They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (12 page)

One thing he did was to quit playing poker and blackjack. It was shooting crap had played the mischief with him, but after that he laid off all kinds of gambling. For a while it seemed like he lost confidence in himself. He got so he drank every night.

We had a place in the back yard, between the roadhouse and the tourist cabins, where we played horseshoes in the afternoon. Dick or Sam would stay out front and Smut and myself, and sometimes Matt and Badeye, would pitch a few games of horseshoes. One afternoon in December Smut and I were playing a couple of games for fun. It was a warm day for December. A day that was sunshiny, but smoky-looking, like it was going to rain that night, or anyway the next day. I won the first game, and that was queer. Smut could always beat any of us, and I was the worst in the lot. Even Badeye could beat me when he was staggering drunk.

After I won the second game I said: ‘What’s the matter with you, Smut? Something on your mind?’

‘I’m trying to think,’ Smut said.

He pitched his first shoe at the farther stake. It was off a couple of feet. The next one wasn’t any better, but was on the other side. ‘I been thinking about going to Bert Ford and trying to borrow eight hundred dollars. I want to pay that note at the bank and get it off my mind. I would like to pay LeRoy Smathers too. I don’t like that little wretch.’

‘Who does?’ I asked.

‘It may be that his ma does,’ Smut said.

I pitched my two shoes and both of them were off plenty; still they were closer than Smut’s and that made it two and nothing. We walked down to the other stake.

‘Bert’s the only fellow I know of that might have the money,’ Smut said. ‘But he’s so tight that I doubt if he’ll let me have it. If he won’t, then I got to make some other shift to pay the bank.’

‘Maybe you could borrow it from Wilbur Brannon,’ I said. ‘Or maybe Baxter Yonce. They both like you.’

‘Nix on them,’ Smut said.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ I asked him.

‘Wilbur Brannon wouldn’t lend his grandma a dime. That’s a rule of his. It’s a rule he ain’t ever broke. He says he don’t borrow and he don’t lend.’

‘Have you ever tried him?’ I said.

‘No, but that’s the way he is. If you want to borrow money you can go to somebody else and borrow it, or you can go to hell. Either way you do suits Wilbur Brannon all right. But don’t go to him.’

‘Well, how about Baxter Yonce?’

‘Baxter Yonce is a good fellow. But he generally spends what he makes, if it’s a hundred dollars a year, or twenty thousand dollars a year. Anyway, he’s a good friend of Astor LeGrand’s. He couldn’t afford to let me have it.’

‘What’s Astor LeGrand got to do with it?’ I said.

‘Plenty. He’s got his eye on this place. He wants to own it and have it run. He don’t want me to be able to meet that note at the bank, nor to pay all this other money I owe.’

‘How do you know that?’ I said. We hadn’t pitched a shoe toward the other stake, but stood there with the horseshoes in our hands. Smut had his right foot on the top of the stake.

‘I just know it,’ Smut said. ‘He’s done gone and talked to LeRoy Smathers and got him to believing he stands to lose on the furniture he let me have. LeRoy’s been after me to pay all I owe them, by the first of the year. But he can’t make me do it.’

‘If that’s so, why didn’t Astor make J. V. Kirk clamp down on you last month when the note at the bank was due the first time?’ I asked him.

‘Because he wants this place to get going good before he takes it over. He’ll make the bank let me renew the note again if I want to do it. But they’ll charge me another ten per cent to do it. He wants me to get worse in debt than I already am. But he wouldn’t like to see me borrow money from somebody like Baxter Yonce that’s too tender-hearted to sell me out if I couldn’t pay on time.’

‘What’ll you do if you can’t borrow the money?’ I asked.

‘I ain’t decided,’ Smut said.

I got first pitch at the other stake, because I had won both points the last time. My first shoe was off. The next one was a ringer. I didn’t ring one very often and it made me feel pretty good. But Smut had got his money troubles off his chest and he got interested in pitching horseshoes. His first pitch was on top of my ringer. His next one leaned on the stake. That gave him the game. We quit after that and left the horseshoes where they were.

