South of Heaven (4 page)

It was all over in a couple of minutes, but it seemed a lot longer than that. Fruit Jar running crazily, his smoked glasses flying off as he stumbled; Lassen zigging and zagging to follow him.

Lassen jumped out of his car, gun drawn. Fruit Jar looked around, then turned around, kind of stumble-running backwards. He tried to get his hands up, or so it seemed to me. But he tripped just then and, instead of getting them up, he made a wild grab at himself, as a falling man would.

It was all the excuse Lassen needed. He had six bullets in Fruit Jar before you could snap your fingers, and even from where I was I could see that his head was practically blown off.

B
y the time I got there, there was a pretty big crowd gathered. Mostly boes like me, and the rest the few people who lived in town. Someone had dropped a tow sack over Fruit Jar; the upper part of him, that is. His legs were sticking out, and the dirty soles of his feet were showing through the holes in his shoes.

“Hell,” the garage owner was scowling at Bud Lassen, “that was a hell of a thing to do. Killing a man over a few lousy gallons of gas.”

“I told him to halt, didn’t I?” Lassen sounded a little defensive. “You all heard me tell him to halt.”

“So what? You didn’t need to shoot him, dammit!”

Lassen said he thought Fruit Jar was going to draw a gun on him. “It looked to me like he was reaching in his pocket. What the hell? You expect me to hold still while some thief takes potshots at me?”

There was a low murmur from the crowd. A pretty unpleasant murmur. Lassen’s eyes shifted uneasily and fell on me, and he tried to work up a warm smile.

“You, Burwell. You knew this thief, didn’t you? Had a pretty tough reputation, didn’t he?”

“He had a reputation for getting drunk,” I said. “Which hardly made him unique out here.”

There were laughs. Ugly laughs. Lassen’s eyes flickered angrily, but he kept on trying. “A mean vicious drunk, wasn’t he, Tommy? When he got drunk he might do almost anything, right?”

“No, it isn’t right,” I said. “In fact, it’s a damned lie and you know it.”

“Why, you—!” He took a step toward me.

“The only mean vicious guy around here is you,” I said. “And you don’t have to get drunk to be that way.”

That did it. He whipped his gun out, kind of swinging it in an arc to push the crowd back, then leveling it at me.

“Get in that car, Burwell! I’m taking you to Matacora.”

“Not me, you’re not,” I said. “Anyway, what are you taking me in for?”

“For investigation. Now,
move!
”

“Huh-uh,” I said. “I start to Matacora with you I’d never get there.”

He slipped his gun, grabbing it around the trigger guard; getting ready to slam me with the barrel. “I’m telling you one more time, punk. You get in that buggy, or.…”

“He’ll do it.” Four Trey Whitey stepped between us. “He’ll go with you, Lassen, and I’ll go along with him.”

Lassen hesitated, his tongue flicking his lips. “I don’t want you, Whitey. Just Burwell.”

“We’ll both go,” Four Trey insisted. “And we’ll have a good frisk before we leave. How about it, friend?…” He winked at the garage owner. “Mind doing the honors?”

“You bet,” said the garage owner. “You just bet I will!”

He gave us as good a frisk as I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. Searching us from head to foot and proving in front of everyone that we weren’t armed. That pretty well spoiled any little plans Lassen had. He wouldn’t dare shoot us or rough us up now. Since we’d never be held in Matacora, I wondered that he’d bother to take us in at all. But he had more plans than I’d figured on.

“All right,” he grunted. “You want it that way, you’ll get it that way. Pile into the front seat.”

We got into the front with Four Trey driving. Lassen got in behind us, his gun still drawn, and we took off for Matacora.

It was eighty-five miles away. Eighty-five miles without a filling station or a store or a house or any place where a man might get a drink of water or a bite to eat. Nothing but some of the sorriest land in the world—a desert that even a mule jackrabbit couldn’t have crossed without a lunch pail and a canteen. So when we were about midway in those eighty-five miles, more than forty miles from Matacora or the town we had come from, Bud Lassen unloaded us. He forced us out of the car and drove off by himself.

It was a pretty bad spot to be in, but Four Trey winked at me and said it was no sweat. “Someone will come along, Tommy. Just relax and the time will go faster.”

He jumped the ditch and stomped around in what little growth there was on the other side, making sure that it was free of any vinegarroons or centipedes or tarantulas. Then, he lay back with his hands under his head and his hat pushed over his eyes.

I went over to where he was and lay down next to him. We stayed that way for a while, the incessant Texas wind scrubbing us with hot blasts. And at last he pushed his hat back and squinted at me.

“Written any poetry lately, Tommy?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I kind of got out of the habit along with eating.”

