by Jim Thompson
To the outsider, the street might appear unchanging, but not to Sherman Fargo. The Methodist preacher’s wife had picked the grapes from her arbor. The gate at the Widow Talley’s place was hanging on one hinge. (Some of these dudes had probably worn it out.) Doc Jones was digging—
“Whoa!” said Sherman sharply, reining in the horse. “What you doin’ there, Doc?”
“Hello, there, Sherm,” said Doctor Jones.
He was a lean weedy man, with close-cut graying hair and a long neck. He was dressed in overalls. He stuck the spade he had been using into a pile of dirt and came over to the fence, wiping his weathered face with a red bandanna.
“What you doin’ there?” Sherman Fargo demanded again.
“Why, I’m building a cesspool, Sherm.”
“A cesspool! You mean you’re puttin’ in a bathroom?”
“That’s about it. I guess I am.” The doctor laughed uncomfortably.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned!” said Sherman, and his queer, choking voice reverberated with a conflict of emotions.
“I just about got to, Sherm. You know how hard it is keepin’ a path open to the privy in the wintertime. If it was just for me and mine, I could manage all right, but I got patients coming in all day. Lots of women. I can’t keep one patient waiting while I run out to shovel a path for another one.”
“Well, hell,” said Sherman, “what’s wrong with Mrs. Doc? Can’t she help out a little?”
“She’s pregnant, Sherm. Didn’t you know about it?”
“No, can’t say that I did,” said the farmer, wondering how he had missed this piece of information.
“So you see I just about had to have a bathroom, Sherm.”
“Well, maybe so,” said Sherman. “Personally, I’m past forty and I got the first time in my life to do anything like that in the house. It ain’t healthy!”
“Oh, I think it is, Sherm,” said the doctor.
“Well, I know it ain’t,” said Sherman. “And if I ever catch anyone dropping their pants in a house of mine, I’ll run ’em so far it’ll take ’em a week to catch up with theirselves.”
Jones dropped his eyes unhappily. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” he mumbled.
“It ain’t healthy,” Sherman repeated. “You’re a doctor. You ought to know that yourself.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Jones. “I’ll tell you what I wish you’d do, Sherm. When I get the damned thing in, I’d like to have you come around and look it over and let me know what you think of it. Will you do that?”
“Why,” said Sherman, “I guess I could find the time, Doc.”
“I hate not to go ahead, now that I’ve put so much time and money in on it.”
“And I can’t blame you for that,” said Sherman.
“You’ll be around to look it over?”
“I’ll be around.”
The farmer drove off well satisfied. He did not feel that he had been unduly prying or officious, and, perhaps, he had not. In a society of so few members, the manner in which a man conducted his business was quickly felt by his neighbors. Thus, if you saw a man getting off on the wrong foot, it was your duty and privilege to set him right.
The evening train had pulled out of the station a few minutes before, and a recent passenger stood on the platform at the end next the road. As Sherman approached, he stepped off the platform and stood in the dust waiting.
Sherman brought the bay to a stop again.
“That’s a nice piece of horseflesh you got there,” the stranger offered.
“I think so,” said Sherman. “Judge of horses, are you?”
“Fair. Good enough.” The stranger laughed easily. “The station master told me to wait here until the best-looking bay I’d ever seen hove up, and that’d be you. You’re Sherman Fargo, aren’t you?”
“That’s me,” Sherman admitted with a tingle of pleasure. He accepted the large hand that was thrust up at him, and shook it gingerly.
“I’m Bill Simpson, Sherm,” the man said. “World-Wide Harvester Company. I hear you’re interested in some of our stuff.”
“Yes?” said Sherman. “A man can hear a lot of things.”
The stranger laughed again, displaying several gold teeth. He was a big well-knit man, in a sturdy brown suit such as Sherman himself wore for Sunday. His nails were gray-rimmed, and there was the odor of bay rum about him. Sherman would have been drawn to him even if he hadn’t praised the horse.
“There’s no use us wasting each other’s time,” he said, in what he considered a handsome apology for his brusqueness. “I don’t have the money, and I can’t get it from the bank.”
“Oh, these goddam bankers”—the stranger spat scornfully into the dust. “Look, Sherm, do you want that thresher or not? I hope you do, because I’ve come all the way from Kansas City to sell you one.”
“But, I—”
“Forget the money. Do you want the thresher?”
“Well, sure,” said Sherman. “But, like I told you, I—”
“Well, I’m here to see that you get it. You know, we people at World-Wide aren’t like a lot of companies. We know which side our bread’s buttered on. We know, by God, that the prosperity of the country depends on the farmer. We know that if the farmer ain’t taken care of, the whole damned country will go to hell. We—excuse me. Maybe you’re in a hurry to get home.”
Sherman was in no hurry at all as long as such pleasing conversation was available, but he suddenly remembered his manners.
“If you don’t care how you sleep or eat, Mister—er—”
“Just Bill, Sherm.”
“Well, if you ain’t too particular, Bill, hop in and we’ll ride out to the house. ’Spect I should be getting down the way.”
The salesman threw his valise into the rear, stepped upon a spoke, and sat down easily at Sherman’s side. The farmer drove on across the tracks before he spoke again.
