Walk on the Wild Side

The Last Wolf



The last writer sat alone in his study.

There was a knock at his door.

But it was only his agent. A tired, weathered old man like himself. It seemed not long ago that he had thought the man quite young.

“I phoned you I was coming,” explained his agent, as if to apologize for the writer’s surprised greeting.

Of course... he had forgotten. He concealed the vague annoyance he felt at being interrupted in his work.

Nervously the agent entered his study. He gripped his attache case firmly before him, thrusting it into the room as if it were a shield against the perilously stacked shelves and shelves of musty books. Clearing a drift of worn volumes from the cracked leather couch, he seated himself amidst a puff of dust from the ancient cushions.

The writer returned to the chair at his desk, swivelling to face his guest. His gnarled fingers gripped the chair arms; his black eyes, bright beneath a craggy brow, bored searchingly into the agent’s face. He was proud and wary as an aging wolf. Time had weathered his body and frosted his hair. No one had drawn his fangs.

The agent shifted against the deep cushions and erased the dusty film on his attache case. His palm left sweat smears on the vinyl. He cleared his throat, subconsciously striving to clear his thoughts from the writer’s spell. It would be easier if he could see him just as another client, as nothing more than a worn out old man. Just another tired old man, as he himself had become.

“I haven’t had any success with your manuscripts,” he said softly. “No luck at all”

There was pain in his eyes, but the writer nodded stiffly. “No, it was obvious from your manner that you hadn’t been successful this time.” He added: “This time either.”

“Your last seven novels,” the agent counted. “Nothing.”

“They were good books,” the writer murmured, like a parent recalling a lost child. “Not great books, for all my efforts, but they were good. Someone would have enjoyed reading them.”

His eyes fell upon the freshly typed pages stacked on his desk, the newest page just curling from his ancient mechanical typewriter. “This one will be better,” he stated.

“That’s not the problem,” his agent wearily told him. He had told him before. “No one’s saying that you haven’t written well—it’s just... Who’s going to print them?”

“There are still one or two publishers left, I believe.”

“Well, yes. But they don’t publish books like this anymore.”

“What do they publish then?” The writer’s voice was bitter. “Magazines, mostly—like these.” The agent hurriedly drew a pair of flimsy periodicals from his case.

The writer accepted them with a wry smile and thumbed through the pages of bright photographs. He snorted. “Pretty pictures, advertisements mostly, and a few paragraphs of captions. Like the newspapers. Not even real paper anymore.”

He gestured toward the shelves of age-yellowed spines. “Those are magazines. Saturday Review. Saturday Evening Post. Playboy. Kenyon Review. Weird Tales. Argosy. And the others that have passed. Do you remember them? They contained stories, essays, articles, criticism. A lot of garbage, and a lot of things worthwhile. They contained thoughts.”

“Still, there’s some writing in the few periodicals that we have left,” the agent pointed out. “You could do that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing? That’s not writing! Since the learned journals all went to computerized tapes, the only excuse for a periodical that’s left are these mindless picture brochures the ad companies publish. Damned if I’ll write copy for Madison Avenue! But what are you trying to get to?” he scowled.

The plastic pages of smiling young consumers fluttered back into the attache case. “I'm trying to say it’s impossible to sell your books. Any books. No one publishes them. No one reads this sort of thing anymore.”

“What do they read instead?”

The agent waved his hands in a vague gesture. “Well, there’s these magazines. One or two newspapers are still around.”

“They’re just transcripts of the television news,” the writer scoffed. “Pieced together by faceless technicians, slanted and censored to make it acceptable, and then gravely presented by some television father image. What about books?”

“Well, there are a few houses that still print the old classics—for school kids and people who still go to libraries. But all that’s been made into movies, put on television—available on cassettes to view whenever you like. Not much reason to read those—not when everybody’s already seen it on TV.”

The writer made a disgusted noise.

“Well, damn it, man!” the agent blurted in exasperation. “Marshall McLuhan spoke for your generation. You must have understood what was coming.”

“He didn’t speak for my generation,” the writer growled. “What about those last three novels that you did sell? Somebody must have read those.”

“Well, maybe not,” explained the other delicately “It was pure luck I found a publisher for them anyway. Two of them the publisher used just as a vehicle for Berryhill to illustrate—he has quite a following, you know. Collectors bought them for his artwork—but maybe some read the books. And the last one I sold... Well, that was to a publisher who wanted it for the nostalgia market. Maybe somebody read it while that fad lasted.”

Beneath his white mustache, the writer’s lips clamped tightly over words that would be ill-bred to use to a guest.

“Anyway, both publishers are defunct now,” his agent went on.

“Printing costs are just too high. For the price of half a dozen books, you can buy a TV. Books just cost too much, take too much time, for what you can get out of them.”

“So where does that leave me?”

