Pioneer, Go Home!

by Richard Powell

  Mr. Endicott and said, "We're not starting in a very businesslike way."

  Mr. Endicott said, "Go on, George. Throw away your principles and call him Toby."

  George took a deep breath and said, "Now then, Toby, a bank has to have some kind of security for a loan. In other words, we have to be sure we will get our money back."

  "You can count on us paying it back, if nothing goes wrong."

  "Um. Yes. I see. But by security we mean something more than a mere promise. Take the land you're living on, for example. That might be acceptable security, if your title is good."

  "Oh, we don't have no title," I said. "It is state land and we're just squatting on it and we can't even put in a claim for a title for near about six months."

  George looked in that little tent again that he made with his fingers, and seen the news getting worse. "What," he said in a weak voice, "are the chances that you will get a title?"

  "They are pretty bad," I said. "Mr. King who is District Director of Public Improvements is real unhappy about us, and if he can find a way to get us off that land he will do it before you can say betterment project."

  There must have been a draft where George was setting because he done some shivering. "Really," he said. "After all. What next. Mr. Endicott, should I go on?"

  Mr. Endicott said, "George, I'll bet not a loan officer in the country has ever had an experience like this. Don't back away from it too quickly. It'll be something to tell your children, if you ever work up enough courage to get married."

  George said to me, "I don't suppose it's any use, but let's explore another field. Do you own any stocks or bonds?"

  "George," I said, "if you will tell me what they are, I'll give a look when I get back to the lean-to."

  "Let's forget stocks and bonds. Any mortgages, or insurance policies that have a loan value?"

  "We have not got around to buying none of them things."

  "Um. We might consider a chattel mortagage on your household goods, auto and other personal property, if the valuation is high enough."

  "Well," I said, "Pop sets a lot of store by that car of his and I would say it would bring anyway fifty dollars. It's right outside if you'd like to look."

  "I think we can pass that up. Do you or your father have any outside income of any kind, aside from what you earn selling bait and things at the bridge?"

  "Pop had Aid to Dependent Children for the twins," I said. "And I had Total Disability from the V.A. But Mr. King fixed it so them payments all stopped."

  "Is there any chance you could get those payments started up again?"

  George was looking so sad about us losing them payments that I wanted to cheer him up. "Don't give it a thought," I said. "The way Mr. King works, we won't never get nothing more, unless we pull out and go back to Jersey. But it don't bother us none although I take it kindly that you feel bad about it."

  "Mr. Endicott," George said in almost a whisper, "do you have anything to add to all this?"

  "Only one thing," Mr. Endicott said. "When I was fishing off his bridge last weekend, those Kwimper twins didn't want anybody catching what they look on as their private fish under the bridge. So the twins were swimming under the bridge swiping everybody's bait. Toby caught them at it and made them tell us they were sorry, and Toby offered to give us back all the money we had paid for bait. Those twins were the cutest little devils you ever saw. We almost died laughing."

  "Mr. Endicott," George said, and you couldn't hardly hear his voice now, "I don't see that what you said is very helpful."

  "Don't you, George?"

  "Mr. Endicott, if a man came in to prove he didn't have any tangible security for a loan, he couldn't have done a better job than our visitor has done."

  "George," Mr. Endicott said, "spoken like a true loan officer. Now let's forget tangible security and deal with intangibles."

  "Mr. Endicott," George said like he was almost begging for mercy, "I have no way of putting a dollar value on intangibles."

  "George," Mr. Endicott said, "I just want to find out if you really knew what you were doing, when you thought Toby was a bank robber and you tried to yell for help. Do you have it in you, or don't you?"

  George looked at him for a moment and all of a sudden his jaw set hard and he banged his fist on the desk and said, "Toby, this bank is about to lend you two thousand dollars." Then he swung around to Mr. Endicott and snapped, "And at our prime rate of only four and one-half percent interest, too. Like it or lump it!"

  Mr. Endicott grinned and said, "George, I like it. Of course I may have to fire you as loan officer and take you back on as a vice president, because I don't want you proving how brave you are with every borrower who comes in."

  I said, "I'm mighty grateful, Mr. Endicott, but I don't want to fool nobody. If we don't pay back that money, you got nothing to take off us but Pop's car, and you might have trouble shifting that from low into second because you got to know just the notch to put her in."

  "That's all right, Toby," Mr. Endicott said. "We're making what is called a character loan. We do that now and then, although probably not often enough for the good of our souls."

  So everything ended up fine, and Holly and Pop couldn't get over the way I handled things. But it warn't nothing much. When you want to get money from a bank all you need is either real good character or real bad character, and I reckon most folks have trouble because they come sort of in between.

  8

  FOR the next few weeks we was as busy as a dog with three cats to chase. We got some lumber off a feller taking down an old hotel in Gulf City, and he put us onto another feller that owned some pine land and didn't mind having it thinned out if you done it right and paid him twenty cents a foot. There was some big pines I wanted to use for pilings. I took down two and started loading twenty-foot lengths on top of Pop's car, but that car was ready to lie down and die on me, so I could only take one of them big pilings back at a time and it took too long that way so I ended up with only four big pilings and the rest small.

