The Coral Gables Times

I was confronted by a little, gray-haired character who seemed to have stepped straight out of Dickens.

Peter Kilian

ILLUSTRATION BY RON WING "...a couple of dozen times between Friday and Monday." "That's certainly unfortunate," Kilian admitted, "but it is the iron-bound duty of a responsible householder to look after his property and the welfare of his chattels. That's the code of Abraham." "So you're a bill collector for the phone company," I said. "I would never have guessed it." "No, you wouldn't," he said. "There's lots and lots who wouldn't, that's why I get the worst accounts. I get the terminal cases, after everyone else has given up. And, if I do say so myself, I've had some remarkable results." "I bet you have. Are many phone bills as high as all that? How come they let them run so long?" "Unusual circumstances often prevail—as in your cousin's case, for instance. Now then, just a week ago yesterday, something happened that pleased me mightily. Yes sir, it was a real pleasure for me to see happen what happened, on that day." "Care to tell about it?" I said. He took out an enormous old railroad engineer's watch that had a tick in it you could hear plainly all over the room, looked at it with knotted brows for a moment and said, "I've got thirty-seven minutes to get back to the station and catch my train, so I'll have to make it brief. "You see, Mr. King, some collection cases are so difficult that, after a while, you can't help forgetting all about the money that's involved, and you just sort of get interested in the case itself. It brings out the Nimrod in you." "The primitive hunting instinct," I said. "Exactly! Well, then, I'd had this case that I'd been tracing for almost three years, and a couple of times it had come so close to solution that I finally decided to forget all about it. It was too heartbreaking to be right on top of a payoff when suddenly the subject took your wind and was lost in the underbrush without leaving a spoor behind him. This party's name, by the way, was Millard Tompkins. Ever hear of him?" "No," I said. "Can't say that I have. This guy Tompkins was very discouraging, was he?" "The worst," he said. "And it was in this spirit that I was going home late one Friday afternoon, and, as I may have mentioned before, I generally take the ferry up at Nyack—that's where I make my home. I've been a widower for twenty years, and I'm very punctual in my habits—so I generally catch the same ferry, each evening. Now, then, I don't know if you're familiar with this ferry, Mr. King; and if you aren't, you ought to take a look at her some time, for she's a real beauty. She's an old Mississippi sidewheeler—trim, and lacy, and white, like a bride, and if you stand on deck and look alongside that little beauty, you've got a feeling that people who travel in airplanes have already missed most of the fun in life at the very start. At any rate, I'd always had a nodding acquaintance with the captain of this vessel, and when I went up on deck from where I could see him, he smiled to me and suddenly gave a loud blast on the horn. I couldn't have been more surprised. It was a most unorthodox procedure, and before I could recover from the shock of it, he blew another blast even louder and longer than before. And then he opened the door to his little glass-enclosed cabin and waved to me to come closer. 'He's drunk for sure,' I thought to myself, 'and I just hope we make it to the other side all in one piece.' "'Come on up here,' he shouted to me. 'Come up and take the wheel if you like.' "So, I climbed up the iron stairs, and when I came abreast of him I could plainly smell that my suspicions about him were only too just. 'You're feeling very gay, for a weekday,' I said. 'What's the cause of all the joy, anyway?' "'It's my last ride on this ferry,' he said. 'I'm retiring from active service tomorrow. Go ahead and take yourself a shot. It's on the house!' "I stepped up and poured myself a little one. 'You don't look old enough to retire,' I said, by way of truth rather than flattery. "'I ain't,' he said. 'I ain't supposed to quit for another five years. But I've had some good luck—some mighty good luck, lately, and there's no use carrying my rheumatism up and down this river if I don't really have to, is there?' "'There is not,' I said. 'And is it permitted to ask what the nature of this luck of yours happens to be, so we might keep an eye out for it ourselves, in case it ever passes in our direction?' "'You may ask, indeed,' he said, 'and I'll tell you what it is. You see, some eight years ago that daughter of mine married a no-good Hollywood character who, for the next six years, wasn't able to earn a penny for himself, much less for her. Then, two years ago, he suddenly got a job to go off to Africa and make some kind of a film with natives and wild animals and everything—and—now listen carefully—this film is making such a mint of money that my daughter and my son-in-law insist that I give up the river and come and Continued on page 9 Suburbia Today, August 1961 7