by James Ross
Fisher moved his head away from his wife’s hand.
‘Don’t worry, darling. I’ll be here with you,’ he said.
Lola shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘He’s not eating tonight. Mad with me, I guess. Jack, be sure and bring me all the different kinds of beefsteak sauce. Worcestershire sauce and that hot stuff.’
‘The red-hot sauce?’ I asked.
‘That’s it. The stuff that’s made from all those red peppers.’
‘All right.’ I went into the kitchen and gave their order. On the way back I got them glasses of water.
There were several other customers on that side of the joint right then, and I waited on them and got rid of as many as possible. That is, I asked if that was all, and what else they would have, and if they wanted anything I got it in a hurry, so I would be free to give the Fishers as much attention as possible. It wasn’t their tip that I had in mind, however.
After I brought out Lola’s steak and Fisher’s second highball I just loafed around in the booth that was next to the one they were in. I got me a bottle of pop and sat there in the booth, pretending to drink that, at the same time ready for any other customers, of course. Mainly, though, I had my ears glued in the direction of the wealthy couple from Corinth.
For a while they were pretty quiet. Lola had good manners and you couldn’t hear her eating if you were any distance from her. Once in a while I could hear Fisher suck hard on his pipe. I think it had gone out even before they came into the roadhouse. Finally I heard Fisher put his glass down on the table. Maybe he was getting a little drunk then, for he put the glass down pretty hard.
‘Still don’t believe that dopey boy the sheriff’s got in the jail had the nerve to murder anybody,’ Fisher said.
‘If you’re dumb enough you don’t have to have any nerve to do something bad,’ Lola said.
Fisher was quiet for a minute. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘A stupid person misses all the implications of a thing. A person of that sort thinks only of the immediate present. Its animal needs, or rather desires, are paramount. Women particularly are like that.’
‘We’re pretty terrible,’ Lola admitted. ‘Honey, you’re missing a lot by not having a steak with me.’
‘Perhaps so,’ Fisher said. ‘I seem to miss a lot of things. Still, I’m doing all right with my whiskey. I wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell.’
‘Maybe they buy dope,’ Lola said.
‘Bright fellow, old Omar,’ Fisher said. ‘I’m quite fond of his poetry.’
‘Was he a Greek?’ Lola asked.
‘He was a Persian. I get a lot of comfort out of the old boy,’ Fisher said.
‘I’m getting a lot of comfort out of this steak,’ Lola said.
Fisher turned his head slightly. ‘Where’s our waiter?’ he said.
I stood up then. Fisher snapped his fingers toward me.
‘Whiskey,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘Oh, Charles!’ Lola said. ‘Don’t drink any more. If you have any respect for my wishes, don’t get drunk.’
‘I want a glass of whiskey,’ Fisher said to me.
I fixed that drink myself; I loaded him up for bear. I carried it back on the tray. He took the glass and slugged down most of it at one gulp.
‘That’s better,’ Fisher said. Lola looked sour.
I got back in the other booth.
‘Crime doesn’t pay,’ Fisher said. ‘Nor intrigue, nor cheating. None of it gets you anywhere. I don’t understand what makes so many people think they can beat the game.’
Lola didn’t say anything. Over in the dance hall the nickelodeon was playing ‘The Beer Barrel Polka.’ You could hear people dancing; it sounded like some jitterbugs were cutting loose, and most of the customers on my side got up and went over to the dance hall. When the girls got to jitterbugging sometimes their skirts would twirl around their heads, and of course none of the boys wanted to miss a thing like that. They all said it beat the hell out of the hootchie-kootchie shows because these girls were nice sweet girls. They just liked to jitterbug and they didn’t wear much underwear.
‘Take Capone, for instance. What has his criminal activity got him? He’s confined in a Federal prison—or was—and in addition to that he has paresis. Or other gangsters. They all get murdered. It’s the same way anywhere else. You have to abide by the rules.’
‘You’ve certainly got crime on your mind tonight,’ Lola said.
