by Jon Scieszka
“What’s this?” I’d say. “My manuscript?”
(I want to point out that I’m still using the conditional present tense here. The condition in question would be a chrono-dimension in which I’d actually killed HM. That condition has not been met.)
He’d nod. He’d poke at his face with a napkin that had already been through a lot.
“That was quick,” I’d say, because HM never takes ages with his notes. He never takes as long as it took me to write the damn thing. That’s why my mental health is sound and I have no motive whatsoever to wish the man severe bodily harm.
He’d sip from his third drink and ask after my agent as I flipped through the marked-up pages. They’d be fairly clean, because HM never lets loose with his red pen so that I’d spend hours weeping into the phone to my mother.
“He’s not coming,” I’d admit.
HM would rise and explain he has a meeting he must rush off to. He’d tell me the notes are self-explanatory, and he’d tell me I could email his assistant Tate with any questions.
I still don’t know if Tate is a man or a woman. Is Tate here, by the way? I’d like to meet Tate.
He’d be moving slowly, full of food and drink and ill temper, and I’d drop an IOU on the table and follow him.
I’d stand against the building in the midday shadows and behind a magazine rack, as HM flagged down a cab. And as the speeding car swerved toward the curb, I’d leap from the shadows, knock the editor into the street, and thrill at the sound of screeching brakes—too late—and shattering bone.
It would be over so quickly. He’d lie like a sated, bleeding lump on the hood of the car. I’d slip down the nearby steps to the D train as the cab driver leaned out the window, shouting at the fresh corpse, “Where to?”
That was a bit graphic. The details were sharp and compelling. It rang of truth. But there is one problem: I’ve never even met Herman Mildew. Not in person, anyway. But we’re friends on Facebook. Now excuse me; I want to be the first person to write something snappy and touching on his timeline.
Look, I’m not going to lie to you.
I worshipped Hermie. That’s right, I called him Hermie. It was the name between us…you know the way a nickname can capture everything about a relationship—the specialness, the intimacy, the sense of a magical circle being drawn, with the two of you enclosed and protected, utterly separate from the rest of the world? That was how it was with us.
To be fair, he insisted that I call him “Mr. Mildew” in public. And in private, too, come to think of it. But I understood…that gruff, ungainly exterior masked an essential shyness, and it was one of the things I adored about him. And yeah, okay, maybe he said something about “professionalism,” and “respecting boundaries.” Something about “I don’t like you that way.” Something about a restraining order. Whatever. He was always Hermie in my mind.
You don’t believe me. I can tell. You don’t think anyone could feel close to this tyrant, this monster, this despicable shell of a human being, Mr. Herman Q. Mildew. Well, anyone except that Sara Shepard, apparently. Who IS she, anyway? Are we really supposed to believe they hooked up? One word: delusional. And I can tell you I certainly never saw her follow him home from work, or skulk around his favorite cheese shop, or sneak into his house during those quiet hours between midnight and dawn, when the city finally catches its breath; the hours of lovers the world over. That was my time with Hermie…though of course we couldn’t be together physically, because of the restraining order.
How did I know it was love? I can see how you might ask that. Aren’t these the fundamental questions that haunt us all in life’s journey: Is this love? Is it real? Will it last?
The only way I can think to answer that is to tell you one small story about Hermie that will prove the depth of our bond. Because that bond is my alibi, and my final, pure defense against the insanity of this accusation. Okay, okay, I know—there’s not a “witness.” There’s no “proof.” There’s nobody to “vouch” for me. I am not one to get bogged down in technicalities, or the legal mumbo-jumbo you all like to spout during a murder investigation.
Here’s the story: Many years ago, in the early stages of our relationship, I gave Hermie my nine-hundred-page young adult novel about a beaver who saves his pond from imminent environmental devastation caused by the toxic effluvium from an old pickle factory. It had everything: enough pages to be taken seriously, a spunky main character with an important environmental lesson to teach readers, a thorough and near-academic discussion of the effects of toxic run-off on ponds and streams, and the fearless use of profanity, because I will not be stifled in my art.
