by Jim Thompson
I sat on a crosspiece for a while, smoking. Then I climbed up to the top of the rig and took the hatchet from my belt. I chopped at the edge of the crown block, sending down a shower of grease-soaked splinters.
He brushed them off, lazily, pulling his hat over his face.
I chopped out a small piece of the block, catching it in my hand before it could fall. I took careful aim and let go.
It struck near the side of his head, bounced into the air and landed between his folded hands. He sat up. He looked up at me, then looked at the piece of wood. He took out his pocketknife and began to whittle.
There is always a wind in West Texas. It blows relentlessly, straight off the North Pole in winter, straight out of hell in summer. It was summer now, early summer. The wind rolled through the derrick at a baking, dehydrating one hundred and twenty degrees. There was no protection from it. I had no water. By noon I was getting dizzy, and my throat felt like it had been blistered.
The deputy stood up, looked around and sauntered into the tool shed. Some fifteen minutes later he came out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Like to have some chow?” he called. “A little water?”
“You kidding?” I croaked.
“I’ll find a pail. You can pull it up on the rope.”
He started for the tool shed again. In spite of myself, I laughed.
“Let it go,” I said. “I’m coming down.”
He was a good-looking guy. His hair was coal-black beneath his pushed-back Stetson, and his black intelligent eyes were set wide apart in a tanned, fine-featured face. He grinned at me as I dropped down in front of him on the derrick floor.
“Now, that wasn’t very smart,” he said. “And that’s—”
“And that’s a fact,” I snapped. “All right, let’s get going.”
He went on grinning at me. In fact, his grin broadened a little. But it was fixed, humorless, and a veil seemed to drop over his eyes.
“What makes you so sure,” he said, softly, “you’re going anywhere?”
“Well, I—” I gulped. “I-I—”
“Awful lonesome out here, ain’t it? Ain’t another soul for miles around but you and me.”
“L-look,” I said. “I’m—I wasn’t trying to—”
“Lived here all my life,” he went on, softly. “Everyone knows me. No one knows you. And we’re all alone. What do you make o’ that, a smart fella like you? You’ve been around. You’re all full of piss and high spirits. What do you think an ol’ stupid country boy might do in a case like this?”
He stared at me, steadily, the grin baring his teeth. I stood paralyzed and wordless, a great cold lump forming in my stomach. The wind whined and moaned through the derrick. He spoke again, as though in answer to a point I had raised.
“Don’t need one,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do with a gun that you can’t do a better way. Don’t see nothin’ around here I’d need a gun for.”
He shifted his feet slightly. The muscles in his shoulders bunched. He took a pair of black kid gloves from his pocket, and drew them on slowly. He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand.
“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “Tell you a couple of things. There ain’t no way of telling what a man is by looking at him. There ain’t no way of knowing what he’ll do if he has the chance. You think maybe you can remember that?”
I couldn’t speak, but I managed a nod. His grin and his eyes went back to normal.
“Look kind of peaked,” he said. “Why’n’t you have somethin’ to eat an’ drink before we leave?”
I paid my fine. I also paid for a bench warrant, the deputy’s per diem for two days and his mileage. And you can be sure that I made no fuss about it.
I never saw that deputy again, but I couldn’t get him out of my mind. And the longer he remained there the bigger riddle he presented. Had he been bluffing? Had he only meant to throw a good scare into a brash kid? Or was it the other way, the way I was sure it was at the time? Had my meekness saved me from the murder with which he had threatened me?
Suppose I had hit him with that block of wood? Suppose I had razzed him a little more? Suppose I had been frightened into grabbing for my hatchet?
I tried to get him down on paper, to put him into a story, but while he was very real to me I could not make him seem real. Rather, he was too commonplace and innocuous—nothing more than another small-town deputy. Put down on paper, he was only solemnly irritated, not murderous.
The riddle, of course, lay not so much in him as me. I tended to see things in black and white, with no intermediate shadings. I was too prone to categorize—naturally, using myself as the norm. The deputy had behaved first one way, then another, then the first again. And in my ignorance I saw this as complexity instead of simplicity.
He had gone as far as his background and breeding would allow to be amiable. I hadn’t responded to it, so he had taken another tack. It was simple once I saw things through his eyes instead of my own.
I didn’t know whether he would have killed me, because he didn’t know himself.
Finally, as I matured, I was able to re-create him on paper—the sardonic, likeable murderer of my fourth novel, The Killer Inside Me. But I was a long time in doing it—almost thirty years.
And I still haven’t got him out of my mind.
25
While the derrick dismantling was dangerous, it was not particularly arduous as oil field jobs went. The contractor didn’t hurry us. There was a chance to rest between jobs. We worked a few days, and laid off a few—a situation perfectly suited to a man who was not in the best of health. So, though I swore to quit daily, I stayed on for weeks.
Strawlegs and I were fairly well-heeled when winter came on, and we were forced to quit. Because jobs generally had to be scrounged for in the oil fields and transportation service was nonexistent, we bought an old Model-T touring car.