‘Honey,’ Fisher said, ‘if you were to have an affair with some man I’d murder him. I warn you. I will become a murderer. I won’t have it!’ He said the last so loud that Badeye and Smut Milligan looked over at him.
I stood up and just leaned over against the booth. Fisher had his head down on the table. I was watching out of the corner of my eye. Lola put her hand under his head and tried to lift it up.
‘Charles, you’re drunk!’ Lola said. She jerked with his head, but he kept it down against the table.
‘Charles, sit up! God damn it, Charles, don’t make a scene. You’re acting like a baby. Sit up!’
She looked up then and saw me.
‘Would you like something else, Mrs. Fisher?’ I asked.
‘No. This is all,’ she said. I gave her the check, then turned and walked up toward the front door. In a couple of minutes they came up to the cash register and paid the check. Fisher paid it, so I knew he wasn’t hog drunk. When they passed me on the way out it looked like Fisher had tears in his eyes, but maybe it was just from the whiskey he’d drunk that night. He couldn’t handle his liquor any too well. I was certainly glad he’d been out to see us.
24
THE NEXT MORNING I was up before even the mockingbird across the road started singing. Rufus was the only one in the roadhouse when I got there, and I slipped in the kitchen and was almost to the swinging doors before he saw me. He asked me if I wasn’t up pretty early and I told him I was, but I couldn’t sleep and thought I would open the joint up. He seemed satisfied and asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. I said no, I believed not, and went on into the other room.
I got out Smut’s typewriter and started a note to Fisher. Rufus was making considerable noise in the kitchen that morning, with his singing, and throwing wood into the stove, and shutting doors, and slinging pots and pans around, so I thought maybe he wouldn’t hear the fuss the typewriter was making. I didn’t worry a lot about him hearing me anyway. He was one nigger that knew how to keep his mouth shut about things that didn’t concern him.
I already had the letter composed in my mind, and it didn’t take me long to type it. It was a short note that went about like this:
Dear Mr. Fisher:
No doubt you remember a letter I wrote you some time back. I wrote you about how your wife was giving you the old double-cross now and then, when you were a good ways out of town.
She is still at it. She is making you look like a dope. Of course I know you ain’t anything of the kind, but other folks around Corinth are getting the idea that you must be something of a dope.
Mr. Fisher, you have got to trust me. If you will leave town in a couple of days there will be a meeting between your wife and the fellow who is laying her. I can arrange it so I will be a spectator at this meeting. I will have to keep in the background, but I will see what goes on and when you come back to town I will tell you everything. But you have got to leave town at once. You will have to let it get out that you are going off. Tell several loafers up town. Tell Fletch Monroe. Maybe he will publish the paper in a couple of days, and it will be fine for it to be in the paper that you are away on business. When you come back I will have an earful for your ears.
Your friend
I had to have Fisher leave word with somebody that he was going away. I couldn’t take any chances on just seeing Lola pass by the roadhouse and wave at Smut. That might not be a signal. If I took it for one and then Fisher was still in town and I wrote him a let
ter telling him about the meeting between Lola and Smut it would be too bad for my prospects. He would know it was all a pack of lies.
I put the typewriter back in the case and slung it under the counter where it had been. I was just getting ready to take the letter out to the mailbox when Smut came in the front. It was extra early for him to be up.
‘You’re up early,’ Smut said to me.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t either,’ Smut said. He went to the showcase and got out a package of cigarettes. I went back into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
While I was in the kitchen I decided to eat breakfast, and in a short while Smut came in and had his breakfast. After we finished that we went back in the front and Smut unlocked the front door and I commenced cleaning up.
We hung around inside until Badeye and Sam Hall came in. I guess it was eight-thirty by then. Sam and Badeye got the paper and divided it between them, but when Smut started out the door, jingling the car keys in his hand, Sam looked up from the comic section.
‘Not going to Corinth, are you, Smut?’ Sam asked.
Smut stopped in the door and turned his head. ‘Yeah, I am,’ he said. ‘You want to go?’
Sam threw his part of the paper back on the counter. He held up his right foot and the shoe he had on was ripped open around the sole. Sam wiggled his toes.
