They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (16 page)

We hadn’t said anything to each other since we left the still. But as soon as we had had a drink and got in bed, Smut began talking. His bed was beside mine and it was dark in there, for the moon had gone down then.

‘We got to do some planning,’ he said. I didn’t say anything, and he went on: ‘We got to get rid of the body. It’ll be some time before anybody misses him. If they can’t find him they can’t ever prove anything.’

The liquor had cleared some of the cotton out of my throat. ‘How’ll you get rid of the body?’ I asked.

‘How’ll
we
get rid of it, you mean,’ he said. ‘You was in on this. Don’t forget that, pal.’

‘All right. I haven’t forgotten anything,’ I said. ‘I reckon I’ll share in the money, then.’

He hesitated a minute. ‘Why, yes, sure you will,’ he said.

‘Fifty-fifty,’ I said.

I could feel his eyes on me in the dark. ‘That’s a little steep,’ he said. ‘I done the dirty work. I really got the money.’

‘I saw you do it too,’ I said. ‘Keep that in mind.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind, all right,’ Smut said.

I heard him turn over then and I guess he was getting ready to go to sleep, but I was pretty jittery and getting worse the more I thought about it. Since it was over now I could talk too.

‘What about all this money we got here?’ I asked.

Smut jumped out of bed. ‘Great God!’ he said. ‘I was about to forget the fruit jars. I’ll put them in my locker till tomorrow.’

‘You think we’ll be able to hide the money and the gun too?’

‘Hell, yes,’ Smut said. I heard him fumbling around in the direction of his locker, then I could hear something going ‘glug, glug, glop.’ After he finished taking his drink, he must have put the fruit jars in the locker, for I heard him snap the lock shut.

I heard him get back on the bed. ‘I got to do some thinking about this situation,’ he said. ‘It didn’t turn out just like I’d figured on.’

‘It better be pretty good thinking,’ I said.

‘Whatta you mean? You trying to threaten me?’ Smut asked. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was sitting up on the bed.

‘No,’ I said.

‘If you don’t have no confidence in my judgment why don’t you work out a few plans on your own hook?’ he said. His voice sounded like a cross between a sneer and a snarl.

‘I may do so,’ I said.

‘I let you in on a good thing,’ he said, ‘and now you begin griping about the way I run things. We got to stick together on this. We’re both in it to our necks.’

‘I don’t like losing that shell out there at the bee-gums,’ I said.

‘To hell with it,’ Smut said.

That was the last we said to each other that night, and I suppose Smut went to sleep then. But I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about what we’d done, and I was sore with Smut for pulling me into a murder without saying anything to me before-hand. I was afraid he had me picked for a fall guy if anything went wrong.

The liquor had gone out of me by then and I felt lousy. I lay there till it was light outside. I got up then and dressed in a hurry, for it was cold in the cabin. There was a mirror in the shower room and I took a look at myself. I didn’t look so good. After I washed my face I pinched it so it would get some color into it, and I took some eye drops and poured them into my eyes until they looked clearer. Then I went out of the cabin and ran across the lot to the roadhouse.

Rufus was frying eggs when I got inside the kitchen. Dick Pittman was standing in front of the stove, warming his hind parts and his hands at the same time. He looked up when I walked in.

‘What’s the matter, Jack?’ he said. ‘You look like you was out all night in bad comp’ny.’

‘Me and Smut drank a little too much last night. We both got sick,’ I said.

Rufus Jones stirred the eggs. ‘Drink you a cuppa cawfee, Mr. Jack,’ he said. ‘It’ll settle your insides.’

He had a tin pot on the stove. I picked up a cup and poured it full. My hand shook while I was holding the cup, and Dick noticed it.

‘Damn if you ain’t narvous,’ he said. ‘You mighty young to be that narvous.’

‘I’ve always been nervous. All my folks were nervous,’ I said.

Dick sort of clucked his tongue. ‘Git you a bottle of this here Narvine,’ he said. ‘My mammy use to take it. It holp her a heap.’

‘I’ll have to try it,’ I said. But I decided I would stick to rye. Dick’s mother died in the insane asylum.

The coffee didn’t help me much, so I tried to eat an egg. But it wouldn’t go down very well, and finally I went out front and commenced sweeping out. I was sweeping under the counter when Dick Pittman came in and sat down. Dick looked all around him to make sure nobody else was near; then he spoke to me out of the side of his mouth.