We odd-jobbed through the boom towns of Chalk and Foursands, then settled down temporarily on a pipeline job between Midland and Big Springs. The pay was fair—four-fifty a day less a dollar deducted for “slop and flop.” The bosses were hard men, but they were not slave drivers. Still, I soon had more of the job than I could take, and so had Strawlegs. Neither of us was physically capable of swinging a shovel and pick for nine hours a day, seven days a week.
Winter was with us, however. We had very little money and no other prospects for work. The only thing to do, seemingly, was to stay here without working. So, after many inquiries and a careful study of camp routine, we did that.
The bosses assumed, naturally, that everyone in camp was working. It followed then that everyone would have earnings from which the dollar-a-day could be deducted, and no head-count was made at meal times. Thus, to eat and sleep free, it was only necessary to keep out of sight during working hours. Immediately after breakfast, Strawlegs and I slipped off into the underbrush, remaining there until lunch time. After lunch we disappeared again, and returned for supper and the night.
Strawlegs was well-educated and had traveled widely and well before booze got the best of him. We both shared a deep interest in the nominally inconsequential, and could spend hours discussing the stamen of a sage bloom or the antics of an ant.
There were four hundred men in the camp—drifters, bums, jailbirds, fugitives from justice. Of necessity, such camps were always isolated and they moved in and out of counties as the work progressed. It was impossible for the local authorities to police them, so the camp bosses did the job. Sometimes they were deputized, sometimes not. In any case they dispensed a pretty fair brand of justice.
Gamblers and bootleggers followed the job, traveling in cars and setting up their own tents on the outskirts of camp. They were allowed to operate freely, as long as they did it at night and behaved themselves. The bootlegger’s product had to be good, and his prices reasonable. The consistently “lucky” gambler was quickly spotted and eliminated.
More than once I have seen a boss (“man
with the stroke”) step up to a crap or blackjack table and order the proprietor to pack and get. There would be no explanation beyond, possibly, “You’ve got enough,” or “knock off while you’re able to.” And I never knew of but one gambler to object. The words were hardly out of his mouth before a fist landed on it and a boot landed under his table, scattering chips, cards and cash to the wind.
One night two whores drifted into camp and were promptly ordered to leave. The bosses were somewhat more explanatory about this edict than others since “ladies” were involved. They pointed out that the men were generally a rough and ready lot who would certainly look upon the women as fair and free game. The two would get nothing for their trouble but exercise, and much more of that than they wanted.
Well, the women left, but sullenly. And late that night they slipped back into camp. The forty men in the first of the ten tents took charge of them. They got no farther, and they almost didn’t get out of it alive.
As their wild shrieks ripped through the night, the “strokes” leaped cursing from their cots. They jerked on their boots, snatched up pick handles and advanced on Number One tent on the run. But there were only ten of them, and many of the men in adjoining tents sided with the occupants of the first one. The onslaught of the bosses was met with clubs, knives, cot legs and razors. As fast as one workman went down, his head split open by a whizzing pick handle, two more sprang forward to take his place.
But the pipeliners didn’t have to win, and the strokes did have to. Otherwise, they were through in the oil fields. So, finally, they formed a ring around the mauled and hysterical women and fought their way out of camp.
The camp set an abundant table in the hundred-yard-long dining tent. There were usually three kinds of meat, even at breakfast. In addition to meat, the average lunch and dinner included a half-dozen vegetables, cornbread, biscuits and light bread, coffee and milk, pie, cake and fruit. But preparing twelve hundred huge meals a day under primitive conditions was something to test a saint, and pipeline cooks were very far from sainthood. Thus, despite good raw materials, the end product was not always good. And despite the variety and abundance, one did not always get what he wanted or as much as he wanted.
It was hard to get a dish passed. When it was passed, it was likely to be emptied before it got to the man who requested it. So the moment they sat down at the table, the men started grabbing meat, potatoes and cake—whatever was nearest them. And fearful that they might get nothing more, they dumped the contents of the bowl or platter onto their own plates. One man would have eight or nine pounds of meat in front of him, another a gallon of potatoes, another a whole cake and so on.
The flunkies (waiters) rushed more food to the table, refills of the original dishes. But these likewise were apt to proceed no farther than the men who grabbed them. They would simply throw away the remainder of the uneaten cake, meat or potatoes and empty the second dish onto their plates. Inevitably, much more food went under the table than into the men’s stomachs.
The bosses did what they could to correct the situation, but they were never completely successful. The cooks—invariably hard-drinking, short-tempered men—grew murderous. They botched food, deliberately. They threw dirt into it. Sometimes they did worse.
One night we were served great platters of golden brown, “breaded” pork chops. There were so many of them that even the greediest men could see that there was plenty for all, and every man was able to fill his plate. Then, they cut into the chops, and the meat almost dripped with blood. It hadn’t been cooked, only browned lightly on the side.
Outraged and profane yells rose from the table. Snatching up handfuls of the bloody pork, the men rushed toward the rear of the tent where the meals were prepared. The cooks stopped their charge temporarily with hurled kettles of boiling food. Then, before their would-be murderers could fully recover, the culinary staff fled the tent as one man, scampering across the prairie in their white uniforms and caps like so many overstuffed, outsize jackrabbits.
