Chapter LIV
CHAPTER LIV
Blue Tweed had gone to the restroom, spending so long in there that Little Lyman began to worry he might have collapsed—that, or Little Lyman would have let in a lot of fresh air later, and possibly go to work on the bowl with a brush and some bleach.
“You okay?” Little Lyman asked when his sole customer eventually returned.
“Things don’t move as easy as they once did,” came the reply. “I could write a thesis on the texture of stall doors.”
Little Lyman thought he might have to tackle the restroom after all. He opened the bottle of Redbreast and kept his hand heavy.
“You’ll go broke pouring so freely.”
“I got low overheads,” said Little Lyman, “and lower expectations.”
“Then life will struggle to disappoint you.”
“I got to say, it’s doing its damnedest anyway.”
Blue Tweed inclined his glass toward the Redbreast.
“Care to have one on me?”
“It’s kind of you, but I’ll stick to coffee.” Little Lyman refilled his mug from the last of the pot. “A lesson I learned from my father, who learned it from his: Never drink in your own bar, like that mantra you shared earlier.”
“The Bad Salesman. But that was advice not to be followed.”
“That your line, selling?”
“Isn’t it everyone’s, in some form?”
“I suppose so,” said Little Lyman. “Unfortunate if nobody wants what you have to sell, though.”
“A good salesman can make you buy what you don’t need. A very good salesman will make you feel that you always needed it but never realized until he came along to point out the hole its absence had left in your life. But I don’t want to sell folk stuff they don’t need. There’s too much of that already, and it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. I want everyone involved to walk away happy from the deal. Hence, the Bad Salesman’s Mantra.”
“And you’re not one of the bad salesmen?”
“I aspire not to be.” He took a sip of whiskey. “I notice you haven’t asked me what it is that I sell.”
Little Lyman hadn’t asked him his name either. In his experience, men who wanted you to know their name shared it. Men who didn’t want you to know wouldn’t offer, and wouldn’t thank you for inquiring either. Here, Little Lyman gathered, was a member of the second tribe.
“Because I don’t want you to waste your time,” said Little Lyman, “or mine. Whatever it is, I don’t want it, and even if I did want it, I doubt I could afford it. And if I could afford it, I’d be someplace else right now.”
“Really? You wouldn’t be here?” Blue Tweed made the Old Hatch sound like a veritable nirvana, somewhere only a halfwit would abandon.
Little Lyman ruminated on the question. There was even a literal element to the act, because it was his habit to nibble at the inside of his right cheek when a subject required contemplation, lending him the aspect of a perturbed herbivore.
“I’d still own the bar,” he declared at last, “or a bar, but I’d have someone else doing the heavy lifting. Spring and fall, I’d be planning a vacation, just some time to catch my breath. Odds-on, I’d already be gone by now, and you’d be talking to an underling instead of me.”
“Florida?”
Little Lyman shook his head.
“I don’t care for Florida. It’s full of too many of the people I’d be going on vacation to avoid. No, I’d visit Europe. My grandfather, he fought in Italy during the war and liked it—the country, I mean, not the fighting. He always meant to go back and see how he felt about it when he didn’t have to kill anyone.”
“Lucky I’m not selling Boca timeshares, then,” said the man.
“I guess it is,” said Little Lyman. He polished some glasses that didn’t require polishing. Blue Tweed studied his whiskey like one who had posed the fates a question and anticipated the response to be disclosed in amber.
“I sell Bibles,” said the man, “among other items, generally of a religious nature”—though Little Lyman had studiously continued not to ask.
Little Lyman hadn’t been aware that selling Bibles was even an occupation anymore. As far as he could tell, people were prepared to give away the word of God for nothing. Every second Saturday, a handful of evangelicals would gather in Leesburg, holding signs proclaiming the love of Jesus and handing out texts to anyone prepared to share their email details. If someone was of a mind to, they could give a fake email address and walk away with a shiny copy of the New Testament, though Little Lyman didn’t imagine God would approve of someone lying and accepting the New Testament in the same breath, seeing as how it cut against the grain of the whole transaction. If they were happy to listen to the whole spiel, and drop ten dollars as a sign of goodwill, they could take home a full bells-and-whistles set containing the Old Testament alongside the New, with a cheap tin cross on a ribbon that doubled as a bookmark, the ribbon-bookmark treatment not extending to giveaways.
Failing that, assuming you weren’t the sociable, giving, or lying type, you could wait for the opportunity to spend a night in a hotel and depart with a Gideon Bible, if only by ignoring the injunction to leave it where you’d found it and call the Gideons if you wanted a copy of your own. Little Lyman reflected that, in a curious sense, selling Bibles was a little like dealing in anything other than the most specialized of pornography in the internet age: no need to pay hard cash for something when it was available for free at the push of a button, even if the porn providers had finally cottoned on to this and now cut most of the movies before the money shot, or so Little Lyman had been reliably informed by a friend.
