The Newspaper Boy

by Harshvardhan

 

The newspaper boy would do his rounds, climbing up and down the stairs of thirty four buildings of three floors each, plugged in cheerfully to the early morning radio show on his phone. He would fold and stuff the papers neatly into all sorts of door flaps, latches and door handles. Nobody knew the headlines better than him, as he would gaze down at every paper while folding it. Ask him the headlines of any newspaper and he would rattle it off without missing a beat.

 One morning, the headlines on the local daily caught his attention. “Senior Citizen Killed After Brutal Assault By Milkman.” As he read the entire article, he felt sick. The coroner had put the time of death between 06:00 am to 06:30 am of the previous day, due to excessive bleeding. The police put the motive down to robbery. The milkman had been arrested, as one of the neighbors had heard the old man moaning and had spotted the milkman escaping with a sack.

The newspaper boy took out his earphones and angrily threw them away as realization dawned upon him. He would meet the milkman everyday as they reached the building in which the old man stayed, at about the same time. The previous day he had happily folded and stuck the newspaper into the handle of the open door of the old man’s apartment, without thinking twice. If only he hadn’t been listening to his radio, he would have heard the old man’s cries for help.