mry writes

*a story*

John Taylor Edgar Smith –always John Taylor Edgar; never Johnnie, or JT, or any other cut-rate variant of his full given name– was a dealer in cut-rate used souls. A soul pawnbroker. In fact, he pretty much developed the whole business of buying and selling used souls. He sort of backed into the niche while sort of trying to bail out what was left of his own soul.

John Taylor Edgar Smith was not the first to make money in the soul business. Preachers and prophets have been dealing in souls for quite a while, engaging in things as morally and ethically questionable as selling dispensations to personages seeking an expedient pathway to eternal glory and everlasting grace without the bother of actually conducting their lives in a manner conducive to attaining eternal glory and everlasting grace.

John Taylor Edgar Smith’s forebears, many hops down his convoluted family tree, engaged in various and occasionally rather creative but inevitably dubious and/or nefarious activities, but they never dealt in the business of souls. Have to draw a line somewhere. Leave that business for the church.

Still, the aptitude for behaviour outside the norm was deeply bred into him. Without really trying, he managed to live up to his familial heritage. Or down to it, depending on who was doing the observing. John Taylor Edgar Smith eventually managed to extend his heritage by devising a wholly new form of commerce.

He did so by developing the business of dealing in the shady world of soul-trading. Soul pawning. He essentially invented that world, and through sheer cussed perseverance built it into a tidy and extremely profitable business. There eventually came a time when you could find a John Taylor Edgar Smith Soul Brokerage(TM) in most any town of any reasonable size. Souls are abundant, as is misery and circumstance and bad luck.

John Taylor Edgar’s foray into the business of trading used souls stretched back a while. It stretched back to a time when he was really down, and just about out. It started from a confluence of events which could only happen to someone whose wingtips were scuffed and worn from frequent kicking against hard ground. Sometimes opportunity presents itself only to people in extraordinary circumstances. People who are getting by with some form of plain ordinary life don’t generally find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.

Some years back, things had not been going all that well in the plain ordinary business of John Taylor Edgar’s life.

What with more than a few ducked obligations and a surfeit of just plain ugly luck, his life’s trajectory was less than stellar. In fact, until he entered the used soul world the high point of John Taylor Edgar’s life was probably about two days before he emerged from his mother’s womb and found himself blinking up at the world. From that point on, until one dusty afternoon a long convoluted thirty-some years later, things in his life were on a steadily descending trajectory to nowhere.

John Taylor Edgar’s down-and-outedness eventually reached the point where he began pawning most of the portable articles in Darlene’s house. Darlene was off spending a winter trying to save some poor lost heathen souls through the tired old method of patching holes in the tin siding and scrounged roofs of their poor dwellings. A handful of roofs got patched by Darlene and her soul-savers group, but few souls were actually saved. Meanwhile, John Taylor Edgar Smith was working on dismantling a major portion of the life she left behind.

When Darlene slipped into her letters a line or two too many about how splendid Thomas was at the whole soul-saving business and how splendidly Thomas was showing her new ways to see the light, even in the pitch dark of a patched hut somewhere in the deep hinterlands of equatorial dark lands, and especially how much Thomas was into her, well, John Taylor Edgar could read between the lines of her ever-less frequent letters. He knew she did not mean Thomas was into her in a metaphorical sense.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to him anyway.

Darlene was becoming more uptight and naggy about John Taylor Edgar Smith’s ways long before she went off to save heathen souls. It seemed to him she was just warming up for the big job: John Taylor Edgar Smith’s soul. She had begun working on John Taylor Edgar and his misbegotten ways right away after she hooked up with the All World One Power Healing Ministry and started going to prayer meetings two, sometimes three times a week.

“Cut your hair and clean up your appearance, John Taylor Edgar Smith.”

“Get a decent clean steady job, John Taylor Edgar Smith.”

“Come to the prayer meeting with me and get straight in your life, John Taylor Edgar Smith.”

