They Don't Dance Much: A Novel

by James Ross

  ‘Wait a minute, Jack. Don’t you want a nightcap?’ he said. He turned to Johnny, who was standing by the stove smoking a cigarette.

  ‘You can go, Johnny. We’ll turn out the lights,’ he said. Johnny took one of the stovelids off and threw his cigarette in the stove. He turned and went out.

  I sat down on the table that was directly back of Smut. He got up and poured himself another drink and he fixed one for me. He brought the drinks over where I was sitting and handed me mine. Then he sat down in the chair and lit a cigarette.

  ‘I was a damn fool. I’d lost sixty dollars in that poker game. I hated to see it go. I thought maybe I could get it back with the dice. But I played hell.’

  ‘No use worrying about that now,’ I said. I was sleepy, and in my mind I agreed with him that he’d acted like a fool.

  ‘No, it’s gone now,’ he said. ‘But I’m in a bind, sort of. How much you reckon that check I gave Bert Ford was for?’

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty dollars. Before that he’d won most of the seventy dollars I had to start with.’

  ‘I just gave you fifty out of the cash box,’ I said.

  ‘I had about twenty dollars on me before I got that out of the cash register,’ he said. ‘But that ain’t worrying me. What’s worrying me is that I got a four-hundred-dollar note coming up at the Farmers & Merchants Bank this week.’

  ‘Can’t you meet it?’ I said.

  ‘No. The money I lost tonight was going to be part of it. I’d aimed to make enough out of that game to bring it up to three hundred and fifty or four hundred dollars.’

  ‘Maybe you can get it renewed,’ I said.

  ‘Doubt it,’ he said, and he looked glum. ‘I had some trouble getting it in the first place. I’d already borrowed and they knew it. It just took more to fix up this place than I’d counted on.’

  ‘The way you been taking in money, it looks like they’d wait a month or two for it. In a little while you could make enough to pay for it,’ I said.

  ‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it got out how much money I been taking in. Don’t you ever tell anybody my business.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said.

  Smut swallowed down his drink with one motion and sat the glass on the floor. ‘The reason I said that was that I don’t want Astor LeGrand to know exactly how much money I take in. Ever since I first come out here I been giving him a straight ten per cent to look out for me. I’m making too much now to do it. He ought to be satisfied with five per cent. And his brother-in-law would have to be cashier of the bank. If I tell them at the bank how much I take in out here, why it would be the same as telling Astor LeGrand.’

  I saw he was right, of course. ‘It’s a mess,’ I said. ‘Offhand, I wouldn’t know where you could scrape up the money.’

  ‘Maybe I can stall Bert off awhile,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe so. He’s got plenty of money anyway.’

  ‘He’s got some. I don’t know how much,’ Smut said, and hitched up his belt. ‘He used to be in a business to make money.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Used to be a strike-breaker. He’d get up a bunch of cutthroats and break up strikes that the unions were trying to pull.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Up North, and in the West. Badeye heard about him in Detroit.’

  ‘How come him to leave if he had a good thing?’

  ‘Must have got in trouble. Probably hit some picket a little too hard.’

  ‘They tell me he’s got thirty thousand dollars buried on his place,’ I said.

  Smut looked at me hard. ‘Who told you that?’ he asked.

  ‘Catfish,’ I said. ‘He told me that one night when Bert had the snakes he told him he had thirty thousand dollars buried somewhere.’

  ‘One of them is a lie. There ain’t thirty thousand dollars in this county,’ Smut said.

  ‘I reckon so,’ I said. ‘But Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt told me just this afternoon that Bert said something to him one night about it.’

  Smut studied awhile. ‘I remember something about that,’ he said. ‘I remember Baxter Yonce and Wheeler Wilkinson talking in the bowling alley up town one night. Baxter said Bert had a lot of money, fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, in a bank in Charlotte. He said Bert drew it out just a week before the bank busted.’

  ‘How’d Baxter know that?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. But Baxter ain’t a man to gossip,’ Smut said.

  ‘Wonder where he’s got it hid,’ I said.

  ‘Hell, if I knew that I wouldn’t be sitting here worrying about that note coming due at the bank,’ Smut said. He put his hands under his chin, and I went off and left him there to his worrying.

