Hardcastle (36 page)

He would have puzzled over it further if he hadn’t suddenly heard a noise and realized that something was approaching and in the starshine seen the thin, slinky figure of the hound, tracking him to his bed as he had done that first night. “Fetlock, you knothead, all them people run you off too?” he asked.

The dog stopped short, startled, and Music got some sense of how the hound must feel, being addressed so abruptly and apparently from the very earth, no erect man-shape anywhere in sight. The hound circled warily. “Ha,” Music said, “it’s me. Come on here. Come on.” Nervous, close to the earth, the dog circled in, and finding, at last, Music’s face at one end of the pile of pine needles, went into a half-relieved, half-puzzled fit of tail wagging and whining and face licking. “Stop, you son of a bitch,” Music said, for the hound seemed to think he needed digging up, as though he were a landslide victim or a favorite bone. At last Music had to free an arm and settle Fetlock down, scratching the hound’s head and long velvet ears until he lay down with his head on Music’s chest.

That was good. The dog’s warmth seeped down to him, and his only problems were his face, searingly cold where the dog had licked him, and his bladder, which wished to be emptied even though he had already emptied it before he ever got to the bull pine to make his bed. Must be the broth, he thought; it went straight through me.

Nevertheless, he made up his mind to pay no attention to either problem. He didn’t. And he slept straight through till morning.

21

THE BRISTOL RUN

EVERYTHING WAS RIMED with hoarfrost. The very air seemed frozen stiff. And the Model T didn’t want to start. Both Regus and Music took half a dozen turns at the hand crank. Still, the motor finally kicked over and caught, the handle of the crank tearing itself from Music’s grip with nearly enough force to break his thumb. Regus adjusted the spark and throttle and stuck his head out of the crack of the open door. “Aire ye hurt then?” he asked.

“No, the mulish son of a bitch!” Music said, and wagging his hand on the end of his arm as though he were drying it, he got in the truck, and they backed around and started off toward Elkin.

It was about the time of day when they had formerly gone to work, and sure enough, as they passed the commissary, Cawood and Grady Burnside were lounging on the steps. Regus, who had appeared that morning wearing his old miner’s cap as though it were a twenty-dollar Stetson, tipped it grandly as the Model T clucked past.

Music rolled himself a cigarette and lit it. They were well past Mink Slide and the cigarette was half gone before he spoke. “I didn’t think you were the sort of man who would poke a snake for no reason,” he said.

“I been a paid son of a bitch for a long time,” Regus said. “What makes you think I ain’t got a reason?”

“Well,” Music said, “you seem to take my meaning anyway. I guess you think we’ve got as fine a chance to get to Bristol and back with you wearing that cap as we would otherwise.”

Regus stared straight down the road, no expression whatever on his face. Finally he took off the cap and pitched it on the seat between them, and no more was said about it. But in some corner of Music’s brain it seemed significant and worrisome.

About a mile below the Bear Paw they pulled off the road, and Music fired the Colt. Much to his surprise, all five loaded cylinders went off without so much as a hangfire, and the stone he was aiming at—somewhat smaller than a dinner plate and around thirty yards distant—bore the marks of five .44-caliber balls. With the smoke hanging in the frigid air and his ears still ringing, he sat on the running board and recharged and recapped the pistol, resting the hammer, at last, on the nipple of the empty chamber. “A man couldn’t want a better pistol than that,” he said, when he climbed back in the truck. He set the musette bag containing powder, balls, caps, cornmeal, lard, nipple wrench, and nipple prick down directly on top of Regus’s miner’s cap.

“Absolutely,” Regus said, “so long as you’re a-shootin at rocks.” He sniffed. “They mean you no harm, wait while you reload, and hold right still while ye chew yer tongue and take aim.”

“Ha,” Music said.

After about an hour they passed through a community called Saltlick and then another called Fivemile, where two men armed with shotguns waved them down.

One man held his shotgun leveled at the cab of the truck, and the other came up to Music’s window, propped his foot on the running board, touched the brim of his hat, and asked, “Where you fellers bound?” He had a gold tooth and held his shotgun casually beside his leg and pointed at the ground.

“Over Tennessee way,” Music said. “Hope to buy a hog or two.”

“Ain’t they no hogs in Kentucky?” the man asked.

“Sure,” Music said, “but my uncle don’t own em. He’s got two he didn’t butcher and don’t want to feed em over. Wrote and said I could have em fer three dollars apiece and them pretty good-sized.” He hoped to hell he sounded like a Kentucky farmer. The man with the gold tooth flicked his eyes from the pistol butt sticking out of Music’s coat and the lump it made against his side to Music’s face, to Regus, and back to the pistol. Regus’s .38, luckily, could not be seen beneath his jumper.

“Yer right well armed just for buyin a pig,” the man said.

“Lord,” Music said, “I’d like to get home with it. Damned coal miners all makin a fuss and trouble, and people up to meanness. If I pay for a couple of hogs, I aim to get back home with em.”

The man’s eyes covered exactly the same ground as they had a moment before.

“It’s gettin to where a poor farmer cain’t hardly even travel the road,” Music said.

The man appeared to think about it and then abruptly swung his head for them to move on, saying to his partner across the road, “Let em pass.”

When they were a little way distant from the armed men, Regus cut his eyes around to Music without quite moving his head. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Who would have thunk ye’d show such a talent for lyin.” Regus tasted the inside of his mouth and grinned in a way that sent a little buzz of anger through Music. “A feller just don’t know who in hell to trust anymore.”

Music was himself surprised at what had come out of his mouth. “I intend to get to Bristol, and I intend to bring them damned supplies back,” he said and began at once to take off his coat so that he could get rid of the shoulder holster and the enormous pistol. With Regus watching out of the corner of his eye, Music wrapped pistol, musette bag, and Regus’s miner’s cap in a rag and put them on the floorboard.

“They’s a feller back yonder who’s gonna be lookin fer us to come back with a couple of pigs. What tale you gonna tell him next time?”

“I don’t know,” Music said. He looked out the window as the last of Fivemile’s wretched company housing fell behind. “I think we ought to find another way home.”

Regus nodded. “I reckon we could go around by Harlan and there,” he said.

“I think we better,” Music said.

“I guess,” Regus said. “Hit would save us comin through Mink Slide and Elkin with our tucker, though goddam Harlan ain’t the place I’d pick to visit just now neither.”

For a long time then they were silent, while the Model T made its fusty, clamorous way down the road and the climbing sun caused the frost, which lay everywhere, to creep toward the shaded lee of the hills. Slowly Music’s spirits began to rise. Hell, he thought, if they were smart and had a little luck, they’d make it to Bristol and back all right; and it was a grand thing just to be on the move for a change, just to be going somewhere again, no matter what the circumstances.

When they got to Pineville and Music saw a little café with its windows all but painted over with the list of fare, he almost laughed aloud. They’d had no supper to speak of and no breakfast at all, but unlike most times in his life, he had money, well over twenty dollars tucked in a tobacco sack in his breast pocket. He was hungry, and it was a wonderful thing to be hungry when you happened to be a man of means.

He pointed out the café to Regus, but Regus said he’d just as soon find a grocery store where he could get some crackers and sardines and maybe a little cheese.

“You goddamned hick,” Music said and laughed. “We are going to have some hot food and coffee and a piece of pie. I’ll stand you to it.”

And although Regus argued that it didn’t seem right to pay some stranger extra to cook and serve them victuals on a dish, Music said he wasn’t going to be done out of proper food just because Regus was afraid to eat in a café. “Well, goddamn you then!” Regus said and pulled the truck over. He gave Music the little chrome-plated derringer to stick in his pocket, since it was obvious he meant to leave the Colt hidden on the floorboard.

Music wouldn’t have admitted it, perhaps even to himself, but the simple matter of sitting at the counter of the little café made him feel better than he had in months. Ella’s good cooking aside, it just wasn’t the same. Nor was it simply that he could choose, among many possibilities, just the sort of thing he craved—a bowl of, by God, chili and a piece of apple pie, never mind that it was breakfast—no, the matter of eating in a café was on a whole different basis. It was out in the world, fraternal, cash-and-carry, and no strings attached. Somehow in a woman’s kitchen a man felt forever obliged and bound in some odd way. Sure, from the first time they stuck a tit in a fellow’s mouth until they buried him, they presided over the simple pleasure of eating. He hadn’t felt so good since he was in Chicago, before his luck, and the luck of the whole world, seemed to turn bad. The chili was fine stuff with a special hot kick, and there was a big bowl of crackers between them to crumble into it. And pie. It was a wonderful café, rich with the smell of coffee and many kinds of food; even the underlying, pissy odor of old grease was just as it should have been.

