The Collected Stories of William Humphrey (34 page)

And that was the last we saw of him for about two hours, when, looking out the show window, I saw a wagon and team drawing up to the gas pumps, and driving them was John. I was showing a couple a car, but before those two made up their mind there would be three changes of model, so I turned them over to one of my assistants and went out.

“John!” I said. “Here, what's this? What have you done with that new car of yours?”

Well, it seemed that John's new car no go no more. John was disgusted with it. He seemed to expect me to give him that other one in replacement, the other yellow one. I said the warranty stopped just a little short of that, but let's have a look at his, chances were we could put it right if there was something the matter with it, get it going for him again. John, though, was really down on that car, never wanted to see it again, didn't even want to talk about it. Only very grudgingly did he consent to come with us in the wrecker and show us where he had left it.

What was keeping his car from going was a great big mean old tree in the way.

Taking notes on the scene were a couple of highway patrolmen, so while we towed in the wreck, John was taken down to the courthouse and charged with drunken driving, recklessness with an automobile, damage to public property (to get at the tree, he'd had to clip off a couple of the highway department's concrete fence posts), speeding, and if there had been such a thing as driver's licenses (there was later, of course, and it all but ruined the automobile business in Oklahoma for a time, especially the literacy test, but I wasn't hurt; on the contrary, I'd seen it coming and gotten out while the getting was good), why, I suppose they would have booked him for driving without any. As for the damage to his car, it looked a lot worse than it was. The front end was all smashed in, fenders and head lamps, bumper, grille, and the hood was sprung; but apart from the radiator and a bent fan and fan shaft, mechanically it was unharmed. For three hundred and fifty dollars—say five hundred—we could have it looking like new, almost.

But I never even got to quote him a figure before John started in again about wanting that other car, the one sitting on the showroom floor. His own, he refused even to come out and look at it. With that car John was finished. I was growing just a trifle impatient with trying to get it through that thick skull of his by sign language that cars weren't guaranteed against trees alongside the road, when John, pointing once again at the car on the floor, took from under his arm his parcel wrapped in newspaper, now considerably lightened, and put it in my hand.

It took me a minute to catch on, and when I did, I still didn't believe it. It's hard to credit foolishness, even when you've seen as much of it as I have. “You want to
buy
it, then?” I said. “Is that what you're saying? You want to
buy
that car?” There stood that savage without socks on his feet, wanting to buy his second Cadillac of the day!

What was more, he was ready to pay cash for it. No trade-in. He never even asked me to make him an offer on his other one. He could hardly wait for me to count the money. “Same,” he said. “Same.” Meaning it came to as much as he paid for his first car.

“That may be,” said I. “But the price ain't the same. This car here costs a little more than your other one. Because this one ain't never been rode by anybody, see?”

I figured he ought to have a good bit more money left than he had paid for his first car. That one had cost him forty-two hundred dollars, which, taken from nine thousand, left forty-eight hundred. Less twenty for wrecker service: forty-seven eighty. However, he had only forty-two hundred and eighty dollars on him. Where the other five hundred had gone didn't take three guesses. Fine or bail bond to those shysters down at the courthouse.

“Not enough,” I said. Not caring particularly for the look on his face, I gave Doyle the sign, and he came over and joined us.

“I give you,” said John, “my wagon and my team.”

Not his other car. I'm slow, as I say, when it comes to taking in foolishness of that depth, but now it dawned on me that as far as John was concerned that other car of his was dead. Having no value to him anymore, it had none that he could imagine for anybody else.

“I got me a wagon,” I said. “I got mules.”

“Good wagon,” said John. “Good mules.”

It wasn't a bad-looking team. Underfed, like all Indians' animals, but good stock. Not a bad-looking wagon, either.

“Wagons and teams not fetching much now,” I said. “Everybody like you, wants a car. Nobody wants a wagon and team.”

He just stood there, looking at me. I wondered what was going through that head. Nothing, it appeared.

Then Doyle spoke up and said, “How much does John need to have enough to buy him that yellow car?”

