The Grand Collector

The ambulance showed up that night without a siren and that wasn’t good because Mr. Simmons was already dead by the time they got there. The next morning I was still lamenting I had probably salted him into an earlier than expected visit to the hereafter. I didn’t see Mrs. Simmons, but I knew he croaked by the way people from the First Baptist Church of Seminole Heights converged on the house to pay their
respects.

When they read his will a few days later, poor, old Mr. Simmons, come to find out, had scribbled out a codicil to his will, witnessed by the maid and the yard man, and he bequeathed the mynah bird to me. Sam hadn’t said a word for days so I tried breaking the ice with pistachio nuts. My plan was to get on the bird’s good side so he’d tell me where Mr. Simmons buried the rest of the loot he and his brother, Frank, stole. Once I had my hands on that, I could pay off my National Defense Student Loan and The Record Club of America. I
could get Johnson out of my hair, once and for all.

Somewhere behind the bird’s orange bill and his black as spades eyes he had the answer, but he was mum as a bird in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. I popped open a few pistachio nuts and with my pocket knife. I sliced each nut into thin slivers, then quartered them. I used a pair of tweezers to spoon feed each piece to Sam. His eyes glowed as I poked the tweezers through the cage that I set up in a corner of my
bedroom. He grabbed the piece, then hopped back on the trapeze in the cage.

“Where’s the loot?” I asked.

He grabbed the piece alright, but the bird must have been traumatized by Mr. Simmons’ sudden disappearance and turned into a deaf mute. When I was out of pieces he cocked his head and looked at me. No answer. The bird was silent as a statue. The phone on the small table alongside the bed rang. It was eight a.m.

“Is this Wilbur Dobbs?”

​Shit. It was Him.

“Your student loan is delinquent,” He said. “Your account with Record Club of America. Overdue.”

It was Johnson from Allied Credit Corporation in Chicago, the Grand Collector of National Defense Student Loans worldwide, delinquent accounts division, and the Record Club of America. I recognized His
curmudgeony, gravel-coated voice. I had never met Johnson, but I concocted an image of Him in my mind.
In fact, I don’t think anyone outside the reinforced fortress of Allied Credit Corporation had ever met Him. Johnson was probably not even His real name. His name and identity were guarded secrets like Yahweh or mysterious Druid wizards.

I imagined Johnson sat at a great oaken desk in the largest gray cubicle in the entire skyscraper that housed Allied Credit Corporation, the largest collection agency probably in the galaxy. The skyscraper was crowned with a halo of clouds at the top and somewhere in that hazy mist He controlled His delinquent accounts including mine. His sprawling cubicle was surrounded by a honeycomb of smaller ones. The other collectors in those cubicles hovered like bumblebees and archangels in the vicinity of His cubicle. They spoke to Him with
deference and eyes averted though secretly, they couldn’t wait until He made His last collection and all His accounts cleared. Then He would anoint one of them as the next Grand Collector.

The aisles cleared for Him at break time when He visited the snack machine in the break room, where He pressed A7 for peanut butter and crackers. When He returned to His cubicle He lit a cigar and hung it
from His thick, ruby-colored lips while He dialed scofflaws like me and pressured a payment out of them or promised eternal retribution, bad credit, and, when the case merited it, infertility. In between calls Johnson thought about His dinner, some variation of cabbage and sausage, served in His private dining room.He wore a white dress shirt, brown pants, white socks and black shoes with thick rubber soles that could stomp on bugs and muffle the sounds of their crunching shells. The skin on His face was pale and doubled from years in His kingdom of cubicles and fluorescent lights.
I really hated dealing with the motherfucker.

“Mr. Dobbs.”

“I paid on it, Mr. Johnson,” I said.

​”You haven’t paid for six months, Mr. Dobbs. You have to pay something every month. This is America, the land of minimum payments. You have to make one every month. For everything. That’s what makes
America. Lowest bids and minimum payments.”

​”The land of minimum payments. Yes Sir,” I said trying to humor Him.

“I don’t have the money right now.”

“Let me tell you a story about a man who had no debts and no minimum payments.”

“Oh no,” I thought. “Another parable.”

“He came into this world without debts and he lived his life without debts. He didn’t own a house. He didn’t own a car. He didn’t own a powerboat. He didn’t own a sailboat. He traveled everywhere by foot. The few things he had were paid for by his father who lived on a distant mountain.”

I wish I didn’t have any debts, especially a National Defense Student

“Loan,” I thought.

“People began to believe in him and his extraordinary power to be debt free. His friends, neighbors, even strangers began to believe in him, that he had a special God-like power, some kind of magic, to have no
debts, no minimum payments, and to be happy and free. They looked at him and said, ‘Oh, Ram of No Outstanding Balance, show us your way. Show us how to be free of minimum payments. Show us the way to Eternal Life without debt. Turn all the digits in our monthly statements to zeroes, and we shall be free to worship you every day.”

