by James Ross
I looked at Bert’s eye, then looked away. ‘It’s out under the bee-gums,’ Bert whispered. ‘Between the granary and the orchard. Take me. I’ll show you.’ He looked up at Smut like he was eager to tell him where it was now.
‘Promise me not to kill me,’ he whispered to Smut.
‘I ain’t going to hurt you, Bert,’ Smut told him. He picked Bert up and I held the light on the stairs for them to go up. We went out of the kitchen, into the hall, and out the back door.
There was a row of bee-gums in front of Bert’s peach orchard. There were about a dozen of them, built like long goods boxes, and whitewashed.
‘Which one?’ I heard Smut whisper to Bert.
Bert whispered back: ‘Third one from this end. Under it.’
Smut threw him on the frozen ground. I held the flashlight on the third bee-gum from the end. Smut turned it over and knelt down. There was molded grass underneath, and white-looking dirt. In a minute Smut brought out a fruit jar. Then two more after that one. He turned toward where Bert was lying, looking up at the sky.
‘How many fruit jars?’ Smut asked him.
‘Three. Just them three,’ Bert whispered.
Smut motioned me over to where he was kneeling on the ground. I went over there and held the flashlight down so he could see what was in the jars. He unscrewed the top of one jar and stuck his hand in it. He came out with a roll of bills. It was a thick roll, with a rubber band tight around each end and another rubber band across the middle of it. The bill on top was a fifty-dollar bill. The outside of the jars had been glazed over with varnish or paint, so you couldn’t see through them. Smut screwed the top back on the jar and handed it to me.
‘Give me his gun,’ he said. I gave it to him and he snapped it open to see if there were any cartridges in it. Something fell out; it sounded like an empty.
‘What was that?’ Smut asked.
‘An empty, I guess,’ I said.
Smut put the gun in his raincoat pocket and got down on his knees and started feeling around for it.
‘I got to find it,’ he said. ‘Hold that light down here.’
I held the light on the ground, but he couldn’t find it and stood up in a minute.
‘Might not have been anything,’ he said. ‘Anyway it won’t ever be found. We ain’t got much more time out here.’
He stepped toward Bert. ‘You tote the jars,’ he told me. ‘I got to tote Bert. We’ll go in the house and count it.’
He handed the other two jars to me. They were half-gallon jars and bundlesome to carry. Smut bent his knees and picked up Bert Ford.
We counted it in the fire room. Smut threw Bert on the floor and pushed his feet under the bed. We sat down at the table and counted. That is, Smut did. He acted like he was afraid I would try to slip some of it out if he wasn’t looking. There were two rolls in each jar.
Bert Ford lay there without stirring while Smut counted it. The money was fixed so it wasn’t much trouble to count. One roll was nothing but fifty-dollar bills. One roll, a thin one, was all hundred-dollar bills. There were two rolls of twenties and one of tens. The biggest roll of all had a mixture of fives, ones, and a few two-dollar bills. Smut took off his right glove. He wet the first two fingers of his hand and fanned through the bills in a hurry. As soon as he got through counting a roll, he mumbled something to himself. I guess he was multiplying the number of bills by the denomination of that roll. When he finished he looked up at me.
‘Twelve thousand dollars,’ he said. He pushed his chair back and looked at Bert. ‘It ain’t enough,’ he said. ‘You got more than this somewhere. Where is it?’
I was on the other side of the table from Smut. I pushed my chair back and looked at Bert. I held the flashlight on his face. He blinked his good eye and then closed it. His lips looked black in the light.
‘That’s all I got out here,’ Bert Ford said. ‘I got some government bonds in a box in Corinth, but you couldn’t use them.’ He sounded like somebody trying to talk with a mouth full of mush.
Smut bent down over Bert Ford’s face. ‘I would hate to have to burn your eyes out to make you tell me the truth,’ he said.
Bert rolled his head toward Smut’s legs. He opened the eye that hadn’t been burned. ‘Don’t hurt me no more, Milligan,’ he said. ‘That’s all I got.’ His voice was weak and sounded like he was tired.