“Let’s have some of the old ones then. That one about the road seems appropriate under the circumstances.”

I said I wasn’t sure I remembered it, not all of it, and he said to give him what I remembered, then. So I did:

“I guess that’s about all I remember,” I said.

Four Trey said he liked the poem very much, but it always gave him a touch of blues. “How about something a little lighter? A couple of limericks maybe.”

“Well, let’s see,” I said. “Uh…oh, yeah.…”

“That’s actually not a true limerick,” I said. “But here’s one that is:”

Four Trey made a chuckling sound. “Go on, Tommy,” he said. “How about that booze poem? The
Ode to a Load
or whatever you called it.”

“Gee,” I said. “Now, you
are
going back. I did that one when I was just a kid.”

“Mm, I know,” he said drily. “But the old things are best, Tommy. So give me what you can of it. Let me hear that grand old poem once more before I die.”

I laughed. “Well, all right, if you want to punish yourself,” I said and I started in again:

I broke off, for Four Trey had rolled over on his side, his back to me. I waited a moment, and when he didn’t say anything, I asked him what was the matter.

“You,” he said, his voice coming to me a little muffled because he was speaking into the wind. “You’re the matter. You know, if I was really a friend of yours, I’d kick the crap out of you.”

“What?” I said. “What are you talking like that for?”

“Prometheus,” he said. “Oedipus Rex. Cosmic reciprocity. Goddammit…” He rolled over and faced me, scowling. “What kind of life is this for a kid as bright as you are? Why do you go on wasting your time, year after year? Do you think you’re going to stay young forever? If you do, take a look at me.”

I was surprised at his talking this way, because he just wasn’t the kind to get personal, as I’ve said. He never liked to get too close to anyone since, naturally, that would give them the same privilege with him.

“Well,” I said, finally. “I don’t entirely waste my time, Four Trey. I’ve learned a lot about different jobs and I read a lot when I have the chance. One time I wintered in Six Sands and I read every book in the public library.”

“Six Sands, hmm? That would be about eighteen volumes, if I remember the town rightly.”

I laughed and said, no, they had quite a few more books than that. “But, anyway, getting back to the subject—this stuff I fool around with isn’t poetry. It’s doggerel. I don’t know much about writing or poetry, but I know that much.”

“I see. And you figure on getting able to do the real stuff by hanging around these Godforsaken labor camps?”

I said, no, I was pulling out after this pipeline job. I was going to save my money and get a start on making something out of myself. He studied me reflectively, chewing on a piece of grass stem.

“I hope you mean that, Tommy. Because you’ll have the money to do it. Deal blackjack for me and save your stiff’s wages, and you’ll have all the money you need.”

“I’m going to,” I said. “That’s just what I’m going to do, Four Trey.”

He nodded, studying me with thoughtful eyes. “Who was the girl I saw you with today, Tommy? You seemed to be getting along real friendly.”

“Oh, her,” I said. “Oh, she’s just a girl.”

“I know she’s a girl, Tommy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl that was more of a girl. In fact, she wouldn’t have needed much more equipment to be two girls.”

I laughed, a little uncomfortably. “Her name’s Carol. I don’t know her last name.”

“Well, now, she must be a pretty dumb girl. What did she say when you asked her?”

“Look,” I said, “I was only with her a few minutes. She had some idea of getting work around the pipeline, but I told her there wasn’t anything for girls.”

“Mmm? Don’t you think that was rather misleading, Tommy?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, feeling my face redden. “Not if you’re talking about what I think you are.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Why else would she be in a place like this? A girl who brings a shape like that to a pipeline isn’t looking for a job, Tommy. She has her office right in her pants.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” I said. “You shouldn’t talk that way about a girl you don’t even know. Why, I’ll bet she’s long gone by now. She probably wouldn’t even have stopped in town if she hadn’t had a flat tire.”

“A flat tire, huh?” He laughed softly. “Well, she certainly didn’t have anything else that was flat.”

My face was really beginning to burn by then, and I was on the point of saying something very nasty. But he smiled at me in a way he had of smiling—warm and friendly and sympathetic—so I choked down the nasty words and smiled back at him. After all, why should I be so defensive about a girl I didn’t even know and would never see again?

He sat up, gripping his hat brim front and rear and tilting it upward. I sat up also, unconsciously doing the same with my hat brim. I think I must have imitated him a lot without knowing that I did. I suppose every kid patterns himself after some older man, and I might have done worse.

He drew his knees up and locked his arms around them, looking off toward Matacora. Pretty soon I was doing the same thing. After a while, he shifted his gaze and spoke to me.

“You believe in God, Tommy?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so,” I said. “That’s the way I was raised.”

