by James Ross
Dick looked up at me then, and he looked like he was pleased with the way he had memorized the story. The only thing was, his eyes looked glassy. He was slobbering a little and it dropped off and fell on his blue chambray shirt. The boy named Slopface lay back on the cot and put an old newspaper over his face. I don’t know why he did it, unless it was from habit, for it was not hot weather and there weren’t any flies in the jail. The only things I saw in there, aside from the fixtures and the three prisoners, were some cockroaches that looked like they got plenty to eat, and one rat that dashed across the floor and went down a hole under the lavatory. The bedclothes were filthy and the place stank, but there were no flies in there.
‘You worked pretty fast that night, Dick,’ I said. ‘Did you run all the way from Shantytown to Bert Ford’s place? I don’t see how you had time that night to do everything you say you did.’
Dick pursed his busted lips. ‘I run all the way,’ he said. He stopped chewing for half a minute.
‘No, I tell you how that was. I was running down the highway just outside Shantytown and here come a car. It was a fellow I didn’t know and he picked me up. Carried me near bout to the river. To the road that goes to Mr. Bert’s. That’s how that was.’
‘I see,’ I said. I tell you I felt strange hearing him confess like that. I wished to God I had stayed away from the jail.
Dick looked straight at me then. He got up from the stool and stood up against the bars. He caught a bar in each hand and pressed his face against them. He began to cry.
‘God Almighty! Jack, they got me in here and they goin to lectrocute me for somethin that I don’t even know nothin bout! For God’s sake, Jack, can’t you do nothin? Where’s Smut? Can’t he do nothin? You know I ain’t never killed nobody.’
‘I know it, Dick,’ I said. I didn’t know what to say to him.
The tears were trickling down Dick’s face. As soon as they fell out of his eyes they got gray-looking from the dust that was on his face. He was gripping the bars so hard that the veins on his wrists and forearms looked as big as plowlines.
‘Get me out of here before they take me to Raleigh and burn me up!’ Dick yelled at me. Then he took his hands off the bars and just leaned there on his face, with his hands hanging down by his sides, loose as arms stuck on a scarecrow. His voice died down to a whisper.
‘I didn’t know what they was talkin bout. I done been hit in the mouth, and in the eye, and in the stomach till I’m sore as a boil all over, and I’m just about crazy. They’d keep tellin me how it was. What I had done, and I hadn’t done nothin. Finally I seen they was goin to beat me to death and I just said, “Yeah, I done it.” I thought it would be easier for me to the in the lectric chair.’
He straightened up again and his eyes lost that glassy look. They got wild and scared-looking and I thought, ‘Dick would be plenty dangerous now if he had a gun and was out from behind the bars and somebody was standing between him and the stairs.’
‘I tell you, God damn it to God-damn hell, Smut Milligan better get me out of here! He knows God-damn good and well that I never done nothin! Tell him to get me out of here!’ Dick screamed.
The tramp was relieving his kidneys in the lavatory. He turned his head. ‘Don’t yell so loud, country boy,’ he said. ‘You interfere with me making water.’
Dick was whimpering and sobbing again. ‘I couldn’t kill nobody,’ he said. ‘Why, when I was a kid I would go off and hide when they was a-killin hogs. I couldn’t stand to see them kill the hogs. You know I never killed Mr. Bert Ford. Don’t you know in your mind I never killed him, Jack?’
‘I know you didn’t, Dick,’ I said. ‘But don’t get scared. You’ll have a trial and a lawyer. You’ll come clear.’
The tramp turned around then. He was buttoning up his pants. ‘You gonna fry in that old chair, country boy,’ he said, and snorted out his special horse laugh. Slopface commenced snoring. Every time he inhaled, the paper that was over his face would be sucked down toward his mouth, and when he let his breath out again the paper would be pushed up. The tramp sat down on the cot next to the one Slopface was on. He watched the newspaper rise and fall like he was fascinated by it.
‘Jack, you’re my friend, ain’t you?’ Dick said. He sat back down on the stool and leaned his face over against the bars.
