They Don't Dance Much: A Novel

by James Ross

  I went back to the roadhouse then, and I don’t think anybody saw me go out to the mailbox. I hung around inside, working a little, but mainly just killing time, until about nine-thirty, when Smut came in.

  Smut hated me plenty by then, but he was trying hard to keep it covered up. He tried to act like nothing much had passed between us. He came up to where I was sitting and asked me if I wanted to go to Corinth with him. I told him no.

  He wasn’t gone very long that morning. Just about an hour and a half. When he came back he went down to the cabins and didn’t come back to the roadhouse until sometime after noon. He got his lunch then and went out front and sat on one of the benches. After a while I went out there too.

  I don’t know how it happened, but that afternoon we were all sitting out front at one time, like we were waiting to have a group picture taken. Smut and Badeye sat on the bench on the left of the door. Sam and Dick and I held the other bench down. Matt Rush was sitting in the door. Smut was quieter than usual. I was keeping my mouth shut too, but the other boys kept the conversation going with practically no stops. First they talked about cars, then got off on poker, then slot machines. They took up the weather for about half a minute, then mentioned that it looked like a good crop year, but cotton wasn’t bringing but a mighty little; they spoke about the revival meeting that was going on in the evangelist’s tent, just outside the city dump, and then they got off on the subject of girls. They were going to town on that when the sheriff and his two deputies drove up in he sheriffs Plymouth sedan.

  They all got out and started over to where we were sitting, Sheriff Pemberton leading the procession. He wabbled along in front, chewing his tobacco. His deputies, Brock Boone and John Little, followed a couple of steps behind. They were so tall that they made the sheriff look like a fat duck waddling along in front of two grizzly bears. The sheriff spat about a cupful into the gravels in front of my feet.

  ‘Good evening,’ the sheriff said.

  ‘Hello, sheriff,’ Smut said. He looked like he was terribly surprised to see the sheriff with both the deputies.

  Smut stood up. ‘I’ll get you all some chairs,’ he said, and started in the door.

  The sheriff held up his hand. ‘No need of that, Milligan,’ he said.

  Sheriff Pemberton stuck his hand in his pocket and came out with a paper. He pushed his wide-brimmed hat back on his head. Brock Boone leaned back against the brick column in front of the gas tanks. John Little stood behind the sheriff, with his hands on his hips. Both of them had their guns where they could be seen.

  The sheriff cleared his throat. ‘I got a warrant here, Milligan,’ he said. ‘I got a search warrant. I’ll read it.’

  Smut turned around. ‘You got a what?’ he asked.

  ‘I got a warrant that authorizes me to search the premises,’ Sheriff Pemberton said.

  ‘What you searching for?’ Smut asked.

  ‘Corn liquor,’ the sheriff said. He cleared his throat again and held the warrant up nearer his eyes.

  ‘You don’t have to read it. There ain’t any corn around here, but go ahead and see for yourself,’ Smut told the sheriff.

  Sheriff Pemberton held the warrant out toward Smut. ‘You want to see the warrant?’ he asked.

  Smut curled his upper lip. ‘I ain’t interested in the damn thing,’ he said. ‘I guess I ain’t under arrest until you actually find some corn, am I?’

  ‘No. But you better stay with us,’ the sheriff said.

  ‘Don’t worry. I aim to be right with you, sheriff,’ Smut said. ‘Maybe I better lock the cash register till these deputies of yours gets out of sight.’ Smut stepped inside the room.

  The sheriff stepped up into the doorway. He turned and spat one last gob into the great outdoors, then followed Smut inside. John Little and Brock Boone went too.

  All the rest of us went along. There might be some excitement. One thing we all knew for certain; there was some corn liquor inside.

  When we got inside we just stood around and watched the sheriff and his men looking for the liquor. They took the front first; that is, Sheriff Pemberton and Brock Boone did. John Little went over to the other side and commenced looking. He was on a cold trail.

  They rummaged around there in the front and looked everywhere except where there was liquor. I watched Badeye. He wasn’t saying anything out loud, but I could see his lips working, saying ‘hot’ when they got close, ‘cold’ when they went off on a dead limb.

