“I ain’t bound for Knoxville. I’m headed south.”
“That’s what I thought you said,” the driver said, grinning, easy. He was a big man, gentle in the knowledge of his own great strength and power. “You already told me you was going south.”
The small man squinted at him, and his sharp rodent’s face worked itself into a mask of fine wrinkles, sly and dangerous.
“Why do I have to get out then? It’s cold and lonesome up here in the mountains. Ain’t nobody else on the road. What are you trying to do to me?”
The very idea made the driver laugh.
“Like I say, you can ride all the way to Knoxville if you want to. Suit yourself.”
“You’ll be going the wrong direction.”
“From here on I will.”
“Goddamnit!” the little man said. “Don’t that beat all?”
The driver was still more tickled than anything else, but he looked at his watch to see how much time he was wasting. It was past midnight already. He was going to have to put down a heavy foot on the gas as it was.
“Would you just turn a man loose in open country? There’s probably wild animals and Lord knows what else up here. You’d just stop your truck and make a fellow get out and shiver in the cold?”
“I didn’t tell you to get out yet, but I’m fixing to.”
“See there? See what I’m talking about? You don’t give a hoot. What happened to all the charity in the world?”
“My charity, such as it is, goes as far as this turnoff. I guess I’m through talking. Time to get off.”
The driver shoved a long arm around behind the little man, who had backed himself up against the cab door like a cornered animal. The man twitched and winced away from the arm as if he were dodging a blow, but the driver merely flicked the door handle and pushed it open. Then he had to be quick. The little man, with all his weight against the door, would have pitched out of the high cab if the driver hadn’t seized him in a tight grip. For an instant they were locked there in a reluctant embrace.
“I guess somebody will be coming along pretty soon,” the driver said.
“Who would stop and give me a ride?”
“What are you complaining about? I give you a ride, didn’t I? You’re just as bad as an old woman.”
The driver shook his head, dismay now added to his natural curiosity. He refused to let himself be moved or troubled by the tears silently falling from the red-rimmed, bloodshot, phlegm-colored eyes, making jagged streaks along his dusty face.
“I see you’ve made up your mind,” he said to the driver at last. “Invincible ignorance, I call it. Well, could you do me one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“Lemme have a couple of cigarettes and a pack of matches.”
The driver sighed with relief. He hadn’t been able to guess what was coming next, and anyway this was going to make it simple and final. He took the half-empty pack from his pocket and fumbled for matches.
“Here,” he said. “Keep the pack. I got another one.”
The little man took them with his left hand, still keeping the other one out of sight as he had all along, jammed in his pants pockets. No “thank you,” nothing. Just took the pack of cigarettes and the matches in his free left hand, slipped sidewise off the seat, and dropped down to the ground. The driver had to reach all the way across and pull the door to. He shifted into low and pulled the big truck off the shoulder and back onto the road, shifted again, made his turn, and drove north.
For a moment he thought about it. Then he laughed out loud to himself.
“It does beat all,” he said, “the way some people you run into these days act.”
Then, with all that over and down with, he started thinking about the diner up the road, up near Knoxville, where he would treat himself to a great big breakfast. There were a couple of cute little waitresses who worked there, and you could joke with them if you felt like it. Driving a truck on long hauls wasn’t such a lonesome job as a man might think.
The small man left behind stood in the middle of the road, stamping his feet in a fierce little dance, partly against the sudden chill of the night after the close warmth of the cab, but equally out of an excess of puzzled frustration. He watched the red taillights of the truck and trailer vanish into the dark, swallowed whole. He spat on the road and cursed the driver and the truck and all of Creation. Clenching his fist, he felt the crackle of the cellophane on the half-empty pack of cigarettes and relaxed, feeling in the privacy of the dark a slow, sly grin forming itself on his lips.
He moved off the road, hopped lightly over a yawning ditch, sat down on the other side, and dangled his legs. Expertly with his left hand he opened the pack of paper matches, folded one match back, struck it and lit a cigarette, staring into the blue heart of the little flame, letting his cupped palm feel the warmth of it until the match was burned almost down to the end. He puffed and blinked and let his eyes become accustomed to the dark again. Gradually the stars grew bright and the bulked shapes of the mountains loomed like huge, crouching beasts around him. He hunched down as small as he could, as if to draw in against the dark and the cold, as if somehow to conserve and protect, like the cupped match flame he had stared at, the invisible heat of his body and soul. He was like a drab little sparrow there. He smoked and chuckled to himself.
“Well,” he said, “if worse comes to worse, you could always get yourself a job as a scarecrow.”
The picture of himself in a lonely field, arms outstretched, scaring the crows away, tickled him no end.
Then, more sober, shouting into the dark: “You foxed him! You foxed that fool out of half a pack of ready-made cigarettes!”
Lee Southgate was already on the road at that time. He was driving fast because he had some business in eastern Tennessee in the morning, and he wasn’t sleeping well in hotels and motels anyway. He had stopped once, east of Ashville, and had an order of bacon and eggs and toast and coffee, even though he hadn’t been the least bit hungry. A traveling man just had to stop every so often to get the feel of solid ground under his feet again, the earth he spent so much of his waking time and energy lightly skimming and scorning. Like a dainty-legged water bug swift across the surface of a pond, he thought. Sometimes, for no special need or reason, you had to light somewhere and take a look around.
