I fanned my perspiring face with my straw. The sun would not go down for another hour yet. Lazy-Bones carelessly dangled the yellow drawstrings of the sack over his lips until one of them finally became fastened between his teeth. This success pleased him greatly. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye and smiled broadly.
“Sure is a good old hot day,” he drawled again as though he loved the sound of the words. “Ain’t it?”
“One of the hottest of the summer,” I stated emphatically.
“You know, I like it when it’s good and hot,” he declared enthusiastically, the words punctuated with dabs at the tissue with the tip of his tongue.
Later he mined a soiled match. Apathetically he tested it on the seat of his breeches. He studied the purple tip and greenish base lovingly. Then he picked up one of his feet in his hand and critically examined the worn sole of his shoe. It was evident that its condition pleased him, because he drew the head of the match across its area several times, smiling from ear to ear. The match-head was damp. It crumbled to the steps with the first stroke, but Lazy-Bones did not know of the catastrophe until I burst out with the news in annoyance. Lazy-Bones was irritating at times.
I snatched a box of matches from my pocket and with a swift, continuous sweep of the hand lit one for him.
“Here! Lazy-Bones!” I called roughly. “Here’s a light!”
Lazy-Bones motioned me aside with assurance.
“I’ve got a match somewhere what’ll light up,” he explained, chuckling.
In five minutes he found it and with magical operations was able to blaze its tip. However, he had to lick the cigarette paper again and while he was preoccupied with the tissue and his tongue the flame scorched his fingers. Of course he had to throw the match to the ground.
“Christ!” I mumbled under my breath.
Lazy-Bones at last, however, had what he would call a cigarette aglow.
“Sure is a good old hot day,” he announced as though never before in all his life had he made the observation.
I lit another cigarette.
“Ain’t it?” he demanded with explosive enthusiasm.
I smiled at Lazy-Bones, nodding with conviction.
He rubbed the ash from his cigarette and fixed his gaze on some insignificant object across the street. I loved the indolent fellow more than ever. He knew how to live, and he thoroughly enjoyed every hour of his sluggish existence.
Lazy-Bones presently got to his feet and stretched his arms and legs with an accompaniment of groans and grunts.
“Yes, sir,” he yawned, “this sure has been a good old hot day.”
Again I nodded, but nonetheless there came once more that familiar explosion from the depths of his body:
“Ain’t it?”
Lazy-Bones lifted his bicycle from the pavement where several hours previously it had fallen when he slouched away from it. I waved farewell and started homeward. He motioned me to a stop.
“Well,” he smiled with his eyes, his ears, his nose, his chin, and his yellowed teeth, “I’m going home now and drink a pint of gin and go to bed and dream about this good old hot day.”
I smiled back at him, and with a wave of the hand started home once more.
“Sure has been a good old hot day. . . . Ain’t it!”
I left him dillydallying with his wheel.
But that was a long, long time ago. . . .
When I finally got my car stopped I jumped out and pulled poor old Lazy-Bones’s mangled body from the axle. I pulled him from under the car and prayed while I pulled that he wasn’t dead. I picked his head up in my arms, thinning the gore on his white face with the perspiration running in streams down my forehead, and wiped away the blood with my white linen coat. I called his name, begging him to answer me.
“Lazy-Bones! Lazy-Bones!”
He did not answer. His head slipped through my fingers to the hot, sticky asphalt. Somebody jerked me away.
“Lazy-Bones! Lazy-Bones!”
An undertaker bore him away. His pink sports page, now a wet, red rag, was wrapped around his head.
As long as I live I shall remember Lazy-Bones. Knowing the sunny nature of the poor fellow as I did it seems incredible, but nonetheless in my hands, through his matted hair, his head had felt like a bag of freshly cracked ice.
(First published in American Earth)
Balm of Gilead
BACK IN JANUARY, about the middle of the first week, Ned Jones received a letter from the fire insurance agent’s office in Bangor. The letter said that the company, effective January 1st, last, had discontinued allowing a discount on premiums covering farmhouses and barns which were equipped with lightning rods. Therefore, the letter said, the cost for protection on his buildings would be raised to twenty-two-fifty from twenty-fifty.
However, the letter went on, if the rods were already installed on the building, a lightning-rod expert would call and inspect the terminals, ground wires, brads, and so forth, and if the expert found them in first-class condition, the discount would be reinstated. The charge for all of this, the letter concluded, would be three dollars for the inspector’s time.
“Thunderation,” Ned said when he had finished reading the letter the third time, “Hell and thunderation!”
It did not take him long to figure out that he would save a dollar by not having the lightning rods inspected, but even so he could see that it was going to cost him two dollars a year more to keep his buildings covered by insurance.
“That’s thunderation,” he said.
His wife, Betty, was silent about the whole matter. She always froze up inside whenever something came up like that and threatened to cost an extra penny.
The insurance premium was not due and payable until February 1st, but a week before that time Ned got ready to make a trip to Bangor and pay a call at the insurance agent’s office.
