Some of Tim's Stories (6 page)

Mike forgot to lock the front door before he started wiping tables.

It had been a busy night in the bar. He had pulled beers, poured shots, washed glasses, stopped three fights, listened to half a dozen sad stories. When the last customer left, surprisingly early for a busy night, it was not yet two.

He meant to turn off the flashing “Open” sign, too, but didn't. So when he heard the front door open behind him, he had only himself to blame.

“Sorry, man,” he said. “We're closed.”

He turned and saw the gun. Funny, how he concentrated on the guy's face, trying to remember details—knowing, sick, why he probably hadn't bothered to put on a mask. At the same time all he could see was the gun. It was a .38.

“The cash.”

“Sure,” Mike said. Ed had the cash in the back. He was wondering how to break that news when they both heard a noise from there.

Mike couldn't remember if he had made a move or not. The next thing he knew he was flat on his back. He felt like someone had slammed him in the chest with a tire iron. He had never been shot before but somehow didn't picture it feeling like this.

There was a scramble at the door—Ed jumping over him to chase the guy into the parking lot. Mike heard the boom of the bar's shotgun. He hadn't heard the first shot. It was like his mind skipped right over it.

Mike looked around. The bar looked different from this angle. Gum and God-knows-what stuck under the tables. Stains on the ceiling tiles.

For some reason he had it in his brain that he could ask for do-overs, go back fifteen minutes, get it right this time. It was starting to hurt now.

“Mike!” Ed ran back in, knelt beside him. Ed grabbed a bar towel off the table, yanked Mike's shirt open, pressed the towel against his chest. That hurt too, but Mike didn't say anything except, “You get him?”

“Yes. Stay down,” Ed ordered. Mike was used to taking orders from the older man; he wasn't going to argue now. Then Ed jumped up, and Mike almost grabbed at him.

“Medics and cops,” he heard Ed bark into the phone. He gave the bar address slowly, with a couple of simple directions and, “Medics and cops. You got that?”

Ed was beside him again, clasping his hand in a grip. It felt strong and warm.

“That was from 'Nam, wasn't it?”

“What?”

“Saying ‘medics' instead of ‘ambulance.'”

“I guess so,” Ed answered.

Mike said, “My dad was in 'Nam.”

“I know.”

Mike's fingers were rubbing at the floor, like they were trying to get a grip on it, and it felt too sticky.

“The floor's wet,” Mike said. “That's not beer, is it?” “You're a pretty good drinker, kid, but you're not going to bleed beer.”

“Ouch,” Mike said. It hurt to laugh. He paused.

“He never told me anything about it. 'Nam I mean. He died when I was ten. Maybe he was just waiting till I got older.”

“It's nothing you want your kids to know about.”

After a minute, Mike said, “I don't see any white light. No tunnel.”

“Just as long as you don't see any yawning red pit with imps you'll be fine.”

“Man, if I had known it would make you be funny, I would have got shot a long time ago.”

Mike was out of breath when he finished that sentence. Now it really hurt to breathe. It felt like there was an elephant standing on his chest.

“Hang in there, Michael.”

“Thought my name was Dumbass Kid.”

“Sometimes you act like it's your job description.”

“My dad called me Michael.”

“I know.”

Mike was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “You think that bozo's crawling around the parking lot like a half-squashed bug?”

“We can hope. You want me to go check?”

“No! … no.” Mike shifted around, trying to escape the pain. “Shit! Fuck this, man! It hurts.”

“I know,” Ed said.

God, Mike thought. God … He remembered the last
time he had been in a church. He must have been nine. In the middle of whatever the preacher was saying, Mike's dad got up, took Mike by the hand, and left the church.

He was going to write that story sometime, he'd thought, the way his dad had smoked one cigarette after another, pacing, while they waited for church to be over, for Mom to come out. How upset he had been.

“That's not God,” Mike's dad said finally. “What that preacher was saying. God is not fire insurance. God would like to help people, Michael. It upsets Him to see how bad we screw ourselves up. People make their own hell. God doesn't send them there.”

