Time

I’m in the process of cleaning up Gary Reilly’s ninth Asphalt Warrior novel before sending it off to our eagle-eyed editor for the thorough polish.

If you don’t know, Gary Reilly was a close friend of mine who had one story published in his lifetime—in 1977. That story, The Biography Man, was published in The Iowa Review and republished in the Pushcart Prize Anthology (Vol. IV) one year later in 1978.

Gary went on to write 25 novels. None were published before Gary succumbed to cancer in 2011. Since his death, my friend Mike Keefe and I have published 13 of those 25 titles—to considerable praise from National Public Radio, Booklist, and The Denver Post, among others.

The 14th novel will come out next year. It’s Gary’s final entry in the Asphalt Warrior series—the comedic adventures of Brendan Murphy, a.k.a. Murph, a sardonic cab driver who prowls the streets of Denver. Because we can’t find any sign of Gary’s title, Mike and I are calling this one Varmint Rumble, in which Murph encounters a motorcycle gang called The Varmints (The Commerce City Chapter).

Going through the raw digital manuscript, Gary kept track of his progress:

“26 days sun 8/23 488 31,556”

I think the ‘26’ is the number of days since he started writing this particular novel.

Then:

“30 thu 8/27 312”

“31 fri 8/28 didn’t write.”

“32 sat 8/29 didn’t write.”

Then this:

“42 tues 9/8 didn’t write. Chemo day after Labor Day.”

More than once I drove Gary to his chemo appointments at Denver Health. He never wanted me to accompany him inside. He treated the errands not much differently than making a run to the grocery store, where I also drove him a time or two.

Further down in the draft, this note:

“January 2, 2010 710 words 61,188 tote FIRST TEXT OF THE NEW YEAR”

Despite the chemo and everything, so much enthusiasm in those capital letters. He finished the draft of Varmint Rumble (I think Gary would approve of that title) a few weeks later, in late January.

And in Varmint Rumble, Murph (Gary’s alter-ego) is on the run from The Varmints (Commerce City Chapter) because he believes they know he was responsible for the drug overdose of the gang leader’s sister. (Yes, it’s played for laughs). So Murph, who is also a long-suffering unpublished novelist, goes to a motel in Aurora to hide and contemplate his fate. He knows he needs to go to the big motorcycle gang fight at Cherry Creek Reservoir to face the music.

And Murph thinks this:

“One of the things I dislike about myself is that once I set my sights on a goal, nothing can stop me. Rejection slips don’t count. Even though they have the same external effect of not writing novels at all—which is to say that on the surface I appear no different from someone who doesn’t write novels—I nevertheless have never been thwarted from pursuing my goal of being a published novelist. By the same token, the idea of violent death as a metaphor for a rejection slip did not stop me from driving relentlessly toward the Cherry Creek Reservoir.”

Gary Reilly, on chemo, never gave up writing. Brendan Murphy, staring down certain death at the hand of the Varmints, never let go of his dream. Top-notch role models, both.

I’ll leave you with an unrelated Murphism from the forthcoming Varmint Rumble:

“I will be completely honest here: I have never understood how X and Y became numbers, but that’s what the bright boys tell me. I have always wondered what a paycheck for a mathematician looked like. ‘Hey buddy, got change for an X?’ I once thought of saying this to a math professor but decided not to.”