He and his wife started out to Bangor after breakfast, driving the old car slowly along the black-top road, taking care to stay as far on the right-hand side of the road as possible. The law was that a car owner would not have to carry liability and property-damage insurance as long as he did not have a mishap. Ned was set on not having that first accident on the highways that would force him to pay insurance premiums for the right to drive his car. It was an old car anyway, about twelve years old, and he did not intend buying another one when it was worn out.
They got to Bangor just before ten o’clock in the forenoon, and, after finding a safe place to park and leave the automobile, Ned and his wife went straight to the agent’s office.
They sat down on a bench in the hall and waited for several minutes, and then a girl took them to see Mr. Harmsworth.
“Now, about that insurance on my stand of buildings out at Gaylord,” Ned said, shaking his head and his finger at the agent.
“I take it you’re upset about the new lightning-rod clause, effective January 1st, last,” Mr. Harmsworth said, smiling at Ned and his wife. “You see, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Jones, the company at the home office in New Hampshire rewrites the contracts, and we agents have nothing whatever to do with the terms the company dictates.”
“What do people in New Hampshire know about lightning rods anyway?” Ned said. “Now let me tell you. I once knew a man in New Hampshire who —”
“Let’s not get off the subject, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Jones,” Mr. Harmsworth said. “After all, both my parents were born and raised in New Hampshire, and I’m sure there is a New Hampshire connection somewhere in your family, too.”
He smiled at Mrs. Jones, beaming upon her all the force of what he knew was a sunny smile. Betty refused to be disarmed. She was frozen up inside, and she intended to remain unthawed as long as the insurance company refused to make an adjustment that would not cost them an extra penny.
“Now, I’ve lived down here in the State of Maine for all my life,” Ned said, “and I’m sixty and more right now, and lightning rods are the only things in the world that’ll keep lightning from str
iking and setting fire to the house or barn. All my life I’ve seen lightning strike a spire and run down the cable into the ground without even so much as smoking up the roof and clapboards. If it wasn’t for lightning rods —”
“Are you sure lightning runs down lightning rods, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Jones?” Mr. Harmsworth said. “I was under the impression it ran up the rods, or rather made contact on the point of the spire. However —”
“Lightning is lightning, whether it runs up or down, or slantwise, if it has a mind to,” Ned said, rising up.
“I see you know a lot more about such things than I do,” Mr. Harmsworth laughed, beaming upon Mrs. Jones. “I was raised here in the city, and I never had a chance to observe how lightning behaves when it comes in contact with a rod-equipped building. But, just the same, there’s nothing either you or I can do about this here clause, because the home office rewrote the contract and sent us the printed forms, and I’m merely their representative. I carry out their orders, but I have no authority to alter a clause in a contract.”
Ned looked at his wife, and she shook her head. That was all he wanted to know. No insurance company, with a home office in New Hampshire, run by New Hampshire people, was going to tell him whether they thought lightning rods were protection or not. He looked at his wife again, and shook his head. Betty tightened her mouth, freezing tighter inside, and nodded at Ned.
Mr. Harmsworth shuffled some papers on his desk, and, bringing one out with much crinkling and creasing, laid it before Ned.
“This is your bill for fire-protection coverage, due February 1st,” he said, glancing quickly at Ned, but not looking at Mrs. Jones.
Ned pushed it back at him.
“Now, about this Balm of Gilead,” Ned said, edging forward in his chair.
“What Balm of Gilead?” Mr. Harmsworth asked, startled. “What’s that?”
Ned looked at his wife, and Betty nodded. That was what he wanted to know from her. He pulled his chair closer to the desk.
“My Balm of Gilead,” he said. “I’ve got one in my dooryard, fourteen feet from the west wall of my dwelling house, and twenty-two feet from the east wall of my barn.”
“What’s a Balm of Gilead?” Mr. Harmsworth asked, still startled. “Wasn’t that something in the Bible? How’d you get something that was in the Bible?”
Ned and Betty looked at each other, but neither of them made any motion of the head.
“Balm of Gilead is a tree,” Ned said. “My Balm of Gilead was set out by my father, seventy-seven years ago, and it stands in my door-yard.”
“What about it?” Mr. Harmsworth asked, wild-eyed.
“It’s a lightning rod,” Ned said. “It’s the finest lightning rod on earth. After a Balm of Gilead —”
“You want us to give you a discount because you have a tree —” Mr. Harmsworth began, sitting forward in his chair.
“— passes its fiftieth year, it turns into a lightning rod,” Ned continued doggedly. “Lightning won’t strike any other thing within fifty yards of it. Lightning strikes the Balm of Gilead every time.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at exactly,” Mr. Harmsworth said, “but I wouldn’t suppose you expect to get any discount on your fire insurance for having a tree like that.”
Betty stiffened her backbone.
“I don’t know why not,” Ned said. “Why shouldn’t I get a discount when I’ve got a Balm of Gilead located almost halfway between my two buildings, and the farthest is twenty-two feet from it. A tree like that is two or three times more protection than rods on the buildings. Why, it even makes the buildings proof against lightning! I figure I’m due five or six dollars discount for having that tree where it is.”
Mr. Harmsworth scratched his head and took a swift look at Mrs. Jones. He had time to see that her mouth was drawn in a tight line across her face. He did not look at her again.
