Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
You can’t run a town — even one small as Gopher — without a collector. Once a year for a whole month the Village Collector collects the dues to operate the Volunteer Fire Department (housed in a rickety barn on the abandoned MacKenzie place), to run an ambulance (an ancient hearse fitted up with a cot and first-aid kit), to plow the snow (a World War II Jeep with no doors) on roads the county ignores, and other such vital services. We call this money the Village Dues for the good reason that Gopherites find it easier to pay smaller dues for special services in summer than higher overall taxes at year’s end. A member of each household — we got maybe a hundred fifty households in Gopher — would drop off a check or an envelope with cash over to the Bumppo house, have a cup of coffee in Martha’s ballyard-sized kitchen, trade two cents’ worth of gossip, then go about their business. Lately, a few of the town’s better-heeled folks, like the Brandons and the Whitneys, came around waving credit cards like these things were the Lord’s Prayer sealed in plastic. But Nickie never got around to accepting “the devil’s tool” for payments since he believed we’d already let thingamajigs take over too much of our business. Except for figuring out who owed what and then collecting it, don’t ask me what Nickie did as collector the rest of the year. But he did it, I know, because it got done.
When a public official in Gopher passes on to the Great Collector in the Sky — that’s just a bookish way of saying “croaked” — the spouse, or son, or daughter is expected to move into the vacated post without so much as a ripple in the town’s routine. Saves the time and expense of calling a new election. Under this system of handing over the power we’re able to pay our dues at the same house and be assured of getting a decent cup of coffee. (No one around here can abide by surprises, especially in their coffee cups.) In the case of Martha Bumppo, she’d been the Village Collector behind the Village Collector ever since the start of Nickie’s reign. The money was handed over to the man of the house, but the woman of the house kept the records and sent out the overdue notices and typed up the reports. So while all the glory had been going to Mr. Bumppo, all the work had been falling on Mrs. Bumppo, and with four kids to cook for and keep patched up, she already had too much to do. For years she’d been wanting to visit her ma in Missouri. Now, with her husband cooling down in a plot behind the Baptist church, and a little insurance pay dirt coming her way, and with all but one kid out of the house, she was determined to give up the collectorship and climb on a bus heading west. No matter how hard Annabelle and Daisy tried to convince her otherwise, she wouldn’t budge: “I ain’t doing it no more, so stop asking.” Her “stubborn-headedness” upset them plenty, as if they believed sidestepping this civic duty shed a bad light on everyone in Gopher.
Martha’s refusal to move into the vacated post was further complicated by the fact that the rest of us already had jobs at the pharmacy or barbershop or general store or dry goods outlet or repair shop/gas station. As for weekends, we had too many loose drainpipes and wobbly banisters and drafty windows and leaky faucets to repair at home to take on an extra duty. Besides, none of us knew how to be the Village Collector. With not one candidate stepping up to the plate, the phone wires of Gopher — even a few computers equipped to send out mail on the wings of electricity — heated up, and they didn’t cool down until after my boss, Sylvester Masterson, a member of the Village Council, looked up from the pill he was crushing with his pestle and said to me: “Mitty, let’s put Bartleby up for collector.”
“Bartleby!” I yelped, nearly dropping the bottles of aspirin I was setting out on a shelf.
“He’s the perfect man for the job.”
“What makes you say a thing like that?” I asked, glancing over to make sure there wasn’t a “pulling-my-leg” grin on his sunken face.
Sylvester must’ve thought all this out earlier because he came out with three “damn good reasons” without blinking. First, Bartleby liked everyone, and everyone tolerated Bartleby. Second, he could add up prices on a complicated list of plumbing materials without using a calculator. Third, and most important, he didn’t know how to say no.
Following a long night of being coaxed by Sylvester over several hands of poker at the Grange, Rolf Larsen, Gopher’s resident entrepreneur — he owns the general store and laundromat and heads the Village Council — marched into Cowley’s Hardware first thing next morning. With Zack out back taking an inventory of stovepipe, Rolf asked Bartleby point-blank if he could think of any good reason why he shouldn’t become the Village Collector.
Bartleby thought about this awhile, then said, “Can’t say as I can.”
“That settles it,” said Rolf. “You are hereby nominated to become Gopher’s new collector.”
Without a word Bartleby scratched his ass, went out the front door, looked into the slot in the mailbox on the sidewalk, then disappeared down the street. Or so they tell me. That night at the Grange there was a bucketful of grumbling about putting up a “flake” for public office, but the simple fact was that no one else wanted anything to do with that opportunity. As for the few who supported the nomination, I suspect they were just trying to play a joke on the good people of Gopher. Next afternoon, in an emergency meeting of the council staged at the schoolhouse (which is in dire need of a new roof), Bartleby’s “election” was carried by a landside. The only dissenting member of the council was Zack Cowley, who expressed concern that the duties of Village Collector would get in the way of his duties as a hardware clerk.
“Needn’t worry ’bout that, Mr. Cowley,” Bartleby assured him. “I’ll chase down those stray mutts at night after your store shuts down.” This was the first hint we had that Bartleby may have misunderstood the nature of the collections he’d been elected to undertake.
Bartleby’s acceptance speech consisted of a promise to be the “best collector this town’s ever seen,” and true to his word, Bartleby began collecting with the same zeal he brought to sorting concrete nails and wall anchors at Cowley’s. On his way home from work he’d stop unannounced at random residences to collect used clothing for the town rummage sale; on bingo nights he was seen collecting cigarette butts and candy wrappers off the plank floor of the Grange; Saturday evenings he put aside to chase down stray dogs and cats and even a coupla squirrels. On Sundays he could be found handing the collection plate down the pews of the Baptist and Methodist churches. Bartleby would collect anything that struck him as collectible, and the big joke back then was that you’d better keep moving or else Bartleby would come along and collect you too.
On hearing that Bartleby Jargon had taken to collecting every raindrop in Gopher, outsiders might’ve thought he wasn’t a flake so much as flat-out stupid. But if anyone had ever said that about him to my face, he would’ve had a fight on his hands. (I may be skinny, but I’m wiry.) Bartleby was simply a good neighbor and an earnest public servant, a throwback to the days when a man went out of his way to help someone less fortunate, when a man performed his workday job like it was a patriotic duty. Why call him stupid or flaky just because he got left behind in all the changes that’ve taken place? I don’t mean like the new cash register that plays a song in Rolf’s general store or the high-speed teat-tweaker out at Joad’s farm. I’m talking about the changes that have crawled into the minds of the citizens of this land. The way the Almighty Buck is worshipped. The way people look out only for themselves. The way we let the TV tell us how to live.