They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (22 page)

SMUT CROSSED ME UP
that night. He didn’t take a trip. I don’t know why Lola came out to see him that afternoon, unless she was scared about something, or was giving him the lay of the land for future reference.

Even after we went to bed that night I kept myself awake and debated whether or not to get up and look for the money anyway, with Smut there in the room. I didn’t quite have the nerve to risk it.

The next morning really looked like it was spring. The oak trees were budding out in a pale green and the little Easter pinks were popping open beside the highway. Since it was such a fine morning I thought maybe Smut Milligan would get in his pick-up and take off somewhere. But he disappointed me again. He came up to the roadhouse about eight o’clock and just parked there.

Smut and Badeye and Sam Hall and myself were sitting in the front that morning when Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt came walking in the front door. He had his walking-stick in one hand and he toted a basket of eggs in the other hand.

‘How much you give for eggs, Milligan?’ he asked Smut.

Smut looked up from the Charlotte paper. ‘Are they fresh?’ he asked.

‘Hell, yes, they’re fresh,’ Old Man Joshua said. He took out his corncob pipe and stuck it in the side of his mouth. ‘Every egg I got here’s been laid in the last two days.’

‘I been paying twenty-seven cents a dozen,’ Smut said.

Old Man Joshua took out his can of tobacco and filled his pipe. ‘It ain’t enough,’ he told Smut. ‘You been buying cold-storage eggs. These here eggs is fresh.’

‘I been getting my eggs from Wheeler Wilkinson in Corinth,’ Smut said. ‘They’re always fresh. I ain’t never got a bad egg from Wheeler. Anyway, I got a good supply of eggs on hand. I don’t never know when you’re going to bring me some eggs, nor how many.’

‘Well, damn it, I don’t never know how many eggs the confound hens is going to lay,’ the old man said. He sucked on his pipe and spat across the room, under one of the booths.

‘Gimme thirty cents a dozen and I’ll take it out in trade. They’s five dozen here,’ Old Man Joshua said.

‘Well, all right,’ Smut said. He took the basket and put it back under the counter beside the box where we kept some knives and forks and spoons. He wrote out a due bill for the eggs and handed it to the old man.

‘You all usin all the paper?’ Old Man Joshua asked.

We had the paper divided. Smut had the front and back pages, I was reading the funny paper, and Badeye had the sports section. Sam Hall had the society section and the column by Lucia Locket. He got in last and had to take what was left.

Smut yawned and put his hand over his mouth. He pushed his part of the paper down the counter to Old Man Joshua. ‘Here,’ Smut said, ‘there ain’t much news today.’

The old man took the newspaper and held it out in front of his face about a foot. I guess he was near-sighted. I finished the funny paper and put it on the counter. Smut picked that up and began reading it. Sam Hall was sitting in a booth over against the wall, reading his section. He looked over toward me and sort of chuckled. Sam never laughed out; he was pretty fat and his belly and both chins sort of shook when he chuckled.

‘I wish this Lucia Locket would quit writing a column,’ Sam said. ‘She hurts my operations in Corinth.’

Smut looked up from the funny paper. ‘How’s that, Sam?’ he asked.

‘Well, all the girls in Corinth read what she says every morning, and when you get one of them out here on Lover’s Lane, why, she remembers what Lucia Locket says and the girl won’t do nothing but maybe let you hold her hand.’

‘Hell, nobody pays any attention to Lucia Locket,’ Smut said.

Sam chuckled again. Sam wasn’t as dumb as Matt Rush and Dick Pittman. In fact he finished high school in Corinth; not that that’s anything to write home about—other folks have done the same thing—but Sam had pretty good sense. He was just naturally lazy, though, and didn’t have the ambition a hog’s got in July. He had a face that looked like a Chinaman’s, only his skin was pink like a healthy baby’s. When he could get a night off he liked to go courting in Corinth.

‘I don’t reckon anybody but young girls pays any attention to Lucia Locket,’ Sam said, ‘but they think she’s the stuff. That column’s the first thing they read when they get hold of a paper.’

‘I like to read the old heifer’s column myself,’ Smut said. ‘She evermore gives the men the works. “Feed the brute,” says Lucia Locket. “Feed him good and pat his hand, and smooth his cheek and it won’t be but a few minutes till the jackass is asleep, and then you can pick his pockets and read his letters and see if he’s messing with his stenographer.” ’ Smut got up and walked over to the booth. ‘You finished with this part?’ he asked Sam.

