The Monger

By Merle Harton, Jr.

New Orleans. It was one of the mixed blocks in the Garden District, the blocks that are no longer all white. I had just parked my car on a side street, off Prytania, and started the walk to St. Charles Avenue. It was a hot day, almost the end of May, and I stopped for a moment to tie my shoes. They were big shoes, black brogues, with wing tips so wide they could fly me over the sidewalks like Mercury on speed. From their depths sprouted two yellow striped socks made of a nylon polyester rayon mix that made my feet sweat. I bent down, laying my clipboard off to the side. I didn't have to tie my shoes, but it gave me a chance to appear casual and like I belonged in this neighborhood. I had to. The Monger would be watching.

I finished my shoe tying, grabbed my clipboard, and stood up again. I must have been bent over for about ten minutes, because when I got tall again and started to walk I got dizzy and did a quick dance backwards and then went down with a hard crack. No one came to my aid and I lay there on the sidewalk for another few minutes before getting up, this time slower. I started walking again. The time was three thirty.

I rounded Prytania and St. Charles and walked briskly past a tall three story renovated Victorian with a wrought iron cornstalk fence along the front that looked as out of place as a zipper on a car door. Two oak trees past the Victorian, I stood in front of a tidy pink shotgun house with green wooden shutters clinging to the sides of a tall split glass window that stood as tall as the front door to the right of it. The door could have been any door in the French Quarter. Green, like the shutters, with a polished brass doorknob sitting atop a lock that could be picked by any kid with a 30 piece tool kit from Sears. But this was Uptown. And this was the house of The Monger.

I opened the latch on the chain link gate and walked up the brick path and then up the short concrete steps to the porch, a lonely wide stretch of green painted wood. The instant my foot touched the porch, one of the slim boards left its mooring and slapped me in the face. I tottered back, lost my footing on the steps, and landed on my back on the bricks. Struggling to my feet, dazed and sore, I checked my watch again. It was three forty five.

I picked my clipboard out of the grass, about ten feet away, and made my way back up the steps. The attack board had settled itself back into its hiding place on the porch. I stepped carefully, taking short steps, moving side to side, like a Brahmin in a cobra field, right up to the green door. The doorbell made a tinkling sound inside the house and I heard slow footsteps coming toward me. The door opened. A figure stood in the doorway. So this was The Monger.

"Good afternoon, sir." I gave him my biggest smile. I held the clipboard out in front of me. "How are you today?"

"What are you selling?" he asked. The Monger bought my act. He was shorter than I expected. His head was small, but shaped for thinking, and shiny bald, except for a few clumps of gray hair that clung to the sides, above two large ears. His etched brow was wide and his blue eyes set far apart on a narrow face. Beneath each eye was a hanging mass of wrinkles, suggesting sadness and guilt. A nose the size of an outfielder's throwing arm stared out at me. His mouth was small. The lips, so thin they could have been penciled on, twisted to the side and The Monger spoke again: "I haven't got all day. So what're you selling?"

"Well, sir, this is your lucky day. I'm not selling a thing. I'm with the ACME Research Company and we're in your area today conducting interviews for a survey commissioned by a consortium of clients seeking information on safety in the home and wherever people eat, sleep, shop and play." How I got all of that in one breath I will never know. But when you work undercover, you have to be prepared to make the act convincing. And I was a pro. I had to do it right. This man was no fool. He was The Monger.

"An interview? Hmm. I haven't been to an interview for thirty years. I used to be pretty good at it myself. My name's Johnny Cleaver." We shook hands through the doorway. "Hey, come on in," he said.

He backed away from the door and waved me in. The floors were wood, not parquetry but painted slats, like those on the front porch. I stepped inside cautiously, looking down, walking with wide slow steps, like a first lieutenant outside a Vietnamese hamlet.

"I got something for that jock itch," said Johnny Cleaver, a.k.a. The Monger, looking me up and down, over his shoulder.

"I'll be all right once I get to a chair," I answered.

"Have a seat here." He motioned me to a heavily padded black leatherette recliner in front of an oval black lacquered coffee table. On the other side of the table was a sofa, possibly a sofa bed, with a wide flower design printed on a heavy weave off white fabric. He settled himself down into the center of the sofa and then stretched out, propping his head up on one of three big square pillows lounging near the arm rest. I sank into the recliner and propped my clipboard on my knee.

"Now, what exactly would you like to know?" he asked.

"Well, Mr. Cleaver, tell me." I looked down at my clipboard and pulled a pencil from the inside pocket of my herring bone jacket. I started scribbling nothing in particular on the top sheet of blank paper in my lap. "What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word microwave oven?"

"A yuppie couple with the exploded remains of a dead kitten."

I knew it! This was indeed The Monger. But I just had to be sure. I had to get him to reveal himself to me. I said: "Are you familiar with the new Kitten Safe Microwave Oven, by Tao Kornung?"

"No—I'm not!" He sat up abruptly. Terror filled his wide eyes.

"Yes, it's the newest in a line of animal safe appliances designed to protect innocent people with money who haven't a clue as to how to operate today's modern machinery. Now, what's the first thing you think of when you hear the word carbonated beverages?"

"Why, um, syringes stuffed inside soda pop cans."

"Have you heard of the new Syringe Safe cans manufactured by Subway Aluminum for Popsie Cola Bottlers?"

"No. No, I haven't," said Johnny "The Monger" Cleaver who sat dejected on the edge of the sofa. I had him where I wanted him.

"Apples?" I asked.

"Razor blades."

"Halloween?"

"Apples with razor blades inside."

"Slides at water parks?"

"Razor blades," he said.

