by James Ross
‘Damn if you ain’t narvous,’ he said. ‘You mighty young to be that narvous.’
‘I’ve always been nervous. All my folks were nervous,’ I said.
Dick sort of clucked his tongue. ‘Git you a bottle of this here Narvine,’ he said. ‘My mammy use to take it. It holp her a heap.’
‘I’ll have to try it,’ I said. But I decided I would stick to rye. Dick’s mother died in the insane asylum.
The coffee didn’t help me much, so I tried to eat an egg. But it wouldn’t go down very well, and finally I went out front and commenced sweeping out. I was sweeping under the counter when Dick Pittman came in and sat down. Dick looked all around him to make sure nobody else was near; then he spoke to me out of the side of his mouth.
‘I tell you I had a time last night, Jack,’ he said.
‘Is that a fact? When’d you get in?’
‘I just got in about an hour ago,’ Dick said. ‘Her old man works on the graveyard shift and don’t come in till seven. It sure was juicy stuff.’
So that put Dick out of the way. He didn’t know anything.
‘I guess you took a prophylactic when you got in?’ I said.
‘No,’ Dick said. ‘It ain’t any use for me to do that. She’s a clean girl. I’m the only one that’s gettin it. Just me and her husband.’ He got up and went back into the kitchen.
It was about ten o’clock when Smut came in the front. He didn’t look so good. There must not have been a drink left in the cabin. He didn’t even look toward me when he went by on his way to the kitchen.
In a minute he came back with a glass and a bottle of liquor. He sat down at the counter beside me.
‘You want a drink?’ he asked me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t you figure it’s a little dangerous to be drinking like this here in the morning?’
‘It ain’t nothing,’ he said. ‘I told Rufus I drunk too much last night, and the only way I knew how to get right was to take a little hair of the dog that bit me. He didn’t think nothing of it. Soon’s I get a couple of drinks under my belt I’ll be all right.’
After a couple of drinks he looked better. The color came back into his face. He held up his right hand and said, ‘Milligan has full control.’ His fingers didn’t tremble, but his eyes looked bloodshot.
‘Did you get your thinking done?’ I said to him. We were alone in the front.
‘Not all of it,’ he said, and wrinkled his eyebrows. ‘We got a couple of days’ leeway.’
‘Don’t count on it,’ I said.
‘Nobody’ll find him. That beer of Cat’s ain’t ready to run off. We didn’t leave no mess at his house, nor no fingerprints.’
‘Damn the fingerprints,’ I said. ‘But you can’t take anything for granted in this sort of business. He can’t stay in the beer long.’
‘I know he can’t,’ Smut said. ‘I’ll get rid of the money tonight. I got to figure out something to do with him.’ He took one cigarette out of his lumberjack pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. He got up from the counter and shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’m going to Corinth,’ he said. ‘May not be back till late. When I come back I’ll have something figured out.’ He turned up the collar of his lumberjack and went out the door.
10
THE MORNING PAPER MAN from Charlotte passed and threw out our paper a few minutes after Smut left. He usually got there before eight o’clock, but when it was cold weather he would be late. I beat Dick Pittman to the paper and began reading it. Dick looked so disappointed that I gave him the part that had the comic section in it. There wasn’t much news, but on the front page it said, ‘Relief from Cold Wave Promised South.’ I was glad to see that till I happened to think about Bert Ford. If it got warm the beer might work off sooner and Catfish would have to get ready and run the liquor. Before then we had to get rid of the body somehow. Thinking about it I got worried and went and got a bottle of beer and drank it.
I was drinking the beer when Catfish came in from the kitchen. He was all bundled up in overall jackets and old sweaters, and he had on a black leather cap with the flaps pulled down over his ears. He blew his breath on his hands and rubbed them together.
‘I cain’t stand this,’ he said. ‘I ain’t use to weather like this. If it don’t moderate in another day or two, I reckin I might as well pack my satchel and move furder south.’
Dick looked up from the funny paper. ‘Aw, it ain’t so cold. I looked at that thermometer we got outside and it wasn’t but eighteen.’
