Loren held the sewing needle under hot running water. Twirling the eye end between his fingers, he hummed a song to himself—an old song written by a former governor of Louisiana. It was called “You Are My Sunshine” and Loren liked the words because he understood them.
He shut off the water with his left hand, and still humming and twirling the needle between his thumb and index finger, he walked into his room and sat on the edge of the bed, on the Daffy Duck king-size bedspread. Loren looked at the needle. “Simple enough,” he said.
His humming broke into words, “You make me happy, when skies are gray. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you…” Loren lifted the needle and jabbed it into his left palm.
Blood flowed out of his hand, filling the cup made by lifting his thumb and little finger. “Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Leaning forward, he dribbled blood into his typewriter keyboard, starting at the Q and moving slowly down and to the right to the ?, then up past the P and O and back across to Z.
Lana Sue came through the door carrying a handful of folded socks and humming a song of her own, one he didn’t recognize. She opened the bottom drawer of his chest and dropped in the socks.
“What the hell are you doing, Loren?”
“I’m starting a new novel.”
“By bleeding into the typewriter?”
“It’s symbolic.”
Talking over her shoulder as she walked into the bathroom, Lana Sue asked, “Of what?”
“I don’t have to explain my symbols.”
She came back with a wad of toilet paper which she placed in Loren’s hand. “Make a fist.” She clenched Loren’s hand around the toilet paper. “I suppose you want to cleanse the crap. Prove to the reader that you’re giving your all this time.”
“More of an offering to New York City.”
Lana Sue sat beside Loren on the bed and held his bleeding over the floor so none of the drip stained her bedspread. “Elevate this,” she said. “It’ll stop in a minute. What’s this one going to be about?”
“The book?”
“Yes, Loren. What’s the book about?”
“Children abandoning their parents, mostly.”
“I’ve read that one.”
“Also true love, God, and the difference between good and bad.”
“You know the difference between good and bad?”
“Sure. I’ve been listening to your Hank Williams and Patsy Cline albums.”
Lana Sue looked at the mess on the typewriter. “You’re compromising.”
“I haven’t even started. How can I be compromising?”
“You bled all over the old Royal portable. You’ll write the book on the electric Remington.”
“Blood would gum up the Remington. I wouldn’t get to write at all.”
“It doesn’t work if you bleed into the wrong machine, Loren.”
“It doesn’t?” Loren’s hand started to throb.
Lana Sue shook her head. “Nope, sorry.”
“Do we have any Band-Aids?”