Well, I told you right off that sometimes you can’t win for losing, which was the case for Porter and Seth both, and another way of putting it is to say that when everything goes wrong there’s nothing goes right. Here’s what happened. Porter slipped on a piece of loose gravel while he was pushing, and the truck had to go on its own, and where it went was halfway and no further, with its back wheel hung up on a hunk of tree limb or some such and its two front wheels hanging out over nothing and its motor stalled out deader’n a smoked fish.
Porter said himself a whole mess of bad words. Then he wasted considerable time shoving the back of that truck, forgetting it was in gear and not about to budge. Then he remembered and said a few more bad words and put the thing in neutral, which involved a long reach across Seth to get to the floor shift and a lot of coordination to manipulate it and the clutch pedal at the same time. Then Porter got out of the truck and gave the door a slam, and just about then a beat-up old Chevy with Indiana plates pulls up and this fellow leaps out screaming that he’s got a tow rope and he’ll pull the truck to safety.
You can’t hardly blame Porter for the rest of it. He wasn’t the type to be great at contingency planning anyhow, and who could allow for something like this? What he did, he gave this great sob and just plain hurled himself at the back of that truck, it being in neutral now, and the truck went sailing like a kite in a tornado, and Porter, well, what he did was follow right along after it. It wasn’t part of his plan but he just had himself too much momentum to manage any last-minute change of direction.
According to the fellow from Indiana, who it turned out was a veterinarian from Bloomington, Porter fell far enough to get off a couple of genuinely rank words on the way down. Last words or not, you sure wouldn’t go and engrave them on any tombstone.
Speaking of which, he has the last word in tombstones, Vermont granite and all, and his brother Seth has one just like it. They had a double-barreled funeral, the best Johnny Millbourne had to offer, and they each of them reposed in a brass-bound casket, the top-of-the-line model. Minnie Lucy Boxwood sang “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” which was Porter’s favorite song, plus she sang Seth’s favorite, which was “Old Buttermilk Sky,” plus she also sang free gratis “My Buddy” as a testament to brotherly love.
And Linda Mae and Rachel got themselves two hundred thousand dollars from the insurance company, which is what Gert and her kids in Valdosta, Georgia, also got. And Seth and Porter have an end to their miseries, which was all they really wanted before they got their heads turned around at the idea of all that money.
The only thing funnier than how things don’t work out is how they do.
Funny You Should Ask
On what a less original writer might deign to describe as a fateful day, young Robert Tillinghast approached the proprietor of a shop called Earth Forms. “Actually,” he said, “I don’t think I can buy anything today, but there’s a question I’d like to ask you. It’s been on my mind for the longest time. I was looking at those recycled jeans over by the far wall.”
“I’ll be getting a hundred pair in Monday afternoon,” the proprietor said.
“Is that right?”
“It certainly is.”
“A hundred pair,” Robert marveled. “That’s certainly quite a lot.”
“It’s the minimum order.”
“Is that a fact? And they’ll all be the same quality and condition as the ones you have on display over on the far wall?”
“Absolutely. Of course, I won’t know what sizes I’ll be getting.”
“I guess that’s just a matter of chance.”
“It is. But they’ll all be first-quality name brands, and they’ll all be in good condition, broken in but not broken to bits. That’s a sort of an expression I made up to describe them.”
“I like it,” said Robert, not too sincerely. “You know, there’s a question that’s been nagging at my mind for the longest time. Now you get six dollars a pair for the recycled jeans, is that right?” It was. “And it probably wouldn’t be out of line to guess that they cost you about half that amount?” The proprietor, after a moment’s reflection, agreed that it wouldn’t be far out of line to make that estimate.
“Well, that’s the whole thing,” Robert said. “You notice the jeans I’m wearing?”
The proprietor glanced at them. They were nothing remarkable, a pair of oft-washed Lee Riders that were just beginning to go thin at the knees. “Very nice,” the man said. “I’d get six dollars for them without a whole lot of trouble.”
“But I wouldn’t want to sell them.”
“And of course not. Why should you? They’re just getting to the comfortable stage.”
“Exactly!” Robert grew intense, and his eyes bulged slightly. This was apt to happen when he grew intense, although he didn’t know it, never having seen himself at such times. “Exactly,” he repeated. “The recycled jeans you see in the shops, this shop and other shops, are just at the point where they’re breaking in right. They’re never really worn out. Unless you only put the better pairs on display?”
“No, they’re all like that.”
“That’s what everybody says.” Robert had had much the same conversation before in the course of his travels. “All top quality, all in excellent condition, and all in the same stage of wear.”
“So?”
“So,” Robert said in triumph, “who throws them out?”
“Oh.”
“The company that sells them. Where do they get them from?”
“You know,” the proprietor said, “it’s funny you should ask. The same question’s occurred to me. People buy these jeans because this is the way they want ’em. But who in the world sells them?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Not that it would do me any good to have the answer, but the question preys on my mind.”
“Who sells them? I could understand about young children’s jeans that kids would outgrow them, but what about the adult sizes? Unless kids grow up and don’t want to wear jeans anymore.”
“I’ll be wearing jeans as long as I live,” Robert said recklessly. “I’ll never get too old for jeans.”
The proprietor seemed not to have heard. “Now maybe it’s different out in the farm country,” he said. “I buy these jeans from a firm in Rockford, Illinois—”
“I’ve heard of the firm,” Robert said. “They seem to be the only people supplying recycled jeans.”
“Only one I know of. Now maybe things are different in their area and people like brand-new jeans and once they break in somewhat they think of them as worn out. That’s possible, don’t you suppose?”
“I guess it’s possible.”
“Because it’s the only explanation I can think of. After all, what could they afford to pay for the jeans? A dollar a pair? A dollar and a half at the outside? Who would sell ’em good-condition jeans for that amount of money?” The man shook his head. “Funny you should ask a question that I’ve asked myself so many times and never put into words.”
“That Rockford firm,” Robert said. “That’s another thing I don’t understand. Why would they develop a sideline business like recycled jeans?”
“Well, you never know about that,” the man said. “Diversification is the keynote of American business these days. Take me, for example. I started out selling flowerpots, and now I sell flowerpots and guitar strings and recapped tires and recycled jeans. Now there are people who would call that an unusual combination.”
“I suppose there are,” said Robert.
An obsession of the sort that gripped Robert is a curious thing. After a certain amount of time it is either metamorphosized into neurosis or it is tamed, surfacing periodically as a vehicle for casual conversation. Young Robert Tillinghast, neurotic enough in other respects, suppressed his curiosity on the subject of recycled jeans and only raised the question at times when it seemed particularly apropos.