John D. MacDonald
A Good Judge of Men
McGarron, the sales manager, issued the invitation.
Four of us were being broken in at the home office before being sent to the regional offices of the Dillon Construction Equipment Company. There’s a lot of money in moving dirt, and in selling the stuff that moves it. It’s the cream of all sales jobs. They prefer civil engineers, but some of the old boys, like McGarron, started in before Dillon started to get particular.
McGarron said, “I’ve got this camp. It’s in pretty rough country. We can go out and maybe get ourself a deer. I’ll take care of the grub and the liquor and the guns and the transportation. You guys get licenses. We’ll leave from here Friday afternoon.”
It was as much an order as an invitation.
McGarron had made it pretty clear that he could turn the thumb down on any one of us, or the whole four, if he felt like it. I didn’t think much of him from the minute I met him. A big-bellied citizen with a weather-red face and what his wife probably told him were twinkly little blue eyes. He was one of those people who keep sticking you with their thumb to emphasize a point, or knuckling you on the chest. But he knew equipment, and he had a 30-year card file in his head of everybody who’d bought anything from Dillon.
I wanted the sales job and I wanted it badly. I’d been seven years with Kimball and Stroud Construction, the last four as superintendent of road jobs in the field. I made the mistake of showing a real nice profit on a Georgia job, and that sort of turned me into their Georgia expert. It looked like I was going to be stuck down there for the rest of my life.
Peg and I had a little reserve to carry us until commissions started coming in, and I figured that after three years with Dillon I ought to be racking up $20,000 a year. But if McGarron decided that I parted my hair in the wrong place. I knew I could always go back with Kimball and Stroud.
So there was me, Ralph Buckler — and there was Jake Reigen, and Tom Durboldt and Allan Archer, The four hopefuls.
Jake Reigen was a tough, swarthy, bandy-legged little guy in his early forties. He had a wide white-toothed grin and a world of practical experience in the road-building game. I figured Jake as having too crazy a temper to ever make a salesman. If a prospect said no to Jake, Jake would want to clock him with a cement form.
Tom Durboldt was a quiet, big-shouldered blond who was a transfer from Dillon’s Manufacturing Division. He was steady, likeable, but without experience in problems in the field.
For a long time I couldn’t figure out Allan Archer, the fourth member of our little quartet. I’ve hired kids like him out in the field. You always hire them with misgivings. They either last a few days and quit, or they get stubborn and turn into pretty good hands. He was 21 or 22, a dark boy with a good build.
I remembered hearing about the Archer Corporation, and how they recently landed the fat airfield construction contract in North Africa. I asked Allan a few indirect questions and found out that it was his family.
So on Friday, on the last day of our three-week training period, we carried suitcases out to McGarron’s big gray Cadillac sedan. The guns and liquor and food were in the trunk. We had to put the bags inside, so it was pretty cramped.
“Another day, another dollar,” McGarron said, shoving his thumb into Tom Durboldt’s ribs. McGarron was full of original cracks like that. We got in, and I sat beside McGarron, with the other three in back. Archer in the middle.
McGarron’s driving made me nervous. He bullied his way through traffic, cursing everybody who wouldn’t move over.
“I suppose I got a bunch of dead shots with me,” he said.
“I can hit the ground with my hat every time,” Jake said.
We bulled about previous hunting trips. I’d done a little, not much. Tom was a woodsman from way back. Jake and Allan Archer had never shot at anything except tin cans on fence posts. You could feel the strain in the car. McGarron knew just what his recommendations were going to be, and he could have taken the pressure off by letting us know. But that wasn’t his way. He was going to talk about everything in the world except those four sales openings that we wanted. I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of hinting around, and I guessed Tom felt the same way.
But Jake brought it up, and I sort of liked the way he did it. We were about an hour from the city and had turned off onto narrow, pot-holed asphalt. Jake said, out of the clear sky, “Look, McGarron. We all want to relax and have a time. So tell us. Do we have jobs or don’t we?”
I looked at McGarron’s blunt profile and saw his lips tighten. Then he grinned. “Sure, Jake. I’ll tell you. As far as I can see, three of you fellows are going to work out fine. I’m not sure about the other guy. I thought I’d make up my mind this weekend which three to choose.”
“So who might not have a job?” Jake demanded.
“Hell,” said McGarron, “I wouldn’t want to spoil the weekend for one of you.”
I had my arm along the top of the seat. I looked back at Jake. His eyes had a narrow smoky look, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. It was pretty obvious that McGarron wanted to run it like one of those TV shows, with $20,000 a year for the jackpot.
We got to his camp. It had a little one lung generator to pump the water and run the lights. There was a gasoline stove in the kitchen. The camp wasn’t sealed, and you hung everything on nails sticking out of the studding. The porch overlooked the lake.
As soon as we got organized. McGarron broke out the liquor and made it evident that he expected every one of us to get just as tight as he was going to get. And he planned to get thoroughly boiled. Things were getting pretty fuzzy by the time we ate, and after the table was cleared, McGarron organized a poker game. By then Jake’s eyes looked pretty bloodshot. Tom’s mouth was sliding all over his face, and Allan Archer was as pale as death.
McGarron just got louder and redder. He demanded that we play table stakes pot limit, which is a rugged game in any man’s league. Drunk as I was. I knew what Jake held every time. Tom played a steady game, but unimaginative. It was the Archer kid who surprised me. I don’t know where he learned his poker. Jake went broke in the first hour, stumbled over to a bunk, fell in and began to snore. Tom was losing steadily. I was trying like hell to stay even. McGarron and Archer were splitting Jake’s money and Tom’s.
We’d killed three fifths by midnight, and one of those big pots came along. I opened with two pair and found I’d opened into McGarron’s pat hand and into a one card draw by Archer. I didn’t fill and checked, then folded as McGarron bet. Tom had already folded. He yawned and said, “Enough for me,” and wandered out into the night.
McGarron had bet small, considering his pat hand. Allan, with his face like chalk, made a substantial raise.
“Sucked you in that time, son,” McGarron said heartily. He matched the raise and bet big.
“And another raise to you,” Archer said tonelessly.
“I sure like to take money away from stubborn people,” McGarron said, betting right back. They had shoved the pot up above five hundred dollars by then. I knew it didn’t mean much to McGarron, and probably less to Allan Archer.
Archer calmly pushed everything he had left out. Two or three hundred I guess it was. As it was table stakes, that was all he could do. And it was going to take just about everything McGarron had in front of him to call.
“Excuse me,” Archer said in a strangled voice. He put his cards face down on the table and stumbled to the door. In a moment we heard him being sick at the end of the porch.
I sat there and McGarron sat there. He fiddled with his cash and kept looking over at Archer’s cards.
“Hate to take the kid’s money,” McGarron said jovially.