They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (17 page)

‘Hell, let him go to South Carolina,’ Smut said. ‘I’m glad this come up. I got to change my plans a little, but that’s all right.’

He got up from the chair and his color was back to normal. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said. He went to the refrigerator and poured two liquor glasses full of liquor. He brought them back to the table where I was sitting.

‘I don’t want any,’ I told him.

He drank his off, then drank the one he’d poured for me. ‘Let’s go out to Catfish’s,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you. We won’t be gone long.’

Smut got a piece of cold roast beef and half a loaf of bread out of the refrigerator. He gobbled that down, then took a tomato and commenced eating it, and we went out the front. Badeye was sitting in there, drinking his usual beer, and reading the sports page of that morning’s paper. There were two boys from Corinth, Joe Murray and Harvey Wood, playing the pin-ball machine that Smut had just had installed in the front. They both had on boots and looked like they’d been rabbit-hunting.

We got in the pick-up and headed down the River Road. Catfish lived right on the river, about half a mile off the highway, and not very far from where his still was. But we had to take another road from the one we took the night before when we carried Bert Ford to the still.

We didn’t talk much till we got to Catfish’s house. It was a shack that looked like it could use a new roof. I think it had three rooms. On the north side, where the window panes were busted, Catfish had nailed rusty tin over the windows to keep the wind out. He was a fellow that disliked a cold wind.

We drove up in his yard and stopped the pick-up beside the well. Catfish’s car was parked a little ways down, beside the hogpen. Catfish was sawing wood with a little nigger boy. They used a crosscut saw, and every time Catfish pulled the saw to him he jerked the little nigger about two inches off the ground.

When we got up pretty close they stopped sawing and Catfish turned around.

‘How you today, Mr. Smut?’ Catfish said.

‘I think I’ll live, but it don’t make no difference to me,’ Smut said. ‘Hello, Boss-Man,’ he said to the little nigger boy.

Boss-Man grinned and slipped around behind Catfish’s coat-tails. Catfish looked over his shoulder at him. ‘Go on in the house, Boss-Man. I’ll call you when I git ready to saw some more wood,’ he said.

Little Boss-Man made a dive for the back door and went inside the house.

‘I hear you got to go to South Carolina,’ Smut said.

Catfish stuck his hands in his pockets and shivered. ‘I would ax you all in to the fire,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like to be talkin bout all this liquor and beer and mess in front of the chillun.’

‘That’s all right,’ Smut said.

‘Yes, sir,’ Catfish said, ‘it begin to look like I got to go down there to see my old daddy. I ain’t seen him in five year and he mighty low now. Mighty low. Cose I cain’t do nothin to help him, but it look to me like I ought to go down there. I don’t want it said that I didn’t go nigh him in his last sickness.’

‘Well, go ahead,’ Smut told him. ‘Don’t worry about the beer. If it gets ripe I can run it off
.’

‘I was thinkin bout that,’ Catfish said. ‘Wonderin if you knowed how to make a run of liquor.’

‘I can make it all right,’ Smut said. ‘You go on to South Carolina and stay as long as you want to. Any reasonable length of time. If the beer gets ripe I’ll take care of it.’

Catfish took his hands out of his pockets and blew on them. ‘Much oblige, Mr. Smut,’ he said. ‘If I can git my car started, I’ll go tomorrow.’

We left then. As soon as we got out of the yard into the road, Smut said: ‘Now, this is working out right. Listen, we got to get that beer to working and run it off right quick. In a couple of days or so.’

‘What about Bert Ford?’ I asked.

‘I’ll take care of him when I run off the liquor.’

‘How’ll you take care of him?’

‘I’ll take care of him,’ Smut said. ‘Don’t let it bother you.’

We turned off the dirt road then, onto the highway.

‘What about the money?’ I asked Smut.

‘I’ll make some shift about that. Probably tonight. Listen, don’t worry about the money. We’ll divide it later on, but right now we got to hide it and sit tight. This is going to be a drawn-out thing, and our only chance is to let it die down. We got to take it slow and easy.’

He sort of slumped down over the steering wheel and steered with his left hand. He stuck his right hand inside his lumberjack and got out a cigarette. I stuck the lighter in the slot and when it was ready I handed it to him. He lit the cigarette and raised up.

‘I wonder about Catfish,’ he said.

‘He didn’t see anything,’ I said.

