by Jim Thompson
He wished immediately that he hadn’t, because Sherman owed him six hundred dollars (two hundred carried over from the year before), and he knew the Fargo pride. He wouldn’t have hurt Sherm for the world; he tried to be appeasing.
“Now you just sit down over there and cool off,” he said. “I reckon I can get this stuff for you right away if you got to—”
“You’re gettin’ kind of worried about my bill, ain’t you?” demanded the farmer.
“Pshaw! What kind of crazy talk is that? Just sit down over there and—”
“You think maybe I can’t pay up?” persisted Sherman.
“I ain’t been hounding you any, have I?”
Sherman nodded sourly, as if the answer to his question had been in the affirmative.
“I see,” he said. “Well, if you’re getting worried, maybe I better not tick you any more. Maybe I better take my trade somewheres else.”
“That’s what you’re sayin’,” said the storekeeper. “You ain’t heard nothing like that from me.” But, then, as Sherman continued to glower and threaten, his own temper broke its bonds, and his cracked voice shrilled with his sense of outrage. “Well, have it your own way,” he shouted. “Go on and be ornery, an’ see if I care! Take your dadgummed trade somewheres else, and see if I care!”
He came around the counter flapping his apron at Sherman, as he had done in the old days when the farmer was just another nosy, pestiferous brat. Sherman couldn’t hit the old man, of course; he couldn’t even bring himself to curse him adequately.
Snatching up his list, he left the place, feeling cheap and frustrated.
There was only one other grocery in town, and it wasn’t properly a store to the local notion. It was called the Pick and Prosper, of all damned fool things, and the way it was run was a sight to see. It didn’t have any counter, except a little one right up to the front. It was all lighted up so that you could see exactly what you were getting—which, obviously, wasn’t smart of the nebulous owners. To prove their further lack of sharpness, if further proof were needed, they had arranged the shelves so that a customer could reach right out and help himself. There would be hell to pay, the citizens observed wisely, if the loafers ever got to hanging out at the place.
Right up near the front, by the little counter, was a rack with a bunch of baskets. People logically supposed that they were for sale and wondered why a few weren’t tossed in the window by way of display. But no one had ever entered the establishment to inquire the why of the matter.
Sherman paced slowly back and forth in front of the store for a few minutes, rolling his eyes to look inside. He guessed he’d been in the wrong with old Simp. He guessed, by God, that he wasn’t, neither. If Simp didn’t know the Fargoes were good for their bills by this time, it was about time he was learning!
Bracing himself, Sherman turned suddenly in his pacing and entered the store. It was empty save for the out-of-town dude who ran it. He came bustling forward from the rear in a clean white apron and literally bowed before the farmer.
“Yes, sir. Can I help you with something, sir?”
No one had ever called Sherman “sir” except in a letter. He smirked unconsciously.
“Why, I reckon you can, at that, young fellow,” he declared. “I got quite a list of stuff here.”
“Yes, sir!” The manager’s eyes widened at the sight of the list. “Just take as many baskets as you need, sir, and if there’s anything you can’t find, just ask me.”
“You—you mean I help myself?” inquired Sherman in his choked up-and-down voice.
“That’s right, sir!”
“Well,” said Sherman, shocked by this weird idea, “I don’t know about that.”
The clerk smiled at him gaily. He was a scrawny young man with pustule-punctured cheeks and yellow hair which he parted in the middle.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, sir. I’ll help you. I’m not supposed to do it, but I’ve got plenty of time.”
“Well, all right,” said Sherman, gamely. “I’ll try anything once.”
He and the clerk divided the list between them. Feeling rather self-conscious, Sherman picked up a couple of baskets and meandered over to the wall aisle.
Blindly he selected a few articles, laying them studiously in the baskets. Then, seeing that none of them bit him or exploded in his hands, he began to take heart. It was really simple. There wasn’t a damned thing to it. Well, there was something to it, all right, it was quite a trick, but he was getting the hang of it.
