The Dog of the South by Charles Portis Page A

advantages and how to take insults and rebuffs in stride. The good salesman must make one more call , Dix said, before stopping for the day. That might be the big one! He said you must save your money but you must not be afraid to spend it either, and at the same time you must give no thought to money. A lot of his stuff was formulated in this way. You must do this and that, two contrary things, and you must also be careful to do neither. Dynamic tension! Avoid excessive blinking and wild eye movement, Dix said, when talking to prospects. Restrain your hands. Watch for openings, for the tiniest breaches. These were good enough tips in their way but I had been led to expect balls of fire. I became impatient with the thing. The doctor had deposited bits of gray snot on every page and these boogers were dried and crystallized.
    â€œThis car seems to be going sideways,” he said to me.
    The car wasn’t going sideways and I didn’t bother to answer him.
    A little later he said, “This engine seems to be sucking air.”
    I let that go too. He began to talk about his youth, about his days as a medical student at Wooten Institute in New Orleans. I couldn’t follow all that stuff and I tuned him out as best I could. He ended the long account by saying that Dr. Wooten “invented clamps.”
    â€œMedical clamps?” I idly inquired.
    â€œNo, just clamps. He invented the clamp.”
    â€œI don’t understand that. What kind of clamp are you talking about?”
    â€œClamps! Clamps! That you hold two things together with! Can’t you understand plain English?”
    â€œAre you saying this man made the first clamp?”
    â€œHe got a patent on it. He invented the clamp.”
    â€œNo, he didn’t.”
    â€œThen who did?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou don’t know. And you don’t know Smitty Wooten either but you want to tell me he didn’t invent the clamp.”
    â€œHe may have invented some special kind of clamp but he didn’t invent the clamp . The principle of the clamp was probably known to the Sumerians. You can’t go around saying this fellow from Louisiana invented the clamp.”
    â€œHe was the finest diagnostician of our time. I suppose you deny that too.”
    â€œThat’s something else.”
    â€œNo, go ahead. Attack him all you please. He’s dead now and can’t defend himself. Call him a liar and a bum. It’s great sport for people who sit on the sidelines of life. They do the same thing with Dix. People who aren’t fit to utter his name.”
    I didn’t want to provoke another frenzy while he was driving, so I let the matter drop. There was very little traffic, as I say, in that desolate green scrubland, and no rivers and creeks at all, but he managed to find a narrow bridge and meet a cattle truck on it. As soon as the truck hove into view, a good halfmile away, the doctor began to make delicate speed adjustments so as to assure an encounter in the exact center of the bridge. We clipped a mirror off the truck and when we were well clear of the scene I took the wheel again.
    Then one of the motor mounts snapped. The decayed rubber finally gave way. Strength of materials! With this support gone the least acceleration would throw the engine over to the right from the torque, and the fan blades would clatter against the shroud. I straightened out two coat hangers and fastened one end of the stiff wires to the exhaust manifold on the left side, and anchored the other ends to the frame member. This steadied the engine somewhat and kept it from jumping over so far. I thought it was a clever piece of work, even though I had burned my fingers on the manifold.
    For a little car it had a lot of secrets. Another tire went flat near Chetumal, the left rear, and I almost twisted the lug bolts off before I figured out that they had left-hand threads. Far from being clever, I was slow and stupid! Of all the