Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Nor I either.”

“You might pass that old jug over here for a moment.”

“Soon as I pour a tad for myself, if you’ve no objection.”

“None whatsoever,” said Porter.

They were over at Porter’s place on the evening when this particular conversation occurred. They had taken to spending most of their evenings at Porter’s on account of Seth had a wife at home, plus a daughter named Rachel who’d been working at the Ben Franklin store ever since dropping out of the junior college over at Monroe Center. Seth didn’t have but the one daughter. Porter had two sons and a daughter, but they were all living with Porter’s ex-wife, who had divorced him two years back and moved clear to Georgia. They were living in Valdosta now, as far as Porter knew. Least that was where he sent the check every month.

“Alimony jail,” said Porter.

“How’s that?”

“What I said was alimony jail. Where you go when you quit paying on your alimony.”

“They got a special jug set aside for men don’t pay their alimony?”

“Just an expression. I guess they put you into whatever jug’s the handiest. All I got to do is quit sendin’ Gert her checks and let her have them cart me away. Get my three meals a day and a roof over my head and the whole world could quit nagging me night and day for money I haven’t got.”

“You could never stand it. Bein’ in a jail day in and day out, night in and night out.”

“I know it,” Porter said unhappily. “There anything left in that there jug, on the subject of jugs?”

“Some. Anyway, you haven’t paid Gert a penny in how long? Three months?”

“Call it five.”

“And she ain’t throwed you in jail yet. Least you haven’t got her close to hand so’s she can talk money to you.”

“Linda Mae givin’ you trouble?”

“She did. Keeps a civil tongue since I beat up on her the last time.”

“Lord knew what he was doin’,” Porter said, “makin’ men stronger than women. You ever give any thought to what life would be like if wives could beat up on their husbands instead of the other way around?”

“Now I don’t even want to think about that,” Seth said.

You’ll notice nobody was mentioning spats or bow ties. Even with the jug of corn getting discernibly lighter every time it passed from one set of hands to the other, these two subjects did not come up. Neither did anyone speak of the shortsightedness of failing to keep up fire insurance or the myopia of incinerating a building without ascertaining that such insurance was in force. Tempers had cooled with the ashes of Dettweiler Bros. Fine Fashions for Men, and once again Seth and Porter were on the best of terms.

Which just makes what happened thereafter all the more tragic.

“What I thinkI got,” Porter said, “is no way to turn.”

(This wasn’t the same evening, but if you put the two evenings side by side under a microscope you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart each from the other. They were at Porter’s little house over alongside the tracks of the old spur off the Wyandotte & Southern, which I couldn’t tell you the last time there was a train on that spur, and they had their feet up and their shoes off, and there was a jug of corn in the picture. Most of their evenings had come to take on this particular shade.)

“Couldn’t get work if I wanted to,” Porter said, “which I don’t, and if I did I couldn’t make enough to matter, and my debts is up to my ears and rising steady.”

“It doesn’t look to be gettin’ better,” Seth said. “On the other hand, how can it get worse?”

“I keep thinking the same.”

“And?”

“And it keeps getting worse.”

“I guess you know what you’re talkin’ about,” Seth said. He scratched his bulldog chin, which hadn’t been in the same room with a razor in more than a day or two. “What I been thinkin’ about,” he said, “is killin’ myself.”

“You been thinking of that?”

“Sure have.”

“I think on it from time to time myself,” Porter admitted. “Mostly nights when I can’t sleep. It can be a powerful comfort around about three in the morning. You think of all the different ways and the next thing you know you’re asleep. Beats the stuffing out of counting sheep jumping fences. You seen one sheep you seen ’em all is always been my thoughts on the subject, whereas there’s any number of ways of doing away with yourself.”

“I’d take a certain satisfaction in it,” Seth said, more or less warming to the subject. “What I’d leave is this note tellin’ Linda Mae how her and Rachel’ll be taken care of with the insurance, just to get the bitch’s hopes up, and then she can find out for her own self that I cashed in that insurance back in January to make the payment on the Oldsmobile. You know it’s pure uncut hell gettin’ along without an automobile now.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Just put a rope around my neck,” said Seth, smothering a hiccup, “and my damn troubles’ll be over.”

“And mine in the bargain,” Porter said.

“By you doin’ your own self in?”

“Be no need,” Porter said, “if you did yourself in.”

“How you figure that?”

“What I figure is a hundred thousand dollars,” Porter said. “Lord love a duck, if I had a hundred thousand dollars I could declare bankruptcy and live like a king!”

Seth looked at him, got up, walked over to him, and took the jug away from him. He took a swig and socked the cork in place, but kept hold of the jug.

“Brother,” he said, “I just guess you’ve had enough of this here.”

“What makes you say that, brother?”

“Me killin’ myself and you gettin’ rich, you don’t make sense. What you think you’re talkin’ about, anyhow?”

“Insurance,” Porter said. “Insurance, that’s what I think I’m talking about. Insurance.”

Porter explained thewhole thing. It seems there was this life insurance policy their father had taken out on them when they weren’t but boys. Face amount of a hundred thousand dollars, double indemnity for accidental death. It was payable to him while they were alive, but upon his death the beneficiary changed. If Porter was to die the money went to Seth. And vice versa.

“And you knew about this all along?”

“Sure did,” Porter said.

“And never cashed it in? Not the policy on me and not the policy on you?”

“Couldn’t cash ’em in,” Porter said. “I guess I woulda if I coulda, but I couldn’t so I didn’t.”

“And you didn’t let these here policies lapse?” Seth said. “On account of occasionally a person can be just the least bit absentminded and forget about keeping a policy in force. That’s been known to happen,” Seth said, looking off to one side, “in matters relating to fire insurance, for example, and I just thought to mention it.”

(I have the feeling he wasn’t the only one to worry on that score. You may have had similar thoughts yourself, figuring you know how the story’s going to end, what with the insurance not valid and all. Set your mind at rest. If that was the way it had happened I’d never be taking the trouble to write it up for you. I got to select stories with some satisfaction in them if I’m going to stand a chance of selling them to the magazine, and I hope you don’t figure I’m sitting here poking away at this typewriter for the sheer physical pleasure of it. If I just want to exercise my fingers I’ll send them walking through the Yellow Pages if it’s all the same to you.)

“Couldn’t let ’em lapse,” Porter said. “They’re all paid up. What you call twenty-payment life, meaning you pay it in for twenty years and then you got it free and clear. And the way Pa did it, you can’t borrow on it or nothing. All you can do is wait and see who dies.”