They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (33 page)

Smut was shot bad, but he made a dive at Fisher. Fisher waited until Smut was almost touching him, then shot him in the forehead. Smut fell over on his face. When he fell, he clawed his fingers into the dirt.

I had been lying there on my stomach all the time. I decided to stay flat on the ground until Fisher got out of there.

Charles Fisher looked down at Smut. He seemed to be satisfied that Smut was dead.

‘Wanted to show you something, Milligan,’ he said.

Fisher put the gun in the bag, but he didn’t bother to snap the bag shut. He folded the bag around the gun, turned around, and ran back to his car. As soon as he got it started, he whipped it around and took off down Lover’s Lane. He was giving it the gun when he went out of sight.

I pulled myself up by holding on to the mulberry tree. I looked around for Sam, but he wasn’t in sight. I walked over to Smut and knelt down beside him.

He was dead now. I looked around me to see if anybody was in sight. While I was looking in the direction of the car shed, Sam came crawling around the corner. When he saw me he stood up.

‘Has he gone?’ Sam asked me.

‘Fisher’s gone,’ I said.

Sam walked over to me. He was walking slow and a little unsteadily. He looked as weak as I felt.

‘Dead?’ Sam whispered.

I nodded my head. ‘Go get the others,’ I said.

Sam’s strength came back to him then. He ran toward the roadhouse. I started feeling over Smut and located his pocketbook. It was buttoned up in his shirt-pocket. I looked through it in a hurry. There was a five-dollar bill and two quarters in it and that was all. No paper with the combination to his safe. I put the pocketbook back in the shirt-pocket and fanned him for the key ring. It was stuck down in the watch pocket. There were about a dozen keys on the ring, but I didn’t have any trouble deciding which was the key to his cabin. I got it off and put the key ring back where it was just as Badeye and Matt came out of the kitchen.

They ran all the way. Sam was right behind them, running too, and in a minute Garfield and Rufus came down there. Badeye knelt down on the other side of Smut.

‘For God’s sake! For God’s sake!’ Badeye said. He took Smut’s right hand and pulled it out of the dirt.

‘I wish you’d look!’ Badeye said more to himself than to anybody else. ‘I wish to God you’d look. He must a dived at Fisher. He clawed up dirt here.’

Badeye shook his head. ‘God, what a fellow!’ he said, and got to his feet.

They all took a good look at Smut. Rufus Jones put his hands over his face and shook his head quick. ‘I don’t want to see it,’ Rufus said. He started back to the kitchen. ‘White folks, I ain’t got no truck with it,’ he called over his shoulder.

I stood up then. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we better let him stay here till the sheriff and the coroner can get here. They’ll have to see him. But we might cover him up with a sheet.’

‘Go get a sheet, Matt,’ Sam Hall said.

Matt started toward the cabin the other boys slept in. He walked a couple of steps, then broke into a run. I turned to Sam.

‘Somebody’s got to drive into Corinth and let the sheriff know,’ I said. ‘You want to do that, Sam?’

Sam sat down on the ground beside Smut. His face was white and he looked like he might be going to faint.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ Sam said. ‘I tell you I’m just too nervous to do it.’

Matt Rush was not a very good driver. Badeye was a little too drunk.

I knelt down over Smut again. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if I can find the keys to the pick-up.’

‘Take his car. The keys are in it,’ Sam said.

‘Is it in shape to drive?’ I asked.

‘I was through greasing it,’ Sam said. His voice sounded like he was a long ways off.

So I backed Smut’s coupé off the rack and turned it around. Badeye jumped on the running board and rode up to the gas tanks with me. I stopped there to let him off because he said he didn’t want to go to Corinth with me. When I stopped I noticed the gas gauge. It was registering empty.

‘Pump up some gas. The tank’s about empty,’ I said to Badeye. I let the clutch out and rolled up to the high-test tank.

‘How many?’ Badeye asked.

‘A couple of gallons,’ I said.

While Badeye was pumping up the gas a car came down the highway from Corinth and turned into the roadhouse. An old touring car, without a top and without a windshield. It was Buck Wilhoyt’s old Essex that he got out every spring. Buck drove up beside me and stopped his rattletrap.

‘Whatta you say, Jack?’ Buck yelled.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘How about getting a grease job on my old boat?’ Buck asked. ‘She ain’t greasy enough. I got my own oil. I just want to use you all’s rack.’