‘Well, how low you want it to get?’ Catfish asked him.
‘Well, I ain’t seen no zero weather this winter,’ Dick said.
‘I ain’t neither,’ Catfish said, ‘and don’t aim to. If it git just one more degree lower I’m leavin this ice and mess. I’m goin to Mexico.’
Dick went back to reading the paper. He had to spell out the words and it was a slow job for him. Catfish looked over at me. ‘What the matter with you, Mr. Jack?’ he said. ‘You mighty quiet this mornin.’
‘I don’t feel good,’ I said.
Catfish looked sympathetic. ‘You takin the flu?’
‘No. I drank too much last night,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘Sleep the best thing for that. Sleep and rest, and shawt rations for a day or two.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ I said.
Catfish blew on his hands again; he looked around the room. ‘Where Mr. Smut? I got to see Mr. Smut.’
‘He’s gone to Corinth,’ I said. ‘Might not be back till late.’
‘I specially want to see him,’ Catfish said. He sat down at the counter beside me. ‘I come by the beer this mornin,’ he said.
I dropped the paper on the floor. For a minute I couldn’t say anything. I looked at Catfish, but he was taking out his sack of tobacco and his cigarette papers. You couldn’t tell anything from the look on his face.
‘Did you look in the beer?’ I asked. I looked off at the wall when I said it, and yawned.
‘I took the kag off the top of the still and smelt the beer and tasted of it,’ Catfish said. ‘But it ain’t ready yet. That’s what’s worryin me.’ He poured the tobacco on the cigarette paper, caught the strings of the tobacco sack in his teeth, and pulled the sack shut.
‘How come it’s worrying you?’
He licked the cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. ‘Gimme a match, Mr. Jack.’ I gave him a match. He lit the cigarette and inhaled a draw. ‘I wish it was ready right now. It look like I got to go to Florence, South Callina. Read this here letter.’
He reached inside his coats and pulled out a dirty envelope. I took it and pulled out a sheet of ruled tablet paper that was inside it. It was written with a pencil and was pretty dim.
Dear Ander [it began—Catfish’s name was Andrew]. Pa done had a stroke. You know he done had too other stroke. He right low. If you want to see Pa alife you better come on to see him. Don’t look like he can stay here long. We all well as common. Ant May broke her hip this last past week. The doar step give in with her. Hope you all well as common.
GORGY
I think Catfish had a sister that was named Georgia.
I handed the letter back to him. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I guess it would be all right for you to go on.’
‘Only thing worryin me is the beer,’ Catfish said. ‘I feels a responsibility for it. I been makin liquor for Mr. Smut two year and ain’t never let no beer go to the bad yet. But that beer won’t be ready to run for three or four days, even if it was to turn real warm.’
‘How long did you aim to stay in South Carolina?’ I asked him.
‘That’s it. I don’t know. If I was to go down there and Pa was done dead, why I’d just go to the buryin and mess around down there a day or two, and come on back. But you know how it is. He might linger on for days and days. Cose if it keeps on cold as this, that beer won’t hurt for a week or ten days. Beer cain’t do no workin in weather cold as this here.’
‘I’ll swear I don’t know, Catfish,’ I said. ‘If you want to wait around here I reckon Smut’ll be back sometime before night.’
‘I cain’t wait long. I got to git up some firewood. I ain’t hardly got a stick of wood at the house,’ Catfish said.
I wanted to tell him to go on to South Carolina, because I didn’t like for him to be fooling around in that beer. But I didn’t know what Smut might be planning.
‘I’ll tell Smut when he comes in,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’ll drive out to see you about it.’
‘All right,’ Catfish said. ‘Before I forgit it, gimme two sacks of Bull Durm and a extra book of papers.’
I got him the tobacco and gave him some matches. He stuck it all in his pockets. ‘Charge it, Mr. Jack,’ he said, and went out the back way, through the kitchen.
Smut got back earlier than I thought he would. When he had something on his mind he liked to get in the pick-up and just ride till he got his thinking done. It wasn’t much after one when he came in the kitchen where I was eating a light snack. Johnny and Rufus were eating at a table over behind the stove, and they were talking and making plenty of racket.
