Pop. 1280

by Jim Thompson

  “Well, sir,” I said, “there’s a road sign just outside of town that says ‘Pop. 1280,’ so I guess that’s about it. Twelve hundred and eighty souls.”

  “Twelve hundred and eighty souls, huh? Is them souls supposed to have people to go with ’em?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, “that’s what I meant. It was just another way of saying twelve hundred and eighty people.”

  We all had a couple more drinks, and Buck tossed his stogie in a gaboon and cut himself a chaw; and Ken said I wasn’t pre-zackly correct in saying that twelve hundred and eighty souls was the same as twelve hundred and eighty people.

  “Ain’t that right, Buck?” Ken said, giving him a nod.

  “Kee-rect!” Buck said. “You’re a thousand per cent right, Ken!”

  “Natcherly! So just tell old Nick why I am.”

  “Shorely,” Buck said, turning toward me. “Y’see it’s this way, Nick. That twelve hundred and eighty would be countin’ niggers—them Yankee lawmakers force us to count ’em—and niggers ain’t got no souls. Right, Ken?”

  “Kee-rect!” Ken said.

  “Well, now, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I wouldn’t come out flat and say you fellas was wrong, but I sure don’t reckon I can agree with you neither. I mean, well, just how come you say that colored folks don’t have souls?”

  “Because they don’t, that’s why.”

  “But why don’t they?” I said.

  “Tell him, Buck. Make old Nick here see the light,” Ken said.

  “Why, shorely,” Buck said. “Y’see, it’s this way, Nick. Niggers ain’t got no souls because they ain’t really people.”

  “They ain’t?” I said.

  “Why, o’ course not. Most everybody knows that.”

  “But if they ain’t people, what are they?”

  “Niggers, just niggers, that’s all. That’s why folks refer to ’em as niggers instead of people.”

  Buck and Ken nodded at me, as if to say there wasn’t anything more to be said on this subject. I took another pull at the bottle and passed it around.

  “Well, looky here, now,” I said. “How about this? My mama died almost as soon as I was born, so I was put to suck with a colored mammy. Wouldn’t be alive today except for her sucklin’ me. Now, if that don’t prove—”

  “No, it don’t,” Ken broke in. “That don’t prove a thing. After all, you could have sucked titty from a cow, but you can’t say that cows is people.”

  “Well, maybe not,” I said. “But that ain’t the only point of similarity. I’ve had certain relations with colored gals that I sure wouldn’t have with a cow, and—”

  “But you could,” Ken said. “You could. We got a fella over in the jail right now for pleasurin’ a pig.”

  “Well, I’ll be dogged,” I said, because I’d heard of things like that but I never had known of no actual cases. “What kind of charges you makin’ against him?”

  Buck said maybe they could charge him with rape. Ken gave him a kind of blank look and said no, they might not be able to make that kind of charge stick.

  “After all, he might claim he had the pig’s consent, and then where would we be?”

  “Aw,” said Buck. “Aw, now, Ken.”

  Ken said, “What you mean, aw, now. You tryin’ to tell me that animals can’t understand what you’re sayin’ to ’em? Why, god-dang it, I got me this little ol’ beagle-terrier, and I can say, ‘Boy, you want to go catch some rats?’ and he’ll leap all over me, barkin’ and whinin’ and licking my face. Meaning, natcherly, that he does want to go after rats. Or I can say, ‘Boy, you want me to take a stick to you?’ an’ he’ll slink off in a corner with his tail between his legs. Meanin’ he don’t want me to take a stick to him. An’—”

  “Well, sure,” Buck said. “But—”

  “God-dang it!” Ken said. “Shut up when I’m talking! What the hell’s wrong with you, anyways? Here I go an’ tell Nick what a smart fella you are, and god-dang if you don’t make a liar out of me right in front of him!”

  Buck got kind of red in the face, and said he was sure sorry. He sure hadn’t meant to contradict Ken. “I can see just how it happened, now that you explained it to me. This fella, he probably says to the pig, ‘How about a little you-know-what, Piggie?’ and the pig started squealing and twitchin’ her tail, meanin’ she was ready whenever he was.”