“Then you believe that’s heaven right up over us, so close we can almost touch it. We’re just a little south of heaven, right?”

“Well,” I hesitated. “I suppose you could put it that way.”

“Think about it, Tommy. Think about it real hard the next time you’re about to do something to screw yourself up.”

He yawned and stood up. He stretched himself, then stood a little on tiptoe to peer off toward the horizon.

After a minute or so he said, “Here we go, Tommy. Here’s us our ride.”

I
t was a pipeline company car, a half-ton pickup, with a timekeeper and Higby, the chief high-pressure, in it. Trailing behind a ways was one of the company’s big flatbed trucks. The car stopped, and Higby nodded to me and shook hands with Four Trey.

“Starting a new jungle?” he said. “Or were you just out for a walk or something?”

“Or something,” Four Trey said. “You want to hear about it before you give us a ride?”

Higby said God forbid hearing about it at any time; he had more than enough to think about already. “You can have some hours with your ride, if you want ’em. Use you rigging up camp.”

“I guess we could be persuaded,” Four Trey said. “You don’t have any other engagements do you, Tommy?”

I said, “Huh?” and then I said carelessly that I guess I didn’t have anything scheduled that couldn’t be postponed.

The timekeeper was fidgeting, tapping on the steering wheel. Higby told us to climb in the back, giving us a pursedlip look to let us know he didn’t care for the guy.

We had a fast ride into town—too fast for the road. Four Trey and I were bouncing around every step of the way, and we both took a banging from the loose tools that flew up from the truck bed. By the time we reached town, we were both of a mind to cloud up and rain all over the timekeeper. But Higby saw how we felt, I guess, and he hustled him off on an errand in one direction and sent us in another to round up a rigging-up crew. So the guy didn’t get the pasting he deserved.

We went down to the jungle and passed the word. By dusk about fifty men were piled on the big flatbed truck, sitting around its edges with their legs hanging off. Higby had hired on the cook from the Greek’s restaurant, and he rode in the back of the pickup with Four Trey and me, sitting on his working-stiff’s bindle and carrying his knives and cleavers in a dish towel.

As we drove out of town ahead of the truck, I looked around for Carol. But there was no sign of her or her homemade house-car. And I was relieved in a way and sort of sad in another. Sorry that I wouldn’t ever be seeing her again. I’d never had much to do with girls—nothing at all, to tell the truth. It seemed a shame to be losing one, the only one I could have cared about, before I ever got to know her.

We were about a mile from camp when the truck began to honk wildly, flashing its lights. Four Trey banged on the roof of the pickup and shouted to Higby. Without slacking speed, the pickup wheeled around on the prairie, and went back to where the truck had stopped.

A man had been killed. He had been sitting near the rear of the flatbed, and apparently a wheel had caught his dangling feet, snatching him from the truck and slamming him down against the rocky earth.

Higby glanced at the body; looked quickly away with a sadly bitter curse. “Dammit to hell, anyway. Anyone know the poor devil?”

Someone said the man’s name was Bones, but someone else said it wasn’t his real name. He was just called that because he was so thin. No one knew who he was. On a pipeline hardly anyone ever knew who anyone else was. Pipeliners didn’t have names or homes or families.

Higby stooped down and went through the dead man’s pockets as well as he could, under the circumstances. There was nothing in them except some matches and a practically empty sack of Bull Durham. No wallet, no letters. No Social Security card, naturally, since this was before the days of Social Security.

Higby straightened, rubbing his hands against his trousers. He turned to the timekeeper, a prissy owlish-looking guy with gold-rimmed spectacles. His name was Depew, and he wore a hairline moustache and store-new khakis.

“I’ll phone a report into Matacora tomorrow,” Higby told him. “You can put that in your job log. Meanwhile, we’ll have to get him buried.”

Depew frowned importantly, pursing his lips. “We can’t assume any funeral expenses, Higby. Riding on the truck was his own choice. He wouldn’t have been an employee until he reached camp.”

Higby stared at him wonderingly. “Why, you silly son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “You stupid snotnosed bastard!” His voice was soft but it cut like a whip. “Do you know what the temperature was today? Do you know how far it is to the nearest undertaker? To the nearest public cemetery? To the nearest place where anyone gives a good goddam what happens to the body of a poor devil like this? DO YOU? WELL DO YOU, YOU STINKING LITTLE SHITBIRD?”

He yelled out the last part, almost blasting the timekeeper from his feet. Depew turned white and put a trembling hand to his mouth. He could hardly believe what was happening, I imagine. After all, he was an important man—not just
a
timekeeper but
the
timekeeper—the chief representative of the banks.

“N-now…now, really, Higby,” he stammered. “I resent.…”

“Screw your resentment!” Higby snapped. “And put a mister in front of my name, hereafter! Make it loud and clear, get me?” He turned away from Depew, glanced around the circle of men until his eyes fell on us. “Four Trey, I can’t order you to, but.…”

“You don’t have to,” Four Trey said. “Just give us an hour and some mucksticks, and Tommy and I’ll bury him.”

“Good”—Higby’s smile warmed us. “I’ll remember it. But won’t you need some dyna?”

Four Trey said we wouldn’t; we’d just look around until we found soft dirt. Higby nodded approvingly, and we got picks and shovels from the pickup. Then everyone loaded up again and drove away, leaving Four Trey and me with the body.

We poked around with the picks for a few minutes until we found a patch of rock-free prairie. Inside of a half hour we had buried Bones or whatever his name was, mounding over the grave with rock to keep out the varmints.

Four Trey leaned on his pick, resting, looking down thoughtfully at the grave, then raising his eyes to me.

“Well, Tommy. Can you think of anything appropriate to the occasion? A few nice words for a guy who probably never heard any?”

“I guess not,” I said. “I heard some words said over a guy out in the Panhandle, but I can’t say they were real nice.”

“Let’s see.”

“Well, all right,” I said. “Here it is:”

Four Trey raised his brows at me. He said that he could see what I meant—whatever that meant.

We moved away from the grave, lighting up cigarettes. The soughing wind turned cool, and the moon climbed up out of a distant hedge of Spanish bayonets, the giant cacti, and down in the Pecos bottoms a bobcat screamed in pointless fury. Far far away, yet clearly visible in the silvery moonlight, two wolves trotted up over a rise in the prairie, haunched down side by side and howled tragic complaints to the heavens.

A little shiver ran up my spine. Four Trey stomped out his cigarette butt, idly asking me how many boes I’d run into out here that I knew.

I said I thought I knew most of the six hundred. “I don’t mean I know them well, but I’ve probably run into them on other jobs.”

“Just probably, right? You’d have to talk to them a while, get close to them, before you were sure.”

“Well, yeah, sure,” I said. “Boes look a lot alike after they’ve jungled up for a while. When they get bearded out, and their clothes get ragged and dirty, it’s pretty hard to tell one from another.”

“Yes,” Four Trey said, “yes, it is, Tommy. In other words, you might not recognize a man until you sat down next to him—on a flatbed truck, shall we say?”

“Huh?” I said. “Are you saying that…that…?”

“Mmm, no,” Four Trey hesitated. “I don’t think I’d go so far as to
say
it. Merely to point out the possibility that what appeared to be an accident wasn’t. Because those flatbeds were designed to carry men, and I just don’t see how a man could catch his foot in the wheel.”

I said I thought I could see how. If the truck went down in a rut on one side, and if the guy slid out to the edge, and if they hit a bad jolt—all at the same time, kind of. “That’s a lot of ifs,” I admitted. “But, well, why would anyone want to kill a bo like Bones?”

“The answer is in your question, Tommy. What was Bones like? Who was he? What was his background?” Four Trey shook his head. “Offhand, however, I’d say he was killed because he recognized someone who couldn’t afford to be recognized.
If
he was killed, that is, and I’m by no means sure that he was.”

I laughed a trifle nervously. “You sounded pretty sure a moment ago. Maybe you should tell Higby what you suspect.”

Four Trey said firmly that he guessed he maybe shouldn’t, and I shouldn’t either. “I’ll tell you about Frank Higby,” he went on. “Frank’s got a line to build. He has to eat line, sleep line, think line, and he can’t be bothered with anything else. He wouldn’t cover up a murder, of course, but he sure as hell wouldn’t go looking for one either. And he wouldn’t be exactly fond of a guy who did it for him.”

I nodded and said I supposed he was right, but he made Higby sound pretty callous. Four Trey yawned and said that life was a pretty callous proposition when you got right down to it. The callousness was more subtle on the upper levels; you knifed a man by cutting off his credit or pulling a slick double-cross. Down in the dirt where we were, you simply knifed him.

He lighted another cigarette, slid a glance at me in the glow of the match. His expression changed, and he laughed softly, giving me an amiable nudge in the ribs.

“Aah, for God’s sake, Tommy. I haven’t got you upset, have I?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” I said. “What the hell anyway?”

“What the hell?” he agreed. “We were tired and hungry and thirsty and we had some time to kill. So I’ve been tossing the bull around. I was just talking, understand? I didn’t mean anything by it, and you aren’t to think anything of it.”

“Sure,” I said, relieved. “You really think it was an accident, then?”

“Didn’t I just say so?” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. But, of course, he hadn’t said that at all.