  8

  SMUT HAD TILL THURSDAY to get up the money. Wednesday morning, while I was helping Matt sweep out the front, he came in. He had on his dark suit, and a hat for a change. He walked over to where I was sweeping around the tables.

  ‘I’m going to the bank, Jack. Don’t know whether I’ll be back before twelve or not,’ he said.

  ‘Hope you have luck,’ I said.

  ‘Hope so. If that Schlitz man comes this morning, take a dozen cases of beer, and tell the El-Putro man I can’t sell them stinking things he calls cigars. Tell him not to leave but one box this time.’ El-Putro was Smut’s name for the brand of cigars that man sold. The real name for them was some sort of Senators. Smut twisted his neck around and walked out to the front where the pick-up was parked.

  After we got through sweeping and cleaning up there wasn’t much to do. The beer truck came, and the cigar salesman, and after they left I worked on a bookkeeping course I swapped out of Badeye. He said it was one he’d bought when he was up North. He said he got ambitious there for a while. Didn’t drink but a pint of liquor a day and saved his money. But it wasn’t long before he saw that a poor man didn’t have a chance. He got disheartened and quit the course. He claimed the correspondence school that sold him the course made him keep on paying for it, though, till it was all paid. Then they sent him the complete course. He said he’d lost the solutions to the problems he sent in, and anyway hadn’t sent in but twelve lessons when he quit. There was supposed to be ninety lessons in it, but lessons number 19, 21, and 53 weren’t there. He told me he lost them. On several of the lessons, but never on the front of any of them, there was this name: ‘Robert McCuiston.’ I guess that was the name of the man Badeye stole the course from. I swapped Badeye a straight razor and a bottle of hair tonic for it.

  It was considerably after twelve o’clock when Smut put in his appearance again. He came past the counter and didn’t even look up at me when he walked by.

  ‘Any luck?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not a bit,’ he said, and went on to the kitchen.

  I waited there, and it wasn’t long before he came back. He had a water glass full of whiskey and a bottle of ginger ale. We were by ourselves in the front.

  ‘Want part of this?’ he said, and pointed to the liquor.

  ‘I guess not,’ I said. ‘Might have a customer any time now.’

  ‘Damn the customers!’ he said. ‘Well, I did have a little luck—in a way. I got the note renewed for two months.’

  ‘That helps some, don’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Not much. They stuck forty dollars more on it for renewing it. And the regular interest on top of that.’

  ‘Hell-fire! That’s highway robbery!’ I said.

  Smut took about half of the liquor in the glass. He chased it with a drink of the ginger ale, then wiped his hand over his mouth.

  ‘I got to Corinth,’ he said, ‘and I made for the bank. J. V. Kirk was there. He was mighty cordial, till he found out that I wanted him to renew the note. Then he hemmed and hawed. Finally he says: “Mr. Milligan, I don’t know what to do. Come back to see me tomorrow and I’ll let you know what we can do about it.” Well, that wouldn’t give me time to be prepared in case he wouldn’t ren
ew it, so I says: “No, I think you ought to tell me now. Yes or no.” ’

  Smut finished the glass of liquor. Then he finished the bottle of ginger ale and went on: ‘Finally he says to come back about two o’clock. I told him all right, I’d do it. I went back out to the pick-up. I drove down the street and parked back of the hotel, on Depot Street. Then I came back uptown by the back lots, and went in the back of the Hang-Out. You know that’s directly in front of the bank. I got a Coca-Cola and set down in a chair by the front door.’

  Smut loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt-collar. ‘I waited a good while—an hour or so—when up drove Astor LeGrand. He went inside the bank and I guess he stayed in there half an hour. Then he come out, got in his car, and drove down the street toward the Courthouse. As soon as he left I walked straight to the bank. J. V. Kirk was sitting there in the cashier’s cage.’

  Smut pushed the glass down the counter. He hitched his shoulders and jerked his tie off. ‘ “Mr. Kirk,” I says to him, “I had to come back up town for something, and just thought I’d drop in and see if you’d made up your mind about that note.” He sort of smiled and nodded his head. “I decided to let you renew it for sixty days,” he said. “Thanks, Mr. Kirk,” I said. “Course we have to make an extra charge for this service,” he said. “How much?” I said. “Forty dollars,” he said, and he never batted an eye.’

