Medicine Show

by Bill Crider

  Uppity bastard, Sanders thought. Too good to go to a show with the common folks.

  Gary was not one of Sanders's favorite people. He might be a wealthy man, but he thought he was better than everybody else when he really wasn't. He was just richer, that was all. Sanders wondered how long Gary's wealth would last. If the Hawkins brothers were bleeding him like they were bleeding everyone else in town, it wouldn't last long. Pretty soon, Mr. Gary wouldn't be any richer than the rest of them.

  Sanders wondered what the Hawkins brothers would do then. Probably move on to some other town and take whatever they could get there, suck it dry like some kind of leeches, and then find somewhere else.

  It never occurred to him that anything or anyone would put a stop to Sam and Ben Hawkins. No one had ever stood up to them before, not even the sheriff, and nobody ever would.

  At least that's what Sanders thought.

  4

  Sam Hawkins was sitting in a wooden frame chair with a leather bottom made from cowhide. The bottom was mostly worn smooth, but there were still tufts of reddish hair on the parts of the seat no one sat on.

  The chair was on the porch of the house where Sam and Ben lived. It wasn't much of a porch, and it wasn't much of a house. The porch slanted forward just the littlest bit, and the roof leaked. It was no place to be when it rained. Inside the house wasn't much better, but you could avoid the biggest leaks if you tried.

  Ben was on the porch too, but he wasn't sitting in a chair. There wasn't another chair, and Sam was the older. He always got the chair. Ben sat with his back resting against the wall, his hat pulled down over his eyes. Above his head was a window with a broken pane.

  The Hawkins brothers looked a great deal alike, but it was easy to tell them apart. Ben was the one who chewed tobacco. He was never without a plug in his pocket and a chaw in his cheek, bulging it out like he had a little round ball in there.

  Both men had tangled black hair that had not been washed for some time and black beards that were in a similar condition. If a man looked close he could see the tobacco stains in Ben's beard, but no one wanted to look that close. Both men had the hooked noses that, along with their name, had given Sam his nickname.

  They had wild black eyebrows, too, growing straight across their foreheads with no break above the nose. There were people who said that a bird could build a nest there and not be noticed, but they never said that to the Hawkins boys' faces.

  Both Ben and Sam were wearing worn Levi's and faded plaid flannel shirts with long sleeves. The underarms of the shirts were stained with sweat. Their boots were scuffed and scarred, the heels worn down.

  The house was in a clearing in a pine woods. The trees grew straight and tall, towering high above the dilapidated house, their green needles shiny in the sun above.

  Below, the ground was thickly shaded. Rust-colored pine needles covered the ground and the roof of the house. Very little grass grew beneath the trees because of the shade and the pine needles.

  The yard of the house was hard-packed dirt. There were pine needles all over, but the dirt showed through in patches.

  Sam was watching a terrapin crawl with infinite patience across the dirt yard.

  "Where you think that son of a bitch is goin'?" he said.

  Ben pushed up his hat and leaned forward. "What son of a bitch?"

  "Out there in the yard," Sam said.

  Ben squinted his eyes, trying to see whatever or whoever it was that Sam was talking about.

  "I don't see nothin'," he said finally.

  "It's a terrapin," Sam said. "Right over there." He pointed.

  Ben looked again. "I see him," he said. He spit a stream of brown tobacco juice over the edge of the porch. "What about him?"

  "I was just wonderin' where he thought he was goin'," Sam said.

  "Hell," Ben said. "How should I know? What difference does it make, anyway?"

  "Not a damn bit," Sam said. "He ain't ever gonna get there, anyhow."

  Sam pulled a pistol from its holster, cocked it, and sighted down the barrel.

  "You can't hit that thing from here," Ben said. He spit again. "I bet it's twenty yards off."

  "I can hit it," Sam said. "Ten dollars says I can hit it."

  Ben nodded. "Ten dollars says you can't."

  Sam fired the pistol. The explosion was accompanied by grayish smoke, the smell of gunpowder, and a loud yowl from beneath the porch.

