They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (23 page)

Baxter would come in late at night, about three sheets to the wind, and sit in a booth over on the dance-hall side. He’d watch his chance and slip his record on the nickelodeon. Then he’d beat it back to his booth and go back to drinking his beer, or whatever it was he was drinking that night. In a minute the nickelodeon would commence rolling out ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’

Sometimes some of the customers would look like they thought it was out of place for a hymn like that to be played on a nickelodeon in a roadhouse. That never worried Baxter Yonce. He would sit there with his eyes shut, swaying his big head from side to side and humming the song to himself.

One night I had told Smut about it. I told him that some of the customers looked a little strange when that hymn began playing. But Smut was making good money then and he was pretty independent about it. He said if the customers didn’t like ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ they could go to hell.

SMUT SPENT MOST OF
the next afternoon sleeping in the cabin. When he came back to the roadhouse about seven o’clock that night he seemed restless. I decided it was his night out.

Business was pretty slow at first. Just a few loafers from Corinth and Wilbur Brannon and Baxter Yonce. Wilbur hadn’t been out much since Bert Ford vanished, but I don’t think it was because he thought we had anything to do with it.

This night Wilbur brought his liquor with him and drank it with Baxter Yonce. Smut took a drink with them, in the kitchen, and they offered me one, but I didn’t take it. I had to be sober in case Smut took off.

After they all took a drink they came back out and Wilbur and Baxter sat down at the counter. Baxter ordered a barbecue sandwich and Wilbur commenced reading
The Sporting News
that Smut had left on the counter. After a minute the buzzer from the kitchen rang and Smut went back and got the sandwich. He brought it up and set it before Baxter Yonce, who grabbed it and started biting into it like he hadn’t had anything to eat all day. Smut leaned back against the shelf where the wine bottles were stacked. He made an easy target for Baxter Yonce’s salesmanship practice.

‘Smut, you been doing a land-sale business out here, ain’t you?’ Baxter asked.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Smut said. He was a little cautious about answering questions like that.

‘What I mean is, you been making good,’ Baxter said. ‘Why don’t you trade in that pick-up you’ve got and let me fix you up with a new one? I got some new Dodge pick-ups. I got the very thing you need.’

‘I ain’t in a position to trade right now,’ Smut said. He walked around the counter and sat down beside Baxter Yonce.

‘I’ll give you a good trade-in,’ Baxter said and took another bite out of his barbecue sandwich. ‘That’s a thirty-six Ford you got, ain’t it?’

‘A late thirty-six,’ Smut said.

‘How many miles on it?’

Smut shut one eye and rolled his tongue over in his cheek. ‘I think it’s got a little under forty thousand on it,’ Smut said. It had forty-six thousand miles on it then, but I guess Smut figured he could run the speedometer back to forty thousand.

‘If it’s got good tires I’ll give you a liberal allowance in a trade,’ Baxter said.

Smut shook his head. ‘I wish I could afford to trade,’ he said, ‘but I just ain’t in shape to do it. This Ford will have to do my business for a while yet.’

‘Why don’t you let me sell you a Dodge demonstrator I got in the show room? You could keep your pick-up for business purposes and then use this demonstrator for a gal wagon. A pick-up simply don’t have the tone a passenger car has. This demonstrator’s a last year’s model, but the same as a new car.’

‘A sedan?’ Smut asked.

‘No, it’s a coupé,’ Baxter said. ‘I’ll really sell it right.’

‘I’d like to have it,’ Smut said.

Baxter reached down the counter and took a paper napkin out of the napkin box. He wiped the grease off his mouth.

‘Sometime when you’re up town, drop by and let me show you this car. I want you to drive it fifteen minutes. If you drive it fifteen minutes and ain’t sold on it, I’ll just give you five gallons of gas for your pick-up.’

Smut Milligan smothered a light belch. ‘I’ve got plenty of gas now,’ he said.

About eight o’clock Baxter and Wilbur got in a four-handed casino game with Buck Wilhoyt and another pool-room product from Corinth. They played in the crap-shooting gallery, and it looked like a quiet night until the ballplayers from Corinth came out.

There were two baseball clubs from the North training in Corinth that spring. That is, they had two different names and were supposed to represent two different towns, but the Cincinatti Reds owned them both. One of them was a club from Illinois that was in the Three Eye League. The other was a club from Canada and was in the International. The ballplayers from both clubs stayed at the Keystone Hotel and practiced in the Corinth ball park.