  I was wondering what the hell. Had Smut quit paying his protection money? Or was Astor LeGrand just pulling his customary double-cross? It had me buffaloed for a minute.

  Finally Sheriff Pemberton got careless and opened the icebox where we kept the soft drinks, and about ten pints of corn liquor. The sheriff looked inside, then shut the lid down in a hurry. He scratched his head.

  ‘I don’t know where in the world that stuff’s hid,’ he said.

  It wasn’t corn liquor they wanted. The search was phony as love on Lover’s Lane. I didn’t know just why they were prowling around like that, but I was afraid it had something to do with the murder. Everything looked too fishy for a corn-liquor hunt. In the first place, Smut had looked too surprised when the sheriff drove up. Nobody could look that surprised about anything unless they had practiced for a while. I began to get plenty uneasy.

  Finally, after Brock Boone had stumbled against a quart of liquor under the counter, and the sheriff had seen the four pints in the bread box, they gave it up.

  ‘Must be in the kitchen,’ Sheriff Pemberton said.

  ‘No liquor out here,’ Brock Boone said.

  Just about that time John Little came back in from the other side. He was shaking his head.

  ‘I can’t find a drop,’ he told the sheriff.

  Sheriff Pemberton scratched his head again, quick and hard, then jerked his cowboy hat down over his forehead.

  ‘Brock, you and John make a thorough search of that kitchen,’ the sheriff told them. ‘Come on, Milligan, we’re going down to them cabins.’

  The sheriff and Smut went out the front door. The rest of us followed Brock and John into the kitchen.

  In there it was the same as out in the front. They opened the refrigerator last—by that time Johnny Lilly had thrown meat over all the bottles in there, so they didn’t see that. There wasn’t any other liquor back there except in the bottom of the stovewood box, and in the drawers of all the tables, but they didn’t look in any of those places. We went back into the front room. The deputies were shaking their heads. They said they couldn’t understand it.

  I sat down on one of the counter stools and Badeye was beside me. The other boys just stood around. Brock Boone and John Little went over and parked on one of the tables at the booths.

  ‘Don’t reckon there’s no use of us going down to them cabins,’ Brock Boone said.

  ‘Don’t see as there is,’ John Little said. He took out his pocket­knife and started trimming his fingernails.

  John had just finished with his right hand and was starting on the left one when Smut came back with the sheriff. Smut didn’t have the handcuffs on. The sheriff was empty-handed as when he left. Just the plain gold ring on his left hand, and the Elk Tooth ring.

  The sheriff walked over to where the two deputies were flopped on the table. He looked down at the floor and shook his head.

  ‘Nothing on hand today, boys,’ he said. ‘We got a cold tip this time.’

  Brock Boone stood up and stretched his shoulders and back like a cat does.

  ‘You can’t get nothing on Smut Milligan,’ Brock said. ‘Hell, he was raised in the orphanage and on the streets.’

  The sheriff turned toward Smut. ‘You’re a slick one, son,’ he said. ‘But you want to be careful about this liquor business. There’s been numerous complaints here recently about you selling liquor. I was just doing the duty of a sheriff. Any sheriff. No hard feelings.’

  ‘Oh, hell, no!’ Smut said. ‘No hard feelings. I would offer you al
l a drink of corn liquor, but it so happens I’m out today. Come back again when your stool pigeon gets another hunch.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ the sheriff said. He went outside then and Brock and John went out too. They went back to town.

  Nobody said a word till they got their car started. Then Dick Pittman shut one eye and shook his head.

  ‘Godfrey Daniel!’ Dick said. ‘That was a damn close shave! They was a couple times there I thought them fellows had found something—or was going to find something. They come mighty close once or twice.’

  Badeye laughed a short laugh that didn’t sound like he thought anything was funny.

  ‘I thought sure Brock Boone had turned his ankle when he stumbled over that quart bottle under the counter,’ Badeye said. ‘And Sheriff Pemberton sticking his nose in that icebox. Ain’t the sheriff a little near-sighted, Smut?’

  Smut ignored Badeye. ‘Whoever it was tipped them off that I been selling corn liquor is a lousy son-of-a-bitch,’ Smut said.

  Badeye held out his right hand to Smut, like he’d just been introduced and wanted to shake hands.

