‘A Bud,’ the lightning rod salesman said. ‘And draw another for yourself, if you’re of a mind.’
‘I’m always of a mind,’ the owner said. He returned with two beers, took the salesman’s dollar, and left three dimes on the bar. ‘Bruce Carrick,’ he said, and offered his hand.
The seller of lightning rods shook it. ‘Dohay is the name,’ he said, ‘Andrew Dohay.’ He drained off half his beer.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Carrick said. He wandered off to serve a young woman with a hard face another Tequila Sunrise and eventually wandered back to Dohay. ‘From out of town?’
‘I am,’ Dohay admitted. ‘Salesman.’ He glanced around. ‘Is it always this quiet?’
‘No. It jumps on the weekends and I do a fair trade through the week. Private parties is where we make our dough – if we make it. I ain’t starving, but neither am I driving a Cadillac.’ He pointed a pistol finger at Dohay’s glass. ‘Freshen that?’
‘And another for yourself, Mr. Carrick.’
‘Bruce.’ He laughed. ‘You must want to sell me some-thing.’
When Carrick returned with the beers the seller of lightning rods said: ‘I came in to lay the dust, not to sell anything. But now that you mention it…’ He hauled his sample case up onto the bar with a practiced jerk. Things jingled inside it.
‘Oh, here it comes,’ Carrick said, and laughed.
Two of the afternoon regulars, an old fellow with a wart on his right eyelid and a younger man in gray fatigues, wandered over to see what Dohay was selling. The hard-faced woman went on watching ‘As The World Turns’.
Dohay took out three rods, a long one with a brass ball at the tip, a shorter one, and one with porcelain conductors.
‘What the hell…’ Carrick said.
‘Lightning rods,’ the old campaigner said, and cackled. ‘He wants to save this ginmill from God’s wrath, Brucie. You better listen to what he says.’
He laughed again, the man in the gray fatigues joined him, Carrick’s face darkened, and the lightning rod salesman knew that whatever chance he had had of making a sale had just flown away. He was a good salesman, good enough to recognize that this queer combination of personalities and circumstances sometimes got together and queered any chance of a deal even before he had a chance to swing into his pitch. He took it philosophically and went into his spiel anyway, mostly from force of habit:
‘As I was getting out of my car, I just happened to notice that this fine establishment wasn’t equipped with lightning conductors – and that it’s constructed of wood. Now for a very small price – and easy credit terms if you should want them – I can guarantee that…’
‘That lightning’ll strike this place at four this afternoon,’ the man in the gray fatigues said with a grin. The old campaigner cackled.
‘Mister, no offense,’ Carrick said, ‘but you see that?’ He pointed to a golden nail on a small wooden plaque beside the TV near the glistening array of bottles. Spiked on the nail was a drift of papers. ‘All of those things are bills. They got to be paid by the fifteenth of the month. They get written in red ink. Now you see how many people are in here drinking right now? I got to be careful. I got to…
‘Just my point,’ Dohay broke in smoothly. ‘You have to be careful. And the purchase of three or four lightning rods is a careful purchase. You’ve got a going concern here. You wouldn’t want it wiped out by one stroke of lightning on a summer’s day, would you?’
‘He wouldn’t mind,’ the old campaigner said. ‘He’d just collect the insurance and go down to Florida. Woon’tchoo, Brucie?’
Carrick looked at the old man with distaste.
‘Well, then, let’s talk about insurance,’ the lightning rod salesman interposed. The man in the gray fatigues had lost interest and had wandered away. ‘Your fire insurance premiums will go down…’
The insurance is all lumped together,’ Carrick said flatly. ‘Look, I just can’t afford the outlay. Sorry. Now if you was to talk to me again next year…
‘Well, perhaps I will,’ the lightning rod salesman said, giving up. ‘Perhaps I will.’ No one thought they could be struck by lightning until they were struck; it was a constant fact of this business. You couldn’t make a fellow like this Carrick see that it was the cheapest form of fire insurance he could buy. But Dohay was a philosopher. After all, he had told the truth when he said he came in to lay the dust.