Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 2, February, 1955

The Competitors by Richard Deming

The whole trouble was that there weren’t enough people dying. The funeral directors had to think of a way to remedy the situation.

The village of Shannon wasn’t big enough for two funeral parlors, Sam Potter thought morosely. One for each fifteen hundred population. Even if he and Dave continued to get their fair half of the available business, future prospects were gloomy. Particularly since Shannon natives tended to live to such discouraging old age.

This was largely because of the nature of the community, Sam reflected as he paused in his raking of the already immaculate lawn to examine without pleasure the sedate sign reading: Potter and Clemson Mortuary. A sleepy Western New York State village on the shore of Lake Erie, Shannon had no large industries to provide hazardous occupations, so little crime there hadn’t been a murder in thirty years, and a disgustingly healthy climate.

If only Harry Averill had been content to stick to the furniture business and hadn’t decided, three years back, to branch out into the funeral business also, Sam thought resentfully, he and Dave would still have a comfortable living. After enjoying a monopoly for fifteen years, it was a little hard to see half your business snatched away by a man who already had a way to make a living. Then in grudging fairness Sam had to admit it was Averill’s son insisting on studying to be an embalmer which had induced the elder Averill to enter the field, and not pure avarice.

He went back to his raking, a short, round little man in his forties whose normal expression was a benign smile instead of the frown his face now wore.

Dave Clemson came from the funeral home’s garage, where he had been tinkering with the engine of the ancient hearse, and walked across the lawn toward Sam. Glad of an excuse, Sam again stopped his raking and leaned on the rake handle as his partner approached.

Dave Clemson was the same age as Sam Potter, also a bachelor, and for business purposes had cultivated an identically benign expression. But there the resemblance ended. Dave was four inches taller than Sam and as thin as a rail.

When he reached Sam, Dave stopped and said in a discouraged voice, “It’s no use. She’s finally done.”

“The hearse?” Sam asked.

“What else?” the thin man snapped at him.

“You don’t have to bite my head off,” Sam said mildly. “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”

“It’s as bad as I think,” Dave assured him. “The cylinders are too big now to bore out again, the pistons are warped and the head’s almost eaten through. Nothing but a new motor would ever make her run again. Also the transmission’s shot and the rear end is ready to go out. After eighteen years, what could you expect?”

Sam asked, “What are we going to do?”

“Either buy a new hearse or fold up.”

“A new hearse!” Sam said, appalled. “Where do we get the sixty-five hundred bucks?”

“I figure eighty-five hundred. For a combination hearse and ambulance.”

Sam’s voice rose to a squeak. “A combination job! What in the devil do we need with an ambulance?”

“I’ve had it in mind for some time,” Dave said. “Come inside and we’ll talk it over.”

By tacit agreement they went to the casket display room in the basement, as it was the coolest room in the building. And as always before a business conference, Dave got some ice from the refrigerator in the embalming room, squeezed a couple of the lemons he always kept in the same refrigerator and made two tall glasses of lemonade. Neither man spoke until they were both comfortably seated, had their pipes going and had sampled their drinks.

Then Dave said, “Like I said, I’ve been thinking this over for some time, Sam. And the way I see it, we’re never going to get out of the red waiting for Shannon natives to die.”

“So how will spending eighty-five hundred bucks we haven’t got help us?”

“We’ve got to rake up business from outside of Shannon. And that’s where the ambulance idea comes in. I been checking up on a few things. You know how many accident calls that broken-down fire-department ambulance made last year?”

The plump man shook his head.

“A hundred and eight,” Dave Clemson said in an impressive voice. “Better than two a week.”

Sam looked surprised, but not particularly impressed. “So?”

“So I happen to know their ambulance is as close to falling apart as our hearse. The chief plans to go before the common council Monday night and ask for a new one. Suppose we show up too, tell the council we plan to buy a new hearse, and as a public service would just as soon make it a combination ambulance-hearse? Then the village wouldn’t need one any more. We could guarantee twenty-four-hour service and charge a set fee. We’d bill patients able to pay, and charge the village for charity cases. I think the common council would jump at it.”

