They Don't Dance Much: A Novel (28 page)

‘You can’t get nothing on Smut Milligan,’ Brock said. ‘Hell, he was raised in the orphanage and on the streets.’

The sheriff turned toward Smut. ‘You’re a slick one, son,’ he said. ‘But you want to be careful about this liquor business. There’s been numerous complaints here recently about you selling liquor. I was just doing the duty of a sheriff. Any sheriff. No hard feelings.’

‘Oh, hell, no!’ Smut said. ‘No hard feelings. I would offer you all a drink of corn liquor, but it so happens I’m out today. Come back again when your stool pigeon gets another hunch.’

‘I’ll be back,’ the sheriff said. He went outside then and Brock and John went out too. They went back to town.

Nobody said a word till they got their car started. Then Dick Pittman shut one eye and shook his head.

‘Godfrey Daniel!’ Dick said. ‘That was a damn close shave! They was a couple times there I thought them fellows had found something—or was going to find something. They come mighty close once or twice.’

Badeye laughed a short laugh that didn’t sound like he thought anything was funny.

‘I thought sure Brock Boone had turned his ankle when he stumbled over that quart bottle under the counter,’ Badeye said. ‘And Sheriff Pemberton sticking his nose in that icebox. Ain’t the sheriff a little near-sighted, Smut?’

Smut ignored Badeye. ‘Whoever it was tipped them off that I been selling corn liquor is a lousy son-of-a-bitch,’ Smut said.

Badeye held out his right hand to Smut, like he’d just been introduced and wanted to shake hands.

‘Glad to know you,’ Badeye said. ‘Honeycutt’s my name.’

Smut gave Badeye a look that was dirty enough to keep a nigger washwoman busy two days. He didn’t say anything, but went into the kitchen.

TWO DAYS AFTER
the corn-liquor raid Sheriff Pemberton came out to the roadhouse again. Brock Boone was with him. They came into the front room where I was leaning against the pin-ball machine, reading the morning paper. Sheriff Pemberton acted like he was in a hurry. He didn’t bother to say good morning.

‘I want to see Milligan,’ the sheriff said to me.

‘I think he’s back in the kitchen,’ I said, and started back there to see. I walked to the swinging doors and pushed them open. The sheriff and Brock were right at my heels. Smut was sitting at a table with Dick Pittman. They were drinking coffee.

The sheriff pushed past me and walked over to the table. Smut Milligan looked up then.

‘Out pretty early, ain’t you, sheriff?’ Smut asked.

Sheriff Pemberton pointed at Dick Pittman. ‘I want this boy, Milligan,’ he said. ‘I got to hold him for questioning.’

Dick raised his eyes and looked at the sheriff, then took a drink of coffee. He set the cup down and stirred in it with his spoon. He didn’t get the sheriff’s drift.

‘What you want to question him about?’ Smut said.

‘About the gun,’ the sheriff said, and spat a thin stream of tobacco juice into the stovewood box.

‘Oh!’ Smut said. ‘It turned out bad, did it?’ Smut looked like he was sad about it turning out the way it evidently had, whatever that was.

Dick Pittman dropped the spoon on the table and it made a rattling noise. He looked a little puzzled; probably he was beginning to understand that they were talking about him.

The sheriff reached inside his coat and pulled out a pistol. It looked like the one that Smut took away from Bert Ford that night we killed him.

‘Look at this thing, son,’ the sheriff told Dick. ‘Ever see this gun before?’

‘I seen some looked mighty like it,’ Dick said. He took out his package of Beechnut chewing tobacco and crammed his mouth full of the strings of black tobacco.

‘I reckon you have,’ the sheriff said slowly. ‘It was in your locker.’

Dick grinned. He was embarrassed at having everybody look at him so straight and hard. Then he quit the grinning.

‘In—in my locker? You say you found it in my locker?’ Dick said.

‘That’s right. When I was looking for the corn liquor. I looked in all the lockers in them cabins and this was in yours.’

Dick’s mouth was open. A little yellow tobacco juice trickled down his chin and separated into drops on his beard. He took the back of his hand and brushed it across his chin, then commenced slobbering again.

‘I don’t know nothin about it,’ Dick said.

‘Come to think about it, you never saw it before, did you?’ the sheriff asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘How come it to be in your locker?’

‘Somebody must a put it there,’ Dick said.

‘You got a permit to have a gun?’