‘Catfish was here to see you,’ I said to Smut. He had headed toward the refrigerator, but he stopped.
‘What’d he want to see me about?’
‘He came by the beer this morning,’ I said.
The color went out of Smut’s face and it turned gray. He opened his mouth, then shut it, and sat down slow and careful in the chair that was beside mine.
‘Jesus! Did he notice anything?’ Smut whispered to me. He looked over where Rufus and Johnny were laughing and talking.
‘I don’t think so. He said he looked at it and tasted of it to see how it was coming along.’
Smut licked his lips with the end of his tongue. ‘How come him to say anything about it if he was just examining it?’
‘He wants to go to South Carolina. He was looking to see how long the beer could wait before it would have to be run off.’
Smut spoke in his regular voice. ‘What’s he want to go to South Carolina for?’
‘His daddy’s about to die. He wants to go see him.’
Smut looked relieved. ‘Is that all?’ he said. ‘Don’t scare me like that. Whyn’t you tell him to go on and stay a couple of weeks?’
‘I told him I’d tell you when you got back and maybe you’d run out there and talk to him about it,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe you wanted to move it out of the beer about tonight and then let Catfish make up the liquor when it was time.’
‘Hell, let him go to South Carolina,’ Smut said. ‘I’m glad this come up. I got to change my plans a little, but that’s all right.’
He got up from the chair and his color was back to normal. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said. He went to the refrigerator and poured two liquor glasses full of liquor. He brought them back to the table where I was sitting.
‘I don’t want any,’ I told him.
He drank his off, then drank the one he’d poured for me. ‘Let’s go out to Catfish’s,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you. We won’t be gone long.’
Smut got a piece of cold roast beef and half a loaf of bread out of the refrigerator. He gobbled that down, then took a tomato and commenced eating it, and we went out the front. Badeye was sitting in there, drinking his usual beer, and reading the sports page of that morning’s paper. There were two boys from Corinth, Joe Murray and Harvey Wood, playing the pin-ball machine that Smut had just had installed in the front. They both had on boots and looked like they’d been rabbit-hunting.
We got in the pick-up and headed down the River Road. Catfish lived right on the river, about half a mile off the highway, and not very far from where his still was. But we had to take another road from the one we took the night before when we carried Bert Ford to the still.
We didn’t talk much till we got to Catfish’s house. It was a shack that looked like it could use a new roof. I think it had three rooms. On the north side, where the window panes were busted, Catfish had nailed rusty tin over the windows to keep the wind out. He was a fellow that disliked a cold wind.
We drove up in his yard and stopped the pick-up beside the well. Catfish’s car was parked a little ways down, beside the hogpen. Catfish was sawing wood with a little nigger boy. They used a crosscut saw, and every time Catfish pulled the saw to him he jerked the little nigger about two inches off the ground.
When we got up pretty close they stopped sawing and Catfish turned around.
‘How you today, Mr. Smut?’ Catfish said.
‘I think I’ll live, but it don’t make no difference to me,’ Smut said. ‘Hello, Boss-Man,’ he said to the little nigger boy.
Boss-Man grinned and slipped around behind Catfish’s coat-tails. Catfish looked over his shoulder at him. ‘Go on in the house, Boss-Man. I’ll call you when I git ready to saw some more wood,’ he said.
Little Boss-Man made a dive for the back door and went inside the house.
‘I hear you got to go to South Carolina,’ Smut said.
Catfish stuck his hands in his pockets and shivered. ‘I would ax you all in to the fire,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like to be talkin bout all this liquor and beer and mess in front of the chillun.’
‘That’s all right,’ Smut said.
‘Yes, sir,’ Catfish said, ‘it begin to look like I got to go down there to see my old daddy. I ain’t seen him in five year and he mighty low now. Mighty low. Cose I cain’t do nothin to help him, but it look to me like I ought to go down there. I don’t want it said that I didn’t go nigh him in his last sickness.’
