by Jim Thompson
He gave me an amiable tap on the knee by way of emphasis. I tried to jerk away from him, and the other two held me where I was.
“Why…why, damn you!” I sputtered. “What kind of punk do you think I am? You think you can just walk up to me and tell me what I can do an’ what I can’t do and make me like it? I’ll see Carol whenever I damned well please, and.…”
“Huh-uh. No, you won’t, Tommy, boy. Not unless you can see when you’re dead.”
“Big deal! And what’s Carol going to say about you killing me? You get tough with me, and she’ll blow the deal on you.”
“She might, Tommy. She just might—if she knew about it. But, of course, she ain’t going to. No one is.”
“Like hell! I just disappear and no one thinks anything of it? Now that makes a lot of sense!”
Longden said that it sure did, didn’t it, and Bigger beamed that I sure caught on fast. Show me which end of a match to strike and I’d figure it out in no time. Doss said that a boy as bright as me prob’ly had to hide under the bed in the morning so that folks could see the sun come up.
“Y’see, here’s the way it is, Tommy, boy,” Longden continued. “Carol’s begged you to leave. Three-four people have, everyone that gives a dang about you. That’s the way it is, right? Carol an’ everyone else has done everything they could to point you away from here an’ start you to movin’.…”
“But…well, maybe they did, but.…”
“So you don’t show up some fine morning, and what do folks think? Why, they just think that Tommy Burwell finally whistled-up the dogs and pissed on the fire and made himself long-gone.”
He nodded firmly, waited a moment to see if I had anything else to say. I did have…but I wasn’t going to say it to him. So he jerked his head at the other two, and the three of them got up and walked away together.
The work whistle blew.
I carried my tray back to the chow truck and headed for the dope gang.
22
Ditch pipe receives a protective coating in the factory these days and has for a long time past. But in those times, the coating was applied at the ditch. As with blasting, it was the quickest way of doing it and, above all, the cheapest. In a different state with a different kind of economy, it would never have been allowed. But in Texas, a state largely dependent on cattle, cotton and oil, practically anything went.
Cotton required large amounts of cheap, backbreaking labor. You could no more farm cotton under healthful conditions than you could raise cattle without men who spent endless hours in the saddle in all kinds of weather, risking their health and their lives for a pittance, growing old when they were young. So also with the oil industry and those related to it.
There were no absolutely safe jobs in the oil fields. They ranged from fairly safe to downright hazardous. To have made them completely safe would have been too costly, it was reasoned, and the industry could not be hampered in any way. On the contrary, the state’s attitude was fiercely protective.
Texas oil men complained that the Standard Oil Company was unfair competition. So for many years Standard was barred from the state by law. It could operate everywhere else in the world, but not in Texas. Anything or anyone who made trouble for Texas industry was buying trouble for himself. And that included people who did the unhealthy, dirty and dangerous jobs of that industry.
They didn’t have to do ’em, did they? No one forced them to. They knew what they were getting into when they hired out, and if they didn’t want to risk it they didn’t have to take it!
Insurance? Sure, there was insurance. But insurance was a big industry, too, and fully deserving of the state’s protection. You couldn’t expect an insurance company to sell (or an employer to buy) policies on workmen in certain kinds of jobs. Not unless those policies were so restricted and qualified as to make them virtually worthless. It would cost too much; it would cut profits. Costs had to be held down, profits held up.
Which takes us back to me and the dope gang.
There were three men in the gang, plus a straw boss who checked the pipe after it was doped. One man walked on each side of the ditch, each holding one end of a hammocklike device. This was wrapped one turn around the pipe, and held loosely to form a kind of apron underneath. The third man, me, poured the dope into this apron.
I used a pouring can pretty much like the sprinkling can you’d use in your garden, but with the spray-nozzle removed. As I poured, the other two men pulled the hammock back and forth in a sawing motion, coating the pipe with a thin layer of liquid asphalt.
The hammock men could keep pretty well out of the way of the fumes. I had to stoop right into them. They walked forward. I had to walk backward to keep out of their way.
I wore goggles, of course; I also kept my hat jammed low and my collar turned up and a bandanna tied across my face like a Western outlaw. But that was all I could do, and it wasn’t even halfway enough. In the time that I poured dope—that afternoon plus two days more—my face was burned so badly that the skin hung in strips. My neck and forehead weren’t much better off, either, and I think my eyesight would have been permanently damaged in a very little while longer.
It was a tough world, the Far West Texas of the twenties. You might not live through it and you might not look pretty if you did, but people would know you were a man from a mile away.
At the end of two and a half days, the pipe was doped as far as it was welded, and Higby curtly told me that I could go back to shooting powder if Four Trey would have me. I braced Whitey for it, all nervous and edgy and on the defensive because he hadn’t even spoken to me since I’d been back. He still didn’t speak, either.
He just listened, then shook his head and turned away without answering. I grabbed him and whirled him back around.
“Now…n-now you listen to me!” I stammered, my voice cracking with fury. “You just l-listen to me, Four Trey Whiteside! I’m twenty-one years old and I’m a man. You keep poking it at me that I am! I’m a man, I’ve got to make my own life, and you make me know it. But the minute I start to do it you slap me down. You.…”
“I do it for your own good!”