Ten of them came out that night. Some of them looked like college boys, but others looked like they might not be able to speak English. It was the first time any of them had ever been out to the roadhouse, but they made themselves at home. They stayed over in the dance hall and played the nickelodeon and drank plenty of beer. A couple of them started playing the slot machines and sent Sam Hall over to the cash register to get them some nickels. After a while one of the ballplayers—he was a dumpy fellow—stuck his head into the door that opened from the dance hall.

‘Where’s the girls? Ain’t there no girls around here?’ he said.

Smut Milligan looked around at this fellow.

‘No, you can get grub and liquor out here, and a little gambling, but you got to furnish your own girl,’ he said.

‘That’s a hell of a note,’ the fellow said, and went back to one of the booths.

This bird hadn’t more than finished asking about the girl situation before a carload of high-school kids came into the place. After that, boys from the hosiery mill, with their girls, began coming in. The ballplayers waited until the natives began dancing; then they would break in on the boys and dance with their girls. They managed to keep the high-school girls most of the time, but it was more trouble getting a girl away from one of the hosiery-mill fellows.

The ballplayers kept up that sort of stuff for awhile, and finally I reckon most of them got sleepy. Anyway, they all went back to Corinth except for three of them. The three that were left came over to the counter and ordered a round of beer. They sat side by side at the counter, and the fellow in the middle was bigger than the other two. This fellow had on a gray leather jacket that had ‘NY’ on the front of it. I reckon he’d once been with a New York club and forgot to turn the jacket in when they released him. He was a big, sandy-haired man and had hands big enough to pick up half a dozen baseballs at one time. There was a scar on his face that ran from the side of his mouth clean across to his left ear. The boys with him called him Ox. On the left of Ox was a fellow that was long and thin and had a big Adam’s apple. He was left-handed and kept playing with the salt cellar. The other fellow was the little dumpy guy that had asked Smut about the girls. His name was Thurlow.

Badeye brought the beer up to the counter and set the bottles in front of the three ballplayers. Then Badeye folded his arms across his chest and stood back of the counter, in the Mussolini pose. Smut was sitting down the counter, making up a list of the supplies he had to order the next day.

The fellow named Thurlow took a drink of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’m beginning to hit that rock now,’ he said. ‘They was a hitch in my swing till yesterday, but I feel easy up at the plate now.’

‘Hell, wait till us pitchers start hooking them,’ Ox said. ‘You ain’t looked at nothing yet.’

‘If I wait till you learn how to throw a hook I won’t never look at nothing,’ Thurlow said, and took out his package of cigarettes.

‘Hell,’ Ox said, ‘I don’t need no hook. That fast one I got and my brains is all I need in the International League.’

‘You ought to quit fretting about your brains and learn how to throw a hook,’ Lefty said. ‘If you could of throwed a hook when you first went up, you’d of been with them Giants today.’

Ox took a drink of beer. He started to put the beer bottle in his lumberjack, then remembered and set it back on the counter.

‘No, it was politics kept me off the Giants,’ Ox said. ‘Terry don’t give nobody a place on his club unless they’re from the South.’

‘Baseball’s got so it’s like everything else,’ Thurlow said. ‘Ability ain’t nothing these days. It’s got so you got to have a grandstand personality, or you got to be a Greek, or a Indian, or a Chinaman, to make the grade. If you’re a Wop, you’ll pull out the Greeks, or the Eyetalians, or the Rumanians, or whatever kind of Wops you happen to be kin to. A true-born American ain’t got a chance no more.’

‘That ought not to hold you back none,’ Lefty said. ‘You’re a Portugese, ain’t you?’

‘It’s a lie. I was born in Joplin, Missouri,’ Thurlow said.

Ox grunted and finished drinking his beer. ‘I ain’t old,’ he said. ‘I’ll be up there yet. Probably about August. I ain’t but twenty-six.’

‘You ought not to run your age back but one year at the time, Ox,’ Lefty said. ‘Last year you was twenty-eight. You ought to take it easy and just be twenty-seven this year. Next year you can be twenty-six.’

‘Oh, I ain’t no spring chicken neither,’ Thurlow said. ‘They ain’t liable to sign me up on account of my boyishness. But it stands to reason that a old head can play a better game of ball. It’s brains rather than brawn that gets you there.’

‘Is that the reason you’re with a Class B club?’ Lefty asked.

