Pop. 1280

by Jim Thompson

  He grunted, still not saying anything. I sat down on the bench a few feet away from him.

  The fact was, I wanted to relieve myself. But I wasn’t sure that I ought to go on into the toilet. The door was unlocked swinging back and forth with the motion of the train, and it looked like it must be empty. Still, though, here this fella was, and maybe that’s what he was waiting for. So even if the place was empty, it wouldn’t be polite to go in ahead of him.

  I waited a little while. I waited, squirming and fidgeting, until finally I couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Were you waiting to go to the toilet?”

  He looked startled. Then, he gave me a mean look, and spoke for the first time. “That’s some of your business?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I just wanted to go to the toilet, and I thought maybe you did, too. I mean, I thought maybe someone was already in there, and that’s why you were waiting.”

  He glanced at the swinging door of the toilet; swinging wide now so that you could see the stool. He looked back at me, kind of bewildered and disgusted.

  “For God’s sake!” he said.

  “Yes, sir?” I said. “I don’t reckon there’s anyone in there, do you?”

  I didn’t think he was going to answer me for a minute. But then he said, yeah, someone was in the toilet. “She just went in a little while ago. A naked woman on a spotted pony.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But how come a woman’s using the men’s toilet?”

  “On account of the pony,” he said. “He had to take a leak, too.”

  “I can’t see no one from here,” I said. “It’s funny I couldn’t see ’em in a little place like that.”

  “You calling me a liar?” he said. “You saying a naked woman on a spotted pony ain’t in there?”

  I said, no, of course not. I wouldn’t say nothing like that. “But I’m in kind of a hurry,” I said. “Maybe I better go up to one of the other cars.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” he said. “No one’s calling me a liar and getting away with it!”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I didn’t mean it that way at all. I just—”

  “I’ll show you! I’m telling the truth! You’re gonna sit right there until that woman and her pony comes out.”

  “But I gotta pee!” I said. “I mean, I really got to, sir.”

  “Well, you ain’t leaving here,” he said. “Not until you see I’m telling the truth.”

  Well, sir, I just didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t know. Maybe you would have, but I didn’t.

  All my life, I’ve been just as friendly and polite as a fella could be. I’ve always figured that if a fella was nice to everyone, why, they’d be nice to him. But it don’t always work out that way. More often than not, it seems like, I wind up in a spot like I was in now. And I just don’t know what to do.

  Finally, when I was about to let go in my britches, the conductor came through taking up tickets, and I had a chance to get away. I tore out of there in such a hurry that it was maybe a minute before I could get the door open to the next car. And I heard a burst of laughter from the rest room behind me. They were laughing at me, I guess—the conductor and the man in the checked suit. But I’m kind of used to being laughed at, and anyway I didn’t have time to think about it right then.

  I dashed on up into the next car and relieved myself—and believe me it was a relief. I was coming back down the aisle, looking for a seat in that car so’s I wouldn’t run into the checked-suit fella again, when I saw Amy Mason.

  I was pretty sure that she’d seen me, too, but she let on that she didn’t. I hesitated by the seat next to her for a minute, then braced myself and sat down.

  No one knows it in Pottsville, because we were careful to keep it a secret, but me and Amy was mighty thick at one time. Fact is, we’d’ve got married if her Daddy hadn’t had such strong objections to me. So we waited, just waiting for the old gentleman to die. And then just a week or so before he did, Myra hooked me.

  I hadn’t seen Amy since except to pass on the street. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, and try to explain things to her. But she never gave me the chance. Whenever she saw me, she’d toss her head and look away. Or if I tried to stop her, she’d cross to the other side of the street.

  “Howdy, Amy,” I said. “Nice morning.”

  Her mouth tightened a little, but she didn’t speak.

  “It’s sure nice running into you like this,” I said. “How far you ridin’, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  She spoke that time. Just barely. “To Clarkton. I’ll be getting ready to leave any moment now.”

