A Pair of Aces

by Joe R. Lansdale

  The smartest thing to have done was go on over to Mr. Parks's place, even if it did take me all damned day on crutches, but I just couldn't. Us Foggs had our pride and I didn't want no handout. No one taking care of me when I was old enough to take care of my ownself. I decided to set out for town, get me a job there, make my own way. Even if I couldn't save the farm, I could start me some kind of living. There was probably something I could work at until my leg healed up and I got me a solid job.

  I figured if I started early, like tomorrow morning, I could make town by nightfall, crutches or not. I'd most likely fall down and bust it a few times, but that didn't matter none.

  Well, as I said, us Foggs are proud, and maybe just a bit stupid, so come morning I put some hard bread, jerked meat, and dried fruit in a sack, and saying adios to the dead chickens, the mule bones, and Papa's grave, I started crutching on out of there.

  I must have fallen down a half-dozen times before I got to the road, but when I was on it I could crutch along better because there was a lot less ice there.

  By noon my underarms were so sore from the rubbing of the crutches, they were bleeding and making blisters that kept popping as I went. Instead of making it to town by nightfall, I was beginning to think I'd be lucky to make it by next year's Thanksgiving. In fact, I was counting on dying at that moment, just keeling over beside the road there and kicking out the last of my worries.

  I stopped, sat down on a rock and my coattails, ate some bread and jerky, and fretted things over. Thinking back on it now, I'm surprised I didn't hear it coming before I did.

  Guess I was wrapped up in my lunch and my thinking. But I finally caught sound of this tinkling, and when I looked up I seen it was bells and harness I had heard, and the harness was attached to eight big mules pulling a bright, red wagon driven by a big colored man wearing a long, dark coat and a top hat. When the sun hit his teeth they flashed like a pearl-handled revolver.

  As the wagon made a little curve in the road, I got a glimpse at the side, and I could see there was a cage fixed there, balancing out the barrels of water and supplies on the other side.

  At first, I thought what was in the cage was a deformed colored fella, but when it got closer, I seen it was some kind of animal covered in black fur. It was about the scariest, ugliest damned thing I'd ever seen.

  Right then I was feeling a mite less proud than I had been earlier that morning, so I got them crutches under my sore arms and hobbled out into the road waving a hand at the wagon. I was aiming on getting a ride or getting run slap over so I could end the torture. I didn't feel like I could crutch another mile.

  The wagon slowed and pulled alongside me. The driver yelled, "Whoa, you old ugly mules," and the harness bells ceased to shake.

  I could see the animal in the cage good now, but I still couldn't figure on what it was. There was some yellow words painted above the cage that said, "THE MAGIC WAGON," and to the right of the cage was a little sign with some fancy writing on it that read: "Magic Tricks, Trick Shooting, Fortune Telling, Wrestling Ape, Side Amusements, Medicine for What Ails You, and And All at Reasonable Prices.

  Sounded pretty good to me.

  "You look like you could use a ride, white boy," the big man said.'

  "Yes sir, I could at that," I said.

  "You don't yes-sir a nigger" I turned to see who had said that, and there was this fella standing in faded, red long johns and moccasins with blond hair down to his shoulders and a skimpy little blond mustache over his lip. He had his arms crossed, holding his elbows against the cold. He'd obviously come out of the back of the wagon, but he'd walked so quiet I hadn't even known he was there till he spoke.

  When I didn't say nothing, he added, "This here's my wagon. He's just a nigger that works for me. I say who rides and who don't, and I say you don't."

  "I got some jerky, canned taters, and beans I can trade for a ride, and I'll sit up there on the seat."

  "If you was riding you sure would," the blond man said. "But you ain't riding." He turned back to the wagon and I noticed the flap of his long johns were down. I snickered a little, and he turned to stare at me. He had eyes like a couple of big nail heads, cold, flat, and gray. "I don't need no beans and taters," he said sharply, and turned back to the wagon.

  "He can ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," the colored man said.

  The white fella spun around and came stomping back. "What did you say?"

