by Dan Marlowe
When she brought it to the booth twenty minutes later with a mound of french fries and a pound of sliced tomatoes, I ate for a quarter-hour without coming up for air. I mean it was really a slab of beef.
I was divot-digging with a toothpick when Hazel returned to the booth. "Apple pie? Coffee?" she wanted to know.
I tested my straining belt. "Better rain check me."
She glanced at the bar. Everything was quiet. I had my first look at her feet as she stood beside the booth. She had on worked-leather cowboy boots studded with silver conches. They're not given away. Evidently the Dixie Pig wasn't about to declare bankruptcy.
Hazel slid into the booth opposite me and sat with her chin propped in her hands. Her steady gaze seeped through to my backbone again. "Maybe it's not the face," she decided. "Maybe it's the eyes. What do you really do for a living, Chet?"
I reached for my cigarettes, offered her one, and lit two when she accepted. "Your pa should have hairbrushed you out of asking questions like that, Hazel."
"My pa never hairbrushed me out of anything I wanted to do," she answered. "Well?"
"I've been known to make a bet." I humored her.
"That's more like it," she said briskly. "A workingman you're not, pardner. What's your action? Horses?"
"Horses," I agreed.
"Is that right?" She straightened up as though someone had turned on an electric current in the booth seat. "D'you remember old Morning Star? I saw him run five-and-a-half furlongs at Delaware Park in a tick less than—"
So we sat and played Remember When.
It's a damn small world sometimes. Hazel's first husband had been Blueshirt Charlie Andrews, the man who bet 'em higher than a duck could fly. I'd never met him, but he'd been a pal of a friend of mine who unfortunately attracted a small piece of lead. I didn't tell Hazel this.
In five minutes we found out we'd both been in Louisville for the same Derby and in Baltimore for the same Futurity not too many years ago. We argued about which
year it was. "I know which year it was," Hazel insisted. "It
was my first year at the tracks. I was seventeen."
"Which makes you—"
"Never mind the arithmetic, Horseman."
"—younger than I am," I finished.
Her inward look turned back down the years. "I guess Charlie Andrews was about the ugliest man I ever knew. He was about five-five and weighed two-forty, and even his ears had muscles. He stopped off for a cup of coffee in a diner in Ely where I was a waitress. He was on his way to Santa Anita, but three weeks later he was still sitting in the diner trying to talk me into sharing the wealth. He was about as subtle as a blowtorch, and I was green as grass. He'd sit across the counter from me, taking up most of two stools, and he'd spread the grease in his own peculiar way. 'Hazel, honey,' he'd say to me, 'you got a croup jus' like a thoroughbred mare. I never hope to see a bigger piece of ass.'"
She shook her head reminiscently. "He married it to get it, finally. He was a lot of all right, that Blueshirt man. Although it sure was chicken today and feathers tomorrow living with him. That character would bet on anything."
Some people came in the back door, and she stood up lo go back to the bar to wait on them. "Don't go away, Horseman," she said over her shoulder.. "I don't get a chance to talk the language much these days."
I knew what she meant. It's a special language. When Jed Raymond walked into the Dixie Pig at eleven o'clock, Hazel and I were still rerunning races we'd both seen.
"You must have had the password, Chet," Jed said to me. "Our hostess doesn't usually unbend like this with the hoi polloi."
Hazel reached up from the booth and nearly collapsed him with a casual backhander in the chest. "This guy is with it, Jed,'' she said, leveling a thumb at me. "Where'd you find him?"
"He found me," Jed said when he could get his breath, "Lay off the strongarm stuff, woman, or I'll call out the militia on you." He sat down in the booth beside me. "One for the road?"
"One," I agreed. "Then I've got to get out of here. I'm meeting Roger Craig in the morning."
I drove back to the Lazy Susan twenty minutes later. Hazel's handsome face and attractive smile danced in the windshield before me. With her hearty laugh and superlative figure she was the most woman I'd seen in a hell of a while.
For a time I'd nearly forgotten the shape of things. It wouldn't do.
