They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (26 page)

Smut and I sat there the better part of an hour and there was very little conversation passed between us. We just sat on the benches with our legs crossed, looking off into the woods on the other side of Lover’s Lane.

I was just wishing that Smut would go to a ball game in Corinth, or would go shoot a few games of pool, when a car that looked like Lola Fisher’s came around the bend above the cabins.

It was Lola, all right. She drove past the roadhouse and tooted the horn and waved her hand at Smut. He waved back and grinned.

It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for her to do that, and I didn’t think anything about it then. But it wasn’t ten minutes till she came back up the highway and waved again. This time Smut held up his hand and nodded. Lola had sort of slowed the car down, but when Smut nodded she stepped on it again and hit the trail toward Corinth. I guess she was hitting seventy-five by the time she got out of sight.

Smut got up then and went down to his cabin, but I stayed out front most of the afternoon.

I was pleased that Lola had driven by. I thought it might be a signal from her that the husband was out of town. I didn’t have the slightest proof that she’d ever had anything to do with Smut since she had married Fisher. All I had was a good hunch. If her waving had been a signal, then it was a lead-pipe cinch that Smut would be out most of the night. When he came back from his date, I aimed for him to be twelve thousand dollars in the hole.

While I was sitting there thinking the situation over, I got to wondering about the old sedan where Smut stored the corn liquor.

He had bought the sedan from the junk man in Corinth. I think he paid ten dollars for it. It didn’t have any wheels on it, but nobody wanted to ride in it anyway. None of the glass in the windows was broken and the doors could be locked. Smut usually kept the back end of it stuffed with corn liquor. He had to be more careful about handling corn liquor than tax-paid government liquor. Nobody could touch him about the tax-paid liquor except the county officers, and he had them fixed. He could fix them about the corn too, but not the Federals. That was why he bought the old sedan. It was a nineteen-twenty-four Studebaker, and no doubt was a hot number in its day. But it was pretty battered-looking now, and stood down behind the woodpile in the middle of a lot of empty oil cans, old shoes, and broken bottles.

Smut Milligan had the name around Corinth of being a smart fellow. But I was beginning to have my doubts. He was a fellow that would dash in where nobody else had the nerve, and that was the main reason he was successful. It was brass rather than brains that had got Smut where he was. It struck my mind that he would probably figure the sedan was a good place to hide the money.

I planned everything that afternoon. The first bus from Salisbury to Blytheville passed the river bridge about seven-thirty in the morning. I would flag that at the bridge and go on to Blytheville. That bus made direct connections in Blytheville for Charlotte. When I got to Charlotte I could take my pick. But it was Chicago I had in mind. I thought I would be safe there from Smut.

I hung around the roadhouse till it was dark that night. About seven-thirty I went inside and started to the kitchen for something to eat. But just then we had a customer, and before I was through giving him his change there was another one. After that I was plenty busy. The rush started that night as sudden as a rainstorm in the summer-time.

About eight o’clock I was hungry as a bear. Badeye was hungry too. He said something to Smut about being relieved for a few minutes while he grabbed a sandwich. Smut brought him a sandwich from the kitchen and asked him if he couldn’t make out with that for the time being. Badeye said he could, and Smut walked up to the cash register.

‘You want me to get you something to eat?’ he asked me.

‘Bring me a bowl of soup,’ I said.

‘What kind of soup you want?’

‘Chicken soup, tomato soup, vegetable soup. Just get me some soup,’ I said.

It was some time before he came back with the soup. He set it on the top of the counter, next to the cash register. I looked at it and it was supposed to be chicken soup.

‘That’s the greenest chicken soup I ever saw,’ I said.

‘Maybe the chicken had been eating grass just before his neck was wrung,’ Smut said.

I dived into the soup. It tasted strange. But I was hungry and couldn’t hold back on account of that.

‘The soup’s bitter as gall,’ I told Smut, who was still standing beside me.

‘Probably it was made from a young rooster that had a lot of gall,’ Smut said. He started toward the back.

I finished the bowl of soup and thought no more of it. But about an hour later when I lit a cigarette and tried to inhale a draw I nearly choked to death. My throat started burning. I went to the back and got a glass of water. There wasn’t anything the matter with the water, but I just couldn’t swallow it. I went back to the cash register and my throat was on fire. I looked under the counter, next to the bread box.

