“About fifty-six.”
“No, I mean the girl.”
“Oh. She’s about seventeen. I think she gets out of high school this year.”
“I’d rather not fool with them if they’re under nineteen or twenty. You will understand, Norwood, I am not necessarily looking for skating skills. What about you, do you live here in town?”
“Yeah. I live down there just the other side of that Nipper station.”
“Old Nipper! I was looking at your uniform when you first came up. He’s an old friend of mine, you know, Nipper is. I used to do some investigating for him down in Houston. I was practicing a little law then too. What a man! Money? Norwood, he’s richer than the fabled Croesus. Have you ever met him?”
“I never did. I seen his plane a few times. He used to fly over town dropping out copies of the Constitution.”
“Well, he’s quite a man. I was on his education committee for three years and I was a judge in the Nipper Junior High Essay Contests that were so big. I was one of the judges. Perhaps you sent one in yourself?”
“What?”
“The Nipper Essay Contest. For junior high kids.”
“I didn’t hear anything about it.”
“You should have got in on that, Norwood. Everybody got a little prize of some kind. And the winners, we gave them some wonderful scholarships. Their theme was ‘Communism in the National Council of Churches.’ They laid it right on the line. Wrote their hearts out. I was proud to be a part of it.”
“Do you still work for Nipper?”
“No, not any more. We had a falling out, I’m sorry to say. I traded him some rent houses for a registered bull and he got mad about it. Subsequently I left Houston.”
“Did you beat him on the trade?”
“Yes, I confess that I did. I took him like Stonewall Jackson took Nathaniel P. Banks in the Valley of the Shenandoah. That is to say, decisively.”
“He didn’t like that.”
“He wasn’t used to it.”
Norwood looked at his watch. “Well, I got to get on back to the house and take a bath. My thumb’s hurting.”
Grady touched his arm. “Wait a minute. I’d like to talk to you about something. I might be able to put you next to something. Have you got a couple of minutes?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I tell you what we could do. We could go over to my car and have a drink and talk about it there.”
“All right.”
It was a big new Buick Invicta with red leather upholstery. Grady brought out a bottle of Old Forester from under the seat. There was some crushed ice in a milk shake carton. Norwood held the paper cups and Grady poured.
“This is a nice car,” said Norwood.
“Yes, I’m doing right well,” said Grady. “How many tubes do you think that radio has?”
“I don’t know. It looks like a good one.”
“Twenty-four. There’s not another one like it in this part of the country. Listen to that tone. It’s like FM.”
Norwood listened. “That tone is good.”
“What happened to your thumb?”
“Nothing. I mashed it.”
“You better put something on it when you get home.”
“I already did.”
“Unguentine is good for something like that.”
“I put some shaving cream on it.”
“Unguentine is a lot better. It has special healing ingredients that shaving cream doesn’t have. It goes to work on that soreness.”
“Was that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No,” said Grady, and he took off his hat and arranged himself sideways on the seat in the attitude of a man getting down to business. “No, it’s something else. You’re a big strong boy, Norwood. I’ve got a place for you, I think. Here’s the deal: We buy these bad debts from stores and filling stations at twelve cents on the dollar. Then we go out and collect what we can. A topnotch, hustling, aggressive agent can make good on forty per cent of that paper. He can make those profligate bastards cough up. And anybody, with my training, can make good on twenty-five per cent of it. I’ll train you and buy you a suit and some Florsheim shoes and furnish you with one of my late model demonstrator cars and we split halves on everything above the line. Everything above my twelve per cent investment. What do you think?”
“I don’t think I would be much good at that.”
“You’re not interested in making money.”
“Naw, I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t think I would be much good at it. I got a debt of my own I can’t collect. Another thing is, I don’t have much education. For that kind of job. Wearing a suit.”
“Education requirements are minimal. Let me be the judge of that.”
“Well, naw, I don’t think so.”
“Hmmm,” said Grady, and he poured some more of the Forester. “Tell me this, how would you like a trip to California?”
