Padding For The Carpet King

Alex Little has been the carpet king of Ragsdale for nearly twenty years. On the day he finds himself standing on the sidewalk outside of Musgrove’s tattoo parlor he realizes that his life has been one of nearly unendurable sameness, and that the endless varieties of carpet—the berber, shag, indoor/outdoor, sculpted, woven polyester or natural fibers—have lost their enchantment.

He is dressed in tan slacks, a dark blazer, a patterned tie. These are the things he always wears, has always worn. But when he first strode into the Carpet Kingdom he had had a full head of hair and a much smaller waistline.

How has it happened, he wonders, that despite the rainbow of changing colors on the showroom floor, despite the luxury, variety and excitement he sends out into homes and businesses all over the city, he himself has remained colorless and dull?

He has raised children, been a good husband, been active in the local business associations and promoted his Carpet Kingdom until he received the status of a minor celebrity in this mid-sized town. Sometimes, in the showroom, he has truly felt like a king while his subjects looked to him for help in deciding the all-important question of what they will lay down upon the floors of their

homes, what will cushion their steps for the next ten years (for a carpet should never be made to serve any longer than that).

He helps them choose the carpets on which their babies will crawl, take their first steps, pose for prom pictures and celebrate college graduations, on which their clients will stand while deciding how much money to spend, or against their anxious patients will shuffle their feet while they sit waiting for their turn. A little bit of him is underfoot in the lives of half the people in town (the other half have unwisely chosen hardwood floors or done business with a succession of Iranian men operating a discount carpet mart out near the highway).

But the satisfaction this has given him has begun to wear thin. He doesn’t know quite when it happened. It grew upon him slowly, this feeling of discontent, so that at first he only noticed it every once in a while like an itch he couldn’t reach. But eventually it turned into a kind of an ache. While

the carpeting business is an new and challenging as the day he began, he discovers that he’s tired of the sameness of himself. He’s tired of the way he dresses every day, but having deviated very little from the same familiar route through his closet for nearly forty years, he can not now imagine how he might approach it differently.

Would he one day suddenly begin to wear denims instead of slacks? And then change his loafers to sneakers? Or perhaps heavy, industrial boots. Would he continue wearing his blazers or shed them in favor of simple t-shirts? Would he wear plain white or colors? Or shirts with slogans, and if so, what would they say? Or perhaps he could begin wearing leisure suits, as if at any moment

he might sprint out the door for a jog. He could wear western boots and fringed shirts and a large cowboy hat, or daredevil leather jumpsuits with rhinestones like Elvis.

The possibilities of color and combination are endless, too endless, too random. Carpeting the body, for Alex Little, is much like carpeting the home.

You make a sensible, practical and visually appealing choice and then you needn’t worry about it again. It is there, a fixed and solid thing that doesn’t change without a great deal of upheaval and disruption.

So it was no coincidence that the carpet king found himself outside of Musgrove’s Tattoo Parlor looking in the window at the various small designs Musgrove had painted on a plaque for display. But these small designs would not do at all. No, they were like throw rugs, tossed here and there about the body, making splotches of color, disrupting otherwise clean lines. A thing

ought to be done wholeheartedly if it is to be done at all and the carpet king has made up his mind. Under the carpet of the clothing will be the padding of a tapestry that hire the artist Musgrove, currently sitting on a stool in the dark interior and spitting tobacco juice into an empty beer can, to weave in enduring color and style on the canvas of Little’s own back—an Arthurian landscape complete with unicorns and fair maidens that stretches from shoulder to shoulder and from neck to hips. It is the padding after all that keeps the carpet and the floor from wearing each other thin in the everyday repetition of footsteps upon them both.

No, it was no coincidence that the carpet king found himself outside the tattoo parlor that day. No coincidence at all.