Wonders Never Cease (Part Two of the Anderson saga)

Preface

When I sat down to write my first novel, I had no way of knowing people would read it. My aspirations were meager, my expectations sparse. I remember a bookstore owner in southern Arkansas by the name of Amanda Petrie calling me to see if I would come to a book signing. I hesitated, of course. What would I do if no one showed up? Offer to vacuum carpets? Scrub the restrooms, man the till? The night before the signing Amanda informed me she had ordered forty-four copies and this before I even knew the publisher had printed that many.

        I shuddered.

        Expectations aren’t so great when they are someone else’s.

I thought to myself, “Run for the hills. It’s safer.” But the very next day people came by the carload, two of them entire home-school families with seven children each—on assignment, I suppose.

They asked me questions about what it’s like to be an author, where I get my ideas, what I do with all the money and the spare time. I told them that writing is like having a good sneeze. You feel better when you’re finished. They wrote my every word on slips of paper, so I gave them more. I told them that all writers are optimists, for who else would sit down with this much blank paper and only their minds to fill it? I said, “I write much because I am paid little,” and they liked that. They liked contemplating my poverty. I told them that sometimes the garbage can is a writer’s best friend; that writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can’t see very far, but you follow the lights.

            I enjoyed the attention at first. It was intoxicating. Like cheap perfume. People began tapping my shoulder in restaurants and nervously introducing themselves. “Hi, I read your book,” they’d stammer. “I can’t believe it’s you. That book changed my life.” What do you say to that? Thanks? It was no problem? My pleasure? They began stopping me on sidewalks to tell me the single most tragic event of their lives. “Hi, I’m Robert, and I just lost my job.” “I’m Sarah and I’m all alone now.” I felt like a psychologist, listening to problems night and day without compensation.

But there was compensation.

Plenty of it.

The publisher began sending me large checks. At first I thought they were fake, like those ones from Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes. I stood in line at the bank, trying to act nonchalant, then placed the first one on the counter and let out a low cough. It was for $17,143 and some odd cents. The bank cleared it. I waited two weeks before spending a penny, knowing I might be caught and jailed, then I went out and bought a used Chrysler, a step up for me. I had over fifteen thousand dollars left. What ever would I do with it?

People found my phone number and called it.

I got an unlisted number.

People found my address and began driving long distances to talk with me. They knocked on my door and stood on the steps and told me of their childhoods. Of their failures, their sins—deep secrets they had told no one else. I advised them to share these intimate details with their minister. “He’s tired of me,” they said.

Fellow writers asked me to review their manuscripts and offer advice, or better yet, write a note of recommendation to a publisher of my choosing. I wrote them back: “This is great stuff, I’m sorry I have no time to read it.” They printed the first part of my sentence on the covers of their books.

I stood in line with more checks and they got bigger. I won’t tell you how big. It’s embarrassing. Friends that used to like me began to resent me. They saw me driving an even newer Chrysler and they wanted to pop the tires and shoot out the headlights.

One day a man in a dark suit showed up. It was a slow day, so I invited him in to my living room expecting to hear his problems. Instead he showed me his IRS card and said he was here to find out about my financial dealings, but that he had read my book and would I sign a first edition copy before we talked about my taxes?

He glanced through a file with my name on it and shook his head. He said, “We’ve got a problem Sir, a real big problem.”

I squinted hard and asked, “What do you mean? I’m clean. I’ve paid my taxes. Talk to my accountant.”

He seemed unconvinced. “I’ll have to report this,” he said, “unless…well…unless of course, you show me a few chapters of your new book.”

I couldn’t believe it.

I told him about writer’s block. About my study that was littered with broken ideas and false starts. I told him that every time I sit at the keyboard my fingertips go numb and my heart palpitates and I feel as if I’m suffering a stroke. I said that writing books is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of feeding alligators. I told him that I have suffered all my life from Attention Deficit Disorder and that writing a novel for a person with ADD is like trying to drive a golf cart down the interstate without being distracted by honking horns. I told him how my first book was written out of love, out of instinct, out of passion for the subject, but now all that was inciting me to literary labor was the profit, the bottom line, the almighty dollar. I told him that of all the enemies of great literature, success is the most menacing.

He said, “Why don’t you tell the publisher you’ll do it for free?”

I asked him to leave. I said, “Out!” I said, “go ahead and slam the door.”

He said, “You think about it.”

And then he was gone.

I received a notice the next Thursday that I had been audited by the IRS and that I owed over seventy-two thousand dollars, which just happened to be the exact amount of everything I owned. I wrote out a check the same day and as I posted it, a tiresome burden lifted from my body. I was free. Unencumbered. Almost weightless.

I sat down that afternoon and began to write. My wife brought dinner to my study, roast chicken with spinach salad and Italian dressing. I didn’t even notice. She said, “Honey, come to bed, I’d like to tell you something.” I didn’t even hear. I wrote through supper, through bedtime and long into the night. By morning I had the first four chapters of what you are about to read. By mid-afternoon I didn’t even need coffee to keep me awake. I was invigorated by the story. My wife sat beside me watching me work.

“Terry Anderson,” she said, “you’re not going to tell them what really happened, are you?”

I said I was.

She frowned and then she smiled and then she laughed out loud.

“You wouldn’t,” she said.

“Oh yes I would,” I countered.

“But they won’t believe you.”

“That’s okay. I’ll tell them it’s a novel. You can get away with things when it’s a novel.”

“Will you tell them about me?” She snuggled a little closer.

“Oh yes I will. If not in this book, maybe the next.”

“You’ll tell them everything?”

“Everything,” I said.

And I did.

[Introduction] [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2]