“Okay,” Mike had answered, ashamed to admit he hadn't really been paying attention, just waiting for church to be over, thinking about getting home, playing ball.

His parents had had a fight about it, one of their rare ones, but his dad never went back to that church. And wouldn't let Mike go either.

He meant to write that story, except he couldn't think of an end. But now it helped, picturing God the way his dad had told him.

“He'd been in a war, maybe he found out something…” Mike said aloud. “You find out things in a war, don't you?”

“Yes.”

Mike tried to sit up, but Ed gently shoved him back down. They could hear a siren now, in the distance.

“Damn,” Mike said, “this is going to be one mother of a hospital bill.”

“Work-related. You're covered.”

Mike couldn't see Ed too well now, his vision was blurry. But he heard him ask, “Anything else you're scared of?”

“Hell, yeah,” Mike gasped. “Lots of stuff.”

He was terrified, things to be scared of lining up in his mind, waiting their turn…

“I'll tell you something I learned. Pick one.”

“What?”

Ed said, “Pick one thing to be scared of. But one thing you can handle if you concentrate.”

Mike thought. The siren was closer now.

“I'm scared I'm going to yell, make some kind of noise when they come to move me. I don't want to.”

“All right,” Ed said. “You concentrate on that.”

Conducted by Teresa Miller

“It was cliché, he knew. But he meant it classic.”—Tim

I have visited with Susie Hinton in her home before, but this time is different. Susie is going on record about her career as one of America's most popular writers. It is an especially warm day, and before we formalize our conversation, we take a moment to admire the caladiums lining her front walk, some red and some white, their deep green veins accentuating the contrast. Inside, Susie's fifteen-year-old Australian shepherd, Aleasha, is asleep on the kitchen floor and doesn't budge as we make our way to the refrigerator. I'd noticed once before that Susie has the same Franciscan apple dishes my grandmother had left to me, and this afternoon she explains that they had belonged to her mother. The dishes, like her early stories, place us in the same generation, and
I note that for such an accomplished person, she seems very relaxed in ordinary circumstances. She offers me a glass of wine, a Beringer chardonnay, and we settle in her den to talk. The focal point of the room is an old Underwood typewriter mounted on a roll-top desk
.

Even though
The Outsiders
is true to the 1960s, when teenagers were known as “Socs” and “greasers,” what is it about the book that makes it timeless
?

If you've got ten kids in a class, they're going to divide into the in group and the out group. I get so many letters from kids saying, “We don't call them ‘Socs' and ‘greasers'; we call them ‘jocks' and ‘punks'; we call them ‘preps' and ‘skaters.'” The names change, the uniforms change, but the groups go on forever, and kids instantly recognize that aspect of the book. Another thing is the emotional intensity. I wrote it when I was sixteen. When I read it as an adult, the emotions seem a little over the top, so I couldn't have written that book later. I wrote it at the right time in my life, because that was exactly what I was feeling, and that's exactly what the kids who read it today are feeling, too.

Most scholars agree that
The Outsiders
created a whole new publishing genre, young adult literature. Was there anything missing from your own life that motivated you to write beyond traditional frameworks
?

One of the reasons why I wrote
The Outsiders
was that nothing realistic was being written for teenagers. If you were through with the animal books and you weren't ready for an adult book, there was nothing to read except
Mary Jane Goes to the Prom
and
Tommy Hits a Home Run
. I couldn't find anything that dealt with teenage life as I was seeing it, so in one sense I wrote it just to have something to read.

What sort of books did you read
?

I was a very eclectic reader. I loved Shirley Jackson's
The Haunting of Hill House
. Naturally you can assume from reading
The Outsiders
that I had read
Gone with the Wind
. Actually when I re-read
The Outsiders
, I'm amazed by how literate Ponyboy is. He mentions reading
Great Expectations
.

Your father was dying while you worked on the book. Do you think that on some level you were trying to process your grief through the story you created
?