One day Darlene came home with stars in her eyes and a new purpose for her life. “We are called to grace. We are called to fix things for souls in dark lands, and show them the way to fix their souls. I am going to dark lands to heal souls and gain grace for my soul. Me and my Tuesday prayer and healing team are going to go ease the journey for a few tortured souls. But we will keep praying for your soul. Even when we are healing souls in dark lands, we will be seeking healing for your tortured soul back here.”

John Taylor Edgar waved goodbye to Darlene as she embarked for the distant shores. At first her letters came in waves, two or four at a time, one or two times per week. Then they came in trickles, no more than one or two per week.

Eventually even the trickle faded into the sand. Perhaps the hot sun of the dark lands evaporated the ink in her pen, John Taylor Edgar scoffed. He could read between the lines; he could read what she did not write.

‘Goodbye Darlene,’ thought John Taylor Edgar after a couple of weeks went by without a letter.

He sat on the sagging orangey-yellow sofa in the small house they once shared. The room was steeped in twilight, which blended and blurred with the dimness within his mind. For a long time he stared at nothing in particular, lost in thoughts of nothing in particular. Gradually, his personal twilight faded. He looked about and saw his ticket to his own personal grace staring right back at him.

John Taylor Edgar began to think Darlene surely did not need all those extra rings and blings she left behind, stashed in a shoebox at the bottom of a pile in the back of her closet.

And she was not ever going to learn to play on her daddy’s old guitar, no matter how many times she said she was. A custom-made 12-stringer, no less. Probably made with rare wood from an endangered tree cut down behind the patched hut in the dark lands where Darlene and Thomas were showing each other new ways to see the light in the middle of the dark equatorial night.

It was also likely that splendid Thomas would find no good use for that shotgun stashed in the closet. Best to get it out of the way before he tried to figure out how to point it and ended up blasting his foot off. Or blasting John Taylor Edgar’s head off, if they happened to figure out that it was not a sneak-thief that made off with the dishes.

Oh, and John Taylor Edgar found the keys to the old Buick. Somehow they had ended up taped to the back of the refrigerator. As if he was not to be trusted with that old cranky Buick.

Now that he had the keys he might as well borrow the blue Buick. After all, he could not very well carry all Darlene’s not-needed stuff on his person. Besides, an old vehicle, especially a Buick, needs to run occasionally, lest the rust and rot sets in. And they surely would not let him board the bus carrying a shotgun and a guitar and dragging a duffel or two. A man certainly needed some form of transportation. Even a rusty old Buick would suffice, given the right set of circumstances.

Since splendid Thomas and Darlene would be used to seeking out a shady spot to rest over there in the dark lands, John Taylor Edgar might as well do her a favour and get that rusty old Buick out from under the shade tree back here at home. He could make room under the shade tree for a swing, or a blanket, or whatever else they were finding pleasure on over there in that dark village. Besides each other, of course.

So the old Buick became John Taylor Edgar Smith’s ride to Grace. On the road to Grace, he exhausted four different pawnshops while trying to spread the wealth around a bit. Interesting business, he was thinking after a hour of wrangling with the ornery old cuss at pawnshop no.2. Trade your old worn goods for some ready cash, with a promise that when you were flush again you could reclaim what was rightfully yours.

Or what might rightfully have been Darlene’s, as the case might be. But that is just details. Point was, here was a means to trade up or down, depending on your needs and abilities. Pick up serviceable goods that did not currently service their previous owners’ needs. Drop off serviceable goods that did not currently service their current owners’ needs. Not as much as cash did, at any rate. And coming up with cash was John Taylor Edgar’s immediate goal.

Anyway, after pawnshop no.4 the Buick was cleaned out and John Taylor Edgar’s wallet was fatter than it had been in a long time. A long, long time. His wallet was now fat with dirty old Darlene-derived cash and the old Darlene Buick was clean.

John Taylor Edgar’s last stop before entering into Grace was Eddie’s Autos. -“We pay top, We sell botton…” – proclaimed a vintage billboard leaning lazily towards the road. The turn into Eddie’s Autos popped up just before a big lazy westward turn on the road leading across the mountains and into Grace. Two roads diverged at the far side of Grace. He would make up his mind which one to take when he got there. Probably would not matter which one, he guessed.

