by Bryant, Tim
"Is there any place in particular I should start?" I said.
"You can start back there," he said, pointing to the furthest, darkest corner, "and work your way up. I'll start right here."
I began flipping through the bins, which were nothing more than old wooden crates stacked on hastily assembled tables. Bing Crosby on Brunswick, Paul Whiteman on Columbia. Benny Goodman, Bunk Johnson.
"Are these in any kind of order?"
"They used to be."
Texas Alexander on Vocalion. Bix Beiderbecke on Okeh.
"Where you get all these damn things?"
"Anywhere and everywhere," Crawford said. "These days, mostly for personal collections. People die and leave 'em or move and leave 'em behind."
"I used to sell records for a negro department store over in Quality Grove," I said. "They don't sell 'em no more. Any idea what a place like that would do with them?"
Crawford came walking around the corner, holding a stack of inventory like a school girl holding books.
"You talkin' about Chester Merkley's place?"
"That would be the one," I said.
"I have all of his old stuff. It's in storage. Never even put it out"
"Then that's where I want to start."
I was shocked to find that, back behind the store counter, in a storeroom bigger than all of Peechie Keen's, sat almost as many records as were displayed in the main room. I was led to one full wall of them, stacked hip deep, over which is a hand-written piece of paper.
"Merkley's Dept. Store."
"Did you pay for these up front, or does he have you working on commission?" I said.
"I took out a loan and purchased half of them from Dock Price, when he owned the store," Crawford said. "Later, Mr. Merkley talked me into buying the remainder of them. I really shouldn't have. I don't have the space to put even half of them out."
"Doesn't sound like a smart business move," I said.
"Well," said Crawford, "one might say that I was coerced into it. It's really a long story."
I said, well, it looked like I had a good bit of time there in front of me, so why didn't he get started on telling it while I made my way through the stacks. I started my work, pulling out a Leon McAuliffe here and a Barney Kessel there and quietly setting them aside.
29
Slant and me went carousing on the Jacksboro Highway, just hoping to run into somebody who'd heard something about Whitey. For the most part, I'd learned to stay away from that area. The cops all called it Jacks Beer Highway, because of all the beer joints lining the place.
About five or six years previous, we'd been on an all-nighter out that way. Started at the Albatross, went down to the Skyliner, a strip club, and ended up at the Barrel. It was after hours, but the drinks were still flowing, and the two of us got into a game of Russian Roulette with two rancheros from Amarillo. Catch was, we were just shooting at our toes.
"One bullet in the chamber," the biggest of the rancheros, a man everybody called Mister Floyd, said. "Spin once and shoot. Long as you stay in the game, gat makes it back around to me, I buy drinks."
"We shoot a hole in our feet, we pony up for the next round?" I said.
"Not so long as you stay in," he said.
Of course, by this time, a crowd had started to gather. There was no turning back.
I've got to give Slant Face his due. The man could have left me to my own devices. When the game commenced, he actually took the second shot, after Mister Floyd. We were using my gun, the .38 Colt, which, in my mind, gave me a home field advantage. Under optimum conditions, I could feel the difference between an empty cartridge and a loaded one landing in the cylinder. These were not the best conditions. The gun made its way to me, and, of course, I took aim at my bad leg. I've had a slight limp in it all my adult life and didn't need a matching set. I clicked off a round, not hearing the firing pin, not even hearing the noise inside the crowded room.
By the third time around, Mister Floyd and his partner, a man named Rollie, were both laughing it up, and I began to wonder if he'd actually pulled the slugs when I wasn't looking. The round robin had fallen into a rhythm, and I was looking forward to the next free drinks. Third time around, I spun the chamber with a little extra force, squared off against my left boot and shot the little toe clean off into oblivion.
Everything whited out, and I came to outside the bar, with the distinct sensation of having my foot masticated by a Kodiak bear. Rollie was still laughing, splashing a bottle of whiskey over my foot, and Slant was trying his best to pour another one down my gullet. My perfectly good boot was torn all to hell.
The folks out there played hard as a habit. Where the Top O' The Hill attracted a high rolling, sophisticated crowd, womenfolk even, the clubs along Jacksboro attracted hellions and rebel rousers. Kind of guys who'd shoot off their own toes for sport and come back the next week for another go.
All the same, if something shady was going on anywhere in Cowtown, somebody on Jacksboro usually knew all about it, and, often as not, had a hand or two in it. We weren't there fifteen minutes before I was wishing once again that we'd stayed put on our end of town.
"You the guy killed them two niggras,” this big cowboy said, and, I swear, for a minute, I thought he might be Mister Floyd from Amarillo. The fact that he was pointing me out to everybody around him, like he'd discovered a prize in his Crackerjacks, wasn't endearing him to me.
"The man hasn't killed anybody,” Slant said. "As a matter of fact, we're trying to find out what really happened to the young fellow in question.” The cowboy didn't seem to like Slant's answer much. Didn't really seem too high on Slant in general.
"You mean that niggra?” he said.
"We think the cops might have done it and set my friend here up” Slant said. "We're lookin' for anybody might have heard anything.”
