Dweller - Jeff Strand [63]
“It’s okay.”
“But you understand what I’m saying, right? You can’t disappear for a week and expect a job to be waiting for you when you get back.”
Toby nodded. “I understand. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
Toby sat on his couch, newspaper open to the classified ads. He’d circled a couple of items, but there wasn’t anything that came close to singing out to him.
He skimmed the ads again, just in case there was something amazingly exciting that he’d missed.
Nope.
He flipped back to the funny pages. Yeah, the comics were way more interesting than the classifieds. Even the ones without punch lines like Gasoline Alley.
He liked to draw. At least, he used to.
Maybe it was time to restart his hobby…
CHAPTER TWENTY GLIMPSES
1978
“And here in the last panel, he says, ‘Glub, glub,’ as they dunk him into the toilet.” Toby pointed to the carefully rendered artwork. “What do you think?”
No.
“But it looks like a toilet, right? Do you know how hard it is to draw a toilet and make it look three-dimensional?”
No.
“It’s a pain in the ass. I really wish you had a better sense of humor, because I need to test these gags out on somebody who can laugh at things other than me hurting myself.”
“Perfect!” Henry Lynch, an editor at the Orange Leaf Times, held up Toby’s work and examined it closely. “Absolutely perfect. Yes, you’re hired.”
Toby grinned. He’d cut himself pretty bad with the razor blade, trying to cut the newspaper copy to the exact specifications, and he’d gotten hot wax all over his sleeve when he did the layout, but he didn’t tell that to Mr. Lynch.
“I need to hire older people more often. Kids today, they have no patience for the art of newspaper layout.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Okay, which do you like better? This”—he held up the drawing of Rusty with a mustache and goatee—“or this?” He held up the drawing of Rusty, clean-shaven.
Owen offered no immediate opinion.
“Please don’t poke this one with your claw.”
When Toby completed his twenty-fifth satisfactory comic strip, he celebrated by making a homemade banana split with extra hot fudge, extra strawberries, extra pineapple topping, extra whipped cream, and three maraschino cherries.
He felt a little sick afterward.
Then he reread the strips in order and decided that none of them were even remotely funny. Instead of throwing them away, he taped them up on his bedroom wall, where they could haunt him and provide a constant reminder to do better.
“Look what I’ve got here. Oooooh yeah.” Toby took the Styrofoam container out of his backpack and popped open the lid. “Two New York strip steaks. One medium well, one rare. Mr. Zack still cuts me a special deal.”
He erased the pencil drawing of Pugg’s hand for the tenth or eleventh time. It was incredibly difficult to draw a dog holding a telephone receiver. Paws weren’t meant to hold telephones, he supposed.
After another half an hour, he got the details just right, and reached for the ink.
“Not that you asked, but I still don’t have a title. Peanuts doesn’t actually mean anything, as far as I know. Maybe I’ll call it Tomatoes.”
1979
“What do you know about proofreading?” Mr. Lynch asked.
“Uh, nothing, but I can learn.”
“Can you learn today? Helen’s having her baby early and I’m kind of stuck.”
“So what do you think of this? The strip wasn’t working out, but I did these five as a single panel. I think they’re pretty funny. I couldn’t get Rusty’s hair right so I got frustrated and added a cowboy hat,