By this time John Taylor Edgar was so ornery and worn out from so much fussing and arguing with cranky old cusses sitting on stools behind high counters trying to squeeze every last nickel out of each dime deal that he nearly immediately got right into Eddie of Eddie’s Autos (“We pay top, we sell botton…”).

John Taylor Edgar got himself ready to give Eddie of Eddie’s Autos what-for about the old Buick, what with its clearly prime condition and state of mechanical functioning, almost as soon as Eddie started in with a clearly practiced routine of walking slowly ’round and ’round the old blue and white finned beast, shaking his head every few steps.

John Taylor Edgar got good and annoyed with Eddie of Eddie’s Autos pretty quick, what with Eddie muttering disparaging remarks and punctuating them with negative shakes of his head at about every second step.

“Not good, not good. Look at that old metal. Likely to be loose and rattly, leastways wherever it is not rusted up tighter’n a wrench can bust loose. Gonna be tough to move this beast. Not sure I wanna try. Least not for more than a few hundred.” Eddie’s mutterings were clearly meant to be overheard.

Eddie scuffed and kicked the dry dirt as he shuffled along. Pushed his fists deep into his faded khaki pockets, pulled them out to rap on a fender or poke at a tire, pushed them back into his khakis. Periodically he would stop, rock back on his heels, and slide his hands through his old dry leather suspenders and interlock them over his rather consequential belly. In this pose he would stand and stare at some object for an interval longer than seemed absolutely necessary for discerning whatever it was he obviously felt needed discerning.

“What is all that muttering supposed to mean? You are fixing to lowball me, that is what I reckon. And see that sign right up there? Ya’ll say ‘We pay top’! But it sounds like you got things a mite topsy-turvy. Sounds like you mean to pay me bottom so’s you can sucker some bigger fool into paying you top. And what the smelly hell is a ‘botto’ anyway?” John Taylor Edgar tried to clue Eddie of Eddie’s Autos that he was not any old fool and Eddie of Eddie’s Autos should not expect to shake him down with ornery ways and obtuse shakes of his shiny fat head.

Well, John Taylor Edgar and Eddie of Eddie’s Autos went at it for hours, long and roundabout. It was a slow afternoon at Eddie’s Autos, which John Taylor Edgar figured was often the case. And John Taylor Edgar was not in much of a hurry to get anywhere down the road, seeing as Darlene was not likely to be chasing after him all too soon and he had nowhere special -and nowhere non-special, come to think of it- he needed to be.

Eventually they stopped cussing at each other. They paused to draw breath, lean back in a pair of slowly rusting chairs on the shady side of Eddie’s Autos, and down a pair of cold ones Eddie produced from a grimy top-load freezer hidden in plain sight in a dark dusty back corner of the dark dusty former shipping container now serving ignominiously as the Head Office for Eddie’s Autos. This grandiose statement the sign over the door proclaimed in faded and uneven brush strokes. John Taylor Edgar almost asked if the paint ran out while Eddie was scrawling the Head Office sign, or while he was splashing the word ‘bottom’ on the roadside sign.

Head Office – Eddie’s Autos. No mention that it was the only office for Eddie’s Autos. It could equally say Tail Office – Eddie’s Autos. One and Only Office – Eddie’s Autos. Or just plain ‘the office’. Small ‘t’, small ‘o’.

Eddie of Eddie’s Autos tilted his head and looked sidelong at John Taylor Edgar. An awkward grimacing motion, probably a sort of malformed grin, tried to crawl onto his droopy wrinkly face. It did not succeed on account of the flaccid and flabby smile-forming muscles being long out of practice, but it was clearly a different sort of expression for Eddie’s face and it clean stopped John Taylor Edgar right in the middle of his twelfth or fifteenth time of pointing out how much tread was left on those two Firestones on the front, which definitely added at least another $50 to the value of the old Buick, dang-it-all.