Cowboy wasn't quite ready to start buying me drinks, but the answer did seem to cool him down. Of course, all the sudden, everybody out there had been too busy with choir practice and lawn tennis tournaments to know anything of actual value.
I hung around long enough to tell the story of me shooting my toe off two different times and had to pull my boot off each time to prove it. A couple of the guys said they had heard the story or one like it, and one young boy tried to get me to reenact the episode. The bartender was not the one who had been there years before, but he started looking at me like he might want to throw me out again all the same, so we finished up our drinks and told them all goodbye.
I was coming back down Jacksboro like a drunk at the wheel of a road grader.
"Dutch, you okay?” Slant said.
I said that it had finally hit me. That I should have gotten myself good and arrested while I had my big chance.
"I'd be behind enemy lines,” I said, "instead of out here trying to find some plan of attack. Dandy would see the smarts in that.”
Slant said that he'd seen merry old England since Dandy has seen smarts. Forget about the cops for awhile, he said, but I couldn't forget Lieutenant Kimble, great-grandfather of the dead kid at my doorstep. He was the one solid lead that I had.
"Let's just go find Kimble. Have a little heart to heart with him.”
I passed out sometime during the early morning and woke up back in my own bed. For a minute or two, I wondered if it had all been a dream, like the one I'd had of carrying Dandy around through the streets. But, no, I still had the smell of Jacksboro in my nose. I pulled off my boots, counted toes, and started warming up breakfast on the radiator.
30
"An ex-gunfighter who now runs his small town's newspaper fears that he might have to take up his guns again when a gang of outlaws rides into town, intent on taking over,” Ruthie Nell read from the morning's The Fort Worth Press and looked up. "You remember. Randolph Scott has the lead role.”
She got a bang out of the fact that the gunfighter ran a newspaper. I said she'd better take a closer look at the fella she was working for. The movie, Fort Worth, had
premiered a year or so earlier but was making a return engagement at the Deal, the only theater Ruthie would go to. She was trying to get me to see it. Way I figured, I hadn't gone the first time, and if I'd missed much sleep in the months since, it wasn't due to that.
I was steamed at her for a story that had appeared in the paper a few days prior, where Stubblefield refused to dismiss me as a viable suspect in the case. "Curridge has a lot of the characteristics we look for when we're hunting for a killer,” he'd said. "The classic loner, drifter type.”
It hadn't surprised me that Stub would say such a thing. Hadn't really even shocked that the paper had printed it. That great big old "by Ruth Parker” at the end had got my goat though, and I was making sure she knew it.
"Never mind,” she said, "I thought you might be interested in the new story I'm working on.”
"You gonna go for broke and try to get me the electric chair now?” I said.
"I went to Dallas and spoke with your friend, Dandy,” she said.
Ruthie Nell had walked into his room on the second floor of the VA Hospital and introduced herself to the nurse, who sat in a folding chair next to Dandy's bed, and Dandy's sister, who sat against a wall with her ear pressed up against a radio.
"I was hoping to speak to Mr. O'Bannon,” she said.
The nurse never looked up.
"You doin' a feature about the boy?” the sister said, and put her ear back up to the radio like she was waiting for a secret message. She looked to Ruthie to be about her momma's age, which was sixty, but she didn't act like any sixty year old she'd ever seen.
"If everything works out, that might happen," Ruthie said.
"Well, you can start by talkin' to me,” the sister said.
"I've knowed 'im ever since he was born.”
The nurse stood, put a pillow in her chair, and sat back down on it.
"He got a brother name Doyle. He come first,” the sister continued. "Then momma had me. Dandy here, he's the baby.”
Ruthie Nell had to admit, he looked kind of like a big old baby laying up in the bed. She looked close to make sure he was breathing, then got to wondering if he could hear what they were saying.
"So is your brother able to talk?” she said.
"Lord a'mighty,” said the nurse, who, up until that moment, had been doing her best to pretend she wasn't even in the same room. "Can that man ever talk. Ever once in a while, I have to tell him to shut up and give it a rest.”
"If you don't mind me asking,” Ruthie said, "can you tell me what he's being treated for?”
"They don't got any idea,” said the sister. She looked at the nurse, who was back to ignoring them. "They knew, think he'd still be comin' here, almost forty years after the war?”
Later on, when the nurse had gotten off duty but the next one hadn't made her away around yet, Ruthie Nell moved over to the folding chair. Dandy looked about as medicated, his speech was about as slurred, as it normally was when she saw him out on the town.
"Dandy,” she said, "you remember talkin' to Dutch Curridge out at the dance hall a few nights ago?” Dandy was in sure enough slow motion, but Ruthie thought she saw him trying to work his jaw into speaking position. Unfortunately, it never quite got there.
"Mr. O'Bannon, you have the right to just lay there and remain silent. Furthermore, if you say one damn word to anybody from the press, I can assure you that not only can it be held against you, it will come back to haunt your ass.”
Ruthie jumped to her feet just as Sheriff Stubblefield came through the door.
