by Gil Brewer
The Red Scarf
Gil Brewer
Published by New Pulp Press
The Red Scarf
Copyright © 1952 by Gil Brewer
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Chapter 1
About eight-thirty that night, the driver of the big trailer truck let me out in the middle of nowhere. I had stacked in with a load of furniture all the way from Chicago and I should have slept, too. I couldn’t even close my eyes. Brother Albert had turned me down on the loan, and all I could think of was Bess holding the fort in St. Pete, and us standing to lose the motel. How could I tell her my own brother backed down on me? The dream. So the driver said if I could make it to Valdosta, then Route 19, the rest down through Florida would be pie. He gave me what was left of the lunch he’d bought in Macon. I stood there under a beardy-looking oak tree and watched him rumble off, backfiring.
It was raining and snowing at the same time; you know, just hard enough to make it real nasty. The road was rutted with slush, and the wind was like cold hands poking through my topcoat. I had to hang onto my hat. I ate the half piece of chocolate cake he’d left, and the bacon and cheese sandwich. I saved the apple.
A couple of cars roared by, fanning the road slop clear up to my knees. I didn’t even have a cigarette. I figured this was as broke and low-down as I’d ever be.
My feet were already soaked, so I started walking. I came around a sharp curve in the road and crossed a short wooden bridge. Then I saw the sign.
ALF’S BAR-B-Q
Drinks
Sandwiches
The sign was done in blue lights and it kind of hung like a ghost there in the dripping trees. It swung and you could hear it creak. Just the sign, nothing else.
I kept walking, feeling the change in my pocket, thinking about a cup of hot coffee and some smokes and maybe it would stop raining. Or maybe I could hit somebody for a ride.
Then I saw how I wasn’t going to hit anybody for any ride. Not here. Not at Alf’s. If a car stopped at this place, they’d either be crazy, or worse off than I was. There was this bent-looking shed with a drunken gas pump standing out front in a mess of mud, and Alf ’s place itself was a sick wreck of an old one-room house, with the front porch ripped off. You could still see the outline of the porch in the dim light from the fly-freckled bulb hanging over the door. Tin and cardboard signs were plastered all over the front of the place.
I went inside, and it was like being hit across the face with the mixed-up smells of all the food Alf ’s place had served for the past ten years.
“Ho, ho, ho!” a guy said. He was a big, red-faced drunk, parked on an upturned apple crate beside a small potbellied stove. He looked at me, then at the thin man behind the counter. “Ho, ho, ho!”
“You best git on along home,” the man behind the counter said to the laughing one. “Come on, Jo-Jo—you got enough of a one on to hold you the rest of this week and half of next.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” Jo-Jo said.
I brushed some crumbs off one of the wooden stools by the counter and sat down. Alf ’s place was a compact fermentation of all the bad wayside lunchrooms on the Eastern seaboard. With some additions. He had a coffee urn, a battered jukebox, two stick-looking booths, a chipped marble counter, and a greasy stove. The ceiling was low; the stove was hot.
“What’ll it be?” the counterman said. “I’m Alf. We got some fine barbecue.” His hair was pink and sparse across a freckled skull. He wore a very clean white shirt and freshly ironed white duck trousers.
“Cup of coffee, I guess.”
“No barbecue?”
“Nope.”
Alf shook his head. I turned and glanced at Jo-Jo. He was wearing overalls with shoulder straps. He was a young, rough, country lush. His eyes had that slitted hard-boiled look, his mouth broad and loose and his black hair straight and dank, down over his ears. Combed, it would be one of those duck cuts. He was a big guy.
I heard a car draw up outside. Jo-Jo took a fifth of whiskey from his back pocket, uncapped it, drank squinting, and put it away. He stood up, stretched, touching his hands to the ceiling, reeled a little and sat down again. “Son of a gun,” he said. “Dirty son of a gun.”
Alf put the thick mug of coffee on the counter. “Cigarettes?” I said. “Any kind.”
He flipped me a pack of Camels. I heard a man and woman arguing outside, their voices rising above the sound of a car’s engine. A door slammed. The engine gunned, then shut off.
“Damn it!” a man said outside.
The door opened and this girl walked in. She hesitated a moment, watching Jo-Jo, then she grinned and stepped over toward the counter, letting the door slap.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Jo-Jo said. Then he whistled. The girl didn’t pay any attention. Jo-Jo looked her up and down, grinning loosely, his eyes like rivets. Then the door opened again and a man came in. He stood staring at the girl’s back.
“Viv,” he said. “Please, come on, for cripe’s sake.”
She didn’t say anything. She was a long-legged one, all right, with lots of shape, wearing a tight blue flannel dress with bunches of white lace at the throat and cuffs. She was something to see. There were sparkles of rain like diamonds on the dress and in her thick dark hair. She half-sat on the stool next to me, and looked at me sideways with one big brown eye.
“You hear me, Viv?” the man said.