Eddie’s wrangling suddenly moved from autos to souls. John Taylor Edgar’s soul in particular, although neither Eddie nor John Taylor Edgar would have said so. Not at first. Eddie had not spent a couple of lifetimes hustling dollars from folks without picking up some tricks along the way. One of those tricks was the ability to ignore his culpability, aka his conscience. Perhaps aka his soul.

John Taylor Edgar was the first to introduce the concept. “Now let me get this idea straight in my head. Sounds like you are suggesting I sit here beside you each and every day, drumming up ways to squeeze an extra fifty or five hundred dollars out of folks who happen to need a barely running clunker and who happen to wander across the fine line separating Eddie’s Autos from the real world.”

He paused to swipe the back of his sleeve across the dust and sweat on the tip of his nose. “That fine line I point to is the one out there where the dust at the edge of the road starts to mix with the dust from the potholes at the end of the turnout into Eddie’s Autos. Once some poor misguided folks cross that mixed-up dusty line they enter into a soul-sucking world called used cars sales. And now you are suggesting I take up selling used cars too? You are suggesting I sell my soul?”

Eddie’s face accomplished what was for him the near impossible: a darn-near real looking grin suddenly and briefly splashed across it. “You-all plannin’ to twist that little knife you poked into my heart? Sell your soul? That is not the idea I have got in mind. I spent most a’ my lifetime building this here business, and I am offering to bring you in on it cheap. Nearly givin’ it over, just to know my life’s work will last beyond my own days.”
Eddie slumped forward. His arms flopped free in front of his legs, outside of the elbows brushing the insides of his folded knees. He now looked like a plump formless puppet whose strings were cut.

John Taylor Edgar glanced sidelong at him, trying to not react out of haste. He pushed a clump of his somewhat stringy blonde hair back across his shoulder, where it hung over his collar. Eddie remained folded for several minutes, until John Taylor Edgar finally spoke.

“Guess I did not realize the full weight of my words. Was not trying to dismiss your life’s work, or your internal feelings. Do not take it so bad. I do not mean it as bad as I might a’ spoke it.”

Eddie suddenly popped back upright. The once rare expression again quickly flitted onto his puffy face, and just as quickly disappeared. “Now, to be straight, I ain’t sold my soul. Never did any commerce with the devil, never had truck with any of Satan’s angels.”

“I did not mean to state that you did. Hell, Eddie, until this morning I never knew you a-tall. I certainly can not be pronouncing on the state of your soul or suggesting that you keep company with the devil. I was just simply and plainly spouting my reaction to the notion you are suggesting.”

Eddie laughed. It was a brief snorting sort of laugh, but sure seemed intended as an expression of amusement. Which is what John Taylor Edgar finally decided it was. “I know used car folks do not carry high credit in most folks minds. Sort of in the company of ambulance chasers and politicians and teevee preachers. But I can account for at least one used car man’s soul, and while it may be a fact that my soul is a bit bumped and bruised, I still got one. One day I will put it back on fully and wholly. From that day onward I will wear it. I will wear it to my grave and forevermore after that. What I am tryin’ to say is sometimes you got to stash your soul away while you get on with what you got to get on with, but you do not got to give it up for all eternity.”

He sat back and slapped his hands on his knees. His thighs responded by quivering in ways that would have been distressing to observe were they not clothed in baggy oversized khaki trousers.

Now, John Taylor Edgar Smith’s thinking did not always fire on all cylinders. And John Taylor Edgar Smith was as apt to tie a mental granny knot as a square knot. But this time, somewhere deep inside that grey mash in his skull, the knot firmed up neat and square and all cylinders fired in proper synchrony.

Eddie’s innocuously profound statement and John Taylor Edgar’s recent business dealings crossed paths in that grey mash which generally rested mostly dormant in his skull. Like old acquaintances whose paths cross unexpectedly, and who kind-of sort-of recognize some mostly forgotten commonality they may have shared at some forgotten point in the past, the two events circled back and stood toe to toe, belly to belly, nose to nose.

