Wallace Ramsden was looking for something. He had been looking for it most of his adult life, except for a brief stint with the Coast Guard. He often mused privately that he probably could have found it then.
Every time he walked into a store looking (and smelling, he imagined, correctly) like he had no idea what he was doing, a friendly employee would spring to the rescue.
"Can I help you find something, sir?"
"Why yes, yes you can!" Wallace would reply, bubbling with elation. Today was his lucky day.
He was disappointed every time.
He thought he had found something under a table in a restaurant, but it turned out to be a napkin. He handed it to a waiter on the way out, grumbling.
When in their early childhood his daughters came into his room stuttering half-asleep about something under the bed, he leapt awake and grabbed a flashlight. He never found anything but monsters and bunched-up socks, and now that they were grown he didn't even find that.
His quest took him around the country. There were a few interesting things in the Chicago Greyhound terminal--that's where Wallace saw the sign.
NO SMOKING WITHIN 50 FEET, it bellowed in a stentorian red capital voice.
An Amish man--or a Mennonite, or a Luddite; Wallace wasn't sure--sat bearded, puffing on a pipe underneath. Maybe he was deaf.
Behind Wallace two elderly women gossipped about someone who was misusing church funds. He didn't listen too carefully, but nodded sympathetically with each cluck of disapproval.
The Chicago Greyhound terminal is also where Wallace fell in love. Her hair was red, or made red by some clever trick of bus station lighting. She stood bleary-eyed and pudgy in a line, clutching pillow and bag as only bus travellers do. Wallace felt his heart melt and seize with a pang of jealousy. He was jealous of the man whose open arms would greet her at the end of her uncomfortable journey, even if that man was her grandmother. Wallace had always wanted grandchildren. He and his wife, try as they might, had never been able to have any.
Wallace used to put chili on his hot dogs, but invariably some would end up on his shirt.
"You have something on your shirt."
"I do?!"
Eventually he decided the chili wasn't worth the trouble, and ate his hot dogs plain.
After traveling far and wide, finding only napkins, monsters and socks, Wallace decided to give up. He retired to a small beach community and spent his days fishing for perch, always harboring a glimmer of hope that one day he would catch something. But he never did.
When his health failed he moved in with his younger daughter, who treated him well and was always careful with her choice of words, not that he cared anymore. His was the big room upstairs, with a nice picture window and a shelf full of books he had always meant to read.
Wallace only read four of them.
On the last day of his life, he laid with his fifth book, nearly complete, with his daughter in a chair next to the bed. Over her shoulder, something caught Wallace's eye. The other had a cataract in it, otherwise it too would have been caught.
"Get out of my way."
"Don't be silly, Dad. You can't even walk."
"Watch me."
He leapt out of bed like he did in the good old days. Shuffling as fast as he could, he reached the spot he was looking for. There was something on the floor. Today was his lucky day.
Wallace Ramsden picked it up and dropped it in the wastebasket. He died with a smile on his face from ear to ear.