  “O’ course, that’s the way it happened!” Ken scowled. “So what’d you mean by disputin’ me? Why for was you telling me he couldn’t have had the pig’s consent, and making a god-danged idjit out of yourself in front of a visitin’ sheriff? I tell you somethin’, Buck,” Ken went on, “I was entertainin’ some pret-ty high hopes for you. Almost had me convinced you was a white man with good sense instead of one of these big-mouth smart-alecks. But now I don’t know; I purely don’t know. ’Bout all I can say is you shore better watch your step from now on.”

  “I shore will. I’m shore sorry, Ken,” Buck said.

  “I mean it! I mean every god-danged word of it!” Ken frowned at him. “You ever go disputin’ or contradictin’ me again, an’ you’ll be out in the street scratching horse turds with the sparrows. Or maybe you think you won’t be, huh? Maybe you’re gonna start arguin’ again, tellin’ me you won’t be out fighting them birds for turds? Answer me, you god-danged liver-lipped idjit!”

  Buck sort of choked for a moment, and then he said of course Ken was right. “You say the word, Ken, an’ that’s pre-zackly what I’d be doin’.”

  “Doin’ what? Speak up, god-dang it!”

  “S-Scratchin’”—Buck choked again—“scratchin’ horse turds with the sparrers.”

  “The hot, steamy kind, right? Right?”

  “Right,” Buck mumbled. “You’re a thousand per cent right, Ken. I-I reckon there ain’t nothin’ less appetizin’ than a cold horse turd.”

  “Well, all right, then,” Ken said, easing up on him and turning to me. “Nick, I reckon you didn’t come all the way up here to hear me an’ old stupid Buck jibber-jabberin’ at each other. ’Pears to me like you got plenty of troubles of your own.”

  “Well, sir, you’re sure right about that, Ken,” I said. “You purely are, an’ that’s a fact.”

  “And you’re wantin’ my advice, right? You ain’t like some smart-alecks that think they already know everything.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I sure do want your advice, Ken.”

  “Uh-hah?” he nodded. “Uh-hah. Go right ahead, Nick.”

  “Well, it’s like this,” I said. “I got this here problem that’s been driving me plumb out of my mind. Couldn’t hardly sleep nor eat it’s been pesterin’ me so much. So I fretted and studied an’ I thought and I thought, and finally I came to a decision.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “I decided I didn’t know what to do,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Ken said. “Well, now, don’t you go rushin’ into it. Me an’ old Buck here has got plenty on our minds, but we always got time to consult with a friend. Right, Buck?”

  “Kee-reck! You’re a thousand per cent right, Ken. Like always.”

  “So you just take your time an’ tell us about it, Nick,” Ken said. “I’m always willin’ to lay aside the cares of my great office when a friend’s in trouble.”

  I hesitated, wanting to tell him about Myra and her half-wit brother. But all of a sudden, it seemed too personal. I mean, how can you discuss your wife with another fella, even a good friend like Ken was. And what the heck could he do about her, even if I did tell him?

  So I reckoned I’d better leave her out of it, and take up this other big problem I had. I figured it was one problem he could handle just fine. In fact, now that I’d kind of had a chance to get reacquainted with him, and I’d seen how he handled Buck, I knew he was just the man to take care of it.

  5

  Well, sir, Ken,” I said. “You know that whorehouse there in Pottsville. Place over on the river bank, just a whoop an’ a holler from town…�
�

  Ken looked up at the ceiling and scratched his head. He allowed that he couldn’t say that he did know about it, but he figured naturally that Pottsville had a whorehouse.

  “Can’t very well run a town without one, right, Buck?”

  “Right! Why if they wasn’t any whores, the decent ladies wouldn’t be safe on the streets.”

  “Kee-reck!” Ken nodded. “Fellas would get all full of piss an’ high spirits and take right off after ’em.”

  “Well, that’s the way I look at it,” I said. “But now I got this trouble. Y’see, there’s these six whores, all nice friendly girls and just as accommodatin’ as you could ask for. I really can’t make no complaint about these girls. But along with them is these two pimps—one pimp for three girls, I guess—and those pimps are giving me trouble, Ken. They been sassin’ me somethin’ awful.”

