by James Ross
When I went back to the other side Badeye was there and he was getting along all right. His glass eye looked as well as it ever did, but the other one looked like a mottled marble. Green and red and white, all run together. He smelled like a barrel of beer.
‘Whose car is that red thing outside?’ Badeye asked me.
‘Mrs. Fisher’s,’ I said.
‘Lola Fisher’s?’
‘She’s the only Mrs. Fisher in Corinth that I know of,’ I said.
Badeye stuck his hand down in the pretzel bowl and got a handful of pretzels.
‘No, there ain’t but just Henry Fisher and Charles Fisher in Corinth. But there’s plenty of Fishers on the other side of Pee Dee River,’ he said.
‘Any kin to these in Corinth?’ I asked him.
‘Hell, yes,’ Badeye said. ‘Close kin. Why, old Henry Fisher ain’t no blue blood. That old scoundrel come to Corinth when he was about eighteen year old and got a job in the cotton mill. He wasn’t a thing but common white trash, and for a long time he was just a mill hand. I’ve heard it plenty of times that he hadn’t never wore shoes in the summer-time till he commenced working in the mill.’
‘How’d he manage to get so rich?’ I said.
‘He saved his money. That’s a tight rascal. Then old Grimes that used to run the mill took a likin to him. On top of that he married money. Married a old maid that had money.’
‘He was pretty old himself when he got married, wasn’t he?’ I said.
‘Must of been at least thirty-five. I bet he’s seventy-five now.’
‘Don’t look it,’ I said.
‘No. He’s so used to keeping everything covered up that he won’t show his age,’ Badeye said.
About that time a car stopped out front and Sam Hall got out of it. Then the car drove on again in the direction of Blytheville. Sam Hall came inside and Dick Pittman came in too.
Sam sat down at the counter beside Badeye, and Dick went over to the door that opened into the dance hall. I don’t know how he knew that Smut and Lola were in there.
‘Your car’s ready now, Mrs. Fisher,’ Dick called out to her.
Lola didn’t answer him, but Smut Milligan said, ‘Okay, Dick,’ and Dick came over where the rest of us were sitting.
Dick took a package of chewing tobacco out of his hip pocket and stuffed his mouth full. He chewed on it awhile and then said: ‘Damn if that nail wasn’t really up in that tire. Looked like somebody might have took a hammer and drove it in. That was a brand-new tire, too.’
‘I bet she drove it in herself,’ Badeye said. ‘What in the hell does she come out here so much for, anyway?’
None of us answered him, and Badeye lit a cigarette and went on: ‘She always comes out in the afternoon, when there ain’t anybody much out here. Why don’t she come out with her husband sometimes?’
‘Don’t talk so loud, Badeye,’ Sam Hall said.
Badeye went to the icebox where we kept the beer and got a bottle out. When he was doing some earnest drinking Badeye would mix liquor and beer all the time. He opened the bottle of beer and drank down part of it.
‘What business has she got out here?’ Badeye asked us.
Dick spat in the spittoon. ‘I reckon she knows her business better’n I do,’ he said. ‘Anyway, she don’t bother me none.’
‘Hell, she don’t bother me none,’ Badeye said, ‘but it’s gettin noticeable. Her comin out here by herself like this. I bet her husband’s out of town right now.’
Sam Hall was bent over tying up his shoelace, but he straightened up when Badeye said that. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘He left town this morning.’
‘See what I told you?’ Badeye said.
‘The reason I know,’ Sam said, ‘is because I was hanging around Rich’s filling station just before I left Corinth to come back out here. Just hanging around, and this Wiley that drives for Fisher drove that Cadillac up and was having the oil checked. Wiley was bragging about how fast he drove back from Charlotte this morning.’
‘I thought you said he was taking Fisher to Charlotte,’ I said.
‘He did. But he was doing his fast driving when he come back by himself. He wouldn’t drive that fast if Fisher was with him. He’d get fired.’
‘How come Fisher to stay in Charlotte? He don’t do no business in a town as little as Charlotte,’ Badeye said.
Wiley was taking him to the airport in Charlotte to catch the plane to Washington,’ Sam said.
