They Don't Dance Much: A Novel

by James Ross

  I hung around the roadhouse till it was dark that night. About seven-thirty I went inside and started to the kitchen for something to eat. But just then we had a customer, and before I was through giving him his change there was another one. After that I was plenty busy. The rush started that night as sudden as a rainstorm in the summer-time.

  About eight o’clock I was hungry as a bear. Badeye was hungry too. He said something to Smut about being relieved for a few minutes while he grabbed a sandwich. Smut brought him a sandwich from the kitchen and asked him if he couldn’t make out with that for the time being. Badeye said he could, and Smut walked up to the cash register.

  ‘You want me to get you something to eat?’ he asked me.

  ‘Bring me a bowl of soup,’ I said.

  ‘What kind of soup you want?’

  ‘Chicken soup, tomato soup, vegetable soup. Just get me some soup,’ I said.

  It was some time before he came back with the soup. He set it on the top of the counter, next to the cash register. I looked at it and it was supposed to be chicken soup.

  ‘That’s the greenest chicken soup I ever saw,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe the chicken had been eating grass just before his neck was wrung,’ Smut said.

  I dived into the soup. It tasted strange. But I was hungry and couldn’t hold back on account of that.

  ‘The soup’s bitter as gall,’ I told Smut, who was still standing beside me.

  ‘Probably it was made from a young rooster that had a lot of gall,’ Smut said. He started toward the back.

  I finished the bowl of soup and thought no more of it. But about an hour later when I lit a cigarette and tried to inhale a draw I nearly choked to death. My throat started burning. I went to the back and got a glass of water. There wasn’t anything the matter with the water, but I just couldn’t swallow it. I went back to the cash register and my throat was on fire. I looked under the counter, next to the bread box.

  There had been two packages of Paris green under there. Smut used to handle the stuff when he was interested in the farm trade. The farmers used it in mixtures to kill potato bugs. These two packages had been left over from that time and once I had asked Smut why he didn’t throw them away. But he hated to throw anything away. He said leave them there and he’d work them off on some farmer.

  But when I looked for the Paris green that night it was gone. I got sick at the stomach. I motioned for Badeye to come to the cash register.

  ‘I’m sick, Badeye,’ I said. ‘Knocked out. Tell Smut to get somebody else up here.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Badeye asked.

  ‘I’m sick at my stomach,’ I said.

  ‘Take a dose of soda,’ Badeye said.

  ‘That wouldn’t do me any good now,’ I said, and started to go.

  Badeye opened his mouth to say something, but a customer came up then and I went outside.

  I vomited a little out in the yard. Some folks were getting out of their car. They stopped and looked at me.

  ‘That’s the cashier of this place, drunk as a hog,’ I heard a girl say.

  I think it was Gyp Ward that was with the girl. ‘That boy ought to be fired,’ he told the girl.

  I staggered down to the cabin that the help stayed in. It was unlocked and I took a bottle of milk of magnesia out of their shower room. Then I went to my own cabin.

  By straining every muscle in my neck I finally managed to swallow a little water and some of the milk of magnesia. It didn’t make me feel any better after I got it down, but there was nothing else to take. I wanted a doctor, for I was scared and sick, but nobody came to my cabin and I wasn’t in shape to walk to the door after I got inside.

  Toward morning I dropped off to sleep and it was almost noon before I woke up. I got up then, feeling better, but when I dressed and started out the door I couldn’t make it.

  After a while Dick Pittman came down to see me. He asked me if I wanted anything. I had him bring me a couple of raw eggs. I told him my stomach was a little upset.

  About ten o’clock the next morning I felt well enough to dress again and try it up to the roadhouse. Every time I took a step it jarred my insides. My stomach still burned a little now and then. But the thing that burned me steadily was the fact that I was two nights behind in my hunt for the cash. By that morning I should have been over the hills and a far ways off with Smut Milligan’s zipper bag and the twelve thousand dollars.

  20

  I WALKED INTO THE ROADHOUSE and Smut was the only one there. He was sitting at the counter, working on the books. He looked up when I came in.

