Which just makes what happened thereafter all the more tragic.
“What I think I got,” Porter said, “is no way to turn.”
(This wasn’t the same evening, but if you put the two evenings side by side under a microscope you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart each from the other. They were at Porter’s little house over alongside the tracks of the old spur off the Wyandotte & Southern, which I couldn’t tell you the last time there was a train on that spur, and they had their feet up and their shoes off, and there was a jug of corn in the picture. Most of their evenings had come to take on this particular shade.)
“Couldn’t get work if I wanted to,” Porter said, “which I don’t, and if I did I couldn’t make enough to matter, and my debts is up to my ears and rising steady.”
“It doesn’t look to be gettin’ better,” Seth said. “On the other hand, how can it get worse?”
“I keep thinking the same.”
“And?”
“And it keeps getting worse.”
“I guess you know what you’re talkin’ about,” Seth said. He scratched his bulldog chin, which hadn’t been in the same room with a razor in more than a day or two. “What I been thinkin’ about,” he said, “is killin’ myself.”
“You been thinking of that?”
“Sure have.”
“I think on it from time to time myself,” Porter admitted. “Mostly nights when I can’t sleep. It can be a powerful comfort around about three in the morning. You think of all the different ways and the next thing you know you’re asleep. Beats the stuffing out of counting sheep jumping fences. You seen one sheep you seen ’em all is always been my thoughts on the subject, whereas there’s any number of ways of doing away with yourself.”
“I’d take a certain satisfaction in it,” Seth said, more or less warming to the subject. “What I’d leave is this note tellin’ Linda Mae how her and Rachel’ll be taken care of with the insurance, just to get the bitch’s hopes up, and then she can find out for her own self that I cashed in that insurance back in January to make the payment on the Oldsmobile. You know it’s pure uncut hell gettin’ along without an automobile now.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Just put a rope around my neck,” said Seth, smothering a hiccup, “and my damn troubles’ll be over.”
“And mine in the bargain,” Porter said.
“By you doin’ your own self in?”
“Be no need,” Porter said, “if you did yourself in.”
“How you figure that?”
“What I figure is a hundred thousand dollars,” Porter said. “Lord love a duck, if I had a hundred thousand dollars I could declare bankruptcy and live like a king!”
Seth looked at him, got up, walked over to him, and took the jug away from him. He took a swig and socked the cork in place, but kept hold of the jug.
“Brother,” he said, “I just guess you’ve had enough of this here.”
“What makes you say that, brother?”
“Me killin’ myself and you gettin’ rich, you don’t make sense. What you think you’re talkin’ about, anyhow?”
“Insurance,” Porter said. “Insurance, that’s what I think I’m talking about. Insurance.”
Porter explained the whole thing. It seems there was this life insurance policy their father had taken out on them when they weren’t but boys. Face amount of a hundred thousand dollars, double indemnity for accidental death. It was payable to him while they were alive, but upon his death the beneficiary changed. If Porter was to die the money went to Seth. And vice versa.
“And you knew about this all along?”
“Sure did,” Porter said.
“And never cashed it in? Not the policy on me and not the policy on you?”
“Couldn’t cash ’em in,” Porter said. “I guess I woulda if I coulda, but I couldn’t so I didn’t.”
“And you didn’t let these here policies lapse?” Seth said. “On account of occasionally a person can be just the least bit absentminded and forget about keeping a policy in force. That’s been known to happen,” Seth said, looking off to one side, “in matters relating to fire insurance, for example, and I just thought to mention it.”
(I have the feeling he wasn’t the only one to worry on that score. You may have had similar thoughts yourself, figuring you know how the story’s going to end, what with the insurance not valid and all. Set your mind at rest. If that was the way it had happened I’d never be taking the trouble to write it up for you. I got to select stories with some satisfaction in them if I’m going to stand a chance of selling them to the magazine, and I hope you don’t figure I’m sitting here poking away at this typewriter for the sheer physical pleasure of it. If I just want to exercise my fingers I’ll send them walking through the Yellow Pages if it’s all the same to you.)
“Couldn’t let ’em lapse,” Porter said. “They’re all paid up. What you call twenty-payment life, meaning you pay it in for twenty years and then you got it free and clear. And the way Pa did it, you can’t borrow on it or nothing. All you can do is wait and see who dies.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
“Except we don’t have to wait to see who dies.”
“Why, I guess not. I just guess a man can take matters into his own hands if he’s of a mind to.”
“He surely can,” Porter said.
“Man wants to kill himself, that’s what he can go and do.”
“No law against it,” Porter said.
Now you know and I know that that last is not strictly true. There’s a definite no-question law against suicide in our state, and most likely in yours as well. It’s harder to make it stand up than a calf with four broken legs, however, and I don’t recall that anyone hereabouts was ever prosecuted for it, or likely will be. It does make you wonder some what they had in mind writing that particular law into the books.
“I’ll just have another taste of that there corn,” Porter said, “and why don’t you have a pull on the jug your own self? You have any idea just when you might go and do it?”
“I’m studying on it,” Seth said.
“There’s a lot to be said for doing something soon as a man’s mind’s made up on the subject. Not to be hurrying you or anything of the sort, but they say that he who hesitates is last.” Porter scratched his chin. “Or some such,” he said.
“I just might do it tonight.”
“By God,” Porter said.
“Get the damn thing over with. Glory Hallelujah and my troubles is over.”
“And so is mine,” said Porter.
“You’ll be in the money then,” said Seth, “and I’ll be in the boneyard, and both of us is free and clear. You can just buy me a decent funeral and then go bankrupt in style.”
“Give you Johnny Millbourne’s number-one funeral,” Porter promised. “Brassbound casket and all. I mean, price is no object if I’m going bankrupt anyway. Let old Johnny swing for the money.”
“You a damn good man, brother.”
“You the best man in the world, brother.”
The jug passed back and forth a couple more times. At one point Seth announced that he was ready, and he was halfway out the door before he recollected that his car had been repossessed, which interfered with his plans to drive it off a cliff. He came back in and sat down again and had another drink on the strength of it all, and then suddenly he sat forward and stared hard at Porter.
“This policy thing,” he said.
“What about it?”
“It’s on both of us, is what you said.”
“If I said it then must be it’s the truth.”
“Well then,” Seth said, and sat back, arms folded on his chest.
“Well then what?”