He was chagrined to think that old Simp had made a fortune at this pleasant occupation.
Shrewdly looking from the list to the shelves, he satisfied one need thereon after another. Sometimes he would pass by an article, letting it remain in its place in bland security. Then, cocking an eye at it sidewise, he would step back, grasp it firmly by its foolish body, and lower it into the basket. And he would leer triumphantly at its helpless and hapless brothers and sisters.
Let them try to hide from Sherman Fargo. He’d nail ’em in the long run!
Puffing contentedly at his pipe, he moseyed up and down the aisles, pushing the rapidly filling baskets in front of him with his feet. He snorted out gruff pleasantries at the clerk-manager, and the young man twittered back at him happily. Sherman began to feel almost happy. He felt better than he had for a long time.
Dammit, he guessed he was getting kind of soured on the world in general. But he had enough things to make a man sour. Josephine wasn’t any good to him in the sleeping way, and he wasn’t an old man yet by a long sight. He was mortgaged to the hilt on all that land he’d taken over, and now he had to go and plant it to wheat again. Pa was sick again and wasn’t any comfort. Ma was sore at him for siding against Grant. Edie had bawled him out for the way he’d treated Josephine. Ruthie had grown away from him. Those damned ornery boys were always plaguing him. They worked hard enough, but they were always hounding him for money. Always wanting to chase off after some damned-fool girls.
He felt sometimes like the whole goddamned world was against him. Here he was, right in the prime of life, and he felt sometimes like there wasn’t a damned thing left to live for.
But this was all right here in the store. He felt capable and trusted. He was filling his baskets faster than the clerk was, and the fellow didn’t watch him at all to see if he was sticking stuff in his pockets.
Then, at last, the clerk came over smiling and Sherman reckoned, regretfully, that that was about all.
The clerk obtained a huge crate from the rear of the store, and they carried the baskets up to the counter. The clerk began checking the groceries off on the little adding machine and placing them in the crate. Sherman watched the keys twinkle beneath his rapid fingers, approvingly. This certainly beat the kind of toting up Simp did. Old Simp always had a lot of stuff written down that you knew damned well you hadn’t got, and you couldn’t read his figures half the time.
The clerk ripped the tape from the machine, glanced at the total, and tossed it into the crate.
“Well, sir, Mr. Fargo,” he beamed, “that comes to exactly twenty-one dollars and eighty-six cents.”
“I don’t doubt it a bit,” said Sherman, starting to pick up the crate. “It’s a hell of a pile of groceries.”
“Uh,” said the clerk. “Uh—aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Oh, just let the candy go,” said Sherman. For it was the custom of a storekeeper to donate a sack of candy with a large bill of goods. “My kids eat too much sweet stuff anyway.”
“But, the bill. It’s twenty-one dollars and eighty-six cents.”
“Sure it is,” said Sherman, agreeably.
“Well—well, I mean I want the money, Mr. Fargo.”
“Well, dammit, you’ll get it,” said Sherman, with a shade of impatience. “I’ll pay you the first thing in the fall. I pay my bills every fall and spring. Anyone’ll tell you—”
“I got to have the money today. This is a cash store. We only sell for
cash.”
“Wh-aat?” demanded the farmer. “What are you talking about, man?”
The clerk explained, his nervousness making him unnecessarily firm. And Sherman’s amazement warmed swiftly into anger. He wanted to walk out and leave the stuff, but he didn’t want to be beholden to the fellow. Then, he had to have the groceries, and his pride would not allow him to return to Simp’s establishment.
He drew out his wallet. With concealed rage, for he would not let this dude think that twenty dollars or so meant anything to him, he laid the contents on the counter. A twenty-dollar bill and a five. He had intended going to the public auction today to pick up some stuff he needed. Now, he couldn’t.
Slowly, phlegmatically, he picked up his change and pocketed it. The clerk smirked at him ingratiatingly.
“You know there’s something I’ve often wondered about,” he remarked. “Something that always seemed kind of funny to me.”
