They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (31 page)

‘If it ain’t Jack!’ he said, and grinned at me. ‘God knows I’m glad to see you here, Jack. Where’s Smut?’

‘He’s in Mr. LeGrand’s office,’ I said.

Grover Davis spat on the floor. He wasn’t chewing tobacco, so I suppose he just had a habit of spitting on the floor.

‘I got to go downstairs,’ he said. ‘You can talk to him a little while, Jack. But you can’t stay up here too long.’

‘I won’t be long,’ I said.

Grover went out then and I took a look at Dick’s room-mates. One of them was the bumpy-faced boy they called Slopface—the boy that was going to cut another mill hand out at the roadhouse the fall before. I didn’t know the other man. He was a hard-looking customer—sunburned so black that he looked like a brown nigger. Part of it might have been soot, for he looked like he was a vag that had got stuck in town.

‘How you getting along, Dick?’ I said.

‘All right,’ Dick said. Dick’s left eye was black as the ace of spades. His lip had been split too.

‘Who gave you the shiner?’ I asked him.

Dick looked around at the two fellows behind him. ‘I bumped into the wall last night,’ Dick said. ‘The bulb was burnt out we had in here, and it was dark and I wasn’t used to the place.’

The man that looked like he knew all about the inside of freight cars gave a short horse laugh. Dick looked back at him and grinned. It was a mighty nervous grin.

Dick pulled his stool over closer to the bars.

‘They got me, Jack,’ he said. ‘I got tired of messing with them and owned up to killing Mr. Bert Ford. I don’t know how come me to kill him.’

Dick was talking about twice as fast as I ever heard him talk. He didn’t look at me, but kept his eyes on the floor. He kept twisting his hands around, like they were wet and he would dry them by rubbing one over the other.

‘I went off that night and I got me a drink of liquor. It sot me afire. I felt like I had to have some money. I didn’t know no place to git none. Finally Bert Ford come in my mind. I says to myself, “That boogar’s got money and it’s hid on his place. Everybody says so, and it’s bound to be so.” I got me another drink of that stick liquor they sells in Shantytown and I made a bee-line to Bert Ford’s place. I got there and it was pitch dark. After a little while, though, I could make out them bee-gums. I got the notion that maybe Bert Ford had hid his money under them bee-gums. I sot in to work.’

Dick took his package of Beechnut chewing and stuffed all there was in the package into his mouth. Then he squashed the empty package in his hands and dropped it on the floor.

‘I was going to town when I hear somethin. It was Bert Ford. There he stood with a flashlight in his hands. He says to me, “What in the hell you think you doin in my bee-gums? Damn you to hell, I’ll larn you to come probin round my damn bee-gums!” So he come at me. I was scared. I reckon I lost my head. I pulled out my pistol and shot his heart out. I would of run and not shot him, but how did I know he didn’t have no gun on him?’

Dick looked up at me for a second, then looked at the floor again and went on with his tale of the murder.

‘I got the keys outen his pocket. I backed his car out from under the shed and put him in the back. Then I got me a old mowin-machine wheel that was lying there in the yard. No, it was in the car shed. That was how I seen it. When I turned on the lights I seen it and got it. Then I backed it out and got Mr. Bert. I took him to the river and weighted him down with the mowin-machine wheel and throwed him in the river. Just beyond the bridge. I took what money he had on him. Twarn’t but some few dollars over a hundred. I brought the car back to his place and then run all the way back to the roadhouse.’

Dick looked up at me then, and he looked like he was pleased with the way he had memorized the story. The only thing was, his eyes looked glassy. He was slobbering a little and it dropped off and fell on his blue chambray shirt. The boy named Slopface lay back on the cot and put an old newspaper over his face. I don’t know why he did it, unless it was from habit, for it was not hot weather and there weren’t any flies in the jail. The only things I saw in there, aside from the fixtures and the three prisoners, were some cockroaches that looked like they got plenty to eat, and one rat that dashed across the floor and went down a hole under the lavatory. The bedclothes were filthy and the place stank, but there were no flies in there.

‘You worked pretty fast that night, Dick,’ I said. ‘Did you run all the way from Shantytown to Bert Ford’s place? I don’t see how you had time that night to do everything you say you did.’

Dick pursed his busted lips. ‘I run all the way,’ he said. He stopped chewing for half a minute.

