Pop. 1280

by Jim Thompson

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “I don’t reckon you will. Not right now, anyways.”

  “Who’s gonna stop me? What the hell you mean I won’t do it right now?”

  “I mean Uncle John ain’t here right now,” I said. “Kind of ’pears like he got tired of waitin’ for you.”

  Tom’s mouth gaped open, and he looked around wildly. Everybody began to laugh, because naturally Uncle John had skipped out, and the expression on Tom’s face was a sight to see.

  He cussed me; he cussed the crowd. Then, he jumped on his mare and rode away, heeling her so hard in the flanks that she screamed with pain.

  I stomped the sidewalk board back in place. Robert Lee Jefferson, the owner of the hardware store, caught my eye and motioned me to come inside. I went in, and followed him back to his little office.

  Robert Lee Jefferson was the county attorney as well as the store owner, there not being enough work in the job to interfere with his business. I sat down, and he told me I’d handled the situation with Tom Hauck real well, and that Tom would surely have a lot of respect for law and order from now on.

  “In fact, I imagine the whole town will, don’t you, Nick? All those noble taxpayers who observed the manner in which you maintained the peace.”

  “I guess you mean just the opposite of what you’re sayin’,” I said. “Just what do you think I should have done, Robert Lee?”

  “Why, you should have arrested Hauck, of course! Thrown him in jail! I’d have been delighted to prosecute him.”

  “But what could I arrest him for? I sure couldn’t do it for whippin’ a colored fella.”

  “Why not?”

  “Aw, now,” I said. “Aw, now, Robert Lee. You don’t really mean that, do you?”

  He looked down at his desk, hesitating a moment. “Well, maybe not. But there are other charges you could have got him on. Being drunk in a public place, for example. Or hunting out of season. Or wife-beating. Or, uh—”

  “But Robert Lee,” I said. “Everyone does those things. A lot of people, anyways.”

  “Do they? I haven’t noticed any of them being brought into court for prosecution.”

  “But I can’t arrest everyone! Pretty near everyone.”

  “We’re talking specifically about one man. One mean, no-good, drunken, shiftless, lawbreaking wife-beater. Why didn’t you make an example out of him for other men of his type?”

  I said I just didn’t rightly know, since he put it that way. I just didn’t know; but I’d do some studyin’ about it, and if I came up with an answer I’d tell him.

  “I already know the answer,” he said curtly. “Everyone with a lick of sense knows it. You’re a coward.”

  “Now, I don’t know as I’d say that,” I said. “I ain’t sayin’ that I ain’t a coward, but—”

  “If you’re afraid to do your job by yourself, why don’t you hire a deputy? The county provides funds for one.”

  “Why, I already got a deputy,” I said, “my wife. I deputized Myra, so’s she could do my office for me.”

  Robert Lee Jefferson stared at me grimly.

  “Nick,” he said, “do you honestly think you can go on doing as you’ve been doing? Absolutely nothing, in other words. Do you really think you can go on taking graft and robbing the county, and doing nothing to earn your money?”

  “Why, I don’t see how I can do much else if I want to stay in office,” I said. “I got all kinds of expenses that fellas like you and the county judge and so on ain’t bothered with. Me, I’m out in the open all the time, brushin’ up with hundreds of people whereas you folks only see one once in a while. Anyone that’s put in trouble, why I’m the fella that puts ’em there; they don’t see you until afterward. Anyone that needs to borry a dollar, they come to me. All the church ladies come to me for donations, and—”

  “Nick…”

  “I throw a big barbecue every night the last month before election. Come one, come all. I got to buy presents when folks has a new baby, and I got to—”

  “Nick! Nick, listen to me!” Robert Lee held up his hand. “You don’t have to do all those things. People have no right to expect them of you.”

  “Maybe they don’t have a right,” I said. “I’ll go along with that. But what they got a right to expect, and what they do expect ain’t exactly the same thing.”

  “Just do your job, Nick. Do it well. Show people that you’re honest and courageous and hard-working, and you won’t have to do anything else.”

  I shook my head, and said I couldn’t. “I just plain can’t, Robert Lee, and that’s a fact.”