  We built a twenty by fifteen shack on pilings, and maybe it warn't no model housing facility like Mr. King had talked about, but we could live in ours and nobody could live in his because the government hadn't got it built. We tacked on a front porch where we could eat, and a back porch for a kitchen with wooden flaps you could let down to keep rain out but let air in. We sunk the pilings by buying an old motor and hooking it up to a pump, and digging through the shell and working the pilings down the rest of the way with a jet of water. The pilings for the shack was on the thin side, on account of Pop

  swiped my four big pilings that I cut first, and whenever a squall come on you could feel the shack sway, but it warn't nothing more than you would get in a boat and a lot less jerky. Anyway when I got time I would get four more big pilings and sink them beside the lighter ones and tie them into the shack, and that would take care of the sway.

  What happened about the four big pilings I brung first was this. One of the finest things about traveling, Pop said, was the rest rooms in the filling stations you stopped at. Back home none of us Kwimpers had rest rooms like you get in filling stations but just one or two holers back in the woods, and when the skeeters was around you would not call them rest rooms but maybe unrest rooms. So Pop wanted the finest rest room a person ever had, and he took them four big pilings for it because he said the first thing a man wants in a rest room is the feel of something solid that he can brace against if he wants.

  It is not often Pop gets wound up about something he has to sweat over, so we give him a free hand, and he done a scientific job. He visited around the filling stations in Gulf City and checked what they had. Pop is handy with tools when they don't remind him it has been a long time between naps, and he built the rest room all by himself and it ended up a place you would want to show off to your friends. Pop wouldn't settle for anything less than the real tiling, and he picked up second-hand four of them johns that don't have their own tanks but flush when you
get up off the seat. He got a big cypress water tank that somebody in Gulf City had used to catch rain water before they had city water, and Pop put that up next to the rest room and hooked it into them johns, and hooked up that old motor so we could pump the tank full of salt water whenever we needed. Pop even got some old soil pipe and laid an outfall across the beach and a ways out into the water.

  There was only one thing about that rest room you might say was unusual. Pop warn't too good of a plumber and he got them pipes from the water tank sort of scrambled. I don't mean to say they didn't work good. You might say they worked too good. When a person got up off one seat, all them johns flushed at once, and I mean there was a lot of water flying around and a person who didn't jump up at the same time as the first person might get up sooner than he expected. It was all right when just two people was in one side or the other of the rest room, because one of them could say "Ready" and the other could say "Go" and they could both leap off at once. But you couldn't do that when folks was in different sides of the rest room with the wall between, and now and then somebody would get caught short and near about come up through the roof.

  Well, it warn't really nothing to worry about and it added a little liveliness to the place. When some of the fellers that come around regular to fish caught onto it, they had a high old time with fellers that was coming around for the first time. It give them twins a way to let off high spirits, too. You didn't want to go in there and set and think awhile if them twins seen you, because them little imps would sneak in the other side and have you off there like a dog routing out a partridge, and afterward you knowed why folks talk about a dog flushing a partridge.

  We put in our dock, and bought four old rowboats and fixed them up, and picked up some second-hand out-boards. We didn't have no more rushes of business like the tarpon brung, but there was always some folks dropping by for bait and rowboats and coffee and sandwiches, and we was beginning to clear up to thirty dollars a week. This was only the summer, too, and we could look for a lot more business when the tourists started coming in the late fall.

  A real nice thing happened around the end of June. A middle-aged feller and his wife, that was named Jenkins and come from Illinois, stopped by and asked could they pull their car and trailer off the road and stay the night, and we said sure. One thing led to another after that, and the Jenkinses asked if it was all right if they stayed on and of course it was fine with us. We offered them some of the land beside us but they liked the other side of the road next to the bridge, even though they only had about fifteen feet of fill over there that the state didn't own. We helped them build a platform for their trailer. They had some money from selling a store up in Illinois and was looking for a place to settle down. They was real clever at making jewelry out of different kinds of shells, and they begun a little business across the road from us.

  Early in July we had a visitor we could have done without. Things was quiet that afternoon, and I had been taking a swim off the bridge and was setting on the bridge rail near our shack to dry off. Two cars come along from Gulf City and pulled off the road just past me and in front of our place. One was a Department of Public Improvements car, and Mr. King got out of it. The other was a two-tone coupe and a girl got out of it. At first look you would say she was a plain girl that taught fourth grade somewhere and didn't never make the principal think of reasons why she should stay after classes and talk to him about why Johnny warn't doing well. She had on a dark skirt and a white blouse that buttoned up to the neck. She had pulled her yellow hair straight back and rolled it up in a braid like it better not give her no nonsense about curling or blowing around in the wind. If she had let it go it might not have looked bad, because any yellow hair will come alive if you let the light get into it. She wore glasses with more tortoise shell on the rims than you would think even a tortoise would want to carry around.

  Well, you give her a second look and you would still say she was a plain girl. You give her a third and fourth look and come out the same way. Then you begin to wonder why you are giving this plain girl so many looks. Maybe there was something about the way she moved. You would know what I mean if you ever watched a cat sleeping prim as you please all day and then at night get up and stretch and go slipping off into the dark, and that is not the same cat you had setting around during the day.

