The following story is absolutely true. I heard it from the friend of a friend who copied it from a napkin in a coffee shop. I have reproduced it here verbatim except where I copied it word-for-word:
Charlie Browne had left the coffee shop, but the kid at the counter told Franklin he could catch up to him if he hurried. Franklin was out the door and onto the sidewalk before the kid could finish his sentence. Franklin needed the interview with Charlie Browne. The editor had been clear: lose this one and he’d never write for the magazine again. Franklin saw his quarry in the next block on the sidewalk opposite. The man stood on one foot, the other raised behind him so his heel faced the sky. The great artist had stepped in something and was inspecting the bottom of his shoe.
Charlie Browne was pissed off that he’d been made to wait—and made to wait in a second-rate coffee shop that ground second-rate coffee beans brewed by second-rate baristas who made second-rate conversation. What a great fucking way to start a great fucking day. And then, just to make sure he got the message (that the gods were conspiring against him) he stepped in a great steaming pile of dog shit. Great. Just fucking great. He didn’t have anything to scrape the shit off his brand new Italian leather, so he dragged his sole across the pavement: three lines North/South, then two cross-hatches East/West, and a broad S to one side. With a final wipe on the curb, Charlie Browne hailed a cab. He apologized for the smell and said he’d make it up to the cabbie at the other end.
Franklin ran towards the cab, waving his arms and shouting. When the cab had disappeared, Franklin thought that if he squinted into the smog he could see his career dangling from a noose. He stood more or less where Charlie Browne had climbed into the cab, and he resolved not to cry, at least not in a public place. But as he hung his head, he opened his eyes, and there at his feet lay an impromptu Charlie Browne masterpiece. Franklin whipped out his camera and took a series of photos of the deft shoe strokes in shit. His editor might not send him packing after all.
When Franklin got back to the office, he ran off the best photo and presented it to Linus. Linus crumpled the photo and tossed it into Franklin’s face. He pointed to the door and told Franklin to use it in a permanent way. And that was that. Franklin stuffed the crumpled photo into his pocket and walked out into the street. He was determined not to get depressed, to carry on as if nothing had happened, to march onward into that bright and shining future which he knew belonged to him. He paused at a jewelry kiosk just beyond the hot dog stand and found a pair of earrings for Patty. May as well bring a smile to her face before he broke the news that he’d been fired.
The hipster at the kiosk handed back the change along with a tiny paper bag.
“You wouldn’t happen to have some tissue paper, would you? This is a gift and—you know.”
“Sorry, man, we had some, but it’s, like, gone.”
“Maybe I can improvise.”
Franklin pulled the crumpled photo from his pocket and flattened it on the counter, then slid the earrings onto the photo.
“Hey, man, whazzat?”
“It’s a picture I took this morning.”
“Looks like art.”
“It’s dog shit.”
“I like the way the lines intersect ‘n’ stuff.”
As Franklin and the hipster talked, a woman stepped up to the kiosk and looked at some of the necklaces. She was in her mid-thirties, high colour on her cheeks (not natural), with pouffy hair heaped on her head, towering, tottering, like the buildings all around them.
“You know who did that was Charlie Browne.”
“Charlie Browne?”
“Yeah. You heard of Charlie Browne?”
“The artist? Everybody’s heard of him.”
The woman snatched the earrings that Franklin had bought for Patty and she ran into the street. The hipster shouted Hey and Franklin bolted after her. Tires squealed. The woman swore at a cabbie. Franklin could hear the thudding of his heart. A bus rounded the corner and a sound followed like the sound of a melon dashed on the pavement. The woman vanished down an alley and Franklin lay dead on the sidewalk opposite.
The hipster stared at the dog-shit photo on his kiosk counter and wondered what kind of a man would be carrying a Charlie Browne original in his pocket. He slid the photo under the counter and pressed it between the pages of a book he was reading about how to be all that you can be.
Linus van Pelt came raging out of his building demanding to know what was all the noise keeping him from putting to bed the latest issue of his magazine. Then noticing Franklin’s corpse, he mused that, having just fired the poor boy, he wouldn’t have to pay survivor benefits to the widow. What was her name? Petra? Patty? Something like that. Or were they even married? Then noticing the blood spatter across the wall beside his front door, he remarked that it looked like art.
“Really and truly,” he said, “it reminds me of a piece I saw last month at the MoMA by—now who was it?—maybe Charlie Browne. It looks like a Charlie Browne original.”
Linus liked how the spatter hit the wall low and sprayed up. It was assertive. It was optimistic. It suggested a burst of imagination. Linus decided he would cut out the section of wall and prepare it for exhibit in the foyer (which used to be a lobby until they renovated it). Maybe, in next month’s issue, they could run Franklin’s obituary alongside a photo of his last great oeuvre. After that, they could auction it off and donate the proceeds to some charity or other. It didn’t matter what as long as they got a tax credit for it. He’d work an angle; he always did.
Linus approached the police who were investigating the scene and explained that he needed them to leave the wall intact—for aesthetic/spiritual reasons. Although the police didn’t know what he was talking about, they shrugged and said fine; they’d be done in a couple hours and then they’d release the wall to him.
That night, he went home and dreamt of all the ways he would leverage The Great Wall of Linus. At last he’d get his money’s worth out of that useless bastard named Franklin who was always showing up late to interviews and getting himself killed when he ran across the street.
During the night, the monitoring station for Lonestar Security Inc. roused Linus from dreams of art auctions and bidding wars. A nasal voice explained that the van Pelt building had been vandalized and security personnel were on the scene to ensure that no further damage was done. Linus raged to the scene where a security guard showed him the stretch of wall beside the front entrance.
“Goddam it,” he screamed.
Graffiti artists had covered the blood spatter with wild bubble letters and frog eyes and crystalline jim-jams stuck every which way.
“Now I ask you: Why?” Linus grabbed the guard by the lapels. “Why would anybody destroy a perfectly good work of art with shit like this? It’s an indignity. It sullies the memory of whatshisname.”
Linus van Pelt spent the next day negotiating with his insurer. By the end of the week, he held a cheque in the amount of seventy thousand dollars to compensate him for the loss of fine art. And Linus, being a prudent man, wasn’t about to allow his money to lay idle. He would invest it in something that would appreciate in value. Thumbing through the latest catalogue from his favourite auction house, his eyes settled on a striking piece: three lines North/South, two cross-hatches East/West, a broad S to one side, and a blob on what appeared to be a curb. A Charlie Browne original. And if Linus was lucky, he could have it for a song.