  “No?” He leaned back in his chair. “And just why can’t you, pray tell?”

  “For a couple of reasons,” I said. “For one thing, I ain’t real brave and hard-workin’ and honest. For another, the voters don’t want me to be.”

  “And just how do you figure that?”

  “They elected me, didn’t they? They keep electing me.”

  “That’s pretty specious thinking,” Robert Lee said. “Perhaps they trusted and liked you. They’ve been giving you every chance to make good. And you’d better do it very quickly, Nick.” He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. “I’m telling you that as a friend. If you don’t straighten up and do your job, you’ll be out of it come fall.”

  “You really think Sam Gaddis is that strong, Robert Lee?”

  “He’s that strong, Nick. Every bit that strong. Sam is just about everything you’re not, if you’ll excuse my saying so, and the voters like him. You’d better get busy or he’ll beat the pants off of you.”

  “Uh-hah!” I said. “Umm-humm! Would you mind if I used your phone, Robert Lee?”

  He said go ahead and I called Myra. I told her I was going out to Rose Hauck’s place to help her do her chores, so that Tom wouldn’t beat her up when he got home. Myra said that was just fine, her and Rose being such good friends—or so she thought—and she told me to stay as long as I liked.

  I hung up the phone. Robert Lee Jefferson was staring at me like I was plumb out of my mind. “Nick,” he said, waving his hands, “haven’t you heard a word I said? Is that your idea of doing your job—to go out and chore around the Hauck farm?”

  “But Rose needs help,” I said. “You surely ain’t sayin’ it’s wrong to help her.”

  “Of course, I’m not! It’s nice of you to want to help her; that’s one of your good qualities, the way you’re always willing to help people. But—but—” He sighed and shook his head wearily. “Aaah, Nick, don’t you understand? It isn’t your job doing things like that. It isn’t what you’re paid for. And you’ve got to start doing what you’re paid for, or Sam Gaddis will beat you!”

  “Beat me?” I said. “Oh, you mean the election?”

  “Of course I mean the election! What the hell else have we been talking about?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it, Robert Lee, and I think I’ve thought of an angle that will beat ol’ Sam.”

  “An angle? You mean some kind of trick?”

  “Well, you might call it that,” I said.

  “B-But—but—” He looked like he was about to explode again. “But why, Nick? Why not simply do your job?”

  “Well, I thought a lot about that, too,” I said. “Yes, sir, I really did a lot of thinking. Almost had myself convinced for a while that I actually should get out and start arrestin’ people, and start actin’ like a sheriff in general. But then I did some more thinkin’, and I knew I hadn’t ought to do nothing of the kind.”

  “But, Nick—”

  “Because people don’t want me to do that,” I said. “Maybe they think they do, but they don’t. All they want is for me to give ’em some excuse to vote for me again.”

  “You’re wrong, Nick.” Robert Lee wagged his head. “You’re dead wrong. You’ve got away with tricks in the past, but they won’t work this time. Not against a truly fine man like Sam Gaddis.”

 
I said, well, we’d just have to wait and see, and he gave me a sharp look.

  “Have you got some idea that Sam Gaddis isn’t a good man? Is that it, Nick? I can tell you right now that if you have some idea of digging up some dirt on him—”

  “I got no such idea,” I said. “I couldn’t dig up no dirt on Sam if I wanted to, because there just ain’t none to dig.”

  “Good. I’m glad you realize that.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I know Sam’s as good a man as they come. That’s why I can’t understand how all these stories about him got started.”

  “Well, that’s fine. I—what?” He stared at me startled. “What stories?”

  “You mean you ain’t heard?” I said.

  “Of course, I haven’t! Now just what are these stories?”

  I made as if I was about to tell him, and then I stopped and shook my head. “I ain’t gonna repeat ’em,” I said. “If you ain’t heard ’em, you sure ain’t gonna hear ’em from me. No, siree!”

  He took a quick look around and leaned forward, voice lowered. “Tell me, Nick. I swear I won’t repeat a word you say.”

