Madman at the Booksmith
by Tom Harper
"The homeless man had a knife taped in his hand," the announcer says. The videotape picture on the television screen is quite clear, showing the back of a man in a heavy, dirty coat, arms spread like crucifixion, standing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the White House. Ten feet away, four men in blue police uniforms face him, each with a gun drawn and pointed; more police approach the scene, from left and rear. The homeless man turns his head, glancing over his left shoulder, and two shots ring out. Gray puffs of smoke can be seen, as one bullet strikes the man in the chest, and another knocks his leg from under him; he crumples to the ground. "Authorities say the shooting was justified.""They didn't need to shoot him! There was no reason to shoot him!" Adam shouts at the television screen.
"What's that?" asks Eve, coming from the hall into the living room.
"They shot this guy for no reason. He had a knife, but they could have taken him easily without shooting. He wasn't even threatening them. He looked over his shoulder and they shot him! Twice!"
"It's another sign of 'zero tolerance,' around the White House," the announcer announces.
"They didn't need to shoot him," Adam mumbles. "That's the Christmas spirit, zero tolerance for the poor and homeless."
"Look how blonde my hair is," Eve says.
"Yes, that's pretty."
Eve's mane flows behind her like a fine golden mantle as she crosses the room.
A lifesize drawing of 'The Goatman' fills the center of the Booksmith bookstore. Adam considers putting on his new eyeglasses, to study the artwork. But since his cataract surgery, he rarely wears his glasses, except to watch TV. With the new lens implanted, he sees at a distance with his right eye, and his old left eye sees clear up near. He moves close, his face within a foot of the picture--he's disappointed to discover that it is a print, impossible to decipher the artist's original individual pen strokes and crosshatching. Adam steps back, to examine the whole. In the foreground stands 'the goatman,' a shabbily dressed, elderly man with a great white beard, and holding a sweet-faced baby goat in his arms. Behind him is a rickety wagon, topped by a crudely lettered sign which reads "God Is Not Dead," and pulled by a herd of goats.
Adam glances around the bookstore, and sees that no one is watching. I saw the goatman once, in 1960, when he passed through town, he wants to tell someone. Though Adam was just a boy at the time, the goatman made a great impression on him. Who was this odd old man, and what a strange life he must live; had he no family or loved ones, except his goats--but oh, the freedom of it all? Adam often thought that he was something of a goatman himself. In fact, he'd once written a short story, calling himself 'the goatboy.' He'd thought of the goatman as very personal vision. Now, in middle age, he sees stories, newspaper articles, tales, and now this lifesize drawing. Was there just one goatman, or were there many? He'd like to ask.
But Adam walks around behind the picture, to the discount bin, one small wave in a sea of books.
Adam knows all the contemporary authors represented on the shelf; some whose books have disappeared, purchased, perhaps? Adam once brought a copy of his own slender volume, to place on this shelf. But he grew suspicious of the manager--a young, handsome, clean-cut and dark haired man, who looked and talked too much like a businessman. There are only a few copies of Adam's slight volume remaining, and he grows progressively more possessive with their dwindling numbers.
Visiting any bookstore or library is always both a joy and a crisis for Adam. He loves the quiet, the reverence, the feel and look and smell of books, like a black hole of ideas. Yet, it also makes him feel very small, and insecure. What makes me think that I have something to say, something new and relevant, to set me apart from all these, living and dead?
"Hey, how's the magazine going?" asks the manager, his square face smiling. He's dressed casually, today, in a green turtle-neck sweater.
"Oh, okay," Adam answers. "Everything takes longer than it should. But you'll be hearing something after Christmas," he says, making a fist and tapping it against his skull, "knock on wood."
The manager smiles, (either disbelieving and/or distractedAdam thinks) and moves across the room, setting a notebook and papers on the desk behind the check-out counter, next to the cashier. A stranger, who stands talking with the cashier, retreats at the manager's arrival.
Adam crosses the room, placing a book on the counter. The book is Den of Lions, by Terry Anderson. A $25 book, he found it in the discount bin, for $2.95. "What is it like to exist for seven years in darkness and chains,..." the liner notes read. Adam has read excerpts from the book, recounting the author's imprisonment in Iran, a pawn of politics. Leafing through the book, he landed on a passage where Anderson wondered if his divorce had gone through, leaving him free to marry anew. Is that what a hostage dwells on? Adam wonders. He isn't sure he'll read the book, but at the price, he figures it is a bargain he can't pass up.
"It's from the bargain bin," Adam tells the cashier.
The cashier is a young man, neat, smiling and pleasant. He seems totally assured, bright, competent; completely at home in his environment, at ease and in control. These are traits that might normally offend Adam, who distrusts certainty in the face of what he considers the natural order of chaos, but for some reason he feels empathy. He likes the youth.
"Have you ever read Jack London?" comes a voice from near the door.
"Jack London, sure," the cashier answers, smiling.
"What have you read?"