  The bullet chipped off the top of the terrapin's shell and sailed up and away, whacking into the trunk of a pine tree.

  The terrapin tumbled over and over, finally winding up on its back. It was apparently unharmed, and its legs waved slowly in the air as it tried to right itself.

  "Missed," Ben said.

  "Be damn if I did," Sam said. "Flipped the sucker four times."

  A mangy-looking orange tomcat stalked out from under the porch and looked around. There were several patches where he had scratched out large hunks of his fur, as he was bothered considerably by fleas.

  Ben and Sam were bothered by fleas, too, but they were not given much to scratching.

  The cat did not see the terrapin. He sat down in the shade of the porch and began biting himself on the back.

  Ben spit a thick brown stream of tobacco juice at the cat, which took no notice as the liquid spattered on the ground near him.

  "Ten dollars," Ben said.

  "That's right," Sam agreed. "You owe me ten."

  "No, I don't. You owe me ten. You missed."

  "I hit the bastard," Sam said. "You saw it."

  "Didn't kill him, though," Ben said, leaning back against the wall and pulling down his hat.

  "That wasn't the bet," Sam said. He was looking at the terrapin, which still hadn't managed to right itself. "You want to bet me ten more I can't kill him?"

  Ben pushed up his hat, interested again. "Sure," he said. "Why not."

  Sam fired again, and the pistol jumped in his hand. This time, the cat made no sound at all. It didn't even move.

  The bullet hit the terrapin, which flew apart with a sharp cracking noise, as if someone had dropped it on a rock from a great height.

  Fragments of the shell and bits of bloody flesh sailed through the air.

  "Ten dollars," Sam said.

  "I owe you," Ben said. "What're you gonna do about that terrapin?"

  "Let the cat have him," Sam said.

  The cat was already walking across the yard toward part of the remains. When he got there he sniffed them for a second, then began to bite at something on one of the shell fragments. Sam and Ben did not feed him often. He had to take what he could find.

  * * *

  Sheriff Coy Wilson was sitting in the jail with his feet up on the desk, waiting out the heat of the day. He didn't like to go out on his daily patrol of the town until the heat moderated a little bit, which meant that it would be late afternoon before he did anything.

  He was a short, fat man whose belly hung down over his gunbelt, and he didn't like to stir himself unless it was absolutely necessary. That's what he liked about working in this particular town--it was seldom necessary for him to stir. There were the usual number of saloon fights, and there was an occasional disagreement about the amount of a bill owed at one of the local stores. There might even be a fracas between a husband and a wife or between a couple of brothers, just family arguments that were easily settled. That was about all. It made the job of sheriffing pretty simple.

  In fact, as far as the townspeople were concerned, it was complicated by only one other thing. The Hawkins brothers. They seemed to all appearances to have the town in their grip. They had just showed up one day a couple of years before and taken over.

  They lived out there in the woods, and they did pretty much what they damn well pleased. If they rode into town and announced that all the merchants owed them twenty-five dollars, then the merchants paid up.

  They didn't want to at first, but they did. They had learned about that the hard way, when old Tully Hai
rston, who had owned the general store at the time, refused to put in his ante.

  The Hawkins boys didn't say anything to him about it. They just went on their way, collecting from all the others, and letting Tully think he'd called their bluff.

  In fact, Tully had gone around to all the other stores that day, telling the owners what a big mistake they were making by paying off. He was a feisty little man, and he had really given everyone a tongue lashing.

  "You're just playin' right into their hands by givin' 'em what they ask for," he said. "You got to stand up to 'em, tell 'em you won't give them a damn cent. They won't do nothin' about it. We still got law in this town."

  The others had tried to talk sense into Tully.

  "Goddamn it," Barclay Sanders told him. "You ought to know better than to talk like that. They won't let you get away with it. It's only twenty-five dollars, and they don't ask often. You should've given it to 'em, Tully. You're just gonna cause trouble for all of us."