  “I sure wish you was riding further,” I said. “I been wanting to talk to you, Amy. I wanted to explain about things.”

  “Did you?” She slanted a glance at me. “The explanation seems obvious to me.”

  “Aw, naw, naw,” I said. “You know I couldn’t like no one better’n you, Amy. I never wanted to marry anyone in my life but you, and that’s the God’s truth. I swear it is. I’d swear it on a stack of Bibles, honey.”

  Her eyes were blinking rapidly, like she was blinking back the tears. I got hold of her hand and squeezed it, and I saw her lips tremble.

  “Th-then, why, Nick? Why did y-you—”

  “That’s what I been wanting to tell you. It’s a pretty long story, and—looky, honey, why don’t I get off at Clarkton with you, and we can get us a hotel room for a couple hours and—”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Right at that time it was the wrong thing.

  Amy turned white. She looked at me with ice in her eyes. “So that’s what you think of me!” she said. “That’s all you want—all you ever wanted! Not to marry me, oh, no, I’m not good enough to marry! Just to get me in bed, and—”

  “Now, please, honey,” I said. “I—”

  “Don’t you dare honey me, Nick Corey!”

  “But I wasn’t thinking about that—what you think I was thinking about,” I said. “It was just that it’d take quite a while to explain about me and Myra, and I figured we’d need some place to—”

  “Never mind. Just never mind,” she said. “I’m no longer interested in your explanations.”

  “Please, Amy. Just let me—”

  “But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Nicholas Corey, and you’d better pass the word along to the proper quarters. If I catch your wife’s brother peeking in my windows, there’s going to be trouble. Real trouble. I won’t put up with it like the other women in Pottsville do. So you tell her that, and a word to the wise is sufficient.”

  I told her I hoped she didn’t ever do anything about Lennie. For her own sake, that is. “I got no more use for Lennie than you have, but Myra—”

  “Humph!” She tossed her head and stood up as the train slowed down for Clarkton. “You think I’m afraid of that—that—her?”

  “Well,” I said, “it might be better if you was. You know how Myra is when she takes out after someone. By the time she gets through gossiping and telling lies, why—”

  “Let me out, please.”

  She pushed past me and went on up the aisle, her head high, the ostrich plume on her hat dipping and swaying. As the train pulled out, I tried to wave to her where she stood on the platform. But she turned her head quickly, with another swoop of the ostrich plume, and started off up the street.

  So that was that, and I told myself that maybe it was just as well. Because how could we ever mean anything to each other the way things stood?

  There was Myra, of course, and there was going to be Myra, it looked like, until her or me died of old age. But Myra wasn’t the only drawback.

  Somehow, I’d gotten real friendly with a married woman, name of Rose Hauck. One of those involvements which I’ve always kind of drifted into before I knew what was happening. Rose didn’t mean a thing to me, except that she was awful pretty and generous. But I meant plenty to her. I meant plenty-plenty, and she’d let me know it.

  Just to sho
w how smart Rose was, Myra considered her her very best friend. Yes, sir, Rose could put on that good an act. When we were alone, me and Rose that is, she’d cuss Myra until it actually made me blush. But when they were together, oh, brother! Rose would suck around her—honeyin’ and dearie-in’ her—until heck wouldn’t have it. And Myra would get so pleased and flustered that she’d almost weep for joy.

  The surest way of gettin’ a rise out of Myra was to hint that Rose was something less than perfect. Even Lennie couldn’t do it. He started to one time, just kind of hinted that anyone as pretty as Rose couldn’t be as nice as she acted. And Myra slapped him clean across the room.

  3

  Maybe I didn’t tell you, but this Ken Lacey I was going to visit was the sheriff a couple of counties down the river. Me and him met at a peace officers’ convention one year, and we kind of cottoned to each other right away. He wasn’t only real friendly, but he was plenty smart; I knew it the minute I started talking to him. So the first chance I got, I’d asked him advice about this problem I had.