‘I kind of wonder,’ Smut said.

‘Hell, he’d been running around raising the roof if he’d seen Bert,’ I said. ‘We’d have heard plenty about it.’

‘I guess that’s right,’ Smut said. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hell, we got the money anyway. I don’t think Dick would have noticed anything.’

‘He stayed all night with his married woman in the mill village,’ I said. ‘He was bragging to me about it.’

‘You find out when he got in?’ Smut asked.

‘About six o’clock this morning,’ I said.

A little after dark I was sitting out front with Badeye when Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt walked into the place. He had on a toboggan skullcap and mittens. He walked across the floor, tapping it with his home-made walking stick, and came up to the cash register where Badeye was sitting.

‘Cold enough for you, Mr. Joshua?’ Badeye asked him.

The old man blew his nose and wiped it with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Hell, naw,’ he said. ‘Don’t git too cold for me. What I don’t like is hot weather, but cold weather suits me.’ He pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and slapped it down on the counter beside the cash register. ‘Gimme some nickels,’ he told Badeye.

Badeye gave him some change, and he went over to where the nickelodeon was and began playing that.

It was pretty cold that night, but some tourists stopped in and ate, and some school-teachers and their dates came out about eight o’clock and broke bread with us. The school-teachers­ drank beer and smoked cigarettes and danced in the dance hall, but didn’t play the slot machines, nor get up a crap game. It wasn’t all the school-teachers in Corinth, by any means. Just the ones with the most nerve. If the folks on the school board heard about them going to a roadhouse they might get fired, or anyway probably wouldn’t get re-elected for a job the next year.

Wilbur Brannon came out later than usual that night. He didn’t drink anything but some beer. He got the evening paper and sat at the counter drinking the beer and smoking cigarettes. After the school-teachers left, Wilbur put the paper on the counter and stretched.

‘See in the paper where it’s cold in Miami,’ he said to Smut Milligan, who was sitting at the counter too. ‘I’d aimed to go to Florida in a week or so, but if it’s going to be cold down there I might as well stay here.’

‘It’ll be apt to get warm in a few days,’ Smut said.

‘I suppose so,’ Wilbur said. He took a cigarette out of his cigarette case and lit it from the end of the one he’d been smoking. ‘By the way,’ he said to Smut. ‘I haven’t seen Bert around here in several days.’

‘No. He hasn’t been here in a couple of days,’ Smut said.

‘Probably been too cold for him to stir out,’ Wilbur said.

‘Probably that’s it,’ Smut said. He yawned and put his hand over his mouth.

I stared at the new pin-ball machine over in the corner beside the front door. I tried to look like a fellow that wasn’t thinking about anything in particular.

IT WAS ABOUT MIDNIGHT
when we closed up. Smut and I went to our cabin, and when we got there Smut put on his boots and then his raincoat. I knew he was up to something, but I didn’t ask him what.

Smut took his hat off the nail on the wall and sort of pushed the crown into shape.

‘I won’t be gone so long,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take a look at that beer myself.’

‘You going to walk?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. It ain’t over two miles.’

‘Why don’t you take his gun and throw that away?’ I said.

‘I’ve already made way with that,’ Smut said. He commenced buttoning his raincoat, from the bottom.

‘Did you hide the money?’

‘It’s safe,’ Smut said. He buttoned the collar of the raincoat and turned it up around his neck. He snapped off the light when he went out.

I had to lie there and worry about Bert Ford awhile before I went to sleep. After I finally dozed off I kept waking up all night, but I don’t know when Smut came in. I got up pretty early the next morning, but he slept on for a couple of hours.

When he finally got to the roadhouse the beer man was there and then the Coca-Cola man. Every time I started to talk to Smut somebody would come in. It was Saturday and everybody had to drop by that day and see if we needed anything. The cigar man, the wholesale grocery man, the bread truck, the truck from Wheeler Wilkinson’s Market in Corinth, and all the other distributors were out that morning. It was noon before Smut got through with them, and about that time a couple of fellows came to see about the slot machines.

