They Don't Dance Much: A Novel

by James Ross

  I looked at the check. ‘Seventy cents,’ I said. The old man blinked his eyes. ‘Seventy cents!’ he said. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all,’ I said. He laughed and gave me the money.

  As soon as he left I had Matt get Smut out of the kitchen, where he was eating his dinner. When he came out front I said, ‘Smut, there was a tourist and his wife in here just now.’

  ‘I know it,’ Smut said, and he was still chewing on whatever it was he’d been eating. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Nothing. Only they laughed at the price we charged them for a fried chicken dinner,’ I said.

  He swallowed hard. ‘Laughed, hah?’ he said. ‘That’s bad. I’ll fix it so they won’t laugh no more. Matt, come here!’

  Matt came up to where we were standing. He took his time about it. ‘What you want?’ he said.

  ‘Listen,’ Smut said. ‘The next time a tourist comes in here you just figure up fifty per cent of the regular price and add it onto his bill. You know how to figure fifty per cent of something, don’t you?’

  Matt stood there looking sleepy and dumb; a thing he did well. He was a blubber-faced boy that had a freckled, dirty skin and red hair. ‘I reckon so,’ he said.

  ‘If a tourist’s bill was to come to a dollar and five cents, how much would you charge him?’ Smut asked.

  Matt studied it for a while. ‘Bout a dollar and a half,’ he finally said.

  ‘That’s fairly close,’ Smut said. But he wasn’t satisfied. ‘How much is half of fifty-five cents, Matt?’

  ‘Well, a quarter’s half of fifty cents,’ Matt said. He looked like he wasn’t interested, but that was the way he always looked.

  ‘I said fifty-five cents,’ Smut said. ‘Whenever a tourist comes in here you come to me, or to Jack, and ask us how much to charge him.’

  ‘How’m I gonna tell if he’s a tourist or not?’ Matt asked.

  Smut stood up and looked down at the top of Mart’s head. ‘Hell-fire, Matt! Do you mean to stand there and tell me you can’t tell a tourist from nobody else?’

  ‘Not all the time,’ Matt said.

  ‘It’s like falling off a log.’ They all wear sun glasses. By the time they get this far south practically all of them has got their nose up so high that they can’t see nothing in a place like this but the top of the walls. They—’

  Matt interrupted him. ‘If they got their nose that high, how do they see how to drive a car?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt me,’ Smut said. ‘Business is all they talk about. When they go down they’ll say, “I guess the business will be all right till I get back.” When they are on the way back they’ll say, “Sure will be glad to get back to the office.” As a general rule tourist women is worse than the men. If a lady tourist takes a notion for her husband to do something crazy he’s got to do it right off, or she’ll take out a ruler and whip him in the hand. Women run things up North. That’s why the men love to come South. Down here they see a lot of niggers that makes them feel a little less like a worm.’

  ‘You still ain’t told me how to tell a tourist from nobody else,’ Matt said, looking pretty sulky.

  Smut looked disgusted. ‘Your daddy must have been a tourist,’ he said.

  Matt turned and walked away from us. ‘Who was yours?’ he asked Smut.

  ‘If I was paying him anything I’d fire the bastard right now,’ Smut said to me.

  Smut followed Matt out the back way. I guess he went to the blackjack game in the cabin. I didn’t see him again till dark. I stayed in the roadhouse all afternoon. Matt came back and stayed too, till about two o’clock, when Sam got back from Corinth. Then Matt went down to the cabin they slept in and Sam took his place. Badeye Honeycutt was in the blackjack game, Dick Pittman­ told me, and he didn’t show up till Smut came back. Dick sat outside all that afternoon. He sold a little gas. Around three o’clock a bunch of boys that usually hung out around Baucom’s Pharmacy in Corinth came out. They stayed in the dance hall and played the nickelodeon.

  Toward dark Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt came out to see what the new place was like. He walked around it, tapping the walls with his walking-stick that was made out of hickory, and puffing his stinking old corncob pipe. After awhile he came inside and sat down at the counter. He was an old man that went to the war in Cuba. He had a wooden leg and got a pension from the government. He was bald-headed and didn’t have any teeth. Not even false teeth. But that didn’t make much difference. He drank most of his meals, anyway. He beckoned me over to where he was.

