Traveling Salesmen

   Mom called them drummers. Not sure where that moniker came from. Guys that would come to the house selling encyclopedias or vacuum cleaners or kitchen gadgets or religions or glass cleaners or what-have-you.
 
   We lived out in the boondocks, but still they would come. And my mom, being my mom, was always courteous and kind. That was the ticket. They’d get a foot in the door, get inside the house, set up their demos, spread out their samples, make themselves right at home. A sucker’s born every minute.

   Dad hated them.

   If Dad caught a drummer in the house, he’d put the screws to them until they skedaddled. Then he’d let Mom have it for letting them in in the first place.
 
   Mom’s gentle heart couldn’t understand why on earth my dad would shout at her for being nice to someone. The conundrum would make her break down and cry. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I promise I won’t do it again,” she would say.
 
   Of course, she would. The very next chance she got, she’d open the front door to a guy selling magazine subscriptions or fresh seafood or raffle tickets or garden tools or vitamins or what-have-you.

*          *          *

   I’ll never forget one particular time when my mom let an Electrolux vacuum salesman into the house. What a disaster.
 
   It was around Christmas time, although I can’t remember if it was before or after. The tree was up, anyway. My dad came in from his morning in the garage fiddling with the Oldsmobile’s frozen windshield washer lines, and found the Electrolux guy setting up for his first demo: The Pillow Test. He shot my mom the look, and was just about to say something when the guy jumped into his spiel.
 
   “Watch as I demonstrate the incredible suction power of the Elextrolux Olympia fourteen-oh-one-be,” he proudly announced. The guy had stuffed one of our couch cushions into a big, clear plastic bag, and he was squeezing the bag opening around the inlet nozzle of the vacuum. His finger hovered dramatically over the vacuum’s ON switch.
 
   Dad started to yell something at the guy, but it was too late. My dad opened his mouth, but nothing came out except for the whirring of the 1401-B. It sounded like a jet engine. My dad kept trying to talk and yell, but nobody could hear him. His hands began to wave and his face began to redden. All the while, our couch cushion, which in its natural state of being was just about the size you’d imagine, was getting vacuum-shrunk down and down. It rapidly got down to about the size of a softball.
 
   Dad lurched across the room, swiped the OFF switch on the Electrolux in an incredible diving maneuver, and the roar of the jet engine came to a sudden stop. Everything was dead silent for a second or two. Then my dad picked himself off the carpet and said, menacingly and well-inside the drummer’s personal space, “What the Christ are you doing to my couch?”
 
   “Umm…,” was all the poor guy could manage. His eyes darted over to the couch cushion, still in the bag. Conspicuously, although the cushion was now exposed to normal atmospheric pressure, it was not growing back into its original shape or size. It was still softball-ish.
 
   “That’s a brand new goddam couch!” my dad loudly lied.
 
   “Umm…well…let me just get this fluffed back up a bit.” The drummer’s hands trembled as he attempted to pat the cushion back into shape. He pulled it out of the bag and was working it the best he could, but it just wasn’t happening.
 
   “Get all your shit together and get the hell out of my house!” my dad bellowed, his forehead veins throbbing conspicuously. He was pretty far into the red. “Goddammit, just leave it! Leave it!” he added, talking about the cushion.
 
   “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” my mom offered to either my dad or the drummer, or perhaps both. Tears were streaming down her face. She held out her shaking hands as a peace offering. “I’m so sorry.”
 
   The drummer, totally flummoxed, abandoned the cushion and started getting his kit together as fast as he could. But it wasn’t nearly fast enough for my dad. Dad opened the front door and began throwing vacuum attachments and small boxes out into the front yard, swearing a blue streak all the while. Goddam this and fuck that.
 
   My mom, in a futile attempt to make peace and help the poor vacuum salesman, got down on the living room floor and started assisting him with the gathering of his stuff. That’s when the Jerry Lewis bit began.
 
   My dad was not about to let his wife lend a helping hand to the enemy, so he grabbed my mom by the arm, planning to jerk her back up to reality. She pulled her arm away from Dad defiantly, and in doing so fell backward into the Electrolux guy, who, in turn, fell backward into our Christmas tree, knocking it right over. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that in the midst of all the pulling and stumbling and falling, the jet engine accidentally got switched to ON again.  Two ornaments and a handful of tinsel were promptly sucked off the felled tree, right up into the nozzle of the thing. Never to be seen again.
 
   It’s a wonder my dad’s head didn’t explode. It’s a wonder the whole episode didn’t end with the police turning up at our house to inquire about the dead body in the front yard, and with my dad being sent up the river to Sing Sing.
 
   But instead of all that, everything wound itself down. My mom kept spontaneously bursting into tears over the following days, though. And that cushion never did return completely to normal.

*          *          *

   One spring, the spring of ’79 I think it was, we noticed that the Jehovah's Witnesses were out and about in town. Easy to spot them. Suits on bicycles, peddling and peddling. They traveled in pairs like Ponch and John on ChiPs.

   “Don’t let those bastards into the house,” my dad directed as he was piloting the Olds down Elm, passing the courthouse, where he spotted a Ponch and a John riding.
 
   “Oh, they won’t come all the way out to our house,” my mom declared with confidence.
 
   My dad took a last deep drag on his Salem, pulling it all the way down to the filter. He eyeballed my mom as he flicked the butt out the window in the general direction of the Jehovah's.
 
   “We’re too far out for bicycles.” Mom’s voice quivered a bit under my dad’s gaze. “And even if they came out, I wouldn’t let then in.”
 
