The Salesman
It was a summer's eve when The Salesman came knocking on Farmer Brown's back door. How he knew to knock on the back door they never figured out, 'cause in the country only salesmen and Baptist preachers knock on the front door; friends and neighbors always come 'round back.
When little sister opened the door she was startled to find a strange man in a hat, overcoat, and gloves (not what you’d wear when the heat index was hitting 110°) standing there. He said, “My name is Seth and I would like to engage in conversation with the personage that owns the land adjacent to where we are now standing.” The way he spoke seemed like the language he was speaking was as strange to him as it sounded to her.
After a moment of the two looking expectantly at each other, he with his head cocked, and she with her mouth open, she turned and yelled, “Pa!”
“What?”
“Come here, right now.”
So Pa did, bringing Ma and two other children with him – Malachi and Jacob, the 16 year old twins. Soon it became a staring contest with each side waiting for the other side to speak first. Which The Salesman did.
“You are the entity that owns the land we are standing on?” Seth asked, very awkwardly, as if English wasn’t his native language. Which it wasn’t.
“Eh, yup. I guess. This is my farm and land.”
“My name is Seth and I represent a consortium of scientists. On your land a series of windmills we would like to erect.”
“What fer?” Ma asked. She wasn’t as trusting, or as she put it “gullible” as Pa was.
“To gage the amount of energy that can be harvested from your atmosphere,” Seth replied.
“Huh?” This time Ma and Pa both asked.
“He wants to get that solar power, green energy, Dad,” the brothers said in unison.
“Yes, I believe your politicians agree with your offsprings assessment. We would like to harvest – that is what farmers call this, I believe – the energy that is green.” Seth reached into his overcoat and produced a diagram. “This is the amount of land we would need for the apparatus.”
Pa looked at the diagram and opined, “Well that base ain’t much bigger than the tractor shed, ma. Take a look.” Which she did after she found her reading glasses that hung on a chain around her neck.
Malachi asked, “But don’t you need some kinda gizmo to put that energy in?”
The salesman looked approving at the boy and said, “Your young male is astute. Yes, the energy that is produced we would distribute to you and your neighbors for your usage.”
“Ah Ha!” Ma said, “I knew there’d be a catch. And how much is this green energy gonna cost us?”
The salesman looked puzzled, “Cost?”
“Yeah. How much we gonna pay? I swear you slick city folk come out here and treat us like we all just fell off the watermelon truck and…”
Puzzled The Salesman interrupted, “You have fallen off a motorized vehicle carrying a flowering plant species of the Cucurbitaceae family? Are you in pain?”
Pa wasn’t in pain, but he was gearing up to give this stranger a good berating when The Salesman took off his glove, reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of diamonds. The Brown’s were fascinated both by the diamonds and that The Salesman had six fingers.
“I believe this is acceptable as restitution for the use of the land?” When the Browns didn’t answer (Seth was unfamiliar with the expression "cat got your tongue" which would have perfectly explained the Brown's silence) he reached into his other pocket and brought out a bag, and emptied it out on the table. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds caught the light and sparkled like sunlight on pond water at noon. “And as for the energy the experiment produces, that is yours at no cost. It is a by product of our experiment.”
Needless to say that after a little bit of horse trading, and another bag of jewels, the Browns struck a deal that would allow Seth to build several of these windmills on their property. It was better than winning the lottery!
It seems that several salesmen like Seth visited several of the farmers in that little county, and all with the same success.
The windmills produced free electricity, the farmers were rich beyond their ability to have ever imagined. Life was good. Praise the Lord and bless their lucky stars.
That was until a few months later when they noticed that the hens weren’t laying eggs, calves were being born with two heads, and everyone seemed to have contracted some kind of skin disease which was making their skin almost reptilian in nature.
Yes, The Salesman’s experiment was more successful than his scientists could have imagined. And all it cost them was the gravel that they used to pave roads with on their planet.