That night Smut dressed up like he was expecting a big crowd out. But it was Thursday night and I thought he must be crazy. Thursday was generally the worst night in the week. But he didn’t tarry there long. He went in the kitchen, and I reckon he took a couple of slugs and maybe had a sandwich. When he came back past me he had a bottle of rye sticking out of his overcoat pocket. He went out of the door, without saying pea-turkey to me; in a minute I heard him drive off in the pickup. He hadn’t come in when I closed up at midnight.

He slept late the next day. It was about noon before he came into the roadhouse. Then he didn’t stay long. Just went in the kitchen and ate, then went to the pick-up again.

We were snowed under with high-school boys when he got back. It was after dark then and the place was full of kids from Blytheville. They had played a football game with Corinth that afternoon and had stopped in our place to eat. It was a post-season game they had played, and Blytheville won 7-6. They were afraid to eat in Corinth after winning the game. They sat in the booths and at the tables, and raised a loud racket, quarreling, beating on the tables with forks, scraping their shoes on the floor, and cussing each other for the pleasure they got out of hearing their voices. The two coaches that were with them sat together at a table in the back and read the evening papers.

I was sitting at the counter eating something that Badeye brought out to me when Smut came in and sat down beside me. He looked mean and gloomy. He was bareheaded and his hair needed cutting. He had on red corduroy pants and a brown leather lumberjack hat was turned up around the collar. It was cold that night.

‘Blytheville must of won the football game,’ he said to me.

‘They did, 7-6.’ I said.

‘Like to have seen it. But I had other business,’ he said.

I wondered where he’d been that afternoon, but I didn’t say anything. He reached inside his lumberjack and came out with one cigarette. He tapped it on the counter and went on, ‘I had to go see Bert Ford this afternoon.’

‘Do any good?’ I asked.

‘He wouldn’t let me have it. Claimed he didn’t have any money where he could get his hands on it. But he’s a lie.’ Smut got up from the stool and stuck his cigarette in his mouth. ‘Got a match?’ he asked me. I handed him a book of matches. He certainly looked like a villain, standing there with his hair curled down around the top of his lumberjack collar. The cigarette stuck in the side of his mouth, his jaw underslung, and his cheekbones sticking out about six inches on either side of his eyes. He lit the cigarette and handed the matches back to me. ‘Much obliged,’ he said, and turned and went to the kitchen. I reckon Rufus and Johnny got a good cussing out for being alive. He wasn’t in a good humor that night.

December wasn’t as good a month as November had been. We didn’t take in much more than two hundred dollars clear, the way I figured it out. During Christmas week we didn’t much more than make expenses. One reason was that a lot of folks in Corinth were off visiting that week, or had company that didn’t care for roadhouses. Then the bars are down in Corinth Christmas week anyway. Everybody drinks liquor out in the open and has a good time without making any bones about it. Even the best folks. Toward the end of the month I began wondering how Smut was going to meet that note that came due pretty soon. I hoped he could do it. I hated to think about losing my job.

The Monday after Christmas it started raining. It was a dreary rain. The sky looked like it was propped up on the tops of the trees and just full of water. It rained all that day and got dark early. We didn’t have half a dozen customers all day, and that night the only folks there were Dick, Smut, and myself. Matt had asked for that day off, and Smut let him have it. Sam had a cold that was so bad that Smut told him to stay in the cabin till the next day and maybe it would be better. Badeye was there till about three o’clock that afternoon. Then he took a notion he wanted his hair cut. He was a fellow that couldn’t rest when he had a notion, so Smut told him to go on to Corinth and get his hair cut. He snagged a ride into town with the bread truck and said he’d come back about night with the boy that brought the evening papers. But he missed the paper boy somehow, and it left us short-handed. Still we didn’t have any customers until about ten o’clock that night.

A car pulled up outside then, and Dick Pittman went out to see what they wanted. But they came in and Dick followed after them. It was Charles Fisher and Lola, and another couple that I didn’t know. They brought in a blast of cold wind with them, for it had stopped raining then and was getting cold in a hurry.

They went to one of the booths next to the wall and I went over to get their orders. Lola and Charles Fisher sat together on one side, and the other couple sat together, facing them. The strange folks were both young; the girl was a little blonde, with a page-boy haircut and a nose hat was turned up on the end. I don’t know whether it was naturally turned up that way, or if she didn’t like our roadhouse. The man with her was big, with a baby face and blue eyes about as big as green peas. All four of them had been drinking a little, and they weren’t used to it. The two men looked serious as a couple of bridegrooms. Lola and the other girl tried to look serious too, but giggled a little now and then. They ordered steamed oysters.

