by James Ross
I walked on till I came to the highway. I went back to the roadhouse by the same way I had taken when I went down there that night to buy a pint of corn—the night Smut Milligan had offered me a job. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since then. That night I had been worrying about the money I owed LeRoy Smathers and about my back taxes. It seemed like nothing now.
29
IN THE MORNING IT was cold and gray. The wind was blowing out of the northeast and it was a strong, wet wind. It felt like a day in January, but back of the cabins the dogwoods were in full bloom.
The sheriff had locked the front door to the roadhouse, but Badeye had a key to the kitchen that Astor LeGrand had given him. About eight o’clock we went up there and I cooked breakfast. After we finished eating Badeye locked up again and we went back to the cabins.
Badeye had broken into the old Studebaker sedan and had got out the corn liquor that was under the back seat. He hadn’t had much breakfast, just a cup of coffee and one egg, raw. When we got back to his cabin he began to drink. He tried to get me to drink with him, and when I refused it made him surly. He told me I couldn’t stay in the cabin another night. He sounded pretty sore, so I left him there with the three half-gallon fruit jars he had brought up from the old sedan.
I went over to the cabin I had called mine. I got my clothes together, but I didn’t have anything to put them in except the trunk, and that was too heavy for the way I was going to travel. I went back to the cabin Badeye was in; the one that had been Smut’s.
Badeye was sitting on the cane-bottomed chair. There was a jar of the liquor on the floor between his feet. Because both his eyes were cocked he seemed to be looking both to the right and to the left.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I want that zipper bag of Smut’s. I’m going to take that and put my stuff in it. I’ll leave the trunk in the place of it.’
‘Take it on,’ Badeye said.
‘I don’t think LeGrand would object to my taking the bag,’ I said.
‘I don’t think so,’ Badeye said.
‘I don’t want to steal anything from him,’ I said. ‘After all he’s done for me I wouldn’t want to cheat him out of a valuable zipper bag.’
‘I didn’t know you and he was intimate friends,’ Badeye said.
‘I’ve helped Mr. LeGrand plenty,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t say we were close friends.’
‘I and him are close friends,’ Badeye said, and gazed into the jar of liquor. He reached down, raised the jar to his mouth, and took a long drink. He replaced the jar between his feet and began staring into it again. I reached under the dresser and got the zipper bag.
Since Astor LeGrand had torn it open, the zipper wouldn’t work any more, but I thought I could tie a piece of window cord around it and use it anyway. I carried it back to my cabin and packed my things in it. I guess it took me two minutes to do that.
I didn’t get any lunch that day because Badeye was drinking and didn’t want anything to eat. He wouldn’t give me the key to the kitchen, but I hung around the place anyway until it was late in the afternoon. About five o’clock Sam Hall came out for his old car and for the few clothes he had kept out there.
Sam came out with the rubber goods man, who was on his way to Blytheville. Sam got out at the gas tanks in front of the roadhouse and came on across the yard. I was sitting in the door to my cabin, and when he saw me he turned and came over where I was.
“When you leaving, Jack?’ he asked.
‘Soon as I can make up my mind which way to go,’ I said.
‘You ain’t got any place in mind?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Listen,’ Sam said, ‘why don’t you go to Renner’s place and get a job there?’
‘Where’s Renner’s place?’
Sam squatted in front of the door. ‘It’s about ten miles below Blytheville. On the junction of U.S. No. 1 and the Florence Highway. It’s a new joint.’
‘A roadhouse?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. A fellow was telling me about it last night. He said he was a good friend of the man that runs the place. He said I could get a job down there.’
‘To hell with it,’ I said.
Sam got up then and started into the cabin he had lived in with the other boys. ‘It’s a cinch you can get a job down there if you want one,’ he said.
‘I’d rather starve,’ I said. ‘Tell me, Sam, when are they going to have the funerals?’
He stopped and turned around. ‘They’re gonna bury Fisher tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I talked to LeRoy Smathers this morning; I went up to the funeral parlor. LeRoy said they was going to have kind of a private affair. Just his daddy, I guess, and his wife, and maybe a few friends—only he didn’t have so many friends in Corinth. You know, folks respected him on account of he was rich, but he wasn’t a good mixer.’
‘What about Smut?’
‘They’ve already buried him, I guess,’ Sam said. ‘I reckon it was sort of private too.’
I could see them in the graveyard. There was Len Smathers driving the hearse, and maybe one fellow to help him unload the coffin. There were three or four niggers that Astor LeGrand had hired to dig the grave. They probably helped slide the box the coffin was in, into the grave. Then the hearse was driven back uptown and the gravediggers covered the box up and went to LeGrand and collected a dollar each. It was private beyond the shadow of a doubt.
In a little while Sam Hall came out of the cabin. He closed the door and walked out to his old Ford roadster that was parked about halfway between the last cabin and Lover’s Lane. He got it started, after stepping on the starter several times, and drove off. When he turned into the road Sam looked around and waved at me. I waved back to him.
I went into my own cabin then, got the bag that was tied with a piece of window cord, stepped outside again, and pulled the door to. Night was corning on. The wind out of the east was wet and raw. I turned up the collar of my windbreaker and pulled my hat down around my ears. It was beginning to rain a little when I crossed the yard to the highway.
THE END
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1940, renewed © 1968 by James Ross
Copyright © 1975 by Southern Illinois University Press
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN 978-1-4532-9567-0
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