Then Dave said, “Like I said, I’ve been thinking this over for some time, Sam. And the way I see it, we’re never going to get out of the red waiting for Shannon natives to die.”
“So how will spending eighty-five hundred bucks we haven’t got help us?”
“We’ve got to rake up business from outside of Shannon. And that’s where the ambulance idea comes in. I been checking up on a few things. You know how many accident calls that broken-down fire-department ambulance made last year?”
The plump man shook his head.
“A hundred and eight,” Dave Clemson said in an impressive voice. “Better than two a week.”
Sam looked surprised, but not particularly impressed. “So?”
“So I happen to know their ambulance is as close to falling apart as our hearse. The chief plans to go before the common council Monday night and ask for a new one. Suppose we show up too, tell the council we plan to buy a new hearse, and as a public service would just as soon make it a combination ambulance-hearse? Then the village wouldn’t need one any more. We could guarantee twenty-four-hour service and charge a set fee. We’d bill patients able to pay, and charge the village for charity cases. I think the common council would jump at it.”
Sam looked at his partner in astonishment. Finally he said, “So do I. Look at the money they’d save. But I don’t see any profit for us. We couldn’t charge more than ten or fifteen dollars a call, and even if we got fifteen dollars, a hundred and eight calls comes to only...” He paused to gaze at the ceiling a moment, then said, “Sixteen hundred and twenty dollars a year. And the outfit would cost us two thousand dollars more than a plain hearse. Figuring depreciation...”
“You don’t get the idea,” Dave interrupted. “I don’t plan to make any profit from ambulance calls. It’s an investment in good will.”
Sam examined his partner with an expression indicating he thought the thin man had lost his mind. Instead of answering, he took a long and sarcastic pull on his lemonade.
“Just listen me out,” Dave said insistently. “You know what most local ambulance calls are for?”
“Auto accidents, I suppose.”
“Almost all of them,” Dave agreed. “Usually involving out-of-town people. Not many Shannon people get hurt in accidents, because they never move fast enough to do more than dent a fender. But an awful lot of tourists passing by town smash up. Since they built the two new highways both sides of town, hundreds of out-of-staters whiz past us every day. And at least a couple a week crack up. I checked with the hospital the other day, and of the hundred and seventy-eight accident victims brought in last year by the hundred and eight ambulance calls I mentioned, thirty-three people were either DOA, or died in the hospital later. But we only got two of those bodies. And of course both those were split fees with the undertaker in the deceaseds’ home towns, since neither was from around here.”
Sam Potter began to look more interested. “What are you getting at, Dave?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why Harry Averill got thirty-one of those bodies while we only got two. Us being the older firm, you’d think it would be the other way. I finally figured it out.”
“How?” Sam asked blankly.
“Just put yourself in the place of the next of kin of an accident victim. Maybe you’ve rushed in from out of town when the hospital called you, or maybe you were in the accident too, but weren’t killed. Maybe you’re hurt, maybe not, but at least you’re upset, you’re not thinking too clearly, and you don’t know a soul in town. When the charge nurse at the hospital asks what you want done with the body, what do you do?”
Sam said slowly, “Why, ask the nurse who the undertakers in town are, I guess.”
“And does the nurse recommend one?”
“No, of course not. They’re not allowed to do that. I suppose she’d give me the names of both funeral homes and let me take my pick.”
“Or, more likely, just hand you a phone book opened to the proper page in the classified section.”
Sam stared at his partner. “Yeah. And...” He stopped and his eyes widened. “My God! I don’t know anything about either of them, so naturally I’d take the first one in the book. Averill got all that business simply because his name starts with A!”
“Exactly,” Dave said, pleased with his pupil. “Probably the only reason we even got two was because Averill’s phone was busy or something when the next of kin tried to reach him.”
Sam was now so interested, he had allowed his pipe to go out and the ice in his lemonade to melt. Setting the glass on the floor next to his foot, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
“So get back to your good will idea,” he said.
“It’s simple,” Dave said. “With an ambulance, we’d be in on the ground floor. Every time we bring in an accident victim, we leave a card. If the victim dies, his next of kin isn’t going to look in any phone book. He’s going to phone those nice, sympathetic ambulance attendants who did everything possible to save the victim’s life by rushing him to the hospital, and who also happen to run a funeral home.”
Sam regarded his thin partner with admiration. “We’d get all of them,” be breathed. “Over thirty a year.” He paused, then went on reflectively, “Of course some of them would just be embalmings, because some families would want their home town undertakers to handle details.” Then he brightened. “But at least half ought to buy caskets from us.”
“At least,” Dave agreed. “And tourists are quite likely to have money. I happen to know Averill unloaded a fifteen-hundred-dollar casket in one of the thirty-one accident fatalities he got last year.”
“Eighty-five hundred dollars for a combination job,” Sam Potter said with a faraway look in his eyes. “We could mortgage the funeral home...”
When word got around the village that Potter and Clemson had taken over the responsibility for furnishing ambulance service for the community, Harry Averill used the rumor as an excuse to needle his competitors a little. The incident occurred at the weekly luncheon meeting of the Shannon Businessmen’s Club.
Harry Averill was a bland, portly man of about fifty, and had once been regarded as a good friend by both Sam Potter and Dave Clemson. During the past three years, ever since Averill’s son Harry Jr. had graduated from a New York City embalmer’s school and the elder Averill had added the funeral business to his already thriving furniture business, their relations remained the same on the surface, but underneath there was the bitterness of business rivals. This particular luncheon meeting Averill made a point of sitting directly across the table from the two partners.
He deliberately waited until mealtime conversation had subsided somewhat, then said in a friendly voice, but one which carried from one end of the table to the other, “Hear you fellows are buying an ambulance.”
“Combination ambulance-hearse,” Sam Potter said. “Matter-of-fact, it arrived this morning.”
Averill beamed. “Probably a wise move. Ambulance fees will help carry you over rough spots when the funeral business is bad.”
Both partners beamed back as genially as their competitor was beaming.
Dave Clemson said in a loud voice, “We don’t even hope to break even on ambulance calls. It’s just a service to the community.”
“Well, that’s certainly civic-minded of you boys,” Averill said in an equally loud voice. “When I heard you were going in for additional revenue because your business had slipped, I knew it was just a malicious rumor.”
“We’re getting along fine,” Sam Potter said in a comfortable tone which effectively hid his rage.
It took Harry Averill a full two months to discover the effect the new ambulance service was having on his business. During that time there were four automobile accident deaths at the local hospital, but Averill didn’t get a single one. But when he finally realized what was happening, he took action to correct the situation at once.