  ‘Gimme a beer, boy,’ he said, and spat on the floor. I got him the beer, and he grabbed it quick so as not to let any of the foam get away from him. He smacked his lips and sucked in his gums. ‘What in the devil you all mean puttin up a place like this out here in these piney woods?’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t put it up,’ I said.

  ‘Who did? That Milligan boy?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s Smut’s. His idea was to make money,’ I said.

  ‘He may do it,’ the old man said, and he pushed back his greasy old hat. He stuck his face down over the bottle of beer and sucked some of it up, making a fuss like a hog over a slop trough. ‘He may do it. But I doubt it.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked him.

  ‘There ain’t no money in this country. This here is a farmin country. God knows there ain’t no money to farmin nowadays.’

  ‘There’s mills in Corinth,’ I said.

  ‘Cotton mills ain’t no money to this country,’ he said. ‘The mill hands don’t git to work half the time. When they do git their little pay checks the company takes it right back, for furnish, and for house rent and wood, and all. This is got to be a pore country.’

  ‘Why, the knitters in the hosiery mills make good money,’ I said.

  Old Man Joshua spat on the floor again. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘They make right smart wages till they eyes go bad on them and they have to go back to farmin, or git on relief. They don’t never save no money. Spend it all on cars and ridin.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll spend some of it out here,’ I said. ‘And maybe we can take in some of the tourists going south.’

  ‘Oh, Yankees is got the money,’ Old Man Joshua said. ‘Gimme another beer.’ He pushed the empty bottle away from him. ‘They’s a few folks in Corinth got money too,’ he went on. ‘Henry Fisher is got plenty money. But folks like that go to the beach and to Californy, and to Charlotte, and up Nawth to spend it. They ain’t comin out here for no amusement.’

  I thought about something then. ‘Listen, Mr. Joshua,’ I said. ‘I hear some folks say Bert Ford has got money. Is there anything to that?’

  Old Man Joshua shook his head. ‘Don’t know. Some say he have; some say not. Bert won’t talk nothin less’n he’s been a-drinkin a right smart spell.’ He poured a little beer out of the bottle into the palm of his hand and lapped it up like a dog drinking water.

  ‘You want a glass?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘Naw. Onct I was out to Bert’s house to see him. He been on a drunk for a month or two. He talked mighty foxy to me that night. He says: “Joshua, if you got money don’t put it in no bank. Give it back to Old Mother Yurth. Bury it.” I don’t know what in the Dinah he was talkin bout, less’n he meant he buried what money he had.’

  ‘Maybe he’d lost money in some bank and was talking about that,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he was.’ the old man said. ‘Gimme another beer.’

  I saw he didn’t know anything about it, so I stopped talking to him. He finished that beer and went over where the nickelodeon was. He was crazy about music. Any sort of music.

  That night there was a fair crowd out. When we counted up at one A.M. on Monday morning we had pulled in fifty dollars that day. Besides that, Smut had won seventeen dollars playing blackjack. He’d got the boys to playing with the trimmed cards. When they quit that evening, the cards weren’t the only doings that had been trimmed.

  We didn’t get rich the next week. As far as business was co
ncerned, things were dull as a froe, but on Thursday afternoon Lola Fisher drove out again.

  It was early when she got there. I was inside when I heard a car drive up. I knew Dick was out there, so I didn’t even look up from the paper I was reading. In a little while I heard somebody laugh. It sounded like Lola. I went to the window and looked out. Smut was standing beside her car and was talking to her. He must have been pretty funny that day, because Lola was certainly doing a lot of laughing. I went back to my paper.

  I had just about finished it when they came inside. Smut was showing her around the new joint.

  ‘Hello, Jack,’ she said to me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  She had on a red leather jacket that day, and a hat that looked like hell. Altogether I reckon it was what you’d call a sports costume. Smut pretended to be pointing out the various features of the roadhouse, but mostly he was getting an eyeful of Lola.

  ‘Look at that art I got splashed up there on the walk,’ Smut said. He pointed at the picture of the women taking a bath, but he was looking at the back of Lola’s neck where it was white against the black of her hair.