  ‘Glad to know you,’ Badeye said. ‘Honeycutt’s my name.’

  Smut gave Badeye a look that was dirty enough to keep a nigger washwoman busy two days. He didn’t say anything, but went into the kitchen.

  22

  TWO DAYS AFTER the corn-liquor raid Sheriff Pemberton came out to the roadhouse again. Brock Boone was with him. They came into the front room where I was leaning against the pin-ball machine, reading the morning paper. Sheriff Pemberton acted like he was in a hurry. He didn’t bother to say good morning.

  ‘I want to see Milligan,’ the sheriff said to me.

  ‘I think he’s back in the kitchen,’ I said, and started back there to see. I walked to the swinging doors and pushed them open. The sheriff and Brock were right at my heels. Smut was sitting at a table with Dick Pittman. They were drinking coffee.

  The sheriff pushed past me and walked over to the table. Smut Milligan looked up then.

  ‘Out pretty early, ain’t you, sheriff?’ Smut asked.

  Sheriff Pemberton pointed at Dick Pittman. ‘I want this boy, Milligan,’ he said. ‘I got to hold him for questioning.’

  Dick raised his eyes and looked at the sheriff, then took a drink of coffee. He set the cup down and stirred in it with his spoon. He didn’t get the sheriff’s drift.

  ‘What you want to question him about?’ Smut said.

  ‘About the gun,’ the sheriff said, and spat a thin stream of tobacco juice into the stovewood box.

  ‘Oh!’ Smut said. ‘It turned out bad, did it?’ Smut looked like he was sad about it turning out the way it evidently had, whatever that was.

  Dick Pittman dropped the spoon on the table and it made a rattling noise. He looked a little puzzled; probably he was beginning to understand that they were talking about him.

  The sheriff reached inside his coat and pulled out a pistol. It looked like the one that Smut took away from Bert Ford that night we killed him.

  ‘Look at this thing, son,’ the sheriff told Dick. ‘Ever see this gun before?’

  ‘I seen some looked mighty like it,’ Dick said. He took out his package of Beechnut chewing tobacco and crammed his mouth full of the strings of black tobacco.

  ‘I reckon you have,’ the sheriff said slowly. ‘It was in your locker.’

  Dick grinned. He was embarrassed at having everybody look at him so straight and hard. Then he quit the grinning.

  ‘In—in my locker? You say you found it in my locker?’ Dick said.

  ‘That’s right. When I was looking for the corn liquor. I looked in all the lockers in them cabins and this was in yours.’

  Dick’s mouth was open. A little yellow tobacco juice trickled down his chin and separated into drops on his beard. He took the back of his hand and brushed it across his chin, then commenced slobbering again.

  ‘I don’t know nothin about it,’ Dick said.

  ‘Come to think about it, you never saw it before, did you?’ the sheriff asked.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘How come it to be in your locker?’

  ‘Somebody must a put it there,’ Dick said.

  ‘You got a permit to have a gun?’

  ‘No, sir. I ain’t got no gun neither,’ Dick said. He was getting plenty scared. His face was white as a boll of cotton.

  The sheriff put the gun back in his inside coat-pocket. He looked hard at Dick.

  ‘Listen, son. I got a shell. Empty shell that I found out next to the bee-gums on Bert Ford’s place. I found it the first time I went out there after it was known that Bert had mysteriously disappeared. It was a thirty-eight, and this gun I found in your locker is a thirty-eight too. I been checking all the thirty-eights I can find and I made a ballistics test on this here shell and on your gun. There’s a few things I want you to explain to me. I got to take you in.’

  It was a long speech for the sheriff. When he finished he spat into the stovewood box again and stood there, with his hands on his hips, looking down at Dick’s head.

  Brock Boone stepped up beside Dick. ‘You want me to handcuff him, sheriff?’ Brock asked.

  ‘Handcuff him,’ the sheriff said. Brock did it. He reached out and snapped one handcuff on Dick’s right hand and then snapped the other one on his own left hand.

  ‘That ain’t a good way to handcuff a prisoner. Some day you’re gonna get hold of a bully that’s as good a man as you are and he’ll give you plenty of trouble,’ the sheriff told Brock.