“Now, about this thresher.…How the hell can a man buy anything without money?”
“We take your notes, Sherm. Your plain, unsecured notes, without any other endorsers.”
“Uh-huh,” said Sherman. “Discount ’em at some bank, I reckon?”
“Not at all. We handle ’em ourselves. World-Wide’s got plenty of money to help the customers who help it.”
“Seems to me you’d want a mortgage on the machine.”
“Oh, no; why that wouldn’t be fair, Sherm!” Simpson protested. “You need the thresher. You’re going to keep on needing it. It wouldn’t be fair to take it away from you.”
Sherman turned this philanthropic attitude over in his mind and could find no flaw in it.
“How soon could I get the thresher?” he inquired.
“You got a phone?”
“Certainly I got a phone. I was about one of the first around here to put one in.”
“Well, sir, I’ll just call our dealer here tonight. He ought to be able to get it out to your place the first thing in the morning.”
“Well, say,” said Sherman, “that’s all right, Bill.”
“I’ll tell you what, Sherm: we’ll look over your stock of implements when we get out to your place. Anything else you need we’ll take care of on the same terms.…How are you fixed for disks and harrows? What about a cornplanter?”
“Oh, I don’t know. We’ll talk it over. The thresher is the main thing.”
“How come you haven’t got around to buying one before?”
“I ain’t needed one,” said Sherman. “There’s a couple of hunky brothers up the Calamus that own a thresher; they’ve been doing practically all the threshing in this neck of the woods. Well, though, the last couple years they’ve been bringin’ over a lot of their friends and relatives from the old country, and now they won’t touch anyone else’s grain until they get through with their own bunch. I say to hell with ’em. I’ll buy a thresher and do my own threshing, and line up all the work from the white families in the neighborhood to boot. I’m not the only
one around here that’s getting damned good and fed up with these foreigners.”
Simpson nodded sagely.
“Uh—what religion are you, Sherm?”
“Methodist. All us Fargoes are Methodists, them that ain’t Baptists and Christians. My sister Myrtle and her husband are Episcopalians, but I don’t count them.”
“Well, I’m not anything really,” the salesman confessed. “Just a Protestant. But I keep my ear to the ground when it comes to religion, and I could tell you things you wouldn’t believe, Sherm! Yessir, they’d make your hair stand on end! Now, you think those hunkies are giving you the go-by just to favor their own kin, but that ain’t it at all. That’s only part of it. All these bohunks and Poles and Rooshans are acting under direct orders from the Pope. They never make a move that the Pope don’t tell ’em to. It’s a conspiracy, Sherm. They’re plotting to drive the Christians out with fire and sword, and take over in the Pope’s name, just like they did over in Europe. They’ll do it, too, if us Christians don’t do something to stop them!”
Sherman laughed shortly. He coughed and spat, and looked slyly at the salesman from the corner of his eyes. In that moment, except for the differences of age, he was the picture of Lincoln Fargo. He judged that the Pope cared as little about having him a convert as he cared about being one. He figured that any bunch of hunkies that could grab his farm would probably earn it in the doing. He said as much, in his exasperated, cream-separator voice, and put a period to the subject with a snort.
Sherman did not like to have his credulity imposed upon. He considered that it had been.
If Simpson had been a little less expert as a salesman than he was, he would not have sold the thresher. But, being what he was, he laughed heartily at his own discomfiture, shifted the conversation to horses, and thence back to farm implements.
By the time they drove up to the farm, he had committed Sherman to the purchase of a new mower and a riding plow, in addition to the thresher.
5
Pearl Fargo—Mrs. Lincoln Fargo—stood in front of the warped mahogany-framed mirror in her bedroom and applied the tip of a burned match to her scanty eyebrows. She knew as well as the next one that God frowned on his painted daughters, that, having created woman as He wanted her, He looked upon alteration of His work as blasphemy. But, she reflected determinedly, she was not so much changing His handiwork as renewing it. She had turned stark gray that summer, she thought, what with Edie and that young’un of hers. A body couldn’t go in her own kitchen without Edie being there, putting everything at odd ends and playing like she was a help. She wished she’d just go off and sit down somewheres, and leave a body to do things like they was supposed to be done. She wished she’d just go off. As for that young’un, Bobbie, it was a mighty good thing he wasn’t her kid. She’d teach him to speak when he was spoken to. She’d blister him five times a day and send him to bed without his supper until he learned how to mind. She’d teach him how to go around poking his nose into other people’s things.…Of course, Pa was always putting him up to meanness, but Pa was Pa. This was his home, and he was getting old. The trouble was that young’un needed to have his hide tanned.
She let down her hair, so thin that it was like a fragment of combed-out rope, and began to brush it. There was a jar of strong tea on her dresser; she always kept it there. She dipped the end of the brush in that, drawing it through her mousy, corn-silk hair. It didn’t do a body any harm to make themselves look decent; the Book didn’t say anything against tea. If some people she knew had paid a little more attention to the way they looked, things’d be a lot better than they were, maybe. A man always had his reasons for what he did. He didn’t go off just for nothing.
