Old Powder Man

by Joan Williams

  “I’m always interested in selling some dynamite,” Son said. “I’ll come on out now if nothing else’s going on.”

  “It’s mighty wet,” Mr. Rollins said.

  “Hell, I’ve never known the rain to hurt me yet,” Son said.

  “Well, come on then,” Mr. Rollins said.

  Son had a secondhand company car to use for business. He drove it to the club, where Mr. Rollins met him on the porch: to Lillian’s consternation when she heard, perishing to know what the club was like inside. They rounded the building to woods behind it, Mr. Rollins going ahead, his rubbers squeaking and squishing in and out of the soggy ground. Following, Son felt dampness penetrate the soles of his shoes.

  “I’m told any method but dynamite clearing will cost me more money,” Mr. Rollins said.

  “It’ll cost a whole lot more if you got to pay men to dig up trees, break up stumps and haul them away too,” Son said. “And it’ll take you three times as long.”

  Mr. Rollins said, “Suppose the windows in the club all get blown out, or something like that? The woods seem awfully close to me.”

  Son, looking back, suddenly felt exhilarated wondering about it himself and laughed beyond what the moment called for. “I can’t guarantee it, but I don’t expect to blast out any windows. Might shake you up a little now, though,” he said.

  “I guess we can stand that,” Mr. Rollins said. “How long do you think the work will take?”

  Son had no idea and guessed: “Two weeks.” He saw by the quick surprise on Mr. Rollins’ face he had said a time shorter than the others. “Of course, I’ll have to let you know definite when I’ve thought about it a little more,” he said.

  But Mr. Rollins was saying, “Two weeks.” He looked at the old woods in surprise as if, if they could disappear in two weeks, they could disappear instantly.

  “I’ll blow you those stumps into nice sized little pieces,” Son said. “Hauling them away will be as easy as feeding candy to a little boy.”

  “Dynamite’s the ticket, I guess,” Mr. Rollins said, and waving his hands in all directions like birds taking flight, he talked of fairways and hazards and greens. Coming out of the woods, he said, “You ever play golf, Mr. Wynn?”

  Son stopped in surprise, trying to imagine himself doing it. “Naw sir,” he said. “I guess I never have had time to play any games, except some craps.”

  “That’s something I’ve never tried,” Mr. Rollins said. “I understand there’s an agreement about the price of dynamite.”

  “Yes sir, the dynamite companies have always agreed to sell at the same price,” Son said.

  “I guess the estimates will differ in the amount of dynamite to be used and the time the work will take,” Mr. Rollins said. “I’ll look forward to your estimate next week with the others.” At Son’s car they shook hands, “I sure do appreciate your calling me,” Son said. “I’m going around the block and look at the woods from the other side. Don’t get anybody after me for trespassing now.”

  Mr. Rollins laughed and waved him on, surprised. He had decided against Son before he ever saw him, the other representatives having singly dropped a word of warning against him: he was too young and had no experience. But once Mr. Rollins had decided on a way of doing things, he could not change; having made a list of all the dynamite representatives in town, he could not rest until he had called them. He read over the list: Du Pont, Hercules, Michigan, American. Checking off the final name, he found he could not put it out of his mind as he intended. The young man had seemed too interested.

  Driving off, Son thought, Son-of-a-bitch, he couldn’t do it; he didn’t know how to do all the figuring involved. All his previous business had been men calling and telling him how much dynamite they wanted, not him telling them how much they needed. He turned the corner and drove close to the curb, peering into the woods. Behind him a driver came close, blew his horn and drove irritably around him. Another car stopped, the driver peered at the woods too, and finally drove on. Unaware of either, Son inched along, turned another corner, finally got out of the car and went up a rise and into the woods. His feet sank immediately into mud and he pulled them out one by one, with a noise like sinks being drained; he sought higher ground, tree roots, piles of dead foliage, though unavoidably he continued to slip into mud. For an hour the sun had been a bright cloud in a day full of grey ones. Now it came out and shone. Son was aware of the sun beyond the tree tops but in the woods it was a grey day still. He leaned against a tree, its bark crinkled, running in all directions like the lines in old ladies’ faces, and said, Pheww, telling himself he had to do it.