Oh, absolutely. At the time I didn't make the connection. Now it's so obvious, looking back, that I was writing it to escape my own reality. There are a couple of deaths in
The Outsiders
, too, so I was dealing with death in my own way, but I write so much from the subconscious that it takes me years to figure out what a book's about.

Clearly you had an extraordinary gift as a writer, even at an early age. In what ways were you a typical teenager
?

I wasn't really typical of the female culture at that time, because all girls got to do was rat their hair and outline their eyes in black. I didn't want a boyfriend with a hot car; I wanted my own car. I think about the actors who are in my movies. Off camera, they were just these goofy, normal prank-playing teenagers, but when the camera was on they were serious artists. And in a lot of ways I identified with them. When I got behind my typewriter, I was serious. Not that I took myself seriously; I took my writing seriously.

You told me a story about getting your first typewriter
.

Oh! My first typewriter. I taught myself to type on my dad's old Underwood, and I still have it. I must have had fingers of steel to type on that thing. I'd been writing for a long time at that point; I started in grade school. When I was in the ninth grade I had my cocker spaniel bred, sold her puppies, and bought my first Underwood. It wasn't electric, but it was still easier to use than my dad's Underwood.

How did you fit writing into your overall life as a high school student
?

Writing actually was my life as a high school student. I wasn't the kind of kid who had to be hanging out with people all the time. I had a boyfriend; we went out once a week. But I was very serious. I was not unhappy being alone. I'm still not unhappy being alone. I'm not scared of hearing a thought go through my brain—unlike people with cell phones glued to their ears. I have a great imagination, and I love using it.

Did you write regularly or just when ideas or stories came to you
?

I wrote regularly, and I read a lot of cowboy stories, a lot of horse stories. I had this mythical cowboy town called Clearwater County. I even made up a newspaper for Clearwater. So I'd done a couple of other books by the time I wrote
The Outsiders
. The year I started
The Outsiders
I was absolutely immersed in it. I took it to school, wrote it on the dinner table. The first draft was about forty pages, single-spaced, but I kept writing more flashbacks, adding more detail.

Critics have noted how beautifully you structured the book
.
How important do you think the circular ending is to the overall story? We begin and end with Ponyboy
.

I love that ending, and I wish I could say I originated it, but actually in the seventh or eighth grade, during my sci-fi period, I read a short story that did that same thing. I'm sure that's what gave me the idea.

Did your family members realize how dedicated you were to your writing
?

No it was just like, “Oh, gosh, she's going to outgrow this sooner or later.” My mother was upset I wasn't watching television with the rest of the family.

What about your friends
?

My close friends knew that I wrote, but I was always kind of a loner. I was eccentric. I had friends in different groups, but I couldn't even conform to the nonconformists.

Was it hard to get a publisher to take you and your work seriously because you were so young
?

Actually not. I've always had strange coincidences happening in my life. A friend of mine's mother read
The Outsiders
, sent it to an acquaintance of hers who was a professional writer, and got the name and address of her agent. The agent, Marilyn Marlow at Curtis Brown, Limited, in New York, called to say, “I think you've caught a certain spirit here, and I'm going to see what I can do with it.” She sold the book to Viking Press, the second publisher that saw it. I got my contract on graduation day that spring and stayed with Marilyn as my agent for thirty years—until her death.

Is it true you almost got an F in your high school creative writing class
?

The year I was writing
The Outsiders
I made a D in creative writing. It's probably because I was so focused on the book that I wasn't doing my work. Also I found out that publishers don't count off for spelling.

Publishing contracts always trump grades. How did your family respond to the news that you had sold
The Outsiders?

