Nor did he ever again go up in an aeroplane. Dave had never trusted flying machines; they were much too high in case they stalled. They had never been anything to him but a means to avoid something worse; once they had served his purpose, he put them aside as firmly as he had put aside fencing foils-and with no regrets in either case.
Soon he had another diploma, one which stated that he was a Bachelor of Science in agronomy-a "scientific" farmer.
This certificate, with the special preference extended to veterans, could have obtained him a civil service job, telling other people how to farm. Instead, he took some of the money that had piled up in the bank while he loafed in school and went way back into those hills he had left a quarter of a century earlier-and bought a farm. That is, he made a down payment, with mortgage on the balance through a government loan at a-subsidized, of course-very low rate of interest.
Did he work the farm? Let's not be silly; Dave never took his hands out of his pockets. He made one crop with hired labor while he negotiated still another deal.
Ira, the completion of Dave's grand plan involves one factor so unbelievable that I must ask you to take it on faith-it is too much to ask any rational man to understand it.
At that pause between wars, Earth held over two billion people-at least half on the verge of starvation. Nevertheless-and here is where I must ask you to believe that I was there and would not lie to you-despite this shortage of food which never got better other than temporarily and locally in all the years that followed, and could not, for reasons we need, not go into-in spite of this disastrous shortage, the government of David's country paid farmers not to grow food.
Don't shake your head; the ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them. Never mind that you yourself are a government; go home tonight and think about it-ask yourself if you know why you do what you do-and come back tomorrow and tell me.
As may be- David never made but one crop. The following year his acreage was "soil-banked," and he received a fat check for not working it, which suited him just fine. Dave loved those' hills, he had always been homesick for them; he had left them simply to avoid work. Now he was being paid not to work in them-which suited him; he had never thought that their charms were enhanced by plowing and getting them all dusty.
The "soil bank" payments took care of the 'mortgage, and his retired pay left a tidy sum over, so he hired a man to do those chores a farm requires even though it is not being worked for a crop-feed the chickens, milk a cow or two, tend a vegetable garden and' some fruit trees, repair fences- while the hired man's wife helped David's wife with the house. For himself, David bought a hammock.
But David was not a harsh employer. He suspected that cows did not want to be waked at five in the morning any more than he did-and he undertook to find out.
He learned that cows would happily change their circadian to more reasonable hours, given the chance. They had to be milked twice a day; they were bred for that. But nine o'clock, in 'the morning suited them for a first milking quite as well as five, as long as it was regular.
But it did not stay that way; Dave's hired man had the nervous habit of work. To him there was something sinful in milking a cow that late. So David let him have his way, and hired man and cows went back to their old habits.
As for Dave, he strung that hammock between two shade trees and put a table by it to hold a frosty drink. He would get up in the morning when he woke, whether it was nine or noon, eat breakfast, then walk slowly to his hammock to rest up for lunch. The hardest work he did was endorsing checks for deposit, and, once a month, balancing his wife's checkbook. He quit wearing shoes.
He did not take a newspaper or listen to radio; he figured that the Navy would let him know if another war broke out-and another did break out about the time he started this routine. But the Navy had no need for retired admirals. Dave paid little attention to that war, it was depressing. Instead, he read everything the state library had on ancient Greece and bought books about it. It was a soothing subject, one he had always wanted to know more about.
Each year, on Navy Day, he got all spruced up and dressed as an admiral, with all his medals, from the Good Conduct medal of an enlisted man to the one for bravery under fire that had made him an admiral-let his hired man drive him to the county seat and there addressed a luncheon of the Chamber of Commerce on some patriotic subject. Ira, I don't know why he did this. Perhaps it was noblesse oblige.
Or it may have been his odd sense of humor. But each year they invited him, each year he accepted. His neighbors were proud of him; he was the epitome of Local Boy Makes Good-then comes home and lives as his neighbors lived. His success brought credit to them all. They liked it that he was still just "home folks"-and if they noticed that he never did a lick of work, nobody mentioned it.
I've skipped lightly over Dave's career, Ira, had to. I haven t mentioned the automatic pilot he thought up, then had developed years later when he was in a position to get such things done. Nor the overhaul he made of the duties of the crew of a flying boat-except to say now that it was to get more done with less effort while leaving the command pilot with nothing to do save to stay alert-or to snore on his copilot's arm if the situation did not require his alertness. He made changes in instruments and controls, too, when at last he found himself in charge of development for all Navy patrol planes.
Let it go with this: I don't think Dave thought of himself, as an "efficiency expert" but every job he ever held he simplified. His successor always had less work to do than his predecessor.
That his successor usually reorganized the job again to make three times as much work-and require three times as many subordinates-says little about Dave's oddity other than by contrast. Some people are ants by nature; they have to work, even when it's useless. Few people have a talent for constructive laziness.
So ends the Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail. Let's leave him there, in his hammock under the shade trees. So far as I know, he is still there.
VARIATIONS ON A THEME-III
Domestic Problems
"After more than two thousand years, Lazarus?"
"Why not, Ira? Dave was my age, near enough as not to matter. I'm still here."
"Yes, but- Was David Lamb a member of the Families? Under another name? There is no 'Lamb' in the lists."
"I never asked, Ira. Nor did he ever offer me a password. In those days a member kept the fact to himself. Or, if he was, Dave might not have known it, since he left home so young and so abruptly. Back then a youngster wasn't told until he or she was old enough to think about marriage. Eighteen for boys, usually, and sixteen for girls. Reminds me what a shock it was when I was told-at less than eighteen. By Gramp, because I was about to do something foolish. Son, one of the weirdest things about the human animal is that it grows up physically years and years before its brain grows up. I was seventeen, young and horny and wanted to get married the worst way. Gramp took me out behind the barn and convinced, me that it was indeed the worst way.
"'Woodie,' he said, 'if you want to elope with this girl, nobody will stop you."