  ‘You feeling better?’ he asked me.

  ‘I feel all right,’ I said, and sat down beside him.

  ‘A man has to watch his stomach in the springtime,’ Smut said. ‘It don’t take much in the spring to upset a man’s stomach.’

  ‘Just a little poison,’ I said. ‘I don’t have it figured out yet. Whether you gave me too much, or not enough. I don’t know just what you had in mind.’

  Smut looked up from the ledger again. ‘What you talking about?’ he said.

  ‘I’m talking about Paris green,’ I said. ‘I don’t know whether you aimed to put enough in my soup to get rid of me at one shot, or if you were just aiming to give me a slug every now and then and rot my guts gradually.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Smut said. ‘I believe you’re crazy.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not crazy.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Smut said. He commenced writing in the ledger again.

  ‘There used to be two packages of Paris green under the counter,’ I said. ‘Right after I ate that soup you brought out to me night before last, I looked under the counter and the Paris green was gone. I don’t know what you did with the rest of it, but I know damned well you fed me a dose of it.’

  ‘You’re crazy. I throwed that stuff away a week ago,’ Smut said.

  ‘I don’t have it figured out yet,’ I said. ‘You’d be a fool to feed me enough to kill me right off the bat. You’re in hot water enough now. I reckon you were aiming to keep on feeding the stuff to me, so it’d look like something else killed me. Like maybe heart trouble did it.’

  Smut looked around toward the door. ‘I tell you you’re talking like a child,’ he said.

  ‘I guess you got the idea of slow poisoning from that slop you’re always reading in the Ace Detective Magazine,’ I said. ‘You better not risk the recipes they got in there. Writers make them up.’

  Smut shut the ledger and stood up.

  ‘I ain’t going to stay here and listen to this crap,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with your stomach, but I know one thing that’s wrong with you. You got diarrhea of the mouth.’ He put the ledger on the shelf back of the cash register and went outside and sat on the bench.

  After a while I went out there myself and sat on the other bench, and in a short time Badeye came up and sat down in the door. Badeye had a watch that was about the size of a small pone of cornbread. He took it out of his vest pocket and began winding it.

  ‘Milligan, you doing any good, practicing medicine these nights?’ Badeye asked.

  Smut looked puzzled. ‘Practicing medicine?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Badeye said. ‘Seen you going off night afore last with a little bag. You was toting a little bag like doctors tote. I thought maybe you was going off on a confinement case.’ Badeye snickered and wound his watch.

  Smut looked at me quick, then looked down at his shoes. He didn’t bother to answer Badeye.

  It must have been two o’clock when Smut got in the pick-up and drove off toward Corinth. I heard him tell Badeye that he was going in to shoot a little pool. He hadn’t more than got out of sight before Sam Hall and Matt Rush came up.

  ‘Where’s Smut?’ I heard Sam ask Badeye, who was sitting outside. I was at the counter, reading the paper.

  ‘He’s gone to Corinth to shoot a little pool,’ Badeye said.


  ‘That’s fine,’ Sam Hall said. He came inside and Matt was with him.

  Sam went behind the counter and got out a flat case that looked like a small suitcase. He stood it on the counter and unsnapped something. It was a portable typewriter in the case. Sam sat down on the stool in front of the typewriter. He took a sheet of paper out of his shirt-pocket, unfolded it, and stuck it in the typewriter.

  ‘I want to try this thing out,’ Sam said. ‘I started to take typing when I was in the tenth grade, but I quit after the first week. I didn’t have the money to get me a typing book. But I always was interested in a typewriter.’

  Sam looked down at his fingers that he had placed on the keys.

  ‘Now, this is the way you’re supposed to have your fingers fixed,’ he said to Matt Rush, who was standing over him, with his mouth wide open.

  Sam looked at his fingers and commenced hitting the keys, slow and careful. He typed out his name. S a m h a l l. ‘Confound it, I forgot to hit a capital “H,” ’ Sam said.

  ‘Whose typewriter is that?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know there was a typewriter around here.’

