South of Heaven

by Jim Thompson

  “What makes you think I’m going anywhere, Tommy?”

  “What?”

  “What makes you think I’m going anywhere? That I’m not staying right here.”

  “But…” I hesitated. “You mean you’re meeting someone here in town? You know someone here?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anyone but you, Tommy.”

  “Well,” I frowned. “I don’t know what you’d do around town. Things will be busy for a few weeks after the pipeline camp opens up, but then they’ll have to move it south to keep up with the job. So far away that the men can’t make it into town.”

  Her head moved in a little nod, and she murmured indistinctly—about doing something around the pipeline, it sounded like. I looked down into her face, wondering why she was blushing so much.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you sure couldn’t work in the camp, Carol. They don’t have jobs for women. Why, the high-pressure wouldn’t let a woman set foot inside a pipeline camp.”

  “The high-pressure?”

  “The bosses,” I explained. “It’s kind of a bitter joke, something the Wobblies started, I guess. You know, like the bosses are always high-pressuring the working stiffs.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s, uh, very interesting.”

  “Actually,” I said, “they don’t push anyone too hard. They can’t. A lot of the men just aren’t capable of hard work—they’ve been drifting, going hungry too long. And a lot more couldn’t be pushed without buying yourself a broken head. They’re jailbirds, chain-gang veterans, guys that would climb a tree for trouble when they could stand on the ground and have peace.”

  “My goodness!” Her eyes were very big and round. “Why aren’t they arrested?”

  “Who’s going to do it?” I shrugged. “The line’s a long way from civilization as a rule. It moves from county to county, through places where the population adds up to less than the pipeliners. Aside from that, the big bosses do a lot of covering-up where the law is concerned. They figure they have to, you know. Otherwise they’d lose a lot of time and the job would be held up, while the law poked around investigating and asking questions and arresting suspects, and so on.”

  Carol said my goodness again, or something like that. To show she was interested, you know. I went on talking, stretching things quite a little, as you’ve probably guessed, to make myself look bold and brave.

  Actually, there was quite a bit of law around the line. Not much of the official sort, but the kind you get from a rifle butt or a hard-ash pick handle. Judge and jury were the high-pressure, and they also carried out their own sentences. And troublemakers seldom came back for second helpings.

  “Now, getting back to you, Carol,” I said. “I was going to ask why.…”

  I broke off for she was staring past me, a startled look in her eyes. I turned around to see what she was looking at.

  It was Fruit Jar. He was clattering away from the garage in his T-Ford, the torn-off hose from the gas pump trailing from his tank.

  I groaned, wondering just how stupid he could be to try such a stunt, getting his tank filled with gasoline and then trying to run off without paying. Where was he going to run to in an area like this? How far did he expect to get in a twelve-year-old Model-T? A car that was already bucking and stalling and trying to die on him.

  The garage owner obviously wasn’t worried. He was sauntering after Fruit Jar and taking his own sweet time about it. Then there was the roar of another motor, and Bud Lassen wheeled out from behind the garage.

  Fruit Jar looked back over his shoulder. He tried to pour on more gas, and the car stalled and stopped. He fought with it for a moment, then threw himself out the door and started running.

  Lassen shouted for him to halt—I’ll have to admit that. But Fruit Jar kept on running, probably too scared to stop. So Lassen turned out on the prairie after him.

  It was all over in a couple of minutes, but it seemed a lot longer than that. Fruit Jar running crazily, his smoked glasses flying off as he stumbled; Lassen zigging and zagging to follow him.

  Lassen jumped out of his car, gun drawn. Fruit Jar looked around, then turned around, kind of stumble-running backwards. He tried to get his hands up, or so it seemed to me. But he tripped just then and, instead of getting them up, he made a wild grab at himself, as a falling man would.

  It was all the excuse Lassen needed. He had six bullets in Fruit Jar before you could snap your fingers, and even from where I was I could see that his head was practically blown off.

