They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (21 page)

It was Lola Fisher in a new roadster. This time it was a Chrysler. It was a bright red one, trimmed with black. I reckon she had to have a new car because it was springtime. She had pulled up against the side of the roadhouse. I walked outside and over to where she was.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Did you blow for something?’

Lola opened the door and got out. ‘I’ve got a flat tire,’ she said. ‘You fix flats, don’t you?’

I nodded my head. ‘Which one is it?’ I asked.

She walked around to the front of the car and kicked against the right tire. ‘This one,’ she said, and pointed down at it with her finger.

Lola looked good that afternoon. Back then most of the girls in Corinth went in strong for a new sort of hair-do; they rolled it up in a knot, like washwomen. But Lola’s hair was riding in the breeze. It went back and sort of flowed around her shoulders. I remember she had on a white slipover sweater that day, and a dark red skirt. Looking at her, you got to thinking that her husband was a lucky fellow.

After I took a thorough look at Lola I looked down at the tire. It was flat, all right. ‘I’ll get Dick Pittman to fix it,’ I said. ‘Wait here a minute.’

When Dick got there he jacked up the wheel and took the tire off. I went back inside and Lola went with me.

She sat down at the counter and I got on the stool back of the cash register. Lola stretched her hands over her head and leaned back. If she had on a brassiere that day it must have already slipped down around her waist.

‘How long do you suppose it’ll take him to fix it?’ she asked.

‘Not long, unless it’s a pretty bad puncture,’ I told her.

She yawned and tapped her hand over her mouth. ‘I guess I might as well drink a beer to kill time,’ she said. ‘Give me a Budweiser.’

I got the beer for her and she sat there sipping it for a little while. Then, when she’d finished about half the bottle, she took it and gulped it all down at once and got up from the counter.

‘I can’t be still a minute,’ she said, and walked over to the pin-ball machine in the corner.

I reckon I should have entertained her while the tire was being fixed, but I couldn’t think of anything to make conversation, so I got the newspaper and started looking at that. She put a couple of nickels in the pin-ball machine and played that, but it wasn’t long before she was back at the counter.

‘Give me a package of Camels,’ she said.

I got the cigarettes and handed them over the counter. ‘Where’s Smut Milligan today?’ Lola said. She began tearing open the package of cigarettes and didn’t look up at me.

‘I think he’s down in our cabin,’ I said.

She looked up at me then. ‘Go get him for me, Jack. I’ve got to see him,’ she said. She sounded like somebody with a bad hangover asking for a quick one.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘If any customers come in while I’m gone, tell them I’ll be right back.’

‘Yes,’ Lola said. ‘Be sure and get him.’

Smut was lying across the bed, asleep, when I got in the cabin. I shook him and woke him up. He sat up on the bed and rubbed his eyes.

‘Lola Fisher’s up at the roadhouse. She wants to see you,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Lola Fisher. Wife of Charles Fisher, the Corinth millionaire.’

‘Oh,’ Smut said.

We went back to the roadhouse and Smut went in, but I stopped outside a minute, where Dick was fixing the flat.

‘What was the matter, Dick?’ I said.

‘Had picked up a twenty-penny nail,’ Dick said. ‘Went all the way through that new tire.’

I went inside then, but Smut and Lola weren’t in sight. In a couple of minutes Smut called to me from the dance hall to bring them two beers. I took the beers and the glasses over there. Smut and Lola were sitting in a booth back next to the private room and they were talking until I came in. Then they got quiet, and when I got there Lola was tapping a cigarette that wasn’t lighted on the top of the table. Smut Milligan sat there looking down at the palms of his hands.

When I went back to the other side Badeye was there and he was getting along all right. His glass eye looked as well as it ever did, but the other one looked like a mottled marble. Green and red and white, all run together. He smelled like a barrel of beer.

‘Whose car is that red thing outside?’ Badeye asked me.

‘Mrs. Fisher’s,’ I said.

‘Lola Fisher’s?’

‘She’s the only Mrs. Fisher in Corinth that I know of,’ I said.

Badeye stuck his hand down in the pretzel bowl and got a handful of pretzels.

‘No, there ain’t but just Henry Fisher and Charles Fisher in Corinth. But there’s plenty of Fishers on the other side of Pee Dee River,’ he said.

‘Any kin to these in Corinth?’ I asked him.

‘Hell, yes,’ Badeye said. ‘Close kin. Why, old Henry Fisher ain’t no blue blood. That old scoundrel come to Corinth when he was about eighteen year old and got a job in the cotton mill. He wasn’t a thing but common white trash, and for a long time he was just a mill hand. I’ve heard it plenty of times that he hadn’t never wore shoes in the summer-time till he commenced working in the mill.’

