They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (6 page)

‘Hello!’ he said when he sat the bottle down. ‘I forgot to offer you a drink.’

‘That’s all right. I can’t drink on the job,’ I said.

‘Might cheat a customer, hah?’ he said, and smiled.

‘A customer might cheat me is the main reason,’ I said.

When we went back outside Bert Ford was sitting on one of the nail kegs. He had on a pair of striped overalls and a gray chambray shirt. The shirt was clean and starched so stiff that it stood out from Bert’s body a little. Bert had a snuff-brush in one hand and a tin snuffbox in the other.

‘Hello, boys,’ he said.

‘Drinking today, Bert?’ Wilbur asked him.

Bert Ford spat out a gob of brown spit. ‘I got some of my own,’ he said. ‘Just took a drink when I come by the spring on t’other side of the highway.’

‘Got some mighty good Scotch here, if you want a drink,’ Wilbur said.

‘Druther have corn,’ Bert said. ‘I’m drinkin corn and don’t care to mix my brands.’

‘How about a game of checkers?’ Wilbur Brannon said to him. I looked at Wilbur’s face and his birthmark had changed to a red that was almost black. A drink did him a lot of good sometimes.

‘Soon to as not,’ Bert Ford said. He took his brush and dribbled it around inside the snuffbox. Then he put it in the side of his mouth and shut his lips tight.

I went inside and brought out the checkerboard. Bert pulled up another keg and they put the board on that.

I watched them playing for a while and they were pretty good. But Wilbur was the best. He was more daring than Bert Ford was. Bert played a close, safe game of checkers. He would rather play for a tie than take a chance and maybe lose. After a while I got tired of watching them and went inside and turned on the radio.

It wasn’t long before the poker game in the back busted up. None of the boys came out the front. But two of them, Crip Wood and Lonnie, drove out past the filling station in an old V-8 sedan. In a few minutes Red Smith—or whatever his name was—drove his car around the back and took off down Lover’s Lane. I turned off the radio and went back outside to watch the checker game. Wilbur Brannon was jumping a double jump on Bert Ford’s kings when Smut Milligan came out the door.

He was eating peanut-butter sandwiches out of a little cellophane package and he looked sour as vinegar. Wilbur looked up at him.

‘Hello, Smut,’ he said. ‘Eating supper?’

Smut nodded his head. ‘Probably,’ he said. He sat down in the doorway. He certainly looked gloomy about something.

It was twilight then, and there was a dark red look to the sky in the west where the sun had gone down. The air was cool like it is in the fall and I felt good. We all sat there looking off at the sky. The only fuss was Smut chewing his peanut-butter crackers.

Finally he swallowed the last mouthful and threw the cellophane away.

‘You boys want to run a few hands of poker, or blackjack or something?’ he said.

Wilbur folded his arms across his breast and leaned back on his keg.

‘Suits me,’ he said.

Bert Ford took his snuff-brush out of the side of his mouth. He spat in the dust. ‘Soon to as not,’ he said, then put the brush back in the side of his mouth.

They got up without saying another word and went to the back. I went inside and turned on the lights. When Smut first bought the place he used oil lamps down there, but when the power line came through he had the place wired and began using electricity.

Smut and I didn’t cook any more than we had to. Sometimes we would make Catfish cook us up a batch of stuff, but he hated to do it, because we always made him wash his hands. Most of the time we just lived out of tin cans. It was sorry eating. I had aimed to cook up some eggs that night, but when they went into the back to play poker I knew there wasn’t any chance of getting Smut out front to watch the business while I cooked. When I saw him come out eating that peanut-butter crap I knew he wasn’t interested in a cooked supper anyway. I opened a can of sardines and got a handful of crackers.

I sat there inside till eleven o’clock that night. I listened to the radio part of the time. The rest of the time I just sat there and thought. Business was slow. I sold gas to a couple of fellows and about half a dozen pints of liquor to some kids that had their girls out on Lover’s Lane. One boy and his girl got a pint about seven-thirty and then came back for more about the time I closed up. He was a grocery store clerk in Corinth. The girl worked in a beauty parlor there. He always wore clothes to make him look like a College Joe. Pants too short, coat too tight in the waist, and a hat that looked like it was something the cats drug up and then put a feather in. He said the liquor didn’t seem to do the girl much good.

‘She don’t loosen up a damn bit,’ he complained to me.

‘Maybe she’s got a girdle on,’ I said.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Try some corn liquor,’ I told him. So he bought a pint of corn. But he must have been pretty dumb. Everybody in town had had that girl except me, and now him. Things looked bad for the boy if he couldn’t loosen up that girl.