  Smut took out a cigarette from his coat. He didn’t pull out the pack, just reached inside his coat and came out with one cigarette. ‘Well, that got me hot. I cussed a little and tried to get him down, but it wasn’t no use. I might as well been talking to a tombstone.’

  ‘So you signed it?’ I said.

  ‘So I signed it for forty bucks more than the old one. I got sixty days to get it in.’

  The roadhouse made plenty of money in the next month. The way things went it looked like Smut could pay off the note in sixty days. He made over three hundred dollars clear, in a month’s time. But he’d bought too much stuff on the installment plan. That ate him up. He had to pay fifty dollars a month on the booths, the counters, and such fixtures. He had to pay twenty-five dollars a month on the stuff he’d bought for the kitchen. The furniture that was in the cabins had been bought on time too, and he had to pay forty dollars a month on that. What made it worse was that he bought it from Smathers & Company; if he was thirty minutes late sending in a payment LeRoy Smathers would be right out. Altogether, Smut had to pay out over a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month on stuff he’d bought. That didn’t leave him enough profit to pay up the note at the bank. Still, he didn’t make much effort to raise the money during November, but just let things ride.

  One thing he did was to quit playing poker and blackjack. It was shooting crap had played the mischief with him, but after that he laid off all kinds of gambling. For a while it seemed like he lost confidence in himself. He got so he drank every night.

  We had a place in the back yard, between the roadhouse and the tourist cabins, where we played horseshoes in the afternoon. Dick or Sam would stay out front and Smut and myself, and sometimes Matt and Badeye, would pitch a few games of horseshoes. One afternoon in December Smut and I were playing a couple of games for fun. It was a warm day for December. A day that was sunshiny, but smoky-looking, like it was going to rain that night, or anyway the next day. I won the first game, and that was queer. Smut could always beat any of us, and I was the worst in the lot. Even Badeye could beat me when he was staggering drunk.

  After I won the second game I said: ‘What’s the matter with you, Smut? Something on your mind?’

  ‘I’m trying to think,’ Smut said.

  He pitched his first shoe at the farther stake. It was off a couple of feet. The next one wasn’t any better, but was on the other side. ‘I been thinking about going to Bert Ford and trying to borrow eight hundred dollars. I want to pay that note at the bank and get it off my mind. I would like to pay LeRoy Smathers too. I don’t like that little wretch.’

  ‘Who does?’ I asked.

  ‘It may be that his ma does,’ Smut said.

  I pitched my two shoes and both of them were off plenty; still they were closer than Smut’s and that made it two and nothing. We walked down to the other stake.

  ‘Bert’s the only fellow I know of that might have the money,’ Smut said. ‘But he’s so tight that I doubt if he’ll let me have it. If he won’t, then I got to make some other shift to pay the bank.’

  ‘Maybe you could borrow it from Wilbur Brannon,’ I said. ‘Or maybe Baxter Yonce. They both like you.’

  ‘Nix on them,’ Smut said.

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’ I asked him.

  ‘Wilbur Brannon wouldn’t lend his grandma a dime. That’s a rule of his. It’s a rule he ain’t ever broke. He says he don’t borrow and he don’t lend.’

  ‘Have you ever tried him?’ I said.

  ‘No, but that’s the way he is. If you want to borrow money you can go to somebody else and borrow it, or you can go to hell. Either way you do suits Wilbur Brannon all right. But don’t go to him.’

  ‘Well, how about Baxter Yonce?’

  ‘Baxter Yonce is a good fellow. But he generally spends what he makes, if it’s a hundred dollars a year, or twenty thousand dollars a year. Anyway, he’s a good friend of Astor LeGrand’s. He couldn’t afford to let me have it.’

  ‘What’s Astor LeGrand got to do with it?’ I said.

  ‘Plenty. He’s got his eye on this place. He wants to own it and have it run. He don’t want me to be able to meet that note at the bank, nor to pay all this other money I owe.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I said. We hadn’t pitched a shoe toward the other stake, but stood there with the horseshoes in our hands. Smut had his right foot on the top of the stake.