‘How’d he manage to get so rich?’ I said.

‘He saved his money. That’s a tight rascal. Then old Grimes that used to run the mill took a likin to him. On top of that he married money. Married a old maid that had money.’

‘He was pretty old himself when he got married, wasn’t he?’ I said.

‘Must of been at least thirty-five. I bet he’s seventy-five now.’

‘Don’t look it,’ I said.

‘No. He’s so used to keeping everything covered up that he won’t show his age,’ Badeye said.

About that time a car stopped out front and Sam Hall got out of it. Then the car drove on again in the direction of Blytheville. Sam Hall came inside and Dick Pittman came in too.

Sam sat down at the counter beside Badeye, and Dick went over to the door that opened into the dance hall. I don’t know how he knew that Smut and Lola were in there.

‘Your car’s ready now, Mrs. Fisher,’ Dick called out to her.

Lola didn’t answer him, but Smut Milligan said, ‘Okay, Dick,’ and Dick came over where the rest of us were sitting.

Dick took a package of chewing tobacco out of his hip pocket and stuffed his mouth full. He chewed on it awhile and then said: ‘Damn if that nail wasn’t really up in that tire. Looked like somebody might have took a hammer and drove it in. That was a brand-new tire, too.’

‘I bet she drove it in herself,’ Badeye said. ‘What in the hell does she come out here so much for, anyway?’

None of us answered him, and Badeye lit a cigarette and went on: ‘She always comes out in the afternoon, when there ain’t anybody much out here. Why don’t she come out with her husband sometimes?’

‘Don’t talk so loud, Badeye,’ Sam Hall said.

Badeye went to the icebox where we kept the beer and got a bottle out. When he was doing some earnest drinking Badeye would mix liquor and beer all the time. He opened the bottle of beer and drank down part of it.

‘What business has she got out here?’ Badeye asked us.

Dick spat in the spittoon. ‘I reckon she knows her business better’n I do,’ he said. ‘Anyway, she don’t bother me none.’

‘Hell, she don’t bother me none,’ Badeye said, ‘but it’s gettin noticeable. Her comin out here by herself like this. I bet her husband’s out of town right now.’

Sam Hall was bent over tying up his shoelace, but he straightened up when Badeye said that. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘He left town this morning.’

‘See what I told you?’ Badeye said.

‘The reason I know,’ Sam said, ‘is because I was hanging around Rich’s filling station just before I left Corinth to come back out here. Just hanging around, and this Wiley that drives for Fisher drove that Cadillac up and was having the oil checked. Wiley was bragging about how fast he drove back from Charlotte this morning.’

‘I thought you said he was taking Fisher
to
Charlotte,’ I said.

‘He did. But he was doing his fast driving when he come back by himself. He wouldn’t drive that fast if Fisher was with him. He’d get fired.’

‘How come Fisher to stay in Charlotte? He don’t do no business in a town as little as Charlotte,’ Badeye said.

Wiley was taking him to the airport in Charlotte to catch the plane to Washington,’ Sam said.

‘What’s he going to Washington for?’ Badeye asked.

‘How in the hell do I know?’ Sam said.

‘Dirty politics,’ Badeye said. ‘He’s going up there to play some dirty politics. He’d do well to stay in Corinth and keep his eye on that wife of his’n.’

‘Pipe down, Badeye,’ Sam Hall said, and just then Smut Milligan and Lola passed the door that opened into the dance hall. I guess they went on out then, for it wasn’t long before Lola drove off.

Smut Milligan didn’t come back to the roadhouse and I didn’t see him again until about night when I went down to the cabin to get my pipe. He was in the shower room and he was humming some little tune to himself. There was a bottle of liquor and a glass sitting on the dresser. Smut looked out at me and waved his razor.

‘I feel pretty good, Jack,’ he said to me. ‘I got a load off my mind this morning when I went to Corinth.’

‘How was that?’ I asked.

‘I got rid of the installment crap. The payment I made on the pick-up today was the last one. It’s not worth a hoot, but anyway it’s paid for. And I made two regular payments today to LeRoy Smathers, and that finished paying him for the stuff we got in these cabins. I had to make a down payment on it to start with, and it wasn’t so much that I owed him.’

‘I wish to God I was rid of him,’ I said.

‘Don’t you pay him some every month?’ Smut asked me, and began shaving under his chin.

‘I’ve just paid him about twenty dollars,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll wait now till I get my share of the money and pay him off then.’