‘You know I am,’ I said. ‘You want me to get you something?’
‘I want you to be sure and have Smut Milligan come to see me,’ Dick said. ‘This morning.’
I started to go. ‘I’ll send him right up,’ I said. ‘Can I get you anything, some chewing tobacco, or something like that?’
Dick was looking down at the floor. He looked like he didn’t want to be bothered any more.
‘I want a Coca-Cola. That’s the only thing I want,’ Dick said.
‘I’ll send you one right away,’ I said.
‘Send it by Smut Milligan,’ Dick said.
I went down the stairs, and out of the jail and across the street to the Pee Dee Barbecue Lunch. I gave a boy in there a dime to take a Coca-Cola to Dick. The boy said he’d take it right up.
25
I WALKED BACK UP Grindstaff Street, turned at the Duke place again, and started down Main. I looked down the street and saw Smut Milligan standing in front of the drugstore. He was waving for me to hurry up.
‘Where in the hell have you been?’ Smut asked me when I got within hearing distance. ‘I been looking all over town for you.’
‘You said come back in about an hour,’ I reminded him.
‘I got through sooner than I expected. I been looking high and low for you,’ Smut said.
‘I was down at the jail, talking to Dick Pittman,’ I said.
‘Is that a fact?’ Smut said.
‘He’s about to go crazy,’ I said. ‘He wants to see you. Right away.’
‘I don’t have time to fool with him now,’ Smut said. ‘I’m in a hurry. I want you to do something for me.’
‘What you want me to do?’
‘I want you to drive the pick-up back. Sam’s already gone—hooked a ride with the laundry truck. There ain’t anybody left to drive the pick-up but you.’
‘What’s the matter with you driving it?’ I asked.
‘I got to drive another car,’ Smut said. ‘I just now traded with Baxter Yonce for a Dodge coupe.’
‘Give me the keys,’ I said.
On the way back to the roadhouse I thought about several things. The way we were letting Dick Pittman take the rap made me feel pretty bad. I thought some of helping him break out of jail, but that would have been a waste of time and work. He was too dumb to stay escaped. I thought some of going to the sheriff and telling him exactly how it was about Bert Ford. But I rejected that plan.
Another thing that had me worried was Smut buying that car. There went another thousand out of the safe, and it made me uneasy to see him spending that money like water. I decided that another week was as long as I could wait. If my letter-writing didn’t bring any results in another week’s time, then I would have to burn a hole in the safe and see what was inside.
That afternoon, about three o’clock, I was out at the grease rack beside the car shed, watching Smut and Sam grease the pick-up, when I heard an automobile horn tooting. It was a two-tone horn. I looked in the direction of the tooting, but all I saw was the rear of the car disappearing around the roadhouse. But in a minute I saw Lola Fisher’s car when she turned it down the highway. She tooted the horn again and stepped on the gas, heading toward the river. Smut had turned and was looking down the road where she’d gone. I didn’t see it if he had waved to her.
Smut soon left the greasing job to Sam and he went to his cabin. He must have slept the rest of the afternoon, for he didn’t show up in the roadhouse until it was good and dark. He ate a couple of sandwiches at the counter and had a glass of his special toddy. Half whiskey and half milk. Some folks say it will make a man sick as a dog to mix whiskey and sweet milk, but Smut said that was a lot
of crap. He said the milk put a lining in his stomach.
That night there was a mob out. It was Friday night, and back then the hosiery mill paid off on Friday. Besides that, the high-school team had whitewashed Blytheville, 8-0, that afternoon in the baseball game, and they were whooping it up because they had licked Blytheville in their own back yard and in spite of the umpires Blytheville had furnished. The kids drank a lot of beer on the strength of that game.
For a while that night Smut was pretty busy in the room that was reserved for crap-shooting. I carried some whiskey back there twice that night and I had to stiff-arm my way through the mob in there. There was a bunch of the home-town college boys out that night. They were home for the spring holidays, and they were just about the most hopeful lot of boys that Duke and Carolina ever turned loose. They seemed to think they could beat Smut Milligan and his set of invisible transparent weight dice. Some of the boys that worked in the hosiery mill were nearly as dumb as the college boys.
