The Victim

[vinylawesome]

"A man name Kanzler, a pharmacist in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, is walking home on a Saturday night. He’s got the drug store’s receipts in his pocket. He is robbed by a masked man on foot.

A cop shows up at Kanzler’s home.

We soon learn that:

1.) The robber had quietly studied Kanzler’s daily habits.

2.) The robber earlier that night had hit a restaurant in a way that suggests he had studied the restaurant owner’s habits.

3.) The robber at that very minute was robbing an Armory/dance hall ticket booth in a way that suggests he had studied the dance hall’s operations.

The Robber Was A Scientist Of Sorts.

His amazing knack for rational thought was upsetting Gibbsville’s social order,

and no one seemed capable of stopping him.

It’s a Darwinian world, and this robber had the best cerebral cortex of all.

Then the cop while at Kanzler’s home gets a phone call from the station house.

The cop returns to the living room to tell Kanzler the news.

The third robbery, the one at the dance hall, had suddenly gone south.

The stick-up man, the cop says, “went out there to the Armory, and Ted Haggerty, he runs the dances, he was in the booth where they sell the tickets from. The ticket window was down, and he was getting the money ready to pay the orchestra.

Knock on the door, and I guess he thought it was the fellow from the orchestra.



He let him in, but it was the fellow with the gun.

But this time he wasn’t so smart.

They always figure it out wrong.

He told Haggerty to put the money in the satchel, and that was the last thing he ever said.


One, two, three, four.

Old Charley Paxton (a hard-drinking cop) was sitting there in the booth, half asleep most likely.

And he just took out his gun and he fired four straight shots and hit the guy with every one of them.

Old Charley Paxton, getting ready to be retired. You sure have to hand it to him.

Just quietly pulled out his .38 and one, two, three, four.

Guy was dead before he hit the floor.

Three in the body and one in the head.”
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For the most part; there is never any physical violence in a legitimate business.

But I’ve seen plenty of dreams, born in the most rational minds in all of of America, suddenly go belly up to the utter surprise of everyone.

Metaphorically speaking, O’Hara’s “one, two, three, four …

Three in the body and one in the head” reminds us what we can sometimes expect from our own plans.

Markets change, economies change, marketplaces change, platforms change...

Thus, sometimes plans need to change.


Don't be The Victim.



From: The Short Stories of John O’Hara.

"A former newspaper reporter who died in 1970, O’Hara was a master at compression. He often told the story largely through dialogue.

“The Victim,” published in 1964 in “The Saturday Evening Post,” is one of my favorites.

Source: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/city-beat/article41152245.html

 

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