I met Hermie at his door as he was coming home from work one day, and thrust the manuscript into his arms. Each time I tried to give him my manuscript—my opus, my life’s work—he kept shoving it away. He could be really playful like that. Finally, when he jammed his key into the front door and rushed into the house, I heaved the manuscript in after him, right before the door slammed shut. Now listen. A few minutes later, the manuscript came flying back out again! Pages scattered all over the concrete steps. And I admit, my heart plummeted through my chest like a television set pushed off the roof of a building, crashing down on an unsuspecting passerby.
But just before he slammed the door shut again, Hermie said two things to me that changed my life forever. What Hermie said was this: “Are you crazy? Who would read this thing?” And then he unleashed such a stream of profanity that I realized, though mere seconds had passed, he actually HAD READ my manuscript! Or at least part of it.
And in those two spare sentences, he gave me more profound advice than any editor I’ve ever worked with; really, than any human being I’ve ever known. Because I realized that what Hermie was saying was this:
1. You have to be crazy for your art. Burn all the bridges, throw out the script, and start from the whirling dervish center of your own madness. Therein lies your genius.
2. Think of your AUDIENCE. Because the moment of communion with the reader is like a love affair. A crazy, inexplicable love affair.
What did you say? Oh, that? In my pocket? Yes, that’s right…it’s rat poison. I’m surprised you recognized it—good for you! You really know your stuff. Excuse me? No, no, don’t be silly. There are lots of rats at the old pickle factory—the place is overrun with them.
Look, I’m not going to lie to you.
You need to understand, it’s tough being an author and illustrator. I spend 99 percent of my time writing and drawing in my studio. Alone. Isolation can do funny things to a person. I’m told that I’ve developed the personality of a newt. That my breath smells like rancid truffle butter. And that my clammy skin, pained expression, and hunched posture lead people to think I have chronic diarrhea. But I don’t have chronic diarrhea. I’ve just become seriously awkward. Seriously.
So then one night I found myself at Herman Mildew’s pickle factory party. The place was packed with the biggest names in publishing. I was really hoping to make some new friends, but as usual, my social awkwardness got the best of me. After an hour, the only conversation I’d had was to ask a pregnant woman when she was due. Turns out she wasn’t pregnant. She was a guy.
My blunders got worse from there. I accidentally guided a blind man into the women’s room. I sneezed my bubble gum into a literary agent’s mouth. I elbowed an old lady right in the boob. And I mistook another guy for a pregnant woman. I could go on.…
One thing was clear: it would take a miracle for me to make any friends that night. And a miracle happened. I walked into the restroom to do my business and found Herman Mildew dead on the floor. I don’t know what killed him. But however he died, I was not going to let that golden opportunity slip away. I mean, Herman was the most hated man in ALL publishing, everyone knows that, and he was already dead…what’s wrong with using his death to my advantage?
I hid Herman’s body as best I could, walked back to the party, and grabbed a microphone.
“E
xcuse me, can I have everyone’s attention?” my voice boomed from the speakers. “Thank you. I’d just like to apologize to anyone I may have offended tonight. I don’t get out much. But I think you’ll all forgive me when you hear this fantastic news. I KILLED HERMAN MILDEW!”
The party was silent. For a moment I feared my little white lie had backfired.
“That jerk is gone forever!” I squeaked. “It’s true!”
And then it started. One person began to clap. Then another. And another. More and more people began clapping and hooting until the room was bursting with applause! The music fired up and the party was ON! Everyone thanked me! Everyone loved me! Everyone wanted to be my friend!
So I lied about killing Herman Mildew. It was worth it. That was the single greatest night of my life.
“I wouldn’t even feed these pages to that rat you call a dog!” Herman Mildew bellowed.
He was standing in the hallway outside his corner office, holding my latest manuscript high above his head. He crumpled the pages into a tight ball. He’d only had them for five minutes so I have no clue what set him off. I didn’t have time to ask because a second later, to my shock and horror, he made his displeasure even more evident by kicking Captain Jack Sparrow, my ten-pound Chihuahua.
