They Don't Dance Much: A Novel

by James Ross

  Your friend

  I addressed an envelope to Fisher, stuck the letter inside, and swiped a postage stamp out of the cash register. Then I walked out in the pitch dark to the mailbox and put the letter inside.

  When I was back in the roadhouse I stuck my head into the dance hall door. The kids were very quiet. I walked inside and they broke it up and I asked them if there was anything else they wanted. They took the hint that time and went outside to their car.

  26

  SUNDAY MORNING I GOT up late and took it easy. I ate breakfast about ten o’clock, then went out in the back yard and sat down on the grass beside the grease rack.

  It was hot for the spring. There was a light breeze from the east and the sun was bearing down, but in the south the sky was a little hazy. There were thin, fleecy-looking clouds beginning to rise up down there.

  I was lying there in the grass under the mulberry tree when Smut drove his car up on the grease rack. He got out and went into the car shed and didn’t pay any attention to me. Smut rummaged around in the car shed for a few minutes, and while he was in there Sam came up to the car.

  ‘Ain’t you afraid of catching cold, lying there on the ground?’ Sam asked me.

  No,’ I said.

  ‘It would give me a bad cold,’ Sam said.

  Smut came out of the car shed then, with a couple of wrenches and the grease gun. Sam went into the car shed and got two cans of oil.

  They commenced greasing the car then, with Sam handling the gun. But just as they got started good an automobile horn started honking up in front of the roadhouse. Smut looked up in that direction.

  There was a Ford coach in front of the roadhouse, and there were two men in the front and two girls in the back seat. The fellow who was driving had his head out the car window and was talking to Matt Rush.

  Smut stood there with his hands on his hips, not knowing whether to go up there or not. In a minute the driver cranked up and drove to within fifteen feet of the grease rack. He slammed on the brakes and hopped out of the car.

  He came up to where Smut was standing. This man was dressed well enough—he had on a dark suit with black-and-white shoes—but there was something about him that I didn’t like. Maybe it was because his hair was slicked down with too much grease—he was bareheaded—or maybe it was because there was too much grease on his voice when he spoke to Smut. This fellow might have been thirty years old.

  ‘Hello, skipper,’ he said to Smut.

  ‘Hello,’ Smut said.

  ‘We want to rent a cabin,’ the fellow said. ‘A double cabin.’

  ‘All my cabins are single,’ Smut said.

  ‘Well, two singles, then.’

  Smut looked hard at the man. Then he looked at the other man and at the two girls in the back seat. The other man was about the same size as the first one and he was bareheaded too. There were bald patches on his head. He had on a light blue polo shirt and needed a shave. Both girls were young and frowsy-looking. You could tell they were whores.

  ‘I’m full up,’ Smut said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, come on, now,’ this fellow said, and smiled at Smut. ‘We’re tourists from Massachusetts. We’re tired and would like to rent two cabins for several days. We want to drive around and see this country. Sure you can’t take care of us?’

  I looked at the license plate on the car. It was from Massachusetts, all right.

  ‘I ain’t got a thing today,’ Smut said. He turned his back to the fellow and began opening the other can of oil.

  The man who claimed he was a tourist ran his finger across his throat, then went back to the car. They drove back to the highway and took off toward Blytheville.

  Sam Hall had stopped work while the conversation was in progress. When the tourists turned off into the main highway, he looked at Smut.

  ‘It’s not any of my business, but how come you didn’t want to rent that fellow a couple of cabins?’ Sam said. ‘The cabins ain’t full.’

  Smut took a wrench out of his pocket and started examining the hinges on the car door.

  ‘I know they ain’t full,’ he told Sam. ‘But I don’t rent cabins to pimps and their whores.’

  ‘How you know that’s what they was?’ Sam asked.

  ‘They just looked like it,’ Smut said. ‘They would of located here and done a good business for maybe a week—it takes the clap about a week to show up on a man—then they’d of taken off for another joint.’

  ‘But other folks come out here and just rent a cabin for a couple of hours,’ Sam said.

  ‘That’s different,’ Smut said.