Despite himself, Little Lyman was intrigued by the man’s vocation. Even as he spoke, he wondered if this was part of the pitch, and by being drawn in, he was destined to conclude the evening by parting with some of his hard-earned money in return for a doorstop with a fake leather cover and colored endpapers.
“That must be a tough way to earn a living,” said Little Lyman, “what with the Gideons and their like undercutting you at every turn.”
“The Gideons,” Blue Tweed scoffed, as though Little Lyman had posited alien instead of human involvement in the distribution of Bibles. “Has anyone ever met a Gideon? I sure haven’t, not in all my years. Me, I like to be able to see the man who’s selling me something. I want to look him in the eye and question him about his product. I want to touch it, smell it, and while I do that, I’m watching him. It’s a game, and if two aren’t playing, one is being played. And you don’t want to be played, not when lucre is involved. It sets a bad precedent for buyer and seller because the buyer will be unsatisfied and the salesman corrupted. Whatever happens, whether I make a sale or not, I leave with my principles intact.”
He took another mouthful of whiskey, holding it for a while before swallowing.
“This nectar is making me garrulous,” he said. “Next, I’ll be giving you something for nothing, lessons in selling apart.”
“The conversation’s enough.”
“Could be that you’re a better salesman than I am. After all, I came in for a well bourbon and ended up drinking Irish whiskey from the top shelf. I stay here long enough and you’ll run me out broke.”
“You’re forgetting the heavy pour,” said Little Lyman.
“Ah, but it wasn’t too heavy, just heavy enough. Too heavy, and I’d have no cause to order another should the mood strike. Too light, and I’d feel cheated. You hit it just on the nailhead.”
“I don’t believe I put that much thought into the matter.”
“You didn’t have to because it came naturally. If it didn’t, someone else would be in possession of your premises, and you’d be an employee instead of the proprietor. We have that in common. We’re both our own bosses.”
“You don’t work for a company?”
“I used to. I started out with Southwestern Com. You know them?”
The Southwestern Company had been in the door-to-door sales business since the nineteenth century, beginning with religious tracts before progressing to cookbooks, home medical reference volumes, and dictionaries.
“Sure I do,” said Little Lyman. “My momma was from Nashville. She said you guys were the bane of her life, and her momma’s too. ‘Healthy, happy, terrific,’ right?”
Blue Tweed chuckled. “The Southwestern slogan, or good as. Start at eight in the morning, work until nine or ten at night. Thirty house calls a day minimum and no more than twenty minutes with each customer. If they hadn’t bitten by then, they weren’t ever going to. I’d talk softly, so they had to lean in close to hear me. On hot days, I’d arrive looking fit to faint and ask for a glass of water. Most would invite me in for a minute to catch my breath, which was when I knew I was halfway home. I’d work six weeks during the summer, eight at a push, and make enough to cover me for the year, then spend the next ten months preparing for the following summer. It was my version of Bible study.”
“But you don’t work for the company any longer?”
“Selling books, even the Good Book, just got harder and harder. People don’t have as much regard for the written word these days. They don’t see the reason for it, don’t value it, not like previous generations. So I found other ways to make ends meet, but I couldn’t quite give up on selling—or books, for that matter. I take pleasure in them, so I retain a range of Bibles and religious material in the car, and one or two on my person as well, just to keep my hand in. And you know what the funny thing is?”
Little Lyman replied that he did not.
“I’m not sure I even believe in God,” said Blue Tweed, “or not the God of the Bible—which is not to say that the book doesn’t contain truths, because it does, and a man could do a lot worse than live by the New Testament’s edicts. But as for the rest, it means about as much to me as a fairy tale.”
Little Lyman frowned.
“So why should anyone buy a Bible from you if you’re selling something you don’t much believe in?”
“But I am selling something I believe in, something that has value. I’m selling the artifact of the book.”
As he answered, Blue Tweed reached into a pocket and produced a black copy of the New Testament, about the size of his hand. The page edges were gold, the spine ribbed. It was in good condition while betraying its age, a volume that had seen use but not abuse. The man laid it carefully on the counter beside his glass.
“This dates from 1854,” he said. “The binder did a hell of a job on it, a hell of a one. His craftsmanship lasted a century before it began to wear, so I just had to help him out some. Touch it. Go on, sir, it won’t bite.”
Little Lyman did. The leather was smooth, and warm beneath his fingertips, almost certainly from its extended proximity to the salesman’s torso— almost , because Little Lyman had the strange sense that the book might have been warm even had he stumbled across it on his doorstep one chilly morning. It felt to him like a living thing that was slumbering, a metaphor that might have appealed to religionists of a certain stripe but was inapplicable to Little Lyman, who had faith only in a distant God.
“What do you mean by helping the binder out?” inquired Little Lyman.
“I had to perform restoration work,” said the man. “The gilt was worn away from some of the page edges, and the leather was split on the front cover. See if you can spot the join. I bet you a dollar you can’t.”
