They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (27 page)

‘Mr. Smut gone to town, I reckin,’ Catfish said.

‘I think so,’ I said.

Catfish sat down on the running board. ‘Wisht I’d a been here before he left. My car’s broke down and I got to go to town and git me a part or two. I could a rode with Mr. Smut.’

‘What’s broke about your car?’ I asked.

Catfish took his hat off and ran his fingers through his wool.

‘I think it’s spirit done broke more’n anything else,’ he said. ‘But I ginrally goes to Mr. Baxter Yonce’s garage and he let me have some old used parts. I fixes it up and it runs on awhile longer.’

Catfish put his hat back on his head and looked up at me.

‘Look here, Mr. Jack,’ he said. ‘What’s come over Mr. Smut? Is he done took and lost his mind?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Well, here a couple nights back I was makin liquor down on the branch. You know, in my regular stand, down toward the river. I got done early that night. Twarn’t more’n two o’clock in the morning. I headed back up the road to my house, and right in the mouth of Jacob’s Creek here was a car parked. It was a new coop. The moon was shinin and I think it was a red coop. They was a man in there had a woman. It was moonshiny, and I swear to God the man was Mr. Smut!’

‘What if it was?’ I said.

‘Nothin. Only he oughtn’t to git a woman out on that road. If that gits to be like Lover’s Lane I got to move my still somewheres else,’ Catfish said.

‘Don’t get worried,’ I said. ‘That’s such a bad road that folks don’t want to drive over it. It’s too much of a wilderness down there for even that sort of stuff.’

‘For folks that’s in heat a wilderness the very thing they lookin for,’ Catfish said.

‘Did you see the woman that was with him?’ I asked.

Catfish shifted his legs. He reached inside his pocket and got out his can of tobacco and his cigarette papers and set them on the running board.

‘That the worst part about it. I couldn’t see the woman that night. But this evenin as I was comin up here and had just got out in the highway they was that same identical red coop come down the road. It was Mr. Charles Fisher’s wife in it.’

‘There’s plenty of cars like that one,’ I said. ‘You just got too much imagination, Catfish.’

‘I guess so,’ Catfish said. ‘I reckin I got too wanderin a mind. But that the only red coop that long in this part of the country. Mr. Smut better be careful. She a rich man’s wife.’

I got rid of Catfish as soon as I could. He went back to the kitchen and visited with the cooks; I told him I thought there was a bottle of good liquor open back there. I went into the front and nobody was there but Sam. I was trying to figure how to get rid of Sam for a short while when he did it for me.

Sam yawned and put his hand over his mouth. He made a sound like a sleepy baby makes.

‘Swear, I’m sleepy!’ he said. ‘If I go take a nap will you be here to stay in the joint, Jack?’

‘I’ll be right here,’ I told him.

As soon as Sam got out of the way, I took out the typewriter and put a sheet of paper in it. The Jew had evidently thrown in a package of paper, but it was plain white paper, that didn’t have anything on it to give me away. I began a letter to Charles Fisher. When it was finished this was the way it read:

Mr. Charles Fisher

c/o Sales Dept.

Corinth Hosiery Mills

Corinth, N.C.

Dear Sir:

I see in the Corinth
Enterprise
where you are out of town a lot of the time. Plenty is happening while you are gone. For one thing your hosiery mill is making plenty of socks. For another thing your wife is making plenty of hay. She is two-timing you a little, Mr. Fisher. But since you are a man that believes in business first I don’t know whether you are interested in what your wife does, or not. I just thought you might be glad to know that she is not so lonesome when you are gone to N.Y., Boston, Etc. But I know you are a busy man and I won’t write you a long letter this time. I will close now. But I will drop you a few lines all along and keep you posted. I don’t charge you anything for doing this. I do it just for practice.

Your friend

P.S. Have you ever been out to Milligan’s Roadhouse, on Lover’s Lane?

I read it over and it sounded all right to me. Anyway, I didn’t know when Smut might come back and I didn’t have time to work on it much. I didn’t know whether it would get a rise out of Fisher or not. But I figured it would. I didn’t know him so well as I did Smut Milligan. I hadn’t had a chance to study him like I would have liked to do. But I knew he was jealous as hell of his wife. I thought the letter would make him think that she was making a fool out of him and it would set him on fire. Later on I aimed to tell him plain out who it was she was playing around with.

