“How much is this one?” I said, nodding towards a scratched Royal typewriter hidden in the shadows on a shelf behind an old Mr. Coffee machine. I tried to avoid places that didn’t have their prices clearly marked, but those places were getting harder to find than gasoline. Besides, since money had gone out of fashion, price tags would have to be a lot bigger to accommodate all of the options for payment.
“Four dozen eggs, two hens, three roosters, half a pint of pre-collapse liquor, or three gallons of shine.”
I considered the options. I had three hens and a rooster at home. One hen would barely be enough to provide for my own protein needs and wouldn’t leave me any eggs for daily trade. Plus, it would piss Red off. Red was my rooster.
“Would you take fish in trade?” I asked, remembering the fishing tackle that had kept me from starving before I got the hens. The merchant raised an eyebrow in consideration.
“A full brace of salmon with no sores would do the trick. No catfish, perch, or crappies, though.”
I thought it through. With my pole, I would have to catch them one at a time and risk a bear attack or, just as likely, a bandit attack. For better or worse, though, ammunition was in short supply and was generally worth more than anything you might want to use it to steal.
“What about the ribbon and the paper?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Having a typewriter isn’t going to do me much good if I don’t have ink or paper.”
“You can cut paper bags to size,” the merchant said, going through the limited inventory in his head. “You can still find boxes of paper in certain places. People come through with it from time to time, but I never take it because folks round here don’t have no use for it.” He glanced at the typewriter on the shelf. “But if you buy this from me, I’ll trade for paper next time some comes through.”
I lifted its steel lid towards me to reveal the ribbon. It was still intact, but its stripes of black and red were severely faded where it had been exposed. Happily, though, two thirds of the ribbon had so far not seen the stroke of a single key. I felt a yearning that I had not felt since the collapse. The lure of a blank page in front of me. The ability to create, or recreate, endless worlds and moments of human experience. I looked over at the few shelves of duct-tape bound dusty volumes that comprised the library and made up my mind. The merchant followed my gaze with a wistful look.
“How many salmon are in a brace?” I asked. The merchant laughed.
“I tell you what,” he said. “How about I let you take that typewriter and work it off. All you’ve got to do is share whatever you write with me.”
“Deal.”
Literature in Small Doses 