There had been two packages of Paris green under there. Smut used to handle the stuff when he was interested in the farm trade. The farmers used it in mixtures to kill potato bugs. These two packages had been left over from that time and once I had asked Smut why he didn’t throw them away. But he hated to throw anything away. He said leave them there and he’d work them off on some farmer.

But when I looked for the Paris green that night it was gone. I got sick at the stomach. I motioned for Badeye to come to the cash register.

‘I’m sick, Badeye,’ I said. ‘Knocked out. Tell Smut to get somebody else up here.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Badeye asked.

‘I’m sick at my stomach,’ I said.

‘Take a dose of soda,’ Badeye said.

‘That wouldn’t do me any good now,’ I said, and started to go.

Badeye opened his mouth to say something, but a customer came up then and I went outside.

I vomited a little out in the yard. Some folks were getting out of their car. They stopped and looked at me.

‘That’s the cashier of this place, drunk as a hog,’ I heard a girl say.

I think it was Gyp Ward that was with the girl. ‘That boy ought to be fired,’ he told the girl.

I staggered down to the cabin that the help stayed in. It was unlocked and I took a bottle of milk of magnesia out of their shower room. Then I went to my own cabin.

By straining every muscle in my neck I finally managed to swallow a little water and some of the milk of magnesia. It didn’t make me feel any better after I got it down, but there was nothing else to take. I wanted a doctor, for I was scared and sick, but nobody came to my cabin and I wasn’t in shape to walk to the door after I got inside.

Toward morning I dropped off to sleep and it was almost noon before I woke up. I got up then, feeling better, but when I dressed and started out the door I couldn’t make it.

After a while Dick Pittman came down to see me. He asked me if I wanted anything. I had him bring me a couple of raw eggs. I told him my stomach was a little upset.

About ten o’clock the next morning I felt well enough to dress again and try it up to the roadhouse. Every time I took a step it jarred my insides. My stomach still burned a little now and then. But the thing that burned me steadily was the fact that I was two nights behind in my hunt for the cash. By that morning I should have been over the hills and a far ways off with Smut Milligan’s zipper bag and the twelve thousand dollars.

I WALKED INTO THE ROADHOUSE
and Smut was the only one there. He was sitting at the counter, working on the books. He looked up when I came in.

‘You feeling better?’ he asked me.

‘I feel all right,’ I said, and sat down beside him.

‘A man has to watch his stomach in the springtime,’ Smut said. ‘It don’t take much in the spring to upset a man’s stomach.’

‘Just a little poison,’ I said. ‘I don’t have it figured out yet. Whether you gave me too much, or not enough. I don’t know just what you had in mind.’

Smut looked up from the ledger again. ‘What you talking about?’ he said.

‘I’m talking about Paris green,’ I said. ‘I don’t know whether you aimed to put enough in my soup to get rid of me at one shot, or if you were just aiming to give me a slug every now and then and rot my guts gradually.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Smut said. ‘I believe you’re crazy.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not crazy.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Smut said. He commenced writing in the ledger again.

‘There used to be two packages of Paris green under the counter,’ I said. ‘Right after I ate that soup you brought out to me night before last, I looked under the counter and the Paris green was gone. I don’t know what you did with the rest of it, but I know damned well you fed me a dose of it.’

‘You’re crazy. I throwed that stuff away a week ago,’ Smut said.

‘I don’t have it figured out yet,’ I said. ‘You’d be a fool to feed me enough to kill me right off the bat. You’re in hot water enough now. I reckon you were aiming to keep on feeding the stuff to me, so it’d look like something else killed me. Like maybe heart trouble did it.’

Smut looked around toward the door. ‘I tell you you’re talking like a child,’ he said.

‘I guess you got the idea of slow poisoning from that slop you’re always reading in the
Ace Detective Magazine,’
I said. ‘You better not risk the recipes they got in there. Writers make them up.’

Smut shut the ledger and stood up.

‘I ain’t going to stay here and listen to this crap,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with your stomach, but I know one thing that’s wrong with you. You got diarrhea of the mouth.’ He put the ledger on the shelf back of the cash register and went outside and sat on the bench.

