They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (13 page)

The baby-faced man smothered a belch and said he remembered vaguely.

‘Well, the cashier got in touch with father and father asked this man Ward, or whatever his name was, to come to his office. He tried to persuade this fellow that his money was perfectly safe. But he was adamant. Finally father got up the money for him. When he left, father asked him what he was going to do with the money, now that he had it. The fellow told him seriously that he would bury it on his farm. I’ve no doubt but that it’s still buried there.’

I opened my mouth and listened while he was saying that. Twenty thousand bucks! I began digging it up in my mind. Then I started spending it. I decided I would throw part of it away on women to start with. Afterward I would put up a roadhouse of my own. But not around Corinth. With that much money I could go to town in more ways than one. I had about decided on the town for my roadhouse when Charles Fisher snapped his fingers at me.

‘Check, boy,’ he said.

I gave him the check and went up where Smut was standing. In a minute all four of them came up there, and Fisher paid the check. Lola Fisher winked at Smut when she started out the door. Smut bowed and said: ‘Thank you. Please come again.’ I don’t know whether he winked at her or not.

Come to think about it, he might not have winked back at her. He was discouraged that night. He wasn’t in a bad humor; he’d drunk almost a pint of liquor before supper that night, and it mellowed him up for the time being. But he was a little discouraged. After I had carried the dishes into the kitchen I came back out front. Dick had left then, and Smut and I were alone. I sat down at the counter and Smut pulled up his stool and sat back of the counter, in front of me.

‘Not many days left to do my New Year’s borrowing,’ he said. He had a toothpick in the side of his mouth.

‘Hope you can borrow it,’ I said. ‘I would hate to be out of a job here in the dead of winter.’

‘Oh, if I can’t borrow it I’ll have the note renewed and let Astor LeGrand take the place over about next spring. The son-of-a-bitch!’

He threw the toothpick on the floor and sucked air through his teeth. ‘Don’t know how come me to come back to Corinth anyway. This is a hell of a place to try and make money. If you get started making it some bastard with the right politics comes out and cuts in on you, or runs you out.’

‘You think Astor LeGrand aims to have this place, do you?’

‘Oh, hell, yes. If I could pay up everybody I owe right now, he’d find some way to get me closed up. Then he’d buy me out and open up again. That’s a slick rascal.’

‘You don’t think you got a chance?’

‘Not a chance. He’s Ahab and I’m Naboth.’

‘He’s who?’

‘Ahab.’

‘Ahab?’

‘Yeah. King Ahab. You know, in the Bible it tells about King Ahab wanting a vineyard that belonged to a one-horse farmer named Naboth. In the long run Naboth got the works and Ahab got the vineyard.’

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you were acquainted with the Bible.’

‘By God, I ought to be,’ Smut said. ‘Old Lady Milligan used to read me a chapter every night, just before she whaled the tar out of me. I got a lot of them Bible stories impressed on me.’ He raised up and rubbed the seat of his pants like he was still a little tender down there.

‘If LeGrand does close you up, what you aim to do then?’ I said.

‘Hell, I’ll do something. Anything except work. Nuts to work. The workingman starves in this neck of the woods. I’d get in politics, but that line’s already crowded. The trouble is I’m a Democrat and everybody else is too. There ain’t sufficient gravy for all us Democrats.’

‘Turn Republican and be patient till after the next election. Maybe you can be postmaster in Corinth if the Republicans win,’ I said.

‘I’ll just starve,’ he said. ‘What gripes me is that I could work up a good thing out here if I was let alone. I’m getting a batch of regular customers worked up. Sometimes I get visited by folks of high social caliber. Such as Mr. Charles Fisher, and wife, and tourist friends.’

‘Have they got a high social caliber?’ I asked him.

‘Sure. The biggest bores in town,’ he said. ‘They’d been drinking a little tonight, hadn’t they?’

‘Smelled like it,’ I said. ‘Talked like it too.’

‘What was they talking about?’ Smut asked.

‘Various things. The South and the niggers and the sharecroppers. You know. The man with him was from the North, I think.’

Smut yawned and put his hand over his mouth, in a polite way. ‘Horrorfied, was he?’

‘Well, not so much. He took kind of a scientific attitude toward it.’