  ‘Is it?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yeah. The folks around here that do that are respectable folks. The girls are mostly girls that sing in the choir and do things like that. The boys come from the best families. But if I was to let whores stay out here, it would be different.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Sam said. He picked up the grease gun again.

  ‘It would get me closed up,’ Smut said. ‘Another thing is, if I was to die and go to hell, it would create a bad situation. If I’d made any money off whores, I couldn’t hold up my head in hell.’

  Sam laughed and Smut walked around to the front of the car. Just at that time another car drove in from the highway and a man got out of it.

  He went inside the roadhouse before I could make out who it was. Smut looked up toward the roadhouse, but I don’t think he recognized the man either. In a minute this same man came around the corner of the roadhouse and started down toward us.

  The man was Charles Fisher. He had something in his hand that looked like a woman’s bag. He was walking fast. Smut Milligan looked at him, then went back to watching Sam finish the greasing.

  Fisher came on up to the rack. His face was white and he was sweating. He had unbuttoned his collar and the knot on his tie had slipped around out of sight. His eyes were puffed a little.

  Fisher stopped in front of the rack. Smut walked around the front of the car and faced Fisher.

  ‘Good morning, Mr. Milligan. I want to show you something, Milligan,’ Charles Fisher said. He talked so fast that it was all run together.

  Smut didn’t say anything. He didn’t get any closer to Fisher either. Fisher looked at Smut, then took a couple of steps forward. He stopped and fumbled with the bag—it was a woman’s handbag.

  ‘Something I want to show you,’ Fisher said. He sounded like a man talking to himself.

  The bag was a blue one and made out of cloth. When Fisher tried to snap it open, his hands were shaking and he nearly dropped the bag. But he caught it up and opened it slow and careful.

  He stuck his hand inside the bag like he was afraid of something in there. His hand seemed to go down just a little bit at a time. But he jerked it out fast enough, and he was holding a pistol that had a white handle.

  I looked toward Smut just as Fisher shot him in the belly. Smut put his hands down there; he made a wry face and swayed a little to the right. Sam Hall dropped the grease gun against one of the empty oil cans and it made a loud noise. Fisher shot again and I heard the bullet whining in the pine thicket back of the woodpile.

  Smut was shot bad, but he made a dive at Fisher. Fisher waited until Smut was almost touching him, then shot him in the forehead. Smut fell over on his face. When he fell, he clawed his fingers into the dirt.

  I had been lying there on my stomach all the time. I decided to stay flat on the ground until Fisher got out of there.

  Charles Fisher looked down at Smut. He seemed to be satisfied that Smut was dead.

  ‘Wanted to show you something, Milligan,’ he said.

  Fisher put the gun in the bag, but he didn’t bother to snap the bag shut. He folded the bag around the gun, turned around, and ran back to his car. As soon as he got it started, he whipped it around and took off down Lover’s Lane. He was giving it the gun when he went out of sight.

  I pulled myself up by holding on to the mulberry tree. I looked around for Sam, but he wasn’t in sight. I
walked over to Smut and knelt down beside him.

  He was dead now. I looked around me to see if anybody was in sight. While I was looking in the direction of the car shed, Sam came crawling around the corner. When he saw me he stood up.

  ‘Has he gone?’ Sam asked me.

  ‘Fisher’s gone,’ I said.

  Sam walked over to me. He was walking slow and a little unsteadily. He looked as weak as I felt.

  ‘Dead?’ Sam whispered.

  I nodded my head. ‘Go get the others,’ I said.

  Sam’s strength came back to him then. He ran toward the roadhouse. I started feeling over Smut and located his pocketbook. It was buttoned up in his shirt-pocket. I looked through it in a hurry. There was a five-dollar bill and two quarters in it and that was all. No paper with the combination to his safe. I put the pocketbook back in the shirt-pocket and fanned him for the key ring. It was stuck down in the watch pocket. There were about a dozen keys on the ring, but I didn’t have any trouble deciding which was the key to his cabin. I got it off and put the key ring back where it was just as Badeye and Matt came out of the kitchen.

  They ran all the way. Sam was right behind them, running too, and in a minute Garfield and Rufus came down there. Badeye knelt down on the other side of Smut.

