Norwood (3 page)

The compactness of the Pratt house was such that three-way conversations could be and very often were carried on from three different rooms, with none of the parties visible to the others. “You beat anything I ever saw, bubba,” said Vernell, who was in the bedroom ironing on this night. “We're both of us making good money now and we got the house fixed up and you've got your car and Bill's here and you just want to throw it all to one side and take off for Shreveport. You don't even know anybody in Shreveport.”

Norwood was sitting at the kitchen table eating a warmed-over supper. He'd been late getting home from the station and they had not waited. He kept his hat on while he ate, his pale green Nipper hat with the black bill. It was a model the Miami Police Department had used in 1934. He held his left thumb in a glass of ice water. The thumb, sticky with shaving cream, was swelling and throbbing and purpling. He had fixed flats that day for three big state gravel trucks, one after the other, and when he was breaking down one of the wheels a locking ring had snapped back on his thumb.

“Well, when you get in Shreveport and run out of money,” came the Michigan voice of Bill Bird, through a cloud of bathroom steam, “Vernell and I will not be able to send you any.”

Norwood speared a sausage patty with his fork and gave it a hard flip through the bathroom doorway.

“Hey!” said Bill Bird. “All right now!” He emerged from the steam in some green VA convalescent pants that were cinched up with a drawstring. Except for his tan shoes, that was all he had on. He was holding the sausage on his open palm, level, like a compass, and he was studying it. “Did you throw this, Norwood?”

“What is it, Bill?”

“You know what it is. It's a sausage.”

“I wondered what that was,” said Norwood. “I saw a arm come in the back door there and chunk something acrost the room. I thought maybe there was a note on it.”

Bill Bird called into the bedroom. “Vernell, come in here a minute. I want you. Norwood's throwing food.”

Vernell came in and looked at Bill Bird's naked torso. “Goodness, Bill, put on some clothes. Norwood's trying to eat his supper.”

“Look at this,” said Bill Bird.

“That's a sausage,” she said,

“I know what it is. He threw it at me in the bathroom.”

“What for? What would he want to throw a sausage for?”

“I don't know, Vernell. It's beyond me. I
do
know you could very easily put someone's eye out like that.”

She gave a little laugh. “I don't think you could put anybody's eye out with a sausage.” Then she saw from Bill Bird's face that this was not the ticket. She turned to Norwood. “What made you want to do it, bubba?”

Norwood went on eating. “You two would drive anybody crazy,” he said. “Going on all night about a sausage.”

“It's something you would expect out of a child,” said Bill Bird. “You know I've tried to get along with him, Vernell, but you can't treat him like a responsible adult. He should be made to apologize for this.
Now
would be the time for it.”

“Bubba, tell Bill you're sorry. Come on now. It won't hurt you.”

“I don't know why I ought to apologize if some stranger comes along and throws a sausage in the house at
him
. All I saw was his sleeve, Bill. I couldn't tell what color it was, it happened so fast.”

“I'll tell you what's going to become of your brother, Vernell,” said Bill Bird. “He's going to wind up in the penitentiary. They have some people there who will set him straight on a few things. You can count on that. I read an article the other day about the seven danger signs of criminal tendencies in the young. I've marked it in there for you to read. I think you will be a little disturbed, you should be, to learn that your own brother has the same personality profile as Alvin Karpis.”

“Bubba was just playing with you, Bill.”

“I'll say this: Unless his attitude undergoes a great change he will be in the pen within five years, just as sure as we're standing here. Now. We'll consider this incident closed.”

Norwood made himself two biscuit and Br'er Rabbit Syrup sandwiches and went out on the front porch to eat them and wait on the bath water to get hot. Down the highway beyond the Nipper station the lights of the skating rink made a dull yellow glow. Insect bulbs of low wattage. The music came and went in heavy waves. It was a record of a boogie-woogie organist playing “Under the Double Eagle.” Norwood threw one of the biscuit sandwiches out to a red dog that was traveling through town, going east, possibly to Texarkana, and watched him eat it in one gulp. Then he went out and started the Fleetline and listened for a minute to the clatter of the burnt rod and the loose tappets—it sounded like a two-cylinder John Deere tractor—and drove down to the skating rink. Sometimes, after the first session, you could pick up a country girl there looking for a ride home.

It was a clear warm Friday night and there was a big crowd. The tent flaps were rolled up all the way around. Some of the bolder girls were wearing short pleated skirts that bounced. The boys were skating fast, working hard at it, as though they were delivering important telegrams. Out front some Future Farmers of America were horsing around beside a billet truck, playing keep-away with a softball. The boy they were keeping it away from was smoking a cigarette and was also wearing an FFA jacket. “Here, you want it? I'm really gonna let you have it this time.” The boy would never learn. They were keeping it away from him because he looked like a baboon. Norwood wandered around to the back of the tent and stood by himself leaning against a big pecan tree and watching the skaters through the chicken wire. He was there only a minute or two, checking out the girls, when he heard someone cracking nuts on the other side of the tree.

He peered around for a look. A very thin and yet very broad man was standing there expertly cracking pecans in his hands and getting the meats out whole. He was as flat and wide as a gingerbread man. He was wearing a smooth brown saddle-stitched sport jacket and some blue slacks with hard creases and a pearl-gray cattleman's hat. He grinned and dusted the hulls from his huge flat hands and extended one to Norwood.

“Hello there, Norwood.”

Norwood shook his hand. “I thought I heard somebody back there. Do you know me?”

“Well, I feel like I do. I see your name stitched there over your pocket. Of course you might have someone's else's shirt on. In that case your name might very well be Earl or Dub for all I know.”

“Naw, it's my shirt all right.”

