They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (32 page)

I gave him the matches and the cigarettes and stuck the bottle in a paper sack and put it on the counter before him. He leaned over a little closer, because there were two girls sitting at the counter then.

‘Gimme a pack of the skins,’ he said. I got them for him.

He held the package in his hand and looked like he was figuring something out. ‘H’m,’ he said, ‘there ain’t but three of these things in a pack.’

Smut stuck the package in his pocket. ‘I ain’t made no love in over a week,’ he said. ‘Better gimme another pack of these things.’

‘You got plenty of confidence,’ I said, and got him another package.

‘Confidence ain’t all I got,’ Smut said. ‘Listen, business is pretty good, but I got to take off. Keep the joint open as long as you got any customers. Even if they’re sloppy drunk. If they’re hog drunk, but spending money, keep the joint open.’

He walked around to the cash register and opened it.

‘I better take most of this money with me. It ain’t safe to leave money in here at night.’

He got out a roll of bills and put it in his pocket.

‘Left you plenty for change,’ he said. ‘When you close up, lock the cash register and leave what you take in from now on, in it.’

He started out the door then, but changed his mind and walked back to me.

‘I mean leave every damn dime of it in there. You hear me?’ he snarled.

I didn’t answer him and he went out then.

Baxter Yonce and Fletch Monroe were out that night. They had been over in the dance hall playing the nickelodeon and making a few middle-aged passes at the dumber girls, but shortly after Smut left they came to the counter and parked there. Baxter was drinking a little that night and he ordered a beer. I got it for him and asked Fletch if he’d have one too. He looked at me and grinned his snaggle-toothed grin.

‘No, I’ve quit,’ he said. ‘I ain’t had a drink, not even a beer, for twenty-nine whole days. Tomorrow ’ll be a month since I was drunk the last time.’

Fletch generally stayed drunk three weeks when he got started, then after a spree he always quit for good. I didn’t want to put temptation in his way, but it griped me for him to be sober just when I wanted to have him loose-tongued. Anyway, he didn’t have any business hanging around a roadhouse if he wanted to quit drinking.

I hung around Fletch and Baxter for some time, trying to hear something about Fisher going out of town. Baxter said a word or two about everybody else in Corinth, but for some reason it looked like he was avoiding any mention of Charles Fisher.

Finally, when he got off on his past, I got desperate. I leaned over the counter and interrupted his favorite lie, about how he’d once spent the night in bed with a country girl and how when he got ready to leave he gave her a dollar and she fingered the money like she’d never seen any before and finally told him if he’d get back in the bed with her for just one more time she’d give him the dollar back, plus a quarter she’d saved out of the egg money.

‘By the way, Mr. Baxter,’ I said, ‘you haven’t seen Mr. Charles Fisher tonight, have you?’

Baxter paused. ‘No, I ain’t. Why?’

‘I just happened to think. There was a fellow out here about two hours ago asking for him. Said he had to see him the worst sort.’

‘I ain’t seen him all day,’ Baxter Yonce said. He went back to telling Badeye about how he used to make a lot of women happy.

Fletch Monroe was smoking one cigarette after another. He seemed extra nervous about something. He spat out a cigarette that was beginning to burn his lips, and he leaned over the counter toward me.

‘Fisher ain’t in town tonight,’ Fletch said.

‘He’s not?’

‘No. He left town this evening. He come by the shop about two o’clock and said he wanted to renew his subscription to the paper. It wasn’t due till next fall, but he thought it was due now. He seemed to be kind of addled about something.’

Fletch took a package of cigarettes out of his pocket and shook it. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, then took it out again and held it in his right hand.

‘I talked him into a five-year subscription—Fisher, I mean,’ Fletch said. ‘Get me a beer, Jack.’ He looked down at the cigarette he had squashed in his hand.

I got the beer for him and went back to the cash register. Baxter Yonce finished his story. He covered a yawn with both hands.

‘About ready to go, Fletch?’ he asked.

Fletch gulped down the last of his beer. ‘Just a minute,’ he said to Baxter. He motioned to Badeye.

‘Get me a beer, Honeycutt,’ Fletch said.