  "I don't think so," Tully said. "They're just like any other bullies. Cowards, the lot of 'em."

  Barclay Sanders and the others didn't say anything else. They just shook their heads and let Tully go his own way.

  That night, someone, and there wasn't much doubt about who, rode into town and broke the windows in front of Tully's store. They went inside and ripped open every bag, letting the contents run out on the floor. Flour, beans, coffee, sugar--the lot. Stomped around in it. Smashed the pickle barrel and the cracker barrel. Poured syrup over everything. Threw a wheel of cheese in the floor and mashed it all over. Shot the cans, splattering tomatoes and peaches around the walls.

  Then whoever it was rode off.

  The shooting had waked up a lot of folks, but by the time they got to the store, there was no one there.

  Tully had complained to the sheriff, but that hadn't done any good. There was no proof that the Hawkins brothers had done a thing, and the sheriff refused to act without proof.

  "Hell," he said. "That wouldn't be any more legal that what was done to that store. You can't just go accusin' folks of things because you think they did somethin'."

  And that was that. Tully Hairston decided the hell with it and left town, went of to try ranching with his brother. He didn't even clean up the store. The rest of the merchants knew that Tully thought they were a bunch of spineless cowards, and maybe they were, but they still had their stores, and he didn't. Someone else opened the store again about a week later.

  There wasn't much of a question about paying the Hawkinses after that, not that there had been much of one before. They came in when they needed the money, and they got it. They weren't greedy, but they took enough. People often wondered why they continued to live in that shack in the woods when they could have afforded better, but they sure weren't going to ask. They were afraid the Hawkinses might want to move to town. And if they did, there was no telling whose house they might take a shine to.

  No one had bothered the Hawkins brothers after what happened at Tully's. The Reverend Stump, a few weeks before his marriage, had preached a hell/hot, heaven/high sermon about them, and everyone who heard it had secretly agreed with him.

  The Hawkinses hadn't been in church, naturally enough, but they heard about the sermon. That night someone, and again it didn't take much imagination to figure out who, rode horses through the preacher's picket fence, kicked through his flowers, threw horse manure all over his house, and shot out the stained- glass windows of the church.

  They rode away just as the sheriff arrived, and once again he refused to go after the Hawkinses. There was no proof they were the guilty parties, though of course everyone in town knew that they were.

  That was the last brave thing that the Reverend Stump did, unless you counted getting married.

  No one really expected Sheriff Wilson to do anything. The town had hired him a few months before the Hawkins brothers appeared on the scene, and no one had told him he would have to confront anything like that. They had hired him for the kind of minor scrapes they were used to, and to tell the truth no one there thought they paid him enough to go up against anybody like those Hawkinses. They had never thought he'd have to.

  He had drifted into town shortly after the natural death of old Sheriff Townsend, who had served for fifteen years and never faced anything worse than an angry drunk. Townsend had been nearly sixty when he had taken the job, and it had never strained him. No one thought Wilson would have to strain, either.

  He seemed like an amiable enough fella, and he averred that he was able to use a gun and his fists, though he didn't like to and would prefer to avoid violence whenever possible.

  It just wouldn't be possible when dealing with Sam and Ben, so the town didn't take it much amiss that he ignored them. There was occasional grumbling when the merchants got together, but no one really complained. Everyone was afraid that if they complained too much or too long, the sheriff would try to form a posse to go after the Hawkinses.

  And there wasn't a one of them who was going to volunteer for that, for damn sure.

  * * *

  Carl Gary found the sheriff in the jail. Wilson didn't seem to think Gary was anything special. He didn't get up, didn't even swing his feet down off the desk.

  Gary looked as if he might make something of that, but he decided better of it. Instead, he said, "Did you hear that there is a medicine show in town?"

  "Is that a fact?" Wilson said. "Nope. I hadn't heard about it."