About eleven o’clock I got sleepy and went into the room where we slept. The game was still going on. I didn’t hear them talking any, but I could hear the cards. I sat down on Smut’s cot and was untying my shoes when Smut said, ‘That you in there, Jack?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Come on back, Jack,’ he said. I could tell from the way his voice sounded that he was in a better humor. I retied my shoes and went back there.

They were using the kitchen table to play on. Smut was sitting up straight in his chair; Wilbur was at ease, and Bert Ford was leaning over the table, with his chin resting in the palm of his left hand. I looked at the edges of the cards. I don’t think they were from one of the shaved decks. I guess Smut wouldn’t risk that with Bert and Wilbur.

Smut looked up when I came in. ‘Jack, I’m hungry as a dog,’ he said. ‘You can beat me cooking. How about scrambling a few eggs and making a pot of coffee?’

I lit the wicks on the stove and got out a frying-pan. I went to the box where we kept the eggs and Smut looked over his shoulder at me. ‘Get eight or ten eggs. Fix enough for all of us,’ he said.

Wilbur Brannon held up his hand. I was standing behind him and he held a Jack and two treys. ‘No, thanks, don’t fix any for me,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to town in a minute.’

Bert Ford leaned over to the side and spat in the slop bucket. ‘Don’t fry none for me,’ he said. ‘I’m quittin right now. I got to go home. Ain’t hungry noway.’ He sounded pretty glum and I knew he’d lost some. I took three eggs out of the box and broke them into the frying-pan.

Bert Ford got up and pushed back his chair. He walked to the back door and opened it. ‘See you all again,’ he said, and went out. Wilbur said he believed he’d stay on and have a cup of coffee. As soon as I finished the cooking, I went back into the other room and lay down on my mattress bed.

It wasn’t long before Smut came in and sat down on the foot of his cot.

‘Win anything?’ I asked him.

‘A little,’ he said, but he sounded pretty cheerful. ‘I won a little. Enough to make up for them lint heads running off before they lost all they’d won off the other lint heads this morning.’

‘You must be going good if you can win from those two birds,’ I said.

‘I had a feeling I could take them guys tonight,’ he said. ‘As a rule they’re poison. But hell’s bells, what I took off them tonight ain’t a drop in the bucket. They both got plenty money.’

‘Wonder how they got it,’ I said.

Smut kicked his shoes against the wall. ‘God knows; I don’t,’ he said. ‘What I’d like to know is a way to separate them from it.’

THE NEXT DAY SMUT
took the pick-up and went to Charlotte. He left about nine o’clock and told me he’d be back sometime before night. He didn’t tell me his business in Charlotte.

It was the usual Monday. Sold a little gas. Wiped a lot of windshields and filled up radiators with water. I listened to the radio awhile, but it wasn’t long before the only programs I could get were inspirational programs that told you how to get more out of life. I shut it off and went outside to my nail keg.

I was sitting there smoking and thinking when Catfish came up. I was aggravated to see him because I had an idea he’d want to talk the rest of the morning. It was a warm day, but he had on a blue sweater underneath his overall jacket. He came up to where I was, and flopped down on the ground.

‘How you, Mr. Jack?’ he said.

‘I’m all right,’ I said. I tried to make it sound cold. But Cat was a mighty hard nigger to freeze out

‘Mr. Jack,’ he said, ‘you ain’t got a match, is you?’

I gave him a paper book of matches. He began fumbling around in his overall jacket. He turned the pockets as close to inside out as he could, then he went to fishing around in his pants pockets. Finally he took his hat off and scratched his head. ‘Confound my soul!’ he said. ‘I done come off and left my sack of tobacco to the house. You ain’t got a cigarette, is you, Mr. Jack?’

I gave him a cigarette. I ought to have gone in the store and got him a sack of tobacco and charged it to him. But the way I felt right then I’d rather give him the cigarette than go open up the books.

He got the cigarette lit and he looked mighty contented flopped down there in the dirt, with smoke all around him like a brushpile on fire. He took his hat off and threw it down on the ground beside him and propped himself up on his elbow. I noticed the shape of his face; it was like a wedge.

‘Sho is fine weather we havin,’ he said.

I kind of grunted. ‘But not much good for makin liquor,’ he went on. ‘Little too dry. Kinda dangerous havin a fire out in the woods this dry weather. Smoke show up mighty clear too.’

He smoked on awhile and I didn’t open my mouth to him. Finally he said: ‘Where Mr. Smut? Ain’t he here today?’