Smut stood up straight. He drew back his foot and kicked Bert on the side of the face. Smut wore number 12 shoes and he kicked hard. I heard something pop when he kicked. It was probably just the shoe popping. Bert didn’t say anything. Just opened his mouth, then shut it mighty slow.
Smut came back to the table and reached across it toward me. ‘Gimme the flashlight,’ he said. He took it and went into the kitchen. With the light gone the room looked odd; black in the corners and toward the walls, with a little glow in front of the fireplace, from the bed of coals.
When Smut came back from the kitchen he had the flashlight in one hand and a long, bone-handled fork in the other. He handed the flashlight back to me, and dropped to his knees in front of the fireplace. He wrapped his handkerchief around the handle and held the fork in the bed of coals until the prongs were white hot.
‘Hold the light in his face,’ Smut said, and he stood up.
He kicked Bert’s head around till it was more in the center of the room. Then he sat on his chest and motioned me to come closer with the light.
I came around the table and held the flashlight in Bert Ford’s face. Smut put his left hand over Bert’s mouth. He held the fork in his right hand. I turned my head and looked at the green window shades.
It might have been my imagination, but I thought I could hear it sizzling like meat frying in a hot pan. I heard Smut Milligan shift his feet.
‘You ain’t holding the light steady, Jack,’ Smut said.
I got a good grip on the flashlight. I could smell the grease smoke. In a minute I heard Smut get up and then I looked down at Bert Ford’s face. He was working his lips, but wasn’t saying anything. Smut put the fork down on the hearth and sniffed the air.
‘He ought to be in a talking notion now,’ Smut said.
Bert shook his head like somebody sleeping that wiggles when a fly lights on them. He began moaning and talking. ‘Kill me, Milligan! Hurry up. You got all my money. For God’s sake hurry up!’ He opened his good eye and whispered, ‘For God’s sake throw a little dab of water on my eye!’ Then he was quiet and lay there with his eye shut and his mouth open, with the light shining on the gold teeth in his mouth. Smut kneeled down to the floor again.
‘Come on, Bert,’ he said. ‘Where’s the rest of it?’
Bert began tossing his head from one side to the other, with his mouth open in what looked like a grin, but wasn’t. Then he lay back and said, quiet enough: ‘Go on and shoot me. What’s the hold-up?’
Smut frowned. ‘The lying bastard!’ he said. ‘He’s got more money somewhere. But we ain’t got all night here.’ He picked up the fork and put it in his coat-pocket.
‘Hold the light for me till we get to the front porch. Then snap it off,’ he told me.
He picked Bert up again and we went out of the room. I ran ahead when we got almost to the front door, and held it open for Smut.
He dumped Bert Ford in the back of the pick-up and stuffed some cotton waste into his mouth. Then we went back in the house and began straightening things up. We still had on the gloves. I guess Smut was afraid of fingerprints. He made up the bed, like there hadn’t been anybody sleeping in it that night. I stood the chairs in the bedroom back like they were, and I put the Bible on the little table. Smut gathered the three fruit jars in his arms and we went back to the pick-up.
‘Is he going to ride in the back?’ I asked when we came to the pick-up.
‘Yeah,’ Smut said. ‘The bumps won’t bother him now.’
‘What you going to do with him?’ I said.
‘Don’t bother me,’ Smut said.
We got in th
e cab and Smut stepped on the starter. But it was cold, and finally I had to get out and start pushing. I pushed it out of the front yard into the lane and Smut tried it again. Still it didn’t start and I kept on pushing it down the lane. It was downhill and not very hard pushing. Toward the bottom of the little hill Smut tried it again and it caught. He put on the brakes and waited for me.
When I opened the door Smut was finishing the bottle of whiskey. He got the last of it and threw the bottle in the foot. The three fruit jars were in the foot too, but I picked them up and held them in my lap. Smut looked over at me when I picked them up, but it was all right. He had both the guns.
I looked out of the window and the moon was getting low. It must have been between two and three o’clock then. Smut drove even faster than he had on the way out, and paid no attention to bumps. Now and then I could hear Bert Ford rolling against the sides of the pick-up. We went back the same way we came out, and it wasn’t long before we were back on the paved highway.