  “Um-hmmm!” he’d said, after I’d explained the situation and he’d thought it over for a while. “Now, this privy sits on public property, right? It’s out in back of the courthouse?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “That’s exactly right, Ken.”

  “But it don’t bother no one but you?”

  “Right again,” I said. “You see, the courtroom is on the downstairs rear, and it don’t have no windows in back. The windows are up on the second floor where I live.”

  Ken asked me if I couldn’t get the county commissioners to tear the privy down and I said no, I couldn’t hardly do that. After all, a lot of people used it, and it might make ’em mad.

  “And you can’t get ’em to clean it out?” he asked. “Maybe sweeten it up a little with a few barrels of lime?”

  “Why should they?” I said. “It don’t bother no one but me. I’d probably call down trouble on myself if I ever complained about it.”

  “Uh-hah!” Ken nodded. “It’d seem right selfish of you.”

  “But I got to do something about it, Ken,” I said. “It ain’t just the hot-weather smell, which is plenty bad by itself, but that’s only part of it. Y’see, there’s these danged big holes in the roof that show everything that’s going on inside. Say I’ve got some visitors in, and they think, Oh, my, you must have a wonderful view out that way. So they look out, and the only view they get is of some fella doing his business.”

  Ken said, “Uh-hah!” again, kind of coughing and stroking his mouth. Then, he went on to say that I really had a problem, a real problem. “I can see how it might even upset a high sheriff like you, Nick, with all the pre-occu-pations of your great office.”

  “You got to help me, Ken,” I said. “I’m getting plumb frazzled out of my wits.”

  “And I’m going to help you,” Ken nodded. “I ain’t never let a brother officer down yet, and I ain’t about to begin now.”

  So he told me what to do, and I did it. I sneaked out to the privy late that night, and I loosened a nail here and there, and I shifted the floor boards around a bit. The next morning, I was up early, all set to spring into action when the proper time came.

  Well, sir, the fella that used the privy most was Mr. J.S. Dinwiddie, the bank president. He’d use it on the way home to lunch and on the way back from lunch, and on the way home at night and on the way in in the morning. Well, sometimes he’d pass it up, but never in the morning. By the time he’d got that far from his house his grits and gravy were working on him, and he just couldn’t get to the privy fast enough.

  He went rushing in that morning, the morning after I’d done my tampering—a big fat fella in a high white collar and a spanking new broadcloth suit. The floor boards went out from under him, and down into the pit. And he went down with them.

  Smack down into thirty years’ accumulation of night soil.

  Naturally, I had him fished out almost as fast as he went in. So he wasn’t really hurt none, just awful messed up. But I never saw one man so mad in all my borned days.

  He hopped up and down and sideways, waving his fists and flinging his arms around, and yelling blue murder. I tried to toss some water over him to get the worst of the filth off. But the way he was hopping around and jumping every which way, I couldn’t do much good. I’d throw the water at him in one place, and he’d be in another. And cuss! You never heard anything like it, and him a deacon in the church!

  The county commissioners came running out, along with the other office holders, all of ’em pretty jittery to see the town’s most important citizen like that. Mr. Dinwiddie recognized them somehow, although it’s hard to see how he could with all that gunk in his eyes. And if he could have found a club, I swear he’d’ve clubbed ’em.

  He cussed ’em up one side and down the other. He swore he’d file felony charges against them for criminal negligence. He yelled that he was going to file personal damage suits against them for wilfully perpetuating a public hazard.

  About the only person he had a kind word for was me. He said that a man like me could run the county by himself, and that he was going to see that all the other officials were recalled, because they were just a needless expense and a menace to life and limb as well.

  As things turned out, Mr. Dinwiddie never did get around to doing anything of the things he threatened to. But that sure settled the privy problem. It was gone and the pit was filled in within an hour; and if you ever feel like getting a punch in the nose, just tell the commissioners that there ought to be another courthouse privy.

