Part 12

Zeekie was assigned by the Sales Manager to Luke’s Rock, Iowa, for the initial sales bombardment. The Sales Manager, with his well-set little New England head, had of course never been there himself, just as he had never been any place else, but he talked as though he had been making the dorp for years, and assured Ezekiel that there were wonderful possibilities at Luke’s Rock and said he would be greviously disappointed if Zeke did not pull out of there with fourteen carloads scored up in his Order Book.

“We are expecting big things of you,” he said.

“That’s more than I am expecting of you,” replied Zeke. But he replied it strictly to himself.

Then the S. M. gave Zeke one of those Boston handshakes and a modest bunch of Expense Money and told him to track.

* * * * *

Let us now be seated while we study Human Nature a little, and see if it is not a fact that when you hand a good Job and a bunch of Expense Money to a beadle who has never had either, you are liable to put a crimp in his psychology and enlarge his ego until he can’t find anything to fit it.

Take for illusample: When Ezekiel went from the Office to the Railway Station to catch his train, he felt so goshdanged good that he could have punched a hole through a limousine window for sheer ebullience of spirit.

But when he found that his train was late, he went up to the ticket window and told Mr. Vanderbilt just what he thought of the whole ratty System. And he told it so that everybody around the room could hear it and marvel at his courage and knowledge of railroading. He spoke as in behalf of an injured constituency.

When he boarded his train and got the hang of things, he commanded the porter to raise a window here and lower a shade there, and he ignored the cuspidor entirely every time he took a chew.

When he arrived at his metropolitan destination he gave the owner of the yellow Bus a beautiful bawl for not helping him with his little belly-leather suit-case, and on the way up to the hotel he complained to his fellow passengers about the rickety old boat, and wondered why there were no taxicabs in the dump.

When he was assigned to his room at the Luke’s Rock Hotel he kicked like a trapped rabbit because it was a walk-up. And when he saw the room he threw up both good old farm-knotted hands and said it wouldn’t do a-tall. They gave him another room and he went over and felt the bed and said the mattress was about as soft and responsive as the Town Scales.

When he came down for breakfast next morning and the Proprietor with his little strive-to-please face asked him how he had slept, he growled back “Rotten!” and lumbered into the dining room.

When the food came on, he complained that the butter was rancid, the rolls were doughy, the coffee was like turpentine, the eggs were boiled 3-3/4 minutes instead of 3-5/8 minutes as ordered, and the service was fierce.

A silent, contended-looking man sat opposite Ezekiel. He thanked the waitress with the thin Face and receding Future every time she brought him anything, and he seemed to relish the little meal as much as anybody could with a 72-centimetre dub sitting opposite.

Finally Ezekiel addressed the silent man. “This Road Life is certainly fierce, ain’t it?”, he said, pushing back his plate and yanking his napkin from under his red chin.

“It is,” replied the Man. “But it wouldn’t be, if four-flushers like you would keep off it.” Zeek stared, with jaws ajar.

“You are just an ordinary single-cylinder rum,” went on the stranger, “that never knew anything better than a corn-husk mattress and large beans soaked in hot water, until you got a job on the Road. Some day you may learn that the man who has travelled most, kicks least, and that the quickest way to tell a cheap staller is to see how he adapts himself to Road conditions.”

And with this caustic valedictory, the speaker got up from the table and left the room. Ezekiel, flushed and fast foundering, intended to get up too, and tell the fellow what he thought of him, but decided to keep his seat when he saw about nine feet of man arise from the table.

* * * * *

Now Ezekiel Whiffle might have sieved through something of benefit from this experience had he been given time for reflection. But he had to turn his thought to selling those 14 carloads that his Sales Manager had told him were crouching for a chance to spring into his brand new Order Book.

Besides, he was in no position to get a close-up on himself while he still had a Roll and represented the largest factory of its kind in the country.

Thus when he went to see the Trade his ego again got in the way and he couldn’t see that in this grand, free game of Commerce, it is the Buyer who has the right of Free Speech while the Seller must temporize and simulate. At least the Seller must temp and sim up to the time the Order is signed.

He can then go around the corner, if he wants to, and put his thumb to his nose or call the Buyer anything he can think up that doesn’t carry too far along the etheric waves. But to indulge any such feeling before one is off and premises is to invite probable loss of Sale and possible kick in neck.

But Zeekie, the poor smelt, got it all twisted and thought it was war-time and that Buyers were going to come up and kiss him when he arrived and ask him how all the folks were, and carry his suit-case for him, just because he had something to sell.

When they didn’t do it, but on the contrary, went right on reading and signing letters and transacting routine office business all the time he was talking to them, as Buyers in normal seasons enjoy doing, Zeekie felt that his dignity was being shot at from ambush, and so he began telling his Prospects different things that they could do if they didn’t want to buy his celebrated goods.

While no physical harm befell Ezekiel during these clashes, no orders befell him either, and after working the whole surrounding county and netting nothing but a large ostrich egg, he sat down at the wabbly hotel writing-desk on Saturday night and sent the Sales Manager a Report about those fourteen carloads that made that astute little Baked Bean shoot to the scantlings when he read it on Monday morning.

It took the Bostonian about one full minute after he struck terra cotta again to realize that Ezekiel was down with a violent case of Sales-manic Inflation that could be cured only by the knife. So he promptly cut off Zeke’s job and wired him to take the Fifteen Dollars he still had of Dear Firm’s expense money and paddle back to the Old Home Hamlet with it.

Now we come on with the anti-climax, the fall of the action, and the close, thus preserving the dramatic unities and giving our readers that sense of relief which a concluding announcement of ours always brings.