That night there was a cloud hanging back in the west. It had been a windy day, but when it was night the wind died down and everything got still. It was the time of year for tornadoes, but this cloud in the west looked more like a summer thunderhead. It kept lightning back there, and now and then you could hear the thunder rolling away off, slow and deep.
About eleven o’clock Smut came into the front, walked out the door, and took a look at the sky. When he came back in he stopped by the cash register.
‘I don’t think it’s going to rain,’ he said to me. ‘There’s a heavy cloud hanging back there in the southwest, but I think it’s gonna waste away. I’m going down to the cabin and change clothes. Then I got to take off.’
In about fifteen minutes he was back at the cash register. He was well dressed. He had on the green herringbone suit, with the brown-and-white sports shoes, and the green Alpine hat with a feather stuck in the band. In the side of his mouth he had one of these long, slim cigars that the Southern planters are supposed to smoke—when they have got a dime to buy it with—and he looked like a cross between a movie gambler and one of these Indian chiefs that is dead set against the palefaces taking any more of the hunting grounds. He twisted his neck around and jerked his coat open. There was a bottle of liquor in the inside pocket of his coat.
‘Supply me, pal,’ he said to me. ‘I got to get my supplies.’ He leaned over toward me and his breath was a hundred proof. He took the cigar out of his mouth.
‘Gimme a pack of Camels and a book of matches. Might as well gimme a bottle of the sparkling water. I got to have an opener too.’
I gave him the matches and the cigarettes and stuck the bottle in a paper sack and put it on the counter before him. He leaned over a little closer, because there were two girls sitting at the counter then.
‘Gimme a pack of the skins,’ he said. I got them for him.
He held the package in his hand and looked like he was figuring something out. ‘H’m,’ he said, ‘there ain’t but three of these things in a pack.’
Smut stuck the package in his pocket. ‘I ain’t made no love in over a week,’ he said. ‘Better gimme another pack of these things.’
‘You got plenty of confidence,’ I said, and got him another package.
‘Confidence ain’t all I got,’ Smut said. ‘Listen, business is pretty good, but I got to take off. Keep the joint open as long as you got any customers. Even if they’re sloppy drunk. If they’re hog drunk, but spending money, keep the joint open.’
He walked around to the cash register and opened it.
‘I better take most of this money with me. It ain’t safe to leave money in here at night.’
He got out a roll of bills and put it in his pocket.
‘Left you plenty for change,’ he said. ‘When you close up, lock the cash register and leave what you take in from now on, in it.’
He started out the door then, but changed his mind and walked back to me.
‘I mean leave every damn dime of it in there. You hear me?’ he snarled.
I didn’t answer him and he went out then.
Baxter Yonce and Fletch Monroe were out that night. They had been over in the dance hall playing the nickelodeon and making a few middle-aged passes at the dumber girls, but shortly after Smut left they came to the counter and parked there. Baxter was drinking a little that night and he ordered a beer. I got it for him and asked Fletch if he’d have one too. He looked at me and grinned his snaggle-toothed grin.
‘No, I’ve quit,’ he said. ‘I ain’t had a drink, not even a beer, for twenty-nine whole days. Tomorrow ’ll be a month since I was drunk the last time.’
Fletch generally stayed drunk three weeks when he got started, then after a spree he always quit for good. I didn’t want to put temptation in his way, but it griped me for him to be sober just when I wanted to have him loose-tongued. Anyway, he didn’t have any business hanging around a roadhouse if he wanted to quit drinking.
I hung around Fletch and Baxter for some time, trying to hear something about Fisher going out of town. Baxter said a word or two about everybody else in Corinth, but for some reason it looked like he was avoiding any mention of Charles Fisher.