  Lola looked where he pointed. ‘They’re pretty,’ she said. ‘Who painted the pictures, Smut?’

  ‘I done it evenings after work,’ Smut said.

  ‘You’re a big liar,’ Lola said, and laughed. Her laugh sounded nervous, like she was afraid somebody respectable might come in and find her there.

  ‘I actually done it,’ Smut said. ‘Business is drudgery to me. But I love Art. I sweat all day trying to make an honest dollar, but when the sun sinks in the west I lose myself in Art.’

  ‘Oh, pooey,’ Lola said. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at me, that half-scared smile. She commenced hitching at the corners of her hat.

  ‘Show me your dance hall and your roulette wheel,’ she said to Smut.

  ‘I ain’t got a roulette wheel,’ Smut said, ‘but if you’ll come out and play it sometime, I’ll get one.’

  ‘Oh, I might get out some night,’ she said, and they went over to the other side and into the dance hall. Smut didn’t show her the kitchen. She wasn’t a girl that was specially interested in kitchens.

  In a minute I heard the nickelodeon start up, and then I thought I heard them gliding over the floor. I walked down toward the kitchen so I could see into the dance hall. They were dancing; Smut held her close to him and was looking down at her. She seemed to be interested in the looks of the floor.

  The nickelodeon kept going, off and on, for more than half an hour; then it stopped. After awhile Lola and Smut came back around the front of the building, and it wasn’t long till Lola left.

  I couldn’t quite figure out why she slipped out to see Smut Milligan. She had the richest man in Corinth and ought to have been satisfied. I reckon the trouble was that she was married to a man that never took a chance. He didn’t have to. But Smut would take a chance on anything, and when she was with him I think she got to feeling the same way. It was a feeling she had to have now and then. I saw she aimed to have him, one way or another. It wasn’t a thing that mattered so much to Smut Milligan by then. The main thing he wanted was money.

  There wasn’t any big football game in the state that Saturday; still we took in as much money as we had the Saturday we opened. We did all right on Sunday too, but things got quiet early that night. About the only thing going on that night was a poker game.

  It was a three-handed game at first: Baxter Yonce, Wilbur Brannon, and Bert Ford. At first Baxter Yonce didn’t want to get in the game. He said he had a headache. But finally he let Wilbur persuade him to go back to the private room with them. There wasn’t anybody else back there. About eight o’clock I carried them some cracked ice. I couldn’t tell who was winning. They all had their coats off. Baxter Yonce’s shirt was wet with sweat. He played a hard game of cards.

  It wasn’t late that night when Smut walked up to the cash register and asked me how much we’d taken in that day.

  ‘About sixty dollars.’ I said.

  ‘Well, gimme twenty-five dollars,’ he said. ‘I want to make about fifty more in this poker game going on in the back. I feel lucky tonight.’

  I gave him the money: four fives, three ones, and two dollars in change. He stuck it in his coat-pocket and went toward the back. He was whistling when he went in the side door.

  He stayed in there an hour or more, then came back to where I was.

  ‘Gimme twenty-five more,’ he said, dead-panned as a statue.

  ‘You losing?’ I asked him. It wasn’t any of my business, and I wouldn’t have said it if I’d thought.

  ‘The night’s young. I’ll clean them buzzards yet,’ he said. Still he wasn’t whistling this time when he walked off.

  When it was midnight everybody had left the place except for Badeye and me. Badeye was polishing glasses and I knew he’d take one more drink and hit the hay. When he got to polishing glasses and picking up stuff on the floor and brushing specks off the counter it was a good sign that he was about drunk enough for that night. I locked the front door and went back to see if the poker players wanted anything. If they didn’t I was going to bed.

  I got there just in time for the fireworks. I reckon they’d been playing poker for a spell and couldn’t make much headway in any direction. Anyway it must have been too slow for Smut. Right after I got inside the door he threw the deck of cards he was shuffling on the table and said: ‘To hell with this. I’m tired of this. Let’s roll the dice for a little while and call it a night. Course you all can stay here long’s you want to. But I’m going to bed myself rather than keep on like this.’

