Georgia Boy (12 page)

“Good evening, folks,” Ben said, coming up the steps.

“Howdy, Ben,” Pa said. “Come on in and set.

Ma didn’t say anything right away, because she was always suspicious of politicians like Ben Simons until she found out what it was they wanted.

“Nice cool evening, ain’t it, Mrs. Stroup?” Ben said, feeling in the dark for a chair.

“I reckon,” Ma. said.

Nobody said anything for a while. Ben cleared his throat several times, sounding as if he wanted to say something but was halfway afraid to open his mouth.

“Busy these days, Ben?” Pa asked him.

“I sure am, Morris,” he said right away, opening up just as if he had been waiting for somebody to give him a chance to talk. “I declare, it looks like I never have time any more to sit down for a minute’s rest. I snatch a little sleep, and I grab a little something to eat, and the rest is all work, work, work, from early morning until late at night. My wife was telling me only the day before yesterday that I was going to put myself in the grave twenty years ahead of time if I didn’t stop working so hard. I have to patrol the streets, keep the jail cleaned up, make arrests, keep my eyes open for bail-jumpers, and the Lord only knows what else. I’m worn to a frazzle, Morris.”

“Maybe you need somebody to help you out,” my old man said. “Now, take me for example. I’ve got a little free time now and then. True, it ain’t much, because I’m kept pretty busy just watching out for my own affairs, but I could spare a little time every once in a while, if it would help you out any.”

Ben leaned forward in his chair.

“To tell the truth, that’s what I came up here tonight to see you about, Morris,” he said. “I’m glad you mentioned it.”

“Ben Simons,” Ma spoke up, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but whatever it is, it had better not be anything shady like the last trouble you got Morris into. I don’t want to hear of any more of your money-making schemes like selling family-sized expanding coffins. Nobody in his right mind would want to have a coffin opened up and expanded every time another member of the family died.”

“What I had in mind ain’t nothing at all like that, Mrs. Stroup,” Ben said. “What I’m speaking about now is a political appointment.”

“What kind of a political appointment?” she asked, stopping her rocking chair and sitting quiet and straight.

“It’s like this,” Ben said. “The town council met last night and voted to enforce the ordinance against dogs running loose in the streets. Only two days ago I had to track down and shoot a dog that had gone mad, and the town council thinks it’s dangerous to have so many dogs running wild. They told me to enforce the ordinance and lock up every stray dog I found on the street. Right away I told the members that I had all I could handle as it was, and they agreed to appoint an investigator of waifs and strays.”

“An investigator of waifs and strays!” Ma said, rising up out of her seat. “Do you mean to sit there, Ben Simons, and say that my husband is the type of man who ought to be a dog-catcher! I’ve a good mind to ask you to leave my house!”

“Now, wait a minute, Mrs. Stroup,” Ben pleaded. “It wasn’t my idea at all, in the beginning. One of the council members himself suggested that Morris was the ideal citizen to have the appointment, and they voted—”

“Dogs do have a habit of following me around,” my old man said. “I’ve noticed it all my life. It looks like dogs just naturally take to me—”

“Shut up, Morris!” Ma shouted at him. “I’ve never heard of such a humiliating thing!”

“But, Mrs. Stroup,” Ben said, “a great many famous politicians have started out being dog-catchers. As a matter of fact, most big senators, congressmen, and sheriffs started their political careers as dog-catchers. There’s scarcely a high office-holding politician in the country today, who didn’t begin his career by being a dog-catcher.”

“I don’t believe it!” Ma said. “I’ve always had a higher regard for politicians than that.”

“Politics is a queer sort of thing,” Ben said. “The same rules that apply to other occupations don’t seem to hold true to politics. A politician can start out early in his career being a dog-catcher and live it down almost in no time at all. That’s what makes politics the kind of occupation it is.”

Ma was silent after that, and I could hear her rocker begin squeaking again. It was easy to know that she was thinking hard about what Ben had said.

“The more I think about it,” my old man spoke up, “the more I like the idea. I’ve been thinking for a long time that I ought to take a bigger hand in public life. Just drifting along from day to day, doing a little here and a bit there, don’t amount to so much, after all.”

