My name is Craig Doyle and I’m writing a ground-breaking novel.
Weekday mornings my alarm buzzes at 5am sharp, chirruping with the song of a thousand meadow katydids. I never oversleep; I need to be prompt if I want the opportunity to work on my novel. Those katydids sing to me, ‘today is the day, Craig’. They sing, ‘don’t be late, Craig’.
And so I’m up – I brew a single serving of coffee and I make a bowl of oatmeal with cream and raisins, just like every morning. I select a suit that’s probably taupe, or maybe sandalwood, and if I’m feeling confident it may even have pinstriping.
Today feels like a pinstriping kind of day.
It’s a lucky day – I can feel it – so I pull on my favorite socks just for good measure. They’re pineapple argyle with green accents, and little, stitched ants marching along the pattern lines. They were a stocking stuffer from Madison many Christmases ago, and they have a little bit of magic to them. I feel bolder when I wear them.
I’m out the door 4.5 minutes earlier than normal and this is another lucky sign. On my walk I find 2 pennies, 1 quarter, and brand-new silver pen, which looks very similar to one I lost last week.
Finding lost items – very lucky indeed.
My pace slows when I turn the corner from Doris Avenue onto Canary Street, approaching the conclusion of my morning walk; The Lansig County Press. The LCP is a yawning, brick building; old, but in good repair. It looks respectable, even inviting.
But this is ‘street-side’, the half of the building reserved for reporters, journalists, and publications experts. I work ‘lot-side’, around back, with the printing presses. The building is quiet now and that’s the way I like it most. I head around back towards the parking lot, thinking about the reason I’m here before everyone else – my novel. Through the back entrance, huffing up the stairs to the third floor, I arrive at the door sporting a little plaque with my name on it, printed in Times New Roman.
Craig Doyle Printing Press Shift Manager
I take a customary breather here, setting my briefcase down and catching my breath. Once my pulse is manageable I fumble the lock open, switch on the light, and start the morning rounds.
The ‘morning rounds’ are a daily routine of chores and tasks I complete when I first arrive, and they consist of (in this order):
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Check on the various terrariums situated around the room – Barbara the African millipede; Jose, Manuel, and Riccardo, hissing cockroaches from South America; the alluring Delilah, hymanopus corantus; and two cobalt blue tarantulas called Itchy and Scratchy. Armed with a notebook of record-keeping, I jot down the temperature, humidity, and state of each enclosure.
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Feed, if applicable; it was not a feeding day for the predator arthropods, but Barbara and the triplets would appreciate some leftover lettuce.
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Move Delilah to the window terrarium. She likes the morning sunlight there better.
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Check on The Farm.
The center of the office hosted the real pièce de résistance, a Nebula 360 glass formicarium the size of a dinner table, complete with a 4-sided view of my 3,000 strong ant colony. It had all the features; water tower, gravity well, removable glass panes…
My favorite feature of the Farm is the above-ground section, still encased in glass but painted with tiny models from life. There’s a barn complete with plastic farm animals and a toy tractor on one side. A long, curving dirt path from the farm leads to a crude city, complete with a 3D printed model of LCP made as a cake topper during some company celebration. Most of the buildings and little people are made of cardboard and paper, because the ants prefer that.
Check on the Farm is the last item on the list because I like to sit for a while and watch it. Looking at it makes me happy. Some of the cardboard constructions were made by Madison years ago, when it was still cool to have hobbies with Dad and we assembled our first formicarium together. I smile thinking about that.
I also like how all the people in the city go about their lives, oblivious to the massive ant colony around and beneath them. It’s like a secret world no one wants to see. When people come into my office, the Farm makes them uncomfortable. I like this, too, a little bit.
But I don’t meditate long because I have important things to do. It’s finally time, the part of the day I anticipate the most, that glorious moment when I sit at my desk. I place my coffee at my left, my scratchpad at my right, and I relish the click and hum of the computer powering on. Still almost two hours before the shift starts, two hours before staff arrive, two hours with just me and my ground-breaking novel.
And I stare.
Something eerie and strange happens during this time. I stare at the document where these words are typed:
‘My name is Craig Doyle and I’m writing a ground-breaking novel.’
Then I tap my pen rhythmically on the desk. I scribble some notes – can’t forget that meeting after lunch about the school board editorial – and I sip coffee. And eerily and strangely, as if some fae were playing mischief, the clock chimes 9am. I jump at the unexpected sound, thinking the clock must be wrong, until I hear the doors below open and admit dozens of employees clocking in for the day. The shouting starts, the presses whir into life, and the clock just tick-tick-ticks.
Tick-tick-tick.
—--
When people ask me what I’m working on – and they frequently don’t – I usually reply that it’s a ground-breaking novel about insects. And if they inquire further – and they almost never do – I tell them it’s a nonfiction novel, because insects teach people about life.
The truth is that I don’t know what my novel is about, because I haven’t written it yet. But they always say to ‘write what you know’, and insects are what I know. I think it’s a safe assumption that it will be about insects, then.
Did you know the number of different insect species is believed to be between six and ten million, but we’ve only discovered one million?
I once wrote a short story about a click beetle for a column in the Tri-County Registar, something I was very proud of at the time. This beetle didn’t know he was a beetle, but he occasionally had the sense of being infinitesimally small and insignificant, which would occur to him at random times, and then pass. He lived in a stretch of woodland by a highway, and he would often ponder the lights that streaked by at unfathomable speeds, white and then red. The click beetle was so small that he couldn’t perceive the car at all, only the lights cutting through the night. He pondered these things but there were no answers; so one night, he violates what is natural and travels into the road – the click beetle promptly dies in the grille of a vehicle, euphoric. I wrote this but I don’t know exactly what it means, and I love that.