“How do you know it is? What have you done with your own life that makes you know what’s good for me? Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? Do you think you’re God? Are you God, Mr. Four Trey Whitey?”
He said, “Now, listen to me, Tommy!” And I asked for how long should I listen. How long would he tell me what to do and give a damn whether I did it or not.
“A day, an hour, a minute? You play the father, the big brother, only when you take a notion to. And what happens if I start playing my part? That’s another story, isn’t it? Then you freeze up fast. I’m told to get back where I belong. To go my own way and not bother you. One minute you’re my father and the next you don’t know me. You…”
I stormed away at him, about as near to crying as a man gets. I needed a friend, a real friend, because I was all mixed up over Carol and the mess I’d walked into. I was scared and worried and I didn’t know what to do or where to turn, and he…he.…
His face softened. He looked down at the ground uneasily, guiltily, and I think he spoke to me several times before he finally got my attention.
“Tommy…I’m sorry, Tommy. You go back on powder with me in the morning.”
“Well, you ought to be sorry!” I said. “You…an’ you don’t have to take me back on powder if you don’t want me! I’m a man and I’ve got pride, an’.…”
“And I’ve still got half a pint in my bindle. And you and I are goin’ to put it where it’ll do the most good!”
We did, and we made a lot of talk in the course of doing it. Rather, he talked, and I mostly listened.
“…some people are afraid of caring, Tommy. They’re afraid of letting anyone get too close to them. Because when they do care, they care too much. They put all their eggs in one basket, as the saying is, and when something happens to the basket.…” He shook his head, staring off in
to space. “It almost kills them, Tommy. It almost killed me when I lost my wife. For a long time, I wished that it would, but instead.…”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have talked up to you the way I did.”
“Yes, you should have, Tommy. It made me see something that I hadn’t seen before, and I needed to see it. You can’t live another person’s life for him. If you care for him, you’ve got to do it on his terms for what he is, not yours for what you think he should be. Now, in my book you were dead wrong to come back here. I’m convinced of it. But.…”
“I had to, Four Trey. I just had to!”
“You did,” he nodded. “And who am I to act like you’re not worth spitting on because you did? If you’re for someone, you’re for ’em come hell or high water. If you lose someone you care deeply about, well, at least you had ’em for a while. You’re still ’way ahead of the game and you’ve got no call to stop playing. You loved someone and they loved you, just as each of you was—good, bad and indifferent—the only way to love. Because you were people, not gods, and you didn’t make demands that it wasn’t in the other fellow to meet. And you were richer for having loved, for even a little while.…”
That’s about how our conversation ended. With both of us understanding things we hadn’t understood before, and better friends than we’d ever been.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him about Longden and his two bearded buddies, but I didn’t want to push things too far just when we’d gotten on a solid footing. Anyway, we’d have plenty of opportunities to talk now that we’d be working together again.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to tell him. Because Longden hadn’t been kidding when he’d warned me to stay away from Carol or get killed.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. I’ve gotten a couple days ahead of it in telling about getting square with Four Trey, so let’s move back a little.
Back to the end of my first afternoon on the dope gang…
23
Higby had been driving hard, and the line had been moving right along, and the job was now almost an hour’s ride from camp. Going in that night, the guy riding next to me on the flatbed remarked that we’d have to be moving camp soon, jumping it south maybe twenty-five or thirty miles, because the ride was taking too much time. I nodded without speaking, trying to save my cracked and blistered lips as much as possible.
I could hardly bear soap and water for washing that night and I sort of groaned with every bite of the hot chow. In the long run, of course, stretching the burned skin was good for it. Or a lot better, anyway, than letting it tighten on you like a blistered mask. It helped it, if you could stand it, and after dinner I smeared it good with butter, and that helped, too.
The cook watched me sympathetically, cursing the “goddam capitalists.” He said hell was too cold for such people, and, come the revolution, they’d all get their butts warmed with a cutting torch so they’d know how it felt to cook a man alive. Then he threw a thirty-pound ham in the garbage and gave me a four-ounce bottle of jake (Jamaica ginger) to ease me through the night.
The old crumb boss in my tent hovered around me for a long time, wanting to do things for me and letting me know he was sorry. Finally, I pretended to go to sleep, and he went to his own bunk and sacked in. When everyone else had done the same and the camp was dark, I slipped out the back of the tent and headed for town.
I’d never felt less like walking five miles in my life. But there was no phone short of town, and I had to phone Sheriff Darrow. I’d have walked five thousand miles to help Carol, and this was the only way I could do it.
I knew she couldn’t have been mixed up in anything before. She just wasn’t old enough. She was only taking part in the payroll robbery because she was forced to, but that wouldn’t cut any ice with the law. If you commit a crime you’re a criminal and you can’t clear yourself by claiming that you were forced to commit it. So the robbery had to be stopped before it started, and Darrow was the only one who could do it.