‘If they were talking about things like that they must not have been so very drunk.’

‘They talked about other things. Fisher told the story about Bert Ford burying his money.’

‘Is that a fact? What’d he say about
that?’

I told him what I’d heard Fisher say. When I got through he stuck his hand under his chin. He looked off toward the wall on the other side of the room. ‘H’m,’ he said.

I got up then and added up the day’s receipts and locked the cash register. It was eleven-thirty when I went out of the room. Smut had turned around and was sitting in front of the counter, with his chin in his hands. He was looking at the coffee urn.

THE NEXT DAY WAS
a clear one, but so cold that the sun looked like a little ball of muddy ice. The needles on the pine trees looked black, and there was a wind out of the north that made everybody hunt shelter.

Toward night the wind died down, but things didn’t warm up any. Smut and I closed up the place about midnight and made for the cabin we slept in. The ground between the roadhouse and the cabin was frozen hard as a rock.

It was cold in the cabin. There was a little heater in there, but there hadn’t been a fire in it all day. I undressed and got under the blankets.

Smut didn’t seem to be noticing the cold. He hadn’t paid much attention to anything that day. He came over to my bed and sat down at the foot. He shut one eye and looked at the floor.

‘How’d you like to make some money on the side, Jack?’ he asked.

I could tell he was serious. I sat up in the bed and pushed the pillow back.

‘What you mean?’ I asked him.

‘I mean what I said. How’d you like to make some money? Plenty of money.’

‘What’s it doing?’ I said.

‘I can’t tell you about it right now,’ he said, ‘but it won’t take long and it won’t be such hard work. You needn’t worry about it, but there’s money in it for you if you’ll take my word for it.’

‘How much money?’

‘Plenty.’

‘How much you call plenty?’

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘How much money you got now?’

‘None, except the twenty-five a month you pay me,’ I said.

‘If I was to fire you you wouldn’t have that,’ he said. ‘Try getting a job in Corinth. Just try it. The cotton mills run on half time. They don’t pay but twelve dollars a week when they run full time. Even if you could get a job with the hosiery mill they’d make you work three or four months learning and wouldn’t pay you a dime while you was doing it. What you going to live on while you was learning?’

‘Maybe I could get in the CCC,’ I said. ‘Now that I’ve lost my farm I don’t have any visible means of making a living.’

‘I doubt it,’ Smut said. ‘Even if you do they put a boss over you that works you just like you was on the chain gang. You got to get up when they say get up; go to bed when they say go to bed; eat what they hand you to eat, and swallow it when they say swallow; they let you go to town every other Saturday night and give you a prophylactic when you come back, whether you looked at a woman or not.’

‘It’s not as bad as going hungry,’ I said.

‘It’s worse,’ he said. ‘It’s a place for natural-born cannon fodder. It ain’t a place for you. You ain’t a fellow that likes to have somebody plan every hour of your life for you. I’ve studied you. Come on, make up your mind. You want to come in on this with me, or not?’

‘I’ll take it if you’ll shut up,’ I said. I pulled the pillow in place and got under the blankets again. Smut got up then and turned off the light. Most nights he bothered me with grinding his teeth together, and sometimes with his snoring, but he was quiet that night. I don’t know whether he couldn’t sleep, or what.

The next day I thought about Smut’s proposition. I kept wondering how much money. But any money would help me. I wondered what it was he had in mind. We were just about out of liquor, except for corn liquor. I thought maybe he was aiming to steal a load of government liquor that was going to pass through on the way to the South Carolina liquor stores. That’s a risky business unless you can manage to have the drivers fixed. It’s no cinch then. Sometimes I wondered if he was going to break into a freight car somewhere and steal a load of merchandise. But I didn’t think he would risk a thing like that for no more money than there was in it. He said there was plenty of money in it for me. If that was so there was bound to be a great deal in it for him.

The next day seemed a little warmer, but I reckon we were just getting used to it by then. Matt still had his cold and he felt pretty bad. He talked Smut into taking him to his mother’s house in Corinth. They left early that morning.

Smut stayed away most of the day. When he came in he began drinking. It wasn’t good dark when he called me to the kitchen and offered me a drink.

‘Take a slug, Jack,’ he said. ‘It’ll warm you up.’