‘No, I tell you how that was. I was running down the highway just outside Shantytown and here come a car. It was a fellow I didn’t know and he picked me up. Carried me near bout to the river. To the road that goes to Mr. Bert’s. That’s how that was.’

‘I see,’ I said. I tell you I felt strange hearing him confess like that. I wished to God I had stayed away from the jail.

Dick looked straight at me then. He got up from the stool and stood up against the bars. He caught a bar in each hand and pressed his face against them. He began to cry.

‘God Almighty! Jack, they got me in here and they goin to lectrocute me for somethin that I don’t even know nothin bout! For God’s sake, Jack, can’t you do nothin? Where’s Smut? Can’t he do nothin? You know I ain’t never killed nobody.’

‘I know it, Dick,’ I said. I didn’t know what to say to him.

The tears were trickling down Dick’s face. As soon as they fell out of his eyes they got gray-looking from the dust that was on his face. He was gripping the bars so hard that the veins on his wrists and forearms looked as big as plowlines.

‘Get me out of here before they take me to Raleigh and burn me up!’ Dick yelled at me. Then he took his hands off the bars and just leaned there on his face, with his hands hanging down by his sides, loose as arms stuck on a scarecrow. His voice died down to a whisper.

‘I didn’t know what they was talkin bout. I done been hit in the mouth, and in the eye, and in the stomach till I’m sore as a boil all over, and I’m just about crazy. They’d keep tellin me how it was. What I had done, and I hadn’t done nothin. Finally I seen they was goin to beat me to death and I just said, “Yeah, I done it.” I thought it would be easier for me to the in the lectric chair.’

He straightened up again and his eyes lost that glassy look. They got wild and scared-looking and I thought, ‘Dick would be plenty dangerous now if he had a gun and was out from behind the bars and somebody was standing between him and the stairs.’

‘I tell you, God damn it to God-damn hell, Smut Milligan better get me out of here! He knows God-damn good and well that I never done nothin! Tell him to get me out of here!’ Dick screamed.

The tramp was relieving his kidneys in the lavatory. He turned his head. ‘Don’t yell so loud, country boy,’ he said. ‘You interfere with me making water.’

Dick was whimpering and sobbing again. ‘I
couldn’t
kill nobody,’ he said. ‘Why, when I was a kid I would go off and hide when they was a-killin hogs. I couldn’t stand to see them kill the hogs. You know I never killed Mr. Bert Ford. Don’t you know in your mind I never killed him, Jack?’

‘I know you didn’t, Dick,’ I said. ‘But don’t get scared. You’ll have a trial and a lawyer. You’ll come clear.’

The tramp turned around then. He was buttoning up his pants. ‘You gonna fry in that old chair, country boy,’ he said, and snorted out his special horse laugh. Slopface commenced snoring. Every time he inhaled, the paper that was over his face would be sucked down toward his mouth, and when he let his breath out again the paper would be pushed up. The tramp sat down on the cot next to the one Slopface was on. He watched the newspaper rise and fall like he was fascinated by it.

‘Jack, you’re my friend, ain’t you?’ Dick said. He sat back down on the stool and leaned his face over against the bars.

‘You know I am,’ I said. ‘You want me to get you something?’

‘I want you to be sure and have Smut Milligan come to see me,’ Dick said. ‘This morning.’

I started to go. ‘I’ll send him right up,’ I said. ‘Can I get you anything, some chewing tobacco, or something like that?’

Dick was looking down at the floor. He looked like he didn’t want to be bothered any more.

‘I want a Coca-Cola. That’s the only thing I want,’ Dick said.

‘I’ll send you one right away,’ I said.

‘Send it by Smut Milligan,’ Dick said.

I went down the stairs, and out of the jail and across the street to the Pee Dee Barbecue Lunch. I gave a boy in there a dime to take a Coca-Cola to Dick. The boy said he’d take it right up.

I WALKED BACK UP
Grindstaff Street, turned at the Duke place again, and started down Main. I looked down the street and saw Smut Milligan standing in front of the drugstore. He was waving for me to hurry up.

‘Where in the hell have you been?’ Smut asked me when I got within hearing distance. ‘I been looking all over town for you.’

‘You said come back in about an hour,’ I reminded him.

‘I got through sooner than I expected. I been looking high and low for you,’ Smut said.

‘I was down at the jail, talking to Dick Pittman,’ I said.

