The People in My Head: Gerald Danbaum

Gerald Danbaum was a door to door encyclopaedia salesman. He was successful enough that he could sustain himself, not enough that he could afford to settle down. The life of a travelling salesman is one of a shark, constant movement, because to slow down would mean exhausting all sales opportunities. Once someone has bought a set of encyclopaedias, that's pretty much it, they don't need another set. Not for a good number of years at least.

Gerald liked the lifestyle, the constant movement, the chance to see new places and new people. Especially new people. It was a fact widely acknowledged in the encyclopaedia sales community, but never commented on, that Gerald might well be singlehandedly responsible for at least one hundred and sixty divorces, seventy trial separations, and over ninety adoptions. That's not including the number of couples who kept the children he was responsible for fathering. Nobody knew how he managed it, he was an unassuming guy. The frustrated housewife stereotype was one that pretty much all the other salesmen knew was a lie, people were individuals, and the number of stories they shared amongst themselves at conventions was a testament to that. Some speculated that he had sold his soul in return for earthly pleasures, but being that the Devil had a sense of humour, he had been condemned to be a travelling encyclopaedia salesman. Others spoke of him as the ultimate salesman, able to sell himself to a customer as well as his books. Nobody could figure it out.

As he travelled, Gerald came across various other people in similar trades. He often would run across a woman named Sheila. She was a con artist, importing silk screened prints that had then been touched up by poor chinese villagers. She would sell them door to door as her own art, claiming to be fundraising for charities or for a show of her own. They had an on again off again relationship that consisted mainly of sharing motel rooms to cut down costs when they both happened to be in town. Sometimes they would not see each other for months, sometimes over a year, but their orbits always seemed to bring them back together. They never planned for a future together, rarely even discussed their own past history. Neither of them thought of it as fate, they were just in the same business and the world was not that big.

When Sheila made the mistake of returning to a town too soon after she had last been there, her arrest and trial were all over the news. Gerald saw it on the tiny black and white television in his motel room. He called the prison to try and speak to her, but was only allowed to leave her a message. The guard who wrote it down thought it cryptic and never passed it on, lest it be some coded message. So she never knew that he was thinking of her, even though he would never visit her. His sales itinerary was mapped out, and that was the path he followed.

When Sheila got out she married one of the prison guards and put her life of crime and perpetual motion behind her. Gerald never did. Movement was so much a part of his being that even his death kept him travelling. It had to happen one day after all. A husband came home from work early to discover Gerald in motion, and the shotgun blast blew him down into the couch as he tried to run from the house. They dumped the body in the river, and he was carried out to sea. Nobody ever found him, but he travelled on the currents for many years to come.