“I been to California.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t go again.”
“It’s too far.”
“How about a trip to Chicago? . . . New York? . . . Atlanta?”
“New York?”
“That’s right, New York City. A wonderful trip, all expenses paid. Plus—and get this—fifty dollars clear for you, found money, right off the top.”
“This is not some kind of contest.”
“No, no, this is a straightforward job offer. Are you a good driver?”
“Yeah.”
“Good enough. You see, Tilmon and I ship off some of our surplus cars, our good ones, to other parts of the country, where we can get a better price for them. It’s the drivers who have all the fun. Speeding across the country in a late model car, seeing all the sights.”
“I would take one to New York.”
“That’s it.”
“How long would it take?”
“You’ll be back in a week after a wonderful paid-for trip. Many of your friends will envy—”
“How would I get back?”
“You drive back. That’s part of the deal. You take one up and bring one back.”
“I don’t get that.”
“What is it you don’t get?”
“Well, if I take one up and bring another one back, you’re right back where you started. I don’t see how that would put you ahead much.”
“That’s because you don’t understand the market. Some cars are worth more up there and some are worth more down here because of freight costs and other variables. Take a Mercedes now, it will cost you a good two hundred dollars more down here. It all has to do with the market. You won’t be deadheading back, don’t worry about that.”
“I hope these are not stolen cars.”
Grady looked at Norwood for a long moment. “I don’t know whether you meant that seriously or not. We are legitimate businessmen, Norwood. We are in the public eye. We hold a position of trust in the community. We could hardly afford to jeopardize that position by playing around with hot cars. I think you spoke before you thought. No, we welcome legal scrutiny of all our affairs at all times.”
“I don’t want to get in any trouble.”
“Naturally not. One way to avoid it would be not to repeat your highly actionable remark about hot cars.”
“I do need to see somebody in New York.”
Grady put on his glasses and consulted a billfold calendar by the light of his twenty-four-tube radio. “Hmmm. How does a next Sunday morning departure sound to you?”
“That’s pretty quick.”
Grady shrugged.
“I don’t know,” said Norwood. “I’d have to think about it. I’d have to talk to my sister about it.”
“By all means, talk to your sister. Discuss it with her. What is her name?”
“Vernell.”
“What a lovely name,” said Grady. He reached in the back seat and fumbled around in a big pasteboard box and brought forth a styrene comb and brush set and a little bottle of perfume with a blue
bow on it. “Give this to Vernell with my warmest regards.” He nodded toward the back seat. “We had a lot of honorable mention prizes left over in the last Nipper contest.”
“This is mighty nice of you.”
Grady waved it off. “It’s nothing. Now. My phone number’s on this card. Feel free to call me at any time, collect. I would appreciate it if you called on this matter by Thursday noon.”
The ice in the milk shake carton was now soupy but they had another short drink anyway. When Norwood opened the door to leave, Grady had an afterthought. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me see your watch.” Norwood showed it to him. Grady studied it critically through the reading part of his glasses, under the radio light. He tapped the crystal with a long, dense, yellow fingernail. “With all respect to you, that’s a piece of junk.” Then he slipped his own watch off, a flat shiny one with a black face and gold pips instead of numbers, and gave it to Norwood. “I don’t want you to go home tonight till you have a good timepiece on your wrist. You can just put that other one away in your drawer somewhere. Sell it to a nigger if you can.... No, don’t say a word. I want you to have it. I get these at well below cost.”
“This is mighty nice of you, Mr. Fring.”
“Mr. Fring nothing. Call me Grady.”
Norwood drove home and thought about how he would put it to Clyde about taking off from the station. Clyde would ask five hundred questions. Vernell and Bill Bird would be a problem too. They would gnaw on it for days like two puppies with a rubber bone. Norwood had a long reflective bath. He put some more shaving cream on his thumb. While he was combing his hair he took up an oblique pose in front of the mirror and gave himself a lazy smile, like some smirking C & W star coming up out of the lower right-hand corner of an 8 by 10 glossy.