‘Don’t get snotty,’ Thurlow said. ‘If you don’t hurry up and get enough control so you can hit a bull in the tail you’re liable to wind up pitching for Twin Falls in the Idaho-Utah League.’

‘Oh, I ain’t worrying about my control,’ Lefty said. ‘You got to be a little wild to keep them from crowding the plate. You got to make the hitter respect your fast ball.’

‘You ought to buy you a rifle if you want to make anybody respect yours,’ Thurlow said.

About that time a boy and a girl passed by the door that opened into the dance hall. The girl was the little bow-legged school-teacher that had been out before, with Harvey Wood. This time she was with Hubert Parkerson.

The girl was on this side and the ballplayers got a good look at her. That is, Ox and Thurlow did. Lefty was sitting with his back to the door and looked like he was deep in thought. Like he might be worrying about spending the summer out in Utah.

Ox nudged Thurlow in the ribs. ‘See the little dame with the fortifications?’ he asked.

‘Fortifications?’

‘Them breastworks.’

‘Oh.’ Thurlow spat toward the spittoon, but lacked a couple of inches of making it.

‘She wasn’t bad,’ Thurlow said. ‘There ain’t nobody over on that side of the joint now. We ought to go over there and give the guy’s girl a break. Course I never was so crazy about dancing with these little short babes.’

‘Hell, she’s six inches taller’n you are,’ Ox said. He stood up. ‘Come on, Thurlow.’

Thurlow got up and they started off toward the other door. Smut Milligan looked up from his list.

‘Hey,’ Smut said, ‘how about paying for the beer you got? There ain’t no drinks on the house out here. This ain’t no Relief Agency.’

Ox looked over his shoulder at Smut. ‘Take it easy, Dough-Face. We ain’t left yet,’ he said, and went into the dance hall.

Smut’s eyes got narrow. He wasn’t used to being called ‘Dough-Face,’ at least not around Corinth.

Lefty noticed how Smut’s face changed. He got out his pocket­book and threw a dollar bill up the counter toward me.

‘Take the beers out of that, pal,’ he said to me. He turned toward Smut. ‘Don’t pay any attention to Ox,’ he said. ‘There ain’t no harm in Ox. He’s just been drinking, and when he’s drinking he’s got a lot of slack jaw that don’t mean nothing.’

Smut went back to his list and didn’t say anything. Just then I heard the nickelodeon start up and I knew Hubert Parkerson and the little girl were dancing. I wondered how Hubert would take the ballplayers breaking in on his private party.

This Parkerson wasn’t more than twenty years old, but he’d had a lot of experience with women. His daddy was superintendent of the hosiery mill in Corinth, and was Henry Fisher’s first lieutenant. He made plenty of money, but had to spend a good bit on Hubert. In the winter-time he generally sent Hubert off to a military school, where he would be controlled, but this winter the military school got tired of him and booted him out at Christmas. When he was around Corinth Hubert shot a lot of pool and drove around in a slick roadster. His main activity, however, was courting. He was so bad about running after women that every time a girl got pregnant in Corinth it was laid on him. But Hubert picked out who he got in trouble. He always knocked up girls from families that didn’t have any political pull nor much social position, and when the girl commenced swelling up he would just give her a small check and tell her to go to hell. Once, when he was about eighteen, he was running around with Rosalie McCann and she got in the usual fix. Her daddy, Tom McCann, was a hot-headed fellow and he was out to make Hubert marry her. But Tom was the night watchman in the hosiery mill. As soon as he started that talk about Hubert was going to have to marry his girl, Hubert’s daddy called Tom into his office and told him to pipe down and forget the matter, or he’d be on the outside looking for another job pretty quick. Tom McCann took the money the Parkersons gave him and sent Rosalie off to have her baby. He had other children besides Rosalie.

I don’t know what it was about Hubert that made him such a hot number with the girls. He was tall and a little fat. He had black curly hair and a big dishpan face, that was covered with purple-looking splotches. I guess one reason he was so popular with the girls was that he had nerve enough to go on and try it.

About that time Badeye came back from the men’s room, where he’d been as the result of two days’ experimenting with beer, port wine, and corn liquor. His face was paler than usual, but I knew he’d be all right as soon as he could manage to get down a bottle of beer. Sam had left then, and Matt was in the kitchen, so I went over to the dance hall to see if Hubert and his girl wanted anything.