There was genuine sympathy, if not understanding, in the agent’s voice. He had known his client for a long while. “There just doesn’t seem to be any way I can sell your manuscripts. I’m sorry—truly sorry. Feel free to try another agent, if you want. I honestly don’t know one to recommend, and I honestly doubt that he’ll have any better success.

“There just isn’t any market for books in today’s world. You’re like a minstrel when all the castles have fallen, or a silent film star after the talkies took over. You’ve got to change, that’s all.”

More than ever the writer seemed a wolf at bay. The last wolf. They were all gone too. Just the broken-spirited creatures born in cages to amuse the gawking, mindless world on the other side of the bars.

“But I do have some other prospects for you,” the agent announced, trying to muster a bright smile.

“Prospects?” The writer’s shaggy brows rose dubiously.

“Sure. Books may have outlived their day, but today’s writers still have plenty to keep them busy. I think a few of your old crowd may even still be around, writing for television and the movies.”

The writer’s face was dangerous.

“I’ve talked with the producers of two new shows—one of them even remembered that best-seller you had years back. They both said they’d take a close look at anything you have to show. Quite a break, considering you’ve never written a script before. Ought to be right in your line though—both shows are set back in your salad days.

“One’s a sitcom about a screwball gang of American soldiers in a POW camp back in the Indo-China wars. Dorina Vallecia plays the commandant’s daughter, and she’s a hot property right now. The other’s a sitcom about two hapless beatnik drug pushers back in the Love Generation days. This one looks like a sure hit for next season. It’s got Garry Simson as the blundering redneck chief of police. He’s a good audience draw, and they’ve got a new black girl, Livia Stone, to play the bomb-throwing activist girl friend.”

“No,” said the writer in a tight voice.

“Now wait a minute,” protested the agent. “There’s good money in this—especially if the show hits it off. And it wasn’t easy talking to these guys, let me tell you!”

“No. It isn’t the money.”

“Then what is it, for Christ’s sake! I’m telling you, there’s a bunch of old-time writers who’ve made it big in television.”

“No.”

“Well, there’s an outside chance I can get you on the script team for a new daytime Gothic soaper. You’ve always had a fondness for that creepy stuff.”

“Yes. I always have had. No.”

The agent grimaced unhappily. “I don’t know what I can do for you. I really don’t. I tell you there’s no market for your stuff, and you tell me you won’t write for the markets that are there.”

“Maybe something will come up.”

“I tell you, it’s hopeless.”

“Then there’s nothing more to say.”

The agent fidgeted with the fastenings of his attache case. “We’ve been friends a long time, you know. Damn it, why won’t you at least try a few scripts? I’m not wanting to pry, but the money must look good to you. I mean, its been a long dry spell since your last sale.”

“I won’t say I can’t use the money. But I’m a writer, not a hired flunky who hacks out formula scripts according to the latest idiot fads of tasteless media.”

“Well, at least the new social security guarantees an income for everyone these days.”

The writer’s lined face drew cold and white. “I’ve never bothered to apply for the government’s dole. Turning my personal life over to the computers for a share of another man’s wages seems to me a rather dismal bargain.”

“Oh.” The agent felt embarrassed. “Well, I suppose you could always sell some of these books—if things got tight, I mean. Some of these editions ought to be worth plenty to a rare book collector, wouldn’t they?”

“Good night,” said the writer.

Like a friend who has just discharged his deathbed obligations, the agent rose to his feet and shook hands with the writer. “You really ought to keep up with today’s trends, you know. Like television—watch some of the new shows, why don’t you? It’s not so bad. Maybe you’ll change your mind, and give me a call?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You even got a television in this house? Come to think, I don’t remember seeing a screen anywhere. Does that antique really work?” He pointed to an ancient fishbowl Stromberg-Carlson, crushed in a corner, its mahogany console stacked with crumbling comic books.

“Of course not,” said the writer, as he ushered him to the door. “That’s why I keep it here.”

The last writer sat alone in his study.

There was a knock at his door.

His stiff joints complained audibly as he left his desk, and the cocked revolver that lay there. He swung open the door.

Only shadows waited on his threshold.

The writer blinked his eyes, found them dry and burning from the hours he had spent at his manuscript. How many hours? He had lost all count of time. He passed a weary hand over his face and crossed the study to the bourbon decanter that stood, amber spirits, scintillant crystal, in its nook, as always.

He silently toasted a departed friend and drank. His gaze fell upon a familiar volume, and he pulled it down with affection. It was a tattered asbestos-cloth first of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

“Thank God you’re dead and gone,” he murmured. “Never knew how close you were—or how cruelly wrong your guess was. It wasn’t government tyranny that killed us. It was public indifference.”

He replaced the yellowed book. When he turned around, he was not alone.