“If you insist upon it,” he said, “I’ll take it up with the home office in New Hampshire. I won’t be able to do a thing until I hear from them. But I shouldn’t think they would allow anybody a discount on fire insurance for having a Balm of Gilead tree.”
“If they wasn’t those New Hampshire people,” Ned said, “they’d know how much protection a tree like that is.”
“I’ll write you a letter and let you know what the home office has to say just as soon as I get their answer,” he said, standing up.
Ned and Betty got up and went out into the hall, Mr. Harmsworth followed them trying to shake hands with at least one of them. Betty kept her hands clasped tightly across her waist. Ned outwalked the agent to the street.
“Ignorant young cuss,” Ned said. “Associates with New Hampshire people.”
Betty nodded her head.
They bought a few things in a store, and then got into their car and drove home. Neither of them mentioned the insurance during the rest of the day.
During the remainder of the week, and through the first three days of the following one, both Ned and his wife watched the mail for the letter from the agent in Bangor. On the third day the letter came.
They went into the kitchen and sat down in the chairs by the window before opening it. Ned first took out his glasses and carefully polished the lenses. Betty put her handkerchief to her nose, and then put it away. Ned read the letter aloud.
Dear Mr. Jones:
I have taken up the matter of the Balm of Gilead tree in your dooryard with the home office in New Hampshire, and I am herewith advising you of their decision. It seems that the company thought it was all a joke or something because, in their own words, they wished to know if your Balm of Gilead tree would “catch mice, scare crows away, and cure painter’s colic.” Further along in their letter they state most emphatically that under no circumstances would a discount on fire-insurance premiums be allowed for possession of a Balm of Gilead tree. . . .
The letter did not end there, but Ned read no farther. He handed the letter to his wife, and she laid it aside on the table, drawing her mouth into a thin straight line across her face.
“I never did waste any feelings for the people of New Hampshire,” Ned said, putting away his glasses, getting his hat, and standing up.
His wife did not say a word when he left the kitchen and went out into the dooryard.
When she saw him come out of the woodshed with the ax and the crosscut saw, she put on her jacket and went out to help him.
First he cut a notch in the Balm of Gilead on the side in order to fell it in the direction where he wanted it to fall. When that was done, he picked up one end of the crosscut, and Betty picked up the other end. They began sawing silently, their faces bright but drawn in tight lines, and both hoping that an electrical storm would come early in the spring, and each of them praying silently that lightning would strike the house and burn it to a heap of ashes on the ground.
(First published in Story)
A Very Late Spring
MARY JANE KNEW Dave was up to some kind of mischief, but to save her soul she could not find out what it was. Dave had been acting queerly for more than a month. He was nervous and restless when he came in the house and she had a hard time making him finish his meals. Dave said he was just not hungry, but Mary Jane knew that was not the real reason. He was up to some kind of mischief.
Dave blamed it all on the weather. Here it was the last of April and almost the first of May, he said, and it was still winter. There should have been a thaw three or four weeks ago, but instead there were nineteen inches of snow and ice on the ground and the thermometer never went above the twenties. And it looked like more snow right then.
Mary Jane reminded him of the winter three years before when the spring thaw did not come until the first week in May. She said she was certain the lake ice would go out almost any day now.
Mary Jane could not see how the weather had anything to do with the way he was acting.
Instead of getting over his restlessness, Dave got worse. When he came home at night, after worki
ng all day in the lumber mill, he wanted to go out again before he finished eating his supper. There was a dance at the Grange hall every Tuesday night, and the moving pictures every Friday night, but there was no place to go during the rest of the week. Mary Jane went to the pictures on Friday nights and to the dance whenever there was one, and the other evenings she was in the habit of staying at home and doing her lacework. Dave wanted to go somewhere every night now.
“Why can’t you sit by the fire and read the newspapers like you used to do, Dave?” she asked, with her worried frown that he had once liked so much.
“I want to go somewhere,” was his answer. It was the same answer each time she asked him.
She placed supper on the table and Dave sat down in his chair. “You act like a twelve-year-old boy, Dave,” she stated accusingly. “You used to want to stay at home when I wanted to go to the dance or the pictures at the Grange hall. Now you want to go off and leave me by myself every night. What makes you so restless lately?”
“Maybe the winters are getting worse,” he mumbled to himself. “I wish I lived out in California or down in Florida, where they don’t have to put up with snow and ice half the whole year.”
Mary Jane gave up trying to talk to Dave. Every time she asked him what made him so restless at night he always cursed the winters and said he was going where there were none. It did no good to try to talk to him. Dave did not pay any attention to her. He was always thinking about something else.
Two days later there was a four-inch snowfall. It began to snow at about eight o’clock in the morning just after Dave went to the lumberyard. By six o’clock that night it had almost stopped, but there were four inches of it on the ground — on top of the nineteen inches already there.
Mary Jane waited all day for night to come. Not because she wanted it to come, but because she dreaded it more than anything in the world. She knew Dave would come home cursing the winters and the snow. And then before he was halfway through supper he would get up and want to go somewhere. She knew exactly what he would say about it.