The Peppermill
was my first published story.
It was initially published in Futures Magazine,
then reprinted in The Storyteller Magazine
and later in Anthology. The illustration
on the right, created by professional artist,
Ed Fillmore,was intended to be a cover for
Anthology Magazine. Unfortunately, the magazine
decided to go with a different cover.
The Pepper Mill
At last, I found it. After searching through every dry and dusty antique shop in the Midwest, I finally found it. I closed my eyes, raised my fists triumphantly and imagined how rich I was going to be. Opening my eyes, I gently uncurled my left hand, revealing the small treasure cradled in my palm.
How many people had ignored it? How many had never given it a second glance? How many had touched it and not realized its amazing properties?
Perhaps I should explain. I’m a part-time writer and a full-time collector. Years ago I discovered a very cute, very funny story, “Cousin Len’s Wonderful Adjective Cellar,” written by Jack Finney. The story is about an antique salt dish. This antique salt dish is not just any antique, however, it’s a magical antique. If you hold it above something you’ve written, it sucks out all the non-essential adjectives and adverbs, turning bloated stories into crisp, clean prose. Most people thought Finney’s story was just a cute and clever piece of fiction. But, not me! Something in Finney’s story struck me as true, amazingly true. I knew it wasn’t fiction. So I researched that salt dish and found there was a matching pepper mill. And, today, after years of searching, I held that pepper mill in the palm of my hand.
I’m not sure how many traffic laws I broke on the drive home, but my tires voiced a complaint as the curb in front of my house sprang up to assault them. Two at a time my feet took the stairs and I burst through the front door. In my study, I yanked open a file drawer and began frantically throwing papers over one shoulder and then the other in my haste to find…
There! An old college paper. The one my professor had marked “Verbose.”
I slapped it on my desk, covering the half-written stories and poems that I never seemed to finish, and clicked on the lamp. Each adjective, adverb, and noun leaped at me in the harsh electric illumination. Slowly and carefully, I unwrapped my magical treasure. Hesitating, I took a deep breath. Then, just as Finney described in his story, I held the pepper mill two inches above the paper and slowly waved it back and forth. I waited for all the unnecessary words to be vacuumed off the page, leaving behind a brilliant, succinct essay.
Nothing happened.
I held the mill an inch and a half above the paper and very slowly and very carefully I waved it.
Nothing!
This time, an inch away... slowly, carefully…
NOTHING! IT HAD TO WORK! IT HAD TO!
In exasperation, I violently shook my treasure, then watched with widened eyes as a fine violet vapor seeped from the mill. It seemed to purposely avoid my old college paper, choosing instead to alight on a crumpled scrap with the words “we danced all night” scribbled on it. I had started to write a romantic poem about dancing, but like most of my writing, had never gotten around to finishing it. The violet vapor embraced the scrap. Words began to flow and dance. The scrap unfurled and blossomed. I was witnessing the birth of poetry:
It was a soft summer eve
silver clouds hid the moon
drifting on the warm breeze
was a sad, sad old tune
There were dreams in your eyes
and a warm tempting glance
you sighed a soft sigh
as I held you to dance
“Wow!” I said to myself. “Not Robert Frost, but considering all it had to work with was a title, not too bad.”
A ray of understanding peeked through. The pepper mill was not the same as Finney’s salt dish. Instead of paring prose, it spiced it up!
I jumped up and my chair crashed to the floor. I pacing back and forth, back and forth, trying to keep up with the ideas racing in my brain. Again, I tugged open my file drawer. Reaching in, I pulled out handfuls of papers, letters, bills, stories and poems. I dumped them all into a growing pile on the floor. Then, squatting amid the black and white leaves, I clawed madly through them. I stopped when I found an old three-page, C minus college paper. “Good Ideas,” the professor had written, “but you didn’t develop them fully." I held the magical instrument about a foot above the paper and shook it cautiously. Slowly, as if unsure, the violet vapor seeped from the pepper mill and tentatively touched the mediocre offering. Then, as if gaining confidence, the vapor began to envelop the document. First, a rivulet of verbs and nouns flowed onto the pages. Then, stronger still, a stream of similes, phrases and clauses. The document swelled to twice, no three times, its original size! When the vapor finished and dissolved, I hastily thumbed through the paper, amazed by its wisdom and depth. With a howl of triumph, I screamed down the years.
“Take that professor, it’s developed now!”
It wasn’t a pepper mill, it was a paper mill. Give it a broken thought, a vague idea, a half-constructed sentence and it would form, fashion, and finish a work of exquisite craftsmanship.
Confidently, I stood, a smile on my face. Like a symphony conductor, I raised the pepper mill dramatically over my head and began to wave it rhythmically. The violet vapor flowed from the mill and swirled and pranced about the paper-strewn room. The vapor seemed to deliberately choose where it would alight. It caressed a love letter I had once badly written. It reformed and expanded that letter to say those things that I had meant to say, but couldn’t find the words. The ethereal rays touched down upon several of my bank statements. When the rays had dissipated, all of the bank’s cryptic abbreviations were spelled out. Unfortunately, none of the decimal places had moved to the right. One improvident ray touched my tax returns and exploded. I wasn’t sure whether it was commenting upon my fiscal creativity or upon the form’s Byzantine complexity.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced the violet fog settle upon an odd sized booklet. Something tickled my memory. I turned my head slightly to obtain a better view. A puff of air ruffled the pages of the booklet.
That was the opening the vapor needed.
Quickly, every page of that booklet became wrapped in a violet glow. Just as quickly, dark, printed words appeared where previously blanks had been. I leaned closer in an attempt to discover what the booklet was. My arm stopped waving the pepper mill. I stood in disbelief, my arm still raised in the air. Years ago, when I was desperate for work, I had applied for a civil service job. The government sent me a sample test booklet to complete. I answered one or two questions, lost interest, tossed the booklet in my file drawer and forgot about it. Until now! Until now, where before my eyes, the violet vapor was correctly and brilliantly answering every question in that long forgotten booklet. Finally, the pages stopped ruffling, the book quivered, and the vapor disappeared. The room was quiet.
I closed my eyes and my mind reeled with a million different ways to use the vapor to answer any question posed to me, to have all the knowledge in the world at my fingertips, to become rich beyond belief.
Opening my eyes, I stepped toward the booklet, planning to inspect it.
I’ll always wish I hadn’t.
Maybe I am naturally clumsy, maybe I was dizzy from waving the pepper mill in the air, or maybe I just slipped on all the papers I had so carelessly strewn upon the floor. Unable to keep my balance, I fell, splatting face down on the floor, inches away from the booklet. The air gasped out of me. The pepper mill flitted from my hand. On my belly, I sucked in a breath as I helplessly watched the mill arc high into the air. Gracefully, it flew along an invisible curve, then thumped hard to the ground beyond my reach. Miraculously, it was unscathed. The mill rolled crookedly across the floor, bumped very gently into a wall, and as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, cracked in half. From the fissure, the violet vapor swirled and eddied. Then, it coalesced, flowed under my door and out of my life. My dreams of riches – and a good number of my expletives - flowed with it.
#
Years have passed. I no longer collect. I no longer haunt antique shops looking for magical treasures. But, every now and then, if I’m extremely patient, I can coax the tiniest bit of violet vapor out of that odd, cracked, but super-glued, little pepper mill. And, when I do, I write a short story very much like this one.
#
With special thanks down the years to Jack Finney.