‘What’s he going to Washington for?’ Badeye asked.
‘How in the hell do I know?’ Sam said.
‘Dirty politics,’ Badeye said. ‘He’s going up there to play some dirty politics. He’d do well to stay in Corinth and keep his eye on that wife of his’n.’
‘Pipe down, Badeye,’ Sam Hall said, and just then Smut Milligan and Lola passed the door that opened into the dance hall. I guess they went on out then, for it wasn’t long before Lola drove off.
Smut Milligan didn’t come back to the roadhouse and I didn’t see him again until about night when I went down to the cabin to get my pipe. He was in the shower room and he was humming some little tune to himself. There was a bottle of liquor and a glass sitting on the dresser. Smut looked out at me and waved his razor.
‘I feel pretty good, Jack,’ he said to me. ‘I got a load off my mind this morning when I went to Corinth.’
‘How was that?’ I asked.
‘I got rid of the installment crap. The payment I made on the pick-up today was the last one. It’s not worth a hoot, but anyway it’s paid for. And I made two regular payments today to LeRoy Smathers, and that finished paying him for the stuff we got in these cabins. I had to make a down payment on it to start with, and it wasn’t so much that I owed him.’
‘I wish to God I was rid of him,’ I said.
‘Don’t you pay him some every month?’ Smut asked me, and began shaving under his chin.
‘I’ve just paid him about twenty dollars,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll wait now till I get my share of the money and pay him off then.’
‘That’s the thing to do,’ Smut said. He stuck his head out of the door. ‘That twenty-five-dollar payment I made on the stuff in the kitchen was all of that. I got it off today too. On top of that I finished paying for the fixtures.’
How much was that a month?’
‘Fifty dollars,’ Smut said.
‘You must be rid of over a hundred dollars a month that you’ve been having to pay out,’ I said.
‘Everybody’s paid off now except Astor LeGrand,’ Smut said.
I moved my chair over next to the shower room door, so I could talk to him better. ‘You going to be able to pay LeGrand when the note comes due next time? Or will you have to dig into the twelve thousand to do it?’ I asked.
Smut took the brush and started lathering the left side of his neck.
‘I could pay him out of what I take in out here,’ he said, ‘but it would take close scraping. Of course I ain’t going to risk taking any of the twelve thousand and spending it yet. Anyway, it’s to my advantage to let the note drag along. I’ll just keep putting up a poor mouth to LeGrand.’
‘Why don’t you pay him off and tell him to go climb the flagpole on top of the Courthouse?’ I said.
‘I don’t think he climbs very well,’ Smut said. ‘He ain’t used to it. Anyway, as soon as I pay him off I got to start cutting him in more.’
‘How come?’
‘What I mean is, right now he thinks he’s got me by the short hair and he’s not even bothering to come out and look things over. He ain’t been out but once since Christmas. He thinks the note he’s got is all he needs.’
‘You still pay him off for protection, don’t you?’ I asked.
‘Oh, sure. I take him what I claim is ten per cent of my take. It’s about five per cent, but he’s not been bothering to check up on me lately. If I was to pay him off and not be in debt to him he might start trying to get rid of me.’
‘I still
don’t see how he’s going to do that,’ I said.
‘Oh, he can do it, all right. He can have me closed up in five minutes. Still, I ain’t so afraid of him as I was. I believe he’ll let me alone even after I pay the note if I’ll start cutting him in about ten per cent of the rakeoff. I’ll claim it’s twenty per cent and make out to him that I ain’t getting anything out of the joint but a fair salary.’
‘Ten per cent’s a lot of money for protection,’ I said.
‘It’s the only way you can run a joint like this and get along,’ Smut said. He finished shaving his neck and commenced washing the lather off the razor.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you must really be taking in the cash now. Didn’t you tell me back in the winter that it would take you sixteen months to pay for the fixtures, at the rate of fifty dollars a month? You told me you owed eight hundred dollars on the fixtures.’
‘I don’t remember it,’ Smut said.