‘I tell you I had a time last night, Jack,’ he said.

‘Is that a fact? When’d you get in?’

‘I just got in about an hour ago,’ Dick said. ‘Her old man works on the graveyard shift and don’t come in till seven. It sure was juicy stuff.’

So that put Dick out of the way. He didn’t know anything.

‘I guess you took a prophylactic when you got in?’ I said.

‘No,’ Dick said. ‘It ain’t any use for me to do that. She’s a clean girl. I’m the only one that’s gettin it. Just me and her husband.’ He got up and went back into the kitchen.

It was about ten o’clock when Smut came in the front. He didn’t look so good. There must not have been a drink left in the cabin. He didn’t even look toward me when he went by on his way to the kitchen.

In a minute he came back with a glass and a bottle of liquor. He sat down at the counter beside me.

‘You want a drink?’ he asked me.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t you figure it’s a little dangerous to be drinking like this here in the morning?’

‘It ain’t nothing,’ he said. ‘I told Rufus I drunk too much last night, and the only way I knew how to get right was to take a little hair of the dog that bit me. He didn’t think nothing of it. Soon’s I get a couple of drinks under my belt I’ll be all right.’

After a couple of drinks he looked better. The color came back into his face. He held up his right hand and said, ‘Milligan has full control.’ His fingers didn’t tremble, but his eyes looked bloodshot.

‘Did you get your thinking done?’ I said to him. We were alone in the front.

‘Not all of it,’ he said, and wrinkled his eyebrows. ‘We got a couple of days’ leeway.’

‘Don’t count on it,’ I said.

‘Nobody’ll find him. That beer of Cat’s ain’t ready to run off. We didn’t leave no mess at his house, nor no fingerprints.’

‘Damn the fingerprints,’ I said. ‘But you can’t take anything for granted in this sort of business. He can’t stay in the beer long.’

‘I know he can’t,’ Smut said. ‘I’ll get rid of the money tonight. I got to figure out something to do with him.’ He took one cigarette out of his lumberjack pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. He got up from the counter and shrugged his shoulders.

‘I’m going to Corinth,’ he said. ‘May not be back till late. When I come back I’ll have something figured out.’ He turned up the collar of his lumberjack and went out the door.

THE MORNING PAPER MAN
from Charlotte passed and threw out our paper a few minutes after Smut left. He usually got there before eight o’clock, but when it was cold weather he would be late. I beat Dick Pittman to the paper and began reading it. Dick looked so disappointed that I gave him the part that had the comic section in it. There wasn’t much news, but on the front page it said, ‘Relief from Cold Wave Promised South.’ I was glad to see that till I happened to think about Bert Ford. If it got warm the beer might work off sooner and Catfish would have to get ready and run the liquor. Before then we had to get rid of the body somehow. Thinking about it I got worried and went and got a bottle of beer and drank it.

I was drinking the beer when Catfish came in from the kitchen. He was all bundled up in overall jackets and old sweaters, and he had on a black leather cap with the flaps pulled down over his ears. He blew his breath on his hands and rubbed them together.

‘I cain’t stand
this,’
he said. ‘I ain’t use to weather like this. If it don’t moderate in another day or two, I reckin I might as well pack my satchel and move furder south.’

Dick looked up from the funny paper. ‘Aw, it ain’t so cold. I looked at that thermometer we got outside and it wasn’t but eighteen.’

‘Well, how low you want it to get?’ Catfish asked him.

‘Well, I ain’t seen no zero weather this winter,’ Dick said.

‘I ain’t neither,’ Catfish said, ‘and don’t aim to. If it git just one more degree lower I’m leavin this ice and mess. I’m goin to Mexico.’

Dick went back to reading the paper. He had to spell out the words and it was a slow job for him. Catfish looked over at me. ‘What the matter with you, Mr. Jack?’ he said. ‘You mighty quiet this mornin.’

‘I don’t feel good,’ I said.

Catfish looked sympathetic. ‘You takin the flu?’

‘No. I drank too much last night,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Sleep the best thing for that. Sleep and rest, and shawt rations for a day or two.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ I said.

Catfish blew on his hands again; he looked around the room. ‘Where Mr. Smut? I got to see Mr. Smut.’

‘He’s gone to Corinth,’ I said. ‘Might not be back till late.’

