She looked up at me and said, “Yes, young man? You’ve come for the bake sale donation, haven’t you?”
I said I was afraid I hadn’t, and I went into a little explanation of who I was and why I had turned up on her doorstep. While I talked I held my cap in both hands and squeezed it in and out of shape. I didn’t do this because I was nervous. That’s just the way it was supposed to look, because according to old Flickinger the more nervous and earnest you seemed the more trustworthy you were, at least as far as old ladies were concerned.
It was hard to look nervous without doing the little bit of business with the cap, because I actually delivered my set piece without even paying attention to what I was saying. I might as well have been a record player. While my mouth got all the words out, my mind thought about how little this woman had in common with the girl of my dreams, and that I might have guessed as much, because nymphomaniacs don’t go out of their way to have chimes that play hymns — at least most of them don’t — and while I didn’t recognize that tune, it certainly wasn’t “Roll Me Over in the Clover.”
“—free inspection with no obligation whatsoever,” I finished up, and gave my cap a final twist, and hung my head just the littlest bit, because you couldn’t go overboard and look too pathetic or you got tons of warm milk and cookies shoved down your throat.
“Rowrbazzle,” she said.
That seemed like a funny thing for anybody to say, let alone Tilden’s grandmother here, but then of course I saw that she wasn’t the one who said it. It was her cat. He was standing next to her, and he was as big for a cat as she was small for an old lady. He was built like a Siamese, with a blackish brown coat and horrible yellow eyes. I always liked cats, but then they had always said sensible things like Meow. This was the first one that had ever said anything like Rowrbazzle within my hearing and I wasn’t sure just how I felt about it. It put me off stride a little, if you really want to know.
“Now just one moment, young man,” she said.
The woman this time. “You wait right here, and I won’t be a minute. You wait now.”
I waited. So did the cat. Now would have been a good time for me to step inside and let the screen door close behind me, which was the recommended procedure at this stage of the game. Whoever had worked up the recommended procedure had never met a cat that said Rowrbazzle. I stayed where I was, and old Rowrbazzle stayed where he was, and the screen door was the Demilitarized Zone.
Then the old lady came back, and I slapped my smile back in place and whipped off my cap again, and then I noticed what she had in both her little liver-spotted hands.
What she had was an old dueling pistol that was almost as big as her dippy old cat. Her hands were shaking, and the pistol was bobbing up and down like a red red robin, and it was pointing at me, and it looked as though it might go off at any moment.
I said, “Hey! Hey, hang on a minute!”
“This weapon is loaded and primed, young man.”
“I believe it.”
“And let me assure you that it works perfectly well. It is old, but age is not always detrimental. This pistol is in full possession of its faculties.”
I was sure it was. I was perfectly willing to believe that it was still every bit as good as it was the day Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton with it.
“You don’t understand,” I said.
“You will leave this block of houses at once, young man. You will leave directly. The people on this block are all good Christians.”
“You don’t under—”
“Except for the young woman in Number One twenty-one,” she said her voice quavering. “She is a Methodist, and I believe her husband is a wine drinker or worse. You may stop there if you wish. I would not advise it. Last September a boy a bit older than you examined that young woman’s furnace and took it all apart and refused to repair it unless he was paid. I doubt she’d let you into her house after an experience of that sort, but you may try if you wish. I’ve enough on my mind without protecting Methodists, and them wine drinkers in the bargain. Not that I know for a fact that she drinks with him, but they flock together, you know. And I thought you had come about the bake sale. You have an innocent face in sheep’s clothing. Read the Book of Ezekiel.”
“Rowrbazzle.”
“Calvin dislikes you, young man. Our animals can sense things which we can only discover through reasoning. I am going to count ten, and if you are not off my property by the time I reach ten, I will shoot you. I do not hold with violence, but the Lord protects those who look to their own protection. Read the third chapter of the Second Samuel. One. Two. Three. Four—”
I scrambled down the porch steps and between two rows of private hedge to the street, expecting a musket ball to come tearing into me at any moment. The only reason it didn’t was that I was well out of the way before her tinny old voice got to ten. Otherwise she would have shot me. No question about it, she would have blown my goddamned head off without thinking twice about it If Calvin said Rowrbazzle to you, you just didn’t stand a chance around there.
I passed up all the houses on that block. Even the lady in Number 121, the Methodist. I didn’t care if she was a Sun Worshipper. I wasn’t taking any chances.
Around the corner I almost collided with Jimmy Joe. He started to tell me he had just written out an order, but I cut in and told him about Calvin and Rowrbazzle and Grandma Tilden. “Oh, that’s nothing,” he said airily. “I’ve had more guns pointed at me than fingers. They never shoot.”
“This one would have.”
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the guns aren’t even loaded. These people keep unloaded guns around just to put guys like you and me uptight. And the average person, especially a lady, they couldn’t hit a barn from inside of it.”
“This gun was loaded, and she would have shot, and she wouldn’t have missed.”
“Yeah, sure. Prove it.”
“Okay,” I said. I was still having trouble catching my breath. “Okay, smart ass. You go up on the porch and give her a pitch and see if she shoots you or not. I’ll bet you ten bucks you get shot.”
“It’s a sucker bet for you. If she shoots me, how do you collect?”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He laughed. When he did this, it always reminded me of a big old boxer who belonged to one of the masters at a school I went to in Connecticut. That dog barked just about like that. “Forget it,” Jimmy Joe said. “The important question is did she call the cops.”
“I don’t think she would. Never even threatened to. She’s the vigilante type.”
“That’s all to the good.”
“But I’m not supposed to go on that block because of all the God-fearing Christians. And one Methodist.”
“Methodists are Christians.”
“You want to go tell her? If Flick wants me I’ll be working the next block over.”
“They’re all new houses.”
“How’s the one after that?”
“Better.”
“Then that’s where I’ll be. Luck.”
“Up yours,” he agreed. “And watch out for the Christians.”
“Right, and you watch out for the Lions.”
I didn’t meet any more old ladies with dueling pistols that afternoon, or any cats named Calvin with weird vocabularies. I did meet a whole lot of people who had no trouble closing the door in the middle of my pitch.
I had always thought that was about the most aggravating thing that could happen to someone working door to door, getting a door slammed in your face. It can be sort of jarring the first couple dozen times it happens, but I’ll tell you something, once you get used to it you learn to welcome it. Not that you set out looking to get doors closed on you, but if you’re going to strike out anyway, which is going to happen ninety-nine times out of a hundred to the greatest salesman who ever lived, you might as well strike out as soon as possible. The less time you waste on the stiffs, the more calls you can make in a given period of time. And the more calls you make, the more sales you make, and that’s gospel. Old Flickinger says he’d rather have a chimpanzee who makes a hundred calls a day than a genius who makes fifty. Good old Flick.