That was the day I wished the man who signed me to my first book deal dead.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t the first time I wished him dead, but it was certainly the moment I knew I meant it because no one—and I mean no one—kicks my dog and gets away with it. Jack is the sweetest Chihuahua in the world (well, when he isn’t peeing on my luggage because he knows I’m headed out of town). I only brought him in to Herman’s office that day to introduce him to my latest junior editor who has a Chihuahua-obsession like I do.
Did I mention how much I like my junior editors even though none of them have made it past the five-month mark with Herman? The juniors don’t bark at me for manuscripts three weeks before they’re due or threaten to kill my latest contract. They send pleasant emails asking about my kids (Herman doesn’t even remember I have them) before inquiring about where my long overdue acknowledgements are. They put thoughtful edit notes in pretty pink note bubbles in my manuscript document and say things like “please” or “it would be great if.” Herman just writes RUBBISH in big, murderous red script across every page, leaving me to figure out exactly what he hated (did I mention he still doesn’t edit on a computer yet? When he edits my work, I have to write all my notes by hand). Thankfully, Herman’s usually too wrapped up in his famous celebrity lunches—where he’s tried to sign everyone from “Tommy” Cruise to the “Biebs” Justin Bieber to a book deal. That means I rarely have to deal with the oaf. And that’s just how I like it, which is why when I got that invite to his party, I thought about faking every disease in the book to avoid going. But there is no avoiding Herman. Especially when he has more dirt on the young adult community than the FBI has on the Mafia.
I was only there five painstaking minutes when I ran into him. He was up to his elbows in ribs and was using his Armani silk shirt as a napkin, but he turned to me with a wicked smile and said, “Did you try these yet? I had them brought in from Thailand. They are 100 percent pure Chihuahua meat.” His stare turned deadly. “Bring that rat of yours in again and I’ll make him my next meal too.”
The fork I was holding came dangerously close to stabbing him in the throat, but I’m a lady and ladies don’t do such things. They just dream about them. So I left the party. Ask Elizabeth Eulberg, if you don’t believe me. I was sobbing to her about the bounty on Jack Sparrow’s head in the bathroom. Then I pulled myself together and headed straight to the gym to take a late-night spin class because our gym, um, has those sorts of things. Doesn’t every gym offer spin at ten at night? Mine does, and I spent the next hour whipping my legs into a frenzy to work out my aggression toward that Mildew of a man. Did I picture my bike running over his head the entire time? Maybe, but that doesn’t prove anything, does it? That’s just pure and simple spinning motivation.
When I was a boy my family lived at the foot of a mountain that was home to a Sasquatch. It was widely understood among the gang of kids who lived on our dirt road that if our parents were stupid enough to take up residence within a thousand miles of a ten-foot-tall-monkey-man with magical powers, they were also going to be useless when it came time to protect us in the middle of the night when it knocked down the front door, picked us up by our feet, and dragged us up the mountain so it could rip our arms off. It was for this reason that we never, ever, invoked the name of the Sasquatch to blame him for things that had gone terribly wrong in our lives.
Only sometimes we did.
Joey Turnbuckle, a snot-nosed kid who collected mud under his fingernails so he could eat it for lunch, spilled a gallon of paint on his living room rug when he was seven years old. When his mother found him sloshing around on the carpet like a seal, Joey’s paint covered face went wide with terror.
“The Sasquatch did it!”
Later we all agreed it was the paint fumes. Joey wasn’t in his right mind. But that didn’t change the fact that he’d called down the wrath of the Sasquatch.
The next day, Joey Turnbuckle’s dog was gone.
The doghouse was lodged in the branches of a nearby tree, about fifteen feet up. A large family of squirrels had taken up residence and stared down at me and Joey, chirping like little maniacs.
“He’s a big one,” I said, looking down at my tennis shoe, which was sitting inside of a footprint the size of a large watermelon.