‘I specially want to see him,’ Catfish said. He sat down at the counter beside me. ‘I come by the beer this mornin,’ he said.

I dropped the paper on the floor. For a minute I couldn’t say anything. I looked at Catfish, but he was taking out his sack of tobacco and his cigarette papers. You couldn’t tell anything from the look on his face.

‘Did you look in the beer?’ I asked. I looked off at the wall when I said it, and yawned.

‘I took the kag off the top of the still and smelt the beer and tasted of it,’ Catfish said. ‘But it ain’t ready yet. That’s what’s worryin me.’ He poured the tobacco on the cigarette paper, caught the strings of the tobacco sack in his teeth, and pulled the sack shut.

‘How come it’s worrying you?’

He licked the cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. ‘Gimme a match, Mr. Jack.’ I gave him a match. He lit the cigarette and inhaled a draw. ‘I wish it was ready right now. It look like I got to go to Florence, South Callina. Read this here letter.’

He reached inside his coats and pulled out a dirty envelope. I took it and pulled out a sheet of ruled tablet paper that was inside it. It was written with a pencil and was pretty dim.

Dear Ander [it began—Catfish’s name was Andrew]. Pa done had a stroke. You know he done had too other stroke. He right low. If you want to see Pa alife you better come on to see him. Don’t look like he can stay here long. We all well as common. Ant May broke her hip this last past week. The doar step give in with her. Hope you all well as common.

GORGY

I think Catfish had a sister that was named Georgia.

I handed the letter back to him. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I guess it would be all right for you to go on.’

‘Only thing worryin me is the beer,’ Catfish said. ‘I feels a responsibility for it. I been makin liquor for Mr. Smut two year and ain’t never let no beer go to the bad yet. But that beer won’t be ready to run for three or four days, even if it was to turn real warm.’

‘How long did you aim to stay in South Carolina?’ I asked him.

‘That’s it. I don’t know. If I was to go down there and Pa was done dead, why I’d just go to the buryin and mess around down there a day or two, and come on back. But you know how it is. He might linger on for days and days. Cose if it keeps on cold as this, that beer won’t hurt for a week or ten days. Beer cain’t do no workin in weather cold as this here.’

‘I’ll swear I don’t know, Catfish,’ I said. ‘If you want to wait around here I reckon Smut’ll be back sometime before night.’

‘I cain’t wait long. I got to git up some firewood. I ain’t hardly got a stick of wood at the house,’ Catfish said.

I wanted to tell him to go on to South Carolina, because I didn’t like for him to be fooling around in that beer. But I didn’t know what Smut might be planning.

‘I’ll tell Smut when he comes in,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’ll drive out to see you about it.’

‘All right,’ Catfish said. ‘Before I forgit it, gimme two sacks of Bull Durm and a extra book of papers.’

I got him the tobacco and gave him some matches. He stuck it all in his pockets. ‘Charge it, Mr. Jack,’ he said, and went out the back way, through the kitchen.

Smut got back earlier than I thought he would. When he had something on his mind he liked to get in the pick-up and just ride till he got his thinking done. It wasn’t much after one when he came in the kitchen where I was eating a light snack. Johnny and Rufus were eating at a table over behind the stove, and they were talking and making plenty of racket.

‘Catfish was here to see you,’ I said to Smut. He had headed toward the refrigerator, but he stopped.

‘What’d he want to see me about?’

‘He came by the beer this morning,’ I said.

The color went out of Smut’s face and it turned gray. He opened his mouth, then shut it, and sat down slow and careful in the chair that was beside mine.

‘Jesus! Did he notice anything?’ Smut whispered to me. He looked over where Rufus and Johnny were laughing and talking.

‘I don’t think so. He said he looked at it and tasted of it to see how it was coming along.’

Smut licked his lips with the end of his tongue. ‘How come him to say anything about it if he was just examining it?’

‘He wants to go to South Carolina. He was looking to see how long the beer could wait before it would have to be run off.’

Smut spoke in his regular voice. ‘What’s he want to go to South Carolina for?’

‘His daddy’s about to die. He wants to go see him.’

Smut looked relieved. ‘Is that all?’ he said. ‘Don’t scare me like that. Whyn’t you tell him to go on and stay a couple of weeks?’

‘I told him I’d tell you when you got back and maybe you’d run out there and talk to him about it,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe you wanted to move it out of the beer about tonight and then let Catfish make up the liquor when it was time.’