I pulled into Roger Craig's elliptically shaped graveled driveway at five minutes to eight. I was wearing my poor-but-honest khakis. Craig was already out in the side yard superintending a young black boy who was setting up an eight-foot section of slash pine about a foot-and-a-half in diameter. If this was the test, it was going to be a breeze. Slash pine is so soft I could have handled it with my teeth. Still, Craig was a native, and this was native wood that he knew.
I opened the back deck of the Ford and slid out my big toolchest along with a couple of coils of rope. Craig nodded pleasantly. I could see he knew about the deposit. His manner was easier. I had the job unless I cut a leg off. He needed the work done, and I was a customer of the bank.
I strapped on safety belt and climbers, giving it a touch of atmosphere, took out a pair of goggles, and unslung the lighter of the axes. "AH set, Mr. Craig?"
"Whenever you're ready, Arnold."
I walked to the pine log and tested it for balance. It was wedged firmly. I settled myself in front of it, digging in with my heels in the soft turf. With wood like this I had no need for a long, over-the-head ax stroke. Just as well for a man who still had a stiff arm.
I went at it from shoulder height, placing the cuts more with an eye to accuracy than speed. Still, a deep V narrowed rapidly as the ax rang with the mellow sound of good steel. The fat white chunk chips flew in a steady stream. Chips were still in the air when I stepped back with the pine log in two sections. The black boy stood to one side with wide, rounded eyes.
"I wish I could have tried you a few years back," Roger Craig said, a wistful note in his voice.
I almost made the mistake of handing him the ax. That would have been a hell of a thing to do to a recent heart-attack victim. I pushed back the goggles after I caught myself in time. "I'd have asked for a handicap," I told him. "You've got a press agent in town. Jed Raymond says you could really go."
He smiled with pleasure. "Jed's a good boy," he said in unconscious imitation of Hazel the previous night. Craig's smile faded. "I get damn tired of being half a man these days." Then he turned businesslike. "You were trying out for two jobs just now. I ran into Judge Carberry at the club last night. Drop around and see him when you finish up here." He held up a restraining hand when I would have thanked him. "What do you propose to do for me here?"
"I'll do it all." I waved at the driveway. "I'll shape up that low bush Ficus and wax myrtle when I finish with the trees." I turned to the side of the house. "Just about all of it needs thinning and trimming, especially the live oaks and that shagbark hickory. See the dead limbs on the sycamore? And you've got two bad palmettos on the other side of the house. The one closest definitely ought to come down, but maybe the other one can be saved." I ran over it in my mind. "All told, two-and-a-half or three days' work."
I le nodded. "I'll let the judge know he can expect to see you when you finish here."
"I appreciate it, Mr. Craig."
"Stop in and see me at the bank whenever you're ready." I le went into the house, and five minutes later his cat eased down the opposite loop of the driveway.
I smoked my before-climbing cigarette while I walked around the grounds planning my day. One of Roger Craig's forbears had had an eye for trees. There was the biggest magnolia I'd ever seen. It must have gone seventy feet. Craig had chinquapin, sassafras, sweet gum, red birch, and mimosa. On the other side of the house I'd seen cottonwoods and aspens. There was even a chinaberry tree.
It was a bright, sunny morning, and the air felt crisp. I was not only established in Hudson, Florida, but my sponsorship was the best. If I couldn't ease up on the blin
d side of whoever had sandbagged Bunny with a start like this, then there was something the matter with me.
I climbed upstairs and went to work. Most of the morning I thinned tops, occasionally marking a larger limb that had to go. I never stop for lunch when I'm in the trees. Food is just so much extra weight. I go straight through from eight to four.
In the afternoon I looped three different weight saws onto my belt and shouldered up a coil of rope. I went to work on the larger stuff. I undercut it first, then roped it to the trunk and lowered it after the overcut snapped it off. I wanted no heavy drops tearing up the side of the house or scarring the lawn.
The final half-hour I trimmed up stubs and daubed them with paste. I knocked off at four sharp. I felt tired, but pleasantly so. The arm had. held up well. It was the first real day's work I'd done since I'd cased a bank in Okmulgee, Oklahoma I'd finally decided against trying. But I'm never too much out of shape.
I packed the gear into the Ford and headed for the Lazy Susan and a shower. The traffic light caught me in the square, and I sat there waiting for it to change so I could swing south on 19. I had to hold up for a second after the light changed as a slim, redheaded man limped hurriedly across the street in front of the Ford, against the light.