‘No, sir. I ain’t got no gun neither,’ Dick said. He was getting plenty scared. His face was white as a boll of cotton.

The sheriff put the gun back in his inside coat-pocket. He looked hard at Dick.

‘Listen, son. I got a shell. Empty shell that I found out next to the bee-gums on Bert Ford’s place. I found it the first time I went out there after it was known that Bert had mysteriously disappeared. It was a thirty-eight, and this gun I found in your locker is a thirty-eight too. I been checking all the thirty-eights I can find and I made a ballistics test on this here shell and on your gun. There’s a few things I want you to explain to me. I got to take you in.’

It was a long speech for the sheriff. When he finished he spat into the stovewood box again and stood there, with his hands on his hips, looking down at Dick’s head.

Brock Boone stepped up beside Dick. ‘You want me to handcuff him, sheriff?’ Brock asked.

‘Handcuff him,’ the sheriff said. Brock did it. He reached out and snapped one handcuff on Dick’s right hand and then snapped the other one on his own left hand.

‘That ain’t a good way to handcuff a prisoner. Some day you’re gonna get hold of a bully that’s as good a man as you are and he’ll give you plenty of trouble,’ the sheriff told Brock.

‘It’ll take a pretty good man to do it,’ Brock said. He jerked Dick up from the table with a swing of his arm. ‘Come on, kid. Get moving,’ Brock said. He started toward the door, jerking Dick along with him. He waited in the door for the sheriff.

In the excitement Dick had managed to knock his filling-station cap off and his hair came down over his forehead. He worked his lips like he was trying to say something, then sort of slumped his shoulders and just stood there looking puzzled and worried.

‘I ain’t done nothin out of the way,’ Dick mumbled. He turned to Smut. ‘Can’t you help me none, Smut?’

Smut stood up and shoved his chair under the table. ‘I’m coming into town in just a few minutes, Dick,’ he said. ‘I’ll get things fixed up for you.’

Smut winked at Dick, but Dick looked white and discouraged when he went out into the front with Brock Boone and the sheriff. Planting Bert Ford’s gun in Dick’s locker and then telling the sheriff it was there was the meanest trick Smut Milligan ever pulled. I felt mighty sorry for Dick. At the same time I was relieved that they hadn’t found the gun in my locker.

I looked at Smut, but he had gone back to his coffee and seemed to be studying hard about something. I went back to the front and waited for him to come out.

In a few minutes he came forth. He walked in and sat down on a stool and got a toothpick out of the rack. He didn’t look toward me at all.

‘I want to apologize to you,’ I said.

He kept on looking at the floor. ‘For what?’ he said,

‘For saying you didn’t have the guts to kill me. I know now you’ve got the guts to do anything,’ I said.

‘I know it,’ Smut said. He chewed on the toothpick and stared at the picture ‘Under Italian Skies’ over on the other wall.

‘What have you got against Dick?’ I asked.

Smut looked toward me then. He turned on the stool and sat facing me.

‘I ain’t got a thing in the world against him. He’s a dope, but I like him all right. I just rather it would be him than me. Or you. You might squawk. In fact, it’s a cinch you’d squawk to beat the band.’

‘When’d you stick the gun in his locker?’

‘About an hour before the sheriff got here that day he was out claiming to be hunting for corn liquor,’ Smut said.

‘Where was it all the time before then?’

‘In a place where I could lay my hands on it, all right,’ Smut said. ‘I was afraid to throw it away to begin with and just held on to it. The sheriff finding that empty shell was a Godsend to me.’

‘But they still can’t pin anything on Dick,’ I said. ‘How’ll they get past the part about Bert’s body not being found? They ain’t really got any evidence.’

‘They don’t need none. If you think Brock Boone and John Little can’t make him own up to killing Bert Ford, then you can go to the foot of the class. Them two buzzards loves to squeeze a confession out of a fellow. They can work on Dick about half a day and he’ll swear he shot Bert Ford and then et his body. Bones, hair, and all.’

‘My God! You don’t think they’ll really beat him into saying he killed Bert. Listen, if this thing gets stirred up again we’ll get caught yet. This is a mess you’ve got started now.’

Smut spat the toothpick out on the floor and took a cigarette out of his pocket.

‘If things break right it’s in the bag now,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you tell me that Dick was out that night with a married woman on the mill hill while her old man was working on the graveyard shift?’

‘That’s what he told me,’ I said.