  Gary was not surprised. Not only did Sheriff Wilson often fail to show the proper respect to the town's leading citizens, he was singularly uninformed about local events. Gary had been in favor of hiring Wilson for the job, originally, but over the time Wilson had been in office, Gary had come to wonder if he and the rest of the town had not made a big mistake. The man was lazy and arrogant, and Gary did not like him.

  "I thought you might not have heard," Gary said. "That's why I stopped by."

  "That was mighty nice of you," Wilson said. He reached into his shirt pocket for a sack of tobacco and rolling papers. Without taking his feet off the desk, he deftly rolled a smoke and stuck it in his mouth. He opened a drawer of the desk and felt around in it for a second. His hand came out with a match, which he scratched on the underside of the desk. There was a popping sound and the hand came out holding the now-lighted match. Wilson applied the flame to the tip of his cigarette, inhaled, and blew out a cloud of smoke.

  Gary stood there patiently watching the performance.

  "Was there something else you had to say?" Wilson wondered.

  "What are you going to do about it?" Gary said.

  "'bout what?"

  "About the trouble," Gary said.

  Wilson inhaled again and blew a perfect smoke ring. "You said you expected trouble. That don't mean there'll be any. I can't act just on what people expect."

  Gary moved a step closer to the desk. "See here, Sheriff. You know as well as I do what is bound to happen this evening, if the Hawkins brothers get wind of that medicine show being here. And they will get wind of it. They know everything that goes on in this town, unlike some people."

  The sheriff shifted his weight and swung his feet off the desk. They hit the floor heavily.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" he said, squinting through the haze of smoke that was forming between them.

  "Nothing," Gary said. "But you know that they are going to demand payment from the show for allowing it to perform. That is, they are if they treat it like they treat everyone else in this community, and I see no reason why they should not."

  "Well, now," Wilson said. "That may be so, or it may not. You can't go accusin' somebody of a crime they ain't even committed yet. That's worse than blamin' them for somethin' you ain't even sure they've done."

  Gary tried not to let his disgust show. He was just a saloon keeper, but he tried to take an interest in the town, to make it a better place to live. That hadn't been easy to do since the Hawkins brothers showed up, and Wilson had not bee
n much of a help.

  "We know who does nearly everything that goes on around here," Gary said. "The crimes, too."

  "Maybe you do," Wilson said. "Can't say as I do, though."

  "You should," Gary said. "Only a blind man could avoid seeing what's happening."

  Wilson stood up. "Look," he said. "You don't have to pay any money to the Hawkins boys if you don't want to. I've never seen 'em force anybody to do it. I talked to 'em about it, and they said they were just askin' for contributions. Said they helped keep the town quiet, and people were grateful enough to give them a little money for doin' it."

  "Keeping the town quiet is your job," Gary said. "We pay you to do that. We don't need the Hawkinses."

  "Then don't pay 'em," Wilson said. "Simple as that."

  "We've seen what happens to the people who don't pay," Gary said. "So have you."

  "There've been a few little accidents, sure--"

  Gary laughed. "Accidents? That's what you call what happened to Tully's store? To Stump's church? Accidents?"

  "We never found who did it," Wilson said, shaking his head stubbornly. "There wasn't any evidence to say who was the guilty ones."

  Gary was ready to give it up. Wilson's head was thicker than an oak log.

  "All right, Sheriff," he said. "You're probably right. Those Hawkins brothers are pure as the driven snow, and Tully's store was probably savaged by a couple of stray dogs. I'm sorry if I've disturbed you."

  He turned his back on the sheriff and walked out the door. He had done what he could. If the Hawkins brothers broke up the medicine show, that was too bad. He had tried to be a good citizen.

  He thought for a moment of riding out and warning the operator of the show, but then decided that would be too much trouble. Let him take his chances like everyone else in town.

  The sheriff watched Gary go. When the saloon owner was out

  the door, Wilson sat back down and put his feet up, taking one last puff on his cigarette before throwing it to the floor. He guessed he'd better take in the medicine show that evening, just to be sure things didn't get out of hand.