Baxter turned on the counter stool. ‘Thought you wasn’t going to drink anything tonight, Fletch. Decided to fall off the wagon?’

Fletch shrugged his shoulders. He wouldn’t look at Baxter. ‘Hell, it’s just beer,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not going to get drunk.’

‘You ain’t?’ Baxter Yonce said.

‘No, I ain’t!’ Fletch said.

Baxter waited till Fletch had finished that bottle; then they got up and started to go. But when they reached the door Fletch turned around and walked back to the counter.

‘I got to have a pint of corn liquor. Make it a quart jar,’ he told Badeye.

Baxter Yonce stopped in the door. He wasted a sad look on Fletch Monroe.

‘You ought not to get any liquor,’ he said. ‘You’ll get drunk, Fletcher.’

‘I know it,’ Fletch said. His voice was happy.

Fletch borrowed the money from Baxter to pay for the liquor and they went out to Baxter’s car. It was late then. Badeye and Sam wanted to leave, so I told them to take it away; I would keep the place open until the last customer got enough. There were just four customers left then, and they were over on the other side—a couple of Duke boys and a couple of local high-school queens. I went over to the booth where they were sitting and asked them if they wanted anything. They said no, not right then. I went back to the other side and got out Smut’s typewriter.

I was uneasy about writing that letter. Maybe Fisher had just gone out on a test trip and aimed to come in about midnight and see if his wife was in. Maybe Smut Milligan hadn’t gone out to meet her and Fisher would find her at home. That would be too bad. Still I had to write it anyway. This was the report I typed for Fisher.

Dear Mr. Fisher:

Tonight I did a little sleuthing and was present at a meeting between your wife and the man she goes with. They didn’t know I was there. So, thinking they were alone, they let their hair down and went to the horse races.

I hope you enjoy yourself when you leave town, Mr. Fisher, because you ain’t getting even with your wife if you don’t. She seems to be kind of a passionate woman, and this fellow who meets her is taking advantage of that fact. He is passionate too. About like a stud-horse. Tonight he got plenty of co-operation from your wife. The first thing she did was to give him a kiss that would have untied his shoelaces, except that he had already pulled off his shoes. They didn’t talk much. Just moaned and took on. That is, your wife moaned a lot.

The name of this fellow who was out with your wife is Smut Milligan. He runs a roadhouse on Lover’s Lane.

Your friend

I addressed an envelope to Fisher, stuck the letter inside, and swiped a postage stamp out of the cash register. Then I walked out in the pitch dark to the mailbox and put the letter inside.

When I was back in the roadhouse I stuck my head into the dance hall door. The kids were very quiet. I walked inside and they broke it up and I asked them if there was anything else they wanted. They took the hint that time and went outside to their car.

SUNDAY MORNING I GOT
up late and took it easy. I ate breakfast about ten o’clock, then went out in the back yard and sat down on the grass beside the grease rack.

It was hot for the spring. There was a light breeze from the east and the sun was bearing down, but in the south the sky was a little hazy. There were thin, fleecy-looking clouds beginning to rise up down there.

I was lying there in the grass under the mulberry tree when Smut drove his car up on the grease rack. He got out and went into the car shed and didn’t pay any attention to me. Smut rummaged around in the car shed for a few minutes, and while he was in there Sam came up to the car.

‘Ain’t you afraid of catching cold, lying there on the ground?’ Sam asked me.

No,’ I said.

‘It would give me a bad cold,’ Sam said.

Smut came out of the car shed then, with a couple of wrenches and the grease gun. Sam went into the car shed and got two cans of oil.

They commenced greasing the car then, with Sam handling the gun. But just as they got started good an automobile horn started honking up in front of the roadhouse. Smut looked up in that direction.

There was a Ford coach in front of the roadhouse, and there were two men in the front and two girls in the back seat. The fellow who was driving had his head out the car window and was talking to Matt Rush.

Smut stood there with his hands on his hips, not knowing whether to go up there or not. In a minute the driver cranked up and drove to within fifteen feet of the grease rack. He slammed on the brakes and hopped out of the car.

He came up to where Smut was standing. This man was dressed well enough—he had on a dark suit with black-and-white shoes—but there was something about him that I didn’t like. Maybe it was because his hair was slicked down with too much grease—he was bareheaded—or maybe it was because there was too much grease on his voice when he spoke to Smut. This fellow might have been thirty years old.