A thousand phantoms drifted about his study. Spectral figures in a thousand costumes, faces that told a thousand stories. Through their swirling ranks the writer could see the crowded shelves of his books, his desk, substantial.

Or were they? When he looked more closely, the walls of his study seemed to recede. Perhaps instead he was the phantom, for through the ghostly walls of books, he began to see strange cities rising. Pre-Babylonian towers washed by a silent sea. Medieval castles lost within thick forests. Frontier forts standing guard beside unknown rivers. He recognized London, New York, Paris—but their images shimmered in a constant flux of change.

The writer watched in silence, his black eyes searching the faces of the throng that moved about him. Now and again he thought he glimpsed a face that he recognized; but he could not call their names. It was like meeting the brother of an old friend, for certain familiar lines to these faces suggested that he should know them. But he had never seen their faces before. No one had.

A heavy-set man in ragged outdoor clothing passed close to him. The writer thought his virile features familiar. “Don’t I know you?” he asked in wonder, and his voice was like speaking aloud from a dream.

“I doubt it,” replied the young man. “I’m Ethan Blackdaw. You would know me only if you had read Jack London’s Spell of the Snows”

“I’m not familiar with that book, though I know London well.”

“He discarded me after writing only a fragment.”

The writer called to another visitant, a powerful swordsman in antediluvian armor: “Surely I’ve met you.”

“I think not,” the barbarian answered. “I am Cromach. Robert E. Howard would have written my saga, had he not ended his life.” A lean-faced man in dirty fatigues nodded sourly. “Hemingway doomed me to limbo in the same way.”

“We are the lost books,” murmured a Berber girl, sternly beautiful in medieval war dress. “Some writer’s imagination gave us our souls, but none of us was ever given substance by his pen.” The writer stared in wonder.

A young girl in the dress of a flapper smiled at him wistfully.

“Jessica Tilman wanted to write about me. Instead she married and forgot her dream to write .”

“Ben Pruitt didn’t forget about me,” growled a tall black in torn fieldhand’s overalls. “But no publishers wanted his manuscript. The flophouse owner tossed me out with the rest of Pruitt’s belongings that night when he died.”

A slim girl in hoopskirts sighed. “Barry Sheffield meant to write a sonnet about me. He had four lines completed when a Yankee bullet took him at Shiloh.”

“I was Zane Grey’s first book,” drawled a rangy frontier marshal. “Or at least, the first one he tried to write.”

A bleary-eyed lawyer adjusted his stained vest and grumbled, “William Faulkner always meant to get started on my book.”

“Thomas Wolfe died before he started me,” commiserated a long-legged mountain girl.

The walls of his study had almost vanished. A thousand, ten thousand phantoms passed about him. Gothic heroines and brooding figures in dark cloaks. Cowboys, detectives, spacemen and superheroes in strange costumes. Soldiers of a thousand battles, statesmen and explorers. Fat-cheeked tradesmen and matrons in shapeless dresses. Roman emperors and Egyptian slaves. Warriors of an unhistoried past, children of a lost future. Sinister faces, kindly faces, comic and tragic, brave men and cowards, the strong and the weak. There seemed no end to their number.

He saw a fierce Nordic warrior—a companion to Beowulf, had a war-axe not ended his stave. There were countless phantoms of famous men of history—each subtly altered after the conception of a would-be biographer. He saw half-formed images of beauty, whose author had died heartbroken that his genius was insufficient to transform his vision into poetry. A Stone Age hunter stalked by, gripping his flint axe—as if seeking the mammoth that had stolen from mankind its first saga.

And then the writer saw faces that he recognized. They were from his own imagination. Phantoms from uncounted fragments and forgotten ideas. Characters from the unsold novels that yellowed in his files. And from the unfinished manuscript that lay beside his typewriter.

“Why are you here?” the writer demanded. “Did you think that I, too, was dead?”

The sad-eyed heroine of his present novel touched his arm. “You are the last writer. This new age of man has forgotten you. Come join us instead in this limbo of unrealized creation. Let this ugly world that has grown about you sink into the dull mire of its machine imagination. Come with us into our world of lost dreams.”

The writer gazed at the phantom myriads, at the spectral cities and forests and seas. He remembered the dismal reality of the faceless, plastic world he had grown old in. No one would mark his passing...

“No.” He shook his head and politely disengaged her hand. “No, I’m not quite ready for limbo. Not now. Not ever.”

And the book-lined walls of his study rose solid about him once more.

The last writer sits alone in his study.

His eyes glow bright, and his gnarled fingers labor tirelessly to transform the pictures of his imagination into the symbolism of the page. His muscles feel cold, his bones are ice, and sometimes he thinks he can see through his hands to the page beneath.

There will be a knock at his door.

Maybe it will be death.

Or a raven, knelling “Nevermore.”

Maybe it will be the last reader.