  "I said he could ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," the colored man said, moving his lips real slow like, as if he was talking to an idiot. "It's too cold for a boy to be out here, especially one on crutches."

  "You don't say," said the blond man. "You're getting awfully uppity for a nigger who works for me."

  "Maybe I is," the colored fella said. "And it worries me something awful, Mister Billy Bob. I get so worried abouts it I can't get me no good sleep at night. When I lay myself down I just keep tossing and turning, wondering if Mr. Billy Bob is put out with me, and if I truly is getting uppity."

  Mister Billy Bob pointed his finger at the colored fella and shook it. "Keep it up, nigger. Just keep it up and you're going to wake up with a crowd of buzzards on you. Hear?"

  "I hear," said the colored man, and it was almost a yawn.

  Billy Bob started back for the wagon again, gave me a glimpse of his exposed butt, turned, and came back. He shook his finger at the colored fella again. "Albert," he said, you and me, we're going to have to have a serious Come-to-Jesus Meeting, get some things straight about who's the nigger and who ain't."

  "I do need me some pointers on that, Mister Billy Bob. I get a trifle confused sometimes and it just sets me to shuffling my feet trying to figure on the straight of it."

  Billy Bob stood there for a moment, like he was going to stare Albert down off the wagon seat, but finally he gave up. "All right," he said to me. "You can ride, but it's going to cost you them beans and taters, hear?"

  I nodded.

  This time Billy Bob turned and went inside the wagon, the moon of his butt my last sight of him for a while, the slamming of the wagon door my last sound.

  I turned and looked up at Albert. He was leaning down with a big hand extended. Just before I took it, I got me another look at the critter in the cage, and when he looked at me, he peeled back his lips to show his teeth, like maybe he was smiling.

  When I was on the seat beside Albert, he said, "That Mister Billy Bob's gonna need to get them buttons fixed on the seat of his drawers, ain't he?"

  We laughed at that.

  After we got moving good, Albert said, "You keep them beans and taters, boy. Taters upsets my stomach, and beans, they make Mister Billy Bob fart something awful. Just ain't no being around him."

  "That's good about them beans and taters," I said, "'cause I ain't got none. All I got in this bag is some hard bread and jerked meat."

  Albert let out a roar, like that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. I could tell right then and there he didn't have no real respect for Billy Bob.

  "That critter in the cage?" I asked. "Is that some kind of bear what caught on fire or something?"

  Albert laughed again. "Naw, it ain't no bear. That there is a jungle ape. Comes from the same place as all us colored. Africa. They calls him a chimpanzee. Name's Rot Toe on account of he got him some kind of disease once and one of his toes on his right foot rotted off. Least that's what the fella who sold him to Billy Bob said."

  I remembered the sign I'd read on the side of the wagon. "Wrestling ape." I said. "That thing wrestles?"

  "Now you got it," Albert said.

  I found a place for my crutches and the food bag, then I leaned back with my hands in my lap.

  "You look a might bushed, little peckerwood. You wants to lay your head against my shoulder to rest, you go right ahead. "

  "No thanks," I said. But we hadn't gone too far down the road when I just couldn't keep my eyes open no more and I realized just how tired I really was. I lolled my head on Al
bert's big shoulder. I could smell the clean wool of his coat. And wasn't no time at, all until I was asleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  I was thinking on this, feeling sorry for myself, when Albert brought me out of it.

  "Best get your butt down from here and get to doing."

  I'd been so lost in my thoughts, I hadn't noticed we'd stopped. We were under a big oak that grew out to the edge of the street, and around the oak were curled vines big as well ropes. Out to the right of the tree was a big clearing. It looked to have been made by fire. It was just the place for us to have our show.

  Behind the clearing, and to the left of the oak, there was nothing but woods. And I do mean woods. It was thick with all manner of brush and brambles. It was just another thing that got me to thinking on the town and how odd it looked. Even the woods around it seemed different from any I'd seen before, and I found myself not wanting to stare out there for long for fear of seeing something I didn't want to see.

  I got down and went around to Rot Toe's cage, limping as I went. That foot that had been broken got stiff when I rode too long or, on the other hand, walked on it too much.