  He did not think about mud, knelt in it until dampness penetrated his heavy wool suit. Still, he remained, one knee delving further into the ground, his arm across the other, holding in his cupped hand a scoop of dirt. Balanced against his youth were the woods which had been here longer than he had the knowledge to dream of. He compared himself against the other men he knew; he was just a boy in the business compared to them, but he was willing to learn. He realized now that all the time he thought he had been just playing cards and shooting craps and drinking some whisky with those men he knew, he had been learning from their experiences, which was where they had gotten all their education, in the school of hard knocks. To the levee contractors, ditch and road builders, equipment salesmen he knew, dirt was more than something you walked on. It was something you depended on for your livelihood, the same as the weather and seasons. He had to know the kind of dirt he was dealing with, the same as in a business deal he had to know the kind of man he was dealing with: Tennessee and yellow clay shot easy, they told him, the same as black, rich gumbo; for crumbly, “crawfish” land, you figured in extra dynamite; if soil had too much sand, you couldn’t use dynamite at all.

  He stood, cleaning his hand against the wide flare of his pants, and began to walk as if he could learn dirt through the soles of his shoes; silently, the trees dripped rain. The oldest river man he knew, old Red Johnson, who had made more money than the rest of the fellows put together, claimed to have learned about levees by walking them, St. Louis to New Orleans, and most people believed him. Shoot by the lay of the land, Red had told him. Son remembered it, studying the trees. On some, buds were tightly furled and bright green, and he was sorry the little buds were never going to open, never going to be leaves, that the old trees would never know another spring.

  Mr. Rollins wanted clumps of trees left, harder than blowing the whole eighty acres sky high. Several times Son sifted dirt, wondering if it were light or heavy, sandy or clay and silt; he thought desperately of The Blaster’s Guide back in his office. “Blaster’s Bible would be a better title,” his predecessor had said, pointing it out. It was a small book with not much information; but it was the only book there was. Son had tried to commit parts of it to memory over the resistance of his untrained mind:

  Stumps in loose soil must be loaded more heavily than in stiff soil.

  A smaller quantity of explosives is required to blast a stump in soil of fine clay and silt material.

  Which was it? Son, walking to the car through a mist that had settled heavily with evening, realized for the first time how cold he was. The mist, touching him, turned wet; but on each cheek was the track of a single tear he had been unable to hold back. At the edge of the woods he picked up several rocks and chunked them at a far tree—chunked and chunked and chunked—cursing himself every time: “In sandy soil it pays to blast when the soil is wet.” Or was it dry?

  In the car, he turned on the heater but could not stop shaking. He drove away toward a pink tinge in the sky promising a clear day tomorrow. But it was almost dark when he parked at his office building. The building was deserted except for the cleaning women and Ulysses, the janitor, who took him up in the elevator. “Where you been?” Ulysses said. “You soakin’ wet.”

  “Hell, everywhere,” Son said.

  Ulysses opened the door, “I wait right here for you,” he said. “Take your time.”


  “I don’t know how long I’ll be. I’ll ring you up.”

  “Naw sir, I wait,” Ulysses said, settling down with a secret smile and later, below, the women had to fan out to include his job in theirs.

  Almost before the light was on, he had the right page:

  Stumps in loose, sandy soil must be loaded more heavily than those in firm, stiff soil.

  Twice, he banged his fist sharply on the wooden desk, “Don’t you ever forget it either, you s-o-b!” he said. Reading on, he underlined in red pencil much that had been underlined before, only now he was determined never to forget it and was so absorbed that when the telephone rang, he jumped.

  Lillian said, “I’ve called everywhere for you. Why didn’t you say you wouldn’t be home to supper?”

  “Who said I won’t be?” he said.

