by Ed Kurtz
“I don’t . . . I don’t suppose you happen to be a doctor?”
“No, ma’am—but I used to be a sheriff’s deputy. I know a thing or two.”
“A deputy? Oh . . .”
She might have meant to say more, but Jojo was using both hands to extend her leg to its full length, which elicited a startled yelp from her.
He said, “Sorry.”
“Is it broken?”
“I’m looking now.”
“Sweet Lord, I hope it’s not broken.”
“My daddy always used to say, ‘Hope in one hand and crap in the other, and see which one fills up first.’”
“That’s not very nice,” she said, frowning.
“Yeah, I guess not.”
“True enough, but not at all nice.”
Jojo smiled. She smiled back.
Gently, he moved the pad of his thumb along every contour and crevice in and around her swollen ankle, feeling for evidence of a fracture. Apart from the swelling and darkening of the skin, he found nothing.
“If there’s a break, it’s where I can’t feel it.”
“Oh, no. . . .”
“It’s not so bad. That means it’s not broken clear through. The bones are still set, which is a hell of a lot better than the alternative.”
“Will I be able to walk?”
“Eventually, sure—but I wouldn’t recommend it for at least a week or so.”
“Are you the deputy that got mixed up with that coloured girl?”
His eyes popped wide as his head jerked back.
“That was unexpected,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I . . . I am sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I am. That was . . . uncouth.”
“It’s fine.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her index finger and thumb and groaned.
“I’m gonna need to find somebody with a car,” he said, staring off into the unmoving distance.
“Don’t mind me,” she said with some strain in her voice. “I’ll just have nice little nap.”
“I don’t think I can carry you two miles.”
“No, I expect not.”
Jojo stood up and stretched his arms. The sun still hung just over the horizon as if the gears had gotten stuck. He considered lying down on the road and putting his ear to the ground like the Indians always did in the oaters, but he decided it probably wouldn’t work and he’d just end up looking ridiculous. Instead, he peered down one end of the road for a while, and then the other, holding his breath all the while and listening to the stillness of the outcropping country.
No one was coming.
While he weighed his options—which were limited to leaving her in the irrigation ditch while going for help and staying with her for indefinite period of time—Jojo’s sun-blinded eyes fell upon the blood-red barn across the way.
“How about some shade?”
“Going to hold my umbrella over me?”
“I’m going to carry you to Leroy Dunn’s barn over there.”
“The dance isn’t until Saturday,” she remarked, “and besides—I don’t think I’m much for the Lindy hop just yet.”
“Well, I don’t know about any dance, but I figure you’ll be a lot less hot in there, and a lot less likely to get flattened by some farmer’s son who’s drunker than Cooter Brown and roaming the county in his papa’s one-and-a-half-tonne stakebed.”
She didn’t need long to think it over. He went back down into the ditch, picked her up and carried her up to the road.
“Besides,” he grunted, taking careful steps to the field on the other side, “maybe Leroy’s poking around here someplace.”
“And if not?”
Jojo’s shoulders tensed as he balanced her weight and descended into the opposite ditch.
“Then we wait.”
Although the ever-present scent of horse manure lingered still in the stifling air, the inside of the barn was already set up for the forthcoming festivities. It was one big open space, the floor covered with scattered hay, and the bales were stacked ten feet high in some places against the walls. A podium had been set up at the far end from the doors, and a pair of scored wooden tables were lined up for whatever refreshments the Daughters of the Confederacy had in mind. Jojo took it all in with some modicum of awe; he’d seen quite a few houses that weren’t as livable at this barn.
He found a row of hay bales suitable enough for a temporary bed, upon which he gingerly laid his distressed damsel, who crinkled her face with discomfort but didn’t say anything to let on about it. She sucked in a deep breath and blew it out like it was fire. Jojo examined every corner of the barn, then went back to the open doors and peered out in all directions.
“There’s no one around.”
“Figures,” she said.
“Some places you can’t ever be alone,” he mused. “Like big cities, I mean. Even if you’re in a room by yourself, there’s someone right on the other side of the wall. You’re ever in trouble, I guess you could just knock on the wall, say, ‘Hey in there, I need some help.’”
The woman laughed a little and said, “I’m Theodora. Theodora Cavanaugh.”
He turned back into the barn and took his hat off to scratch his scalp.
“The movie fella’s wife?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s where I was heading.”
“You don’t mean you wanted to see that awful picture. . . .”
“Well, no—I already saw it, but no. Just something I’m wanting to look into.”
“I thought you weren’t a deputy anymore.”
“Old habits, I guess.”
“You don’t suppose Russ is in some kind of trouble, do you?”
“I don’t suppose much. Just some strange stuff going on, that’s all. Makes me curious, and I can’t sleep too good when I get all curious like that.”
Theodora smiled thinly and Jojo patted himself down, absently looking for the smokes he didn’t have.
“Hell,” he grumbled. “I don’t guess you’ve got any cigarettes on you?”
“Sorry. I don’t smoke.”
“Hell.”
“It’s probably just as well. You’d probably burn the barn down with all this dry hay in here.”