  “I can’t. I just can’t. Robert Lee. It wouldn’t be fair, and there’s just no reason to. What difference does it make if people are going around spreading a lot of dirty stories about Sam, as long as we know they’re not true?”

  “Now, Nick—”

  “I tell you what I am gonna do,” I said. “When Sam gets up to make his first campaign speech, come Sunday-week, I’m gonna be right up on the platform with him. He gets my moral support a thousand per cent, and I’m gonna say so. Because I know there ain’t a word of truth in all them dirty, filthy stories that are going around about him!”

  Robert Lee Jefferson followed me to the front door, trying to get me to say what the stories were. I kept refusing, naturally, the main reason being that I’d never heard no one say a bad word about Sam Gaddis in my life.

  “No, sir,” I said, as I went out the door. “I just ain’t gonna repeat ’em. You want to hear any dirt about Sam you’ll have to get it from someone else.”

  “Who?” he said eagerly. “Who should I ask, Nick?”

  “Anyone. Just about anyone,” I said. “There’s always folks that are willin’ to dirty a good man, even when they ain’t got a thing to go on!”

  10

  I got my horse and buggy out of the livery stable, and drove out of town. But I was quite a little while in getting out to see Rose Hauck. I had a little business with Tom to take care of first, business that was kind of a pleasure, if you know what I mean, and it was about an hour’s drive to his favorite hunting place.

  He was there, maybe a hundred feet back from the road, and he was doing his usual kind of hunting. Sitting with his back against one tree and his gun against another, and slugging down whiskey from a jug as fast as he could swallow.

  He looked around as I came up on him, and asked me what the hell I was doing there. Then, his eyes widened and he tried to get to his feet, and he asked me what the hell I thought I was doing with his gun.

  “First things first,” I said. “One thing I’m doin’ out this way is to pay a visit to your wife. I’m gonna be gettin’ in bed with her pretty soon now, and she’s gonna be givin’ me what you were too god-danged low-down mean to ever get from her. Reason I know she’s gonna give it to me is because she’s been doin’ it for a long time. Just about every time you were out here hog-drunk, too stupid to appreciate what a good thing you had.”

  He was cussing before I had the last words out; pushing himself up against the tree-trunk, and at last wobbling to his feet. He took a staggering step toward me, and I brought the gun up against my shoulder.

  “The second thing I’m gonna do,” I said, “is somethin’ I should have done long ago. I’m gonna give you both barrels of this shotgun right in your stupid, stinking guts.”

  And I did it.

  It didn’t quite kill him, although he was dying fast. I wanted him to stay alive for a few seconds, so that he could appreciate the three or four good swift kicks I gave him. You might think it wasn’t real nice to kick a dying man, and maybe it wasn’t. But I’d been wanting to kick him for a long time, and it just never had seemed safe until now.

  I left him after a while, getting weaker and weaker. Squirming around in a pool of his own blood and guts. And then ceasing to squirm.

  Then, I drove on out to the Hauck farm.

  The house was pretty much like most farm houses you see in this part of the country, except it was a little bigger. A pitched-roofed shack, with one long room across the front and a three-room lean-to on the back. It was made of pine, naturally, and it wasn’t painted. Because with the hot sun and high humidity, you can’t hardly keep paint on a house down here. At least, that’s what folks say and even if it ain’t so, it’s a danged good excuse for being shiftless. The farm land, a whole quarter section of it, was as good as you’d find.

  It was that rich, black silt you see in the river lowlands; so fine and sweet you could almost eat it, and so deep that you couldn’t wear it out, like so much of the shallow soil in the south is worn out. You might say that land was a lot like Rose, naturally good, deep down good, but Tom had done his best to ruin it like he had her. He hadn’t done it, because they’d had too much good stuff to begin with. But both the land and her were a long sight from being what they’d been before he got ahold of ’em.

  She was hoeing sweet potatoes when I arrived, and she came running up from the field, panting for breath and pushing the sweatsoaked hair from her eyes. One heck of a pretty woman, she was; Tom hadn’t been able to change that. And she had one heck of a figure. Tom hadn’t been able to ruin her body either, although he’d sure tried hard. What he had changed was the way she thought—mean and tough—and the way she talked. When she didn’t have to be on guard, she talked practically as bad as he did.