I said, figuring twenty-five dollars for the wagon and team and the harness, that would leave him still shy one hundred and fifty-two dollars and ninety-seven cents. “Make it a round hundred and fifty,” I said.

“You don't suppose,” said Doyle, “that we could allow John that for the wreck, do you? We ought to be able to strip a few spare parts off of it, oughtn't we?”

“Who are you working for,” I said, pulling a sour face, “me or John?”

Then, with as good grace as I could, I gave in.

“Come see what our friend John has gone and done with his new car.” It could not have been more than an hour later when Doyle Gilpin came in from giving a prospect a ride out in the country in our new demonstrator and said those words to me.

“Don't tell me,” I said.

“Just come see,” said Doyle.

I got up and followed. Doyle at the wheel, we drove out of town about five miles, being overtaken and passed by a siren car. We pulled up to where a line of cars alongside the road was already pulled up.

It was not a tree this time, it was a curve in the road, and he must have tried to take it at no less than a hundred, for the car had finally come to rest a good fifty yards in the field beyond and must have turned over no fewer than half a dozen complete turns. Alongside the wreck, where the impact had thrown him, lay John—by old General Phil Sheridan's definition, a very good Indian.

There being no hospital in our town, thus no ambulance, the corpse was removed via pickup truck, to be left until called for by family or friends at the local funeral parlor.

The body gone, the crowd left. I stayed studying the wreck until all were gone. I would never have believed you could smash up a car to look like that.

“Nothing to do with that one,” said Doyle, “but set a match to it.”

It was just what I was thinking myself. No point in leaving an ugly sight like that to disfigure the beauty of the landscape, and to scare away trade.

“You got one on you?” I said.

“One what?” said Doyle.

I gave him a cigar, put one in my own mouth.

“One match,” I said, waiting for a light.

And here now is the end of my story.

A little later in the day I was working at my desk when I had the feeling that somebody was watching me and looked up, and there standing in the doorway was this squaw. She was built like a sack of potatoes, and dressed like one, had a face the shape and the color of a deep-red potato. I hadn't heard her come in—you never do, they're as slinky as a cat and don't know that a door is for knocking on—but I felt she had been there for some time already before I noticed her, watching me out of those narrow, shiny black eyes.

“What can we do for you?” I said. For you never knew: tomorrow she might be a customer.

She never said anything.

I said, “It's around to the side there, if that's what's on your mind. Make yourself at home. It's free.”

She just stood there, never batting a lash.

“Can't speak a word of English, I bet, can you?” I said. And I tried a couple of words on her which proved she couldn't. Can you just imagine it, a full-grown woman, born and brought up in the United States of America, and too lazy or too dumb or just too plained damned contrary to learn to speak the language? What are you going to do with people like that, I ask you.

Doyle Gilpin came in from the shop.

I said to Doyle, “Minnie Ha Ha here looks like she would like to use the Ladies'. Show her where to find it, will you?”

She and Doyle talked until it commenced to get on my nerves. It don't take much of that grunting and hawking to do it.

“What's all the palaver about?” I said.

“This here,” said Doyle, “is Mrs. John. His squaw.”

“Well? What does she want?” I said.

“She says, can she have back the wagon and team?”

“Oh, she does, does she? Well, would you please just explain to Mrs. John there that I took that wagon and team in on a trade on an automobile. And you might say that with things as they are I allowed about twice as much for it as it's worth.”

More grunting, more hawking. “What's she jabbering about now?” I said.

“Says she needs it to take her man away in.”

“Well, hell, lend her a wagon and a damned team. Let her have them two we took in on Monday. They ought to just about make it to the graveyard.”

“She says she needs it to move with too. She's got to get off the place tomorrow so they can start drilling for the oil.”

“All right! Tell her she can borrow them for that too. Well, now what?”

“She says now that their land is gone, she ain't got no place to bury him in.”

That was when I blew the whistle. “What in the infernal hell,” I said, “has that got to do with me, I'd just like to know? Am I supposed to include a cemetery plot with every car one of these jokers buys from me?”