I turned the corner with a teasing tickle in the back of my mind: had I seen the man before, or just someone who looked like him? When you move around the way I do, it's sometimes hard to hit faces to locations.
Then it hit me.
The last time I'd seen that limping redhead he'd been in Manny Sebastian's parking lot in Mobile with the hood up on my car.
I turned into the first vacant parking space, got out of the Ford, and walked back up the street.
I sat at the wobbly desk in my motel room and spread out under the gooseneck light the real estate map of the area I'd obtained from Jed Raymond. On the floor at my feet the German shepherd lay with his muzzle on his paws, his brown eyes watching me steadily. I'd stopped at the vet's and picked him up after I'd spent a fruitless thirty minutes quartering downtown Hudson in my search for the redhead I'd last seen three-hundred-fifty miles away. I hadn't found a trace of him.
Just seeing him, though, meant the honeymoon was over for me. There was only one reason the redhead could be in Hudson. Manny Sebastian had decided to cut himself in on the Phoenix $178,000. It really wasn't very bright of Manny. I had to give thought to how I was going to change his mind, because I was definitely going to change it. First, though, there was the matter of locating the money myself.
The shepherd's shoulder was stiff, but he could walk. The scrape on his head was nothing serious. "How you doin', Kaiser?" I asked him. His big tail thumped the rug. His head came up, and his new tags glistened on his new spiked collar. A twenty-dollar bill had straightened me out with the motel proprietor about the added starter in the unit.
I turned to the map. Finding the sack with the money in it had suddenly taken on urgency. I couldn't take the affair in second gear since seeing the limping redhead. I had to get moving. I knew Bunny wouldn't have dug himself in too far out of town, but he wouldn't have set up in a tent in front of city hall, either. He liked to batch it alone where he wouldn't attract attention. It was one of the things I'd liked about him.
After looking at the map, I tentatively ruled out the north-south stretch of US 19 as the most likely section to look for Bunny. Too much traffic and too many people for a man trying to attract no attention to himself. That left Main Street east of the traffic light in Hudson. And because of Thirty Mile Swamp south of Main Street, it left Main Street to the north.
I took a pencil and lightly marked two points five miles apart, beginning at the edge of town. If I drove up every road leading north from Main in that five-mile stretch, I might not find Bunny but I might find a blue Dodge with Arizona plates. An automobile is hard to dismantle completely. Even the burned-out skeleton of a car could be a starting place.
I looked at my watch. I still had an hour of daylight. "Come on, boy," I said to the shepherd. He was up at once, hobbling but expectant. He was ready to jump into the front seat when I opened the car door, but I picked him up and put him in. "We'll pamper you for a day or two," I told him. He nuzzled my arm and sat down, dignified as a college president.
I went around to the trunk and hauled out knee-high boots, a machete for underbrush, and a steel-shafted number 3 iron for snakes. I'd seen enough of the side roads around Hudson to know I'd be doing more walking than riding. And I planned to cover every cowpath a car or a man could traverse in the five-mile area I'd marked off. I'd cover it a yard at a time, if necessary. Whatever it took, I was going to find Bunny.
We drove out Main Street, Kaiser sitting up as steady as a sergeant-major on dress parade. Me had a big head and a wicked-looking mouthful of teeth. His coat was mostly gray, flecked with brown, and he looked all business riding shotgun beside me.
The first two side roads I turned up weren't too bad. I checked them out without too much trouble. At the third one I took one look, pulled the Ford off the road, and changed into the boots. I didn't have enough daylight left to do much, but I wanted to get the feel of it. I found out I had a bull by the nose in the first hundred yards. Clouds of gnats and mosquitoes dive-bombed me. I lunged through knee-deep brush, chopping steadily, streaming perspiration. Only a few signs of recent car traffic lured me on to the end of the track. When the faint ruts petered out by an abandoned tarpaper shack, I turned around and slogged my way back to the road.
I emerged from the brush to find a two-tone county sheriff's cruiser pulled in behind the Ford. Kaiser was showing a handsome set of fangs to a uniformed man trying to look into the front seat. My brush-crackling progress had announced me, and the uniformed man turned to inspect me.
