Ghost of a flea

The used store book guy would not take the four volumes of Margaret Atwood. He said that they never sold, except when school started. The students needed them at school. They then sold them at the end of the year, or sooner, as soon as possible. He could rhyme off the likely lesson plans of the local high schools and the likely weeks of the month when the unread rag stock pulp would reappear, unwanted, at his sales station. He scowled. No, said the bookseller of Guelph, he had never sold anything by Margaret Atwood to anyone just looking for a good read. No. It is not hard to realize that the popularity, the very existence, of Brand X is dependent upon the Red Fringe that lives, over paid and ability challenged, in the intestines of the body politic, the education bureaucracy. The witches, he called them, the witches.