‘Well, go ahead,’ Smut told him. ‘Don’t worry about the beer. If it gets ripe I can run it off.’
‘I was thinkin bout that,’ Catfish said. ‘Wonderin if you knowed how to make a run of liquor.’
‘I can make it all right,’ Smut said. ‘You go on to South Carolina and stay as long as you want to. Any reasonable length of time. If the beer gets ripe I’ll take care of it.’
Catfish took his hands out of his pockets and blew on them. ‘Much oblige, Mr. Smut,’ he said. ‘If I can git my car started, I’ll go tomorrow.’
We left then. As soon as we got out of the yard into the road, Smut said: ‘Now, this is working out right. Listen, we got to get that beer to working and run it off right quick. In a couple of days or so.’
‘What about Bert Ford?’ I asked.
‘I’ll take care of him when I run off the liquor.’
‘How’ll you take care of him?’
‘I’ll take care of him,’ Smut said. ‘Don’t let it bother you.’
We turned off the dirt road then, onto the highway.
‘What about the money?’ I asked Smut.
‘I’ll make some shift about that. Probably tonight. Listen, don’t worry about the money. We’ll divide it later on, but right now we got to hide it and sit tight. This is going to be a drawn-out thing, and our only chance is to let it die down. We got to take it slow and easy.’
He sort of slumped down over the steering wheel and steered with his left hand. He stuck his right hand inside his lumberjack and got out a cigarette. I stuck the lighter in the slot and when it was ready I handed it to him. He lit the cigarette and raised up.
‘I wonder about Catfish,’ he said.
‘He didn’t see anything,’ I said.
‘I kind of wonder,’ Smut said.
‘Hell, he’d been running around raising the roof if he’d seen Bert,’ I said. ‘We’d have heard plenty about it.’
‘I guess that’s right,’ Smut said. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hell, we got the money anyway. I don’t think Dick would have noticed anything.’
‘He stayed all night with his married woman in the mill village,’ I said. ‘He was bragging to me about it.’
‘You find out when he got in?’ Smut asked.
‘About six o’clock this morning,’ I said.
A little after dark I was sitting out front with Badeye
when Old Man Joshua Lingerfelt walked into the place. He had on a toboggan skullcap and mittens. He walked across the floor, tapping it with his home-made walking stick, and came up to the cash register where Badeye was sitting.
‘Cold enough for you, Mr. Joshua?’ Badeye asked him.
The old man blew his nose and wiped it with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Hell, naw,’ he said. ‘Don’t git too cold for me. What I don’t like is hot weather, but cold weather suits me.’ He pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and slapped it down on the counter beside the cash register. ‘Gimme some nickels,’ he told Badeye.
Badeye gave him some change, and he went over to where the nickelodeon was and began playing that.
It was pretty cold that night, but some tourists stopped in and ate, and some school-teachers and their dates came out about eight o’clock and broke bread with us. The school-teachers drank beer and smoked cigarettes and danced in the dance hall, but didn’t play the slot machines, nor get up a crap game. It wasn’t all the school-teachers in Corinth, by any means. Just the ones with the most nerve. If the folks on the school board heard about them going to a roadhouse they might get fired, or anyway probably wouldn’t get re-elected for a job the next year.
Wilbur Brannon came out later than usual that night. He didn’t drink anything but some beer. He got the evening paper and sat at the counter drinking the beer and smoking cigarettes. After the school-teachers left, Wilbur put the paper on the counter and stretched.
‘See in the paper where it’s cold in Miami,’ he said to Smut Milligan, who was sitting at the counter too. ‘I’d aimed to go to Florida in a week or so, but if it’s going to be cold down there I might as well stay here.’
‘It’ll be apt to get warm in a few days,’ Smut said.
‘I suppose so,’ Wilbur said. He took a cigarette out of his cigarette case and lit it from the end of the one he’d been smoking. ‘By the way,’ he said to Smut. ‘I haven’t seen Bert around here in several days.’
‘No. He hasn’t been here in a couple of days,’ Smut said.
‘Probably been too cold for him to stir out,’ Wilbur said.