   “Don’t let ‘em in the goddam house.” Smoke came out of him as he said it.

*          *        *

   The following weekend the Jehovah’s came out the house. Dad wasn’t home, but he was expected shortly. Mom was in a pickle.
 
   She was doing dishes, gazing out the kitchen window, when she saw them peddling our way. She dropped her towel and started scurrying all around the house like a nervous hen, mumbling to herself. It never occurred to her that she could get out of jail free by just not answering the front door if the Jehovah’s knocked. Something deep down inside her equated not answering a knocked-upon front door with Murder One.
 
   I looked out the window and saw them. They were parked in our driveway, dismounting their steeds. “Mom,” I said, “why don’t we just not answer the door.”
 
   Mom was down on her knees with her elbows on the La-Z-Boy seat, hands clasped in prayer position. “Please, God,” she was begging, “Please don’t let them knock. Please don’t let them knock.”
 
   But knocked they did. God was too busy for my mom’s prayer. Or perhaps siding with the Jehovah's Witnesses.
 
   So, I did what any good Scout would do. I summoned up some good old fashioned pioneer moxie. Those bastard Jehovah’s were imposing upon my family, causing my mom to tailspin, so I was going to do a little imposing on them. My plan was this: I would sneak out the back sliding door, and then around the side of the house, and then make my way to their bicycles, where I’d see to it that all four tires went flat in under a minute.
 
   However, to my surprise, once I made it around the side of the house, I saw those two Jehovah’s Witnesses climbing back onto their bikes. It appeared they were leaving. Off to their next victim.
 
   When I asked my mom how on earth she’d gotten rid of them so fast, I half expected her to say something heroic, out of a movie, like, “Well, I just showed ‘em the business end of my forty-five, son.” But there was none of that.
 
   Instead, my mom described it like this: “Well, I told ‘em to come back at two o’clock. Your father will be home by then. He’ll be able to handle it.”

*         *          *

   My dad came home for lunch around noon. Over tuna salad sandwiches and noodle soup my mom mustered up the courage to tell him about our visitors earlier.
 
   “You didn’t let the bastards in the house, didja?” my dad barked, his mouth full of noodles.
 
   “No, of course not,” Mom answered. Then after a pause, “I told ‘em to come back later. I told ‘em to come back at two.”
 
   “At two?! Jesus. Whadja go and do that for?! Now the bastards are gonna come back!” My dad was getting loud and spitting little pieces of tuna and celery.
 
   “Don’t yell at me. Please don’t yell at me about this,” my mom pleaded. “I couldn’t think of what else to do.”
 
   “Dumb. Just dumb. Well, I woulda told ‘em to get lost and never come back. That’s what I woulda done. Just sayin’. Dumb.”
 
   “Well maybe they won’t come back. We’re way out in the country and all.”
 
   “I guess so,” my dad replied, calming down a little. “It was still dumb.” He decided it required saying one more time. “We’re supposed to go over to Nellie and Win’s this afternoon, anyway. Remember?”
 
   “Oh my goodness. I completely forgot about that.” Mom was stunned by the remembrance. “I told Nellie I’d bring over that banana bread. And some fruit salad,” she continued. Mom put her half-eaten sandwich down and stood up, hands on her hips. A new tizzy was spooling up.

*          *          *

   We left for Nellie and Win’s close to two. That’s when my mom had told the Jehovah’s to come back. The Olds was purring along smoothly, and I could tell from the back seat that my dad was feeling pretty good about it. “She’s running like a top, I tell ya,” Dad said with a grin. “Worth about half of what those greaseballs charged me, but worth something.” The Olds had just come back from the shop.
 
   We were about a mile from our house when saw the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
 
   “Oh no. Oh no. Oh my god.” Mom was starting to lose it.
 
   “What the hell are you yammering about?” my dad croaked. He had a low tolerance for sudden phonations, especially while driving. I remember sneezing one time while my dad was trying to find a parking spot at the mall, and I swear he had a look like he wanted to take a swing at me.
 
   “There they are!” my mom explained, pointing to the Jehovah’s Witnesses on their bicycles. “It’s them! It’s them. The same ones. Oh my god, they’re going back to our house!”
 
   “Who cares,” my dad said with a chuckle. “Nothing to get upset about. They’ll get out there and there won’t be anybody at home, and then they’ll peddle back to their nutty headquarters. Screw ‘em.”
 
   “How can you say that? I just don’t understand you sometimes.” Mom was staring at my dad, unblinkingly. He wasn’t taking the bait. “They’re gonna to be exhausted after peddling their bikes all the way out to our house, twice in one day. Exhausted. I feel so bad for them.” Mom was a defender of the weak and an absorber of their pains. Still my dad remained indifferent. He was playing with the wheel, lightly touching it, checking the alignment, eyes straight ahead. “And it’s my fault. I’m the one who told 'em to come back. And now they’re coming back! Oh no. It's just past two, and they're coming back at two like I asked. They trusted me. They trusted me.” Tears were imminent.
 
   “Aw, screw ‘em,” my dad said.
 
   For about half the ride over to Nellie and Win’s, I sat in the back of the Olds listening to my mom and dad go at it about the Jehovah’s, each stating their case. Not so much to each other, but to some invisible judge and jury. But then I started daydreaming as I watched the trees going by. I got into those trees. My dad's voice and my mom’s sputter-crying blended into the background, mixed together with the sound of the engine and the tires and the wind. I wondered what it would be like if I ran away from home. I could go live in the woods, I figured, somewhere far up in the mountains. Nothing up in the mountains but peace and quiet and the cool earth under my feet.

– O.M. Kelsey