Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012

In the old days Bartleby Jargon would’ve been known as an “eccentric”... an odd duck who, though out of step with the rest of the community, was appreciated by most because his weird originality made life a bit more colorful. Nowadays, in a world impatient with the uncommon, a world far less generous, Bartleby was called a “flake.” To the citizens of Gopher that meant he was adrift somewhere between the moon and stars, someone no good to anyone, least of all himself. But to me, Bartleby was just a misplaced person without a past or present.

Bartleby wasn’t born in Gopher, yet no one could say exactly where he came from or how he happened to show up at this speck of pepper on the map. He just was and had been for some time. What made him hard to figure out, I guess, was that he’d never learned how to give a direct answer, and always went round and round with a puzzled look in his eye. Under that gob of hair with the texture of clay was a plain, unmarked face that could’ve passed for thirty-five or sixty-five. Plus, he had oversized ears that tended to wiggle when he spoke, distracting us from thinking about anything beneath the man’s surface.

With his natural attraction to nuts and bolts, no one was surprised to hear he took a job at Cowley’s Hardware over on Main — even flakes, I mean eccentrics, have to pay rent and buy baloney. If eccentrics are different from regular folks it’s because they get things done by way of their own mysterious logic. Like the time his boss, Zack Cowley, was away at a hardware show in Chattanooga, and Bartleby, left behind to mind the store, handed over shovels, hoes, rakes, and God knows what else to a family of migrant farmers passing through. Either the family skipped town without paying, or Bartleby saw fit to give the stuff away. All Zack knew for sure was that a batch of tools was missing from his store, and there wasn’t enough cash in the register to account for the merchandise. But he didn’t sack his assistant, as everyone expected — in some cases hoped would happen, and I figure it was because no one else in town would’ve sorted screws and brads and washers with such enthusiasm and at such cheapskate wages... They say it took Bartleby Jargon ten months to pay back Zack Cowley for those wayward tools.

Because Bartleby never expected anything from anyone, and yet was always willing to extend a helping hand to neighbors or strangers, I found myself doing little things for him. I’d bring him a coupla apples from the twisted tree out back our house, or I’d drop off the sports pages after I’d finished reading the local weekly: Like any red-blooded American, he had a soft spot for baseball. But he usually seemed embarrassed by my friendly gestures, so I had to hold back from time to time before I’d say to my wife, Maggie, “Think I’ll drop over to Jargon’s and see if he can use a little help with his mailbox — snowplow knocked it off the post two months back.” At which Maggie would look up from her knitting, over the wire rims of her glasses, and say: “I could use a little help stopping my kitchen faucet from dripping.” Reactions like that have taught me to do my thinking with my head and not with my mouth.

Bartleby’s behavior reminded me of an old song they used to play on the radio that goes something like this: “I start for the corner, but turn up in Spain.” One day Zack sent him to deliver an imported copper teapot to the Brandon place; it’s that sturdy white Victorian up on the hill, overlooking the village like God in His heaven looking down on us. Only Bartleby never reached Brandon’s mansion — ended up digging poppies out of fresh flower beds in the village square and transplanting them into his teapot. Then he goes and leaves this flower arrangement on the steps of the town jail. “What in God’s name was that flake thinking?” townspeople asked each other. To one of them, Myra Crane, I answered, “Nothing at all — he was just being Bartleby.” What I’d meant was, he was always doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and usually for some reason that made sense to no one but him. That’s why everyone in Gopher seemed to have a favorite Bartleby story. Whenever the men gathered for their Friday night card game at the Grange, or the women met in the basement of the Methodist church to organize a fund-raiser on Saturday afternoon, they seemed to spend more time telling Bartleby yarns than dealing cards or planning a chicken-and-biscuit dinner.