“And tall,” Joey added.
When Joey’s dad came outside and stood next to us, Joey pointed up to the doghouse.
“The Sasquatch did it.”
From this incident we learned some important pieces of information. If the Sasquatch really did do it, then you could say so and it would leave you alone. You could even joke about crazy things the Sasquatch may have done, like pushing a giant tree over on top of your house (this actually happened, different story). As long as it sounded cool, the Sasquatch seemed fine taking responsibility. But no card-carrying Big Foot wants to take credit for spilling paint in your living room. It’s beneath him. The number one rule at the foot of a mountain: don’t ever blame a Sasquatch for stupid crap you did yourself. The incident with Joey Turnbuckle was the first time any of us understood how serious this rule really was.
The consequences got a lot worse.
My uncle Clyde said it when my aunt found a red sock combined with a load of whites, which had turned her favorite sun dress a blotchy shade of pink.
“The Sasquatch did it!”
Three days later, uncle Clyde’s head fell off. I’m not making this up.
My big brother said it only once in my entire childhood when my mom caught him smoking on the side of the house.
“The Sasquatch did it!”
This was an egregious use of the Sasquatch name, mostly because it didn’t make any sense.
“The Sasquatch did what?” my mom asked. She didn’t understand what my brother meant, but then again she was so stupid, she made us live in a town cursed by a known Sasquatch. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, because my brother was even more stupid. Who blames a Sasquatch when you get caught smoking?
Legend has it my brother looked at the cigarette in his hand, flicked it into the grass, and began crying like a three-year-old. My mom enfolded him in her arms and told him she wouldn’t tell my dad. But my big brother wasn’t crying about getting caught smoking a dumb cigarette. He was crying because he knew he’d blamed it on the one creature you don’t blame things on. No Sasquatch likes to be made a fool of, especially when it’s being blamed for something.
That night our house burned to the ground. We found a marshmallow roasting stick in the back 40 the next morning, stuck in the dirt between two footprints.
“Nice going, bro,” I said.
He lit a cigarette and stared off into the woods. “Could have been worse. At least m
y head didn’t fall off.”
He had a point.
You’d think this would have been enough to run my marble-headed parents out of town for good, but they were even more stupid than I thought, and that’s saying something. We moved in with my widowed aunt, four doors down, who was still mourning the loss of uncle Clyde. Her house smelled like burnt coffee and bleach, and she had a weird hang-up with lampshades that led to my one and only face-to-face encounter with a Sasquatch.
It started out innocently enough. My mom had taken me and my brother down to the crummy general store about a million miles away on foot and given me two quarters to spend as I liked. I wanted a BB gun so I could shoot squirrels, rabbits, and the occasional Big Foot, but fifty cents wasn’t going to get me the BBs, let alone the weapon. So I bought a squirt gun instead. And a Tootsie Roll.
The trouble began in the garage on a cold January morning. There was a stark white light bulb over my head, burning bright like a little sun as I sat on the concrete step leading back into the house. I don’t know what made me shoot water at that light bulb, and I sure as heck didn’t know it was going to be so much fun. If it had been boring I would have stopped, but that’s the trouble with trouble. We rarely see it coming when we’re having such a good time. The first few seconds were the best (also true about most kinds of trouble). I squeezed the plastic trigger on the squirt gun, shooting a laser-perfect shot of water at a light bulb that had been left on all night long and into the morning. It hissed gloriously, steam pouring off its sides like billowing smoke. So of course I kept on shooting, who wouldn’t? On the fifth shot the light bulb exploded with a fabulous pop! showering the floor with thousands of tiny pieces of glass. I went directly into the house, where my aunt’s compulsion to remove all lamp shades sent me on a mad tear through every room, blowing up light bulbs like a G.I. Joe sharpshooter. The carnage was magnificent, a true joy, until I flopped down on the plastic covered sofa and realized what I’d done. The gun was in my hand. I’d laid waste to every light bulb in the house. I’d blown them all up and had a hell of a good time doing it.