So he stopped at the roadside diner, knowing the long, winding, lonely drive through the mountains lay in dark ambush ahead of him. He had eaten, played the jukebox, talked a while with the waitress and shown her the snapshots in his wallet, pictures of his wife, his two young children, his dog, and his new ranch-style house in the Tall Oaks subdivision. It had been a nice time. The waitress was big, plain, and sympathetic, motherly. He always got along easy with big, plain women.
Lee Southgate was a salesman for a sporting-goods firm. He made a good living at it, but his territory in this part of the country had to be large. He was on the road a lot of the time and it was hard on him, wore him down. He was a natural salesman, much the same as some are natural actors; selling came easy to him; but the trips alone, the vague gaps of time between meeting people and performing, for every sale was a performance, troubled him.
Even though he had promised his wife to be careful about picking up hitchhikers, for terrible things happened these days, he usually ended up keeping his eyes peeled for figures by the side of the road. They almost always turned out to be college students or young men going in search of some adventure. He was reminded of himself and his own youth in the drab days of the Depression.
By now it was almost dawn with the sky already gray and lightened. Lee Southgate’s headlights leapt to discover and reveal a small shape, like a boy’s, standing by the side of the road. Surprised, then relieved, he slowed down and stopped, opened the door.
When the man climbed in, a small man, almost a kind of dwarf, old and dirty, his right hand jammed in his pocket, and without a word, just climbed in, pulled the door to and looked straight ahead
waiting to get going, Lee Southgate wished that he had passed by.
He just might have a knife in that pocket, Lee Southgate was thinking. A crazy, twisted, little old man like that might do most anything.
He drove on.
“Been waiting long?”
The man twisted to look at him, to look him over, scornful, surprised, and maybe even outraged at being asked a direct question. He did not reply for a while. He waited so long to answer that Lee Southgate wondered if he had really heard him at all.
“Long enough,” he said. “I like to have froze down to the bones waiting for you to get here.”
“Well, well! Well, then. Let me just turn the heater on and see if we can’t take the chill off.”
The man grunted at that and looked away again, staring at the dark nothing out of the window. As if to say it would take more than a heater and a few kind, impersonal words to get rid of his chill. Lee Southgate stifled a belch. He was beginning to suffer from indigestion. He almost always did have indigestion after he had eaten without really being hungry and when he was very tired. A man could change all that, lose the slump of sheer fatigue and the growl in his stomach, once he found a motel, took himself a good hot shower, and changed his clothes.
Furtively he sized up his passenger. One thing was for sure, he hadn’t been near a bath or a basin of water for quite a while. He had noticed his clothes in the quick, impersonal, complete manner of a salesman when the door opened for him to get in and the overhead light briefly bathed the car in a yellow glow. Now without even looking he could see the separate parts. The shoes, worn, run down flat at the heels, scuffed and paper-thin. The pants dirty, ragged, and stained. Then the strange thing was the jacket, an expensive one, suede, a genuine luxury item. It had looked to be fairly clean too and didn’t come close to fitting him. The sleeve almost hid his thumb. Maybe somebody down the road had given it to him. Then again maybe he stole it. If he had a knife in his pocket he might have just taken it off somebody. It would be a big man too.
“Where are you headed, old-timer?”
“South, if it’s anybody’s business but my own.”
“You don’t say,” Lee Southgate said, for the moment too pleased with the sound of another voice to care what was said.
“And another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“My name is not old-timer.”
“No offense meant,” he said, smiling. “My name’s Lee Southgate.”
“Okay. Pleased to meet you. But just never mind who I am.”
“Is it supposed to be a secret?”
“A secret? What do you mean making a crack like that?”
The old man turned again to stare at him with that same leathery crinkled expression of suspicion, curiosity, outrage, and incredulity. A mad look. Small as a boy or a jockey he was all right. Lee Southgate was drawn irresistibly, as to a kind of magnetic appeal, to think about that hidden right hand in its pocket. Who knows? He might even have some kind of a little zip gun. Or maybe an old-fashioned set of brass knuckles. Most likely a knife though, one with an edge like a straight razor.
He reached over and punched on the radio. If he wasn’t going to be able to share a decent conversation, he could at least listen to something. They could listen together. That would be sharing something. Lee Southgate fiddled with the dial until he picked up, faint and static-clouded, an all-night disc-jockey show. He hummed along with the music and watched the road ahead swimming in the glare of his headlights. He felt better.
After a while he realized that his companion was still staring at him, waiting for something, maybe for the answer to the question he’d asked that Lee Southgate had already forgotten. Lee Southgate looked at him and flashed an amiable smile.
“It ain’t a secret. You’d know it. You’d know it in a minute if I was to tell you.”
“Is that a fact?” Lee Southgate began. Then, as if on second thought: “Sure now, I guess I would.”
