|
Diamond Jim
“You been yawning a awful lot, Debbie. Bet you were out late with you boyfriend in Hot Springs while you husband away working. Shame, shame!”
Debbie looked up from the Jiffy Stop’s little grill. She had been listening to Patty Rhee’s distinctive Korean-Arkansan accent long enough to tell when she was teasing. “I was up last night with a sick kid. Taylor’s coughing kept the others up too. They’re probably going to take a nap at Mama’s after school and won’t want to sleep tonight either.”
“I still think you got something going on with Diamond Jim. He coming to see you in a few minutes.”
“What makes you think Jim’s coming…oh yes, it is Friday evening, isn’t it?” Diamond Jim came to Patty’s Jiffy Stop for supper at 5:30 every Friday evening. You could almost set your watch by him. She glanced at hers. He’d be here any minute.
Sure enough, at 5:30 sharp Jim came through the front door in his familiar faded hunting jacket and cap. “Hi, Jim!” Patty called from the counter. “What it gonna be tonight? Burger or chicken?”
Jim coughed a couple of times due to the sudden change of temperature inside. “Chicken,” he croaked as he struggled to clear his throat. He hung his jacket and cap on the coat rack beneath Patty’s big plaque that read “The two best times to go fishing are when it’s raining, and when it ain’t.” Then he ambled past the snack food racks and the shelves of locally-made wood carvings over to his customary spot at the nearest of the Jiffy Stop’s half-dozen tables. Patty dished up some chicken tenders and fries for him, while Debbie poured a cup of coffee and added plenty of sugar, just like Jim liked it.
“Evening, Jim!” greeted fellow regular Don Parker from his own usual table. “How’s the rock hunting business going?”
“Pretty good. I found some nice agate this week and what I think might be a garnet. I think I might have a lead on a kimberlite pipe in the area. You know what that means!”
“What does it mean?” Debbie asked as she started toward the dining area with Jim’s meal.
“Means diamonds!”
“You know that ain’t no guarantee you’re going to find diamonds,” Don scoffed. “Even if there is a real kimberlite this far from Murfreesboro, which I doubt.”
Debbie set Jim’s coffee and food on the table before him. “Here you go.”
“Thank you, Sugar,” Jim said. “You wouldn’t know a kimberlite if it bit you on the rear end, Don!”
Debbie walked away, leaving them to another of their geological discussions. She hoped at least this time it wouldn’t turn to theology. While they were both Bible-believers, Jim thought that the seven days of Genesis were real days, while Don thought they were figurative references to eras of geological time.
As she busied herself about the room, she noticed Jim glancing her way now and then across the dim interior of the Jiffy Stop. Nothing too unusual about guys looking at her even now; but she often noticed a softness around the brown eyes above Jim’s wild grey beard when he watched her. Patty was right inasmuch as she thought Jim was a bit sweet on Debbie. Poor thing. He had grown up in the old orphanage at Norman and had never had any family. These Friday night meals and his semi-regular attendance at her family’s church constituted Jim main social occasions. It had to be a lonely life sometimes, even for someone as solitary by nature as Jim.
As a kid Jim had found a book on minerals at Norman’s minute public library and become fascinated with them. He had spent most of his life eking out a living as a supplier of semi-precious gems and fossils to the curio shops in Hot Springs. Ever since anybody could remember he had talked about someday finding diamonds in the hills and striking it rich, just like that John Huddleston had in Murfreesboro had way back in 1906. That’s why people sometimes called him “Diamond Jim.” Troy, her husband, had assured her that there was little chance of his or anyone else’s ever finding diamonds around here. Most people told Jim that. It had never stopped him.
Debbie returned during a lull in the debate when Jim called for more coffee. “So really, what have you been up to?” she asked.
“Up to no good,” he said. “I’m getting ready for deer season, like everybody else. No point in prospecting while there’s hunters all over the woods. After the season’s over I’ll get back on the trail of that ore pipe.”