Admittedly, Little Lyman was no expert on bookbinding, but nothing was wrong with his eyesight. Try as he might, he could discover no trace of mending on the cover. Assuming the stranger was telling the truth about the damage in the first place, he surely had an aptitude.
“So you sell only restored books?” asked Little Lyman.
“Why would I sell new ones? You said as much yourself: People are giving them away, so why pay for what can be acquired free of charge? I have to offer something different, something unique. I’m selling a beautiful item, a piece of history, so the buyer can become part of a continuum. A book like this might lead a reflective individual, someone with a spark of self-awareness, to consider their place in the universe. It’s a form of stewardship. You take care of it and pass it along when you’re done, or it gets passed along once life is done with you.”
Little Lyman opened the volume, but gingerly. Ordinarily, he’d have been tempted just to flip through the pages of a book, and if the cover was sufficiently soft, he might have bent it in the process, but he was sure Blue Tweed would frown on any mishandling. Little Lyman noticed that the capital letter at the start of each book was printed in gold, which glowed in the light of the bar.
“I did those,” said Blue Tweed. “I enjoy gilding.”
“It’s pretty,” said Little Lyman. “No, it’s more than that. It’s beautiful.”
“Then it’s yours.”
“For nothing?”
Blue Tweed shrugged as if to say Sure, if that’s how it’s got to be .
“I can’t take it,” said Little Lyman, handing it back. “It wouldn’t be right.”
Blue Tweed wagged the index finger of his right hand approvingly, like a tutor noting a student’s prowess.
“Because you understand that it has value, and we don’t value what we receive without cost, not even love.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Little Lyman, who had never been in love, or not so that he’d been able to identify it as such.
“So what would a book like this be worth, do you think?” asked Blue Tweed.
“I couldn’t say. I suppose it would depend on the buyer, wouldn’t it?”
Blue Tweed raised his finger again, this time wagging it more forcefully, his whole frame practically vibrating with satisfaction.
“You see,” he said, “you get it. There are factors outside the seller’s control, and the more unusual the item, the more those factors come into play. There isn’t another book like this, not anywhere. It’s one of a kind. As the seller, I have to find a buyer capable of appreciating how special it is, and that buyer and I then have to agree on a price, because financial and intrinsic value are not the same. When we’re done, we’ll have settled on the correct sum if both of us emerge from the deal equally satisfied—or unsatisfied, the two not being unrelated.
“But beyond that, as not only the seller of this item but also its creator—because I’ve put time and effort into the restoration, and I’ve left my mark in the form of the gilding on the capitals—I want the book to find the right buyer, and that may not be the one with the most money. Would I want this book to end up in the hands of a collector of religious curios, to become just one more addition to their shelf, a bauble to be taken out for examination and display maybe once a year, if that, but otherwise touched only to be dusted off? No, I would not. I don’t need money that badly. I want this volume to be appreciated, to be cherished, so that in fifty years, or a hundred, a man not unlike myself, a craftsman if not an artist, might take it in hand, fix its scars, retouch its gilding, and find another owner for it—but again, the right owner.”
Blue Tweed stroked the book’s cover. His gaze grew fixed. He was staring beyond Little Lyman, at a place or a period of which he alone was cognizant.
“The right owner,” he repeated. “Wrongful ownership is not far removed from outright theft, because it’s depriving another of what should properly be his. For those who care about such matters—and there are fewer of us than there ought to be—it’s an error that cries out for correction, a necessary restoration of the natural order.”
Movement returned to his eyes, and they flicked to Little Lyman. “Men,” he concluded, “have died for less.”
Little Lyman, who had never stolen from anyone, not unless holding back from the IRS counted, which it didn’t, saw no reason to disagree.
“So I’ll ask you again,” said Blue Tweed. “What do you think a book like this might be worth?”
Little Lyman swallowed hard. He knew he’d be buying the book. Part of him didn’t want to disappoint the little man by not purchasing it, but he also feared bad luck might follow if he failed to oblige, even if he could not have said why. He’d been played, but played well.
“Fifty dollars?”
Blue Tweed pantomimed offense, but there was genuine hurt behind it nonetheless.
“Fifty dollars? Why, that bottle of whiskey cost more and it’s not even sui generis. This book, there isn’t another like it and never will be.”
“But I’m not sure I want it,” said Little Lyman.
“We’re negotiating, aren’t we? That means you do want it, deep down. The only question is: How badly? Two hundred badly?”
“I own suits that cost less than two hundred dollars,” said Little Lyman.
“So two hundred is too much?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now we’re in the ballpark. It’s between two hundred dollars and fifty dollars. I’d be happy with a hundred, but I believe you’d consider that excessive.”
“I would.”
“But for me, seventy would be too little, though you might be content.”
“Not very.”
“Content enough, though, or significantly more than I would be. So what about eighty? I’d be desirous of a larger sum, but I could take the pain. You’d have wished to pay less, but you still might have paid more. Eighty it is.”
He extended a hand. Little Lyman, despite himself, took it, and they shook on the deal.