‘Sure. Take it on,’ Sam told him.

Smut brought it back to the counter and sat down again. ‘Let’s see what the old buzzard’s got on her mind this morning,’ he said. I looked over his shoulder, and that day the column by Lucia Locket was on the same page with the society items. On top of the page it said, ‘Weddings, Betrothals, Brighten Late Winter Calendar.’ Smut read the heading out and said: ‘The Society Editor must have been drunk last night. It ain’t late winter. It’s spring now.’

‘Maybe she ain’t seen a groundhog yet,’ Sam said.

‘Maybe not,’ Smut said. He took out a cigarette and tapped it on the counter. He commenced reading out the heading to Lucia Locket’s column. ‘The Modern Girl May Propose, But She Must Be Subtle.’ Badeye put down the sports section and leaned his elbows on the counter. Old Man Joshua threw his part of the paper on the floor. Smut lit his cigarette and went on: ‘ “In this modern age, when many of the taboos of society are rapidly breaking down, it is no longer considered disgraceful for a girl to pop the question. It is a thing that is definitely being done.

‘ “But each case presents its peculiar problems, and any girl with matrimony on her mind will do very well indeed to study the man she intends proposing to. It is a little like stalking a tiger in the jungle. It is possible to hunt tigers without knowing any of their traits, but the more successful big-game hunters make a careful study of the tigers they are pursuing, their haunts and their little habits. Men, of course, are more docile than tigers and not nearly so wary.” ’

Smut inhaled a draw from his cigarette and went on:

‘ “There are several methods that have been proven. One of the best is to trap him with food. The emotions of men seem to ebb and flow with their digestive juices, and the combination of a warm meal in a cozy room is one that has led many a male to the altar. It is very hard for the average man to say ‘no’ on a full stomach.” ’ Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt belched, then hiccuped. Smut frowned at him, then went back to Lucia.

‘ “Another way to hook a recalcitrant male is to quietly assume that you are his betrothed. Ask him if he prefers the wedding in June, or earlier. If you are bold enough to do this you are the same as a married woman.” ’ Badeye scowled when Smut read that.

‘I’d like to see a frock try to pull something like that on me,’ Badeye said. ‘I’d just like to see one of them try to assume something with me!’

‘Don’t start worrying about it, Badeye,’ Smut said. He threw his cigarette on the floor and I stepped on it.

‘ “If you take the matter into your hands and propose and the man of your dreams meets you with an evasive, hesitant attitude, turn on the tears. After you cry on his watch chain for awhile he will feel that he has been a cruel brute and you will be engaged to him. In such cases, however, it is imperative to hasten the wedding.” ’

Smut threw the paper back on the counter. ‘Well, boys, she’s in good shape this morning.’ He looked at Old Man Joshua.

‘Don’t let any of these modern girls rope you in, Mr. Joshua,’ Smut said. ‘You been a bachelor a long time. It’d go pretty hard with you if you was married.’

Old Man Joshua sucked on his pipe. ‘Oh, I’m too old to inter-rest the gals,’ he said. ‘But I’m a confound sight better man right now than a lot of these here cigarette-suckin, Coca-Cola-drinkin young sprouts. It run in my family to be a good man for a long time. My daddy was seventy-two year old when my baby brother was born.’

‘He must have had some damn good neighbors,’ Badeye said.

Old Man Joshua cupped his hand to his ear. ‘What say?’ he asked.

‘I said I thought that was pretty damn good,’ Badeye said.

Sam Hall leaned back against the wall and stuck his feet over the side of the booth. ‘That ain’t all Lucia Locket says this time,’ Sam said.

Smut looked at the newspaper again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But the other one is a regular feature of hers. She runs it several times a month. It’s the Heart-Broken Stenographer. “Dear Lucia Locket: I have done wrong. I spent the week-end with the boss at the beach. We stayed at the hotel together. I loved him and he said he loved me. I thought we loved each other. I thought he was going to divorce his wife. But now he says it’s his duty to stay with her. What can I do?” ’ Smut turned around again. ‘Lucia says to her: “Well, you little goose, you can’t do nothing! What do you hope? Work a man for all you can get out of him. But don’t never go to the hotel with him. All is lost when you do that.” It seems like it makes Lucia mad for a girl to get generous like that. Lucia believes in swapping it for a house and lot.’

‘She’s got one other regular letter,’ Sam said. ‘The one about where the girl has slept with another fellow, or maybe several fellows, but now she’s fell in love with a fine, hard-working boy that’s got a good job, and she asks Lucia if she ought to tell the last boy about it, or not.’