‘If you could spare me some money I would go with you and get me some shoes,’ Sam said.
‘How much you want?’
‘Ought to be able to get some pretty good shoes for three dollars.’
Smut came back to the cash register. He leaned his right elbow on the top of the showcase and looked down at Sam’s busted shoe.
‘You ought to be able to get a pair of shoes for less than that,’ Smut said.
‘Cheap shoes don’t last very long,’ Sam said.
‘I’ll give you two dollars and a half,’ Smut said. ‘I noticed in the window at Delk’s store last week. They got some good-looking sports shoes in the window for two forty-nine.’
Smut opened his pocketbook and gave Sam two one-dollar bills and two quarters. Sam got up from the stool and they started out toward where the pick-up was parked, in the front yard.
‘How about me going to town with you too, Smut?’ I called after them.
‘Come on,’ Smut said.
So we took off for Corinth—Smut driving, Sam in the middle, and me squeezed over against the right door. Smut usually went by Lover’s Lane, but this time we took up the highway. Smut drove fast, about sixty-five all the way, and there was such a strong wind blowing that it bothered him about steering. The pick-up would slip over a few inches every now and then and Smut would twist the steering wheel and cuss. Smut said it seemed to him that the weather got windier every year. He said maybe it was because so much of the woods had been cleared up.
We drove up the paved highway and the farmers were working in the fields beside the road. Most of them were bedding up their cotton land for that year. Just as we passed one farmer I saw his hat blow off. The wind took the hat past one mule’s ear and the mule—it was a big gray one—shied and commenced rearing straight up on its hind legs.
We tore through Shantytown and damned near hit Jule Wertz’s milk truck that was backing out into the road from the New York Café. Smut wasn’t in any special hurry; that was just the way he always drove. If he ever had a wreck, even a scratched fender, I never heard of it.
We parked in front of Baucom’s Pharmacy. I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Smut and Sam got out, and Smut asked Sam if he wanted to shoot him a game of pool. Sam said he’d do well to spend his money for the shoes, so Smut went into the Élite Pool Room and Sam started up the street toward Delk’s department store. Smut had said he would be ready to go back to the roadhouse in about an hour.
I waited there in front of the drugstore until both of them were out of sight. Then I went into the post-office, bought a stamp, and threw the letter to Fisher into the slot.
I was hard put to it to find anywhere to loaf in Corinth for a whole hour. It had been so long since I hung around the place that I had forgotten how to kill time in the filling stations, and the café, and the bowling alley. Anyway, the bowling alley was empty except for a nigger boy who was sweeping out. I didn’t want to go to the pool room. I could see Smut Milligan out at the roadhouse as much as I cared to without following him all over Corinth.
So I walked down to Rich’s filling station and passed the time of day with him, and then just walked up and down Main Street until I thought an hour had passed. When I came up to the drugstore Smut was sitting on the running board of the pick-up, tying his shoestring. He looked up at me.
‘I ain’t ready to go just yet, Jack,’ he said. ‘See if you can’t kill another hour. I got to go to LeGrand’s office and have a discussion with him. Be back in about an hour.’
So I decided to go see Dick Pittman. I walked down the street, and it was windy as March is truly supposed to be. I had to hold my hat on with both hands. I turned the corner at the Duke Power place and went down Grindstaff Street (it was named after Judge Grindstaff’s daddy) and came to the jail.
The jail was a new one, made out of brick. From the outside it looked like a high-school building except for the bars. It had two stories and the jailer and his wife lived in the downstairs. The jailer, Grover Davis, was standing in the front door when I walked up the steps.
‘Hello, Mr. Davis,’ I said. ‘How about seeing a prisoner?’
‘Who you want to see?’ he asked.
‘I want to see Dick Pittman. Just for a few minutes,’ I said.
‘I guess it’s all right,’ Grover said. He hesitated a minute, then motioned for me to come on. We went up the stairway that was beside the door.
The jail had been finished about six months. It was supposed to be fireproof and had set the taxpayers back for fifty thousand bucks. Astor LeGrand’s brother-in-law, Tom McDermott, was the contractor that had built the jail. No doubt it actually did cost several thousand dollars to build it.