“Is that right?” said Sherman.
“Uh-huh. You know I was raised in the city and it always seemed so funny to me”—he giggled—“the way you farmers raise stuff for other people a-and come into the store to buy your own.”
“That is funny,” Sherman declared.
“Uh-huh. I always thought it was.”
“When a thing’s funny,” said Sherman, “a man ought to laugh. You hadn’t ought to hold in anything like that.” His hard blue gaze struck the clerk like a blow. “Go ahead,” he said. “Laugh.”
“Well…I guess it isn’t funny, after all.”
“Sure it is,” insisted Sherman. “It’s the damnedest funniest thing I ever heard of. Now I want to hear you laugh.”
“Mr. Fargo, I didn’t—”
“Laugh!”
The clerk gulped.
“Ha, ha,” he said.
“Harder! Get it out of your system.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” said the clerk.
Sherman shook his head. “What you need is a little primin’. Someone to tickle you a little. You can’t properly get started by yourself.”
“Mr. Fargo, please—”
Sherman leaned over the counter, and the clerk shrank back against the wall. With terrible joviality Sherman put out two thick stubby fingers and jabbed him. The fingers plunged against his ribs with a sickeningly funny feeling; they darted here and there, jabbing, raking against his bones. He tried to push them away, to cover up against them with his arms. But the terrible farmer would not be avoided. The venomous rakings and pokings increased, while Sherman urged him with hideous humor to go ahead and laugh.
He did laugh, at last. He laughed and cried at the same time. Hysterically he leaned back against the wall and his shrill cackling filled the store, and insane tears streamed down his pustuled face.
Sherman shouldered the crate of groceries, his eyes smoldering.
“Next time,” he advised, “don’t hold in so long.” And he swaggered out of the place.
As he had expected they would be, by God, Ted and Gus were hanging around the wagon waiting for him. He tossed the groceries in the back and mounted to the curb, looking them over bitterly. They were dressed in tight-fitting pants, pork-pie hats, and white shirts with purple detachable collars.
The gaze that they gave back to him was as bitter and implacable as his own. They stared at him out of their close-set eyes, trying to draw their lower lips up over their buck teeth; and Sherman’s stare was the first to waiver.
After all, they were men. They did men’s work.
“Well,” he said, drawing out his wallet, “I reckon you want some money. Here’s a dollar you can divide.”
He held it out to them, but they only looked at him, keeping their hands in their pockets.
“What the hell you expect us to do with a dollar?” demanded Ted. “That won’t much more’n pay for our dinner.”
“Pay for your dinner!” exclaimed Sherman. “Why, your dinner won’t cost nothin’. Edie’ll feed you.”
“We pay for what we eat,” said Gus.
“Now what’s the sense in that? Many’s a time Edie and Bob’s et with us!”
“It ain’t the same,” said Gus, and Ted nodded.
“Well, a dollar’s all I can spare,” said Sherman stubbornly. “I’m overdrawn at the bank right now, and I ain’t askin’ Alf to carry me for no more. He ain’t like Bark. He feels like he’s got to do things just because he’s in the family, and I ain’t takin’ advantage of him.”
Gus said, “Crap!”
Ted said, “I see you hatin’ to take advantage of anyone. Goddam if I don’t.”
Sherman flushed at the implication of the statement. At their age, Pa had deeded him a hundred and sixty acres. And he had nothing to give them. He could not even promise them anything. Oh, he knew how they felt; but what could he do any more than he was doing?
“Well, I’ll just tell you what I’ll do with you,” he said, companionably. “You take this dollar and go eat and get you some candy and sody pop and whatever you want, and then meet me over behind the blacksmith shop. I’ll take you on for a game of horseshoes. I’ll just bet, by God, I can trim you!”
He looked at them jocularly, pleading silently with them, and Ted and Gus looked at each other. An evil grin played around their pushed-out lips.
“I got a better idea than that,” said Gus. “You take your dollar and buy you a pound of axle grease with it—”
“And stick your horseshoes up your ass,” Ted concluded.