  ‘Smut got it yesterday in Corinth,’ Sam said. ‘The Jew’s having his yearly fire sale and Smut got the typewriter from him. He got something else too.’

  ‘He got him a safe,’ Matt Rush said.

  ‘A safe?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam Hall said. ‘A safe to keep money in. It was the one the Jew had. The Jew’s leaving town for good.’

  ‘Where’s the safe?’ I said.

  ‘In Smut’s cabin,’ Sam said. ‘He started to leave it up here but he said that was dangerous. He said he was going to keep it in his cabin, and from now on when he closed up at night would take the money down to his cabin and have it where he could stay with it. He acts like he thinks somebody might be going to try to rob him.’

  ‘Somebody might,’ Matt said. ‘Smut takes in a sight of money out here sometimes.’

  So that was where it was. That was all right too. I didn’t know anything about combinations, but I knew how to get a safe open. The only trouble was it would take some time to do it. But if he had it in a safe I had plenty of time now and could pick my chance. I was glad to hear about the safe.

  Badeye came inside then and noticed the typewriter out on the counter.

  ‘Smut Milligan’s going to raise hell with somebody for having his typewriter out,’ Badeye said.

  ‘I can get it back where it was before you can wink your eye,’ Sam said.

  Matt Rush looked at me. ‘You know how to operate one of these things, Jack?’ he asked.

  ‘I took typing when I was in school,’ I said.

  ‘You know the touch system?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I once did. Let me try it,’ I said. Sam moved over to the next stool and I took his place in front of the typewriter.

  It was a Remington and looked like it was practically new.

  ‘Let’s see you write your name with your eyes shut,’ Badeye said. I did it. Sam Hall looked at Matt. ‘You see?’ he said.

  I shut my eyes and wrote: ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is a specimen of the writing of this machine.’

  ‘You see?’ Sam asked Matt.

  ‘I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch!’ Matt Rush said.

  I typed on a while longer, then my stomach got to burning again and I went outside and got in the old roadster that Sam Hall had just traded for. I leaned back on the seat and was taking it easy when Catfish came up and spoke to me.

  ‘Mr. Smut gone to town, I reckin,’ Catfish said.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  Catfish sat down on the running board. ‘Wisht I’d a been here before he left. My car’s broke down and I got to go to town and git me a part or two. I could a rode with Mr. Smut.’

  ‘What’s broke about your car?’ I asked.

  Catfish took his hat off and ran his fingers through his wool.

  ‘I think it’s spirit done broke more’n anything else,’ he said. ‘But I ginrally goes to Mr. Baxter Yonce’s garage and he let me have some old used parts. I fixes it up and it runs on awhile longer.’

  Catfish put his hat back on his head and looked up at me.

  ‘Look here, Mr. Jack,’ he said. ‘What’s come over Mr. Smut? Is he done took and lost his mind?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, here a couple nights back I was makin liquor down on the branch. You know, in my regular stand, down toward the river. I got done early that night. Twarn’t more’n two o’clock in the morning. I headed back up the road to my house, and right in the mouth of Jacob’s Creek here was a car parked. It was a new coop. The moon was shinin and I think it was a red coop. They was a man in there had a woman. It was moonshiny, and I swear to God the man was Mr. Smut!’

  ‘What if it was?’ I said.

  ‘Nothin. Only he oughtn’t to git a woman out on that road. If that gits to be like Lover’s Lane I got to move my still somewheres else,’ Catfish said.

  ‘Don’t get worried,’ I said. ‘That’s such a bad road that folks don’t want to drive over it. It’s too much of a wilderness down there for even that sort of stuff.’

  ‘For folks that’s in heat a wilderness the very thing they lookin for,’ Catfish said.

  ‘Did you see the woman that was with him?’ I asked.

  Catfish shifted his legs. He reached inside his pocket and got out his can of tobacco and his cigarette papers and set them on the running board.

  ‘That the worst part about it. I couldn’t see the woman that night. But this evenin as I was comin up here and had just got out in the highway they was that same identical red coop come down the road. It was Mr. Charles Fisher’s wife in it.’