We went up the stairs, and the roof was low up on the second floor. It was a little dark up there too. There was a long corridor where we came up, and on the left were the cells. There was a big cell at this end and Dick was in it with two other fellows. Just below them there was a big nigger in a cell by himself. I didn’t see anybody else up there.
There were three cots in the cell Dick was in and the other fellows were lying on two of the cots. But Dick was sitting on a stool and had his face pressed against the bars. His eyes were shut and he looked like he was sleeping. There was a little lint in his hair. I spoke to him and he opened his eyes.
‘If it ain’t Jack!’ he said, and grinned at me. ‘God knows I’m glad to see you here, Jack. Where’s Smut?’
‘He’s in Mr. LeGrand’s office,’ I said.
Grover Davis spat on the floor. He wasn’t chewing tobacco, so I suppose he just had a habit of spitting on the floor.
‘I got to go downstairs,’ he said. ‘You can talk to him a little while, Jack. But you can’t stay up here too long.’
‘I won’t be long,’ I said.
Grover went out then and I took a look at Dick’s room-mates. One of them was the bumpy-faced boy they called Slopface—the boy that was going to cut another mill hand out at the roadhouse the fall before. I didn’t know the other man. He was a hard-looking customer—sunburned so black that he looked like a brown nigger. Part of it might have been soot, for he looked like he was a vag that had got stuck in town.
‘How you getting along, Dick?’ I said.
‘All right,’ Dick said. Dick’s left eye was black as the ace of spades. His lip had been split too.
‘Who gave you the shiner?’ I asked him.
Dick looked around at the two fellows behind him. ‘I bumped into the wall last night,’ Dick said. ‘The bulb was burnt out we had in here, and it was dark and I wasn’t used to the place.’
&nbs
p; The man that looked like he knew all about the inside of freight cars gave a short horse laugh. Dick looked back at him and grinned. It was a mighty nervous grin.
Dick pulled his stool over closer to the bars.
‘They got me, Jack,’ he said. ‘I got tired of messing with them and owned up to killing Mr. Bert Ford. I don’t know how come me to kill him.’
Dick was talking about twice as fast as I ever heard him talk. He didn’t look at me, but kept his eyes on the floor. He kept twisting his hands around, like they were wet and he would dry them by rubbing one over the other.
‘I went off that night and I got me a drink of liquor. It sot me afire. I felt like I had to have some money. I didn’t know no place to git none. Finally Bert Ford come in my mind. I says to myself, “That boogar’s got money and it’s hid on his place. Everybody says so, and it’s bound to be so.” I got me another drink of that stick liquor they sells in Shantytown and I made a bee-line to Bert Ford’s place. I got there and it was pitch dark. After a little while, though, I could make out them bee-gums. I got the notion that maybe Bert Ford had hid his money under them bee-gums. I sot in to work.’
Dick took his package of Beechnut chewing and stuffed all there was in the package into his mouth. Then he squashed the empty package in his hands and dropped it on the floor.
‘I was going to town when I hear somethin. It was Bert Ford. There he stood with a flashlight in his hands. He says to me, “What in the hell you think you doin in my bee-gums? Damn you to hell, I’ll larn you to come probin round my damn bee-gums!” So he come at me. I was scared. I reckon I lost my head. I pulled out my pistol and shot his heart out. I would of run and not shot him, but how did I know he didn’t have no gun on him?’
Dick looked up at me for a second, then looked at the floor again and went on with his tale of the murder.
‘I got the keys outen his pocket. I backed his car out from under the shed and put him in the back. Then I got me a old mowin-machine wheel that was lying there in the yard. No, it was in the car shed. That was how I seen it. When I turned on the lights I seen it and got it. Then I backed it out and got Mr. Bert. I took him to the river and weighted him down with the mowin-machine wheel and throwed him in the river. Just beyond the bridge. I took what money he had on him. Twarn’t but some few dollars over a hundred. I brought the car back to his place and then run all the way back to the roadhouse.’