Badeye stuck the hose into the tank. He spat and looked around at Buck.

‘You can’t use the grease rack now,’ Badeye said.

‘How come I can’t?’ Buck asked.

‘It’s occupied right now,’ Badeye said.

‘No, it ain’t. I looked down there just as I drove around the corner. There’s just some fellows standing around down there.’

Badeye took the hose out of the gas tank. He spat again.

‘Go down there and take another look,’ he said to Buck Wilhoyt.

THE ONLY THING I REMEMBER
about going to Corinth that Sunday morning is that I kept the speedometer on seventy all the way until I hit the city limits. I had to slow down there because the people were beginning to go home from church.

It was about noon by that time. I figured Sheriff Pemberton would be home getting ready to eat Sunday dinner, so I made for his house. I went down Main and turned at the Methodist Church. The Methodist preacher was the longest-winded one in town, so there was still a lot of folks hanging around in front of that church. I had to stop there once on account of some woman backing her car out in the middle of the street right in front of me.

I went down that street, turned left, drove about a city block, and stopped in front of the sheriff’s house. It was a bungalow, painted dark green and trimmed with brown, with a dormer window sticking out of the roof. The sheriff’s car wasn’t parked in front anywhere. I got out of the coupé and ran up the front steps.

The sheriff’s wife answered the doorbell. She was a plump blonde, about thirty-five, I’d say, and from the sloppy-looking house dress she had on I guess she hadn’t been to church that morning.

‘I want to see the sheriff,’ I said.

‘He’s not here right now,’ Mrs. Pemberton said. ‘He just now got a call and left.’

‘You know where he went?’

‘He’s out at Mr. Charles Fisher’s, I think,’ Mrs. Pemberton said. ‘He got a call to go out there just now. Just when he was getting ready to eat his dinner.’

‘Charles Fisher’s!’ I said. So Fisher was going to own up to it right away.

‘That’s where the call was from,’ the sheriff’s wife said. ‘Somebody called him over the telephone and said for him to rush out there. I been trying to find out what’s the matter, but it seems like nobody’s got home from church.’

I think the woman said something else, but I didn’t stay to hear it. I got in the car and studied a minute about what I ought to do. If Fisher was going to confess, the sheriff would find out about Smut without me telling him, but the main reason I didn’t want to go out there was because I didn’t want to see Fisher just then.

In the end, though, I decided I would drive over there and report to the sheriff. I took the back ways till I got to Pee Dee Avenue. I drove down the avenue, that was lined with Lombardy poplars, and when I got toward the end I saw there were three cars in front of Charles Fisher’s. One of them was Fisher’s car—the one he had driven out to the roadhouse. The sheriffs car was there too, and another one that I didn’t recognize. I pulled up to the sidewalk and parked.

I ran up the steps to Fisher’s front door, but I didn’t ring the doorbell. It wasn’t necessary. Bud Smathers came out of the door just as I got there, and I saw the sheriff’s back just inside.

‘I want to see the sheriff, Mr. Smathers,’ I said.

Bud was chewing on a cigar that wasn’t lighted. He took the cigar out of his mouth and blew out a piece of tobacco.

‘Go right in and see him,’ Bud Smathers said.

The sheriff turned his head when I went inside, but didn’t speak to me right off. He was chewing tobacco, but not doing any spitting.

‘Can I talk to you a minute, sheriff?’ I asked.

The sheriff nodded his head. He looked around him, but there wasn’t a spittoon in sight and the fireplace over in the left corner had been closed up. Sheriff Pemberton walked over to a table that was in front of the fireplace. He spat into a vase of hyacinths that was on the table.

‘It’s about Mr. Fisher,’ I said. ‘Has he talked to you, sheriff? About Smut, I mean?’

Sheriff Pemberton looked directly at me then. He seemed to be puzzled about something.

‘About Smut Milligan, didn’t you say?’

‘That’s right. I thought maybe he told you about it,’ I said.

Right then Bud Smathers stuck his head in the door. ‘Believe I’ll go on, sheriff,’ he said. ‘LeRoy’ll be back at the store in a minute, I reckon.’

‘That’ll be all right,’ the sheriff said.

The other car out front was Bud’s. He got in it and drove on off. I remembered then that he was the coroner. It worked in fine with his undertaking business.

