HERB’S WORK at the clam-packing plant was noticed from the start; he seemed to have a talent for culling, and he was so dexterous that he came to be regarded with the kind of awe and envy that athletes inspire when they perform feats so far beyond the capabilities of the average person that they seem by performing them to be enlarging the aspirations of the species, to be outlining a new bulge along the frontier of human endeavor. Herb enjoyed his growing reputation, and he was surprised to find how content he was to do this work, this work that required so little of him. He hid his true ambitions well, so well that Lorna hardly saw any evidence of them herself. She saw him reading the Reporter every day, but never looking at the help-wanted ads, and she wondered whether he really meant what he said when he told her that he’d been inspired by what Dan Whitley had told him that very first night when they arrived in Babbington: that it’s amazing how much you learn about a person from an obituary, amazing how much you didn’t know or didn’t notice when the person was alive. From that, Herb had gone on to the realization that in a small town the key to selling, or any kind of advancement, was information, information that an outsider had to make a special effort to acquire. Much later, when he and Lorna were retired in Punta Cachazuda, he put the idea this way: “You’ve heard people say, ‘It’s not what you know that counts; it’s who you know.’ Well, that’s not quite right. I found that it’s what you know about who you know that counts.” Herb was finding out a great deal about the people of Babbington, but the more he found out, the more he found there was to find out. He began keeping notes, on cards.
His affection for tinkering, for fixing things, improving things, served him as well in Babbington as it had in Quelquepart-sur-Marne; he was always ready to do anyone a favor of the tinkering type, and an unanticipated reward of his doing these little favors was that he obtained, incidentally, close-up glimpses into the lives of many Babbingtonians. His very first repair job in Babbington was his work on the Mikszaths’ sagging front door. When he had made the door as good as it once had been, he went on to make it better: he added a secret lock, a spring-loaded bolt, that could be opened by pushing an ordinary-looking nail that projected slightly from the door frame, just to the right of the doorknob. This arrangement allowed Miklos, for whom the effects of his stroke and of arthritis made manipulating a key nearly impossible, to lock and unlock the door on his own.
When Herb demonstrated his ingenious handiwork to the Mikszaths and Lorna, the women, moved by the generosity of thought that underlay Herb’s work, hugged him in turn. Mrs. Mikszath blinked away her tears; Lorna let hers run down her cheeks. Miklos locked and unlocked the door again and again. He turned to Herb, and the strength of his emotion was clear on his gaunt face. He clapped one gnarled hand on Herb’s shoulder and squeezed it as well as he could. He swallowed hard.
“Dut, dut, dut,” he said.
“Aw, don’t say that, Miklos,” said Herb. “It was fun for me. I like doing this sort of thing.”
Mrs. Mikszath could not be prevented from telling the story of Herb’s work on her front door. She broadcast the news of Herb’s generosity and tinkering talent far and wide, and she described in precise detail just how the ingenious lock worked. A welcome consequence of her advertising was Herb’s being called upon to fix and improve things all over town; an unwelcome one was the visit of a burglar, who, after overhearing Mrs. Mikszath’s precise description from the other side of the vegetable counter at the Main Street Market one morning, found himself irresistibly tempted to make use of the knowledge. Several days later he crept into the house in the middle of the day, when it was empty, and made off with everything he could find that was of any value — some silverware and china and knickknacks of the Mikszaths’ and a sack full of Herb and Lorna’s wedding gifts.
In Topical Guide 304, Mark Dorset considers Information: Gathering, Exploiting and Salesmanship: Techniques from this episode.
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304: Herb’s work . . .