I didn’t know who Faulkner was but if I had I would’ve wanted to knock him on his ass. I wanted a novel that would be the beginning and the end of all novels. I wanted a novel that Humphrey Bogart might star in. I wanted a novel that I could sell to the movies. I wanted to write a novel that would make a million bucks and take us out of that fleabag hotel. I wanted a novel that would knock everyone sideways. I was twelve years old and I’d seen how thick my old man’s novel was and I wanted one that thick and that important and that magical. To write a novel so bad that some nights I’d break out in a very cold sweat. I remember my old man fingering a stiff shot of whiskey when he said, if you have a gun like that and you have the book to end all books then you’ve done it, you’re at the top of the game. He said he’d seen pictures of it in some big time magazine, maybe Life, and he wanted one, too. Especially that Thompson that Hemingway used to carry on board the Pilar when he went deep sea fishing. He was jealous of Hemingway for all the guns he owned. Once he told me he envied Hemingway but it wasn’t for his books. For as long as I’d known him he wanted it all. He was tossing it in the air with one hand and catching it with the other when he said, I wish I had the gun this belongs to. My old man said they left a beaten up cardboard suitcase behind with a lot of waste paper inside and I asked if there was maybe a wanted poster mixed in with the junk and he said no but he did find a live 38 round that he gave me. Just skipped town without paying the room rent. Not longĪfter that, Keys and his old man disappeared. Then Keys would add, this belongs to my old man and if he knew I was showing it off like this he’d kick my ass. I wanted to hold it in my hand and run my fingers across Dillinger’s face for luck. He used to say you can look at it but you can’t touch it and all I really wanted to do was touch it, again and again. Every time I went over to his house I’d make him get it out. Maybe if I upped the ante to two switchblades that might do it. Nights I’d go to bed trying to figure ways to get it away from him. The second he showed it to me I wanted it, I wanted it so bad that I broke out in a sweat just thinking about it.
Everything I could think of to get a wanted poster of John Dillinger off a kid called Keys Gunther but he wouldn’t budge.