Sam looked at his partner in astonishment. Finally he said, “So do I. Look at the money they’d save. But I don’t see any profit for us. We couldn’t charge more than ten or fifteen dollars a call, and even if we got fifteen dollars, a hundred and eight calls comes to only...” He paused to gaze at the ceiling a moment, then said, “Sixteen hundred and twenty dollars a year. And the outfit would cost us two thousand dollars more than a plain hearse. Figuring depreciation...”

“You don’t get the idea,” Dave interrupted. “I don’t plan to make any profit from ambulance calls. It’s an investment in good will.”

Sam examined his partner with an expression indicating he thought the thin man had lost his mind. Instead of answering, he took a long and sarcastic pull on his lemonade.

“Just listen me out,” Dave said insistently. “You know what most local ambulance calls are for?”

“Auto accidents, I suppose.”

“Almost all of them,” Dave agreed. “Usually involving out-of-town people. Not many Shannon people get hurt in accidents, because they never move fast enough to do more than dent a fender. But an awful lot of tourists passing by town smash up. Since they built the two new highways both sides of town, hundreds of out-of-staters whiz past us every day. And at least a couple a week crack up. I checked with the hospital the other day, and of the hundred and seventy-eight accident victims brought in last year by the hundred and eight ambulance calls I mentioned, thirty-three people were either DOA, or died in the hospital later. But we only got two of those bodies. And of course both those were split fees with the undertaker in the deceaseds’ home towns, since neither was from around here.”

Sam Potter began to look more interested. “What are you getting at, Dave?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why Harry Averill got thirty-one of those bodies while we only got two. Us being the older firm, you’d think it would be the other way. I finally figured it out.”

“How?” Sam asked blankly.

“Just put yourself in the place of the next of kin of an accident victim. Maybe you’ve rushed in from out of town when the hospital called you, or maybe you were in the accident too, but weren’t killed. Maybe you’re hurt, maybe not, but at least you’re upset, you’re not thinking too clearly, and you don’t know a soul in town. When the charge nurse at the hospital asks what you want done with the body, what do you do?”

Sam said slowly, “Why, ask the nurse who the undertakers in town are, I guess.”

“And does the nurse recommend one?”

“No, of course not. They’re not allowed to do that. I suppose she’d give me the names of both funeral homes and let me take my pick.”

“Or, more likely, just hand you a phone book opened to the proper page in the classified section.”

Sam stared at his partner. “Yeah. And...” He stopped and his eyes widened. “My God! I don’t know anything about either of them, so naturally I’d take the first one in the book. Averill got all that business simply because his name starts with A!”

“Exactly,” Dave said, pleased with his pupil. “Probably the only reason we even got two was because Averill’s phone was busy or something when the next of kin tried to reach him.”

Sam was now so interested, he had allowed his pipe to go out and the ice in his lemonade to melt. Setting the glass on the floor next to his foot, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

“So get back to your good will idea,” he said.

“It’s simple,” Dave said. “With an ambulance, we’d be in on the ground floor. Every time we bring in an accident victim, we leave a card. If the victim dies, his next of kin isn’t going to look in any phone book. He’s going to phone those nice, sympathetic ambulance attendants who did everything possible to save the victim’s life by rushing him to the hospital, and who also happen to run a funeral home.”

Sam regarded his thin partner with admiration. “We’d get all of them,” be breathed. “Over thirty a year.” He paused, then went on reflectively, “Of course some of them would just be embalmings, because some families would want their home town undertakers to handle details.” Then he brightened. “But at least half ought to buy caskets from us.”

“At least,” Dave agreed. “And tourists are quite likely to have money. I happen to know Averill unloaded a fifteen-hundred-dollar casket in one of the thirty-one accident fatalities he got last year.”

“Eighty-five hundred dollars for a combination job,” Sam Potter said with a faraway look in his eyes. “We could mortgage the funeral home...”

When word got around the village that Potter and Clemson had taken over the responsibility for furnishing ambulance service for the community, Harry Averill used the rumor as an excuse to needle his competitors a little. The incident occurred at the weekly luncheon meeting of the Shannon Businessmen’s Club.

Harry Averill was a bland, portly man of about fifty, and had once been regarded as a good friend by both Sam Potter and Dave Clemson. During the past three years, ever since Averill’s son Harry Jr. had graduated from a New York City embalmer’s school and the elder Averill had added the funeral business to his already thriving furniture business, their relations remained the same on the surface, but underneath there was the bitterness of business rivals. This particular luncheon meeting Averill made a point of sitting directly across the table from the two partners.