“My name is Fring. I'm glad to know you, Norwood. Tell me, is everyone at home well?”

“Just getting along fine. How about your folks?”

“They're all dead except for me and my brother Tilmon. I'm fine and he's doing very well, considering his age. Here, take this home and read it when you get a minute.” He handed Norwood a pamphlet. It said,
A noncancellable guaranteed renewable for life hospitilization policy, underwritten by one of the Mid-South's most reliable insurance firms. No age limit. PAYS up to $5,000.00 for sickness or accident. PAYS up to $400.00 for surgery. PAYS prescription benefits. PAYS home nurse benefits. PAYS iron lung fees. PAYS . . .
“You don't have to read it now. Take it home and study it later. Compare it with your present program, in light of your current insurance needs. Talk it over with those at home. That little policy just sells itself.”

Norwood put it in his pocket. “A insurance man.”

“Well, among other things, yes. My brother Tilmon and I have a good many business interests. I'm also in mobile homes and coin-operated machines. I am a licensed private investigator in three states. We have a debt collection agency in Texarkana. I know you've heard of our car lots over there. Grady Fring?”

“You're not Grady Fring the Kredit King?”

“I am indeed.”

“No reasonable offer refused.”

“The very same.”

“You can't convince Grady your credit is bad.”

“Right again.”

Norwood laughed. “Well, this
is
something, I've seen your signs and heard your things on the radio a lot.
Grady has gone crazy
and all that.”

“I would certainly be disappointed if you hadn't heard them,” said Grady. “If I told you what our advertising budget was last year, you wouldn't believe it. That's where you've got to put your money if you want to move the goods. You know what I believe in?”

“What?”

“Volume.”

“What?”

“Volume. Volume. I don't care what I make off anything—six dollars, a quarter, a dime—as long as I can move it. Sell it! Move it! Give it away! But just clear it on out of the way and bring something else in, and then we'll sell it too. Yessir, I do believe in volume. Why aren't you out there skating with all those pretty girls?”

“I'm not too good a skater.”

“Do you come out here much?”

“Some. Every now and then.”

“I'll bet you know all those girls out there.”

“I know some of 'em.”

“This is my first visit,” said Grady, “to this particular roller drome. I get around a good deal at night, you see. I am also connected with a New Orleans talent agency and that part of my work takes me around to many ... highway institutions. What our agency does—it's fully licensed—is seek out and recruit lovely young girls over the Mid-South. Girls seeking a career in show business. Girls who want to leave home. You may not realize it but we have some of the sweetest little girls in the country right around in these parts.”

“We sure do.”

“I'd put them up against girls from anywhere.”

“That Cresswell girl is a good skater,” said Norwood. “She's about the best one around here. That one there with the lights on her skates.”

“Yes, I've had my eye on her. She's a dandy. And sweet too. Do you know her folks? What does her daddy do?”

“I don't know what he does. Her mama works down at the Washateria.”

“How old is she?”

“About fifty-six.”

“No, I mean the girl.”

“Oh. She's about seventeen. I think she gets out of high school this year.”

“I'd rather not fool with them if they're under nineteen or twenty. You will understand, Norwood, I am not necessarily looking for skating skills. What about you, do you live here in town?”

“Yeah. I live down there just the other side of that Nipper station.”

“Old Nipper! I was looking at your uniform when you first came up. He's an old friend of mine, you know, Nipper is. I used to do some investigating for him down in Houston. I was practicing a little law then too. What a man! Money? Norwood, he's richer than the fabled Croesus. Have you ever met him?”

“I never did. I seen his plane a few times. He used to fly over town dropping out copies of the Constitution.”

“Well, he's quite a man. I was on his education committee for three years and I was a judge in the Nipper Junior High Essay Contests that were so big. I was one of the judges. Perhaps you sent one in yourself?”

“What?”

“The Nipper Essay Contest. For junior high kids.”

“I didn't hear anything about it.”

“You should have got in on that, Norwood. Everybody got a little prize of some kind. And the winners, we gave them some wonderful scholarships. Their theme was ‘Communism in the National Council of Churches.' They laid it right on the line. Wrote their hearts out. I was proud to be a part of it.”

“Do you still work for Nipper?”

“No, not any more. We had a falling out, I'm sorry to say. I traded him some rent houses for a registered bull and he got mad about it. Subsequently I left Houston.”

“Did you beat him on the trade?”

“Yes, I confess that I did. I took him like Stonewall Jackson took Nathaniel P. Banks in the Valley of the Shenandoah. That is to say, decisively.”

“He didn't like that.”

“He wasn't used to it.”

Norwood looked at his watch. “Well, I got to get on back to the house and take a bath. My thumb's hurting.”

Grady touched his arm. “Wait a minute. I'd like to talk to you about something. I
might
be able to put you next to something. Have you got a couple of minutes?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I tell you what we
could
do. We
could
go over to my car and have a drink and talk about it there.”

“All right.”

It was a big new Buick Invicta with red leather upholstery. Grady brought out a bottle of Old Forester from under the seat. There was some crushed ice in a milk shake carton. Norwood held the paper cups and Grady poured.

“This is a nice car,” said Norwood.

“Yes, I'm doing right well,” said Grady. “How many tubes do you think that radio has?”

“I don't know. It looks like a good one.”

“Twenty-four. There's not another one like it in this part of the country. Listen to that tone. It's like FM.”

Norwood listened. “That tone
is
good.”

“What happened to your thumb?”

“Nothing. I mashed it.”

“You better put something on it when you get home.”

“I already did.”

“Unguentine is good for something like that.”

“I put some shaving cream on it.”

“Unguentine is a lot better. It has special healing ingredients that shaving cream doesn't have. It goes to work on that soreness.”