I didn’t think Fisher would kill Smut himself. I knew he didn’t have the guts in the first place. In the second place, he was a fellow that couldn’t abide any scandal. He would just work it through Astor LeGrand and have Smut laid out of the way. It wouldn’t cost him much. I figured that for a thousand dollars he could have the complete job done. There were men around Corinth that would kill Smut for much less than a thousand dollars, but I thought that by the time he got through greasing the necessary palms and took care of the sheriff’s detective tendencies and put out enough cash to affect Judge Grindstaff’s eyesight and hearing, it would set Fisher back at least a thousand bucks.

As soon as Smut was killed—if everything worked out right—I would have to get that safe open. I figured I would have a day’s leeway before the sheriff came out and padlocked the joint.

After I finished the letter and put it in my pocket I went out to the car shed. That was where Smut kept most of the things that he used to have in his filling station when he was really doing automobile repair work. I rummaged around in there for several minutes before I found the blowtorch. It was under a pile of empty oil cans over in the southwest corner. I covered it back up and went down to my cabin.

That night I left the roadhouse early. I told the boys that I was still a little under the weather. But I was well enough to go to the car shed, dig the blowtorch out of the oil cans, and get away with it. I hid it in a clayroot in the woods below the cabins.

THE NEXT MORNING I
was back to normal as far as my stomach was concerned. I got up early, and after I finished breakfast I watched my chance and mailed the letter to Fisher. I walked out to our mailbox, stuffed the letter inside as quick as I could, and raised the flag so the mailman would be sure and get it. I hoped he wouldn’t notice who it was addressed to. But if he did it was none of his business.

I went back to the roadhouse then, and I don’t think anybody saw me go out to the mailbox. I hung around inside, working a little, but mainly just killing time, until about nine-thirty, when Smut came in.

Smut hated me plenty by then, but he was trying hard to keep it covered up. He tried to act like nothing much had passed between us. He came up to where I was sitting and asked me if I wanted to go to Corinth with him. I told him no.

He wasn’t gone very long that morning. Just about an hour and a half. When he came back he went down to the cabins and didn’t come back to the roadhouse until sometime after noon. He got his lunch then and went out front and sat on one of the benches. After a while I went out there too.

I don’t know how it happened, but that afternoon we were all sitting out front at one time, like we were waiting to have a group picture taken. Smut and Badeye sat on the bench on the left of the door. Sam and Dick and I held the other bench down. Matt Rush was sitting in the door. Smut was quieter than usual. I was keeping my mouth shut too, but the other boys kept the conversation going with practically no stops. First they talked about cars, then got off on poker, then slot machines. They took up the weather for about half a minute, then mentioned that it looked like a good crop year, but cotton wasn’t bringing but a mighty little; they spoke about the revival meeting that was going on in the evangelist’s tent, just outside the city dump, and then they got off on the subject of girls. They were going to town on that when the sheriff and his two deputies drove up in he sheriffs Plymouth sedan.

They all got out and started over to where we were sitting, Sheriff Pemberton leading the procession. He wabbled along in front, chewing his tobacco. His deputies, Brock Boone and John Little, followed a couple of steps behind. They were so tall that they made the sheriff look like a fat duck waddling along in front of two grizzly bears. The sheriff spat about a cupful into the gravels in front of my feet.

‘Good evening,’ the sheriff said.

‘Hello, sheriff,’ Smut said. He looked like he was terribly surprised to see the sheriff with both the deputies.

Smut stood up. ‘I’ll get you all some chairs,’ he said, and started in the door.

The sheriff held up his hand. ‘No need of that, Milligan,’ he said.

Sheriff Pemberton stuck his hand in his pocket and came out with a paper. He pushed his wide-brimmed hat back on his head. Brock Boone leaned back against the brick column in front of the gas tanks. John Little stood behind the sheriff, with his hands on his hips. Both of them had their guns where they could be seen.

The sheriff cleared his throat. ‘I got a warrant here, Milligan,’ he said. ‘I got a search warrant. I’ll read it.’

Smut turned around. ‘You got a what?’ he asked.