“I still say hell.”
“You’re a rough one, aren’t you?”
“Rough how?” he asked, half-closing one eye.
“I don’t know. Seems like maybe life’s giving you more knocks that a man usually gets.”
“Sounds about right. I’m not complaining, though.”
“See, I can recall the scandal—if you don’t mind my calling it that—but I can’t quite remember your name.”
“Jojo,” he said.
“I’d have remembered that.”
“It’s George Walker, but everybody calls me Jojo.”
“Whatever for?”
“Well, there’s two stories there.”
She spread her hands out and dramatically surveyed the barn. “Plenty of time,” she said.
“I’ll give you one of ’em.”
“Fair enough.”
“My little sister, when we were kids, she had this speech problem. She couldn’t figure out how to say a lot of words, so in the end she sort of had her own language, words she said her own way and if you didn’t know her, you’d never figure out what she was talking about.”
“Like what?” she asked, interested.
“Well, let me think—there was ‘base-nip,’ for basement, and instead of blanket she called it a ‘bock-bock.’ Things like that.”
“That’s cute.”
“Some folks reckoned it was.”
“And you?”
&nb
sp; “I thought it was goddamned adorable.”
She smiled.
“Anyhow, one of the words she couldn’t say was my name. The poor kid couldn’t say George.”
“But she could pronounce Jojo.”
He made a pistol with his forefinger and thumb, cocked it and fired away. “You got it.”
“You’re right: adorable.”
He nodded and fanned his neck with his hat.
“What’s her name?” she asked.
“Lilly.”
“Did she ever get over it? The speech problem, I mean.”
“Naw,” Jojo said dismissively. “She died when she was eight.”
“Oh.”
“I was . . . thirteen, I guess. Yep, woulda had to’ve been.”
“That’s very sad.”
“That’s life,” he said. “Nasty, brutish and short.”
“You’re quoting out of context, sir.”
“Come again?” He cranked his head to one side, puzzled but intrigued.
“That’s Hobbes, isn’t it? From Leviathan? Because he wasn’t talking about life in general, but life during wartime.”
“Impressive,” he said. “Except we happen to be in wartime, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“There’s no war in Litchfield.”
He shrugged. “I wonder.”
“The war at home?”
“Something like that. Listen—do you know much about the folks associated with that sex picture your husband is showing? These roadshow people?”
Theodora arched an eyebrow. “Old habits?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Not much,” she said, letting her eyes wander as she dipped into her thoughts. “Nothing, really. I know I don’t like them, or what they’re doing, anyway.”
“Did you see the picture?”
“No, and I don’t want to, thank you very much.”
“Have you spoken to any of them?”
“Not directly, no. It’s Russ’s business—I haven’t much to do with it.”
“So you haven’t met this Barker Davis fellow.”
“I’ve seen him. Regular enough looking fellow, apart from his eyes.”
“His eyes?”
“Hmm.” She furrowed her brow and stared intently at the musty beams that held the roof up. “Have you ever been stared at by a snake, Mr. Walker?”
“Jojo, please.”
“All right, but have you?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“Cold and hot at the same time.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s hard to describe,” she said. “I’ve never tried before. Where we live, Russ and I, we get a fair amount of varmints coming ’round the house—all sort of critters, from possums and coons to spiders almost as big as my hand—and snakes, too. Rattlers and copperheads, mostly, though I recall a time when I came out the back door to find myself standing not two feet from a big black cottonmouth with the cruellest looking eyes I’d ever seen on any of God’s creatures. They were round and yellow, and . . .” Here she trailed off, squinting her eyes and screwing her mouth up to one side. “Now, I know Reverend Shannon says only people have souls, but I’ve never been very sure about that. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a dog or a horse or anything like that, but I grew up with a lot of animals, and I called some of them friends. The way I see it, if I’ve got anything in me like a soul, then they sure did, too. So, if I’m to accept that animals can have souls the same as people, then I reckon I can be awfully startled by how utterly soulless that snake’s eyes were.”
“And this Davis fellow has eyes like that?”
“Cold and hot,” she reiterated, “at the same time.”
Chapter Ten
At the top of her powerful lungs, Mrs. Hutchins sang:
“When the last, feeble step has been taken,
and the gates of that city appear,
and the beautiful songs of the angels
float out to my listening ear . . .”
Everyone else sang, too—all but Rory Allmond, who could barely speak above a whisper as it was—though none of them matched the aggressive intensity of their de facto leader’s vocal assault.
“When all that now seems so mysterious,
will be bright and as clear as the day,
then the toils of the road will seem nothing,
when I get to the end of the way.”
Jim Shannon had trouble imagining where she got the power from, what with the heat and her age and weight. He supposed he was in fairly good shape and a good twenty years the old woman’s junior, yet he was already drenched with sweat and feeling weak from her death march to the Palace Theater. Twice already he’d allowed his arms to drop, which resulted in his sign banging against the person in front of him, which resulted in a dirty look. This embarrassed the reverend, who felt vaguely humiliated as it was that Emma Hutchins was leading this silly little crusade rather than him. It was not as though he felt strongly enough about the issue to take command, but with her around to set these sorts of things in motion, who needed a preacher? He felt like a puppet leader, which was precisely what he was. At this realization, he dropped his head rather than his arms.