The regular slot-machine man was a rough-looking, tow-headed bird, and he usually came around once a month. But this time there was another fellow with him. This other fellow was the Big Shot. The Big Shot was a Greek and his name was Kintoulas, or something that sounded like that. He was a short, heavy-set fellow that was always smoking a little cigar about the size of a willow twig. The Big Shot leased the slot machines to Smut and he owned all the slot machines in that part of the country. He lived in Raleigh and didn’t get around very often. Smut went with them and they checked the machines. When they finished they all came back to the counter, and the regular slot-machine man opened his briefcase and took out some ledger sheets. He put them down on the counter and began working on them. Badeye was in the kitchen, eating, and Smut motioned to me.

‘Bring us three beers, Jack,’ he said. ‘What’ll you have?’ Smut asked the Big Shot.

‘Gimme a Red Top Ale,’ the Big Shot said, and shifted the stick cigar to the other side of his mouth.

‘Gimme a Budweiser,’ the other fellow said, and turned over one of the ledger sheets and started marking on the next one.

‘Two Buds and one Red Top Ale,’ Smut called to me.

‘Two Buds and one Red Top,’ I said, and got them.

When I brought them up and set them on the counter the Big Shot dropped his cigar on the floor and drank his ale without taking the bottle down from his mouth. Then he shoved the empty bottle down the counter and got out another little cigar.

‘You slacked off a little, Milligan,’ the Big Shot said.

‘December’s a slow month,’ Smut said, ‘and it’s been pretty cold here lately.’

‘Everybody slacked off,’ the Big Shot said.

Smut finished his beer and pushed the bottle down the counter. ‘I see where the legislature is talking about outlawing slot machines the next session,’ he said.

The Big Shot spat out a little stem of tobacco. He shrugged his shoulders, and raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘They all the time talk like that,’ he said, ‘but I got a fella there wukkin for me. He’s—What’s it you call?’

‘Lobbying?’ Smut said.

‘Is right. Lobbing. Hesa cost me plenty money. He better look out for me. But I don’t worry.’ The Big Shot sort of hissed when he talked, like he might have a sore throat.

The tow-headed man put his papers in the briefcase and stood up. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I got the data on all the machines you got out here. You slacked off a little this time, Milligan, but not so bad as some other places.’

‘I’ll pick up from now on,’ Smut told him.

The Big Shot stood up then. He took his gloves out of his overcoat pocket and put them on.

‘Thanks for the beer. See you some more,’ he told Smut.

When they were gone Smut shook his head. ‘Now, there’s a guy that really rakes in the dough,’ he said to me. ‘I hear he come to Raleigh about ten years ago without nothing. He used to run a nigger cafe in Raleigh.’

Smut ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Course I got plenty money now, myself,’ he said and looked at me.

‘Did you look in the beer last night?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah,’ Smut said. ‘I warmed it up a little. I built a little fire in the furnace and got the beer sort of lukewarm.’

‘Will that work it off any quicker?’

‘If you don’t get it too hot it’s the very thing. If you got a small still you can heat bricks or rocks and throw them in the beer. That wouldn’t work with one as big as Catfish’s, though.’

‘If you heat water that just makes it freeze that much quicker,’ I said.

‘Beer won’t freeze, it’s got too much alcohol in it,’ Smut said. ‘Then there’s a crust of meal on top of this batch now and that keeps it warm. And when you get a big lot of beer warm, why, it takes it a long time to cool off. I bet that beer’s working off good today.’

‘Ought to be ready when?’

‘Might be ready tomorrow night. It’s turned a lot warmer today. When we close up tomorrow night we’ll go down there and see about it.’

‘We don’t get much sleep these nights,’ I said.

Smut stood up and stretched his arms above his head. ‘Maybe we can sleep later on,’ he said.

We were pretty busy that afternoon, but Smut took the pick-up and went off somewhere. He stayed most of the afternoon, and when he came back his shoes were muddy.

Sunday was so much warmer that it seemed almost like spring. We had plenty of trade that day. That night it kept four of us busy: Matt and Sam, Badeye and myself. Dick Pittman had caught Sam’s cold then, and was in bed.

We did a good business that night, but most of the customers left early. Baxter Yonce and Wheeler Wilkinson were out that night, and Wilbur Brannon was there too. They asked me about Bert Ford. I told them I hadn’t seen him. Wilbur said he guessed he’d have to go out and see if Bert was sick or anything. We closed up the roadhouse at a quarter-past eleven that night, and Smut and I started out for the still.

We walked fast through the woods and it didn’t take us more than thirty minutes to get there. Smut had his flashlight, but other than that we didn’t carry anything special with us.