  “Now, you don’t mean that!” Ken said. “You don’t mean t’tell me that these pimps has actually been sassin’ the high sheriff of Potts County!”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “that’s exacly what they’ve been doin’. An’ the bad part about it is, they sometimes done it in front of other people, and a thing like that, Ken, it just don’t do a sheriff no good. The word gets around that you’ve been told off by pimps, and it don’t do you no good a’tall!”

  “Do tell!” Ken said. “You spoke the God’s truth there, Nick! But I reckon you don’t just let ’em get away with it? You taken some action against ’em?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve been sassin’ ’em back. I can’t say that it’s stopped ’em, but I sure been sassin’ ’em back, Ken.”

  “Sassin’ ’em back! Why for did you do that?”

  “Well, it seemed about right,” I said. “A fella sasses you, why you just pay him off by sassin’ back.”

  Ken sort of drew his mouth in, and shook his head. He asked Buck if he’d ever heard such a thing in his life, and Buck said he purely hadn’t. Not in all his borned days.

  “I’ll tell you what you got to do, Nick,” Ken said. “No, sir, I’ll show you what to do. You just stand up and turn your back to me, an’ I’ll give you an ill-us-strated lesson.”

  I did what he told me to. He got up out of his chair, and hauled off and kicked me. He kicked me so hard that I went plumb out the door and half-ways across the hall.

  “Now, you come back in here,” he said, crocking a finger at me. “You just sit down there like you was, so’s I can ask you some questions.”

  I said I guessed I’d better stand up for a minute, and he said all right, have my own way about it. “You know why I kicked you, Nick?”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess you probably had a good reason. You were trying to teach me something.”

  “Right! So here’s what I want to ask you. Say a fella kicks you in the ass like I just did, why what do you do about it?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” I said. “No one ever kicked me in the ass before, saving my daddy, God rest his soul, and there wasn’t much I could do about it with him.”

  “But suppose someone did. Let’s just say we got a hypocritical case where someone kicks you in the ass. What would you do about it?”

  “Well,” I said. “I guess I’d kick him in the ass. I guess that’d be about right.”

  “Turn around,” Ken said. “You turn right back around again. You ain’t learned your lesson yet.”

  “Well, looky,” I said. “Maybe if you could just explain a little more—”

  “You turnin’ ongrateful?” Ken frowned. “You tryin’ to give orders to a fella when he’s trying to help you?”

  “No, no, I ain’t trying to do that,” I said. “But—”

  “Well, I should hope not! Now, you just turn around like I told you to.”

  I turned my back to him again; there just wasn’t anything else I could do, it looked like. He and Buck both got up, and they both kicked me at the same time.

  They kicked me so hard that I went practically straight up instead of forward. I came down kind of crooked on my left arm, and it hurt so bad that I almost forgot who I was for a moment.

  I picked myself up, trying to rub my ass and my arm at the same time. Which just can’t be done, in case you’re thinking about doing it. I sat down, sore as I was, because I was just too dizzy to stand.

  “Hurt your arm?” Ken said. “Whereabouts?”

  “I’m not positive,” I said. “It could be either the radius or the ulna.”

  Buck gave me a sudden sharp look out from under his hatbrim. Sort of like I’d just walked into the room and he was seeing me for the first time. But of course Ken didn’t notice anything. Ken had so much on his mind, I reckon, helping poor stupid fellas like me, that he maybe didn’t notice a lot of things.

  “Now, I guess you learned your lesson, right, Nick?” he said. “You see the futility of not givin’ back no more hurt than what you get?”

  “Well, I sure learned some kind of lesson,” I said. “So if that’s the one you was teaching me, I guess that was it.”

  “Y’see, maybe the other fella can kick harder’n you can. Or maybe he’s got a tougher ass an’ it don’t hurt him as much as it does you. Or say you got a situation like me an’ Buck just demonstrated. Two fellas start kicking you in the ass, so’s you get two kicks for every one you give. You get a situation like that, which is just about what you got figuratively speakin’, why you could get the ass kicked clean off of you a-fore you had time to tip your hat.”

  “But these pimps ain’t kicked me,” I said. “They just been sassin’ me, and shovin’ me around a little.”

  “Same principle. Same principle, pre-zackly. Right, Buck?”