  Well, that’s a sample of Ken Lacey’s advice. Just one sample of how good it is…

  Of course, some people might say it was no good at all, that it might have got Mr. Dinwiddie killed and me in a pack of trouble. They might say that the other advice Ken had given me was pure meanness, and meant to be hurtful rather than helpful.

  But me, well, I’ll always think good of people as long as I possibly can. Or at least I won’t think bad about ’em until I absolutely have to. So I hadn’t quite reached a decision about Ken as yet.

  I figured I’d see how he acted today, what kind of advice he gave me before I made up my mind. If he stacked up even halfway good, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. But if he didn’t appear even that good…

  Well, I’d know what to do about him.

  I always know.

  4

  I bought a bite of lunch from the train news butch, just a few sandwiches and some pie and potato chips and peanuts and cookies and sody-pop. About two o’clock that afternoon, we got into Ken Lacey’s town, the county seat where he was high sheriff.

  It was a real big place—probably four, five thousand people. The main street was paved, along with the square around the courthouse, and everywhere you looked there were wire-wheeled buggies and fancy fringe-topped carriages, and I even seen two, three auty-mo-biles with eye-goggled dudes driving ’em and women in veils and linen dusters holding on for dear life. I mean, it was just like being in New York or one of them other big cities I’ve heard about. All that stuff to see, and the people so busy and used to excitement that they didn’t pay no mind at all.

  Just for example, I passed this one vacant lot where there was the god-dangest dogfight going on that I ever did see. Kind of a battle royal between two hounds and a bulldog and a kind of spotty-assed mongrel.

  Why, even if there hadn’t been a fight, that mongrel would have been enough to make a fella stop and stare. Because I’m telling you, he was really something! He had this high ass in the back, all spotted and speckled like a cow had farted bran on him. But his front legs were so short that his nose almost rubbed on the ground. And one of his eyes was blue and the other’n was yaller. A real bright yaller like a woman’s hair.

  I stood there gawking, wishing that I had someone from Pottsville with me as a witness, because naturally no one’d ever believe I’d really seen a dog like that. Then, I happened to look around, and hard as
it was to tear myself away, I turned my back on that spectacle and went on toward the courthouse.

  I just about had to, you know, unless I wanted people to think I was an old country boy. Because I was the only one that had stopped to look. There was so much going on in that city that no one would ever give a second glance to something like that!

  Ken and a deputy named Buck, a fella I’d never met before, were sitting in the sheriff’s office; slumped way down on their spines with their boots crossed out in front of ’em, and their Stetsons tilted over their eyes.

  I coughed and scuffled my feet, and Ken looked up from under his hatbrim. Then he said, “Why, I’ll be god-danged, if it ain’t the high sheriff of Potts County!” And he rolled his chair over to me and held out his hand.

  “Set down, set down, Nick,” he said, and I sat down in one of the swivel chairs. “Buck, wake up and meet a friend of mine.”

  Buck was already awake, as it turned out, so he rolled over and shook hands like Ken had. Then, Ken kind of jerked his head at him, and Buck rolled over to the desk and got out a quart of white corn and a handful of stogies.

  “This here Buck is the smartest deputy I got,” Ken said, as we all had a drink and lit up. “Got a lot of initiative, Buck has. Don’t have to tell him every god-danged thing he’s supposed to do like you would some fellas.”

  Buck said all he’d ever done was to just try to do his duty, and Ken said, no, sir, he was smart.

  “Like old Nick here. That’s why he’s sheriff of the forty-seventh largest county in this state.”

  “Yeah?” Buck said. “I didn’t know they was but forty-seven counties in the state.”

  “Pre-zackly!” Ken said, sort of frowning at him. “How is things in Pottsville these days, Nick? Still booming?”

  “Well, no,” I said. “I wouldn’t hardly say that was booming. Pottsville ain’t exactly no real metropolis like you got here.”

  “Is that a fack?” Ken said. “Guess my recollection ain’t as good as it used to be. Just how big is Pottsville, anyways?”