As the hymn reached its conclusion and the Palace marquee shimmered into sight in the middle distance, Shannon felt his stomach make a fist. He thought, and very nearly said aloud, I’ve gotten to the end of the way.
Jojo stepped out onto the yellow-green grass and squinted in the fading sun, which threw blinding spears of light over the horizon in a last-ditch effort to win the battle it waged. He’d told Theodora he aimed to walk up to the big house—Leroy Dunn’s two-story farmhouse—to see if anyone was around to help. He cocked his hat to one side to block the sun and set off.
Halfway across the fallow field, it hit him.
“Theodora,” he muttered with a bitter laugh. “Fucking Theodora Goes Wild.”
He saw that picture way back in his early deputy days, ’36 or ’37 if he recalled correctly, and of course it starred the one and only world-famous Beth Walker lookalike Irene goddamn Dunne.
“Son of a bitch.”
He walked on, cresting the mild hill that hid the big house from the barn, certain that the nice lady with the busted flipper was ruined to him now.
“You look fine,” she said, puckering her shiny, cherry-red lips and looking him over with her drowsy brown eyes.
He shrugged into the white coat and tightened the knot at his throat. He had always hated wearing neckties but for some reason it didn’t seem to bother him much now.
“Yeah?”
“Real professional like,” she added. “A real doctor.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Don’t forget this.”
She pressed a twice-folded sheet of typing paper into his hand. He regarded it quizzically.
“Your spiel,” she reminded him. “You’d better know your lines.”
“My lines. Yes.”
“You don’t have to pass a medical board review or anything, but most of those rubes want to believe you’re Dr. Elliot Freeman, get it? So make ’em believe it.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey.” She snapped her fingers an inch from his eyes. He blinked. “Get with it or get packing. You’re with us now, baby. You do your job right and, well, everything’s jake, Jake.”
She grinned a lupine grin and flicked a long, thin cigarette into her mouth. Jake smiled back, though he had trouble understanding why. All he could really wrap his mind around was the performance, the most crucial act of his life, his defining moment. Do the job, say the words, be convincing.
Make Daddy Barker proud.
Scooter felt like Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, stealing into the alley (which wasn’t so much an alley as the broad, open space be
tween the theatre and the Rotary Club) and slinking against the brick façade with his moll in tow. Or maybe George Raft. Either way, he felt a tremendous surge in his chest like his torso was a hot water heater. He had to suppress an excited laugh as he held onto Margie’s hand and turned to face the back door.
The door was open no more than an inch and half from the jamb. Scooter’s eyes trailed down the drafty crack to the half-empty popcorn bag that someone had jammed there to keep it from latching shut.
“You got somebody working the inside?” he asked, maintaining his private gangster fantasy.
“I guess you could say that,” she answered with a coquettish smile.
He arched an eyebrow and leaned over to peer through the crack. A tantalizingly cool stream of refrigerated air washed over his face, chilling the beads of sweat that dappled his cheeks and brow.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Not much. Some boxes and a bare bulb in the ceiling. Looks like they just store stuff back here.”
“Then the coast is clear?”
He swallowed, smiled, nodded.
“No time like the present,” he said, parroting a phrase he’d heard in a movie somewhere.
He slid his hand into the crack, pulled the heavy door open and let Margie slip inside. He followed, and as the door closed behind them they found themselves sunblind in the dimness of the hall. Ahead of them the hall opened up into the main lobby, where a cacophony of voices came together to form an unintelligible roar.
Margie said, “Are you ready?”
Scooter felt bold. He playfully patted her rump with the flat of his hand and answered, “Let’s go.”
Russ was hunched over the desk in his private office, the fingers of one hand curled around a chipped glass with a splash of brandy left in the bottom. Poking out between two fingers on the other hand was an unlit cigarette. He’d mostly forgotten about both the drink and the smoke. All he could really seem to think about was the sleep he wasn’t getting.
Atop the desk was a small calendar, propped up by a cardboard tab. The top page was labelled july in bold, red letters, and mcmahon’s filling station was stamped to the left of that. The main body of the small rectangular page was comprised of five rows of squares, thirty-one of which marked the days of the month. And written across each row were the titles of the features planned for that week with lines to mark their respective runs from Wednesday to Tuesday: scrawled in Russ’s hand on the top row was Riding High and The Outlaw, and the second row showed Destination Tokyo and Bataan. Starting on the square for the Wednesday of the third week, Russ had written just one word: roadshow. And though he booked a pair of horror pictures—I Walked With a Zombie and The Mad Ghoul—for the last week of July several weeks earlier, for whatever reason he never bothered to enter these features on the calendar. In fact, he hadn’t written anything at all anywhere in the desk calendar after the present week, despite bookings leading well into September. He simply failed to see any point in maintaining the calendar, though staring at it now he equally failed to understand why he should feel that way.