  Mr. King and the girl was so close I could hear what they was saying, and it warn't wrong to listen because Mr. King knowed I was setting on the rail and didn't care if I heard or not. He said, "Just look at that mess, Alicia. There's a perfect example of slum formation in full swing."

  "They look quite settled and permanent, don't they?" the girl said. She had a low voice, with the purr in it a cat has when it comes up to your ankles and wonders should it wind around them or hone its claws on them. "They've spent some money here. I thought you said they didn't have any."

  "The damn bank lent them some money. It's amazing how often you find banks working against the government. That bank is encouraging a festering sore right in the middle of the finest betterment project we've ever had. I don't mind telling you we've been hoping for matching funds from the Federal government. But they won't touch a project that's been messed up like this one.

  "Well, Arthur," she said, "I assume that you're hoping I'll do something."

  "You're county welfare supervisor, aren't you? You must know a dozen ways to stop this sort of thing."

  "On the surface, it doesn't look too dirty."

  "I thought you welfare people looked below the surface. Where are these people getting drinking water? From a hole in the ground, that's where! What about sewage and sanitation? They just let it go right out into the bay."

  "At Gulf City I believe we're still using the Gulf." "Yes but we're building a settlement basin and treatment plant, and you don't see anything like that here."

  "Well, no," she said. "I suppose it would only cost them a million dollars."

  "I hate to say it, Alicia, but this isn't the sort of coordination that Public Improvements expects from Public Welfare. Look at those two little brats running around almost bare."

  "Cute, aren't they?"

  "What has cute to do with it? I'll bet they're not going to school, either."

  "Probably you're right, Arthur. Because after all, it is summer."

  "You're just playing with me, Alicia. You know perfectly well you can find things wrong here. All you have to do is take a positive attitude instead of this negative one."

  "You always try to rush me," she said. "I like to go at things in my own way. To start with, I'd like to meet some of these people."

  Mr. King jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "One of them is sitting on that bridge rail right back of us, listening to every word we say."

  "That wasn't very diplomatic of us, Arthur."

  "The hell with diplomacy. His I.Q. can't be more than seventy and I'd be surprised if he understands more than every other word."

  The girl turned and looked me up and down, and said, "His I.Q. may only be seventy but that body of his ought to get a genius rating." "Oh, I admit he's a big brute. Want to meet him?"

  "Yes, I think I do."

  Mr. King brung her up to me, and said, "Kwimper, this is Miss Alicia Claypoole. She's County Welfare Supervisor, and if she ever goes to work here she'll find it's a full-time job."

  Miss Claypoole said, "How do you do. Did Arthur say your name is Kwimper?"

  "Yes ma'am," I said. "Toby Kwimper."

  "There's something familiar about that name," she said.

  "What on earth," Mr. King said, "can be familiar about the name of a bunch of Pineys from the back woods of South Jersey?"

  "Jersey, did you say?" Miss Claypoole asked, starting to get excited. "Did you say the pine woods of South Jersey?"

  "That's right, isn't it, Kwimper?" Mr. King said.

  Yes ma am.

  "It can't be," she said, catching her breath. "It would be too much to hope for. Now tell me honestly. Are you really o
ne of the Kwimpers of Cranberry County?"

  I got down off the rail and scuffled around a bit and said, "Well, ma'am, I don't want to take on big about it, but that's us all right."

  Mr. King said, "What the hell is all this about?"

  "Oh, Arthur!" she said, grabbing him by the arm. "You don't know what you've done for me! You've brought me to an enclave of Cranberry County Kwimpers! I can't thank you enough."

  "Well," Mr. King said, "I thought only the Kwimpers were crazy around here but they seem to have company."

  She cried, "Oh Arthur, you're just a planned economy man or you'd know about things like this. Why, this is the answer to a social scientist's prayer! Haven't you ever heard of the Jukes family? Or of the Kalikaks? Families that settled in one place and intermarried and had nothing to do with the outside world and offer the most fascinating study in genes and heredity? Why, they're famous! But the Kwimpers of Cranberry County are simply legendary! Compared to them, the Jukeses and the Kalikaks were globe-trotters. The Kwimpers never used to leave Cranberry County. They have never let anybody study them. What an opportunity! Here I am with just a piddling little M.A. to my name and I get a perfect subject for a Ph.D. thesis handed to me!"

  "Now wait, now wait," Mr. King said, looking nervous. "You couldn't do a job like that overnight."

  "Of course not. It might take months of depth interviews and tests with Rorschach ink blots and Szondi pictures. Then I'd have to do associational tests—you know, sentence completion and word association."

  "How can you do all that with these Kwimpers back in New Jersey and you down here?"

  "I couldn't, of course. So naturally we can't let them leave."

  If you ever seen a person start finding out he has been setting on a nest of fire ants, you would know how Mr. King looked. "Alicia," he said, "you can't do this to me!"

  "Be sensible, Arthur. You can't show me a map of buried treasure and tell me to light a fire with it."

  "You're not going to get away with it. I'll get rid of this bunch somehow."