‘That’s the thing to do,’ Smut said. He stuck his head out of the door. ‘That twenty-five-dollar payment I made on the stuff in the kitchen was all of that. I got it off today too. On top of that I finished paying for the fixtures.’

How much was that a month?’

‘Fifty dollars,’ Smut said.

‘You must be rid of over a hundred dollars a month that you’ve been having to pay out,’ I said.

‘Everybody’s paid off now except Astor LeGrand,’ Smut said.

I moved my chair over next to the shower room door, so I could talk to him better. ‘You going to be able to pay LeGrand when the note comes due next time? Or will you have to dig into the twelve thousand to do it?’ I asked.

Smut took the brush and started lathering the left side of his neck.

‘I could pay him out of what I take in out here,’ he said, ‘but it would take close scraping. Of course I ain’t going to risk taking any of the twelve thousand and spending it yet. Anyway, it’s to my advantage to let the note drag along. I’ll just keep putting up a poor mouth to LeGrand.’

‘Why don’t you pay him off and tell him to go climb the flagpole on top of the Courthouse?’ I said.

‘I don’t think he climbs very well,’ Smut said. ‘He ain’t used to it. Anyway, as soon as I pay him off I got to start cutting him in more.’

‘How come?’

‘What I mean is, right now he thinks he’s got me by the short hair and he’s not even bothering to come out and look things over. He ain’t been out but once since Christmas. He thinks the note he’s got is all he needs.’

‘You still pay him off for protection, don’t you?’ I asked.

‘Oh, sure. I take him what I claim is ten per cent of my take. It’s about five per cent, but he’s not been bothering to check up on me lately. If I was to pay him off and not be in debt to him he might start trying to get rid of me.’

‘I still don’t see how he’s going to do that,’ I said.

‘Oh, he can do it, all right. He can have me closed up in five minutes. Still, I ain’t so afraid of him as I was. I believe he’ll let me alone even after I pay the note if I’ll start cutting him in about ten per cent of the rakeoff. I’ll claim it’s twenty per cent and make out to him that I ain’t getting anything out of the joint but a fair salary.’

‘Ten per cent’s a lot of money for protection,’ I said.

‘It’s the only way you can run a joint like this and get along,’ Smut said. He finished shaving his neck and commenced washing the lather off the razor.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you must really be taking in the cash now. Didn’t you tell me back in the winter that it would take you sixteen months to pay for the fixtures, at the rate of fifty dollars a month? You told me you owed eight hundred dollars on the fixtures.’

‘I don’t remember it,’ Smut said.

‘I do,’ I said. ‘It was the first of December, or close to it. That just makes it about three months. You must really be taking in the dough. You must have paid them about six hundred and fifty dollars today.’

Smut had been taking the blade out of the razor, but he stopped and looked at himself in the mirror. He pretended he was powerfully interested in a little cut on his neck.

‘I cut myself a little,’ Smut said. He looked around toward me. ‘I tell you how that was, Jack. I talked to the man and he agreed to take five hundred and fifty dollars for the debt if I’d pay him the cash right now. I did it, but it took close scraping.’

‘No doubt,’ I said.

Smut looked back into the mirror. ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘I took in plenty of money other night in the poker game, that night the hosiery-mill boys had a game. They was all flush and I relieved them.’

‘What night was that?’

He thought a minute. ‘Last Thursday night.’

‘I thought you went to the show in Corinth that night.’

‘No. I was in the poker game,’ Smut said.

I went on out then and back to the roadhouse. Badeye and Sam Hall were playing a game of checkers. Dick Pittman was sitting in the door, whittling on a dogwood stick. I went to the counter and sat down and started in on the night’s worrying. There was plenty of it to do.

Smut Milligan was a first-class liar, but I’d been around him long enough to tell when he was at it. He had been doing plenty of lying that night, but it was a little below his usual high standard. I knew he’d taken some of the twelve thousand to pay up his installment debts. It began to look like he might soon have it all spent at the rate he was going. I made up my mind to start looking for it that very night if Smut went off. I knew he wasn’t fool enough to take it and deposit it in some bank, where somebody might go and check up on him. I didn’t think he would risk renting a safety-deposit box and take a chance on keeping it there. It would be safe enough there from everybody except the Federals, but Smut was breaking the Federal liquor laws every time he sold a pint of corn liquor. He couldn’t afford to put the money in a safety-deposit box and take a chance on the Treasury Department never sticking their noses in it. I knew the money was somewhere around the roadhouse. I thought it might be in our cabin.