“I’m going to eat something, Noel. That’s all there is to it. I’m starved.”
“Ho, ho, ho,” Jo-Jo said. I heard him uncap the bottle and drink noisily. He coughed, cleared his throat and said, “I reckon your woman wants some barbecue, mister.”
The guy breathed heavily, stepped over behind the girl, and just stood there. He was a big-shouldered guy, wearing a double-breasted dark-blue suit, with a zigzag pin stripe. His white shirt was starched. He wore a gray Homburg tilted to the left and slightly down on the forehead.
“Come on, Viv,” he said. He laid one hand on her right arm. “Please come on, will you?”
“Nuts. I’m hungry, I told you.”
She haunched around on the stool and smiled at Alf. “I’ll try the barbecue. And some coffee.”
“Sure,” Alf said. “You won’t be sorry.”
The guy sighed and sat down on a stool beside her. Alf looked at him, and the guy shook his head.
“You better eat something,” the girl said.
The guy looked at her. She turned front again. I could smell whiskey, but it wasn’t from Jo-Jo. They’d both been drinking and driving for quite a while. They had that unstretched, half-eyed look that comes from miles and miles on the highway.
I sat there with my coffee and a cigarette, nursing the coffee, waiting. They were headed in the same direction as I was. I’d heard the
m come in.
After Alf served her a plate of barbecue, with some bread and coffee, the guy spoke up. He’d been sitting there, fuming. “You got gas in that pump outside?”
“Sure,” Alf said. “Absolutely we got gas.”
“How’s about filling her up?”
Alf started around the counter, nodding.
“Now, aren’t you glad we stopped?” the girl said. “We won’t have to stop later on.”
“Just hurry it up,” the guy said without looking at her. “Feed your face.”
Alf was at the door. “You’ll have to drive your car over to the pump,” he said.
I looked at him. The guy started toward the door. Jo-Jo was trying to get up off the apple crate. He was grinning like crazy, staring straight at the girl. I looked and she had her skirt up a little over her knees, banging her knees together. You could hear it, like clapping your hands softly.
Neither Alf nor the guy noticed. They went on outside and the door slapped shut. I could feel it; as if everything was getting a little tight. The girl felt it, too, because she paused in her eating, and Jo-Jo made it off the apple crate and started across the room.
“Say!” Jo-Jo said. “You’re as pretty as a picture.”
She took the mouthful of barbecue and began to chew.
Jo-Jo sprawled over against the counter, with his hair hanging down one side of his face, and that bottle sticking out, and he was grinning that way. “Gee!” Jo-Jo said. “Cripes in the foothills!”
I got off my stool and walked around to him. “Come on,” I said. “Go back and sit down. You’re kind of tight.”
He looked at me and gave me a hard shove. I went back across the room and slammed against the wall.
“You?” Jo-Jo said to the girl. He held up two fingers and wrapped them around each other. He had fingers like midget bananas. “Me?” he said.
The girl went on eating. She pulled her skirt down over her knees and chewed.
He reached over and took hold of her arm and pulled her half off the stool toward him, like she was a rag doll.
“Girly,” he said. “I could make your soul sing.”
I nearly burst out laughing. But it wasn’t funny. He was all jammed up.
“You wanna drink?” he asked her.
She was struggling. He got up close to her and started trying to paw her. She had a mouthful of barbecue and he started to kiss her and she let him have it, spraying the barbecue all over his face.
He grabbed her off the stool and went to work.
She wasn’t doing anything but grunting. He got hold of her skirt and tried to rip it. I was there by then, and I got one hand on his shoulder and turned him and aimed for his chin. It was all in slow motion, and my fist connected. He windmilled back against the counter.
“That dirty ape!” the girl said.
The barbecue was still on his face. When he hit against the counter, the bottle broke. He stood there watching me, with this funny expression on his face and the whiskey running down his leg and puddling on the floor. Then he charged, head down, his hair flopping.
I grabbed his head as he came in, brought it down as I brought my knee up. It made a thick sound. I let him go. He sat down on the floor, came out straight and lay there.
“They grow all kinds, I guess,” the girl said. “I sure thank you. Thanks a lot.”
“Forget it.”
She kept looking at me. She kind of grinned and lifted one hand and looked at the door. Then she turned and went over to the stool and sat down with her barbecue again.
The door opened, and the guy came in. He saw Jo-Jo. “What’s this?”
“A little trouble,” I told him. “It’s all right now.”
Alf came in and closed the door. He saw Jo-Jo. His face got red. “What happened?”
I told them. The girl was eating again. Then I noticed she stopped and just sat there, staring at her plate. She turned on the stool and looked at the guy. “Pay the man,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
I looked at her, then at the guy. I had to nick them for a ride. I had to.
“I’m awful sorry, miss,” Alf said. “He don’t really mean no harm. It’s just his way.”
Nobody said anything. This guy pulled out his wallet and looked at Alf.