‘Well, I done a little investigating. The only woman that Dick’s been sleeping with around Corinth is Dave Cline’s wife. She’s a part-time whore. I’m damned certain Dick spent that night in bed with her. But he won’t get to first base if he tries to use that for an alibi. The woman would see him fry before she’d own up to anything.’

‘Hell-fire, the sheriff don’t know the night Bert was killed. And if he did it’s been so long that Dick couldn’t remember where he was on any particular night,’ I said.

‘By God, he better remember!’ Smut said. ‘The sheriff has got the time narrowed down pretty well.’

‘How do you manage to find out everything? You and the sheriff seem to be pretty thick when nobody’s looking,’ I said.

Smut lit the cigarette that was in the corner of his mouth. He inhaled a deep draw and let the smoke come out through his nostrils before he answered me.

‘Yeah. We’re pretty good friends now. We try to help each other with our troubles. One good turn deserves another; that’s the way me and the sheriff has got it figured out,’ Smut said.

‘It’s the rawest thing I ever heard of. You know Dick Pittman never hurt anybody in his life,’ I said.

‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ Smut said. ‘We got it pinned on him now, and that’s the last of it. They’ll convict him, but they won’t kill him. Hell, everybody knows that Dick ain’t got good sense. They’ll just send him to the pen for life and in about ten or twelve years he’ll be out again and on Relief.’

‘It’s a damned dirty thing,’ I said.

‘Well, I thought some about putting the gun in your locker,’ Smut said. ‘If I had, I reckon you’d of been happy now. I never in all my life seen such a sanctified man as you got to be since you helped me bump Bert off. But what the hell? Dick’s just as well off in the pen as anywhere.’

Smut got up then and began walking in a little circle in front of the cash register. He would fold his hands across his chest for a little while, then shift them behind him.

‘In the pen he’ll have just as good grub as what he gets out here. He’ll have his clothes and his tobacco. He don’t drink, so that won’t bother him. He can’t get any more mill women, but no doubt the prison authorities ’ll see to it and have enough saltpeter put in his coffee to keep his courage down. Hell, he’s just as well off in the pen as he is out here. Better off, in a way,’ Smut said.

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘You get me to help you do something that you won’t tell me about. You just promise me some money, and when it turns out to be a murder you tell me not to worry. Then you chisel me out of the money. On top of that you try to poison me when I start looking for it. Now you got the murder pinned off on a half-wit. I got to hand it to you. You got everything.’

Smut stopped his circling around. There was a sort of a baffled look on his face, like he wanted to explain to me why he had done it, but didn’t know how to go about it. He sat down at the counter and started chewing on his thumbnail.

‘If you start out on the bottom you got to be tougher than all the folks that’s between you and the top,’ Smut said. He was looking down at the floor.

Badeye came into the room then, and I went back to the kitchen to get a drink.

SMUT DID GO INTO CORINTH
that day, but not till about the middle of the afternoon. He told Sam that he was going in to see about arranging bail for Dick. The other boys had found out that Dick was arrested for questioning and they were a little nervous by then. Badeye hadn’t come in till noon, and when he heard they had Dick in jail he took to the jug at once.

It was after sundown when Smut got back. I was sitting over in one of the booths, playing rummy with Sam Hall, and Badeye was back of the counter. Smut didn’t pay us any attention, but breezed past into the kitchen. Dick Pittman wasn’t with him.

Smut didn’t stay in the kitchen long. In a few minutes he came back in the front, with a sandwich in each hand. He sat down at the counter, just in front of where Badeye was standing.

‘What luck, Milligan?’ Badeye asked.

Well, I didn’t get him out,’ Smut said, ‘but I know in my mind that everything’s going to be all right.’

Badeye leaned his elbows on the counter. He batted his good eye.

‘What you mean, “all right”?’ Badeye said.

‘I mean I think they’ll let him out about tomorrow anyway,’ Smut said. ‘Get me a bottle of bock beer,’ he told Badeye, and began eating the sandwich that was in his left hand.

While Badeye was getting the bottle of beer Wilbur Brannon and Buck Wilhoyt came in. I had been so busy listening to Smut that I hadn’t heard a car drive up. But I looked outside and Wilbur’s car was out in the yard all right. Wilbur’s left arm was in a sling and was bandaged.

‘What’s the matter with you, Wilbur? Been in a fight?’ Smut said, with his mouth full of ham sandwich.