  ‘I just know it,’ Smut said. ‘He’s done gone and talked to LeRoy Smathers and got him to believing he stands to lose on the furniture he let me have. LeRoy’s been after me to pay all I owe them, by the first of the year. But he can’t make me do it.’

  ‘If that’s so, why didn’t Astor make J. V. Kirk clamp down on you last month when the note at the bank was due the first time?’ I asked him.

  ‘Because he wants this place to get going good before he takes it over. He’ll make the bank let me renew the note again if I want to do it. But they’ll charge me another ten per cent to do it. He wants me to get worse in debt than I already am. But he wouldn’t like to see me borrow money from somebody like Baxter Yonce that’s too tender-hearted to sell me out if I couldn’t pay on time.’

  ‘What’ll you do if you can’t borrow the money?’ I asked.

  ‘I ain’t decided,’ Smut said.

  I got first pitch at the other stake, because I had won both points the last time. My first shoe was off. The next one was a ringer. I didn’t ring one very often and it made me feel pretty good. But Smut had got his money troubles off his chest and he got interested in pitching horseshoes. His first pitch was on top of my ringer. His next one leaned on the stake. That gave him the game. We quit after that and left the horseshoes where they were.

  That night Smut dressed up like he was expecting a big crowd out. But it was Thursday night and I thought he must be crazy. Thursday was generally the worst night in the week. But he didn’t tarry there long. He went in the kitchen, and I reckon he took a couple of slugs and maybe had a sandwich. When he came back past me he had a bottle of rye sticking out of his overcoat pocket. He went out of the door, without saying pea-turkey to me; in a minute I heard him drive off in the pickup. He hadn’t come in when I closed up at midnight.

  He slept late the next day. It was about noon before he came into the roadhouse. Then he didn’t stay long. Just went in the kitchen and ate, then went to the pick-up again.

  We were snowed under with high-school boys when he got back. It was after dark then and the place was full of kids from Blytheville. They had played a football game with Corinth that afternoon and had stopped in our place to eat. It was a pos
t-season game they had played, and Blytheville won 7-6. They were afraid to eat in Corinth after winning the game. They sat in the booths and at the tables, and raised a loud racket, quarreling, beating on the tables with forks, scraping their shoes on the floor, and cussing each other for the pleasure they got out of hearing their voices. The two coaches that were with them sat together at a table in the back and read the evening papers.

  I was sitting at the counter eating something that Badeye brought out to me when Smut came in and sat down beside me. He looked mean and gloomy. He was bareheaded and his hair needed cutting. He had on red corduroy pants and a brown leather lumberjack hat was turned up around the collar. It was cold that night.

  ‘Blytheville must of won the football game,’ he said to me.

  ‘They did, 7-6.’ I said.

  ‘Like to have seen it. But I had other business,’ he said.

  I wondered where he’d been that afternoon, but I didn’t say anything. He reached inside his lumberjack and came out with one cigarette. He tapped it on the counter and went on, ‘I had to go see Bert Ford this afternoon.’

  ‘Do any good?’ I asked.

  ‘He wouldn’t let me have it. Claimed he didn’t have any money where he could get his hands on it. But he’s a lie.’ Smut got up from the stool and stuck his cigarette in his mouth. ‘Got a match?’ he asked me. I handed him a book of matches. He certainly looked like a villain, standing there with his hair curled down around the top of his lumberjack collar. The cigarette stuck in the side of his mouth, his jaw underslung, and his cheekbones sticking out about six inches on either side of his eyes. He lit the cigarette and handed the matches back to me. ‘Much obliged,’ he said, and turned and went to the kitchen. I reckon Rufus and Johnny got a good cussing out for being alive. He wasn’t in a good humor that night.

  December wasn’t as good a month as November had been. We didn’t take in much more than two hundred dollars clear, the way I figured it out. During Christmas week we didn’t much more than make expenses. One reason was that a lot of folks in Corinth were off visiting that week, or had company that didn’t care for roadhouses. Then the bars are down in Corinth Christmas week anyway. Everybody drinks liquor out in the open and has a good time without making any bones about it. Even the best folks. Toward the end of the month I began wondering how Smut was going to meet that note that came due pretty soon. I hoped he could do it. I hated to think about losing my job.