  “Goddam, honey,” she said, giving me a quick little hug and stepping back again. “Dammit, sweetheart, I won’t be able to stop today. That son-of-a-bitch of a Tom gave me too much work to do.”

  I said, “Aw, come on. You can spare a few minutes. I’ll help you afterwards.”

  She said, goddamit, it wouldn’t do any good if she had six men to help her. She still couldn’t get through. “You know I want you, honey,” she said. “I’m crazy about you, baby, and you know I am. If it wasn’t for all this goddam work—”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said, deciding to tease her along a while. “I guess I ain’t real sure that you do want me. Seems like as if you did, you could give me a minute or two.”

  “But it wouldn’t be a minute or two, darling! You know it wouldn’t!”

  “Why not?” I said. “It don’t take no longer than that to kiss you a little, and give you a few squeezes and pats, an’—”

  “D-Don’t!” She moaned shakily. “Don’t say those things! I—”

  “Why, I’d probably even have time to hold you on my lap,” I said. “With your dress sort of pulled up, so’s I could feel how warm and soft you are where you sit down. And I could maybe sort of pull your dress down from the top, kind of slide it down from your shoulders, so that I could see those nice things underneath, and—”

  “Stop it, Nick! I—you know how I get, a-and—I can’t! I just can’t honey!”

  “Why, I wouldn’t even expect you to take your dress all the way off,” I said. “I mean, it ain’t really necessary, when you get right down to cases. With a tight-packed little gal like you, a fella don’t have to do hardly nothing at all except—”

  She cut me off, groaning like a spurred horse. She said, “Goddam! I don’t give a damn if the son-of-a-bitch beats my tail off!”

  Then, she grabbed me by the hand and began to run, dragging me toward the house.

  We got inside, and she slammed the door and locked it. She stood leaning into me for a moment, twisting and writhing against me. Then, she flung herself down on the bed, rolled over on her back and hitched her dress
up.

  “What the hell you waiting for, honey?” she said. “Come on, darling, goddam it!”

  “What you layin’ down for?” I said. “I thought I was just goin’ to hold you on my lap.”

  “P-Please, Nick!” She moaned again. “We’ve g-got no time to waste, so—please, honey!”

  “Well, all right,” I said. “But I got some news for you. Sort of a little secret. I think maybe I ought to tell it to you before—”

  “Crap on the secret.” She made a wild grab for me. “I don’t want any goddam secrets! What I want is—”

  “But it’s about poor old Tom. Somethin’ done went and happened to him…”

  “Who gives a damn? It’s just too goddam bad that the son-of-a-bitch isn’t dead! Now—”

  I told her that that was the secret: Tom was dead. “Looks like he got his guts blowed clear through his backbone,” I said. “Looks like he stumbled over his gun when he was drunk, and blowed himself to glory.”

  She looked at me, her eyes widening, mouth working as she tried to speak. Finally, the words came out in a shaky whisper:

  “You’re sure, Nick? You really killed him?”

  “Let’s just say he had himself an accident,” I said. “Let’s just say that fate dealt him a crool blow.”

  “But he is dead? You’re sure about that?”

  I told her I was sure, all right. Plenty sure. “If he ain’t, he’s the first live man I’ve ever seen who could hold still while he was getting kicked in the balls.”

  Rose’s eyes lit up like I’d given her a Christmas purty. Then she threw herself back on the pillows, rocking with laughter.

  “Holy Jesus, so the stinking son-of-a-bitch is really dead! I’m through with the dirty bastard at last!”

  “Well, sir, it sure looks that way,” I said.

  “Goddam him! I just wish I’d have been there to kick him myself, the bastardly son-of-a-bitchin’ whoremonger!” she said, adding on a few more choice names. “You know what I’d have liked to do to that dirty bastard, Nick? I’d have liked to take me a red hot poker and jabbed it right up the filthy son-of-a-bitch’s—uh, what’s the matter, honey?”