‘No.’

‘Where he gone to?’

‘Gone to Charlotte.’

‘I be dog! Gone to Charlotte! I use to live in Charlotte. Didn’t stay there long. Didn’t like it.’

I saw I was going to have to knock him in the head or listen to him. ‘How come you didn’t like Charlotte?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t like that there niggertown they got in Charlotte. We use to live on a creek; Sweet Creek they calls it there. But I never called it no Sweet Creek.’

‘What’d you call it?’

Catfish spat over his shoulder. ‘Sonofabitchin Creek,’ he said.

‘How come you called it that?’

‘On account that there dang creek gits outen the banks and rises up in all them nigger houses. Ever time use to come a rain the water git three foot deep in the house.’

‘Whyn’t you complain to the landlord?’ I asked him.

‘Don’t do no good. Landlord say, “If you don’t like it, git out.” But them was the only kind of house a pore nigger can git in Charlotte.’

‘I think Wilbur Brannon has got some shacks in Charlotte,’ I said. ‘I wonder how much he gets out of them.’

‘If he’s got many he gits plenty,’ Catfish said. ‘Plenty money. Them landlords puts up a little bark house what don’t cost nothin and they don’t paint nothin nor fix up nothin. They don’t never make no repairs neither. They don’t pay no taxes to amount to a hill of beans cause them houses is listed mighty low on the tax books. But they gits they rent outen them just the same. Why, one man had fourteen nigger houses right there together on that there Sonofabitchin Sweet Creek and not but one garden house for all that bunch! You had to hold yourself in and watch your chanct.’

‘I reckon Wilbur makes a pretty good thing out of his houses, then,’ I said. ‘He’s a strange bird to me. I always wondered where he got his money.’

Catfish was in a smoking notion that day. He raised up and said, ‘Got air nother cigarette you could spare me, Mr. Jack?’ I gave him another one, and he went on. ‘Mr. Brannon got money, but not like that there Mr. Bert Ford.’

‘I’ve heard Bert had money,’ I said, ‘but he don’t spend it like Wilbur Brannon does. Bert always wears overalls and drinks corn liquor. He’s just a country jake.’

‘May be a country jake, but he got the money just the same,’ Catfish said. ‘I use to live on Mr. Bert’s place one year. I
know
he got the money. He got it buried.’

‘Buried?’ I said. ‘Where’s it buried?’

‘He don’t say. But one night he tell me he done buried thutty thousand dollar.’

‘Hello!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he talked like that.’

‘Don’t as a ginral rule,’ Catfish said. ‘He made an “O” out of his mouth and tried to blow smoke rings, but didn’t do much at it.’

‘How come him to do it this time?’ I said.

‘Well, I tell you. He been on a long drunk like he use to git on before his liver got mortified on him. He been drunk for the most part, for six months this here time I’m talkin about. And one evenin to’ards sundown I was over to his house to see about gittin a mule the next day to bust out middles with. I come up to the back door and frammed on it. I frammed and I called and finally, lo and behold! Here come a shotgun bar’l pokin out the door at me. Just a Long Tom shotgun bar’l. Well, sir, the day had been ungodly hot, but I tuk and had a chill right then. I was mawtally froze, I was so skeered. Then I see Mr. Bert behind the gun bar’l. He was white as a bed sheet and the draps of sweat standin out on his face like draps of water on a greased watermelon. “What you want, you devil outen hell?” he says to me. I was too skeered to speak right off, but atter awhile I kinda whispered: “Lawd God! Mr. Bert, I don’t want
nothin!”

‘He seen who I was then and he says to me: “Well, it ain’t nobody but Catfish Wall. I swear to God I thought you was Tom Flake.” Now, Mr. Jack, I don’t know no Tom Flake and never heered tell of him. “Yes, sir, I thought you was Tom Flake come to git my money.” That was what he said.’

‘That wasn’t telling you he had thirty thousand dollars buried,’ I said.

Catfish spat. ‘That ain’t all,’ he said. ‘Wait till I git through. He made me come in the house and gimme a drink of powerful strong yaller liquor. He kept that there gun lyin acrost his lap all the time. I seen it was cocked too. “He’s been a-hangin around here,” Mr. Bert says, “a-tryin to git me to tell him where I got my thutty thousand dollar buried. But I ain’t a-goin to tell him.” Then Mr. Bert would laugh like some crazy woman. “I’m goin to give the son-of-a-bitch a bate of birdshot,” he says. “Come by the money—it don’t make no difference how—and now it’s my money. I’ll fight for it to the death,” he says.’