  ‘There’s plenty of cars like that one,’ I said. ‘You just got too much imagination, Catfish.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Catfish said. ‘I reckin I got too wanderin a mind. But that the only red coop that long in this part of the country. Mr. Smut better be careful. She a rich man’s wife.’

  I got rid of Catfish as soon as I could. He went back to the kitchen and visited with the cooks; I told him I thought there was a bottle of good liquor open back there. I went into the front and nobody was there but Sam. I was trying to figure how to get rid of Sam for a short while when he did it for me.

  Sam yawned and put his hand over his mouth. He made a sound like a sleepy baby makes.

  ‘Swear, I’m sleepy!’ he said. ‘If I go take a nap will you be here to stay in the joint, Jack?’

  ‘I’ll be right here,’ I told him.

  As soon as Sam got out of the way, I took out the typewriter and put a sheet of paper in it. The Jew had evidently thrown in a package of paper, but it was plain white paper, that didn’t have anything on it to give me away. I began a letter to Charles Fisher. When it was finished this was the way it read:

  Mr. Charles Fisher

  c/o Sales Dept.

  Corinth Hosiery Mills

  Corinth, N.C.

  Dear Sir:

  I see in the Corinth Enterprise where you are out of town a lot of the time. Plenty is happening while you are gone. For one thing your hosiery mill is making plenty of socks. For another thing your wife is making plenty of hay. She is two-timing you a little, Mr. Fisher. But since you are a man that believes in business first I don’t know whether you are interested in what your wife does, or not. I just thought you might be glad to know that she is not so lonesome when you are gone to N.Y., Boston, Etc. But I know you are a busy man and I won’t write you a long letter this time. I will close now. But I will drop you a few lines all along and keep you posted. I don’t charge you anything for doing this. I do it just for practice.

  Your friend

  P.S. Have you ever been out to Milligan’s Roadhouse, on Lover’s Lane?

  I read it over and it sounded all right to me. Anyway, I didn’t know when Smut might come back and I didn’t have time to work on it much. I didn’t know whether it would get
a rise out of Fisher or not. But I figured it would. I didn’t know him so well as I did Smut Milligan. I hadn’t had a chance to study him like I would have liked to do. But I knew he was jealous as hell of his wife. I thought the letter would make him think that she was making a fool out of him and it would set him on fire. Later on I aimed to tell him plain out who it was she was playing around with.

  I didn’t think Fisher would kill Smut himself. I knew he didn’t have the guts in the first place. In the second place, he was a fellow that couldn’t abide any scandal. He would just work it through Astor LeGrand and have Smut laid out of the way. It wouldn’t cost him much. I figured that for a thousand dollars he could have the complete job done. There were men around Corinth that would kill Smut for much less than a thousand dollars, but I thought that by the time he got through greasing the necessary palms and took care of the sheriff’s detective tendencies and put out enough cash to affect Judge Grindstaff’s eyesight and hearing, it would set Fisher back at least a thousand bucks.

  As soon as Smut was killed—if everything worked out right—I would have to get that safe open. I figured I would have a day’s leeway before the sheriff came out and padlocked the joint.

  After I finished the letter and put it in my pocket I went out to the car shed. That was where Smut kept most of the things that he used to have in his filling station when he was really doing automobile repair work. I rummaged around in there for several minutes before I found the blowtorch. It was under a pile of empty oil cans over in the southwest corner. I covered it back up and went down to my cabin.

  That night I left the roadhouse early. I told the boys that I was still a little under the weather. But I was well enough to go to the car shed, dig the blowtorch out of the oil cans, and get away with it. I hid it in a clayroot in the woods below the cabins.

  21

  THE NEXT MORNING I was back to normal as far as my stomach was concerned. I got up early, and after I finished breakfast I watched my chance and mailed the letter to Fisher. I walked out to our mailbox, stuffed the letter inside as quick as I could, and raised the flag so the mailman would be sure and get it. I hoped he wouldn’t notice who it was addressed to. But if he did it was none of his business.