‘Hello, skipper,’ he said to Smut.

‘Hello,’ Smut said.

‘We want to rent a cabin,’ the fellow said. ‘A double cabin.’

‘All my cabins are single,’ Smut said.

‘Well, two singles, then.’

Smut looked hard at the man. Then he looked at the other man and at the two girls in the back seat. The other man was about the same size as the first one and he was bareheaded too. There were bald patches on his head. He had on a light blue polo shirt and needed a shave. Both girls were young and frowsy-looking. You could tell they were whores.

‘I’m full up,’ Smut said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh, come on, now,’ this fellow said, and smiled at Smut. ‘We’re tourists from Massachusetts. We’re tired and would like to rent two cabins for several days. We want to drive around and see this country. Sure you can’t take care of us?’

I looked at the license plate on the car. It was from Massachusetts, all right.

‘I ain’t got a thing today,’ Smut said. He turned his back to the fellow and began opening the other can of oil.

The man who claimed he was a tourist ran his finger across his throat, then went back to the car. They drove back to the highway and took off toward Blytheville.

Sam Hall had stopped work while the conversation was in progress. When the tourists turned off into the main highway, he looked at Smut.

‘It’s not any of my business, but how come you didn’t want to rent that fellow a couple of cabins?’ Sam said. ‘The cabins ain’t full.’

Smut took a wrench out of his pocket and started examining the hinges on the car door.

‘I know they ain’t full,’ he told Sam. ‘But I don’t rent cabins to pimps and their whores.’

‘How you know that’s what they was?’ Sam asked.

‘They just looked like it,’ Smut said. ‘They would of located here and done a good business for maybe a week—it takes the clap about a week to show up on a man—then they’d of taken off for another joint.’

‘But other folks come out here and just rent a cabin for a couple of hours,’ Sam said.

‘That’s different,’ Smut said.

‘Is it?’ Sam asked.

‘Yeah. The folks around here that do that are respectable folks. The girls are mostly girls that sing in the choir and do things like that. The boys come from the best families. But if I was to let whores stay out here, it would be different.’

‘I guess so,’ Sam said. He picked up the grease gun again.

‘It would get me closed up,’ Smut said. ‘Another thing is, if I was to die and go to hell, it would create a bad situation. If I’d made any money off whores, I couldn’t hold up my head in hell.’

Sam laughed and Smut walked around to the front of the car. Just at that time another car drove in from the highway and a man got out of it.

He went inside the roadhouse before I could make out who it was. Smut looked up toward the roadhouse, but I don’t think he recognized the man either. In a minute this same man came around the corner of the roadhouse and started down toward us.

The man was Charles Fisher. He had something in his hand that looked like a woman’s bag. He was walking fast. Smut Milligan looked at him, then went back to watching Sam finish the greasing.

Fisher came on up to the rack. His face was white and he was sweating. He had unbuttoned his collar and the knot on his tie had slipped around out of sight. His eyes were puffed a little.

Fisher stopped in front of the rack. Smut walked around the front of the car and faced Fisher.

‘Good morning, Mr. Milligan. I want to show you something, Milligan,’ Charles Fisher said. He talked so fast that it was all run together.

Smut didn’t say anything. He didn’t get any closer to Fisher either. Fisher looked at Smut, then took a couple of steps forward. He stopped and fumbled with the bag—it was a woman’s handbag.

‘Something I want to show you,’ Fisher said. He sounded like a man talking to himself.

The bag was a blue one and made out of cloth. When Fisher tried to snap it open, his hands were shaking and he nearly dropped the bag. But he caught it up and opened it slow and careful.

He stuck his hand inside the bag like he was afraid of something in there. His hand seemed to go down just a little bit at a time. But he jerked it out fast enough, and he was holding a pistol that had a white handle.

I looked toward Smut just as Fisher shot him in the belly. Smut put his hands down there; he made a wry face and swayed a little to the right. Sam Hall dropped the grease gun against one of the empty oil cans and it made a loud noise. Fisher shot again and I heard the bullet whining in the pine thicket back of the woodpile.