  I pulled back the tarp and let some fresh air in on the ape, and he grunted at me. There in the sharp, morning light, as the twilight died and the day came in, he suddenly, and for the first time, looked more than tired and old to me, he looked pathetic.

  I said some words to him, got his leash off the top of the cage and used my key to let him out. He took my hand and walked with me around to the other side, and I put his leash on him without any trouble. While I did, he stood staring out at those woods, making soft sounds. He didn't care for them any better than I did.

  Albert had come around and I said how I didn't like the woods and neither did Rot Toe.

  "There ain't a thing to like about them," he said, and he didn't look out there when he said it. "You stay out of 'em, Little Buster, you hear?"

  "Yes sir," I said.

  Albert smiled at me. "You know what Billy Bob says?"

  "Yeah." And we said it together, "You don't yes-sir a nigger."

  "All right, boy," Albert said. "Get up there on the wagon and get them posters, start putting them up. And you're going to need to talk to the sheriff."

  "Me? That's Billy Bob's job."

  "He ain't rightly in the condition to do it. And you might as well get used to it, 'cause he's going to make it your job anyhow."

  "How do you know he is?"

  "I know Billy Bob, and the less work he has to do the happier man he is. He always finds me a new job or two at the end of the month, don't he?"

  And he did. Albert and I did all the work. What Billy Bob did was shoot his pistols, talk about Hickok, read dime novels, and chase gals. That seemed like a pretty good career to me.

  But there wasn't any use arguing. Billy Bob would just leave me somewhere high and dry. And the truth of the matter was I didn't want to leave Albert and Rot Toe. Them and that wagon, scary as it could be sometimes, were all the home I knew.

  I got the posters, a hammer and some tacks, and started up the street.

  When we came to a town, we always went about getting the sheriff's permission for our show, if we could. If we couldn't we pulled the Magic Wagon outside the town sign where his star didn't count and went ahead with it.

  Course, some sheriffs didn't care for that, and they'd come out and run us off, a sign or no sign. I hated it when we had to spend a few days in jail. It just made Billy Bob all that harder to get along with. He'd blame me for too much starch in his long johns, go around frowning and kicking things, yelling at Albert and hitting Rot Toe with sticks until he got all the meanness out of him, or enough of it anyway. He was too full of it to ever get empty.

  But most sheriffs were cooperative, and if they hesitated, Billy Bob could turn on the butter when he wanted to, and talk most of them into it. A sheriff is just like any other fella, in spite of what you might think. He likes a bit of a change now and then, and our show was better than spending his afternoons and early evenings with his heels on his desk, or going over to the saloon to pistol-whip a bunch of drunks into a stupor. Our shows had the added advantage of entertainment before the pistol-whipping, as most of the drunks would show up to see our acts and get looped as usual, only on our Cure-All if they didn't remember a pocket flask of their own. This being the case, the sheriff could watch our little act, then beat the drunks over the head with his gun barrel instead of having to make a special trip on over to the saloon.

  So it was with only a few misgivings that I made my way over to the sheriff's office.

  When I found it, the door was locked and there was- a messy written sign tacked to it:

  I AINT HERE NOW AND AINT GONNA BE TILL SATERDEE. HOLD ALL KILLINS AND SICH TILL I GIT BAK OR LOK YER OWNSEF UP. RILEE OVER TO THE SALOON HAS THE KEE.

  I could just imagine that lawman spit-wetting his pencil and snickering over that sign as he wrote it. As Albert told me time and again, "You can say what you wants about them sheriffs, but them that I've known of has mostly got a sense of humor."

  It also brought to mind a story Albert told me once about this sheriff down San Antone-way that could tell a joke better than you ever heard. Way Albert told it, he could get a fella laughing all the way out of the jail, up the gallows steps, and still cackling till the rope cut him off. Which is understandable at that point.

  But Albert said this sheriff was good. He was not only a joker, he was a prankster. When things got slow around the jail and he had a prisoner, one of his favorite things was to unlock the cage while the fella was asleep, sneak in and put matches between his toes, light them, and sneak out.