Adam sees the manager's suspicious eyes turn toward the door. His own gaze follows. A middle-aged man, balding and with a stubbled beard, stands near the entrance, ten feet away.
"Have you ever read How To Start A Fire?" the man asks the cashier.
The cashier lowers his eyes for a second. He wasn't expecting to be called on for specifics. Hell, everybody knows Jack London he thought, though nothing specific.
"Picture this," the man says. "You're in Arizona, in the middle of the summer, building a stage for a play. It's 100-degrees in the shade, I mean hot," he continues. Adam looks at the man. He's a little disheveled, but not to any extreme. Somewhat like the homeless man on TV this morning, without the heavy coat. But there is a strange white streak down the man's left cheek, like a snail's trail, or silvery snot. Adam looks away, but listens. "You sit down to rest, take out a bottle of Jack Daniels and take a big swig, and read How To Start A Fire." The voice is triumphant, emphatic. "Man, it's like blowing some great coke. It'll blow you away."
The manager has a very disapproving look on his face, not unlike the night Adam brought in his book (and never showed it). "Hey, you weren't so 'nutsy' the other day," the cashier says to the man.
Adam looks at the man again. He examines the white streak down his face. It must be white paint. It can't be snot, he thinks. The man looks all right, his voice seems quite normal, though his clothes do appear slept in. Adam gives the cashier a slight smile, trying to say it's all right, don't be mean. But the manager has a brutal frown on his face.
"I find you very amusing," the cashier tells the man, "but I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You scare some people."
The command seems harsh and sudden to Adam, like the shots fired at the homeless man on television this morning. But he says nothing, handing the cashier a $5 bill, a dime, nickel, and four pennies. "Do you need a bag?" the cashier asks. "No, that's fine." The cashier hands Adam two $1 bills, places a bookmark in the book and hands it across the counter.
"What do you mean?" the man asks.
"You're just over there, raving by the heater," the cashier answers.
It's not cold, Adam thinks. And what could be more natural than talking about Jack London, in a bookstore.
"Raving by the heater?" the man asks.
"Raving by the heater," the cashier says. "You'll make people nervous...."
Adam looks to his left and the manager has moved away, his place taken by a pleasant, pretty, chubby young woman. He recognizes her as a local poet. She's quite shy and unsure of herself, and attempting to ease inconspicuously behind the counter; the cashier's replacement, she hopes the scene is done before it's her turn to take the stage. There is fear in her eyes. Adam looks at the white streak down the side of the man's face. The man smiles, uneasy at the turn of events.
"Watch him," the cashier tells Adam. "Watch him!" looking in his eyes.
Adam remembers, many years before, being frightened by a 'homeless' person, and a companion telling him, "Don't worry, they're the gentlest souls on earth."
The man goes outside, and begins pacing up and down the sidewalk, beside a little wagon, which is full of all his trash and treasures. Not unlike the goatman. Adam walks outside, torn by conflicting advice and emotions. He walks quickly past the man, who glances at him, then looks away. Walking swiftly, around the corner, past the concrete wall, Adam watches from the corner of his eye, over his left shoulder, hoping the man doesn't follow.
Adam climbs inside his comfortable, if old, Chevrolet automobile, with its plush carpet, soft seats, and powerful radio. He cranks the car, and the radio comes on; the strong, clear, clean sounds of a string quartet playing Beethoven. Adam clicks the door lock. The man with the white streak down his cheek pulls his wagon up the street.
"I once gave a bum a dollar, because he told a beautiful story, and had a metal plate in his head," Adam wrote in a poem, when he was young, and living in the back seat of his car.
"I'm half a step away from being that homeless man," he says aloud in his car, as the music reverberates. "That could just as easily be me."
He thinks of his best friend, who's classified as schizophrenic, and who thinks that Adam "is a success, able to function in life." Adam considers his own small successes, the money and prestige he once gained; and failures, what he lost, fired from high-paid jobs, for reasons he really couldn't comprehend--something about submitting, refusing to be subservient, to the best of his understanding. I give her my heart, but she wanted my soul, is how Bob Dylan put it in a song. But Adam's beautiful wife Eve, with the golden hair and heart, stands by him. He saved a little money when he was working, and now she earns their living. Otherwise, would it be him out on the street, pulling the wagon, or with a knife taped to his hand?
Beethoven ends, and the strains of Mozart take his place. Adam glides down Highland Avenue in his comfortable old car, while the man with the white streak on his cheek pulls his wagon in the opposite direction.
"The homeless man is critical, but expected to live," the announcer says on the television that night. But, next day, the newspaper reads:
WASHINGTON -- ...Marcelino Corniel, 33, who was shot Tuesday morning after he chased [a] U.S. Park Police officer with a knife, had been kicked and prodded by [that officer] a few hours earlier....
"They didn't have to shoot him, just because 'he lost it,'" Corniel's son says on television. According to other family members, the man had little use of his right hand, and only partial use of the left hand, to which the knife was taped. And he had 'a stub' for one foot.
...Corniel died Wednesday night after undergoing surgery twice.