Sneering, they turned and walked away.
While he was sitting down to dinner at noon, he saw them unhitch the team and lead it off toward the livery stable. But they did not stop at the stable. They rode the team out to the fairgrounds and put it up at auction.
No one questioned their right to sell it, although they did wonder that Sherman would sell his prize team. The bidders decided there must be something wrong with it, and the boys received only a hundred dollars. But that was roughly one hundred times as much as either of them had ever had before.
Riding merrily out of town on the train, they passed the Misery Crick district; and Ted suddenly cursed and pointed to a figure near the right-of-way.
“Jesus! Did you see that?”
“Jesus! Looked like he had a face full of snakes, didn’t he?”
They swore, wonderingly, staring back as long as they could see at Mike Czerny.
24
Mr. William Simpson, salesmanager of the World-Wide Harvester Company, picked up the phone on his desk and spoke into the transmitter:
“Simpson speaking,” he barked. “How’s that? What was the name? Why, yes, I know them. Know the family quite well. They’re good customers of ours. Send ’em right on up, will you?”
He let the receiver drop wearily and puffed his cigar for a moment. Pulling open a drawer, he took out a bottle of soda-mint tablets and popped two into his mouth. He got up and went into his private lavatory and gulped a glass of water. He gazed into the mirror and shook his head.…These out-of-town customers with their craze for excitement and their cast-iron stomachs! They never got full and they never got tired, and they seemed to think a man didn’t have anything to do but chase around with them.
God, they didn’t know when they were well off. They ought to be stuck with a job like his for about a week. They’d never leave the farm again; they’d never want to see the inside of another cabaret.
His secretary rapped on his office door, and he hurried out, tugging at the lapels of his coat, working up a big smile.
He flung the door open and extended a hand to each of the Fargo boys.
“Why, Ted—Gus! How the devil are you, anyway? Come in, come in!”
The boys sidled past him, grinning, and Simpson addressed his secretary: “Miss Beatrice, these gentlemen are old friends of mine, and we’ve got a lot to talk over. I don’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances…unless it’s very important.”
He winked at her, imperceptibly, and she returned a slight smile of understa
nding. If his visitors didn’t leave within a reasonable time, something very important would come up.
“Well, how in the world have you been, boys?” Simpson demanded. “Sit down and take one of those cigars. Make yourself right to home.”
He boomed on amiably while the boys lit cigars and grinned at each other. And while he talked, he was giving them a covert sizing-up. He felt, somehow, that there was something unusual about this visit, but he could not put his finger on it. Personal appearances, which were the principal foundation for ordinary judgments, meant nothing at all with these farmers.
And, for that matter, the boys were dressed quite well. There was a city air about them. Extremely clothes conscious, they had got rid of their rube duds as soon as they were able, and they had not stinted on new apparel.
After leaving Verdon, they had come to the very practical decision that they would need much more money than they had to make an assault upon the cities. So they had followed the wheat harvest far up into Canada, working almost steadily and often receiving as much as two dollars and a half for their sixteen-hour day, plus, of course, board and room.
When the harvest season was over, they were so well heeled that they had returned the hundred dollars to their father. They had assured each other, humorously, that the old bastard would probably starve to death if they didn’t help him. But now winter was here, and they were almost broke again, and they were beginning to regret their philanthropy.
“How long are you going to be in town, boys?” asked Simpson, studying them.
“Well, we don’t know exactly,” said Gus.
“It sort of depends,” said Ted vaguely.
“I see, I see,” nodded Simpson. “How is your father?”
“Why, pretty good, I guess.”
Simpson emitted a jocular bellow. “You guess? Don’t you know how your father is?”
“Well, we ain’t seen him in quite a while.”
“We ain’t living to home no more,” Ted explained.
“Now, how is that?” Simpson inquired. “You didn’t have a falling out, did you?”
The boys shook their heads in a firm negative. They had agreed that Simpson might be put out if the true facts of their departure were revealed.