  Baxter Yonce yawned. I noticed there were dry streaks in his shirt. ‘I never had no luck with the bones,’ he said.

  ‘Why, sure, Smut, I’d as soon roll you a few times as not,’ Wilbur Brannon said.

  Smut got up and walked over to the window. He took a little box off the window sill and shook two dice out of it. ‘Roll you for five bucks, Wilbur,’ he said.

  Wilbur looked at Bert Ford, who was sitting there rolling his snuff-brush around in his box of snuff. ‘Want to get in on this, Bert?’ Wilbur said.

  ‘Naw,’ Bert said, and put the snuff-brush into his mouth.

  Wilbur rolled first. He rolled a nine. Smut came up with an eleven to start with and Wilbur peeled off a five-spot from a small roll he took out of his pocket. They rolled again and Smut won again. Wilbur didn’t pay him that time, but said, ‘That’s five I owe you.’ He looked toward Bert Ford. ‘Still don’t want to get in?’ he said.

  Bert hesitated a minute. ‘Yes, by God, I will get in,’ he said.

  They got to rolling them up against the wall pretty fast. I don’t know that there’s any craft in rolling dice—just luck. But for a while Smut was lucky. He was taking ten dollars in every time they rolled. But just as sudden the luck started toward Bert Ford. He won eight times in a row before he lost one to Wilbur. Losing to either one of them was bad for Smut, for he’d been the main loser in the poker game. But he wouldn’t quit.

  After a while Wilbur said: ‘Well, I’ve already lost thirty dollars more than I won playing poker. I think I’ll quit this dice-chunking right now.’

  Bert Ford looked around his back. ‘Got enough, Milligan?’ he said.

  Smut gave him a hard look. ‘Hell, no,’ he said. ‘Roll.’

  ‘All right, son,’ Bert said. He rolled an eleven.

  Smut lost three in a row before he won. Then he said: ‘Here I go now. Watch my smoke.’

  ‘I’m watching,’ Bert Ford said. He took off his hat and threw it on the floor. He spat toward the corner of the room, and looked around him like he was amongst enemies and was afraid somebody’d knife him in the back.

  Baxter, Wilbur, and myself bent over there and watched the dice rolling. Niggers talk to the dice, but Smut and Bert didn’t say a word. Maybe they were praying. If they were, Bert’s praying did the most good. He was lucky that night, or he was a better bones-throwe
r than Smut was. When they finally quit, Smut gave him a check. ‘Hold it off for a week, if you will,’ he said to Bert.

  ‘All right,’ Bert said. He took out his pocketbook, folded the check in the middle, and put it in there with the bills. He had a lot of bills in that cheap-looking pocketbook. If they were big ones he had a sight of money on him.

  Bert picked up his hat, dusted it across his legs, and put it on. He took his snuff-brush and snuffbox out of his hip pocket and took a big dip. ‘See you all later,’ he said, and went out the back door.

  Baxter had his mouth open all the time they were throwing the dice, but when Bert left he shut it. Then he opened it again and said, ‘Great God!’ He took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead.

  Wilbur Brannon laughed. ‘Some Bert,’ he said. ‘Didn’t know he fooled with the dice.’

  ‘He wasn’t fooling,’ Smut said. He grinned a sick grin when he said it.

  I went back to the front and turned out the lights. Badeye had already left. I knew Johnny Lilly was still in the kitchen and I went back there, for I was hungry. I was opening the refrigerator when Smut pushed open the swinging doors and came in.

  ‘Want me to fix you a sandwich?’ I said to him.

  ‘Jesus, no!’ he said. ‘I couldn’t eat after that.’ He came over to the refrigerator and got an ice cube and put it in a glass.

  ‘I need a drink,’ he said, and poured a stiff one out of a bottle that was on the top shelf of the refrigerator.

  He sat down in front of the stove and sipped his drink. I finished eating my sandwich and turned to go. ‘I locked the front door and turned out the lights,’ I said.

  Smut set the glass down on the table that was back of him. ‘Wasn’t that a hell of a way to lose money?’ he said. He propped his feet against the bottom of the stove and his elbows on his knees.

  ‘It was a quick way,’ I said, and started to walk away.