Naturally this brought a response from Don, and the debate continued a bit longer. Then Don paid up and left. Jim sat in his booth sipping his coffee, idly glancing at the wall of photos of bears and deer and other local wildlife that Patty had assembled by way of decoration. He continued glancing Debbie’s way now and then, had a few words with Patty, and exchanged hellos with a couple of other local diners. It was a typical evening out for Diamond Jim.
Jim really did seem excited about his “lead”. During the winter months he usually kept close to home and did a good bit of reading. This winter he kept going out in all but the worst weather, rockhounding with a greater passion than Debbie had seen before.
“You’ll get yourself sick, running around in all the cold and wet,” she warned him one evening. “That’s cough’s getting worse.”
“Ain’t got time to be sick,” Jim insisted. “This is the closest I’ve ever been to diamonds. I can just about put my hands on ‘em.” He coughed some more. “I don’t know that the Lord’s going to let me stay around too much longer anyway. I’d like to at least find what I’m looking for before then.”
“Don’t talk that way, Jim! You’ll be okay if you just take care of yourself.”
But Jim didn’t take care of himself. And one Friday evening he did not show up at Patty’s as usual. This worried Debbie greatly. Jim never missed a Friday evening! As soon as she got off from work she drove out to Jim’s house, a few miles up the road from her own home. His old Ford pickup sat in the driveway. Jim did not answer when she knocked on the tumbledown dwelling’s door.
Alarmed, she ran home and got Troy, who was not away at work this week. Troy forced his way into Jim’s house. They found Jim lying in bed, looking like death warmed over. He was still breathing. They rushed him across thirty miles of dark roads to the hospital at Mena.
Debbie spent most of the next day and a half sitting up with Jim, praying over him and holding his hand when it seemed he might be coming around. He would look at her and say or try to say a few words now and then. He never seemed entirely lucid. The second day after she and Troy brought him to the hospital he died.
Members of the church and a few others in the community got together to give Jim a funeral and buy him a headstone. Don Parker was a leading contributor. Patty closed the Jiffy Stop on the day of the service so that she and Debbie could go.
A couple of days later, Debbie went through Jim’s house. He did not leave a lot, aside from ordinary household articles and clothing—most of both rather worn—a small library of books on minerals and wildlife, and several boxes of assorted rock samples and gems. There was a sack of westerns from the library that needed to be returned.
She also took a look in Jim’s coffee can. He had mumbled something to her about it on his deathbed. Did he perhaps have some money there that might be used to help defray his funeral expenses? She did find fifty or sixty dollars—and three dark, dull-looking crystals.
She showed some of the minerals to Don Parker at the Jiffy Stop the next day. “The old fellow did have a good eye for spotting rocks,” Don admitted. “I ought to check with the county to see if I can find a school or some place that might like to have this collection. It doesn’t need to go to waste.”
“What about these?” Debbie handed Don the coffee-can crystals. She explained where she had gotten them.
Don looked at them in the best light he could find in the store. “Hmmmm!” he said. “Surely that ain’t right! Guess there’s one quick way to test it.”
He walked over to the glass door at the front of the store and ran one of the gems down the side. “Debbie!” he called suddenly. “Look at this!”
“Wonder who made that scratch in Patty’s door? She’s not going to like that!”
“That ain’t no scratch. That’s a cut! Look, the other stone does the same. So does this one!” With a few quick motions he scored two more short lines in the glass.
“What does that mean?”
“Means these are diamonds. Real diamonds! Looks like they’re probably just industrial-quality stones. We’d have to have somebody that’s a real expert to look at them. But I’m pretty sure these are diamonds. Somehow or other that old man found the goods.”
Debbie stared at the three dull stones in Don Parker’s hand. “Where…where do you suppose he found them?”
“I get the feeling we might never know.”
_________________
The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls who, when he found an especially costly one, sold everything he had to buy it.
|