He played some records for a while in his sleeping porch bedroom and imagined himself having a smoke backstage with Lefty Frizzell: “Hey Norwood, you got a light?” His green pinstripe Nipper trousers were hanging on the back of a chair, with Grady’s insurance tract sticking up out of a hip pocket. Norwood got up from bed in his shorts and took the tract into the front bedroom. He turned on the light, giving the sleeping Bill Birds quite a start.
“Get out of here,” said Bill Bird.
“What is it, bubba? What do you want?”
“I found the note that was on that sausage, Bill. You didn’t look hard enough.”
“Turn that light off and get out.”
“What does it say, bubba?”
“It says, ‘Dear Bill Bird. If you know what’s good for you you’ll stop talking about things you don’t know anything about. Yours truly, the Commandant of the Marine Corps.’ ”
“That’s very funny. Now get out. I’m not going to tell you again.”
“We’re trying to sleep, bubba. Bill needs his rest.”
VERNELL and Bill Bird did not approve of the New York trip. “You don’t even know anybody in New York,” said Vernell. Norwood was shining his thirty-eight-dollar stovepipe boots. They were coal-black 14-inchers with steel shanks and low walking heels. Red butterflies were inset on the insteps. He was putting a mirror gloss on the toes with lighter fluid and a nylon stocking.
“You can’t reason with him, Vernell,” said Bill Bird. “It’s like talking to a child. I think we have made our position clear. Even to him. I hope so. I hope he’s not planning on wiring us for money when he gets up there stranded.”
Norwood ignored him. “Vernell, don’t be driving my car much while I’m gone. If you have to use it take it easy. That bad rod is liable to go at any time. I’m afraid it’s already scored the crankshaft. I’ll have to turn that goose when I get back. . . . I don’t want him driving it at all.”
Vernell thought this was unfair. “Bill can drive a car all right.”
“Naw he can’t.”
“He can too. He’s just used to an automatic transmission.”
“Uh huh.”
“Bill can drive as good as I can.”
“Well, you can’t drive either. The only thing is, you’re my sister. I might as well turn my car over to a rabbit.”
“You’d have to get special extensions for the pedals,” said Bill Bird.
“Now I mean it, Vernell,” said Norwood. “I don’t want to come back here and have somebody tell me they seen Bill Bird driving around town in that car. Let him walk. It’ll do him good.”
Norwood rode to Texarkana early Sunday morning in the rain with a boy in a butane truck who had a date over there for church. He wore his black hat, the brim curled up in front to defy wind resistance, and his stovepipe boots. One trouser leg was tucked in and the other hung free, after the fashion. The boots were glorious. He had his sunglasses on too, and his heavy Western belt buckle, which portrayed a branding scene in silver relief.
Except for those stylish items, he was not really dressed up. There was a job to be done and a long drive ahead. His good slacks and his tight tailored shirt, with curved arrow pockets and pearl snaps, were packed away in a canvas AWOL bag. He was dressed for the trip in a starchy, freshly ironed Nipper uniform. At the last minute he decided to take along the West Germany guitar. It was zipped up in a soft clear plastic case.
The Kredit King was waiting in his Buick in front of the Texarkana post office as per the arrangement. He was deep in conversation with a man who was leaning on his window. The man was holding a cardboard bucket with GRADY’S BAIT RANCH printed on it. Norwood put his gear in the back seat and got in the front. The man outside straightened up to leave and Grady shook his hand through the window. “There’s plenty of corn meal in there. They don’t eat much. All you want to do is sprinkle a little water in there every two or three days.” When the man left, Norwood said, “Who was that?”
“I don’t know,” said Grady. “Some fellow passing through town. He wanted to know if there were any opportunities here for a taxidermist. I’ll talk to anybody. Talk to a nigger and you might learn something. I sold him four hundred worms.” He looked at his watch. “You’re right on the money, Norwood. I like a man who does what he says he’ll do.”