“The gas was six, even,” Alf said. “The barbecue’s a dollar. That’s seven. Even.”
The guy counted out a five and two ones and handed them to Alf. Alf took the bills and stood there with them hanging limply from his hand. Jo-Jo moved and groaned on the floor.
“Come on,” the guy said to the girl.
“Listen,” I said to him. “How’s chances for a lift? I’m going the same way you are. South. There’s no—”
“No dice. Come on, Viv.”
I looked at her. She looked at me. “Oh, let’s give him a lift,” she said. “It’s all right, Noel.”
He gave her a real bad look. “No.”
She bent a little at the waist and brushed at some crumbs. She looked at the guy again. Then she looked at me and winked. “Come on,” she said to me. “We’ll take you as far as we can.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I really—”
“You heard me, Viv,” the guy said. “I told you, no!”
I figured, the hell. If I could get the ride, that’s all I cared about. I didn’t care about what the guy wanted. Then I saw the way his face was.
“He helped me out,” she said. “You heard him say what happened, Noel. That dirty ape would have done anything. Suppose this man hadn’t been here. What would I have done?”
“Ho, ho, ho,” Jo-Jo said. He was lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling.
I looked at the guy and he looked at me. “All right,” he said. “Damn it.”
The girl took my arm and we moved toward the door.
It was a Lincoln sedan. The guy, Noel, walked ahead of us, his feet splatting in the mud. He got in under the wheel and slammed his door.
“Don’t pay any attention,” the girl said. “We maybe can’t take you far. But it’ll help, anyway. In this weather.”
“Anything’ll help, believe me.”
She opened the door before I could reach it. She climbed in. I closed the door and opened the rear door.
“Get in front,” the guy said.
She pushed the front door open and I slammed the rear door and got in. She jigged over a little and I slammed the front door and we were off like a bull at a flag.
We struck the highway, slid a little, straightened out. “Noel,” the girl said. “Stop the car again.”
I looked at her. She sure was a pip.
“What?”
“I said, ‘stop the car.’ So he can take off his hat and coat. He’s all wet.”
The car slowed and came to a stop. The windows were closed, heater on, and you could smell the stale cigarette smoke. I remembered my cigarettes back there on the counter at Alf ’s.
“Throw ’em in back,” she said. “Okay?”
I opened the door and stepped out into the night and took them off and tossed them in back beside a couple of suitcases and a briefcase on the seat. Then I got in and this time she didn’t shove away. In fact, she looked at me and smiled and snuggled down comfortable.
“Is it all right, now?” the guy said, real evil. She didn’t say anything. He popped it to the floor and we roared off. I sat there without saying anything for about a mile. Just waiting. It wasn’t just the cigarette smoke in this car, or the hot air from the heater, either. You could taste the trouble that had been going on between these two.
“I hope you’re happy now, Noel.”
“That’s enough.”
“Just remember what I said.”
“I told you, Vivian!” He let it come out between his teeth. Not loud; just hard. “That’s enough. You hear?”
She sniffed. “Just remember.”
He tromped and he tromped. The car bucked and leveled off at eighty-three. We were flying. There wasn’t much wind
, but you could see that rain and snow whipping up out there.
“Thanks for the lift,” I said. “It’s a rotten night. Not many’d stop in the highway tonight. Any night.”
“One good turn deserves another,” she said, grinning.
You could almost hear him grit his teeth. He was really hanging onto the wheel. I turned and looked at her, putting one arm across the back of the seat. She tipped her head, freeing a good lot of the thick dark hair where my arm squeezed. In the dash lights, there was a sheen on her long slim legs. She looked at me then, with one big brown eye. Then she began watching the road.
You could smell the whiskey in the car. It seemed to have impregnated the upholstery.
“Going far?” the man said.
“Down the coast. St. Pete.”
He breathed heavily, hulked over the steering wheel. I couldn’t watch him very well without stretching. He made me nervous.
She laid one hand on my knee. “Honey. You got a cigarette?”
“There’s a carton in the back seat, Vivian. You know that.”
She patted my knee. “You know? I’m glad you’re with us. Least Noel’s not cursing.”
“I’ll curse.”
She hitched up and turned and got on her knees in the seat, pawing back there. The dash lights were bright. I looked away.
“On the floor, stupid.”
She came up with the carton and a bottle, turned and sat on my lap, slid off onto the seat and smiled at me again with that one big brown eye. “Bet you haven’t got a cigarette?”
I told her she was right.
She ripped open the carton and handed me a pack. “Care for a drink?”
“Damn it, Vivian.”
She parked the fifth on my knee. I took it.
“All right,” the guy said. “All right.”
We drove along for a while, swapping the bottle. I was hitting it hard. She took enough, too. The guy, Noel, was just touching it now and then.
The whiskey got to me good. But I sat there, propped up, smoking cigarettes and letting the night stretch out. Thinking about Bess. She was a good wife, a wonderful girl. And my brother Albert was a twenty-four carat stinker.
