Only Milo: the story begins
Here’s a literary first for the Wordstock blog. During the coming weeks leading up to the Festival, we are serializing Part One of Only Milo, Barry Smith’s comically macabre tale about a writer who plagiarizes himself to become the ghostwriting darling of the publishing world. Success at last! But as he takes the literary world by storm, Milo’s path for personal recognition takes on an ever-growing body count…
The winner of the 2010 IPPY Gold Medal for Popular Fiction, we’re sure you will enjoy the twists and turns of this darkly funny spoof of the publishing business, brought to you by Inkwater Press (© 2009).
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1
Maybe it was the SPAM Reuben sandwich.
I had noticed the recipe on the back of a can of SPAM
several months earlier, which seemed to legitimize
serving the SPAM Reuben to Margaret. I had tried it
several times in the intervening months and thought
I had determined the proper proportions of SPAM,
sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Russian dressing. The
marble rye I’d found at the deli across town was
pleasing to the eye, and it was a lunch date – I
would never have served it for dinner.
If we ate quickly we could catch the “early bird”
matinee at the Rialto. $3 a ticket.
Maybe it was the TV tables.
They were not the flimsy, cheap aluminum type my
family had when I was young. They were purchased soon
after I moved into this apartment, and they still
looked new. They were wooden and nicely stained in a
reddish-brown color that sort of matched the wood in
my stereo speakers.
I used real plates, not the plastic ones I had in
the cupboard. And how do you beat a kosher dill
pickle with your SPAM Reuben sandwich? I served the
longest, plumpest pickles left in the jar.
Maybe it was the drapes.
Actually, I didn’t have any drapes.
In any case, it was our last date. I have forgotten
what movie was playing at the Rialto.
Maybe it was the movie.
Margaret was a reach. She ran her own business. She
was attractive. She was fifteen years younger than
me.
I had just turned sixty-two and was finally eligible
for Social Security. It was the largest monthly check
I’d received in a number of years. It allowed me to
give up my job delivering the local Thrifty Nickel
want ads throughout the south side of Brooklyn on
Wednesday afternoons. I had begun writing another
novel.
Maybe it was the novel.
I let Margaret read a few pages, and even though it
was a rough first draft, she seemed impressed. She
owned a small independent press, and while she did
not ask for more pages, she also was not dismissive.
She was especially impressed with the intermittent
use of Spanish in my writing. I told her I had lived
in southern New Mexico for a number of years, and
with almost everyone speaking Spanish to some extent,
it was easy to learn and become proficient. You could
spend a couple of hours in any grocery store and
learn the nuances of the language spoken in nearly
every region of Mexico. My best friend in New Mexico
taught Spanish at the local community college,
and we had played basketball together every Friday
afternoon for nearly twenty years. His diction was
impeccable.
She hired me.
She had “discovered” a brilliant young Mexican
writer who had not yet been translated. Margaret
thought she’d struck gold. As with most independent
presses, hers was constantly struggling to remain
afloat. One big hit would make all the difference, or
so she thought.
Margaret would be my boss instead of my date.
I was hired to translate José Calderon’s first novel.
2
Unfortunately, it wasn’t very good.
Of course, I had no formal training in Spanish and
couldn’t make out more than fifty or sixty percent
of the words, but José’s first novel didn’t pack much
of a punch. It apparently involved a serial killer
in a rural area near Mexico City. He was some type
of traveling salesman (too cliché) and the hero, a
small town cop who I am certain José identified with
in some way, was far too milquetoast.
Margaret also told me more about the book’s
background. It was published by a small, obscure
press in Mexico City owned by a very good friend of
hers. Less than a thousand copies were distributed,
but José’s second novel had already been accepted
for publication. Before any copies of the second
book were printed, her friend, facing bankruptcy,
committed suicide. Having no close family, he
bequeathed his meager publishing assets to Margaret,
including both of José’s novels. Now I knew why his
books meant so much to her.
I could have simply walked away.
I could have told Margaret I didn’t really have the
skills to translate.
I could have told her that even with my limited
Spanish I could tell the book really didn’t work.
I could have subcontracted the work to my friend in
New Mexico – he had dabbled in fiction and would have
been a perfect candidate for translation.
I could have spent the summer completing my own
novel – it would be my thirteenth; the other twelve
manuscripts were stacked one on top of the other in
my apartment’s only closet.
But I was eating SPAM and living on Social Security.
With my checkered employment history over the last
forty years, each check was barely enough to get me
to the end of the month.
I translated José’s novel.
3
I moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, in the early
eighties.
I held a steady job for nearly twenty years, if you
call janitorial work at a community college a job. I
worked the early shift, from 6 a.m. until 2:30 p.m.,
giving me the flexibility to play basketball on Friday
afternoons and to write fiction most every night.
Soon after I arrived in southern New Mexico, a
scandal erupted that would not become a national
headline for another fifteen years, when a similar
story broke in Boston. Young adult males came
forward in droves, accusing Catholic priests of
sexual molestation years earlier when they were
children. The scandal spread through New Mexico and
Arizona and eventually several dioceses in the area
neared the point of bankruptcy after making payments
of millions of dollars to the damaged and scarred-for-
life victims.
A co-worker, a young man in his mid-twenties, was
one of the first to come forward. He was mentally
challenged, to say the least, and was suffering from
depression and anxiety. The story of the trauma
inflicted upon him by his Catholic priest left a deep
and lasting impression on me. It was impossible not
to write about the subject.
The first novel I wrote in New Mexico involved a
priest who had sexually molested a significant
number of boys over the years. Eventually, as young
men began coming forward accusing the priest of
molestation, he became a serial killer, murdering
the men who had been his victims of abuse as boys.
In his twisted mind, he was saving these young men
from suffering for the rest of their lives from the
trauma he had inflicted upon them. A local FBI agent,
who himself had been abused by a Catholic priest as
a child, was the hero of the novel, tracking down
the priest after he killed seven men.
Of course, it was obvious the novel I wrote more
than twenty years earlier, which was hiding
somewhere in the closet in my Brooklyn apartment,
was eerily similar to José Calderon’s first novel.
And quite frankly, it was much better than his work.
A serial-killing priest murdering those individuals
he had sexually molested years earlier was a much
stronger story line than a serial-killing travelling
salesman. The fact that the young FBI agent had also
been sexually abused by a priest made it even more
compelling.
I decided José’s “translation” would simply be my
novel set in a rural area near Mexico City.
What did I have to lose?
……………………………………………
To be continued … next week!
