Bibles

Back in my youth, in my straight out of college days, I took a job as a traveling bible salesman. It paid close to nothing, the hours were long and hard, the job thankless, and all of this traveling had to be done in the ancient bucket of bolts assigned to me. However, my young eager self quickly put me in an optimistic pair of glasses. Surely the trips would be nothing short of inspirational, and create a long list of stories to tell. I’d see the country, finish the book (ah! The book! The drafts go back as far a senior year f college, write in thousands of different inks and papers, an idea waiting to have a body years before its publication), and grow the rest of the way up. Of course, those glasses were basically shattered with the force of a sledgehammer wielded by an angry trucker after two hellish weeks on the hot summer road without air conditioning, no inspiration, and series of restless night on lumpy motel beds. Of course, I worked a route, and eventually developed the jaded off-duty attitude of a traveler. I was a regular on the roadside dinners, knew the waitresses by name, and favored a specific room in the motels I had decided would be mine. Like all the other regular travelers, I regarded the holiday-ers and college road trippers with contempt, and always silently nodded to my colleagues. We belonged to another world, our world, the world of the road. We acted like we were born from it, living it, dying from it. Drama queens, the load of us, but it gets mighty lonely in your head, and your brain plays a soap opera to keep you entertained. Those times also weighed heavily on my psyche, because on the one hand I was the jaded glaring old-young man sitting alone in the corner booth, and on the other I was the vibrant charismatic bible salesman. It takes trust from people, and willingness to spend money. Now, though I did cater to several suburban families and old ladies, me big clients were obviously churches and catholic schools and such. Now, priests are usually trusting, and pleasant, but you need to talk a ring round them before they do it to you. And nuns, well they’re a different story. And somewhat scary, especially to a half-Jewish, three-quarter atheist liberal college boy. However, the job did give me one thing. Inspiration. The words began to flow about month in. one minute I’m eating Avery’s world famous cherry pie, the next I’m cramming eight hundred words onto the world’s smallest napkin. The book, which when published became five books, was dissected into pages and sheets and toilet paper and napkins and the back of flyers and notebooks all stuffed into a long dark brown cardboard box that carried with me everywhere, sleeping with it under my motel bed and having it ride shotgun, with two bibles stacked on top of it just in case I got lucky and scored a quick, on the fly sale. Never did, an I think those to bibles are probably buried under a blanket of dust and ash somewhere I my garage, obscured by mount of dinosaurs from previous ages. The only reason I quit the job was because one night I met a publisher in the dinner. The guy was an alcoholic, and insomniac. He as a local, and that particular dinner was an all night place, and I rolled in late, coming in from Tucson, I think. So anyway, we get to talking some how, you know how it is. So anywho, somehow I end up telling him about the book, the mammoth book on the verge of an ending, sleeping in its cardboard box of a bed in the front seat of the car. The guy got interested, and I felt, for the first time in years, that the thing could actually be published. That night, I slept exceptionally well, even though that particular motel was the worst of the ones I stayed in, all water stained and cockroach ridden. I felt almost weightless, anchored only by the soft snores imagined coming from the box under the bed. It was almost a friend, by then, after all those hours in a hot car o a dusty road. That morning, I walked out to the car, packed the box in the front set got ready to go, and stopped. I’d left my watch on the rickety table by the hard-as-stone bed. I ran back for, and even that was going to change my life. Heading back to the car, the street deserted I looked back to the red rust bucket I would be spending the next two hours in. And then, bam. It came from nowhere. The silver Ford, slamming full speed into my torso, sending me flying. I later found out the driver was the stone drunk municipal court judge Andrew Thompson. Anyway, there I was bleeding onto the pavement. Lazily, my eyes followed the expansion on the pool around me, and I remember feeling vaguely ashamed to dirty such a nice clean slice of tar and concrete. People seemed to pour out from the nearby buildings, and I wondered where they all came from. My funeral wouldn’t even be half as full, I thought bitterly. And then darkness. It was quiet and still and I thought, this is it. You’re done buddy. Above me, came a light, which got wider and wider. And I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t ant to die, not then, not with the book unfinished, and all those miles of road untraveled. So many plates of pie to eat, sunsets to see. I didn’t want to die. Nor do I now. The light got bigger, and I thought, but what bout the words? Whose will speak them, if I won’t? All those words left to say. The light was nearly all around when I thought, all these years surrounded by bibles, and I didn’t take a read, not once. I almost laughed. It was just like the sinner to repent too late. And then I don’t remember. It was like I shut off, for a second. Then I woke up in the county hospital, the book in the chair by my bed side. On top of it was a note. “Took a read. Good stuff. Wake up soon, we’ll talk.” The drunken editor. I smiled. My luck had changed.