Sheriff Pemberton was looking at me again; then he looked down at the divan that was in the middle of the room, in front of the little table.

‘Fisher hasn’t told me anything, son,’ the sheriff said in a low voice. ‘He was dead when I got here about fifteen minutes ago. He killed himself.’

‘He’s dead?’ I said. I didn’t know what I was saying.

‘I told you he was dead,’ Sheriff Pemberton said. ‘He shot his wife and then killed himself.’

The sheriff walked over to the vase of hyacinths and spat in it again. On the wall above the fireplace there was hanging the picture of a hard-looking old man, dressed like they used to a long time ago, with a black coat and a white shirt and high stiff collar. Sheriff Pemberton stared at the picture of this fellow, then turned his head toward me.

‘I don’t understand it,’ the sheriff said. ‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’

‘Is his wife dead too?’ I asked.

‘She wasn’t when she left here. LeRoy got out here with the ambulance and took both of them to the hospital and Lola had been shot in the shoulder. She was kind of dazed like, and couldn’t say anything.’

Sheriff Pemberton walked back to the hyacinth vase. ‘Must have gone temporarily insane,’ he said. ‘You want to see me about something?’

‘I wanted to,’ I said. ‘It was about Smut Milligan. About an hour ago Fisher drove out to the roadhouse and killed him. That was what I was talking about.’

The sheriff looked like he had been jolted some. He sat down beside me on the divan.

‘Killed him,’ he whispered to me. ‘Killed Milligan too?’

I nodded my head.

‘I’ll be dogged!’ the sheriff said. ‘Killed Milligan too!’ He said it like a man that’s absolutely given up.

The windows were down in the room and it was hot in there. I looked around at the cold-looking man in the picture over the fireplace. There was something about his eyes that reminded me of an axe blade that’s just been sharpened and he was looking straight at me; I felt like he would point his finger at me in a minute. I wanted to get out of that house. I stood up and turned my back to the man in the picture.

‘I guess you can’t go right now,’ I said to the sheriff. ‘I’ll go on back to the roadhouse.’

I had to get my ducks in a row since things had started breaking. I needed a drink too.

Sheriff Pemberton shook his head and sat up straight. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘How come him to shoot Milligan?’

‘He didn’t say,’ I said.

‘They didn’t quarrel none before he shot him?’

‘No. He just drove out and shot him.’

‘When was this?’

‘Maybe eleven-thirty,’ I said. I wanted to get out of there.

The sheriff got up from the divan. ‘Listen, you all cover him up with a sheet and wait till I can get there. I’ll be there soon’s I can. I got to get hold of Brock Boone and we got to go by the funeral parlor and get Bud.’

‘He’s already covered up,’ I said.

‘What a Sunday! What a day of rest!’ Sheriff Pemberton said. He sat down on the divan again.

I left him there and went out and got in the coupé that had been Smut’s. I drove back to Main Street. When I passed the Smathers furniture store and undertaking parlor LeRoy was standing in the first door. He had his coat off and was rolling up his shirt-sleeves. Things were beginning to break for LeRoy, too.

BUCK WILHOYT MUST HAVE
hit it back to Corinth and spread the news, for the yard was full of cars when I got back to the roadhouse. There was a mob down toward the mulberry tree.

I went inside the roadhouse and Badeye was the only one in there. He was sitting at one of the stools, looking at an empty glass that was on the counter before him. There was a bottle of Teacher’s beside the glass. The bottle was almost full. Badeye looked up when I walked into the room, but he didn’t say anything.

‘I’ll take a drink of that,’ I said.

He blinked his good eye. ‘What? Oh, sure. Take one,’ he said, and he shoved the bottle and the glass up the counter to me.

I poured the whiskey glass full and took it straight and neat. I sat down beside Badeye and lit a cigarette for a chaser.

‘Where’d you get the liquor?’ I asked.

‘What? Oh, the liquor. It was in the refrigerator where Smut had put it to get cold. I guess he was goin to take a few drinks this evenin,’ Badeye said.

The swinging doors from the kitchen opened and Sam Hall came in. He sat down at the counter too. He still looked dazed. He picked up the bottle of liquor and drank out of it like he thought it was just a bottle of water, or maybe iced tea.

‘Go easy on that liquor,’ Badeye told him. ‘It probably represents my month’s wages.’

‘All right,’ Sam said. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead and temples. ‘You find the sheriff?’ he asked me.