  “Right! Y’see, Nick, when a fella starts doin’ somethin’ bad to you, the proper way to pay him back is t’do somethin’ twice as bad to him. Otherwise, the best you got is maybe a stand-off, and you don’t never get nothing settled.”

  “Kee-reck!” Ken said. “So I’ll tell you what to do about them pimps. The next time they even look like they’re goin’ to sass you, you just kick ’em in the balls as hard as you can.”

  “Huh?” I said. “But—but don’t it hurt awful bad?”

  “Pshaw, ’course it don’t hurt. Not if you’re wearin’ a good pair o’ boots without no holes in ’em.”

  “That’s right,” Buck said. “You just be sure you ain’t got any toes stickin’ out and it won’t hurt you a-tall.”

  “I mean, wouldn’t it hurt the pimps?” I said. “Me, I don’t think I could stand even an easy kick in the balls.”

  “Why, shorely, shorely it would hurt ’em,” Ken nodded. “How else you goin’ to make ’em behave if you don’t hurt ’em bad?”

  “You’re actually lettin’ ’em off pretty easy, Nick,” Buck said. “I know I’d sure hate to be in the same room if any pimp sassed old Ken here. Ken wouldn’t stop with just kickin’ ’em. Why, a-fore they knew what was happening, he’d just yank out his pissoliver and shoot ’em right in their sassy mouths.”

  “Pre-zackly!” Ken said. “I’d send them sassy skunks to hell without no fooling around about it.”

  “So you’re really being too easy on ’em, Nick. A god-danged sight easier than a proud, intelligent upstandin’ officer like ol’ Ken. Ken would shoot ’em deader’n doornails, if he was in your place, and you heard him say so yourself.”

  “Right!” said Ken. “I sure wouldn’t miss doing pre-zackly that.”

  Well…

  It looked like I’d got what I came for, and it was getting kind of late by then. So I thanked Ken for his advice, and stood up. I was still just a little wobbly, though; kind of rocking on my heels. And Ken asked me if I was sure I could make it to the station all right.

  “Well, I guess so,” I said. “I sure hope so, anyways. It sure wouldn’t seem right for me to ask you to walk me there after everything you’ve already done for me.”

  “Why, you don’t need to ask!” Ken said. “You think I’d let you go all the way to the train alone,
a fella that looks as peaked as you do?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to trouble you none,” I said.

  “Trouble?” Ken said. “Why, it’s a positive pleasure! Buck, you just heist yourself up out of that chair, and walk Nick to the depot.”

  Buck nodded and heisted himself up. I said I sure hoped I wasn’t putting him to any bother, and he said it wouldn’t be no bother a-tall.

  “Just so’s you can bear with me,” he said. “Know I can’t be no ways as good a comp’ny for you as a fella like Ken.”

  “Well, now, I’m sure you’ll be just fine,” I said. “Bet you’ll prove out a real interestin’ fella.”

  “I’ll try,” Buck promised. “Yes, sir, I’ll purely try, and that’s a fack.”

  6

  I had supper down near the depot, buying a whopping big meal for Buck along with my own. Then, my train came and Buck walked me down to the car I was riding in. Not that I couldn’t have made it all right by myself—I was feeling pretty good about then. But we were getting along real fine, just like I thought we might, and we had a lot of things to say to each other.

  I fell asleep almost as soon as I’d given my ticket to the conductor. But I didn’t sleep good. Dog-tired as I was, I drifted into a scary dream, the nightmare that was always a-haunting me. I dreamed that I was a kid again only it didn’t seem like a dream. I was a kid, living in the old rundown plantation house with my daddy. Trying to keep out of his way, and never being able to. Getting beat half to death every time he could grab me.

  I dreamed I was ducking into a doorway, thinking I’d got away from him. And suddenly being grabbed from behind.

  I dreamed I was putting his breakfast on the table. And trying to get my arms up when he flung it in my face.

  I dreamed—I lived—showing him the reading prize I’d won in school. Because I was sure that would please him, and I just had to show it to someone. And I dreamed—lived—picking myself up off the floor with my nose bloodied from the little silver cup. And he was yelling at me, shouting that I was through with school because I’d just proved I was a cheat along with everything else.