He deliberately waited until mealtime conversation had subsided somewhat, then said in a friendly voice, but one which carried from one end of the table to the other, “Hear you fellows are buying an ambulance.”

“Combination ambulance-hearse,” Sam Potter said. “Matter-of-fact, it arrived this morning.”

Averill beamed. “Probably a wise move. Ambulance fees will help carry you over rough spots when the funeral business is bad.”

Both partners beamed back as genially as their competitor was beaming.

Dave Clemson said in a loud voice, “We don’t even hope to break even on ambulance calls. It’s just a service to the community.”

“Well, that’s certainly civic-minded of you boys,” Averill said in an equally loud voice. “When I heard you were going in for additional revenue because your business had slipped, I knew it was just a malicious rumor.”

“We’re getting along fine,” Sam Potter said in a comfortable tone which effectively hid his rage.

It took Harry Averill a full two months to discover the effect the new ambulance service was having on his business. During that time there were four automobile accident deaths at the local hospital, but Averill didn’t get a single one. But when he finally realized what was happening, he took action to correct the situation at once.

He dropped the news in the partners’ laps like a bombshell at a meeting of the Businessmen’s Club.

“Got a new hearse yesterday,” he announced casually. “Combination ambulance-hearse, like yours.”

Only eighteen years in a business where public relations demanded an ability to control facial expression prevented the partners from gaping at him in consternation. Instead they both managed to look delighted.

“Shannon will have better ambulance service than most cities,” Sam Potter remarked with a wide grin.

But when they got back to the funeral home, neither partner felt it necessary to conceal his gloom from the other.

“We’re licked,” Sam said. “Jimmy Straight, the Hose One pump truck driver, is Averill’s brother-in-law. Every call that comes into the fire department will be relayed on to him instead of to us.”

“Yeah,” Dave said dispiritedly. Then he brightened. “On the other hand, Tommy Johnson on the night desk at the police station is my cousin. I think I can fix it to have us called first by the police.”

This information cheered Sam a little. “Then at least we’ll have an even break,” he said thoughtfully. “It’ll just be a question of which ambulance can get to the scene first.”

That was the way it worked out. Since the police station and the fire department had a joint switchboard, both learned about automobile accidents simultaneously. And as a result the two funeral homes learned of them simultaneously. During the next few weeks both ambulances roared to every accident scene.

But since in no case were there more than three victims requiring hospitalization as a result of any one accident, and each ambulance was equipped to handle up to three stretcher cases, one ambulance always returned home empty. Neither managed to gain an edge, each garnering roughly half the available business.

At the end of six weeks Harry Averill made a visit to the Potter and Clemson Mortuary. He caught the partners in the act of laying out an elderly woman who had tried to pass a semi-trailer on a hill.

“Competent looking job so far,” Averill commented judiciously. “Though Harry Jr. would be a better judge of that than me. He handles all this end of the business, you know, while I work out front.”

Neither partner felt as constrained to be polite to their competitor in private as they did in public. Sam Potter said with a trace of condescension, “We know you’re not an embalmer,” and Dave Clemson asked bluntly, “What do you want?”

“Thought it time we had a little business discussion,” Averill said. “Did you know the whole village is beginning to talk about our races to accident scenes?”

Both partners looked at him. They not only knew it, they had worriedly discussed the possible effect such bad publicity might have on both funeral homes.

But all Sam Potter said was, “So?”

“So up to now people just think it’s funny. They just think we’re competing for ambulance fees. It hasn’t occurred to anyone that we’re also trying to line up...” He paused, discarded the phrase he had started to use and changed it to, “Trying to create good will.”

When Sam and Dave merely continued to look at him, Averill coughed delicately. “It occurred to me that if the general public ever suspects our... ah... good will reason for rushing to accident scenes, people might consider it a trifle ghoulish.”

The partners looked at each other, then went back to work. Sam carefully injected a little paraffin into the withered left cheek of the corpse, rounding it out prettily. As he moved to the other cheek, Dave lightly touched the left one with rouge.

“In a town this small, that sort of talk could ruin both of us,” Averill said.

Sam asked bluntly, “What you driving at?”