‘Is that a fact?’ Smut said.

‘He’s about to go crazy,’ I said. ‘He wants to see you. Right away.’

‘I don’t have time to fool with him now,’ Smut said. ‘I’m in a hurry. I want you to do something for me.’

‘What you want me to do?’

‘I want you to drive the pick-up back. Sam’s already gone—hooked a ride with the laundry truck. There ain’t anybody left to drive the pick-up but you.’

‘What’s the matter with you driving it?’ I asked.

‘I got to drive another car,’ Smut said. ‘I just now traded with Baxter Yonce for a Dodge coupe.’

‘Give me the keys,’ I said.

On the way back to the roadhouse I thought about several things. The way we were letting Dick Pittman take the rap made me feel pretty bad. I thought some of helping him break out of jail, but that would have been a waste of time and work. He was too dumb to stay escaped. I thought some of going to the sheriff and telling him exactly how it was about Bert Ford. But I rejected that plan.

Another thing that had me worried was Smut buying that car. There went another thousand out of the safe, and it made me uneasy to see him spending that money like water. I decided that another week was as long as I could wait. If my letter-writing didn’t bring any results in another week’s time, then I would have to burn a hole in the safe and see what was inside.

That afternoon, about three o’clock, I was out at the grease rack beside the car shed, watching Smut and Sam grease the pick-up, when I heard an automobile horn tooting. It was a two-tone horn. I looked in the direction of the tooting, but all I saw was the rear of the car disappearing around the roadhouse. But in a minute I saw Lola Fisher’s car when she turned it down the highway. She tooted the horn again and stepped on the gas, heading toward the river. Smut had turned and was looking down the road where she’d gone. I didn’t see it if he had waved to her.

Smut soon left the greasing job to Sam and he went to his cabin. He must have slept the rest of the afternoon, for he didn’t show up in the roadhouse until it was good and dark. He ate a couple of sandwiches at the counter and had a glass of his special toddy. Half whiskey and half milk. Some folks say it will make a man sick as a dog to mix whiskey and sweet milk, but Smut said that was a lot of crap. He said the milk put a lining in his stomach.

That night there was a mob out. It was Friday night, and back then the hosiery mill paid off on Friday. Besides that, the high-school team had whitewashed Blytheville, 8-0, that afternoon in the baseball game, and they were whooping it up because they had licked Blytheville in their own back yard and in spite of the umpires Blytheville had furnished. The kids drank a lot of beer on the strength of that game.

For a while that night Smut was pretty busy in the room that was reserved for crap-shooting. I carried some whiskey back there twice that night and I had to stiff-arm my way through the mob in there. There was a bunch of the home-town college boys out that night. They were home for the spring holidays, and they were just about the most hopeful lot of boys that Duke and Carolina ever turned loose. They seemed to think they could beat Smut Milligan and his set of invisible transparent weight dice. Some of the boys that worked in the hosiery mill were nearly as dumb as the college boys.

That night there was a cloud hanging back in the west. It had been a windy day, but when it was night the wind died down and everything got still. It was the time of year for tornadoes, but this cloud in the west looked more like a summer thunderhead. It kept lightning back there, and now and then you could hear the thunder rolling away off, slow and deep.

About eleven o’clock Smut came into the front, walked out the door, and took a look at the sky. When he came back in he stopped by the cash register.

‘I don’t think it’s going to rain,’ he said to me. ‘There’s a heavy cloud hanging back there in the southwest, but I think it’s gonna waste away. I’m going down to the cabin and change clothes. Then I got to take off.’

In about fifteen minutes he was back at the cash register. He was well dressed. He had on the green herringbone suit, with the brown-and-white sports shoes, and the green Alpine hat with a feather stuck in the band. In the side of his mouth he had one of these long, slim cigars that the Southern planters are supposed to smoke—when they have got a dime to buy it with—and he looked like a cross between a movie gambler and one of these Indian chiefs that is dead set against the palefaces taking any more of the hunting grounds. He twisted his neck around and jerked his coat open. There was a bottle of liquor in the inside pocket of his coat.

‘Supply me, pal,’ he said to me. ‘I got to get my supplies.’ He leaned over toward me and his breath was a hundred proof. He took the cigar out of his mouth.

‘Gimme a pack of Camels and a book of matches. Might as well gimme a bottle of the sparkling water. I got to have an opener too.’