  ‘For God’s sake! For God’s sake!’ Badeye said. He took Smut’s right hand and pulled it out of the dirt.

  ‘I wish you’d look!’ Badeye said more to himself than to anybody else. ‘I wish to God you’d look. He must a dived at Fisher. He clawed up dirt here.’

  Badeye shook his head. ‘God, what a fellow!’ he said, and got to his feet.

  They all took a good look at Smut. Rufus Jones put his hands over his face and shook his head quick. ‘I don’t want to see it,’ Rufus said. He started back to the kitchen. ‘White folks, I ain’t got no truck with it,’ he called over his shoulder.

  I stood up then. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we better let him stay here till the sheriff and the coroner can get here. They’ll have to see him. But we might cover him up with a sheet.’

  ‘Go get a sheet, Matt,’ Sam Hall said.

  Matt started toward the cabin the other boys slept in. He walked a couple of steps, then broke into a run. I turned to Sam.

  ‘Somebody’s got to drive into Corinth and let the sheriff know,’ I said. ‘You want to do that, Sam?’

  Sam sat down on the ground beside Smut. His face was white and he looked like he might be going to faint.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ Sam said. ‘I tell you I’m just too nervous to do it.’

  Matt Rush was not a very good driver. Badeye was a little too drunk.

  I knelt down over Smut again. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if I can find the keys to the pick-up.’

  ‘Take his car. The keys are in it,’ Sam said.

  ‘Is it in shape to drive?’ I asked.

  ‘I was through greasing it,’ Sam said. His voice sounded like he was a long ways off.

  So I backed Smut’s coupé off the rack and turned it around. Badeye jumped on the running board and rode up to the gas tanks with me. I stopped there to let him off because he said he didn’t want to go to Corinth with me. When I stopped I noticed the gas gauge. It was registering empty.

  ‘Pump up some gas. The tank’s about empty,’ I said to Badeye. I let the clutch out and rolled up to the high-test tank.

  ‘How many?’ Badeye asked.

  ‘A couple of gallons,’ I said.

  While Badeye was pumping up the gas a car came down the highway from Corinth and turned into the roadhouse. An old touring car, without a top and without a windshield. It was Buck Wilhoyt’s old Essex that he got out every spring. Buck drove up beside me and stopped his rattletrap.

  ‘Whatta you say, Jack?’ Buck yelled.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘How about getting a grease job on my old boat?’ Buck asked. ‘She ain’t greasy enough. I got my own oil. I just want to use you all’s rack.’

  Badeye stuck the hose into the tank. He spat and looked around at Buck.

  ‘You can’t use the grease rack now,’ Badeye said.

  ‘How come I can’t?’ Buck asked.

  ‘It’s occupied right now,’ Badeye said.

  ‘No, it ain’t. I looked down there just as I drove around the corner. There’s just some fellows standing around down there.’

  Badeye took the hose out of the gas tank. He spat again.

  ‘Go down there and take another look,’ he said to Buck Wilhoyt.

  27

  THE ONLY THING I REMEMBER about going to Corinth that Sunday morning is that I kept the speedometer on seventy all the way until I hit the city limits. I had to slow down there because the people were beginning to go home from church.

  It was about noon by that time. I figured Sheriff Pemberton would be home getting ready to eat Sunday dinner, so I made for his house. I went down Main and turned at the Methodist Church. The Methodist preacher was the longest-winded one in town, so there was still a lot of folks hanging around in front of that church. I had to stop there once on account of some woman backing her car out in the middle of the street right in front of me.

  I went down that street, turned left, drove about a city block, and stopped in front of the sheriff’s house. It was a bungalow, painted dark green and trimmed with brown, with a dormer window sticking out of the roof. The sheriff’s car wasn’t parked in front anywhere. I got out of the coupé and ran up the front steps.

  The sheriff’s wife answered the doorbell. She was a plump blonde, about thirty-five, I’d say, and from the sloppy-looking house dress she had on I guess she hadn’t been to church that morning.

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

  ‘He’s not here right now,’ Mrs. Pemberton said. ‘He just now got a call and left.’