“I suggest we split the business. You fellows take all calls one week, we’ll take them the next. That way we won’t be going out on unnecessary calls, there won’t be any danger of talk and, best of all, we’ll each only be on twenty-four-hour call half the time. I don’t imagine you fellows like having to stick near a phone all the time any more than I do.”

Sam and Dave silently continued working on the corpse for some minutes. Finally Dave said, “I think he’s got a point, Sam.”

“I guess so,” Sam said reluctantly. “Maybe we ought to try it at least for awhile.”

Neither partner mentioned to Harry Averill that they had discussed going to him with the identical proposition.

For the next six months the cooperative agreement between Averill’s Funeral Home and the Potter and Clemson Mortuary worked without friction. On alternate weeks the combination ambulance-hearses of each rushed to accident scenes alone. And while some weeks the traffic toll was heavier than others, over a period of time each made approximately the same number of trips.

However, when Dave Clemson made one of the statistical studies he was so fond of at the end of the six months, his findings upset him.

“We’ve had twenty-four calls in six months,” he told Sam. “Averill’s had twenty-seven. We brought in forty-nine people and he only brought in forty. In every case where a victim from out of town died, the next of kin called the funeral home whose ambulance brought the deceased to the hospital.”

“Sounds fair enough to me,” Sam said.

“But out of his forty people, twelve of Averill’s died. Only seven of our forty-nine did. He got five more embalmings than we did.”

“It’ll work out even over the years,” Sam assured him. “Next six months we’ll probably get more embalmings than Averill.”

“We better,” Dave said darkly. “Even with this extra tourist business, we’re barely keeping up payments on that eighty-five hundred loan. If things get worse instead of better, we’re sunk.”

But things didn’t get worse. Fortunately for the shaky financial status of the mortuary, Sam Potter’s prophecy came true. During the next six months, despite ambulance calls being fairly evenly split, only five of those accident victims brought in by Averill died, while eighteen delivered to the hospital by Sam and Dave expired.

“See?” Sam said, when Dave had reported to him the results of his semi-annual statistical study. “Now we’re eight embalmings ahead of Averill.” Then his face turned gloomy. “Which means the percentages are we’ll drop way down during the next six months.”

But this time Sam’s prophecy was not correct, for the partners’ luck held for the whole of the next six-month period. The accident victims they rushed to the hospital continued to die with much more gratifying frequency than those brought in by Averill.

By now the partners’ procedure on emergency calls had settled into a routine. On the way to accident scenes Dave Clemson invariably drove. Coming back Sam Potter always drove while his thin partner sat in back with the patients. After delivering their cargoes to the hospital, they switched again and Dave drove home.

This might have gone on indefinitely without change had it not been for Sam Potter mistaking a car seat cushion for a body one dark night.

The call came in about eleven P.M., reporting a bad accident on the main highway about two miles beyond town. Within three minutes they were roaring to the scene with the siren wide open.

When they approached the accident scene, the first thing the partners saw was a ditched semitrailer with a cluster of people gathered about it, then an overturned sedan fifty yards beyond. As usual Dave was driving, and since from previous experience he knew that in arguments between semis and passengers cars it was normally the occupants of the passenger car who were most in need of attention, he slid by the semi and brought the ambulance to a stop near the sedan.

A large number of cars had stopped, and so many curious on-lookers were wandering around, it was impossible to determine which, if any, group surrounded an injured person. As Sam slid out of the right-hand side of the ambulance, he spotted a seat cushion lying in the ditch near the overturned sedan, and in the dark mistook it for a body.

As the cushion was still some yards beyond where the ambulance had halted, Sam ran around the front of the vehicle instead of the rear. But when he reached a point near the left front fender, he saw his mistake and turned to look for Dave. Then he saw that Dave had stopped the ambulance right next to an injured man lying on the shoulder, and was already pulling open the rear doors.

Reversing himself, Sam rushed back along the left side of the vehicle, catching his shoulder sharply on the side-view mirror as he passed. It gave him a painful bruise, but in the flurry of helping Dave load the injured man into the ambulance he forgot about it.

There was only one injured person, and he was unconscious. As always Sam Potter drove to the hospital while Dave sat in back with the patient. They had almost reached the village line before Sam grew conscious of his shoulder aching. Then he remembered bumping the side-view mirror and glanced at it reproachfully.

