Lyin' Like a Dog, The Yankee Doctor, The Danged Swamp! 3-Volume set

by Richard Mason

  Then she walked into the store with us sitting there so mad and worried we could hardly talk.

  Finally, John Clayton asked, “What are ruffians?”

  “Danged if I know, but I’ll bet they’re something bad. Oh, oh my gosh, we’re in so much trouble! What are we gonna do?” I said.

  “Come on, Richard, we gotta go talk to Peg.”

  We jumped off the breadbox and ran around the block to Peg’s Pool Hall. Peg had just walked in the back door, and after we rattled the front door a few minutes, he let us in. He took one look at us and shook his head. “Damn, boys, y’all made the paper; just can’t stay out of trouble, can ya? Come sit down and tell me why y’all broke those hotel windows.”

  We walked over to the nearest domino table and sat down.

  “Peg,” I said, “you know we’ve been tellin’ you the honest to god’s truth ’bout everything that happened.” Peg nodded his head yes and I continued. “It’s that Doctor Carl, Peg. He did it, turned us in, and then he wrote the judge a letter sayin’ we should be sent to reform school. He’s tryin’ to get rid of us, ’cause we’re the onlyest ones in town that knows what a sorry person he is, and if he does one more thing, and we get the blame, we’re goners. What are we gonna do, Peg? We ain’t done none of that stuff.”

  Peg leaned back and shook his head. “Boys, y’all are in a bunch of trouble, and I swear to god , I wish I could help you, but even if I believed y’all are innocent, which I do, I still can’t do nothin’. You know them church ladies of the WMU is after me, and if I start badmouthin’ Doctor Carl, they’ll be all over my ass. Hell, he gave a two-thousand- dollar gift to the church’s building fund last week. But boys something funny is goin’ on with Doctor Carl, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m gonna tell you what I know, and I’ll deny I said it if y’all tell anybody. Promise you won’t tell a soul?”

  “Yes sir, we promise.”

  “Okay, boys, there are a couple of things that don’t look just right. First, that old sot Curly Sawyer has started paying cash for his beer, and he even cleaned up his old accounts. When I asked him where he got the money, he just smiled and said, “I got my sources.” Whatever the hell that means. Now, just tell me, who in the world would give old Curly a dime?”

  We sure couldn’t think of anybody, and, in fact, Curly was always trying to borrow money for a beer even from little kids.

  Peg went on: “And, boys, I don’t know if this has anything to do with Curly or not, but as you know I close up real late especially on weekends, and when I left here last Saturday night, ’bout eleven, I drove down Front Street by Doctor Carl’s office and I seen cars still there―and hell boys, it was way after eleven. Hell, I don’t know, maybe it was an emergency or something, or he might just be that busy. But that ain’t all. Last week that carpenter Donald Caruthers was in here havin’ a beer, and he was tellin’ me how much business Doctor Carl was doing. Said he had worked on his office to expand it into the hotel, and now he’s got two more big rooms to see patients in. Oh, yeah, and he said Woodrow Cheers, the building contractor, had been talkin’ to Doctor Carl ’bout building him a house, and it sure ain’t gonna be no oil-field shack, according to Donald. It’s gonna be the biggest house in Norphlet.”

  “What in the world is goin’ on, Peg? There ain’t never any patients in his office. You know people in Norphlet don’t go to a doctor unless it’s a matter of life or death,” I said.

  “Hell if I know, Richard, but remember don’t y’all say one word about what I just told you. You hear?”

  “Yes sir.”

  We left the pool hall feeling a little better, ’cause at least somebody believed us.

  Well, before I headed for home I had one more thing I had to do, and believe me I danged sure didn’t want to do it: I was going to talk to Miss Simpson. I stayed downtown until almost four and then slowly walked to the refinery office. There on the edge of the parking lot was Miss Simpson’s car, a black 1939 Ford. It wasn’t but a few minutes until she walked out and started for her car.

  “Miss Simpson?”

  She turned around and smiled.

  “Richard, how are you? What are you doing here?”

  I was so embarrassed and scared I could hardly speak.

  “Uh, uh, Miss Simpson, I came here to talk to you.”

  “You did what? You want to talk to me? What about?”

  Yes, ma’am … Oh, Miss Simpson, I don’t wanta move to Oklahoma!” I was almost crying.

  “Richard, what on earth are you talking about?”

  “Miss Simpson, if you don’t quit foolin’ round with my daddy, Momma is gonna move me to Oklahoma,” I sobbed.

  Well, Miss Simpson was so shocked at what I’d just said that she just gasped, “Oh, oh, Richard!” and she looked around to be sure no one had heard me. Then she reached over and held my hand and said, “Richard, your dad and I are just friends, and you’re just imagining that. Don’t get upset about us, we’re not doing anything.”

  “Yes, ma’am you are, ’cause I’ve seen Daddy slip round the back of your house and sneak in when you opened the door, and you never turn the lights on.”

  Wow, Miss Simpson dropped my hand like it was a hot potato, and now she didn’t seem so sweet.

  “Richard Mason, I can’t believe you have been sneaking around behind my house in the dark and peaking in! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Miss Simpson my daddy has been actin’ so funny lately and Momma is so upset that I just had to find out what was happenin’, and Miss Simpson if you don’t stop seein’ Daddy, Momma’s gonna move us to Oklahoma.”

  “Richard, your daddy is a wonderful man, and he has been coming by my house, and I’m sorry you’re upset, but you don’t have the right to tell two grown adults who they can see and who they can’t. I sorry this has upset you, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and by the way, if you promise not to tell anyone about what you’ve seen, I won’t tell your dad we had this talk. Is it a deal?”

  I said “yes,” since Miss Simpson wasn’t gonna stop seeing Daddy, and I sure didn’t want a switching when Daddy found out I was sneaking around in her backyard.

  The next day when me and John Clayton met down at the breadbox I told him that talking to Miss Simpson didn’t work. Besides, all that stuff Peg had told us about Doctor Carl was so bad and scary that Miss Simpson didn’t seem to be much of a deal at all. We stopped talking about Miss Simpson, and for the next couple of days we talked of nothing else but what Peg had told us and going to reform school. Would we be locked in a little room and handed a tray of bread and water through a little slot in the door? Well, we couldn’t answer none of that stuff, so we started talking about that old drunk Curly having money, and we decided Doctor Carl had to be giving him money. We went over every possibility of how Curly could come up with extra money and it had to be coming from Doctor Carl.

  “Heck, Richard, you don’t just give money to an old drunk. He hasta have a reason. Maybe it has something to do with us. You know like lyin’ ’bout stuff we did, and what ’bout those people that are stayin’ late at his office? What do you think they’re doin’?”

  “Maybe we need to find out,” I said.

  “Yeah, let’s tell our folks we’re goin’ frog giggin’ Saturday night, and then come downtown and see what’s goin’ on at Doctor Carl’s office.”

  Saturday night finally rolled around, and while I was waiting for John Clayton to come by my house, Momma and Daddy and me sat around the kitchen table and tuned in Walter Winchell.

  “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea … let’s go to press … American planes bomb the main islands of Japan … hundreds of Zeroes shot down … Japs surrender in China by the thousands…” and on and on he went about the War in the Pacific.

  Walter Winchell had just finished when I heard John Clayton yelling for me.

  “Richard, Richard!”

  “Momma, me and John Clayton are gonna go f
rog giggin’,” I yelled as I walked outta the house.

  “Okay, Richard, but don’t bring any more home. Give your share to John Clayton. The icebox is full of frog legs.”

  “All right, Momma, we’ll be back round eleven.”

  We went straight downtown, slipped around behind Echols Grocery, put our gigs, sack, and lights against the back of the store, and then walked down to Front Street where we sat down in the tall weeds across from Doctor Carl’s office.

  “Richard, this is stupid. There ain’t no one here, and the office is totally dark. We’re wastin’ our dang time.”

  “Yeah, maybe we are, but I’d just as soon sit here as tramp round those durn oil pits lookin’ for frogs. Let’s sit here awhile longer and then we can check out Miss Simpson’s bedroom window. Hey, you never know we might get lucky again.”

  “Ha, we’re gonna hafta be real lucky. After that time when she didn’t have no clothes on, we went by there a million times, and nothin’.”

  “Yeah, but you never know.”

  And so we sat there and talked about Miss Simpson, and then we switched over to Miss Tina, and started to compare when… “Shusss, a car.”

  The car stopped right in front of Doctor Carl’s office, and Doctor Carl and Miss

  Tina hopped out

  “It’s nine-thirty,” I whispered. “It’s sure late to be seein’ patients.”

  “Yeah, something’s goin’ on, and it ain’t got nothin’ to do with doctoring,” John Clayton whispered back.

  Doctor Carl and Miss Tina went in, turned on the lights, and walked in the back office. Then the lights in the front office went off.

  “Did you see that? Shoot, that was sure strange. What goin’ on in there?” said John Clayton.

  “Shusss! Be still, another car is pullin’ up,” I said. Sure enough, a big old beat-up Plymouth stopped and six men got out and went in. Five minutes later another car arrived and four more men got out and went in.

  “What in the world are ten men doing in Doctor Carl’s office this late at night?” I said.

  “Heck if I know. They sure don’t look sick,” whispered John Clayton.

  We sat there looking at the dark office wondering what in the world was going on when two more cars pulled up together and out hopped six women. I stared through the weeds tryin’ to see, and then one of the women turned toward us and lit a cigarette. Oh my gosh―it was Miss Emma!

  “John Clayton,” I whispered, “I know that lady. It’s Miss Emma from the Randolph Hotel. What is Miss Emma doin’ at Doctor Carl’s office? She’s supposed to be workin’ at the Randolph.”

  I’d met Miss Emma last fall when I just happened to go into the Randolph Hotel Coffee Shop and started talking to a couple of ladies, who sure looked the part of the famous girls of the Randolph. Heck, we got to be good friends because she knew my daddy, but wow, when Momma found out about Daddy being Miss Emma’s good friend she went just crazy and there was the biggest danged fight right there in my living room you ever did see. Daddy stopped seeing Miss Emma and even quit drinking for a couple of months, but now he was seeing Miss Simpson, so things were all messed up again.

  John Clayton kinda scratched his head like it would give him a good idea and then he nodded and said, “Heck, Richard, maybe she’s foolin’ round, and maybe all them women are a-foolin’ round. My daddy said he thought Miss Tina and Doctor Carl was foolin’ round, so maybe Miss Emma and them other girls is joinin’ them. Heck, they’re sure as heck being real sneaky about whatever they’s doing.”

  We didn’t quite know what to make of all of this, but John Clayton had a real good point: Something was going on in there that they didn’t want nobody to know about.

  Then I had a pretty good thought, and I leaned over and whispered in John Clayton’s ear, “Maybe if we can find out what they’re doing we can get Doctor Carl in trouble and get him off of us.”

  John Clayton looked at me and said, “That might work, but that ain’t all; I think I know why Doctor Carl wants to send us to reform school.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “Well heck, Richard, I figure something is goin’ on in Doctor Carl’s office that’s really, really bad, and we’re the onlyest ones in town that knows what a sorry person he is. Shoot, nobody but Peg has a clue that them people is doing something bad.”

  “Yeah, I you’re right ’bout that, and Peg shor ain’t gonna come out and say nothin’ bad about ’em. But you know what? We might not last long enough to get ’em found out about. The judge said just one more little thing and we’re on the bus to Texarkana and reform school.”

  “Uh, huh, but what can we do? We can’t just sit round here and wait ’til they do something, and we get blamed with it.”

  “Well, you’re right, Richard and we hafta do something ’cause the way I see it, it’s either them or us.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, either they’re gonna get us sent to reform school, or we’re gonna run ’em outta town or get ’um arrested. Heck, we can’t just sit around whinin’ like some little third-graders.”

  “You’re right, John Clayton, and we gotta hurry and do something, but, heck, them roaches didn’t do it, and I can’t think of nothin’ else to do.”

  “Well, I can’t think of nothin’ neither, but if they’s doin’ something real bad in that office, maybe we could get the State Police to come arrest them, that’d do it. We just gotta find out exactly what’s goin’ on in there.”

  We sat there and whispered back and forth until I had an idea.

  “Heck, I know how to find out. I’ll ask Miss Emma the next time I’m in El Dorado.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Miss Emma

  I was up early the next Saturday morning and down at the newsstand before five just like I’d been every day since I’d been put on probation. Doc kinda wanted to take our side about all the stuff that we’d been blamed for, but even Doc thought Doctor Carl was telling the truth that me and John Clayton had broken out them windows. After all, as Doc liked to remind me, “You boys have been in so much trouble over the past two years that every soul in town believes y’all busted them windows.” Doc even had a couple of old ladies complain that his paper boy was a criminal.

  I was back home early, finished my chores, and did a few more things around the barnyard just to impress Daddy. After I finished, I went in to talk to Momma. Daddy had canceled all trips to the picture show after the judge put me on probation, but I’d been almost perfect for two weeks, and I knew Momma might be softening. She was, and even though she was barely speaking to Daddy, she agreed to ask him if I could go to the picture show.

  “Jack, Richard has been so helpful over the past two weeks, and he sure hasn’t gotten into anything. I think he’s learned a lesson. