Night My Friend (39 page)

He played until midnight, giving the kids a solid hour of the newer folk songs and country tunes. He’d picked up a lot of them listening to the jukebox in the afternoons, and he played them well within the harmonica’s limited range.

When he dropped the harmonica into his jacket pocket and stepped outside for some air, he saw the familiar car waiting across the street. All right, he decided, he would go with Big Ben. Certainly no harm could come from it. He went back inside for a quick beer, then went across and climbed into the old car.

“I was thinking you weren’t coming,” the big man said.

“I came, I came. I don’t want to stay out all night, though. I gotta get some sleep.” He’d had three or four beers all told, and he was feeling a bit drowsy.

Big Ben drove the old car over the rough dirt roads as if he knew them like the back of his hand. He probably did, since he’d had a long time to learn them. “I was just a kid during prohibition,” he said, talking as he drove. “I used to make the runs with my older brother over these same roads.”

Finally they reached the house, which was no more than a log cabin set a little ways off the road. Perhaps someone had built it for hunting or even for living, but that had been a long time before Big Ben moved in. It was probably no more disorganized than a bachelor’s quarters in a city might be, but there was a difference. The canned goods, the piled newspapers, the jazz records—they all seemed slightly musty, maybe like Ben himself as he moved through the mess and motioned Tuck to a chair.

“The place isn’t much,” he said, not really apologizing but only explaining. “After my father and brother got killed, my mother sorta went to pieces. I’ve been here alone a long time.”

“They were killed on the highway?”

Big Ben lowered himself carefully onto a chair. “Went through a roadblock with a trunkload of moonshine. Smashed themselves against a tree. I endured.” He smiled and picked up his harmonica. In a moment he was running through
St. Louis Woman,
then switching in mid-refrain to
Gloomy Sunday
and the less familiar
Unquiet Grave.

“That’s good,” Tuck told him when he paused to hit the harmonica against his palm. “Damn good.”

“I used to play like you, till I put on all this weight. I used to do a lot of things.” He squeezed himself out of the chair and brought out a half-full bottle of cheap rye whiskey. “Here, have a few gulps and then play for me.”

Tuck accepted the bottle and passed his harmonica to Big Ben in turn. “Try mine.”

The big man took it and started to play, then grimaced in pain. “Can’t play it,” he said, handing it back. “Damned mustache gets caught.” He started playing again on his own instrument, then waved to Tuck to join in.

They played and drank like that for more than an hour, first singly and then together, until the room began to blur and spin Tuck’s vision. “I have to get back,” he mumbled at last.

“Hell, you don’t need to ever get back. Them girls’ll wait for you.”

“Gotta—”

“That Mariam’s pretty good, isn’t she? I hear tell you go for her. I’d go for her myself if I was fifty pounds thinner. I’d even—”

“Shut up!” Tuck wobbled to his feet and struck out at the man. He shouldn’t drink, man, how he shouldn’t drink! But then why do people always say things to—

“You lookin’ for a fight, boy? Big Ben could break you in two! Big Ben could fix your mouth so you’d never play a harmonica again.”

Maybe that had been it, the reason for it all. Maybe the man had brought him here out of some twisted jealousy to maim or kill him. Tuck didn’t wait to think, to reason any further. Suddenly the jackknife was in his hand, and it was no stranger there. He sank it up to the hilt in Big Ben’s flabby stomach and watched the surprise spread over the man’s face.

“What? What do you think you’re doing, boy?”

The knife came out and in again, and Big Ben stumbled against the table, upsetting bottle and glasses and harmonicas. “Die!” Tuck breathed. “Can’t you die!”

“I been trying all my life,” Big Ben gasped. “Maybe you come just to help me along.”

Tuck stabbed him three more times before the big man went to his knees and the blood began to bubble at his mouth. Then, desperate with drink and cold with fear, he slashed out at the offered throat and ended it.

For a long time Tucker Baines stood staring at the body, as if wishing it alive again. There had been other times, but nothing like this—he’d never really killed a man before, never taken a human life. The sight of it, the blood and the great bloated body, had sobered him almost at once, and now he wondered what to do.

In the past he had always run from trouble, but this was something different, something dangerous. To run away would be an admission of guilt. He began running over it in his mind. No one had seen him with Big Ben, no one knew he’d come here. He remembered touching nothing except the bottle and glass and harmonica, and perhaps the edge of the table. Now he quickly wiped these off, and wiped off the knife as well, dropping it into his pocket.

Still, he could not take chances. He found some fuel oil for the stove and emptied it onto a stack of newspapers in one corner. The place would burn like tinder, body and all. Let them think what they wanted, after that.

He tossed a match from the doorway and watched the papers catch and flare. Then, at the last possible instant, he remembered the harmonica. It was still there on the floor by the overturned table. He ran back toward the crackling flames and scooped it up, then retreated as the ceiling timbers caught the first glow of the fire.

He was halfway down the hill, traveling through the darkened fields, when it started to rain. No matter—behind him the flames had already broken through the log roof of the cabin. There would be very little left for Sheriff Hark to examine.

She saw him the very next morning, early, strolling up the hill to join the crowd. He looked almost as if he hadn’t slept, and she wondered if he’d been up late practicing on his harmonica.

“Hi, Mariam,” he said, stopping at her side in the trampled grass. “What’s the excitement?”

“It’s Ben’s place—Big Ben’s—it burned down during the night. They say he’s dead inside.”

He glanced past her head at the little knot of spectators, at the steaming remains of the cabin. The heavy rain had doused the fire before the destruction was total, but only blackened timbers were visible from where they stood. “That’s too bad,” Tuck told her. “I never did get to meet him.”

“He was the only one I ever knew could play like you.”

“Yeah.” He moved a little away from her and seemed to be thinking. She wondered about what.

That night Tucker got to the River Bend early, and found Sheriff Hark already there waiting for him. He plugged in the jukebox to listen to a couple of folk tunes he was learning, then sat down at the sheriff’s table.

“Too bad about Big Ben,” he said, speaking first.

“Darned shame,” Sheriff Hark agreed. “You ever meet him?”

“Never,” Tuck told him, shaking his head in confirmation of the statement. “Heard tell he was pretty good on the harmonica, though.”

“That he was.” Sheriff Hark sighed. “There was a little basement storage room under the cabin, and when the floor burned away Ben’s body dropped through. The harmonica was there too, with him till the end. Looked just like the one you play.”

“Was he pretty badly burned?”

“Not too much. Like I say, he fell through the floor before the fire did too much damage. And then it started to rain.” Sheriff Hark was staring down at his hands. “Funny thing—looks like somebody killed him.”

“Killed?”

“Yeah. Five or six stab wounds in the stomach, and his throat cut. Fire couldn’t have done all that.”

The kids were beginning to drift in. It was almost time for Tuck to start playing. “Who’d want to kill him?” he asked, slipping the harmonica from his pocket.

The sheriff shrugged his rounded shoulders. “A wanderer, probably. Someone passing by. Ben never had any money.”

“You’ll have to excuse me. I gotta start playing.”

The sheriff nodded. Then, almost casually, “Say, Tuck, could I see your harmonica for a minute?”

“Sure.” He passed it across the table.

“You ever have a mustache?” Sheriff Hark asked, turning the shiny instrument over and over in his hands.

“No. Why?”

The harmonica caught at a stray beam of light and reflected it toward the ceiling. Sheriff Hark looked uncomfortable. “Hell, I’m not one of those storybook detectives. I’d be lost with a fingerprint or a footprint. But I know my people, here in the valley.” He took another harmonica from his pocket and laid it on the table next to Tuck’s. “You say you never met Big Ben?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Well…” He shifted uncomfortably. “This harmonica was the one I found by his body. I think it’s yours.”

“You’re wrong,” Tuck said, suddenly breaking into a sweat. “This here’s mine.”

“Look close at it, boy. You’ll see a thin line of solder near the top, above the row of holes. It’s a trick fellows with bushy mustaches use to keep from gettin’ them caught between the body of the instrument and the silvery top piece.” He paused, looking unhappy. “This was Ben’s harmonica, boy. He couldn’t play one without that soldered top piece. You musta picked up the wrong one after you killed him.”

“It’s time,” Tuck said, wetting his lips. “I have to play.” His hand hesitated over the twin instruments, and finally rested on Big Ben’s harmonica.

“Play,” the sheriff told him. “I’ll be waiting.”

Tucker Baines nodded, walked over to his stool, and began to play very softly an old mountain melody. Somewhere outside a hawk drifted slowly across the evening sky, and the breeze was soft in the valley that night.

F
OR THE BETTER PART
of his twenty-seven years, Jim Figg had been preparing for that night. He’d fought his way through a disheartening maze of amateur bouts before turning professional, then scored six knockouts in a row to attract the attention of even the most jaded pros. Under normal circumstances, he would have had a championship bout with Anger when he was twenty-five, but the delays and hassles over a contract and a site had effectively held things up for almost two years.

In the meantime, Big Dan Anger had easily disposed of three lesser heavyweights, and Jim knew from the moment of weigh-in that morning that the champion considered him another pushover. The gamblers and Vegas odds-makers thought a bit more of Jim Figg’s record of knockouts and made him only a 2-1 underdog.

The dressing room before the fight was crowded with well-wishers and casual friends, and Jim had to listen to endless conversation before his trainer finally chased them all away. All, that is, except Connie Claus, sports editor of the city’s leading morning paper.

Connie was a little man with white hair and a perpetual smile, who knew everything about sports and never stopped showing off his knowledge. His column went out on syndication to twenty-two newspapers, so most people listened politely when he spoke.

Now, straddling a chair while he cleaned the crusted bowl of his pipe, Connie Claus asked, “What do you think, Jim? Can you take the Champ?”

“I can take him,” Jim said.

“You’re a good fighter, boy. You’ve got a great name to live up to, though. Jim Figg—the
first
Jim Figg—was the earliest of the bare knuckle heavyweight champions. He held the title in England from 1719 to 1734.”

“I know,” Jim replied. In fact, he’d first read it in Connie’s column more than a year before.

“Imagine! That was even before Broughton’s rules went into effect.”

“Yes.” Jim stepped into the shower and turned on the water, momentarily drowning out the columnist’s words. All right, he decided. Two hours from now it would all be over. If he won the fight—as he knew he would—he’d be the heavyweight champion of the world. For that, he could listen to Connie Claus’s ramblings a bit longer.

“How’s your girl?” Connie asked him as he emerged from the shower. “You gonna marry her?”

“Sue? I just might ask her if I win tonight.”

“Can I use that in the column?”

Jim gave him a grin. “Wait till after the fight.”

The little columnist was silent while Jim’s trainer taped his hands. But finally, thoughtfully, he drew on his pipe and asked, “Ever hear any talk about another champion, Jim? Someone besides Big Dan?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s crazy, I suppose, but you hear things in my business.”

Jim grunted and flexed the muscles of his right arm. He was feeling good. “If there’s somebody else wants a crack at the title…”

“You don’t understand what I mean, Jim. Some people say Big Dan Anger’s not the champ—that he never was the champ.”

Jim snorted and held out his hands as the gloves were slipped on. “Who in hell is, then?” He was just making conversation. His mind was already in the ring with Anger.

“Have you heard the name Blanco? Roderick Blanco?”

“Wasn’t there a lightweight named Blanco in Chicago a few years back?”

Connie Claus shook his head. “This is a different one.”

“Well, who is he?”

The columnist shrugged. “No one knows. If I knew anything more about it, I’d do a column. The name was mentioned by a retired referee one night when he was drunk. He sobered up and wouldn’t say a word about it. But stories get started.”

“Let’s go!” Max, the trainer, said. “Enough gabbing for now.”

Connie stood up and waved a hand. “I’ll be watching. Good luck—Champ.”

“Thanks,” Jim said with a smile and stepped into the dim outer corridor that led up to the arena. This was his night, his moment. Even Connie knew it.

There was a great roar from the unseen crowd, and Max put a hand on his shoulder. The seconds and others clustered around as they halted a moment at the arena entrance. Former champions were being introduced—Clay and Liston and Patterson and someone else—and each name brought a renewed roar from the crowd.

Then it was Jim Figg’s turn. He walked steadily down the aisle as the crowd’s approval built to a shattering ovation. Big Dan had never been a popular champion, and the people had come to see him lose. Jim climbed through the ring ropes, the sweaty male odor of the previous fighters assaulting his nostrils.