  5

  By the time I got there, there was a pretty big crowd gathered. Mostly boes like me, and the rest the few people who lived in town. Someone had dropped a tow sack over Fruit Jar; the upper part of him, that is. His legs were sticking out, and the dirty soles of his feet were showing through the holes in his shoes.

  “Hell,” the garage owner was scowling at Bud Lassen, “that was a hell of a thing to do. Killing a man over a few lousy gallons of gas.”

  “I told him to halt, didn’t I?” Lassen sounded a little defensive. “You all heard me tell him to halt.”

  “So what? You didn’t need to shoot him, dammit!”

  Lassen said he thought Fruit Jar was going to draw a gun on him. “It looked to me like he was reaching in his pocket. What the hell? You expect me to hold still while some thief takes potshots at me?”

  There was a low murmur from the crowd. A pretty unpleasant murmur. Lassen’s eyes shifted uneasily and fell on me, and he tried to work up a warm smile.

  “You, Burwell. You knew this thief, didn’t you? Had a pretty tough reputation, didn’t he?”

  “He had a reputation for getting drunk,” I said. “Which hardly made him unique out here.”

  There were laughs. Ugly laughs. Lassen’s eyes flickered angrily, but he kept on trying. “A mean vicious drunk, wasn’t he, Tommy? When he got drunk he might do almost anything, right?”

  “No, it isn’t right,” I said. “In fact, it’s a damned lie and you know it.”

  “Why, you—!” He took a step toward me.

  “The only mean vicious guy around here is you,” I said. “And you don’t have to get drunk to be that way.”

  That did it. He whipped his gun out, kind of swinging it in an arc to push the crowd back, then leveling it at me.

  “Get in that car, Burwell! I’m taking you to Matacora.”

  “Not me, you’re not,” I said. “Anyway, what are you taking me in for?”

  “For investigation. Now, move!”

  “Huh-uh,” I said. “I start to Matacora with you I’d never get there.”

  He slipped his gun, grabbing it around the trigger guard; getting ready to slam me with the barrel. “I’m telling you one more time, punk. You get in that buggy, or.…”

  “He’ll do it.” Four Trey Whitey stepped between us. “He’ll go with you, Lassen, and I’ll go along with him.”

  Lassen hesitated, his tongue flicking his lips. “I don’t want you, Whitey. Just Burwell.”

  “We’ll both go,” Four Trey insisted. “And we’ll have a good frisk before we leave. How about it, friend?…” He winked at the garage owner. “Mind doing the honors?”

  “You bet,” said the garage owner. “You just bet I will!”

  He gave us as good a frisk as I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. Searching us from head to foot and proving in front of everyone that we weren’t armed. That pretty well spoiled any little plans Lassen had. He wouldn’t dare shoot us or rough us up now. Since we’d never be held in Matacora, I wondered that he’d bother to take us in at all. But he had more plans than I’d figured on.

  “All right,” he grunted. “You want it that way, you’ll get it that way. Pile into the front seat.”

  We got into the front with Four Trey driving. Lassen got in behind us, his gun still drawn, and we took off for Matacora.

  It was eighty-five miles away. Eighty-five miles without a filling station or a store or a house or any place where a
man might get a drink of water or a bite to eat. Nothing but some of the sorriest land in the world—a desert that even a mule jackrabbit couldn’t have crossed without a lunch pail and a canteen. So when we were about midway in those eighty-five miles, more than forty miles from Matacora or the town we had come from, Bud Lassen unloaded us. He forced us out of the car and drove off by himself.

  It was a pretty bad spot to be in, but Four Trey winked at me and said it was no sweat. “Someone will come along, Tommy. Just relax and the time will go faster.”

  He jumped the ditch and stomped around in what little growth there was on the other side, making sure that it was free of any vinegarroons or centipedes or tarantulas. Then, he lay back with his hands under his head and his hat pushed over his eyes.

  I went over to where he was and lay down next to him. We stayed that way for a while, the incessant Texas wind scrubbing us with hot blasts. And at last he pushed his hat back and squinted at me.