I showed this story to Madison after it was published, and she was somewhat alarmed and concerned. She said she didn’t know I wrote that kind of thing. I told her, neither did I. I asked her if she thought I could one day write a novel. She paused for a long time, and then said,
“I dunno, dad. This style is peculiar; you use too many periods. Your sentences are too short. It’s like staccato, there’s no melody.”
I laughed and told her maybe my brain was staccato.
—--
Here is what a typical work day in the life of Craig Doyle, Printing Press Shift Manager, looks like:
First, I answer no less than 16 emails complaining about the spelling of the Tri-Couny Registar, our main newspaper publication. I politely explain that while I understand their frustrations, this spelling was an intentional decision by the publications board because they couldn’t decide between Tri-County Registrar and Tri-County Star. I answer 7 calls about this same issue and assure the complainants that, yes, I would petition to have it changed. I make the long walk to Street-side to file the complaints in the suggestions box. No one reads them, but I feel the nagging sense of an incomplete task if I don’t file them properly, so I always do.
Back up in my office by 11am, I notice through the interior window that the sports printer for the Registar is not moving. I sweat a little; going down to the manufacturing floor always gives me the clammies, especially when I have to deal with…. Carla.
Carla is the meanest pillbug I’ve ever met. But dealing with Carla is not as scary as facing Dr. Kadner, so reluctantly I shuffle off back down the stairs to the ground floor. I arrive to find Carla on top of the press with a wrench and I feel my forehead break out into a sweat that has nothing to do with going up and down three flights of stairs.
“H-hey, Carla! Y-y-you can’t be up there!”
She lifts her head and stares down at me with her beady little eyes. She shouts over the din of the other presses, “Hey, bossman! Now don’t you worry your pretty little mustache – I got this covered, ain’t no big deal!”
Several other employees are watching now, waiting to see what happens next.
Okay, Craig, you can do this. She’s just a pillbug. No one’s afraid of a pillbug.
“Uhhh, yes, C-Carla, I’m sure you d-do but…. Article five-point-three, p-paragraph two in the Operator’s Guide to Safety c-clearly states that only a registered–”
I fumble it. I can feel it. I’m looking at my hands, gesturing. I’m wiping my forehead and adjusting my glasses. It’s no use.
I am afraid of pillbugs.
“Bossman, bossman, bossman,” Carla starts in again. “This damn printer has already been down an hour and Jake ain’t here. Who’s gonna fix it? You gonna go tell Kadner to call in second shift? Gonna be two hours at best.”
I can feel the perspiration slid down my temple – shipping would be delayed. I’d have to stay late again. Dr. Kadner would be livid.
People are watching. I can’t just wilt like this. I exhale, I steel myself up. I straighten my posture. I look up at the pillbug violating every manufacturing standard atop that printing press.
“Carla,” I say firmly, pointing. “You need to p-put on your safety glasses.”
Carla smiles and salutes. “You got it, Bossman.”
—--
7pm I make yet another trudging assent up the stairs to my office. The last one for this shift, I hope.
Carla didn’t get the printing press fixed; in fact, she dropped her wrench and it wedged between the support bars inside the press. Jake had to be called in. Shipping was missed. Dr. Kadner was livid.
Remembering Dr. Kadner’s face, with his eyes bulging and his veins popping of out of his neck, gives me the clammies all over again.
Stephen Walbug, the second shift manager, had yet to show up for work.
My stomach growls; someone had taken my lunch from the company fridge today. Did they eat it? I hope they did, otherwise what a waste of good pimento.
I half-heartedly perform the evening rounds, checking on everyone and moving Delilah back to her overnight cage. Then I check my phone, but there’s still no word from Steven Walbug. I sigh, shuffle over to my desk, and slump into my swivel chair, exhausted. It squeaks in protest. I slouch there a moment, staring at my desktop, trying to decide the best way to kill time while waiting on Stephen.
Email….? Or Solitaire….? I’m still on company time, so email it is, then.
I sigh again, depressed. Then I remember I had a candybar stashed in my desk drawer. I perk up a little and pull it out, and in my hunger it seems a bountiful harvest of a meal. I set it next to my keyboard and fold my hands together, bowing my head in a quick prayer.
Dear God…. Great bug above…. Please…. Something. Anything. Just let me write a ground-breaking novel. Just one would be enough. I know I’m not supposed to ask but Could I please just have one sign? Amen.
Feeling marginally better, I start munching on that chocolatey nougat goodness and scroll through my inbox. All just the same… the same boring stuff…
Spam….
Work notifications…
Complaints about the Registar…
More spam….
Suddenly I stop, my attention snagged by the headline ‘Are You PRAYING For A CHANGE?’ Eerily, I glance around the office as if someone might be there, but there was no one. I look back to the screen and notice this title:
‘Do YOU have the courage to UNLOCK your POTENTIAL?’
I don’t consider myself courageous but…. What if… what if this was the sign?
‘Are YOU looking to radically change YOUR life?’
I look around the office again, this time to make to make doubly-sure no one was watching. And then I do the thing I never thought I would do. I do the thing no one should ever do.
I click on that spam.
—-