Finally, when he got off on his past, I got desperate. I leaned over the counter and interrupted his favorite lie, about how he’d once spent the night in bed with a country girl and how when he got ready to leave he gave her a dollar and she fingered the money like she’d never seen any before and finally told him if he’d get back in the bed with her for just one more time she’d give him the dollar back, plus a quarter she’d saved out of the egg money.
‘By the way, Mr. Baxter,’ I said, ‘you haven’t seen Mr. Charles Fisher tonight, have you?’
Baxter paused. ‘No, I ain’t. Why?’
‘I just happened to think. There was a fellow out here about two hours ago asking for him. Said he had to see him the worst sort.’
‘I ain’t seen him all day,’ Baxter Yonce said. He went back to telling Badeye about how he used to make a lot of women happy.
Fletch Monroe was smoking one cigarette after another. He seemed extra nervous about something. He spat out a cigarette that was beginning to burn his lips, and he leaned over the counter toward me.
‘Fisher ain’t in town tonight,’ Fletch said.
‘He’s not?’
‘No. He left town this evening. He come by the shop about two o’clock and said he wanted to renew his subscription to the paper. It wasn’t due till next fall, but he thought it was due now. He seemed to be kind of addled about something.’
Fletch took a package of cigarettes out of his pocket and shook it. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, then took it out again and held it in his right hand.
‘I talked him into a five-year subscription—Fisher, I mean,’ Fletch said. ‘Get me a beer, Jack.’ He looked down at the cigarette he had squashed in his hand.
I got the beer for him and went back to the cash register. Baxter Yonce finished his story. He covered a yawn with both hands.
‘About ready to go, Fletch?’ he asked.
Fletch gulped down the last of his beer. ‘Just a minute,’ he said to Baxter. He motioned to Badeye.
‘Get me a beer, Honeycutt,’ Fletch said.
Baxter turned on the counter stool. ‘Thought you wasn’t going to drink anything tonight, Fletch. Decided to fall off the wagon?’
Fletch shrugged his shoulders. He wouldn’t look at Baxter. ‘Hell, it’s just beer,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not going to get drunk.’
‘You ain’t?’ Baxter Yonce said.
‘No, I ain’t!’ Fletch said.
Baxter waited till Fletch had finished that bottle; then they got up and started to go. But when they reached the door Fletch turned around and walked back to the counter.
‘I got to have a pint of corn liquor. Make it a quart jar,’ he told Badeye.
Baxter Yonce stopped in the door. He wasted a sad look on Fletch Monroe.
‘You ought not to get any liq
uor,’ he said. ‘You’ll get drunk, Fletcher.’
‘I know it,’ Fletch said. His voice was happy.
Fletch borrowed the money from Baxter to pay for the liquor and they went out to Baxter’s car. It was late then. Badeye and Sam wanted to leave, so I told them to take it away; I would keep the place open until the last customer got enough. There were just four customers left then, and they were over on the other side—a couple of Duke boys and a couple of local high-school queens. I went over to the booth where they were sitting and asked them if they wanted anything. They said no, not right then. I went back to the other side and got out Smut’s typewriter.
I was uneasy about writing that letter. Maybe Fisher had just gone out on a test trip and aimed to come in about midnight and see if his wife was in. Maybe Smut Milligan hadn’t gone out to meet her and Fisher would find her at home. That would be too bad. Still I had to write it anyway. This was the report I typed for Fisher.
Dear Mr. Fisher:
Tonight I did a little sleuthing and was present at a meeting between your wife and the man she goes with. They didn’t know I was there. So, thinking they were alone, they let their hair down and went to the horse races.
I hope you enjoy yourself when you leave town, Mr. Fisher, because you ain’t getting even with your wife if you don’t. She seems to be kind of a passionate woman, and this fellow who meets her is taking advantage of that fact. He is passionate too. About like a stud-horse. Tonight he got plenty of co-operation from your wife. The first thing she did was to give him a kiss that would have untied his shoelaces, except that he had already pulled off his shoes. They didn’t talk much. Just moaned and took on. That is, your wife moaned a lot.
The name of this fellow who was out with your wife is Smut Milligan. He runs a roadhouse on Lover’s Lane.