  “Written any poetry lately, Tommy?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I kind of got out of the habit along with eating.”

  “Let’s have some of the old ones then. That one about the road seems appropriate under the circumstances.”

  I said I wasn’t sure I remembered it, not all of it, and he said to give him what I remembered, then. So I did:

  I can still see that lonely grass-grown trail,

  Which clung so closely to the shambling fence,

  Sand-swept, wind-torn at every gale,

  A helpless prey to all the elements.

  Its tortuous ruts were like two treacherous bars,

  So spaced to show an eye-deceiving gape,

  So, while one ever struggled for the stars,

  They hugged too close for actual escape.

  Escape—tell me the meaning of the word.

  Produce the man who’s touched a star for me.

  Escape is somthing for a bird.

  A star is good to hang upon a tree…

  “I guess that’s about all I remember,” I said.

  Four Trey said he liked the poem very much, but it always gave him a touch of blues. “How about something a little lighter? A couple of limericks maybe.”

  “Well, let’s see,” I said. “Uh…oh, yeah.…”

  Quoth Oedipus Rex to his son,

  I have no objection to fun.

  But yours is a marital menace.

  So play games no more

  In you-know-who’s boudoir.

  But practice up on your tennis.

  “That’s actually not a true limerick,” I said. “But here’s one that is:”

  Said Prometheus chained high in the sky

  Where he’d alternately shiver and fry.

  While great birds of carrion

  His liver made merry on,

  “I’ll bet they’d like Mom’s apple pie.”

  Four Trey made a chuckling sound. “Go on, Tommy,” he said. “How about that booze poem? The Ode to a Load or whatever you called it.”

  “Gee,” I said. “Now, you are going back. I did that one when I was just a kid.”

  “Mm, I know,” he said drily. “But the old things are best, Tommy. So give me what you can of it. Let me hear that grand old poem once more before I die.”

  I laughed. “Well, all right, if you want to punish yourself,” I said and I started in again:

  Drink—and forgo your noxious tonics,

  Nor pray for cosmic reciprocity:

  Earth’s ills for heaven’s high colonics.

  Drink’s virtue is its virtuosity.

  Yes, drink—or close

  Eyes, ears and nose

  To all that’s hideous and heinous.

  Let moss grow on your phallic hose…

  I broke off, for Four Trey had rolled over on his side, his back to me. I waited a moment, and when he didn’t say anything, I asked him what was the matter.

  “You,” he said, his voice coming to me a little muffled because he was speaking into the wind. “You’re the matter. You know, if I was really a friend of yours, I’d kick the crap out of you.”

  “What?” I said. “What are you talking like that for?”

  “Prometheus,” he said. “Oedipus Rex. Cosmic reciprocity. Goddammit…” He rolled over and faced me, scowling. “What kind of life is this for a kid as bright as you are? Why do you go on wasting your time, year after year? Do you think you’re going to stay young forever? If you do, take a look at me.”

  I was surprised at his talking this way, because he just wasn’t the kind to get personal, as I’ve said. He never liked to get too close to anyone since, naturally, that would give them the same privilege with him.

  “Well,” I said, finally. “I don’t entirely waste my time, Four Trey. I’ve learned a lot about different jobs and I read a lot when I have the chance. One time I wintered in Six Sands and I read every book in the public library.”

  “Six Sands, hmm? That would be about eighteen volumes, if I remember the town rightly.”

  I laughed and said, no, they had quite a few more books than that. “But, anyway, getting back to the subject—this stuff I fool around with isn’t poetry. It’s doggerel. I don’t know much about writing or poetry, but I know that much.”

  “I see. And you figure on getting able to do the real stuff by hanging around these Godforsaken labor camps?”

  I said, no, I was pulling out after this pipeline job. I was going to save my money and get a start on making something out of myself. He studied me reflectively, chewing on a piece of grass stem.