He could have lingered far longer than they did, but the time came to check himself against the bill of fare and prices chalked on a blackboard behind the counter and count out what he owed: ten cents apiece for the bowls of chili, ten cents apiece for the generous slices of pie, the coffee being free, coming as it did with the food. He even left a nickel tip, and when the counterman called them gents and told them to hurry back, he didn’t feel like just another stiff down on his luck, but, for a fleeting moment, a man of potential and promise.

They stopped again for gas, and when the Model T was pecking down the road once more, Regus said, “I never had no chili fed me until this day and I’ll admit to it, but I’ll hand it to ye, I could eat a bowl of that six times a week.” He jerked his chin to one side and sucked his teeth in affirmation. “I wonder what they put in them old kidney beans to make em taste so grand.”

“We’ll stop somewhere on the way back and have some more,” Music said.

“Well, now, I’ll hold ye to that, Bill Music; I surely will,” Regus said.

They made good time and had no more trouble until just before they crossed the Virginia line, where they were stopped once more by armed men and asked their business. Music told his story about the uncle in Tennessee with the pigs, and once again they were allowed to pass.

No one bothered them in Virginia, and they saw no more than two coal tipples in that whole corner of the state, although there were many small farms. As they were passing one, which looked particularly fertile and well kept, Music sat up suddenly in his seat. “Pull in here,” he said. “By God, I’ve got a notion we can drive right past them gun thugs on the way back.”

But when Music asked the farmer if he could buy some hay, the man shook his head sadly and explained that hay wasn’t worth anybody’s time to sell. Last year and the year before, those who had raised it for market could hardly give it away, so no one fooled with more than they needed for their own stock. At last, however, he gave Music the name of a man further down the road who just might have extra.

At the second place they had better luck, and for a dollar they bought a load of alfalfa that filled the truck. The farmer seemed very surprised with his good fortune and looked at the dollar bill Music gave him carefully before he tucked it away into the bib pocket of his overalls. When Music offered him another fifty cents for the sweat-stained, hard-worn straw hat on his head, the man was struck dumb. He looked at Music. He took off his hat and looked at it, turning it this way and that in his hand as though to discover the source of its secret value. “Son,” he said, “I reckon the hay’s worth nearly four bits, but this hat never cost me more than twenty cent and it new.”

“I’d like to buy it,” Music said, for it seemed just the touch to make their disguise complete; he stretched the half-dollar toward the farmer. The man looked at the coin a moment, then took it, and thrust his hat toward Music. With a smile Music put it on and gave the crown a snappy pat. “Pretty good fit,” he said.

“I hope the Lord don’t strike me,” the farmer said, tucking the fifty-cent piece away as well, “for I never lied to ye.”

The spare tire thrown atop the load of hay to hold it down, they puttered and pecked through the streets of Bristol, stopping now and again to ask directions. They asked no policeman for fear he would know at once, somehow, what they were up to and send word back to every sheriff, mine guard, and gun thug in Kentucky to be on the lookout for their return. Still, at last they found the proper street, although they didn’t believe it, if only because they hadn’t expected to be among houses almost as large and fine as Kenton Hardcastle’s. Certainly they were better kept, if not so big. They’d expected a defunct warehouse, or a big tent such as revivals were held in, or maybe a shed off some alley. “Well,” Music said, “park it and let me go and see.” He looked from the slip of paper Arturo Zigerelli had given him to the house number hanging from a lamp beside a long flagstone walkway. The house was a large stucco affair with a red tiled roof. “Hellkatoot,” Music said, “this just ain’t right. That little sucker gave us the wrong address.”

But although the man who answered the door couldn’t place the name of Arturo Zigerelli, it was not the wrong address. “We are expecting men from Consolidated Coal Company in Jenkins and from Hardcastle Coal Company—that terrible place where the young organizer was murdered,” the man said.