A Job of the Plains

I

T
HERE WAS
a man in the land of Oklahoma whose name was Dobbs; and this man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. And there were born to him three sons and four daughters. His substance also was one lank Jersey cow, a team of spavined mules, one razorback hog, and eight or ten mongrel hound pups. So that this man was about as well off as most everybody else in eastern Pushmataha County.

Now there came a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, “Whence comest thou?” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.” And the Lord said unto Satan, “Hast thou considered my servant Dobbs, that there is none like him in the earth, a blameless and upright man, one that fears God and escheweth evil?” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Dobbs fear God for nought? Hast Thou not made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou has blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth Thy hand now and touch all that he hath, and he will curse Thee to Thy face.”

There was actually no hedge but only a single strand of barbwire about all that Chester Dobbs had. The Devil was right, though, in saying that the Lord had blessed the work of Dobbs's hands that year (1929) and his substance had increased in the land. There had been a bumper cotton crop, Dobbs had ginned five bales, and—the reverse of what you could generally count on when the crop was good—the price was staying up. In fact it was rising by the day; so that instead of selling as soon as his was ginned, Dobbs, like everybody else that fall, put his bales in storage and borrowed from the bank to live on in the meantime, and sat back to wait for the best moment. At this rate it looked as if he might at last begin paying something on the principal of the mortgage which his old daddy had left as Dobbs's legacy. And in fifteen or twenty years' time he would own a piece of paper giving him sole and undisputed right, so long as he paid the taxes, to break his back plowing those fifty acres of stiff red clay.

Then the Lord said unto Satan, “Behold, all that he hath is in your power. Only upon himself do not put forth thy hand.” So Satan went forth out of the presence of the Lord.

“Well,” said Dobbs, when those five fat bales he had ginned stood in the shed running up a storage bill and you couldn't give the damned stuff away that fall, “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I might've knowed it was too good to ever come true. I guess I ain't alone in this.”

He had known bad years before—had hardly known anything else; and had instinctively protected himself against too great a disappointment by never fully believing in his own high hopes. Like the fellow in the story, he was not going to get what he thought he would for his cotton, but then he never thought he would. So he borrowed some more from the bank, and butchered the hog, and on that, and on his wife's canning, they got through the winter.

But instead of things getting better the next spring they got worse. Times were so bad that a new and longer word was needed: they were in a depression. Cotton, that a man had plowed and sown and chopped and picked and ginned, was going at a price to make your codsack shrink, and the grocer in town from whom Dobbs had had credit for twenty years picked this of all times to announce that he would have to have cash from now on, and would he please settle his bill within thirty days? He hated to ask it, but they were in a depression. “Ain't I in it too?” asked Dobbs. What was the world coming to when cotton wasn't worth nothing to nobody? For when he made his annual spring trip to the loan department of the bank and was told that not only could they not advance him anything more, but that his outstanding note, due in ninety days, would not be renewed, and Dobbs offered as collateral the other two of his bales on which they did not already hold a lien, the bank manager all but laughed in his face and said, “Haven't you folks out in the country heard yet? We're in a depression.”

Nevertheless, when the ground was dry enough that you could pull your foot out of it Dobbs plowed and planted more cotton. What else was a man to do? And though through the winter there had been many times when he thanked God for taking Ione's uterus after the birth of Emmagine, now he thanked Him for his big family. There was a range of just six years among them, one brace of twins being included in the number, and all were of an age to be of help around the place. The boys were broken to the plow, and the girls were learning, as plain girls did (might as well face it), to make up in the kitchen and around the house for what they lacked in looks. Levelheaded, affectionate, hard-working girls, the kind to really appreciate a home and make some man a good wife. And while boys went chasing after little dollfaces that couldn't boil water, they were left at home on the shelf. But, that's how it goes. Meanwhile they were a help to their mother. And when cotton-chopping time came they knew how to wield a hoe. And when cotton-picking time came all would pick.