"Can" B. Worth - Epilogue - Part Six

"Can" B. Worth

Epilogue - Part Six

            “Perfunctory” “visit” to a “dealer’s stock”.  I do not do?

After the last Dead Can click-bang it was time to “get out”.  This could only be done by completing the ritual, summarial and perfunctory visit to inspect, review and BUY SOMETHING FROM… this venerable old information uttering and cheese gobbling rare bookman’s “old books for sale” “stock”.  “Perfunctory” and most dealers will express their disdain, avoidance maneuverings and curt inspection techniques.

I, on the other hand, am the one who is actually HERE; in this …old Tyrolean mountaineer of a bookseller’s house of business.  Beer bellied, stuffed with shrimp and cheese, addled by alcohol, amiably sedated by his own oratory, graciously respecting me as an equal …and superior… rare bookman and:  Carrying an old wife in the other room who “could use some money” from THIS very rare bookseller visit… I had LONG BEFORE I LEFT HOME that morning reckoned that “I” “must buy something” “too”.

This is not a problem?  By regular practice, interactive buying between rare booksellers from their stock to each other is more myth than actual commerce.  Most do not visit… and are not visited… let alone have cash exchanged.  “Exhibiting” “at a show” is the most common “caught you in the open with your stock displayed AND PRICED so that I, a great dealer, may quickly throttle it for a loose change of an error you old fool of a bookie has made”.  How could my “to the homestead visit” be a door of opportunity?

An old bookseller is most often out-of-corner-of-mouth described as “having nothing”, “looks everything up”, “sells anything good to so and so”, “hasn’t had anything new in years” and “the LAST TIME I was there HE HADN’T BEEN OUT IN YEARS”.  Added is a… perfunctory… acknowledgement of “feel sorry for his wife.  I don’t think they have much money”.  Nothing is ever done about this last by any bookseller for… any bookseller.

So here we find ME standing up in the living room of the private home of this sort of bookseller… and know that I know that I must make a “perfunctory” and “BUY SOMETHING” and:  JUST HOW DO I FEEL ABOUT THIS MOMENT and WHAT DO I ACTULLY DO with these… not too common …opportunities?

Do I “blow it off” and “get out” with my booty bag of verbal legend gathered?  Do I whisk up, in and out scanning the “old books for sale” spine ends with razor sharp eyes to “pull” “something out” “quickly” then fuss with my checkbook after pushing for a “dealer’s discount”?  Do I NOT know that THAT is exactly what this old Tyrolean expects as a best case solution but is so cornered by aging and circumstance that even this hacking of his stock and the pocket change garnered… would be welcome?  Do I …fall back… to be but an equal amongst my bookish braggart peers dismissing and ..dismissing the embraced action of …dismissing of the stock and this bookseller as… “dismissing” as “the obvious thing to do”?

No… and I would not be here if it were not for me personally going “No.” already to… destroying Dead Can’s boxes.  AS I ROSE the wife appeared in my peripheral eye at the dining room to kitchen archway as I SAID “May I please visit your stock before I leave?”

“Of course you may.” said the old Tyrolean who rose too …and wavered… and moved forward to the out door of the living room into the front hallway of the home  and turned toward the base of the stairs… to “upstairs” as I followed …and was followed by …the shadow of the wife… who, when I glanced back communicated a “help me” AND “Thank you” and… about a three volume set more of novelette prose wordlessly …that I read cover to cover (all three volumes) for I am NO FOOL and have been prowling as a picker too long to …stop this poignant reading.

At the stair bottom the accent to the “rare book room” began with the old mountaineer moving slowly up and upon each step with his arms spread to the railing and wall, his old buttock lifting to each next step and leaving the wife and I plenty of time to “Don’t worry.  I’ll watch him” I said.  I followed very closely behind with my own accent so that… should “he fall” he must “take me out too”.  The wife remained vigilant at the stairs bottom, standing in the light from the front door and her eye sharply focused when I looked back and smiled downward to her.  She smiled back.