“Then you ought to accept this appointment, Morris,” Ben said quickly. “It will be a big thing for you. You ought to do it.”

My old man sat still and tried to see Ma’s face in the dark. She was still rocking back and forth and making the chair squeak as regularly as water dripping from a spigot.

“Well,” Pa said slowly, watching Ma as best he could in the dim light, “I reckon it’s something I ought to accept.” He waited to hear what Ma was going to do. She paid no attention at all to what he had said. “I’ll accept the appointment.”

Ben got up.

“That’s fine, Morris,” he said quickly, moving across the porch toward the steps. “That’s fine. I’m glad to hear you say that. I’ll expect to see you downtown in the morning right after breakfast.”

Ben started down the steps. He reached the bottom one when my old man jumped up and called him.

“Ben,” he said anxiously, catching up with him, “how much salary does the office pay?”

“Salary?”

“Sure,” Pa said. “How much salary do I get for being the investigator of waifs and strays?”

“Well,” Ben said slowly, “it’s not exactly a salary.”

“What is it then? What do you call it?”

“It’s fees, Morris.”

“Fees?”

“Sure, Morris. That’s the way most of the best political jobs pay. They pay fees.”

“How much fee do I get?” Pa asked him.

“Twenty-five cents for every dog you catch and lock up.”

My old man didn’t say anything right away. He stood and looked down the street in the darkness. Ben edged towards the street.

“I reckon I am a little disappointed,” Pa said, “because I’d sort of halfway expected to get paid a salary every Saturday night.”

“But the thing about fees, Morris, is that there’s no limit to how much money you can earn for yourself. When you get paid a salary, you know you’ll never get more than a certain amount. But when you get paid in fees, there ain’t no limit to your earnings.”

“That’s right!” my old man said, brightening up. “I just hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“Well,” Ben said, starting down the street, “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

“Good night, Ben,” Pa called after him. “I appreciate you giving me the chance to accept the job.”

We went up the steps to the porch. Ma had left and gone inside to bed.

“Let’s get a good night’s sleep, son,” he said to me, “Tomorrow’s going to be a big busy day. We’ll need all the rest we can get. Come on.”

We went inside and undressed and got in bed. My old man tossed and turned for a long time, and I could hear him talking to himself about all the dogs in town he knew by name when I dropped off to sleep.

The next morning as soon as breakfast was over, Pa got his hat and we went downtown to look for Ben Simons. We did not waste any time on the way down the street, but my old man did tell me to remember about Sparky, the coon hound he saw sleeping on Mr. Frank Bean’s front porch.

We finally found Ben Simons in the barber shop getting a shave. He had lather all over his face when we first went in, and he couldn’t say anything for a while. As soon as he could sit up, though, he waved his hand at Pa and me.

“Good morning, Morris,” he said. “All set to start to work?”

“I’m itching to get started, Ben,” Pa told him.

“I’ll be through here in a minute,” Ben said.

After he had got out of the chair and put on his hat he told Pa to go out and round up all the dogs running loose on the streets and lock them up in the big cell-room at the jail.

“Is that all there is to it?” Pa asked.

“It’s just as simple as that,” Ben told him.

We started off towards the other side of town, walking slow and keeping our eyes open for dogs. Most of them must have been sleeping at that time of the morning, because we didn’t see a single one in the streets. After about half an hour, my old man reached in his pocket and took out a dime.

“Here, son,” he said, handing it to me, “run down to the butcher shop and get a dime’s worth of the biggest piece of meat you can buy for the money. It don’t have to be fresh—it just has to be big.”

I ran down the street and got a good-sized piece of meat and brought it back to where I had left my old man sitting in the shade of an umbrella tree. He had dropped off to sleep, but he jumped up wide-awake when I shook him and showed him the meat.

“That’ll make them take notice!” he said, sniffing at it “Come on, son!”

We went down another street with my old man swinging the chunk of meat back and forth. It was no time at all before we looked back and saw somebody’s speckled bird dog trailing behind us and sniffing the meat.