  ‘You know where he went?’

  ‘He’s out at Mr. Charles Fisher’s, I think,’ Mrs. Pemberton said. ‘He got a call to go out there just now. Just when he was getting ready to eat his dinner.’

  ‘Charles Fisher’s!’ I said. So Fisher was going to own up to it right away.

  ‘That’s where the call was from,’ the sheriff’s wife said. ‘Somebody called him over the telephone and said for him to rush out there. I been trying to find out what’s the matter, but it seems like nobody’s got home from church.’

  I think the woman said something else, but I didn’t stay to hear it. I got in the car and studied a minute about what I ought to do. If Fisher was going to confess, the sheriff would find out about Smut without me telling him, but the main reason I didn’t want to go out there was because I didn’t want to see Fisher just then.

  In the end, though, I decided I would drive over there and report to the sheriff. I took the back ways till I got to Pee Dee Avenue. I drove down the avenue, that was lined with Lombardy poplars, and when I got toward the end I saw there were three cars in front of Charles Fisher’s. One of them was Fisher’s car—the one he had driven out to the roadhouse. The sheriffs car was there too, and another one that I didn’t recognize. I pulled up to the sidewalk and parked.

  I ran up the steps to Fisher’s front door, but I didn’t ring the doorbell. It wasn’t necessary. Bud Smathers came out of the door just as I got there, and I saw the sheriff’s back just inside.

  ‘I want to see the sheriff, Mr. Smathers,’ I said.

  Bud was chewing on a cigar that wasn’t lighted. He took the cigar out of his mouth and blew out a piece of tobacco.

  ‘Go right in and see him,’ Bud Smathers said.

  The sheriff turned his head when I went inside, but didn’t speak to me right off. He was chewing tobacco, but not doing any spitting.

  ‘Can I talk to you a minute, sheriff?’ I asked.

  The sheriff nodded his head. He looked around him, but there wasn’t a spittoon in sight and the fireplace over in the left corner had been closed up. Sheriff Pemberton walked over to a table that was in front of the fireplace. He spat into a va
se of hyacinths that was on the table.

  ‘It’s about Mr. Fisher,’ I said. ‘Has he talked to you, sheriff? About Smut, I mean?’

  Sheriff Pemberton looked directly at me then. He seemed to be puzzled about something.

  ‘About Smut Milligan, didn’t you say?’

  ‘That’s right. I thought maybe he told you about it,’ I said.

  Right then Bud Smathers stuck his head in the door. ‘Believe I’ll go on, sheriff,’ he said. ‘LeRoy’ll be back at the store in a minute, I reckon.’

  ‘That’ll be all right,’ the sheriff said.

  The other car out front was Bud’s. He got in it and drove on off. I remembered then that he was the coroner. It worked in fine with his undertaking business.

  Sheriff Pemberton was looking at me again; then he looked down at the divan that was in the middle of the room, in front of the little table.

  ‘Fisher hasn’t told me anything, son,’ the sheriff said in a low voice. ‘He was dead when I got here about fifteen minutes ago. He killed himself.’

  ‘He’s dead?’ I said. I didn’t know what I was saying.

  ‘I told you he was dead,’ Sheriff Pemberton said. ‘He shot his wife and then killed himself.’

  The sheriff walked over to the vase of hyacinths and spat in it again. On the wall above the fireplace there was hanging the picture of a hard-looking old man, dressed like they used to a long time ago, with a black coat and a white shirt and high stiff collar. Sheriff Pemberton stared at the picture of this fellow, then turned his head toward me.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ the sheriff said. ‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’

  ‘Is his wife dead too?’ I asked.

  ‘She wasn’t when she left here. LeRoy got out here with the ambulance and took both of them to the hospital and Lola had been shot in the shoulder. She was kind of dazed like, and couldn’t say anything.’

  Sheriff Pemberton walked back to the hyacinth vase. ‘Must have gone temporarily insane,’ he said. ‘You want to see me about something?’

  ‘I wanted to,’ I said. ‘It was about Smut Milligan. About an hour ago Fisher drove out to the roadhouse and killed him. That was what I was talking about.’