‘I got a warrant that authorizes me to search the premises,’ Sheriff Pemberton said.

‘What you searching for?’ Smut asked.

‘Corn liquor,’ the sheriff said. He cleared his throat again and held the warrant up nearer his eyes.

‘You don’t have to read it. There ain’t any corn around here, but go ahead and see for yourself,’ Smut told the sheriff.

Sheriff Pemberton held the warrant out toward Smut. ‘You want to see the warrant?’ he asked.

Smut curled his upper lip. ‘I ain’t interested in the damn thing,’ he said. ‘I guess I ain’t under arrest until you actually find some corn, am I?’

‘No. But you better stay with us,’ the sheriff said.

‘Don’t worry. I aim to be right with you, sheriff,’ Smut said. ‘Maybe I better lock the cash register till these deputies of yours gets out of sight.’ Smut stepped inside the room.

The sheriff stepped up into the doorway. He turned and spat one last gob into the great outdoors, then followed Smut inside. John Little and Brock Boone went too.

All the rest of us went along. There might be some excitement. One thing we all knew for certain; there was some corn liquor inside.

When we got inside we just stood around and watched the sheriff and his men looking for the liquor. They took the front first; that is, Sheriff Pemberton and Brock Boone did. John Little went over to the other side and commenced looking. He was on a cold trail.

They rummaged around there in the front and looked everywhere except where there was liquor. I watched Badeye. He wasn’t saying anything out loud, but I could see his lips working, saying ‘hot’ when they got close, ‘cold’ when they went off on a dead limb.

I was wondering what the hell. Had Smut quit paying his protection money? Or was Astor LeGrand just pulling his customary double-cross? It had me buffaloed for a minute.

Finally Sheriff Pemberton got careless and opened the icebox where we kept the soft drinks, and about ten pints of corn liquor. The sheriff looked inside, then shut the lid down in a hurry. He scratched his head.

‘I don’t know where in the world that stuff’s hid,’ he said.

It wasn’t corn liquor they wanted. The search was phony as love on Lover’s Lane. I didn’t know just why they were prowling around like that, but I was afraid it had something to do with the murder. Everything looked too fishy for a corn-liquor hunt. In the first place, Smut had looked too surprised when the sheriff drove up. Nobody could look that surprised about anything unless they had practiced for a while. I began to get plenty uneasy.

Finally, after Brock Boone had stumbled against a quart of liquor under the counter, and the sheriff had seen the four pints in the bread box, they gave it up.

‘Must be in the kitchen,’ Sheriff Pemberton said.

‘No liquor out here,’ Brock Boone said.

Just about that time John Little came back in from the other side. He was shaking his head.

‘I can’t find a drop,’ he told the sheriff.

Sheriff Pemberton scratched his head again, quick and hard, then jerked his cowboy hat down over his forehead.

‘Brock, you and John make a thorough search of that kitchen,’ the sheriff told them. ‘Come on, Milligan, we’re going down to them cabins.’

The sheriff and Smut went out the front door. The rest of us followed Brock and John into the kitchen.

In there it was the same as out in the front. They opened the refrigerator last—by that time Johnny Lilly had thrown meat over all the bottles in there, so they didn’t see that. There wasn’t any other liquor back there except in the bottom of the stovewood box, and in the drawers of all the tables, but they didn’t look in any of those places. We went back into the front room. The deputies were shaking their heads. They said they couldn’t understand it.

I sat down on one of the counter stools and Badeye was beside me. The other boys just stood around. Brock Boone and John Little went over and parked on one of the tables at the booths.

‘Don’t reckon there’s no use of us going down to them cabins,’ Brock Boone said.

‘Don’t see as there is,’ John Little said. He took out his pocket­knife and started trimming his fingernails.

John had just finished with his right hand and was starting on the left one when Smut came back with the sheriff. Smut didn’t have the handcuffs on. The sheriff was empty-handed as when he left. Just the plain gold ring on his left hand, and the Elk Tooth ring.

The sheriff walked over to where the two deputies were flopped on the table. He looked down at the floor and shook his head.

‘Nothing on hand today, boys,’ he said. ‘We got a cold tip this time.’

Brock Boone stood up and stretched his shoulders and back like a cat does.