My mother never read
The Outsiders
until after it was published. At first she was shocked senseless. She was running around asking, “What are the neighbors going to think? What is the family going to think?” Then, when it started getting good reviews and making some money, she began saying, “Wasn't that a nice little book that Susie wrote?” My sister was actually the person who sent the book off to Marilyn, because in idle conversation one day with my mother, I said, “If I sell my book, can I get a car?” My mother replied, “Oh, yeah, you sell a book, you can get a car. Right.” My sister overheard and really pushed me to get the book bundled up and in the mail. She walked around for years afterwards, going, “I sent the book off, I sent the book off,” and I said, “Yeah, and you put the first dent in the car, too.”

Did you have any notion at that point that this book would take off like it did
?

No, I didn't. I thought kids would like it, but I never dreamed it would have the impact that it's had. I mean, it's sold over fourteen million copies. It's in use in most middle schools and high schools in America, and it's been translated into twenty-seven languages. I just got a fan letter from a kid in Greece. And older people, who read the book when they were young, now write to say, “You literally changed my life, the way I think about things.” I feel scared and humbled, because I don't think of myself as somebody who can change lives or should be changing lives. I tell them it's the message, not the messenger. I feel different about
The Outsiders
than I do my other books.
The Outsiders
was meant to be written, and I got chosen to write it.

You'd grown up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and suddenly you were on a national stage. Were you anxious at all when you planned your first trip to New York
?

I'd never been out of Tulsa, except to go to Texas to visit my grandparents, so I was excited about the trip. My mother was wringing her hands, saying, “An eighteen-year-old cannot go to New York City alone.” So she sent my fifteen-year-old sister to take care of me. I had a great time, but
The Outsiders
was not an overnight bestseller. My first royalty check was for twelve bucks. Even in those days twelve bucks didn't get you more than three tanks of gas, so I went on to college. I ran into my statistics teacher a few years ago, and she said she hoped I knew she had cut me a lot of slack. I said, “I know you did, and bless you!” I did everything but kneel at her feet. I also had some professors who graded me very fairly.

Were you still writing
?

I developed a really bad case of writer's block, which lasted for over four years. For the first time, I was aware of the audience. When I was writing
The Outsiders
, it was for me; I wasn't thinking about getting published. I still envy those days. I've never written anything with the idea, “Oh kids will like this,” but in the back of my head now I know that somebody's going to review me. Not all reviews of
The Outsiders
were favorable. I remember
Kirkus
absolutely hated the book and said, “You can believe a kid wrote it, but kids are never going to believe a thing it says.” Well.

Famous last words
.

Yeah, famous last words. Finally my boyfriend, David, who is now my husband, got annoyed with me for being so gloomy. I'd been writing all my life and couldn't use the typewriter to type a letter. He told me that if I didn't write two pages a day, he wouldn't take me out in the evening. That was the great motivation for my second novel. I wanted to go out, so I'd write the two pages. I was very careful about each sentence. I was reading a lot of really good writers in college, and I'd magnified everything that was wrong with
The Outsiders
. I told myself I was going to do the new book right. The book, which turned out to be
That Was Then, This Is Now
, required very little rewriting. Technically I think it's a better book than
The Outsiders
, but it doesn't have its emotional impact.

Your given name is Susan Eloise. How did you become
S. E.?

My publishers asked me if they could just use my initials because of the subject matter. They thought if reviewers picked up
The Outsiders
and saw that a girl had written it, they would read it with bias. The initials sounded great to me. I liked having a public name and a private name. At first, reviewers would mention that a young man had written the book, but after a while I wasn't a secret. I was on television; I was on radio.

Earlier you talked about your focus on male characters in the book. I wonder if you might elaborate on that a little bit more. Why exclusively male characters
?

I had two close cousins who were like brothers to me, and I ran around with them and their friends. I liked to play football. I liked to hunt ducks. I liked to go fishing. I just thought if I wrote that girls were doing these things, nobody would believe it. It's easier for me to write from a male point of view. I know I'm convincing because I get letters from guys to this day saying, “Mr. Hinton, I like your books.” The only book I've written from a female point of view is
The Puppy Sister
, an elementary-age book told from the viewpoint of a female Australian shepherd puppy. I switched gender and species. Other than that, I usually stay with the male characters.