Page 78 of The Children of Eve

“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 infor 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 Iamselling 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 wasslumbering, 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.

---