“That’s all that was needed, son,” my old man said. “There’s nothing like having a good piece of meat at a time like this.”

He whistled at the bird dog, and the dog pricked up his ears and trotted a little faster. Pretty soon somebody else’s dog got wind of the meat, and he began trotting along behind us. By the time we had reached the railroad crossing, there were seven dogs trailing us. Pa was feeling good about it, and he told me to run ahead to the jail and open the cell-room door. When he got there, he led the dogs inside, and then slipped out with the chunk of meat before they could grab it.

“If we’d got just one more that trip, we’d have made us two dollars,” he said. “That’s a lot of money to make by just walking up one street and down another one. I’m beginning to see why it is that a political office gets such a hold on a man. I wouldn’t want to swap jobs with anybody else in the world now. Being a politician is about the best way to earn a living that I ever heard about.”

We went up another street with the chunk of meat, and before we’d gone a block somebody’s spaniel came running out from under a house and trotted along behind us. On the way back to the jail I counted five dogs following us. We made a special trip past Mr. Frank Bean’s house just to give Sparky a chance to smell the meat and come along with us. After we had locked them all up with the others, my old man sat down and began figuring with a matchstick in the sand.

“That’s a little over three dollars, son,” he said, throwing the matchstick away. “That’s a heap of money to earn in just so little time. Tomorrow if we earn as much, we’ll have six dollars. By Saturday night, we’ll have eighteen or twenty dollars. That’s more money than I thought I’d ever see again in my life. Come on! Let’s go home and eat dinner. It’s noon already.

We went home and sat down at the table, but Ma didn’t say a word, and my old man didn’t dare. We finished eating and went outside to sit in the shade of the chinaberry tree.

After about an hour I saw Ben Simons coming up the street in a hurry. My old man was asleep, but I woke him up because I thought Ben had something important to see him about. Ben saw us under the chinaberry tree, and he hurried across the yard.

“Morris,” he said blowing hard and all out of breath, “where in the world did you get all them dogs you locked up in the jail?”

“Oh, them,” my old man said, raising himself on his elbow. “Why, I just rounded them up like I’m supposed to do. It’s my job to lock up all the waifs and strays I find loose in the streets. It just happened that these strays were not cows, or horses, or some other kind of animal.”

“But you locked up Mayor Foot’s prize setter, Morris!” he said excitedly. “Besides that, Mrs. Josie Hendricks said her spaniel was missing, and I found him in the jail with all the others. Mr. Bean’s best coon hound was in there with them, too. Every last one of those dogs belongs to somebody, and besides that, the owners paid two dollars dog tax on them. You just can’t lock up folks’ dogs that they’ve paid their taxes on!”

“They was running loose on the streets,” Pa said. “I went out and made a couple trips looking things over, and I just happened to run across a lot of dogs that acted like they didn’t have no homes. It was my duty to lock them up like I done.”

“How’d you get them to go in the jail?”

“Well, I sort of led them in, Ben. Dogs always have had a way of following me. I told you that last night.”

“You didn’t bait them?”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly,” my old man said. “I did have a little piece of meat, though, come to think of it.”

“I thought so,” Ben said, taking off his hat and wiping his face with his handkerchief. “I knew something was peculiar.”

Nobody said anything for a long time. After a while, Ben put his hat back on his head and looked down at my old man.

“I think maybe I can handle the dog situation from now on, Morris,” he said. “Being dog-catcher will probably take up too much of your time.”

“But how about the three dollars in fees that I earned?” Pa asked. “I earned them fees, didn’t I?”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Ben said. “I don’t think the town council will want to pay out the money now, Mayor Foot would probably fire me for letting you lock up his prize-winning bird dog if we presented a bill for fees. One of the first things I learned about politics was that it never was good politics for one politician to step on another politician’s toes. I reckon it’ll be better if we’ll just let matters stand as they are. I can’t afford to lose my job on account of you, Morris.”

My old man nodded his head and lay back again with his head resting on the trunk of the chinaberry tree.

“I guess you’re right about it, Ben,” he said. “It looks like being a politician is a full-time job, and I wouldn’t want to be saddled with any job that took up all my time, anyway.”