That seemed to satisfy the old man. He nodded solemnly, looked away, and eased back in the seat again. Lee Southgate shrugged and kept his mind on the driving. When the old man decided to speak again, it was so soft, almost a whisper against the noise of the radio, that Lee Southgate wasn’t sure whether he had heard him say something or not.
“What’s that? Excuse me, did you say something?”
“You could hear fine if it wasn’t for that damn noise on the radio.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” He twisted a knob on the radio and then the only noise was the slight whisper of the heater and its whirring fan.
“Thibault, I said. Battling Bill Thibault from New Orleans.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Battling Bill Thibault, that’s who I am.”
There was a kind of patronizing smile about the way he said it though his fierce expression did not change.
“You don’t say. What’s your line of work, Mr. Thibault.”
“My what?”
“Line of work. Occupation.”
The old man gasped in simple amazement.
“You don’t know? You mean to tell me that you ain’t never heard of me? Where the hell have you been?”
“Excuse me,” Lee Southgate started to say, “I’m sorry, but—”
“Where were you hiding when I took on Brakeman Shriver in Mobile? Didn’t you even hear what I done to Burr Beaver in Houston, Texas? And you know damn well that Beaver, he went on to fight for the Championship of the World. You know they let that Burr Beaver have a shot at the Championship and I had already proved I was twice the man Beaver was.”
So that’s it! Just a punchy old prizefighter!
“That must have been quite a while ago, Mr. Thibault.”
The old man giggled.
“Well, I guess so. I would say so. Likely you weren’t even born yet, a young fellow like you.”
“I guess that’s why I never heard of you.”
“That’s no excuse. It isn’t like I was just nobody. I was famous.”
“Sure,” Lee Southgate said, irritated. “You may be famous yet for all I know. I don’t follow the fight game.”
To Lee Southgate’s surprise the old man winced away at that. He pressed his face flat against the glass of the rolled-up window.
“What’s the use?”
It was a rhetorical question.
“Those were the days,” the old man went on. “That was the time. It was the time of tall men. You won’t believe it, but even me, a little old bird like me, I was a tall man in those days. It was good to be alive then. Nowadays there’s nothing. This here is a bad time, a time of bitter children. There’s not one good man among you anymore.”
Then Lee Southgate was left with the heater to listen to and the road to watch and the sense that even though he had hurt the old man’s feelings—and he was sensitive to other people’s feelings and hated, usually, to hurt them—that he had accidentally saved himself from something bad, discomfort, trouble, some kind of real disaster. He could have been more polite with the old bum, feigned an interest anyway, but, obscurely threatened, he had told the truth. Lee Southgate was perplexed, baffled with himself. Why had he been compelled to offend the old man so?
It was early morning now. They had come out of the mountains of North Carolina and were in Tennessee, passing small farms and coming on toward Johnson City. Lee Southgate’s appointment was in Chattanooga, but he felt so tired he decided after all that he would stop off in Johnson City at least long enough to get a barbershop shave.
“How far did you say you were going, old-timer?”
“I didn’t say. But I’m trying to get as far as Chattanooga.”
“I’m stopping off in Johnson City. I’ll let you off anywhere you want.”
“I want to go to Chattanooga.”
Here we go, Lee Southgate thought. Here we go again.
“Oh, you’ll get a ride easy from here on.”
“I’m sick and tired of having to get in and out of cars and trucks an
d standing by the road and waiting for rides to come along. All I want to do is get where I’m going.”
“You ought to take the bus or the train.”
The old man certainly brought out the worst in him. Maybe he was just tired out, worn beyond endurance, down to the bone marrow and the raw edges of his nerves. Truly he couldn’t wait to get the old man out of the car and out of his sight.
As soon as they were in town, he pulled over and parked. People were already on the way to work, moving with purpose along the sidewalks to shops and offices. The mountains, the lonesome road, and the night seemed far behind. He felt much better.
“All right, Mr. Battling Bill Thibault, this is where you get off. End of the line.”
Thibault, or whatever his name was, started to ease himself out of the car without a word.
“Why don’t you take the bus from here on?”
No answer, but he stopped moving and waited.
“I’ll tell you what,” Lee Southgate said. “I’ll give you enough money to have breakfast and buy yourself a bus ticket.”
“What for? I ain’t done nothing for you. What do I have to do for it?”
“Nothing.”
“People don’t give money for nothing.”
Lee Southgate had an inspiration. Why not?
“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you the money for your knife.”
“What knife? I ain’t got one. What do I need a knife for?”
“Show me what you’re hiding in your right-hand pocket and I’ll give you the money.”
The old man’s rat-face wrinkled with curiosity. Thibault had to think about it.
“You gonna give me some money just to look at my bad hand?”
Delicately he slipped his hand out of his pocket and showed it to the salesman. It was puffed and swollen out of all shape and proportion, red as a cooked lobster and the skin stretched taut, terribly infected. Southgate looked and saw that it seemed to throb with each pulse beat. The old man looked at it too for a moment, but impersonally, as if it were a separate thing, maybe a small sick animal, no part of him.
Evening Performance Page 17