I imagine that they were later picked up and driven into town by some of the bosses. At any rate, they did not return to camp, and a new batch of cooks was brought in in time to cook the morning meal.
26
By working as a team at the table, Strawlegs and I fared uncommonly well, and the abundance of food combined with the long days of rest did wonders for us. We moved on, when the job ended in mid-winter, very nearly broke but in better health than we had enjoyed for a long time.
We went back to Foursands. There was no work there so, after a few days, we went to the town of Midland.
We found no work here either, not enough to support us. Finally, much against our better judgment, we sold a third interest in the car to a man named Bragg.
I learned two very valuable things from this transaction. First, that when things get so bad they are about to get better; second, that no bargain is better than a bad one. The day after the deal was made we got work on a highline job, but Bragg would not allow us to buy him out. We were stuck with him, and if there was ever an undesirable partner to have in anything he was it.
He was a giant of a man, more than six feet six inches tall, more than two hundred and fifty pounds of almost solid muscle. And every ounce and inch of him was packed with unadulterated meanness.
Bragg publicly addressed us as “turds” and “turd-heads.” He would talk about revolting subjects at meal-times, making us sick to our stomachs. He was forever knocking us breathless with slaps on the back or bumping into us in such a way as to send us sprawling. Then, he would insist on shaking hands—crushing our fingers until we were forced to grovel.
I remarked a few pages back that no one is wholly bad, but if Bragg had a single redeeming feature I don’t know what it was. The nicest thing I can say about him is that he was a no-good, double-dyed, rotten son-of-a-bitch.
We had to live on the job, sleeping and cooking out when the weather permitted, shacking-up in the nearest tool house when it did not. Bragg bedded down on the cushions of the car, and covered himself with the side curtains. Strawlegs and I had to make do with our blankets. Bragg ate two-thirds of the food or more. He paid for a third or less—and sometimes he would pay for nothing.
It was always our fault whenever anything went wrong with the car. Bragg would neither pay for repairs nor let them go unmade.
About the only work Strawlegs and I could do was with the pick and shovel, digging the holes for the highline towers. Bragg, however, was skilled at several kinds of the work involved. He worked steadily—two days to our one. While we were often too hard up to buy cigarettes, he saved money hand over fist.
He would take the car with him on days when we were not working, returning at nightfall like as not with a broken spring or a blown-out tire which, of course, he blamed on us. Bragg’s idea of a hilarious joke was to leave us out on the prairie all day, dozens of miles from town, without food or water.
Knowing of nothing else to do, Strawlegs and I stayed on—hopefully, at first, thinking that things might improve, then, out of pure stubbornness. Obviously, Bragg wanted us to give up and move on, leaving him in possession of the car. So, though it was a losing proposition for us, we stayed.
When the highline job ended in the spring, we suggested selling the car and dividing the proceeds. Bragg flatly refused. He was going on to the town of Rankin, he said, to an impending pipeline job. We could do as we pleased, but he was going in the car, necessarily taking our two-thirds with his third.
Strawlegs and I decided to go to Rankin.
It lay seventy miles to the west, and there was not a filling station nor house throughout the distance. The road was a rutted, red clay trail, stretching through a dry, sparsely grassed desert.
We had two blowouts in the first ten miles. By nightfall we were only halfway to our destination. We had to stop then, since we could not proceed fast enough for the magneto-powered lights to function. Pitching camp at the side of the trail, Strawlegs and I were allowed a little
bread and bologna and water. Bragg took charge of the rest.
When morning came, he finished what remained of the food and water, and ensconced himself comfortably in the back seat. With his feet in our necks and nothing in our stomach, we continued on our way.
We didn’t continue far before the radiator began to boil, and cursing us for the lack of water, Bragg ordered a stop. We let the engine cool awhile, and drove on again. A few more miles and the overheated motor again forced us to stop.
Bragg got out of the car and hauled us out. Perching himself precariously on the front spring, he unscrewed the cap of the radiator and urinated in it. He stepped down, grimly, advising us to emulate his example.
We did, insofar as we were able to. But we had had very little water and the drying wind had taken most of that from us. For all Bragg’s cursings and poundings on the back, we could not produce something we did not have.
We drove another ten miles, perhaps, before the red-hot engine again forced a halt. And this time there was another difficulty which called for water. Our joltings and the climate had loosened the spokes of the right rear wheel. Unless they were soaked and allowed to swell, the wheel would soon fall apart.
Bragg cursed us until his throat was hoarse. He grabbed us by the neck and bumped our heads together.
“Smart bastards,” he grunted. “Just look what you went and done! Whatcha going to do now?”
“You can have my share in the wreck,” I said, for it would cost far more to repair now than it was worth. “I’m going to walk on into town.”
“That goes for me, too,” said Strawlegs.
“Oh, no you don’t,” snapped Bragg. “You ain’t givin’ me your share—not now, anyways—and you ain’t goin’ off to town after water. We’re goin’ to carry it in, me and you turds, and you’re damned well goin’ to carry your share.”
“Carry it!” We stared at him incredulously. “Carry the—it?”