  “Are you crazy? It’s eight-thirty at night. I’ve had supper ready since six o’clock.”

  “Eight-thirty?” he said, astonished; not knowing how to apologize, he said it was business he was attending to and she ought to understand that.

  “How am I supposed to know?” she said. “I never know where you are. Who else’s there? Is that woman Scottie?”

  “Not anybody else is here. I don’t mix up any women with my business,” he said. “I’m doing some business,” and forgetting even who he was talking to, he hung up. He read on, but it suddenly seemed too cold in the office to stay. He was shivering and opened a drawer to take out a bottle of something to warm him up when he realized he could take the book home and read and he shut the drawer. He would not let anything interfere with his work.

  Going down, Ulysses said, “Something sure got you in a sweat tonight.”

  “Sweat?” Son said, and put up his freezing hand to discover his forehead was hot. He sure felt limp as a dishrag, was not even sure he would make it; maybe he should have had a little juice to fix him up after all, he thought, driving.

  Lillian was too startled by his appearance to complain further; she said, “Are you drunk?” came close to sniff, and said, “You must be sick.”

  He sat down and said, “There’s sure something got hold of me.”

  He went to bed and she brought him pork chops warmed, but the thought made him sick and she brought him soup which he ate, and later lost. His fever was high but he would not call the doctor, and to avoid contagion Lillian slept in the living room. It was late when she woke abruptly and even while she ran to his room, something else crashed over. He stood in the bed, rumpled as a child, one corner of the mattress pulled toward him. Pillows without cases were flung about the room; he jumped to the floor, pulling the mattress after him, saying, “Where is it?”

  “What, Frank?” Lillian said and stepped backward to the living room as he came forward, it seemed menacingly, but he said, “The book, the book.” He found it and went back to lie on the mattress, the book beneath him.

  Lillian said, “Frank, get up and help me put the mattress on the bed. You’ll freeze down there. You’ll die,” but he would not budge; at last, she brought blankets and covered him.

  He said, “I’m too tough to die,” and fell asleep, heavily, until morning.

  “Flu,” the doctor said. “Like everybody else in town.” The newspapers had warned for days the city seemed to have an epidemic. The doctor prescribed medicine, rest and fluids. “Stay in bed now, boy,” he said. “You got a case.”

  “Hell, flu,” Son said: anybody could beat that. But the amount of phlegm in his chest surprised him and shooting pains came and went. He slept, dreaming he had lost; the others were running through the woods, laughing back at him. He got up, took a slug of whisky before breakfast and another one afterward and said, Hell, he had that bug beat. It was the only way.

  He put aside pride and got out books he had kept hidden even from Lillian; he had felt silly, like a schoolboy, reading them; he spread them on the dining room table centered beneath a light fixture that seemed far away it was so small and flat against the ceiling, three pronged unshaded bulbs, similar to a pawnbroker’s insignia. He had two nickel school tablets and three books, Perfect Penmanship, The Salesman, and Modern Merchandising. They had been his texts in a night course he took in business school when they moved to Delton. He was proud to have taken it but not anxious to tell anyone; inevitably, it led to a discussion of what other education he had had. In the course a month had been devoted to each of six topics: “Building A Selling Personality,” “Aspects of the Selling Talk,” “Increasing the Average Sale,” “Making and Holding Customers,” “The Joy of Creative Selling,” and “Vital Sales Statistics”; the latter instructed him how to figure percentages, keep records, figure profits. One of the first problems had been: If Mr. A waits on 30,000 customers a year and sells $15,000 worth of merchandise and gets a salary of $1,500 a year what is his average sale? his cost per customer?

  In despair, the first night, he had written on his paper, I don’t know. But he had learned. Business and selling came to him naturally, making him regret more the education he had not had.

  Lillian hovered wonderingly about the table all day as he read, underlined, and wrote, mumbling to himself. He went to bed exhausted as soon as it was dark; afraid to touch the papers, Lillian bent over them to read headings; Trees Acres Sticks Per Stump; questions were beneath them: How many sticks of dynamite do I need? How many lengths of god dam fuse?

