Never Use a Chicken and Other Stories

by Jim Newell

  Cornelius Henderson Smith turned around, a smile on his face, and looked directly at his wife. She didn’t deny him. She didn’t say anything more incriminating. She didn’t say anything at all. Dee just quietly fainted in a great heap of surprise.

  Her new battery, their new cars and Murphy’s Cadillac will have to wait a couple of years.

  Sons of Belial

  When night

  Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

  Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

  John Milton, Paradise Lost

  I guess nobody would be surprised to be told that night people are different from day people. Night people know they’re different from the day variety because they don’t really feel alive until after the sun goes down. They also know that trying to survive in a world organized for day people is hard on the nervous system. A husband night person hearing his wife shouting every day to get up and get to work is sufficient all by itself to give him ulcers. Wife night people know that the task of trying every morning to get themselves and a houseful of “night people who must be out and about” started is not only the next thing to impossible but also makes their mothers-in-law and the kids’ teachers declare to anyone who will listen that they are unfit to be mothers.

  Having told you all that and knowing you are nodding your head in agreement, let me hear your reaction to my problem. I am just the opposite of what I’ve been telling you. I am a daytime person forced to work at night. I want to sleep at night. I want to quit work at four or five o’clock in the afternoon, have a drink and dinner, watch some TV and go to bed after the late news. My life is not organized that way. Jay Leno is just a name I read in the papers. I’m never home to watch his program. Night baseball? I pass the park on my way to work, although I have been known to stop for a while at the parking lots in the vicinity.

  I make my living as a burglar. It’s a pretty good living, a little risky sometimes, but no more than driving an eighteen wheeler on the highway or being a fireman. I get along. There’s a bank account that is not too shabby, and enough comes in to meet the mortgage payments. There’s no medical insurance or pension plan; there’s no income tax, either, but the hours are terrible. I have a tough time trying to sleep during the daytime, and once in a while, on the job, I want nothing more than to lie down and go to sleep. It’s almost like being a left-handed golfer trying to play with right-hand clubs.

  Oh sure, I could stop being a burglar and get a regular daytime job. If you believe that, then you will also buy the bridge that crosses the river downtown! How could I get a job in these days of high unemployment for unskilled workers when I have never done anything except be a burglar? Who would hire me? Where would I get a reference? Would any sane employer let me handle money? Would I be allowed into a stock room? Could I be bonded? I don’t have any experience working at an honest job. I did one time think about looking for work as a night watchman so I could have the best of both worlds, able to have a regular job with pension benefits and able to sleep at night at the same time, but the pay was nowhere near to what I can get for the work I do now.

  So I am a burglar, a daytime person trapped in a night-time line of work, and it’s Hell. Here’s just one example of the problems a burglar has to face when he’s trying to make a living. Let me tell you about my experience one night last week.

  I was in this house over on the west side. (It was the second place I had been that night. The other stop was a quick visit to a house left open while the family was out for the evening and I had got their late model TV out the back door and into my van before anybody noticed.) Anyway, this second place was a ritzy kind of place with a big lawn, hedge and stone wall, paved driveway, swimming pool, patio, couple of cars in the open garage. I should have known before I went into the place that there would be problems. I mean there was no dog, the doors were not locked, there were no outside lights. The house was sitting there inviting me to come in. I should have known, if I had been awake enough to be thinking, that people who are that dumb are going to cause trouble for a burglar.

  Before I went into the house, I stopped and looked through the cars. You never know what you might find lying around in a car. In this case I found the ownership permit for each car in the unlocked glove boxes. That’s worth a couple of fifties from a guy I know. He buys hot cars and uses stolen permits to forge new ownership certificates so he can sell the vehicles once they’re painted. Good beginning, I thought.

  On the patio beside the swimming pool I could see a woman’s purse on the table under the sun umbrella. When I looked inside the wallet in the purse, I counted out about $70 and found a couple of credit cards. I could use each card at least once before throwing it away so things were still looking good. I decided to go in through the sliding doors off the patio because they were obviously open. I think it was about 1:30 or so when I began that job. So far, I wasn’t worrying about trouble from this visit, either. That shows you that I must have been tired and wasn’t thinking clearly.

  The house was like so many built these days, standard in the way they are laid out and in the way they are furnished, too. You go into one, you go into them all. A blind man could find his way around without too much effort. So I stepped into the family room and stood against the wall getting my bearings, starting to think again. I was listening for any unusual noises. I wanted to know whether I had misjudged the family’s apparent lack of care for their belongings. There was no sound, no dog, no late night TV, no stereo. Everything seemed quiet and normal, whatever normal is for such people.

  Just as I was ready to begin looking around for things I could pack into the van I had parked at the end of the driveway, I heard footsteps in one of the bedrooms down the hall. I wear dark clothes on the job hoping to blend in with the shadows, so I froze against the wall and waited to see if it was just somebody going to the bathroom. Somebody was, a little chubby guy, probably 45 or 50, obviously one of those people who don’t wear pajamas. He didn’t turn on any lights so when the bathroom door shut, I ducked down behind the sofa and waited for him to go back to bed.