“Did he do it? Did he change them?” I asked.

“Not so fast, Mr. Dobbs. Before anything happened, The Prideful One from the Fulfillment and Enhancement Division invited the Ram of No Outstanding Balance to walk with him on a shopping spree through the
Mall of the Coin-Operated American, Fifty Percent Off, Double or Nothing. The Ram, dressed in clothes that were too large and distressed, sackcloth, said nothing when the Prideful One handed him a large, designer shopping bag with reinforced handles.

“Show your followers your power, your freedom, and your glory,” the Prideful One said. “Show them the way to Eternal life. Fill the bag of their emptiness with diamonds as big as hard-boiled eggs, and topaz as large and as blue as the sky. You have fifteen minutes to fill the bag with merchandise, compliments of the Management.

“The Ram took the large shopping bag and promptly sat down on a bench and did nothing but stare at the Prideful One, despite the enticing smells from the nearby World Food Court and all the alluring window
dressings designed by the Fulfillment and Enhancement Division.

“Very well,” said the Prideful One. “Follow me to the second floor.

The Ram followed the Prideful One to the escalator in the middle of the Mall. When they reached the second floor the Prideful One said,
“Show your followers your power and your freedom. Jump to the kiosks below and let the emptiness of your designer bag act as a parachute and cushion your debt free fall.

“Shoppers gathered below the Ram and began to chant, ‘Jump. Jump. Jump,’ but he found another bench and sat down and stared at a sapling growing in a nearby black bucket. By then the Prideful One had
blanched and gotten down on his knees before the Ram.

‘You have resisted and won. No wonder you are debt free and have no minimum payments. Let me escort you to the Final Exit Doors of the Mall of the Coin Operated American.’”

“The Prideful One wasn’t finished though. He led the Ram down the escalator to the first floor then paraded him through the World Food Court. Cooks and servers lined up behind them. Cooks and servers in
resplendent uniforms and hats from Japan, China, Mexico, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, America, Cuba, and Little Eddie’s from Philly, left their stations and followed the Ram of No Outstanding Balance to the Final Exit Doors that led to the parking lot and the three-tiered garage.

“Behind the cooks and servers came shoppers and customers with trays laid out with napkins and silverware. The Prideful One turned to look at the sea of faces behind them. ‘You could lead armies into battle you are so powerful,’ he complimented the Ram who glanced in dismay at the rearguard of believers and followers.

“Won’t you stop at this Last Stand of Kiosks and fill your designer bag with Swiss watches, personalized license plates, and extra large chocolate chip cookies?” the Prideful One asked. “Compliments of the
Management? Mm?

“The Ram ignored the Prideful One and hastened his pace toward the Final Exit Doors which sparkled like diamonds and sunlight a short distance away. When he reached the doors the Ram turned to address the
gathered throng before he slipped away and returned to his father on a distant mountain, never to been seen again.

“A man with an empty tray interrupted the Ram of No Outstanding

Balance before he could speak his final words to his followers.

“Where’s my number 6 from the Shanghai Café?” the man asked.

“Where’s my number 3 from the Grecian Urn?” another customer called out.

“Yeah. Where’s our food?”

“The Ram backpedaled through the Final Exit Doors, turned, then sprinted through the parking lot pursued by the stampeding mob with empty trays.

“It’s in the designer bag,” someone yelled.

“The Prideful One remained inside. He nonchalantly removed the walkie-talkie from his alligator skin belt and pressed a button.

“Security. We have a thief in the west parking lot.”

“And so Mr. Dobbs, are you a thief? When am I going to get a payment from you? When am I going to get anything from you?” Johnson asked. Like I said, I hated dealing with this motherfucker. And His parables.
Every time He called, He shoveled a load of sheep shit on me.

“You’re in Chicago, huh?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Johnson replied in His worn, scratchy voice.

“It’s a toddling town,” I said, grasping for something to say.

“Yeah.”

“It’s the city of big shoulders.”

Johnson coughed into the phone. A dry, phlegmless cough. The wind off Lake Michigan.

“It’s hog butcher to the world,” I said.

“What’s your point, Mr. Dobbs?” He broke in.

“How about the Cubs?”

“What?”

“How about the Cubs?”

He began blubbering about the losing seasons. Talk about Urban Failures. The Cubs were the best failures money couldn’t buy. Then I disconnected, but I knew The Grand Collector would call again, disguising His voice, conning me into a meaningless conversation. Sooner or later, I’d have to pay up or listen to another parable from that motherfucker in the Windy City. All that for a minimum payment. For National Defense and the Record Club of America. I cut up more pistachio nuts. ​
“Please, Sam, where’s the loot?”

“Wilbur’s a good boy,” was all the bird said.

The Grand Collector was originally published in a different form in Hamilton Stone Review