  In the morning, he began again. Lillian was washing lunch dishes and heard him take a drink. She saw him in the dining room, his clasped hands gripping his head, his head bent between his knees. She thought he was in pain and ran toward him. He raised his head and she saw the pain was in his eyes. Bound briefly together by mutual ignorance, they looked at one another as they seldom had. Lillian thought with regret there was nothing in the world she could give him. He did not need encouragement, sympathy or even love and did not lack courage. He needed someone to tell him how.

  “Frank,” she said. “You’ve got to get somebody to help you.”

  He rose in a fury. “If I weren’t the stupidest Goddamn son-of-a-bitch that ever …!” he said.

  She said, “Frank, I’m going to get somebody.”

  He said, “Who?”

  She was silent, unable to think of anyone; no one in the family knew any more than they. She thought of the bank teller who lived on the street. He would know figuring, but how could she invite him over to help her husband with his arithmetic? His wife would tell everybody on the block. Out of a reluctant mouth, she said, “What about one of your friends? That old man Johnson you think a lot of?”

  He went out and down the hall to the bathroom, banging on the walls saying, “Hell, oh hell.” But she had known by his face he had been considering it too. His fever was gone, and she slept in the room again. Long after he lay asleep, snoring, Lillian stared into the dark wishing she could change everything about them, past, present and future.

  Early, she was awakened by birds, returned for spring, making too much noise beyond the window; the bed was empty and light shone around the closed door to the dining room. Tiptoeing, she went to it quietly and opened it and he did not hear. He was surrounded by discarded paper, ashes and ash trays that were full. She looked at him helplessly, and suddenly he snapped his pencil in two, turned around and saw her. “Frank,” she said, “you’ve got to get somebody.” He cursed himself violently and after a moment, Lillian went back to bed.

  The second time she woke, he stood in the doorway. “Lillian, I’ve got to have something to eat,” he said. She got up thinking, I know how he’ll look when he’s old. Pale and tired, he stood caught in sunlight and bleached. He was pale and his hair looked white and he walked like an old man too, shambling, to the bathroom. On her way to the kitchen, Lillian looked at his meaningless papers, struck by the way he wrote, beautifully, in ornate, bold, slanting letters. On impulse, she opened Perfect Penmanship, and saw how meticulously he had learned. She did not feel compassion but pity and, afterward, told herself that had b
een the turning point: nobody could love a husband they pitied like that.

  After breakfast, he said in a half-shout, “Old man Red Johnson’s coming over here!” as if she might argue.

  From behind organdy curtains they watched the old man arrive, in a black Cadillac with a Negro chauffeur. On the sidewalk Red stood as frail, as brittle, as thin all over as a grasshopper. The old man was eighty and had made a million dollars twice, Son said, having lost it the first time. He had been to school only three days in his life and said those were to answer “present” for his brother when he was home with mumps. Most of his adult life had been lived in a tent on the levee; he had brought his wife to it and raised three children there. But when he made money, his wife wanted a house. He bought one of the city’s finest and she furnished it with authentic and spindly antiques. Red had to use the back door and could not put his feet on the footstools. One afternoon, looking out the window, Mrs. Johnson saw two Negro men erecting the old levee camp tent in the back yard. At that moment Red passed her carrying a few possessions and did not return to the house for ten years, except at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

  “Come on in, old man,” Son said, opening the door. “You want Shut-eye to put you on the couch?”

  The old man looked down at it, his eyes brimmed with tears as he laughed. “I wouldn’t never get up off of there,” he said. Shuteye helped him into a chair instead. Red walked leaning against Shut-eye’s shoulder, his feet coming ahead first.

  “Shut-eye, you want you a little something in the kitchen?” Son said.

  “Naw suh, I got to shine the car,” Shut-eye said. When he had gone, the old man laughed and again cried. “I just keep that car for Shut-eye,” he said.