  You can imagine the chuckles this sheriff got when the matches reached the meat and that fella came leaping off his bunk and went rain dancing around his cell.

  But in spite of this sense of humor, or maybe you could say because of it, this sheriffs story ended kind of tragic. As Albert pointed out, there's always someone out there lacking a sense of humor, and as fate would have it, the sheriff I'm telling you about got just such a stick in the mud in his jail.

  This stick in the mud was known as a sour customer anyway, and what he was in jail for didn't liven his personality any. He'd gone on a rampage killing his wife, mother-in-law, and as good an old blue mule as ever pulled a plow. Can't recall what the wife's and mother-in-law's names were, but the mule was called Old Jesse.

  What got this farmer riled in the first place, as is often the case with a man, was his mother-in-law. She lived with them, and didn't have any table manners to speak of. She was kind of elderly, and bad about breaking wind at the supper table. Maybe she could help it, maybe she couldn't. But it seemed to this farmer that she didn't give it a passing thought, and did it mostly to irritate him, never so much as offering up an excuse me, or asking how the most recent one compared to the last. It wasn't nothing to her, and he felt certain she was laughing behind her hand at him 'cause she knew it got on his nerves and spoiled his appetite.

  Well, one evening, things simmered to a head. They were sitting at the table, spooning some ham and gravy and sweet taters, or whatever, and what does this old lady do but cut loose with a honker that would have shamed a pack mule. This farmer claimed it was so powerful the kitchen curtains billowed, but I think either the farmer or Albert exaggerated a little there. Anyway, she went on to choose this time to finally comment on it, and it wasn't a thing that charmed him in the least.

  "Catch that one and paint it green," she said, and giggled.

  The man went beside himself, snatched up the kindling axe and dove for her. As fate would have it, his wife got in the way and tried to stop things. All she got for her trouble was a new part in her hair, about six inches deep. Then the mother-in-law bit the hatchet. And if that wasn't enough, the farmer turned drunk-Injun mad, went out to the lot, and axed the mule.

  This mule killing was quite a blow to the community. Old Jesse had been borrowed by every farmer in the county, and it was
said that he was such a good plower lines weren't needed. Didn't even have to say gee or haw. You just took hold of the plow handles and Old Jesse did the rest without so much as lathering up.

  Yep, that mule's fame was spread far and wide. Later on they had a funeral for him, and Albert said he heard a right smart number of folks showed up to attend the laying away services and do some gospel singing.

  Well, Mule Slayer, as he came to be known, was brought to jail, and while they were waiting on trial, things got slow around the cell, and this sheriff with the sense of humor decided to liven things up with his famous hot-foot routine. So, one afternoon, Mule Slayer was all stretched out on his bunk, catching a few winks, digesting his jail dinner, when the sheriff snuck into his cell, put matches between the fella's toes, lit them, and snuck out.

  When the matches burned down to Mule Slayer's foot, he let out a roar, hit the floor two-stepping and barn dancing around the cell.

  The sheriff thought this was real funny, and he had to lean up against the bars so he wouldn't fall down laughing. He started clapping his hands and singing one of those do-si-do-grab-your-partner songs, and that's just what Mule Slayer did. He promenaded on around there and shot a hand through the bars and got the sheriff by the goozel, reached the gun out of the old boy's holster, and took the keys off of him.

  Damned if Mule Slayer wasn't suddenly in a joking mood himself. He put the sheriff on the bunk, strapped him down with pieces of the sheriff's gun belt and suspenders, and set the bed on fire, and as it was stuffed with feather ticking, it lit up right good.

  Albert said folks claimed later they could see smoke, hear that sheriff screaming and Mule Slayer laughing for a half mile or better, but I sort of doubt that myself.

  When the townsfolks got there, they beat out the sheriff with a couple of brooms and throwed water on him, but it was too late. There wasn't enough left of him or the feathers to sweep up in a dust pan. Most of the old boy was soot on the walls. Even his badge had hotted up considerable. It had melted into a tiny ball, fallen between the bed springs, and rolled off into the corner.