It’ll Do
Copyright William J. Conaway, 1989
Episode 5 – Full Moon Madness
One day around the time of a full moon this fellow came into the It’ll Do who we’d never seen before, and I want to tell you—from my place behind the bar—he looked strange.
He said, “Would you look at this gadget for me?”
Well, I’m a friendly sort of person and, besides, I’ve got something of a curious nature. “What have you got there?” I asked.
“It’s a thing I have been working on for—oh, I guess—10 or 12 years. “Funny thing: I started out to make a gravitational device, but I ended up with something entirely different.” He slid this small black box back and forth between his two hands. It didn’t look like much; it could have been one of those portable radios, but it didn’t have a dial face. It just looked like a small plastic box. It had one toggle switch. That was all. It didn’t seem very impressive to me.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“That’s just it: I’m not exactly sure. It does some strange things.”
I just looked at him, waiting for him to continue. He sipped on his beer a couple of times.
“Pass me an unopened beer, will you?”
I did. He waved this small black box over the top of the bottle and flipped the toggle. The cap flew off and headed in the direction of the garbage can.
“It can do much more than that,” he said. He ordered another. Then he turned this box over in the general direction of the juke box and pushed the switch. Before you knew it, there was music playing. I’ll swear before God Almighty that no-one had put a quarter in the slot, but there we were, listening to Conway Twitty. “I don’t know quite what to do with it,” he said.
“Mister,” I said,”just keep it away from my juke box.”
“It will do the strangest things—I don’t know exactly what it will do— and, in truth, I am somewhat afraid of it.”
J.C. happened to be sitting at the bar. He suggested that they try it out on the pool table. It moved every ball into all six pockets in about one second flat. J.C. came back and ordered a double dark beer.
There were only the three of us. The dark beers kept coming, and I was doing my share. All this time that little black plastic box was sitting on the bar. I even considered offering it one, just for luck.
J.C., this stranger, and I were the only ones in the bar, and we were all sort of looking at one-another, but none of us were looking anywhere near the box.
“Innkeeper, I’m giving this (he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the box) to you,” the stranger said. “Now it is your’s.”
What did I want with a thing like that? I wanted this stranger to take it away—to Siberia, or California, or, better yet, to New York.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked.
For one of the first times in my life, I hadn’t been keeping track. “Twenty,” I said.
He laid a fifty down on the bar with a relieved smile and told me to keep the change. Then he walked out of the It’ll Do—not too steady, but then I wasn’t feeling very steady either.
Now there was this thing sitting there on the bar. J.C. and I both had a dark beer. We finally looked at it. It didn’t seem to be doing anything, but all of a sudden the Juke box started playing “Kern River” by Merle Haggard. It was the perfect time for a refill.
One of my Brothers-in-law, Jerry, is a truck driver. He had stopped over in Cherryville to visit Vera, and was due to go on to L.A. that evening. Somehow-or-other, with a few dark beers I persuaded him to take that little black box with him. I asked him to throw the damned thing just as far as he could out into the ocean. He was a pretty good guy, and he said he’d do it, without even asking why.
He left for L.A. over two months ago. We haven’t heard from him since. I don’t think I’m going to tell Vera about this.
Living and Writing in Mexico 
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