After a while I went out there myself and sat on the other bench, and in a short time Badeye came up and sat down in the door. Badeye had a watch that was about the size of a small pone of cornbread. He took it out of his vest pocket and began winding it.

‘Milligan, you doing any good, practicing medicine these nights?’ Badeye asked.

Smut looked puzzled. ‘Practicing medicine?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Badeye said. ‘Seen you going off night afore last with a little bag. You was toting a little bag like doctors tote. I thought maybe you was going off on a confinement case.’ Badeye snickered and wound his watch.

Smut looked at me quick, then looked down at his shoes. He didn’t bother to answer Badeye.

It must have been two o’clock when Smut got in the pick-up and drove off toward Corinth. I heard him tell Badeye that he was going in to shoot a little pool. He hadn’t more than got out of sight before Sam Hall and Matt Rush came up.

‘Where’s Smut?’ I heard Sam ask Badeye, who was sitting outside. I was at the counter, reading the paper.

‘He’s gone to Corinth to shoot a little pool,’ Badeye said.

‘That’s fine,’ Sam Hall said. He came inside and Matt was with him.

Sam went behind the counter and got out a flat case that looked like a small suitcase. He stood it on the counter and unsnapped something. It was a portable typewriter in the case. Sam sat down on the stool in front of the typewriter. He took a sheet of paper out of his shirt-pocket, unfolded it, and stuck it in the typewriter.

‘I want to try this thing out,’ Sam said. ‘I started to take typing when I was in the tenth grade, but I quit after the first week. I didn’t have the money to get me a typing book. But I always was interested in a typewriter.’

Sam looked down at his fingers that he had placed on the keys.

‘Now, this is the way you’re supposed to have your fingers fixed,’ he said to Matt Rush, who was standing over him, with his mouth wide open.

Sam looked at his fingers and commenced hitting the keys, slow and careful. He typed out his name. S a m h a l l. ‘Confound it, I forgot to hit a capital “H,” ’ Sam said.

‘Whose typewriter is that?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know there was a typewriter around here.’

‘Smut got it yesterday in Corinth,’ Sam said. ‘The Jew’s having his yearly fire sale and Smut got the typewriter from him. He got something else too.’

‘He got him a safe,’ Matt Rush said.

‘A safe?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Sam Hall said. ‘A safe to keep money in. It was the one the Jew had. The Jew’s leaving town for good.’

‘Where’s the safe?’ I said.

‘In Smut’s cabin,’ Sam said. ‘He started to leave it up here but he said that was dangerous. He said he was going to keep it in his cabin, and from now on when he closed up at night would take the money down to his cabin and have it where he could stay with it. He acts like he thinks somebody might be going to try to rob him.’

‘Somebody might,’ Matt said. ‘Smut takes in a sight of money out here sometimes.’

So that was where it was. That was all right too. I didn’t know anything about combinations, but I knew how to get a safe open. The only trouble was it would take some time to do it. But if he had it in a safe I had plenty of time now and could pick my chance. I was glad to hear about the safe.

Badeye came inside then and noticed the typewriter out on the counter.

‘Smut Milligan’s going to raise hell with somebody for having his typewriter out,’ Badeye said.

‘I can get it back where it was before you can wink your eye,’ Sam said.

Matt Rush looked at me. ‘You know how to operate one of these things, Jack?’ he asked.

‘I took typing when I was in school,’ I said.

‘You know the touch system?’ Sam asked.

‘I once did. Let me try it,’ I said. Sam moved over to the next stool and I took his place in front of the typewriter.

It was a Remington and looked like it was practically new.

‘Let’s see you write your name with your eyes shut,’ Badeye said. I did it. Sam Hall looked at Matt. ‘You see?’ he said.

I shut my eyes and wrote: ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is a specimen of the writing of this machine.’

‘You see?’ Sam asked Matt.

‘I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch!’ Matt Rush said.

I typed on a while longer, then my stomach got to burning again and I went outside and got in the old roadster that Sam Hall had just traded for. I leaned back on the seat and was taking it easy when Catfish came up and spoke to me.