  ‘It’ll take a pretty good man to do it,’ Brock said. He jerked Dick up from the table with a swing of his arm. ‘Come on, kid. Get moving,’ Brock said. He started toward the door, jerking Dick along with him. He waited in the door for the sheriff.

  In the excitement Dick had managed to knock his filling-station cap off and his hair came down over his forehead. He worked his lips like he was trying to say something, then sort of slumped his shoulders and just stood there looking puzzled and worried.

  ‘I ain’t done nothin out of the way,’ Dick mumbled. He turned to Smut. ‘Can’t you help me none, Smut?’

  Smut stood up and shoved his chair under the table. ‘I’m coming into town in just a few minutes, Dick,’ he said. ‘I’ll get things fixed up for you.’

  Smut winked at Dick, but Dick looked white and discouraged when he went out into the front with Brock Boone and the sheriff. Planting Bert Ford’s gun in Dick’s locker and then telling the sheriff it was there was the meanest trick Smut Milligan ever pulled. I felt mighty sorry for Dick. At the same time I was relieved that they hadn’t found the gun in my locker.

  I looked at Smut, but he had gone back to his coffee and seemed to be studying hard about something. I went back to the front and waited for him to come out.

  In a few minutes he came forth. He walked in and sat down on a stool and got a toothpick out of the rack. He didn’t look toward me at all.

  ‘I want to apologize to you,’ I said.

  He kept on looking at the floor. ‘For what?’ he said,

  ‘For saying you didn’t have the guts to kill me. I know now you’ve got the guts to do anything,’ I said.

  ‘I know it,’ Smut said. He chewed on the toothpick and stared at the picture ‘Under Italian Skies’ over on the other wall.

  ‘What have you got against Dick?’ I asked.

  Smut looked toward me then. He turned on the stool and sat facing me.

  ‘I ain’t got a thing in the world against him. He’s a dope, but I like him all right. I just rather it would be him than me. Or you. You might squawk. In fact, it’s a cinch you’d squawk to beat the band.’

  ‘When’d you stick the gun in his locker?’

  ‘About an hour before the sheriff got here that day he was out claiming to be hunting for corn liquor,’ Smut said.

  ‘Where was it all the time before then?’

  ‘In a place where I could lay my hands on it, all right,’ Smut said. ‘
I was afraid to throw it away to begin with and just held on to it. The sheriff finding that empty shell was a Godsend to me.’

  ‘But they still can’t pin anything on Dick,’ I said. ‘How’ll they get past the part about Bert’s body not being found? They ain’t really got any evidence.’

  ‘They don’t need none. If you think Brock Boone and John Little can’t make him own up to killing Bert Ford, then you can go to the foot of the class. Them two buzzards loves to squeeze a confession out of a fellow. They can work on Dick about half a day and he’ll swear he shot Bert Ford and then et his body. Bones, hair, and all.’

  ‘My God! You don’t think they’ll really beat him into saying he killed Bert. Listen, if this thing gets stirred up again we’ll get caught yet. This is a mess you’ve got started now.’

  Smut spat the toothpick out on the floor and took a cigarette out of his pocket.

  ‘If things break right it’s in the bag now,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you tell me that Dick was out that night with a married woman on the mill hill while her old man was working on the graveyard shift?’

  ‘That’s what he told me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I done a little investigating. The only woman that Dick’s been sleeping with around Corinth is Dave Cline’s wife. She’s a part-time whore. I’m damned certain Dick spent that night in bed with her. But he won’t get to first base if he tries to use that for an alibi. The woman would see him fry before she’d own up to anything.’

  ‘Hell-fire, the sheriff don’t know the night Bert was killed. And if he did it’s been so long that Dick couldn’t remember where he was on any particular night,’ I said.

  ‘By God, he better remember!’ Smut said. ‘The sheriff has got the time narrowed down pretty well.’

  ‘How do you manage to find out everything? You and the sheriff seem to be pretty thick when nobody’s looking,’ I said.

  Smut lit the cigarette that was in the corner of his mouth. He inhaled a deep draw and let the smoke come out through his nostrils before he answered me.

  ‘Yeah. We’re pretty good friends now. We try to help each other with our troubles. One good turn deserves another; that’s the way me and the sheriff has got it figured out,’ Smut said.