She frowned, suddenly, and stood staring into the mirror, her nose wrinkled. With a sort of slow dread, she put down the brush and lifted the jar of tea. Angry, disgusted, she set the jar down with a bang and some of the liquid slopped over onto the dresser. She mopped at it hastily with a flour-sack washcloth.
She looked around, sullen and red-faced, as the portieres at the doorway rustled.
“What’s the matter, Ma?” said Grant Fargo.
“Nothing,” snapped Mrs. Fargo.
Grant glanced from the jar to the dresser to his mother’s hair, and immediately came to the correct conclusion. With remarkable self-control he managed to keep from laughing.
“Well, I’ll be doggoned!” he said sympathetically. “Now who would do a thing like that?”
“You know who,” said Mrs. Fargo.
“But why would he do a thing like that?”
“Oh, why does he do anything?” said his mother peevishly.
Grant knew the why of the affair. Once a week the bedroom china of the household was put to soak in strong soapsuds; and Bobbie, he knew, under certain motivations, walked in his sleep. One night, when he had come in late, he had found the boy at the back door, drowsily attempting to get out. Another time he had discovered him trying to crawl out a window, hermetically sealed against the night air. Being Grant, of course, he had done nothing to assist Bobbie; and, consequently, such a sudden and severe blight had stricken the potted plants of the living room that they had had to be thrown out.
Grant was on the point of mentioning this further perfidy to his mother when he recalled the purpose of his visit. She was in a bad enough humor already. He had best tell her some other time.
“Well, that doggone ornery kid!” he said warmly. “I’m sure sorry, Ma.”
“Some—sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to do, Grant!”
“I know. It’s too bad. But it really won’t hurt anything, Ma. Why, there’s some people over in Spain that wash their teeth in it!”
“Why—why, do tell!” said Mrs. Fargo, shocked and yet proud of her son’s erudition.
“It’s a fact,” said Grant carelessly. “I’ll tell you what, Ma. I’ll slip in and get you a little of my bay rum—”
“Oh, no! I wouldn’t dare to, Grant!”
“Well, what about some vanilla? Want me to get you the vanilla bottle?”
“Do you think it’d be all right? Going to church, I mean?”
“Oh, sure,” said Grant. “Why, when I went to church in Houston, the minister’s wife used vanilla!”
He went into the kitchen, the pantry, and returned with the pint bottle of vanilla, sniffing appreciatively while Mrs. Fargo timidly anointed her locks. She wore her hair on top of her head in a slightly pyramided coil which, according to her husband, resembled a cow chip. Mrs. Fargo supposed that it did, too, but there was no other way she could wear it. Her dress was of black satin with a white lace collar which she had tatted for herself. The material was hardly worn at all, but it had become a little tight in the last ten years. Her shoes were a high-grade black kid, and had cost her a dollar and seventy-five cents. She did not wear them around the house, shuffling around instead in a discarded pair of her husband’s gaiters, and they were practically as good as the day she had bought them with the dress. Her hat was built of a twenty-five-cent wire frame and the material from a long discarded blouse. She draped a knitted shawl around her shoulders, for the weather was still not cold, and she did not own a coat—a good coat. She did not go out during the winter. She could not walk into town, and, for neighborhood visiting, it was good enough to wrap up in a comforter. Sometimes, some of Sherman’s family would offer her a ride to town. But they were always in a hurry, and she could not drop things and go on a moment’s notice. Anyway, it didn’t happen very often. Not often enough to make a good coat anything but an extravagance. Anything she needed from town the others could bring for her. Anything that happened they could tell her about. She did not need to go any place during the winter.
Grant flattered her while she completed her toilette, twitching and flouncing uncomfortably. She did not know how to take it. Pa had said some nice things to her a long time ago, but she guessed that it was just because he was after something. A man at the boardinghouse in Kansas City had said s
ome pretty things, too, but he was a drunkard and hadn’t paid his bill.
Mrs. Fargo was sure that she looked respectable. That was sufficient.
“Did you—are you broke, Grant?” she said at last.
“I’m afraid I am, Ma. I sent off a bunch of letters yesterday about jobs and it just about cleaned me out. Just give me a couple of dollars. That’ll tide me over until I get next to something.”
Mrs. Fargo nodded and reached for her reticule, then paused, her eyes averted. “Why…why, I don’t have two dollars, Grant.”
“Now, Ma!” Grant laughed firmly. “Of course, you have it. What about the money you got from those chickens yesterday?”
“Well, I do have it,” Mrs. Fargo admitted honestly. “But I have to turn it in at the revival tonight. Tonight’s foreign-mission night, and it’s the last chance—”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Grant, his pale forehead corrugating. “Are you going to give everything you’ve got to that Bible-mouthing fake? You tell him for me, by God, that—”
“Grant!”
“Oh, all right,” Grant snarled. “But—”
“He’s not a fake, Grant. He is the Chosen One of the Lord. He is His agent sent here to carry out His will.”
“Well, maybe so,” said Grant, wondering at the strangeness of his mother’s tone. “I’m sorry, Ma. I do have to have some money, though.”
“I could give you sixty cents, Grant. I sold twelve dozen eggs yesterday, too.”
