On
an unhurried stroll on an auburn autumn afternoon, I stumbled upon a most shocking
sight. The murder had not been horrific, would never make headlines, and I harbored
doubts whether or not John Q. Public would neither notice nor care. I exhaled
with deep regret and bowed my head in deeper respect. With grim determination,
he had once paced the pavement and stormed the streets, his unfailing
dedication unhindered by the continual closing of door after door before him. I
had never met this stalwart gent and had known only of his existence through
the passed down tales of legend.
Or
lore.
“What’s
that, mommy?”
The
voice of childlike innocence interrupted my heartfelt homage and I looked up in
surprise.
“Just
some old books, honey,” the young mother said distracted, one hand held tight
to the girl, the other tighter to her Smartphone.
“Old
books,” I commented from behind and sauntered alongside the pair. I turned down
the collar of my khaki colored traditional trench coat and tilted up the brim
of the umber fedora.
“Just.
Some old. Books,” I repeated. I framed my mouth with thumb and forefinger,
nodding in contemplation.
Contempt.
“C’mon,
honey,” the woman urged, her voice pitched an octave higher as she ushered the
child away.
“No
lady,” I called after them. “This is not just a pile of mildewed,
pseudo-leather encased pages,” I spat, my voice rising in volume to keep pace
with the rapidly retreating pair. “These tomes are crammed full of information,
data, answers to every question you can imagine.”
The
little girl began to sob. My diatribe turned darker.
“Unfortunately,
the only answer I seek does not reside within the withered pages of
these discarded volumes,” I bellowed. “Go home to your Kindle, your iPhone, your Playstation. Better yet, take that child to the library. Let her
feel the fine texture of a page. Papyrus in its earliest form. Look it
up!”
The
anguished cries of the little girl dwindled with distance. My attention returned to the complete set of Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedias neatly
tied in three piles at the curb, awaiting the next day’s trash pick-up.
Another
important part of history erased.
All
of it would disappear when the last of the bookstores, the last of the
libraries, the last of papyrus
dissolved into nonexistence. What would remain for archaeologists to unearth
long after the physical remnants were gone and the last vestiges of humanity
were stored only in a cloud
somewhere?
The
tremulous wail of an approaching police siren sent me hurriedly homeward,
hoping to avoid an encounter with local law enforcement more interested in my
recent harassment of mother and child rather than investigating the real crime
here.
The
Death of the Encyclopedia Salesman.
Who
was he?
What
had drawn him to this lonely calling?
Where
had he perfected his craft?
Could
it be called craft?
So
many questions and with not a physical manifestation of his former subsistence in
existence, I would be forced to conduct a bit of research online.
It’s
a dirty place.
Online.
The
encyclopedia salesman would concur.
Entrenched
within my dimly lit dwelling, I raised a silent toast to him and all who
followed, switched on the old CRT monitor, powered up the IBM, cracked the
knuckles – for no other reason than to set the proper mood – grasped the mouse
and directed the cursor to the curled orange fox always asleep on the taskbar
below.
Nothing
happened. The white arrow remained frozen on the screen pointing in a northwest
trajectory, its latitude and longitude on the worldwide web I could not deduce.
I turned the mouse over to inspect the undercarriage, the equivalent of looking
stupid looking under the hood of an automobile that had simply stopped running.
I was no mechanic. I wasn’t a vet either, but hadn’t needed to be to realize my
mouse had died. I sighed, raised a silent toast to it as well, and drove off to
the nearest electronics superstore.
“Can
I help you?” asked a chipper clerk on welcome duty, adorned appropriately in
company colors and bearing a nametag that read my name is Chip. Ask me about –
I
ignored the suggestion and posed my own question. “Where do you keep the mice?”
Purely preposterous my inquiry, I narrowed my eyes, warning off any quirky
quips that might arise. With a single finger pointing roughly in the same
direction my cursor had, he sent me on a long journey across the bustling
landscape and while I ducked, dodged and veered, I considered a future
investigation. The Death of the Old Mom
and Pop Shop.
The choices were staggering.
My eyes darted left, right, up and down. There were mice everywhere.
“How
can I help you?”
I
whirled, and eyed this cheerful chap
with the same derision, calculating just how genuine his disposition was,
hiding behind a million-dollar smile on little more than minimum wage.
“I
need a mouse.” I proposed.
He
narrowed his eyes. “What kind of
mouse?” he dealt.
I
saw his play and raised him one.
“What
kind of mice do you have?”
He squinted further, trying to
get a read. Behind his crafty brown eyes, I saw a slot machine spinning,
stopped on two sevens already. The slightest hint of a smirk formed upon his lips.
He reached for the top of the line rodent, resplendent in gold packaging. Mesmerized,
my eyes widened with hypnotic fascination.
The
world blurred bright.
Immaculate.
White.
The
scruffy sales clerk previously clad in trademark company garb had transformed
into a sharp-dressed boy band wannabe. His hair now coifed in an impressive
symmetric upsweep, he tiptoed towards me and tunefully intoned:
“Well
this mouse is supersonic!”
An
abrupt crash of brass accentuated his exuberance.
“Ergonomic!”
The
horn section howled.
“Aero
– dy - namic!”
The
horns hit two times.
Salespeople
to the right of me, salespeople to the left of me, all of them hyped and ready
to dance.
“Why
it could be Greased…”
“Whoa,
whoa, whoa,” I stopped the show, snapped from reverie right to reality with
little time for revered musical numbers that would remain forever timeless.
Home
at last, I marveled at the speed and fluidity of my new optical mouse,
utilizing laser light rather than the old-fashioned trackball, another victim
of technological advancement.
It
does not take a crack detective to figure out what became of the encyclopedia salesman.
He has simply become obsolete. Obsolescence not a criminal act, this case is
officially closed. I am not finished yet however. Last night, unable to sleep
on my sagging sofa, I caught the last moments of an infomercial while
restlessly channel surfing. Another unfortunate soul has mysteriously gone
missing under eerily similar circumstances. The vacuum cleaner salesman. This
time there’s a trail. Someone called “The Shark,” with a particularly evil
weapon at his side, a robot called the “Roomba.”
A
sick play on words.
“Roomba.”
Rumba.
A
dance.
The
dance of life?
Or
death!
TJM - Dec, 2018