I didn’t make it a habit to drink out there except late in the night after the customers had gone home, or were mostly drunk. I hesitated a minute.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Go on, drink it. You might need it before the night’s over,’ he said.

I took a stiff drink and chased it down with some spigot water.

It was a good thing there weren’t many people out that night. Smut started pouring the liquor down Sam and Badeye. Sam couldn’t handle very much, and by ten o’clock he was pretty drunk. Badeye drank every night, of course, but Smut generally allowanced out his liquor. This night he let Badeye have all he wanted. That was a lot of liquor and by ten o’clock he was tight as a drum. Smut called me back in the kitchen then. When I got there he pointed to a bottle that was half full and sitting on the table before he stove.

‘Take a big one, Jack,’ he said. ‘It’s about time for us to take a trip.’

I took a good-sized one, and went back out front.

Rufus Jones always went home about eleven o’clock except on week-ends. He stayed with a brother of his hat lived about a mile from the roadhouse, in the direction of Corinth. Johnny Lilly usually stayed till we closed up the place, and sometimes after that. But this night Smut let him off before midnight. Johnny had an old car and went back and forth to Corinth every night. He lived with a high-yellow woman in the Shantytown section.

Sam passed out about then and Smut toted him to the cabin where the help stayed at night. While Smut was gone Badeye got to polishing glasses, and his eyes looked like glasses that had been polished good. When Smut got back Badeye said: ‘Well, Milligan, I think I’ll take it away. Put it to bed.’ He stood behind the counter, polishing a glass with a dirty towel, and looking off toward the picture on the other wall.

‘Go ahead,’ Smut told him.

Badeye dropped the glass on the floor. It broke into a hundred pieces. Badeye held out his hand in front of his face for a minute, like a person that’s sleep-walking; then he reached up and took his left eye out of its socket and stuffed it inside his shirt. He looked down at the pieces of glass around his feet.

‘I’m a little drunk,’ he said, and put the towel in his apron pocket.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Smut said. Badeye picked his way down the counter and went to the front door. He opened it and stepped outside. The door was left wide open and Smut ran to shut it.

Dick Pittman had been in the kitchen most of the night. He wouldn’t drink liquor, so Smut hadn’t bothered to offer him any. Dick came to the door that opened into the front. He had his cap in his hands.

‘How about leavin here, Smut?’ he said. ‘Ain’t nobody else comin out here tonight. Too dang cold.’

‘Go ahead,’ Smut told him. ‘You going to hit the hay, Dick?’

Dick grinned and shook his head. ‘I got to go off. Got to go to Corinth a little while.’

‘My God! You got women on your mind on a night as cold as this?’ Smut asked him.

Dick stood there in the doorway, grinning and twisting his cap in his hands. Then he understood that Smut meant he could go, and he turned and went through the kitchen.

‘You reckon he’ll stay in Corinth long?’ I said to Smut.

Smut reached inside his lumberjack and brought out one cigarette. He pulled a loose string of tobacco out of the end of the cigarette and threw it on the counter.

‘I think so,’ Smut said. ‘I think he goes to see a married woman that lives in the mill village. Her husband must work on the midnight shift and he won’t get off work till seven o’clock in the morning. Dick’ll likely stay with her till five or six o’clock.’

‘Well, the coast is clear. What now?’ I asked.

Smut lit the cigarette. He took a deep draw and let the smoke come out of his nose.

‘Nothing right now. We got to give him time to get out of hearing.’

We waited till he finished smoking the cigarette, and threw it on the floor and stomped it out.

‘I got to go to the cabin a minute. Wait for me here,’ he said. He got up, buttoning up his lumberjack, and went out the front door.

He came back by way of the kitchen. He had on his raincoat, and had gloves on his hands; the first time I ever saw him wear gloves. He was holding my raincoat in his hands.

‘Here’s your coat,’ he said. ‘Put these on,’ and he handed me a pair of old gloves that had once been tan.

I took them. ‘Where’d these come from?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t have any gloves. I didn’t know you had any.’

‘I bought mine in Corinth today. When I went to the cabin this morning to get Matt I stole the pair you got. They were in the top of Badeye’s trunk. They ain’t quite big enough for me.’

They were big enough for me. I put on the raincoat and buttoned it up.