  He didn’t.

  The man came into the family room and sat down on that sofa, the only sofa in the room, the one I was sitting behind. “Herbie,” I asked myself, “why would this guy get insomnia the night I hit his house?” That was while I was sitting on the floor behind the sofa trying to massage the cramp in my left leg. At least he hadn’t turned on any lights. He sat there about ten minutes and I was about to check to see whether he had gone to sleep when I heard another set of footsteps coming from the bedroom. This time they belonged to a woman.

  “George, you out there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the matter, dear? Can’t you sleep?”

  “I was asleep. Got up to go to the john and came out here to think for a while.”

  “Can I help you think?” The voice had changed to a cutesy little voice, with overtones. A lamp went on and I figured I was in trouble for sure.

  “Oh, there you are. I couldn’t see you.” The light went off.

  Safe again.

  “You couldn’t see anything without your glasses.”

  That was a line I was happy to hear, but I wouldn’t have placed bets on the truth of it if she had looked behind the sofa that was now holding both of them and hiding one of me. I began looking for a way to get out of that room, assuming I could get rid of the cramp in the calf of my left leg.

  “You oughta have some clothes on, George. What if Mother comes out here.”

  George just grunted. By the sound of the grunt, her mother was not his closest friend. I was on his side. That family room already held two more people than it needed, so far as I was concerned. I had also just decided there was no way I could get out of the room unnoticed because the open area to the next room, probably the kitchen, was well within the view of anybody sitting on the sofa.

  “What are you thinking about out here that you couldn’t think about in bed? “The cut
esy voice had become an invitational coo. I could be settling in for a long night.

  “Nothin’. I coulda’ been thinking there. I dunno. Just sat down here and my mind started turning over what to do with the money.”

  He had just said the magic word. The cramp in my leg disappeared and my mind came fully awake.

  “Didn’t you leave it on the dresser?”

  “Uh-huh. That wasn’t what I meant. I meant tomorrow or whenever. If we start spending it, people are going to wonder where we got it. When people wonder, that means they’re asking questions.”

  “Well you got it to pay off the debts, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. That’s a problem, too. If I start paying off a thousand here, five thousand there with cash, somebody’s going to tell somebody else, and especially this close after a bank hold-up, somebody’s going to think it’s a little strange.”

  My brain clicked in. I was remembering the robbery at a trust company at one of the malls the day before. I didn’t remember which trust company.

  “Well nobody’s going to connect you with a bank robbery, George. Accountants usually have better ways to rob their clients.”

  She giggled. It was a nice goofy giggle. I was remembering the radio said about twenty grand was taken. It was that much because the next day was a holiday. See! People who work nights don’t get to have holidays! Lots of people had been shopping the afternoon of the robbery so stores were making early cash deposits.

  “That’s not funny, Ginger.” George didn’t sound too happy. “I got twenty-two thousand dollars and I can’t do anything with it, not even deposit it in the bank, because I can’t account for it.”

  Holy smokes! I had wandered into the house of the bank robber. Twenty-two thousand, and he had left it sitting on the dresser in his bedroom.

  “I have an idea, George. “Her voice was soft and caressing. I thought I would like to see Ginger. I was even making bets with myself that I could guess why this accountant had got so far into debt that he had to do such a non-conservative accountant thing as to rob a bank. I stay away from that kind of thing, myself. Robbing banks, I mean.

  “Yeah?” He didn’t sound terribly interested. “What’s your idea?”

  “We could open a whole bunch of bank accounts in a whole bunch of banks. A thousand in one, two or three thousand in another. We could use several names and after a while start taking the money out and deposit it into one big account as though it was payment for fees or something.”

  There was silence from the sofa, although I could sense that somebody was moving from one end toward the other.

  “George?”

  The tone of her voice told me who had moved. He wasn’t going to hold out too long.

  “Yeah, honey. That doesn’t sound too bad. Yeah. Good idea. Yeah. That just might work. If I can stall the bank off for another week or so. Maybe I could make a small payment, fifteen hundred or something, and give them a firm promise of another thousand in a week’s time.”

  “Sure, sweetie. When they see that you can meet those promises, they’ll wait for the rest.”

  “Ginger, I love you. You have a real good head.”

  “The rest isn’t too bad either.” A nightie came over the back of the sofa and draped itself across my shoulders. “Is it, George?”

  The talk got predictably silly after that but I didn’t listen to the words. I knew where the conversation was going to lead and I was busy thinking about that twenty-two thousand bucks in the bedroom. I was also getting sleepy again. It’s awful being the right kind of person at the wrong time of day. Or night. I came awake again when the sofa began to move. My first thought was why didn’t they go back to bed for that kind of thing. Then I really woke up and put my mind in gear.

  “It’s your chance, dummy,” I scolded myself. “Come on, Herbie. Get going.”