"Ma'am, as for you, I hope you have the good sense to remain silent as well," he said. "You understand what I'm saying.”
"I'm not sure I do,” Ruthie said.
"Ma'am,” Stub said. "I don't have to even tell you this, but I will. We've had one tail on you and another on your fella, Mr. Curridge. I kinda figured one of you would eventually lead us to this man right here. Now Mr. O'Bannon's wanted on some pretty serious charges. I don't expect you'd like to be brought in as an accessory.”
By then, the new nurse had followed the commotion into the room and was trying in vain to grab a handle on things. Stubblefield brought out a long piece of paper. She looked at it and left the room again. Within minutes, Dandy was sliding off the bed, into a pair of slacks and grabbing his hat.
"What are you charging him with?” Ruthie said, switching gears and clearly sensing an even bigger story in the making.
"When I'm ready to talk to the press, I'll be sure to let you know, darlin',” Stubblefield said as he walked Dandy from the room and into the corridor. Dandy looked at her and grinned.
"I was only doin' my job.”
"Ain't we all,” I said to her as I sat there and listened to Ruthie wrap up the story.
"You believe he had the nerve to call you my fella?” she said.
The signs definitely seemed to be pointing at Dandy. I wondered what Stub knew, whether he knew anything I didn't. It was likely that he knew everything I did, which meant he had to be aware that one of his own men was blood related to one of the victims and had a known vendetta against the other. We also all knew the lengths Stub would go to, to protect anyone on the force.
"Only thing that really bothers me,” she said, "is that the son of a bitch was following me.”
"He was just using you to get at Dandy,” I said.
"I don't like being used,” she said.
"Now you know how I been feelin',” I said and gave her one of my sad looks.
The next thing on my list was to locate Lieutenant Kimble. I figured I could go down to the jail , maybe see Dandy, and probably kill two birds with one stone. But locking horns with Kimble on his own ground was foolhardy. I needed to catch him on neutral ground.
I figured what was good for the goose was good enough for the gander. I'd follow him around a little bit, see where things might lead.
31
By 1951, Crawford Jackson had been living a fairly good life. Besides the fact that he'd moved in with his mother, in order to save money and help her with medical problems, he was an unattached man on the go, with a solid job and a decent paycheck, a group of hip friends and a habit of getting by on very little sleep.
Every evening, he would close the store down at eight o'clock and join his friends for a night on the town. Monday night meant the Jim Hotel, Tuesday, the Green Parrot. Wednesday was either the Four Deuces or the 3939, Thursday the Skyliner. Weekends, they might even go over to Dallas.
Most of the clubs had a mixed clientele, mostly jazz music, some blues. They weren't into the western stuff. Liquor laws were nonexistent. Every club had their own bootlegger, most had an ample supply of reefer as well.
Crawford got into the reefer on a personal level, and, within a short amount of time, had seen the potential for it on a business level as well. He started buying it from a guy he met at the Skyliner and selling it for a healthy profit, right from the counter at the record store.
About the same time, Chester Merkley made his first appearance in Crawford's life, talking him, over his mother's objections, into putting a jukebox and a cigarette machine in the store. Merkley was servicing them, taking the biggest portion of the proceeds, when he discovered that Crawford was making more money dealing marijuana than Merkley's own cigarettes. It didn't tickle the man.
"Best I can tell you," Crawford said, "Chester Merkley had your friend, Sheriff Stubblefield come by and threaten me. Well, it was no threat. He was going to ticket me and shut me down. We would of lost everything.
I couldn't bear for my mother to find out. She was already dying by this time. We all knew it was a matter of time. And I couldn't let her die, thinking I was a loser, that I had lost everything she had worked for.
Of course, Mr. Merkley comes back around with a couple of his thugs, and he's all too happy to make a deal with me. This is right about the time he's taking over the Quality Grove Department Store from the Prices, and he wants me to buy all of the music inventory, says it's an ob
vious move to make. He comes up with the terms, and even decides he'll provide protection for me so I can keep selling the dope on the side.
I'm sure you can see what happened next. He starts taking a cut of that too, and, when I say a cut, it's suddenly like I'm working for him. I'm his boy. I get a small fee for my services, he's taking the lion's share, or I should say two lions' shares. It don't take long for me to wise up. Merkley and Sheriff Stubblefield are sharing all the proceeds from my work, and I can't say a darn thing, or they'll shut me down quick as a wink."
I asked him if he was still working for them.
"I am," he said. "My mother found out, and it finished her off. She didn't know all the details, but she found out enough."
"How did that happen?" I said.
"She was talking to Sheriff Stubblefield. It couldn't of been more than a month before she died. Just asking him what she needed to do to make sure that the store would be safely transferred to me, trying to set everything right, see. And the Sheriff just laughed. Told her that Chester Merkley already had controlling interest in the store and wasn't nothing she could do about that."
My heart felt for the guy. The whole system seemed to be upside down to me. And while I could survive and make my way through an upside down world, it was becoming clearer to me that there were a lot of folks, like Whitey Calhoun and Crawford Jackson, who didn't have the necessary skills.