The ambulance’s siren had pulled all other traffic to the sides of the road, but one truckman had neglected to dim his highway lights. Just as Sam glanced at the sideview mirror, the ambulance interior was flooded with light. And to his surprise Sam noted that his jostling the mirror had turned it so that he had a full view of the back.

Then his surprise changed to horror as he saw the reflection of his partner’s raised arm. What looked like a small blackjack was in Dave’s hand. In the momentary illumination Sam saw it descend in a vicious arc onto the already injured head of their passenger.

Sam was so shocked by what he had seen, it didn’t even occur to him to demand an explanation from Dave. With his mind in a turmoil, he roared on to the hospital.

He said nothing to Dave as they carried the stretcher inside, nor anything while they waited outside the door of the emergency room for the doctor’s verdict.

He continued to remain silent when the doctor came out and announced laconically, “DOA.” The doctor handed Dave a wallet and said, “Seems to be plenty of identification in there.”

While Dave counted the money and wrote out a receipt which he gave the charge nurse, Sam thought over the appalling sight he had seen. He examined his partner carefully, but could detect nothing in his manner indicating a guilty conscience.

Prior to the advent of the new ambulance service, it had been the chief nurse’s duty to contact accident victims’ next of kin, but since both Averill and Clemson and Potter had volunteered to take this unpleasant task off her shoulders for cases they brought in, she had gladly relinquished the responsibility. Now Sam had another wait while Dave made a long-distance call from the superintendant’s office.

Sam didn’t go in with him. He didn’t want to listen to his partner’s sympathetic voice as he broke the news, nor to his respectful explanation that it was the Potter and Clemson Ambulance Service and Mortuary calling. Particularly he didn’t want to hear Dave’s question as to what disposition the next of kin wanted made of the body.

He still had not spoken to Dave when they returned to the ambulance. By force of habit he climbed in the right side of the cab, as he always did when they left the hospital, leaving the driver’s seat for Dave. The first thing Dave did was glance at the side-view mirror.

Looking puzzded, Dave reached through the window to straighten it, then paused and carefully studied its present angle. When he saw it gave a full view of the rear, he gave Sam a quick sideglance.

Sam nodded his head and said in a dispirited voice, “I saw it.”

Dave made no comment, merely starting the engine and driving away. But several times during the short trip home he glanced surreptitiously at his partner. Even in the dark Sam could tell that the thin man’s face was pale.

When they pulled into the garage, Dave could stand the suspense no longer. “What are you going to do, Sam?” he asked in a slightly high voice.

“I’m going to think awhile before I do anything,” Sam said heavily.

He climbed out of the cab and made straight for the casket display room, leaving Dave to close the garage doors alone. When Dave came down a few moments later, Sam was seated with his pipe going and was staring off into space.

Dave’s face was now very pale. After watching Sam hesitantly for a minute or two, he disappeared into the embalming room. Five minutes later he returned with two glasses of lemonade. Sam accepted one mutely and waited until Dave had his pipe going before he spoke.

Then he said, “This wasn’t the first one, was it, Dave?”

Without looking at him, Dave shook his head.

“We’ve been averaging two to one over Averill,” Sam said.

“Maybe they’d all have died anyway,” Dave said in a low voice.

Sam looked at him steadily until Dave said in a defensive tone, “It’s paid off the hearse and got us back on our feet. Without all those extra cases, we’d be bankrupt by now.”

Sam drew thoughtfully on his pipe. “There’s that, of course,” he conceded.

He continued to puff his pipe for some minutes. Finally he took it from his mouth and drained a quarter of his lemonade.

“If I called the police,” he said reflectively, “I guess the business would be finished. Even if they electrocuted you and cleared me, the mortuary would never survive such a scandal.”

Dave said nothing.

“Maybe they would all have died anyway,” Sam said.

Dave said with a faint note of relief, “Of course they would have, Sam.”

Sam drained the rest of his lemonade and tapped some of the ashes from his pipe to make it draw better. In a brisk tone he said, “I guess the best thing to do is change our procedure a little. You shouldn’t have all the responsibility. Hereafter I’ll ride in back half the time.”

He looked up and met Dave’s eyes. The two men smiled at each other.