"Deputy Sheriff Franklin," he announced curtly. "You'd better keep that damn wolf on a leash." I said nothing. Franklin was a stocky man with a red, weathered face. His gray trousers had red piping on the sides, and his khaki shirt was open at the throat. "What's your business out here?" he asked me.
"I'm a timber cruiser," I said.
"You're a what?"
"I'm scouting the area for a stands of second-growth black maple I heard is in here."
He scowled. "We're two hundred miles too far south for black maple. If you know your business, you know that." He glanced at the weedy-looking trees in an area that had obviously been viciously slash-cut.
I made my voice firm. "I had a drink with an old-timer who told me they took a million feet of black maple out of here fifty years ago. If the slash hasn't been burned over, then-should be a buck in it today for the guy who finds the right spot." Franklin was studying me, frowning. "I'm also working for Mr. Craig and Judge Carberry in town," I added.
Whatever Franklin had planned to say, the names stopped him. He wasn't the type to bow out gracefully, though. He swaggered to the rear of the Ford and made a production of writing down the license plate number. "We keep an eye on these badlands," he said gruffly and stalked back to his cruiser. He backed out on the road at fifty miles an hour and roared wide open down the road.
I changed back to my cordovans, put boots, machete, and golfclub back in the trunk, then patted Kaiser's scarred head when I got back into the Ford. "Good dog," I hold him. He rrrrrrr'd deep in his throat, then nipped at my arm. I had a feeling Kaiser and I understood each other about uniforms.
It was full twilight by the time I got back to the motel.
I began to make a habit of eating my evening meal at the Dixie Pig. Jed frequently joined me, and we'd sit over a drink and talk. When the bar wasn't busy, Hazel sat in, too.
Jed was a complete extrovert, like most salesmen I've known. In a roomful of people he'd crawl onto Hazel's lap and talk babytalk to her. He had a high-pitched, infectious laugh that turned every head in a room. But he was still a sharp-witted kid who looked both ways before crossing the street.
Between them Jed and Hazel knew every living soul for fifty miles. I'd get them st
arted and then listen while they rattled family skeletons past and present. I didn't Know what I was listening for. I just hoped I'd recognize it when I heard it.
Early in the game I introduced the subject of the post office. They both shook a few feathers loose from that bird, but I couldn't find anything meant for me. Lucille Grimes was the postmistress, widow of a postmaster deceased five years. Jed said the town wondered why she didn't remarry, since she didn't lack for suitors. He also said zestfully that she was a tall, leggy, cool-looking blonde.
Hazel had her own idea why the beauteous Lucille hadn't remarried. She hinted that the favored suitor already had a wife. Since Hazel, minus her usual spade-is-a-shovel outspokenness, failed to name him, I deduced that he was a Dixie Pig customer. Lucille Grimes wasn't one of Hazel's favorite people, judging from the redhead's attitude. Jed kidded her about it openly.
I wasn't interested in the postmistress' morals or lack of them, but that post office continued to bother me.
It took me eight working days to clean up the Craig and Landscombe properties. Evenings I got out and plowed up and down the side roads north of Main Street. I found nothing. Nobody remarked that I didn't seem to be knocking down stone walls looking for more work after I finished with the Craig and Landscombe properties. The sun coast of Florida is an easygoing place.
Jed Raymond led an active social life, even for a young fellow his age. The nights he didn't show for dinner, it came to be understood I'd postpone my own meal to seven-thirty, and Hazel would serve us both in the corner booth. We'd sit and swap stories about horses and horse-players over coffee and cigarettes.
The big girl was comfortable to be around. Once in a while she'd have to get up and tend bar, but not too often. The Dixie Pig did its real business from nine-thirty to two a.m. The talk was knowledgeable. Hazel had made the racetrack scene from Ak-Sar-Ben to Woodbine, and so had I. It's not the biggest club in the world.
Jed warned me once that she could be moody and her drinking a problem. So far I'd seen no sign of either. I felt she had a chance to let off steam with me that had been a long time bottled up. Blueshirt Charlie Andrews had died a few years before of a heart attack. Hazel had rushed into a no-good second marriage with a mystery man, Lou Espada, who had died as mysteriously as he'd lived. Andrews and Espada between them had left Hazel well off.