‘I do,’ I said. ‘It was the first of December, or close to it. That just makes it about three months. You must really be taking in the dough. You must have paid them about six hundred and fifty dollars today.’
Smut had been taking the blade out of the razor, but he stopped and looked at himself in the mirror. He pretended he was powerfully interested in a little cut on his neck.
‘I cut myself a little,’ Smut said. He looked around toward me. ‘I tell you how that was, Jack. I talked to the man and he agreed to take five hundred and fifty dollars for the debt if I’d pay him the cash right now. I did it, but it took close scraping.’
‘No doubt,’ I said.
Smut looked back into the mirror. ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘I took in plenty of money other night in the poker game, that night the hosiery-mill boys had a game. They was all flush and I relieved them.’
‘What night was that?’
He thought a minute. ‘Last Thursday night.’
‘I thought you went to the show in Corinth that night.’
‘No. I was in the poker game,’ Smut said.
I went on out then and back to the roadhouse. Badeye and Sam Hall were playing a game of checkers. Dick Pittman was sitting in the door, whittling on a dogwood stick. I went to the counter and sat down and started in on the night’s worrying. There was plenty of it to do.
Smut Milligan was a first-class liar, but I’d been around him long enough to tell when he was at it. He had been doing plenty of lying that night, but it was a little below his usual high standard. I knew he’d taken some of the twelve thousand to pay up his installment debts. It began to look like he might soon have it all spent at the rate he was going. I made up my mind to start looking for it that very night if Smut went off. I knew he wasn’t fool enough to take it and deposit it in some bank, where somebody might go and check up on him. I didn’t think he would risk renting a safety-deposit box and take a chance on keeping it there. It would be safe enough there from everybody except the Federals, but Smut was breaking the Federal liquor laws every time he sold a pint of corn liquor. He couldn’t afford to put the money in a safety-deposit box and take a chance on the Treasury Department never sticking their noses in it. I knew the money was somewhere around the roadhouse. I thought it might be in our cabin.
15
SMUT CROSSED ME UP that night. He didn’t take a trip. I don’t know why Lola came out to see him that afternoon, unless she was scared about something, or was giving him the lay of the land for future reference.
Even after we went to bed that night I kept myself awake and debated whether or not to get up and look for the money anyway, with Smut there in the room. I didn’t quite have the nerve to risk it.
The next morning really looked like it was spring. The oak trees were budding out in a pale green and the little Easter pinks were popping open beside the highway. Since it was such a fine morning I thought maybe Smut Milligan would get in his pick-up and take off somewhere. But he disappointed me again. He came up to the roadhouse about eight o’clock and just parked there.
Smut and Badeye and Sam Hall and myself were sitting in the front that morning when Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt came walking in the front door. He had his walking-stick in one hand and he toted a basket of eggs in the other hand.
‘How much you give for eggs, Milligan?’ he asked Smut.
Smut looked up from the Charlotte paper. ‘Are they fresh?’ he asked.
‘Hell, yes, they’re fresh,’ Old Man Joshua said. He took out his corncob pipe and stuck it in the side of his mouth. ‘Every egg I got here’s been laid in the last two days.’
‘I been paying twenty-seven cents a dozen,’ Smut said.
Old Man Joshua took out his can of tobacco and filled his pipe. ‘It ain’t enough,’ he told Smut. ‘You been buying cold-storage eggs. These here eggs is fresh.’
‘I been getting my eggs from Wheeler Wilkinson in Corinth,’ Smut said. ‘They’re always fresh. I ain’t never got a bad egg from Wheeler. Anyway, I got a good supply of eggs on hand. I don’t never know when you’re going to bring me some eggs, nor how many.’
‘Well, damn it, I don’t never know how many eggs the confound hens is going to lay,’ the old man said. He sucked on his pipe and spat across the room, under one of the booths.
‘Gimme thirty cents a dozen and I’ll take it out in trade. They’s five dozen here,’ Old Man Joshua said.
‘Well, all right,’ Smut said. He took the basket and put it back under the counter beside the box where we kept some knives and forks and spoons. He wrote out a due bill for the eggs and handed it to the old man.
‘You all usin all the paper?’ Old Man Joshua asked.