“I got me a good watch.”
“You have for a fact. . . . Here, let me get a look at you. That’s all right. You look like the Durango Kid, perhaps better known as Charles Starrett. What’s the guitar for?”
“It’s mine, I thought I’d take it with me.”
“You didn’t tell me you were a musician.”
“I fool around with it a little, that’s all.”
“You should have said something about it. I have a few contacts in the music game.”
“You do?”
“Well, I know some of those boys. I have some music machines down around Bossier City.”
“Do you know anybody on the Louisiana Hayride?”
“I know everybody on the Louisiana Hayride.”
“That’s what I’d like to get a shot at.”
“I expect I could pick up the phone and do you some good. We’ll talk about that another day. Right now we’d best get to the business at hand. I know you’re anxious to get rolling.”
Grady unfolded a map of New York City and laid it out on the steering wheel. The delivery point, a garage in Brooklyn, was marked with a circle. Grady explained about the route. It was very complicated. He went over it again, then once more. Norwood lied and said he thought he had it. Grady gave him the map and a stiff fiber envelope holding titles and pink slips and two sets of keys and a Gulf credit card in the name of Tilmon Fring and twenty-five dollars expense money.
Norwood said, “I guess I’ll get some more in New York then.”
“Some more what?”
“Well. I don’t know. Some more money.”
“Wasn’t that credit card in there?”
“Yeah, there’s a credit card here. But I was wondering if this was enough money.” He held up the five fives.
Grady was baffled and hurt. “That’s the usual. I thought it would be ample. I’ve never had this come up before. This
is embarrassing. You have your credit card. Figure a six-day trip at the very outside, that’s more than four dollars a day for your meals and the little contingencies of the road. These warm nights you can pull over and catnap right there in the car if you get tired. Most of the drivers drive straight through. Arnold has a comfortable cot in his garage—”
“When do I get the fifty dollars?”
“When you get back. Cash on delivery.”
“I couldn’t get it now?”
“Why no. You’re not even bonded, Norwood.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means you get your money when you get back.”
“I’d like to have some of it now.”
Grady showed signs of distress. He took a kitchen match from his pocket, one with garlands of blue lint on it, and burrowed earnestly in one ear with it. When he was through he examined the match and buzzed down the automatic window a couple of inches and tossed it out. He brought his billfold from his inside coat pocket. “Here’s what I’ll do, Norwood. I’ve never done this before. I’ll give you another ten toward expenses. We’ll write that off. That’s expenses. Then—I’ll give you an advance of twenty-five. That’s off your fifty. Now I’ll hold the balance here—on my person—and then, see, you’ll have that much more when you get back. To buy things that you need and want. Go off to New York with a lot of money and you’ll spend a lot of money. I’ve seen it happen too often. . . . You know, some people would be willing to pay us for an opportunity like this.”
Norwood counted the money and folded it into a hard square and stuck it in his watch pocket.
“Okay?” said Grady.
“Okay.”
“You won’t have to sign a voucher on that advance. And you needn’t bother to make an exact accounting on the expense money. We’re informal. We like to give our agents a free hand. So far as it’s consistent with good business practice.” He started the car and turned to Norwood with a grin. “I have a surprise waiting for you.”
They drove half a mile or so through the Arkansas side of town and pulled into an alley full of puddles, behind an ice plant. As it turned out there were two surprises. The first was that there were two cars to be delivered, not one. There they were, bumper to bumper, a big 98 Oldsmobile in front and a Pontiac Catalina behind, gleaming and smelling pleasantly of new paint. “We always give them a coat of Duco,” said Grady. “It’s a small enough investment and it can add two hundred dollars to a car’s value. That Olds is like new. Twelve thousand actual miles. Never used a pint of oil. It’s a clean car too. Well taken care of. It will be a joy to drive. You won’t even know you’re pulling anything with that new reflex tow bar. It has a patented action. We’ve just started using those and they are dandies.”