"Everything Goes In At The End"

“Everything Goes In At The End”

By Cody Williams

 

1.

Raymond Nidheart paused for a moment and waited for a sound to come from the home of Jack Richards. He placed his ear up against the black wooden door and listened but he heard nothing. At the center of the door was a black metal doorknocker with what looked like a severed hand and a bone hanging down from it. Raymond reached and grabbed the plastic hand it knocked on the door again. This time he did hear something. Sort of a rustling noise coming from inside the house. Ray backed away from the door and waited. The front door opened slightly but was held in place with a long chain. Jack put his face up against the crack between the door and the frame and looked out at the young reporter. He was an old man as he had just turned eighty-four the week before. His hair, whatever was left of it, was white and scattered randomly throughout his head. There was a bushy gray goatee at the base of his face and a large nose that resembled a beak in many ways at the center of it. Just above his eyes were two bushy eyebrows that were gray. In his left ear was a hearing aid.

            “What do you want?” The old man asked him in a deep and cracked voice as if he hadn’t used his vocal chords in two or three days. Ray was silent for a moment. He just stared at the old man thinking of what to say but couldn’t bring himself to say anything. What would you say to a New York Times Bestselling author that has been in a reclusive state like JD Salinger the last thirty years of his life. “What do you want boy? You’ve been knocking on my door the last thirty minutes. I waited for you to leave, but you were just so damn persistent! Tell me what you want. You made this old man get out of his reading chair with a bad hip, you better have a good reason for it!”

            “M…M…Mr. Richards! Hi! I’m Raymond Nidheart from the Little Rock Press. I’ve come here to interview you for the newspaper considering how famous you are and that your eighty-fourth birthday just passed last week.” Raymond said. The old man smiled, but not in a way that was like he was happy to see him. No, it was almost as if he was laughing at him.

            “I’ve got nothing to say to you sonny! F**k off before I call the cops!” The old man said. He went to close the door, but Raymond quickly put his hand between the door and the doorframe.

            “Wait! If you just give me a minute of your time! The Press wanted me to interview you! They want to dedicate a day to celebrating your legacy! Please!” Raymond pleaded.

            “Celebrate my legacy? No. That’s not what they want. First of all I don’t want a legacy at all. Being famous never interested me. Secondly, what you and this town wants to do is bring me back to the public eye and extort me by saying ‘hey! Look at us! He lives here! Aren’t we a great city?’ Did I pretty much hit the nail on the head there?” He asked. Raymond paused for a moment. What he said made since. He knew that.  Jack went to close the door again, but Ray stopped.

            “Just tell me, how do you write all those nasty things? And why is it that you stopped writing? Why did you retire?” Ray asked.

            “Retire?” The old man said. He looked at him for a moment before he shut the door. It was quiet for a moment, but then Ray could hear the chains that held the door shut rattle. Jack opened the door and looked at Ray. “Come in! But your legal pad and your camera both stay out here. There will be no pictures or quotes in your damn article. Raymond thought for a moment and then agreed by nodding his head. He took the camera from around his neck and sat it down on the white wooden rocking chair that looked as if it had been stolen off of the front porch of Cracker Barrel. Ray placed his legal pad beside it and walked into the house before Jack closed the door behind them.

 

2.

Jack led Ray down the hallway and into the last room on the left. The room was dark as long black shades covered the windows. Ray could see the dark shadow outline of Richards stumble around and sit down directly in front of him. Jack reached over to turn on the lamp that was resting on his desk, which lit up the room. Richards leaned forward and folded his hands. He motioned for Ray to come in and to sit in one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. Ray stepped into the office and sat down on the wooden chair across from him while resting his arm on the side of it. Jack reached over to his left and grabbed pack of cigarettes. He took one out of the pack and placed it in his mouth.

            “So, why do you want to know?” Richards asked him of he took a puff from his cigarette. Raymond was quiet for a moment. He stared at the one famous author for a moment. The thought of why anyone would reject fame for doing something that he or she must love made him wonder. It would make since if he were just doing it for the money. That would make a lot more sense. But that wasn’t it. Raymond could tell that. It was just not the vibe that he got from Richards. Jack took another puff from his cigarette and then let it rest on the edge of the ashtray. “Are you going to say something or just keep wasting my time?” Richards asked. Raymond closed his eyes and cleared his throat.

            “We wanted to know why it is that you quit. My editor insisted that I try to interview you since you are the town’s only celebrity and it was your birthday just last week.” Raymond said. Jack let out a soft laugh followed by several coughs. He reached down and grabbed a bottle of Jack that was on the floor beside his chair and took a sip.

“Tell me, Mr. Journalist, why did you become a journalist?” Richards asked him. Raymond was put off by the question at first.

“I like to write. I’m grateful to be able to making a living at writing. That’s why I do it, I guess.” Raymond answered. Richards smiled at him strangely and took another sip of the whiskey.

“No. You majored in creative writing in college, bought into all that literary bullshit, and then got butt-hurt when people didn’t want to read that literary s**t that you wrote so you turned to journalism and your writing has become dry. There, did I pretty much hit the nail on the head?” Richards asked him. Raymond could feel his face start to turn red with both anger and embarrassment. It was true. But how did he know it? Raymond wasn’t quite sure. “You see, you and I are not all that different. We’re both writers of type. You just lost that spark that used to drive you to do it. So you sold out. I never did that. I never bought into that literary bullshit and I just wrote what I wanted whether that was fantasy, science fiction, horror, or crime and didn’t give a s**t of what anybody else thought.”

“If all that is true, why did you quit? Why did you give up something that you claimed to love? Did you just make all the money you wanted and then turn your backs on the fans that you had. To me, that seems selfish. So, why did you do it? Why did you quit?” Raymond asked.

“That’s the difference between you and me, I didn’t quit Mr. Reporter.” Richards said. He lifted his arm and pointed at a large black safe in the corner. “That safe over there is full of manuscripts that I’ve written since the last Bernie Jackson crime novel was published. Writers don’t retire. Not the ones who really enjoy what they do, anyway.” He told him. “Tell me, what have you written since your last novel was rejected by a publisher? Have you ever written anything else? Probably not. For me, I can’t stop writing. It’s not that simple. Everything goes in at the end of the day. The people you meet. The people who piss you off. Everything you do can be an inspiration for a story. You just have to look for it.” Richards said. Raymond was quiet for a moment. “Did you get all you needed? Are we done here?” Jack asked. Raymond nodded. “Good, now get out!” Raymond stood from his chair and walked over to the door of the old man’s office. He looked back at Richards.

“Will anything in the safe ever be published?” Raymond asked. Richards took another sip of his whiskey and shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know. I assume after I die some a*****e reporter much like you will come here, discover the manuscripts, and put them out there just to make a quick buck. But I don’t know.” He said. Raymond turned his back to the famous writer and walked out of his office. Richards finished off the bottle of Jack Daniels and put out the cigarette as he put a piece of blank paper in the Royal typewriter. He typed “The Reporter” by Jack Richards at the top of the page and started to write.

Copyright © 2015 by Cody Williams
Courtesy of TTP Entertainment

Author's Note

I'm returning to WritersCafe! Here is a story I wrote a month or so ago. I'll be publishing a few older stories that have not been published yet. I'll post some "new" ones down the road.

-CW