"I suppose, then, that you haven't heard that all razor blade manufacturers are planning to discontinue the distribution of single blade razors? And they expect to offer rewards and refunds on the return of all such blades sold in the past twenty years. Handsome rebates on the purchase of a new line of safety razors are also available."

"I don't believe it." He was standing now.

"Oh, but it's true."

"Impossible. You're just repeating a rumor. On the other hand, it can't be a rumor."

"And why not, may I ask?"

"Because I would know about it, that's why."

"Have you then heard that the dead body of Elvis has been positively identified?"

"Stop this! That's not true! I'd know about it if it were!"

"And just how is it you would know!" I was standing now. He glared at me. His hands trembled.

"Because, because—because I am THE MONGER!"

"AH HAH! So you admit it!"

"Yes, I admit it! Every major rumor in this country can be traced directly to me and my campaign to wake everyone up to the subtle dangers around them! I started small. Growing up in the fifties, I was the one who started the rumor about children locked in abandoned refrigerators. I alone was responsible for the spate of Hitler sightings and I also started the rumor about the truck driver who was driving along with his arm out the window—you remember, the one who had it severed by a passing vehicle and who drove for miles without realizing it. I almost gave up rumor mongering, when I turned to journalism. But I was no good at that and soon went back to mongering."

"Hey, how about snakes?" His thin lips became a smile. "Remember this one? A lady goes into the department store and tries on an imported fur jacket and feels pins sticking her in the back, only they're not pins but baby coral snakes, and she collapses and dies. Remember that? I'm proud of that one. How about the one about kids playing in the plastic balls in the hamburger restaurant's playground and getting bitten by water moccasins? That was mine, too. Oh, oh, but let's not forget my classic—"

"—Your classic?"

"Yeah, lest we forget. A baby alligator is flushed down the toilet and it grows up in the sewer system. That was mine. Really. They made a movie about it. And, oh, sure, I did the one about the yuppie couple who tried to dry out the little rain drenched kitten in the microwave and ended up blowing it to bits. That was gross. I was having a bad day when I thought that one up. It was about the same time I invented the word zit. But I sure had some fun with all those Elvis sightings. I tell you, some people are just plain stupid. But my tour de force has got to be the one about the missing son."

"Refresh my memory."

"Well, this woman's son—he's about twenty or twenty five—has been missing for over three days. It was not like him to be away that long without some word. She's worried and so checks with the police and they start looking for the young man, but discover nothing. Then, a few days later, he turns up as a John Doe in a major hospital. Turns out he had been mugged, robbed of his wallet and all identification, and left dead in an alley. The woman identifies her dead son at the hospital and the body is given over to a mortuary for burial preparations. At the wake—now get this—the mortician himself comes over to the grieving mother and offers his condolences and says, 'It's a terrible thing what happened to your son.' Of course, she thinks he's talking about the fatal mugging. But then he says, 'I've never seen anything like it in my entire career.' And she asks him what he means, and he says that when he prepared the body he found that all of the man's organs had been removed."

"The hospitals didn't like that one," I said, pushing the hairs down on the back of my neck.

"Well, now you know," said The Monger. "What happens next? I suppose you're going to take me in?"

"I have to. It's my job."

"May I go to the bathroom first?"

I looked him up and down, and then nodded. I followed him to the opposite end of the living room and stepped in front of him as he lunged toward a tall door. I entered the bathroom. A flimsy flower print curtain obscured a small high window's light into the dark space. I flipped the light switch and took a cautious look around the small room. The tub was classic white, Queen Anne style, with those ridiculous feet; an ugly oval shower curtain hung in the middle. The toilet and wall hung sink were clean but stained. Strewn all around the floor were piles of yellow newspapers, faded tabloids, and dog eared magazines.

"This is my reading room," he said, anticipating my question. "A man in my business has to stay on top of the latest news."

"I see that," I said. "Don't be long." I waved him into the bathroom and shut the door. I returned to the sofa and sat down, keeping an eye on the bathroom door. Soon my eyes were watering; I looked at my watch. It was four thirty.

Just then I heard the grunt of a small man trying to lift a window that had not been opened since the last time it was painted, and then the unmistakable sound of a short man climbing through a bathroom window. I sprinted for the door! It was locked. I thrust my shoulder against it! The door did not budge. My shoulder hurt. I tried the other shoulder, and this time the door gave way and I fell face down into a pile of old Reader's Digest magazines. I looked up from the floor and watched as a breeze blew aside the torn curtain, revealing the open window. The time was four forty two. The Monger was gone.

I stayed in the house a few minutes longer to look for clues. I studied his phone records and read his mail, and then left. There was nothing more for me in the house. The Monger would not return.

I interrogated the neighbors. For days I watched his street. But he was gone from the city. I would never find him again.

From time to time, new rumors surface—some ridiculous, some ugly—and people are once again shaken and dismayed as companies are maligned, the safety of their products questioned in the press, and as the famous dead walk again among the living, and small fears are let loose to terrorize the uncritical masses.

As for me, I do what I can to quell the rumors as they appear, but I have found no one who will believe me when I tell them that one man alone is responsible for these desultory eruptions of fear. It is like trying to get a dog to lie down in the back of a moving pickup truck. But then, if I had come back from the end of the rainbow, I would expect people to ask me for a glimpse of gold, too. The Monger remains free, and he continues to elude me.

I put my pipe in the ashtray and take a long drink of whiskey and try to remember how Capablanca would calculate the relative value of Knight and Bishop. Suddenly I shudder and look at the drink in my glass and I think surely that I had read or heard that a few people had died after drinking this brand, and then I am not sure and I am overcome by a kind of doubt that would make The Monger smile.

First published in Back Porch (Summer 1995)

The New Quaker (Fiction): "The Monger"
Copyright © 1994 Merle Harton, Jr.  All rights reserved
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