🎧 269: When my great-grandfather ...

WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER Richard looked up from his newspaper, he was surprised to find that Herb Piper was someone he didn’t know. My great-grandmother Lena wasn’t at all certain whether she knew the boy or not. Lorna had seemed to know him when she’d called out his name, and her manner now suggested that he was someone Lena ought to remember, but she simply couldn’t place him. Richard glanced at Lena to see whether he could find on her face any hint of their connection with the Pipers. He saw there a pleasant smile. It was that thin smile we all employ when we attempt to hide our ignorance, but either Lena was too accomplished at employing that smile or the light in the Huber parlor was too dim for Richard to see it for what it was. To him, the smile on Lena’s face looked like evidence of recognition, and the idea began to form in his mind that Herb Piper was the son of a fellow named Henry, called Hank, a terrible drinker, notorious for it, who had fallen face-down in a pool at the Whatsit’s edge one moonless night about four years ago and drowned in three inches of water. “A terrible thing, terrible,” Richard reflected. He recalled that it had happened during a drought, making it one of the bitter ironies of life.
     The sight of Herb, neatly dressed and apparently prosperous, gladdened Richard’s heart, but, at the same time, made him feel that he might have done, really ought to have done, more for Hank’s widow, and for poor Herb too, for that matter. He was glad to see Herb looking so hale, but he would be gladder still when the boy was gone. Given the pathetic circumstances, Richard thought it appropriate to stand, and he did.
     “How’s your mother, young fellow?” he asked, taking Herb’s hand in a firm grip, grabbing Herb’s elbow with his other hand, composing his features in a look of grave concern.
     “She’s fine, sir,” said Herb, smiling, humoring this stocky burgher, who, through this sudden question, impressed him as certainly mad and possibly dangerous.
     “Wonderful!” exclaimed Lena, delighted to find that Richard, at least, not only recognized this Herb Piper but knew enough about the boy to ask after his mother. Then, in the manner of many a person who, relieved to find that his ignorance has apparently gone undetected, throws to the winds his former caution, his wise reticence, and boldly, recklessly, with a certain jaunty sangfroid, puts his foot straight into his mouth, she added: “I’m so glad to hear that. We were concerned, weren’t we, Richard?”
     Richard, his notion of the boy’s past now apparently confirmed by Lena, nodded gravely, guiltily, and looked at his shoes. “Yes,” he muttered. “I’m sorry we haven’t seen you before this, Herb. The door was always open, you know. Still,” he said, brightening, “I’m glad you’ve come to see us now, and I’m pleased to see you looking so well. You seem to be making quite a success of yourself.” He pounded Herb on the shoulder. Herb stood his ground, and he maintained the smile on his face, since he had learned from his years of street-corner rat-pie selling that a calm manner and ready agreement worked best with lunatics.
     “Yes, sir,” he said, still smiling. “Thank you, sir.”
     “Herb’s selling books now,” said Lorna, taking a spot at the end of the sofa. Her eyes twinkled. This was going to be even more fun than she’d imagined. “He’d like to sell you some books, Father.”
     “Oh?” said Richard Huber. “Books?” He was entirely ready to buy a book or two at once, to salve his conscience, and then to send Herb on his way. “We could use some books, couldn’t we, Lena?”
     “Why, I’m sure we could,” said Lena, eager to surrender any further dealings with the mystifying Herb Piper to her husband, now that she’d established incontrovertibly the strength and vividness of her recollection of Herb and Herb’s mother, even after what she supposed had been so long a lapse of time.
     “What books have you got, Herb?” asked Richard.
     “He hasn’t got Ben-Hur,” said Lorna. “I’ve already asked him about that.”
     “No, I’m afraid I don’t have Ben-Hur,” said Herb. “The books I’m offering are more of the useful than the entertaining kind.” He bent to his sample case.
     “Now there’s a distinction I’ve never understood,” said Lorna.
     “Quiet, now, Lorna,” said Richard. He was embarrassed for Herb, having to go into the homes of people who had known his father, to trade on their sympathy as a way of inducing them to buy his books. He considered it little more than a way of putting a respectable front on asking for charity. However, he wasn’t offended by Herb’s exploiting his acquaintances in this way — in fact, he was impressed by the resourcefulness the idea showed — but he was sorry that poor Herb had been brought to it. “Let Herb show us what he’s got,” he said, “and don’t you interrupt him, Lorna.”
     “What I have, sir,” said Herb, “is something no home should be without.” He gave everyone his smile, and when he turned to Lorna he allowed himself to add a wink. “The books that I’m about to offer for your consideration have been chosen by Professor Alonzo Clapp, late of Harvard College, as books that are essential to the health, wealth, and savoir-faire of today’s man, woman, or child. This,” he said, flinging open the clever case he had designed and built, “is Professor Clapp’s Five-Foot Shelf of Indispensable Information for Modern Times.”

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