We had the paper divided. Smut had the front and back pages, I was reading the funny paper, and Badeye had the sports section. Sam Hall had the society section and the column by Lucia Locket. He got in last and had to take what was left.
Smut yawned and put his hand over his mouth. He pushed his part of the paper down the counter to Old Man Joshua. ‘Here,’ Smut said, ‘there ain’t much news today.’
The old man took the newspaper and held it out in front of his face about a foot. I guess he was near-sighted. I finished the funny paper and put it on the counter. Smut picked that up and began reading it. Sam Hall was sitting in a booth over against the wall, reading his section. He looked over toward me and sort of chuckled. Sam never laughed out; he was pretty fat and his belly and both chins sort of shook when he chuckled.
‘I wish this Lucia Locket would quit writing a column,’ Sam said. ‘She hurts my operations in Corinth.’
Smut looked up from the funny paper. ‘How’s that, Sam?’ he asked.
‘Well, all the girls in Corinth read what she says every morning, and when you get one of them out here on Lover’s Lane, why, she remembers what Lucia Locket says and the girl won’t do nothing but maybe let you hold her hand.’
‘Hell, nobody pays any attention to Lucia Locket,’ Smut said.
Sam chuckled again. Sam wasn’t as dumb as Matt Rush and Dick Pittman. In fact he finished high school in Corinth; not that that’s anything to write home about—other folks have done the same thing—but Sam had pretty good sense. He was just naturally lazy, though, and didn’t have the ambition a hog’s got in July. He had a face that looked like a Chinaman’s, only his skin was pink like a healthy baby’s. When he could get a night off he liked to go courting in Corinth.
‘I don’t reckon anybody but young girls pays any attention to Lucia Locket,’ Sam said, ‘but they think she’s the stuff. That column’s the first thing they read when they get hold of a paper.’
‘I like to read the old heifer’s column myself,’ Smut said. ‘She evermore gives the men the works. “Feed the brute,” says Lucia Locket. “Feed him good and pat his hand, and smooth his cheek and it won’t be but a few minutes till the jackass is asleep, and then you can pick his pockets and read his letters and see if he’s messing with his stenographer.” ’ Smut got up and walked over to the booth. ‘You finished with this part?�
� he asked Sam.
‘Sure. Take it on,’ Sam told him.
Smut brought it back to the counter and sat down again. ‘Let’s see what the old buzzard’s got on her mind this morning,’ he said. I looked over his shoulder, and that day the column by Lucia Locket was on the same page with the society items. On top of the page it said, ‘Weddings, Betrothals, Brighten Late Winter Calendar.’ Smut read the heading out and said: ‘The Society Editor must have been drunk last night. It ain’t late winter. It’s spring now.’
‘Maybe she ain’t seen a groundhog yet,’ Sam said.
‘Maybe not,’ Smut said. He took out a cigarette and tapped it on the counter. He commenced reading out the heading to Lucia Locket’s column. ‘The Modern Girl May Propose, But She Must Be Subtle.’ Badeye put down the sports section and leaned his elbows on the counter. Old Man Joshua threw his part of the paper on the floor. Smut lit his cigarette and went on: ‘ “In this modern age, when many of the taboos of society are rapidly breaking down, it is no longer considered disgraceful for a girl to pop the question. It is a thing that is definitely being done.
‘ “But each case presents its peculiar problems, and any girl with matrimony on her mind will do very well indeed to study the man she intends proposing to. It is a little like stalking a tiger in the jungle. It is possible to hunt tigers without knowing any of their traits, but the more successful big-game hunters make a careful study of the tigers they are pursuing, their haunts and their little habits. Men, of course, are more docile than tigers and not nearly so wary.” ’
Smut inhaled a draw from his cigarette and went on:
‘ “There are several methods that have been proven. One of the best is to trap him with food. The emotions of men seem to ebb and flow with their digestive juices, and the combination of a warm meal in a cozy room is one that has led many a male to the altar. It is very hard for the average man to say ‘no’ on a full stomach.” ’ Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt belched, then hiccuped. Smut frowned at him, then went back to Lucia.