We turned up the highway for a hundred yards or so, then Smut swerved the pick-up to the right and we went down another dirt road. When we turned we nearly went over, for Smut hadn’t slowed down much. I heard something bumping around in the back.
The road ran beside the river and it wasn’t anything but a wagon road. Nobody ever used it except people that might go there to fish in the season, and sometimes Catfish. He made liquor down there. It was the worst I ever traveled in a car, but we got over it in a hurry.
Finally we came to where the road crossed the mouth of Jacob’s Creek. There was a drop of about six or seven feet, straight down on this side, straight up on the other. Smut threw on the brakes there. He opened the door on his side and jumped out. I sat there where I was, wondering what next.
I soon found out. Smut opened the door on my side and stuck his head in.
‘All right, let’s get him out,’ he said.
Smut climbed up into the back and picked Bert up again. He handed him over the side to me. The weight of him staggered me, but I got him balanced and sort of leaned him against me like you would a crosstie you were trying to up-end.
Smut got out of the truck and walked over to where I was standing. He reached around Bert’s neck and pulled him over.
‘You got to help me tote him, Jack,’ he said. Smut had him under the shoulders and I got him at the feet.
We toted him then like two fellows toting a sack of fertilizer, and him swinging every time we stepped, just like a sack of fertilizer. We went down by the creek in a lot of honeysuckle vines and willow trees till we came to a tree that was a big river ash and looked like a line tree. Smut stepped to the right there and I turned too.
We walked on across a meadow that had grown up in Johnson grass and up a hill that had been cut over for pines. On top of the hill it was flat like a table for a little ways, then we commenced going downhill and came into a gulch. I knew where I was then. It was the gulch Catfish had his still in.
We turned down the gulch and it wasn’t but a short piece till we came to the still. The gulch was wide there, for it kept going back every time there was a big rain. Catfish’s still looked like a big box. There was a furnace built out of brick, and above the furnace was the container for the beer. Catfish had built the container out of planks, then lined it with tin and nailed tin around the outside. It was made square, about four feet by four feet, and at least five feet deep. It was a good-sized outfit.
The furnace was built down in the ground, but the top of the container was up pretty high, as high as my shoulders. When we came up to the side of the still we stopped a minute to blow.
‘It’s going to be hard to stuff him in this thing,’ Smut said.
I looked at the top of the still. It was covered with the same tin-sheeted planks, except for the hole where Catfish poured in the water, the meal, and the sugar. This hole was covered with a thirty-gallon barrel that looked like a hat on top of the container.
Smut dropped Bert’s head to the ground, and I stood there holding up his feet. ‘Drop him,’ Smut said. ‘We got to find a rock.’
I put Bert down. I didn’t hunt for a rock. But in a couple of minutes Smut came back with a long, flat rock that probably weighed forty pounds. He began trying to slip it under the ropes that were around Bert. But the rock wasn’t shaped very well for that. Smut threw it on the ground and went off after another.
When he came back he had a rock that was about the same weight as the first one but was shaped better, because it had been worn out a little in the middle and would hold against the ropes. Smut got down on his knees and loosened the ropes around Bert’s chest and arms. Bert stirred a little then, and groaned. Smut took his pistol out and hit him a stiff lick on the temple. After that Bert was quiet.
Smut took the rock and heaved it up on the top of the container. Then he stooped over Bert and beckoned to me.
‘Grab hold of his feet again,’ he told me.
Smut was at his head and I had him by the feet. We swung him a couple of times, then heaved. He cleared the top of the still by about half an inch. Smut put his hands on top of the container.
‘Give me a shove,’ he said.
I shoved him and he climbed up beside Bert Ford. He fixed the rock under the ropes that he had loosened, then stood up. He took the barrel off the opening, and then picked Bert up by his shoulders. I stood there and watched while he dragged Bert to the opening and pushed him into the beer. When he fell in, it made a sloshing fuss and the beer splashed against the sides of the still for a minute, but Smut put the barrel back in place and everything got quiet.