‘I remember that one,’ Smut said. ‘And Lucia always says: “Don’t be a fool! What he don’t know won’t hurt him. Marry him and bang him around till he ain’t got the spirit to ask you any sort of question, let alone a question about who all you been in bed with.” ’

Old Man Joshua shook his head. ‘She’s a hard woman. I alius read her piece when I git hold of a paper. I read it just to see how low things is a-comin to.’

‘I bet she wasn’t ever married,’ Badeye said. ‘Sometimes I think it must be a man that writes the column.’

‘No, it ain’t a man that writes it,’ Smut said.

‘How you know it ain’t?’ Badeye asked.

‘Because men don’t generally run whorehouses,’ Smut Milligan said. ‘You can tell from the advice Lucia hands out that she’s run a whorehouse some time or another.’

Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt hung around that morning and drank up most of his due bill. He drank eight ten-cent beers and two fifteen-cent ones and got pretty high, but not sick or anything. He got Smut to give him some nickels for part of the due bill and he put the nickels in the nickelodeon. After the third bottle he had us tote his beer into the dance hall. He was busy with the nickelodeon and didn’t have time to walk over to the counter.

About three o’clock his due bill was used up and he was broke. He came over to the cash register where Smut was sitting. I was polishing off the wine bottles and Matt Rush was mopping the floor.

‘That due bill done used up, ain’t it, Milligan?’ the old man asked.

‘It’s all gone,’ Smut told him, ‘but I’ll lend you some nickels if that’s what you want.’

The old man scratched the crown of his hat. ‘I would like to hear a couple more chunes,’ he said, ‘but I got to git on home and slop the hog. I reckin he’s raisin Cain because it must be past feedin time.’ He looked up at the big wall clock. ‘Good Lord! After three o’clock! I swear I got to git home. I’m supposed to git my check, my vetrun’s check, in the mail today. If it’s there I’ll be back about night. I’m in a notion to pitch a big one.’

‘Don’t you want something to eat before you go?’ Smut asked him.

‘No. Much oblige.’ He grabbed up his walking-stick and weaved out of the room.

Smut shook his head after the old man. ‘God, but he loves music!’ Smut said.

Badeye Honeycutt stretched his arms above his head and stuck out his chest. A button popped off his shirt when he reared back, and he stooped to the floor to pick it up.

‘Just like a child,’ Badeye said. ‘Old Man Josh’s gettin right childish. Why, when I took a bottle of beer over to him this mornin he ast me how much a nickelodeon cost. Said he was thinkin about buyin one for home use.’

Old Man Joshua wasn’t the only one that liked a nickelodeon. Everybody around Corinth was just about as bad as he was. White folks called it a nickelodeon, or just a phonograph, but the niggers all called it a piccolo. We had a lot of records for ours. Mostly we kept dance music for the young folks to dance by, but there were a lot of other things that the old sots and screwballs wanted to hear. Once in a while Fletch Monroe would hook a ride out in the afternoon and sit an hour at a time playing ‘The Ship That Never Returned.’ It was his favorite piece. When Buck Wilhoyt drove out in Wheeler Wilkinson’s truck to deliver the meat he would take time out to play a tune on the nickelodeon. He was nuts about ‘My Pretty Quadroon.’ Buck would sit by the nickelodeon and sing so loud that he drowned out most of the music. Sometimes when Old Man Joshua got drunk enough he would play a nigger song that some music salesman gave Smut one day. The name of it was ‘Strange Fruit.’ It started off like this: ‘Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves, blood on the root,’ and this nigger woman with a husky, mournful voice sung it. It was all about lynching, and the nigger woman could go to town on it. Old Man Joshua helped hang a nigger one time when he was a young man. Somebody got it out that a white girl claimed the nigger had raped her. Now when the old man took on about a dozen beers he would sit and listen to this thing. Toward the last he would cry sometimes, but when the music stopped, he stopped crying too. ‘I can feel his God-damn eyes borin through me right now,’ Old Man Joshua would say; then he would belch and get all right. It was just when he was pretty full that he was like that. When he was sober he’d as soon lynch a nigger as to blow his nose.

Baxter Yonce had a favorite record too. It was about the strangest of them all: ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ Baxter didn’t go to church much, and he drank plenty of liquor; I couldn’t see why he was so crazy about a hymn. We had a hard time finding it in the music stores, but he raised so much hell about it that Smut finally ordered it from Chicago to pacify him.