  “I hope you mean that, Tommy. Because you’ll have the money to do it. Deal blackjack for me and save your stiff’s wages, and you’ll have all the money you need.”

  “I’m going to,” I said. “That’s just what I’m going to do, Four Trey.”

  He nodded, studying me with thoughtful eyes. “Who was the girl I saw you with today, Tommy? You seemed to be getting along real friendly.”

  “Oh, her,” I said. “Oh, she’s just a girl.”

  “I know she’s a girl, Tommy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl that was more of a girl. In fact, she wouldn’t have needed much more equipment to be two girls.”

  I laughed, a little uncomfortably. “Her name’s Carol. I don’t know her last name.”

  “Well, now, she must be a pretty dumb girl. What did she say when you asked her?”

  “Look,” I said, “I was only with her a few minutes. She had some idea of getting work around the pipeline, but I told her there wasn’t anything for girls.”

  “Mmm? Don’t you think that was rather misleading, Tommy?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, feeling my face redden. “Not if you’re talking about what I think you are.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Why else would she be in a place like this? A girl who brings a shape like that to a pipeline isn’t looking for a job, Tommy. She has her office right in her pants.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” I said. “You shouldn’t talk that way about a girl you don’t even know. Why, I’ll bet she’s long gone by now. She probably wouldn’t even have stopped in town if she hadn’t had a flat tire.”

  “A flat tire, huh?” He laughed softly. “Well, she certainly didn’t have anything else that was flat.”

  My face was really beginning to burn by then, and I was on the point of saying something very nasty. But he smiled at me in a way he had of smiling—warm and friendly and sympathetic—so I choked down the nasty words and smiled back at him. After all, why should I be so defensive about a girl I didn’t even know and would never see again?

  He sat up, gripping his hat brim front and rear and tilting it upward. I sat up also, unconsciously doing the same with my hat brim. I think I must have imitated him a lot without knowing that I did. I suppose every kid patterns himself after some older man, and I might have done worse.

  He drew his knees up and locked his arms around them, looking off toward Matacora. Pretty soon I was doing t
he same thing. After a while, he shifted his gaze and spoke to me.

  “You believe in God, Tommy?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess so,” I said. “That’s the way I was raised.”

  “Then you believe that’s heaven right up over us, so close we can almost touch it. We’re just a little south of heaven, right?”

  “Well,” I hesitated. “I suppose you could put it that way.”

  “Think about it, Tommy. Think about it real hard the next time you’re about to do something to screw yourself up.”

  He yawned and stood up. He stretched himself, then stood a little on tiptoe to peer off toward the horizon.

  After a minute or so he said, “Here we go, Tommy. Here’s us our ride.”

  6

  It was a pipeline company car, a half-ton pickup, with a timekeeper and Higby, the chief high-pressure, in it. Trailing behind a ways was one of the company’s big flatbed trucks. The car stopped, and Higby nodded to me and shook hands with Four Trey.

  “Starting a new jungle?” he said. “Or were you just out for a walk or something?”

  “Or something,” Four Trey said. “You want to hear about it before you give us a ride?”

  Higby said God forbid hearing about it at any time; he had more than enough to think about already. “You can have some hours with your ride, if you want ’em. Use you rigging up camp.”

  “I guess we could be persuaded,” Four Trey said. “You don’t have any other engagements do you, Tommy?”

  I said, “Huh?” and then I said carelessly that I guess I didn’t have anything scheduled that couldn’t be postponed.

  The timekeeper was fidgeting, tapping on the steering wheel. Higby told us to climb in the back, giving us a pursedlip look to let us know he didn’t care for the guy.

  We had a fast ride into town—too fast for the road. Four Trey and I were bouncing around every step of the way, and we both took a banging from the loose tools that flew up from the truck bed. By the time we reached town, we were both of a mind to cloud up and rain all over the timekeeper. But Higby saw how we felt, I guess, and he hustled him off on an errand in one direction and sent us in another to round up a rigging-up crew. So the guy didn’t get the pasting he deserved.