We went back the same way we came in to the highway. We took up it to the roadhouse, and when we turned off the highway into the yard, Smut shut off the motor and coasted in without making any noise. We made sure the car was in about the same location as it was the last time anybody would have noticed it. Smut gave me one jar to carry and he took the other two. It was five minutes past four when we slipped in our cabin.
We hadn’t said anything to each other since we left the still. But as soon as we had had a drink and got in bed, Smut began talking. His bed was beside mine and it was dark in there, for the moon had gone down then.
‘We got to do some planning,’ he said. I didn’t say anything, and he went on: ‘We got to get rid of the body. It’ll be some time before anybody misses him. If they can’t find him they can’t ever prove anything.’
The liquor had cleared some of the cotton out of my throat. ‘How’ll you get rid of the body?’ I asked.
‘How’ll we get rid of it, you mean,’ he said. ‘You was in on this. Don’t forget that, pal.’
‘All right. I haven’t forgotten anything,’ I said. ‘I reckon I’ll share in the money, then.’
He hesitated a minute. ‘Why, yes, sure you will,’ he said.
‘Fifty-fifty,’ I said.
I could feel his eyes on me in the dark. ‘That’s a little steep,’ he said. ‘I done the dirty work. I really got the money.’
‘I saw you do it too,’ I said. ‘Keep that in mind.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind, all right,’ Smut said.
I heard him turn over then and I guess he was getting ready to go to sleep, but I was pretty jittery and getting worse the more I thought about it. Since it was over now I could talk too.
‘What about all this money we got here?’ I asked.
Smut jumped out of bed. ‘Great God!’ he said. ‘I was about to forget the fruit jars. I’ll put them in my locker till tomorrow.’
‘You think we’ll be able to hide the money and the gun too?’
‘Hell, yes,’ Smut said. I heard him fumbling around in the direction of his locker, then I could hear something going ‘glug, glug, glop.’ After he finished taking his drink, he must have put the fruit jars in the locker, for I heard him snap the lock shut.
I heard him get back on the bed. ‘I got to do some thinking about this situation,’ he said. ‘It didn’t turn out just like I’d figure
d on.’
‘It better be pretty good thinking,’ I said.
‘Whatta you mean? You trying to threaten me?’ Smut asked. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was sitting up on the bed.
‘No,’ I said.
‘If you don’t have no confidence in my judgment why don’t you work out a few plans on your own hook?’ he said. His voice sounded like a cross between a sneer and a snarl.
‘I may do so,’ I said.
‘I let you in on a good thing,’ he said, ‘and now you begin griping about the way I run things. We got to stick together on this. We’re both in it to our necks.’
‘I don’t like losing that shell out there at the bee-gums,’ I said.
‘To hell with it,’ Smut said.
That was the last we said to each other that night, and I suppose Smut went to sleep then. But I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about what we’d done, and I was sore with Smut for pulling me into a murder without saying anything to me before-hand. I was afraid he had me picked for a fall guy if anything went wrong.
The liquor had gone out of me by then and I felt lousy. I lay there till it was light outside. I got up then and dressed in a hurry, for it was cold in the cabin. There was a mirror in the shower room and I took a look at myself. I didn’t look so good. After I washed my face I pinched it so it would get some color into it, and I took some eye drops and poured them into my eyes until they looked clearer. Then I went out of the cabin and ran across the lot to the roadhouse.
Rufus was frying eggs when I got inside the kitchen. Dick Pittman was standing in front of the stove, warming his hind parts and his hands at the same time. He looked up when I walked in.
‘What’s the matter, Jack?’ he said. ‘You look like you was out all night in bad comp’ny.’
‘Me and Smut drank a little too much last night. We both got sick,’ I said.
Rufus Jones stirred the eggs. ‘Drink you a cuppa cawfee, Mr. Jack,’ he said. ‘It’ll settle your insides.’
He had a tin pot on the stove. I picked up a cup and poured it full. My hand shook while I was holding the cup, and Dick noticed it.