

  “You wrote your little book, Tornado Ashes Club, as some kind of joke. And my God, books are no jokes. Books save lives. We lose lives for books. So you better damn well think twice before you make a joke of them.

  “You put something down on paper that you knew was a lie. That you knew was bad.

  “That’s the worst crime there is. That’s a crime against readers. That’s a crime against literature. That’s a crime against anyone with a heart and a mind and a sense of compassion.

  “You wrote your book to have a joke. To fool people. To impress a few girls and make a buck. You’re like a naughty boy who apes the principal so he can get a few laughs.

  “All right. Well let me tell you why I wrote my books.

  “In 1653, England was falling apart. Young men like you were running about, smashing churches, tearing down altars. Laughing. Throwing mud.

  “But in that year, in a place called Stanton Harold, a man built a church. There’s a plaque in that church. I’ve seen it. And here’s what it says.”

  Preston Brooks closed his eyes and declaimed. If you haven’t seen the video, and you want to know what it sounded like, then read this next paragraph slowly and precisely, in a booming preacher voice:

  “In the year 1653, when across the nation all things sacred were being demolished and profaned, this church was built by Sir Robert Shirley. It is his special praise to have done the best of things in the worst of times. And to have hoped in the most calamitous.

  “To do the best of things in the worst of times,” said Preston. “To hope in the most calamitous. That’s why I write, young man.

  “Are my efforts adequate? Are my books good enough? True enough? Do they capture what it feels like to be a widow who lost her husband in a foolish war? Or a teacher who sees her classroom flooded with swamp water? No. Hell no.

  “But every day I sit down at my typewriter. Every day. And I make an honest try. Can you say that?”

  He paused here.

  My Third Joke: “Well, no, I don’t use a typewriter.”

  No one laughed.

  Preston breathed in through his nose.

  “I make an honest try. Because I’m a writer. And that’s what a writer does. That’s what a human being does. To try and capture this folly we call the world. This joy and this sorrow we call life. I write, sir.

  “And if you think all my work is some trick, or some folly, well then let me say this so you can understand: if you think I’m a silly old man who still believes in silly nonsense like truth and love and beauty and honor and pride and sorrow and joy—you’re damn right I do.”

  So, okay. Given a few seconds, given an interjection from Ted or a station break or something, I could’ve thought of a response. I could’ve hit back. I bet I could’ve even made a fourth, and this time, good, joke.

  I could’ve won the crowd back. I know it.

  But there wasn’t time.

  Before I could think, before I could move, before I could figure out an appropriate expression and shift my face into it, I heard it.

  It started snapping out from the back of the room. Patches of noise expanded and came together and grew stronger.

  It’s not that I couldn’t believe it at first. But it took a few key seconds of neurons firing before I realized what it meant. My body figured it out first, actually, because suddenly my skin got blasted with sweat.

  The crowd was erupting. Thundering, exhilarated, rapturous applause.

  I looked up at the faces that blinded me like flashes. Through them, somehow, I made out the tan skirt girl, beating her hands, applauding as fast and as forcefully as she could.

  They were with him. All of them. The ranchers, the intellectuals, everybody.

  Something occurred to me then: maybe there wasn’t something wrong with Preston Brooks. Or with the people who loved him. Maybe there was something wrong with me.

  I felt a terrible, wrenching feeling in my stomach.

  It wasn’t from the Dairy Queen.

  21

  Do you remember when we went to the old Presbyterian church? Grandmother said. The church up in Gethsemene? Up in that notch in the mountains that they called a village?

  Yes, said Silas. I remember. I played in the rhododendrons. Pretended they were a cave. Pretended they were a pirate’s cave and I was burying treasure.

  That’s right, said Grandmother, and she smiled. That’s right. Do you remember why we went up there?

  For the funeral, Silas said. He remembered.

  Remembered the touch of old sorrowful hands, pressing against his scalp. Remembered the sight of somber nods, passing one another in the pews and the aisles. Remembered the taste of maple syrup, poured over pancakes at a mournful breakfast.

  For the funeral of my cousin, he said.

  That’s right, said Grandmother. Poor girl. Poor girl burned to death, in a fire.
Closed casket, shame to think. Pretty face like hers. “Amazing Grace” never sounded quite the same, not after she was gone. That voice of hers. That face.

  But the choir sang it anyway, said Silas.

  So they did, said Grandmother. So they did. And do you remember what you said to me, when they were finished singing?

  I said it made my heart shake, Silas said.

  That’s right. That’s right. It made your heart shake. And do you remember, Silas, what I told you when you said that?

  You said—and Silas trembled, to think of the memory coming back. You said that’s how you know something’s true. You said that’s how you know something’s really true. When it makes your heart move inside you. That’s when you know it’s true.

  —excerpt from The Tornado Ashes Club by Pete Tarslaw

  An interesting fact about the US Attorney’s Office in Boston is that they serve good coffee, Bay State Bean or something. Aunt Evelyn was there with me, and she seemed indifferent to it, but she has a very refined palate.

  They had us sitting on blue plush chairs in a little lobby, which made the proceedings seem not too serious. There were even magazines, albeit boring ones: Massachusetts Lawyer and so forth. After about fifteen minutes of waiting I reached for one, but Aunt Evelyn looked over at me and shook her head. And certainly it wouldn’t have helped if I’d been casually reading Massachusetts Lawyer when the prosecutors came in. The coffee was comfort enough.

  Luckily for me, Aunt Evelyn was back to being kick-ass. She’d shown up for our meeting in an ageless gray wool lawyer suit. The frilly white-collar thing didn’t soften her at all—she looked like an East German torturess.

  You may wonder why the engines of federal justice were turning in such a way in that it required my aunt to drive down from Vermont wearing a suit. And even now all the details have not been explained to my satisfaction. But Aunt Evelyn had made some calls and learned that the situation was indeed suit-wearing serious.

  HOW WE’D ENDED UP HERE

  An elderly Italian woman in an assisted living facility in Chelmsford received in the mail a packet of information about a mutual fund company called Via Appia.