There was a booth phone next to the garage, and I called him from there. He wasn’t at his office, late as it was, but I managed to reach him at home. In the background, I could hear a baby crying faintly and a few words of a woman’s voice complaining about people who were always late for dinner. I didn’t hear very much of it, because there was a sound like a door being closed, then an amused chuckle from him as he told me to go ahead.
I started talking. After a minute or so he broke in on me.
“Those fellows are teasing you, Burwell. It may be that they don’t want you hanging around their sister, or their foster sister, I should say. But the rest is nonsense.”
“Nonsense!” I said. “They’ve already killed two people and they threaten to kill me, an’.…”
“They haven’t killed anyone. Both deaths were accidents.”
“The heck they were! You…you just don’t know ’em, sheriff! You don’t know.…”
“Yes, I do, Burwell,” he said quietly. “I know everything there is to know about those men. Information is a big part of my job, and I’m very good at getting it. But in their case I didn’t have to. They came in and identified themselves the moment they entered my county.”
“B-but.…” I stared into the phone wordlessly. “But, dammit.…”
“They’re the Long brothers. The Long brothers, understand? I’ll admit they probably bought their pardons; they’ve done it before. But they claim to be going straight now and they certainly act like they mean to. I think they’ve proved that by coming in to see me in the beginning and coming forward later to clear you.”
“You do, huh?” I laughed shakily. “The worst killers and crooks in Texas, and you think…!” I choked up for a moment, unable to go on. “Don’t you see, sheriff? They knew you’d find out who they were, anyway, so they played smart and beat you to the punch. And they didn’t clear me until they had to. Carol found out what.…”
He sighed, cutting in on me again. “You told me, Burwell. You told me. I hold no brief for the Longs—Longie, that’s Longden, or Bigger or Doss. I’ve got no use for any of ’em. I don’t like what they’re letting a potentially nice girl make of herself, but they’re not wanted anywhere now, and I’m not running a Sunday school. So unless.…”
“What about that car?” I said. “Why, sheriff, if you’d just…!”
“What about it? This is a bad part of the world to have a breakdown in. A smart person keeps his car in first-class condition.”
“But it’s more than that! It’s a, uh, well, it’s a get-away car if I’ve ever seen one!”
“Well, now, of course, that’s different! How many have you seen, Burwell?”
He waited; laughed teasingly. I said a few things that weren’t very nice, and he sobered and said he was sorry.
“You’ve had a bad time, Burwell. When a man goes to the trouble that you have to do the right thing, he deserves something better than to be laughed at. I was afraid there’d be trouble if you went back there. The Longs are notorious for dead-pan kidding. Even if they didn’t indulge in it there was always the chance you’d find out who they were, and get the wind up because of the girl. Now, if you’ll take my advice.…”
“Wait!” I said. “Wait a minute, sheriff! I just remembered something else.”
“Did you?” He stifled a yawn. “Well?”
“Higby. He’s in on the robbery. Why, I just dropped a little hint that there was something screwy about payday, and.…”
“Burwell!” His voice was suddenly curt. “Have you been popping off any around camp about this?”
“Of course not,” I said. “Why would I do a thing like that?”
“Because you seem to be about as brainless as a man can get! Higby has a pipeline to build within a certain amount of time. There are enormous penalties to pay for every day he runs over that time, and a whopping bonus for every day he’s under. He had to do the job and he has to do it without a hitch, and what kind of men does he have
to do it with?”
“Now, look,” I said. “I.…”
“He has to do it with scum, Burwell! That’s what they are, mostly. Hoboes, bums, drunks and jailbirds—the scum of the oil fields. Men who make a career out of finding reasons for not working. Now just what do you think would happen if some lovesick, loudmouth kid hinted that something might happen to their pay? Well? My guess is that he wouldn’t have enough men left to build a barn.”
“But I didn’t say that much to Higby! I didn’t hint that.…”
“Practically anything you said would have given him a jolt. You see, he knows who the Longs are. They were hired on at my suggestion.”
“H-he knows?” I said. “You suggested it? Why…why, that’s crazy!”
Darrow sighed that if I was halfway as smart as I thought I was I’d see it differently. The Longs had no honest skill, and the pipeline was the county’s major employer of unskilled labor. By seeing that they were hired on, they could not only be kept track of—their whereabouts known at all times—but helped to earn a living instead of stealing it.
“Both the pipeline company and I could rest more comfortably by having them there. What we didn’t count on was you and that girl falling for each other, which naturally was one hell of a big hazard. Because if she ever got confidential with you, a romantic knothead with all his brains in his crotch.…”
My face was burning, and not just from the dope either. I said, all right, maybe I was a knothead. But he could do one thing at least without upsetting anyone’s applecart.
“Just move in and take Carol away from there, sheriff. If you’ll do that.…”
“I won’t. I’m not in the business of rousting whores. If I were, I couldn’t legally do anything until she actually started turning tricks.”
He made sounds of hanging up. I yelled that I’d bet he was in on the robbery himself, and if he wouldn’t do his job I’d call someone who would.
He snapped that what I’d do was go back to camp and keep my mouth shut, and if I didn’t do it he’d break one of his own rules and float me out of the county.