And, suddenly, recognition happened. A flash of insight, bolt of lightning, bulb going on, eureka moment happened. Recognition of the intersection of ideas occurred in John Taylor Edgar Smith’s head.

John Taylor Edgar’s revelation was simple yet profound. If you could stash your treasures at a pawnshop, if you could stash your soul on a shelf until once again it became useful and needed, why not stash your treasured soul at a pawnshop? And maybe pick up a different soul for your immediate needs? A soul pawnshop.

And thus was planted the seed from which John Taylor Edgar Smith harvested his eventual fortune.

-Your soul not working for you? Pawn it. Trade it for one that better suits.

-Have an immediate need for financial help? Unlock the hidden value in your high-quality soul. Pawn it.

-Wary of having no soul? Try out alternative souls until you find one that suits you.

-Souls do not wear out. They may fray around the edges, but they remain functional. As functional as a soul ever can be, at least. A used soul might fit the bill for you.

-Is your soul too constrictive, too tight? Trade it for a better fitting one.

-Is your family disowning you thanks to your pathological behaviour? Try a fresh new carefully tended soul.

The thoughts sprouted in John Taylor Edgar’s mind in a feverish frenzied rush. An idea, a big hairy audacious idea, popped into his skull. This was so unexpected -John Taylor Edgar Smith rarely experienced an original thought- that he wondered if he was hallucinating.

For several minutes John Taylor Edgar sat stock still, slumped forward, supported by his forearms crossed on his knees. He slowly pivoted his head towards Eddie. Eddie was alternately staring at John Taylor Edgar with a quizzical expression on his face and staring across the expanse of Eddie’s Autos to the distant hazy mountains. He slowly turned back to share Eddie’s gaze across the dust and dirt. John Taylor Edgar realized that Eddie thought he was seriously contemplating the soul-sucking offer.

But what John Taylor Edgar was contemplating was the audacious idea forming in his grey matter. He slowly realized that, crazy and ridiculous as it was, he was just about crazy and ridiculous enough to try it. For the second time in a week he took decisive action. It was a rare event. One of a scant number of times in his life that he actually acted rather than wait for an excuse not to. The actual number of times he previously undertook a real action was in fact a number that might comfortably be counted on the digits of both hands, no need to pull off his shoes and use his toes as well. And sitting there looking at the sheer madness of the idea was almost enough to convince him to sit back and let it pass. But he did not. He could not. For once he could not and did not.

John Taylor Edgar took the previously proffered offer from Eddie of Eddie’s Autos, Firestones be damned. Without further explanation about his sudden capitulation he stood, picked up the pile of crumpled bills sitting on the side counter, and shook Eddie’s hand.

He sauntered over to the Buick and popped open the trunk. He leaned in and dragged a worn duffel bag out of the depths of the old beast. He dropped the bag into the dust next to the bumper and spun on his heels towards Eddie. With a slow-motion pitch he underhanded the keys across the dry earth between himself and a surprised Eddie. Eddie caught them and John Taylor Edgar nodded once, then reached down and hefted the bag.

John Taylor Edgar walked to the line demarcating the real world from the Eddie’s Autos world. A hot dry wind pushed swirls of dust around his ankles. Across the road a tumbling sage skittered across the dry land, bound for nowhere but seemingly in a hurry to get there.

He stopped and looked up the road, bending forward and peering as far as he could see. He then looked down the road the other way just as far as he could see. He toed the dust and dirt mixing at the boundaries of the two worlds. He stood for a moment, staring across the road into the distance.

Finally he seemed satisfied with whatever he was contemplating. He spun to the right, shrugged the duffel bag strap onto his shoulder, and elbowed the bulk of the bag behind his back. He began trudging down the road like a man with a purpose. As he walked past the far corner of Eddie’s Autos he gave a backhand over-the-shoulder wave to Eddie. He knew Eddie saw it, for he could feel Eddie’s eyes boring into the back of his skull. He did not look back; did not need to. Souls were his future.

END