  I got going. I also hoped Ginger kept her eyes closed because her head was away from the archway to the kitchen. Before I could think myself out of action I was in the kitchen heading for the other door to the living room and out into the hall leading to the bedroom. I hoped the floor didn’t squeak because I was in too big a hurry to be careful. I could hear the commotion on the sofa but I was too busy to look at that, either. Finding the money took about a minute and a half. It was in a nylon roll bag, just lying on the dresser partly under a white shirt George had thrown across it. Now, how would I get out?

  I was standing in the doorway of the bedroom considering that little problem when the door to my left opened and an older woman walked out. She obviously didn’t sleep in the nude. She was even wearing something over her hair. Ginger’s mother wasn’t looking toward me. She was heading toward the family room and her mouth was about to give me a way to get out of that house.

  “What’s going on out here? Ginger, haven’t you got any more sense than.... George! Ginger! No, no, don’t get up! I mean ...”

  I walked out behind her. I was still wearing the nightie that had been tossed over the back of the sofa onto what was supposed to have been the floor but landed on me.

  “Good night, George,” I said. “Ladies.”

  I kept on walking through the still-open sliding doors to the patio. I tossed the nightie in the direction of the pool. I was wishing I could see what was going on behind me. I heard a scream from the old lady and a yell from Ginger. Nothing from George.

  “Who’s he?” That was Ginger.

  “Stop that man! He must be a burglar!” That was mother.

  “George!” Ginger again. “Go after him!”

  George said what I was counting on him to say. “With no clothes on? You kidding?” Good old conservative George, the accountant.

  Then I was out of earshot and had cut in the afterburners, running for the van. I was gone before poor George found his pants, or realized that the money was gone, whichever came first. I had no trouble looking after the money. That’s the trouble with accountants. They’re too careful. I even took the next couple of nights off and slept eight solid hours each night in my own bed. In the dark. Day people in night jobs have to take every available opportunity to lead a normal life.

  Fred Versus the Government

  I have an acquaintance whose name is not Fred Smith, but that’s what I am going to call him here. You will understand why I don’t want to use his real name as you read on. Fred is unique. True, we are all unique in that we are each different individuals, but if it is possible to be so, Fred can by all standards be considered more unique than anyone. If he were a circle, he would be more circular than other circles. He is one of those individuals who has his own way of living out the moral code that says, “If that’s the way the law says it shall be done, then that is the exact way I shall do it. Those administering the law shall also do it that way.”

  Fred runs a business connected to financial affairs. He’s a bill collector. Don’t mess with him! If you owe money to somebody and they send Fred to collect it, you might as well pay it now, because you are going to pay it sooner or later. If later is more expensive, pay it now and save, because Fred never fails. Never.

  Nor has Fred ever failed with any branch of the government that he has engaged in battle, and there have been several departments, federal, provincial and municipal, which have deployed their troops against him. The biggest battles have been with The Income Tax people. Fred has won them all. He also took on the Department of Consumer Affairs, with light touches from the Attorney General’s Office, but he considers that one a mere skirmish because he had fun while he was winning.

  Let me tell you about that one. Fred was told by a local judge that he could not charge more than 24 percent per annum interest on overdue accounts. He argued, but was unable to sway the learned legal opinion. So he made a strategic retreat to his office where he called the Department of Consumer Affairs and was connected with a supervisor. When he had explained his problem, the supervisor confirmed that Fred was indeed correct and the judge was wrong.

  “Good,” said Fred. “
Please write me a letter confirming your opinion, with a copy to Judge So-and-So.”

  “Oh, no, sir. I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, sir, I might be wrong.”

  I can well imagine the roar and the loud noise in the ear next to the telephone the supervisor was holding in his hand. He probably switched the receiver to the opposite side and held the now deaf ear in the other hand.

  “Do you mean to tell me you don’t know what you are doing? Let me speak to the Deputy Minister of the Department!”

  The DM was out of town for several days so Fred waited until the day after he was due back. He put on the suit that he bought from the secondhand clothing store, the one that he wears for just such occasions, took his brief case and the walking stick he uses for his conveniently bad leg. Thus properly arrayed, he presented himself at the office of the Deputy Minister of the Department of Consumer Affairs.

  “I want to speak with the Deputy Minister,” Fred told the secretary, giving his name.

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “An appointment?” Fred has an uncanny ability to keep a straight face during such encounters. He also has a loud voice. “Does an employer require an appointment to speak with an employee? This man is my servant. I pay his wages. I want to speak to him.”

  The secretary tippy-toed into the DM’s office and returned with an I-can’t-believe-this look on her face. “I don’t know why, but the Deputy Minister will see you, sir.”

  In the office the DM made no effort to be pleasant. “I do not like the way you made your entry into my office, Mr. Smith,” he said. He did not rise, nor did Fred sit.

  “You, sir,” began Fred, “are a civil servant whose wages are paid by my taxes, which makes you my servant. Now let us understand what a servant is. A servant brings me coffee in bed in the morning. He goes to the door and fetches my newspaper. He runs my errands, does my housework, drives my car, prepares my meals and does what I tell him to do. And if I need to arise in the night and use the chamber pot, my servant empties it. Now do you understand the relationship that you and I have with each other?”