I gave their orders to Rufus and went back to the counter to talk with Dick and Smut. After a while I heard the buzzer from the kitchen. I got the oysters and carried them over to the booth. Charles Fisher took his platter in his hands; he held it out in front of him like he was holding a collection plate in church. ‘Yes, Corinth’s some town,’ he said. ‘Of course, the Southern writers exaggerate conditions, but you can find characters similar to theirs right around here, if you want to. They’re usually farmers, though. Conditions around the mills aren’t really so bad.’

Lola waited till he got through, then looked up at me. ‘Get me some ketchup,’ she said.

‘Yes, mam,’ I said, and I went after it.

When I brought the ketchup back I sat it on the table and asked if they wanted anything else right then. They said no, and I leaned against a booth a few feet away from them, so I’d be handy if they decided they wanted anything else. I guess these folks visiting the Fishers must have been from the North. They asked a lot of questions.

The baby-faced man poured half the bottle of ketchup on his oysters and put the bottle back in the center of the table. ‘How are the relations between the races in this section?’ he asked.

‘Why, not bad,’ Charles Fisher said. ‘We have no violence here. It’s much worse further south, of course. The niggers here know their places and don’t try to stir up any trouble. Some of the whites around here are worse than the niggers.’

‘Low type, are they?’ the pea-eyed man asked.

‘Well, yes. Ignorant and superstitious. I’ve heard of one old woman—a white woman—that claims she can talk fire out of a burn. A lot of the poor whites believe she can do it, too, and they go to her.’

‘What do you mean, “talk fire out”?’

‘She mumbles some little parable over the burnt part and goes through some obscure ritual. After that the place isn’t supposed to hurt.’

‘Is that a fact? And do the ones that are burned feel all right after she does that?’

‘Some of them claim they do. It must be the power of suggestion.’

The other man had his mouth full of oyster and ketchup. ‘It must be,’ he mumbled.

Lola and the blonde girl talked across the table in whispers so as not to break in on the men’s serious conversation. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but once in a while they’d giggle like a couple of schoolgirls. When they made a break like that Lola would look at Charles Fisher right quick to see if he’d noticed. Now and then she slipped in a look at Smut Milligan, who was sitting at the cash register, resting his chin against the top of the counter and looking off toward the side of the room.

Lola looked at Charles Fisher and whispered something to the other girl. It must have been funny, for the other girl laughed. Charles Fisher looked at them like they weren’t being serious enough, and he went back to the problems of the South.

‘The main trouble down here is the improvidence of the native stocks,’ he said, ‘coupled with an ingrained superstition and a fear of progress. They are, in the main, fearful of new things.’

‘In the machine they sense an enemy,’ the baby-faced man said. ‘Something they fear will master them and leave them the machines of the machine.’

Charles Fisher picked up a piece of celery and nibbled it like a Belgian hare. ‘It may be that,’ he said, ‘but I think they merely dislike the pain that is attendant to all learning. They don’t want to learn anything new. It requires too much effort. Of course we have the pick of the natives in our hosiery mills. It isn’t like a cotton mill. We pay much better wages and we have a different type of hand altogether.’

‘The South interests me greatly. Particularly in regard to the relationship of the two races,’ the visiting man said. He sipped his coffee, a drop at a time, and tried to look like a man that’s powerfully interested in something.

‘Oh, that’s been exaggerated,’ Charles Fisher told him. ‘The main thing the South needs is to become mechanized. The methods of farming are very backward. The farmers themselves are not usually a very good type. They aren’t sanitary.’ He frowned, and went on: ‘Still, they sometimes manage to acquire money. Considerable sums of money. I recall one fellow who had over twenty thousand dollars in the bank in Corinth. Bert or Herb Ford, or something. I understand he’d had it in a bank in Charlotte and became uneasy. It was in 1932 and he knew that father had guaranteed the depositors in the local bank. It’s rather a small one, anyway. Well, this Ford, or Hord, or whatever his name is, was right about the bank in Charlotte. It went under. But when that happened he got nervous about all banks. He appeared in Corinth one day and demanded his money. The bank was entirely solvent, but you remember how things were at that time.’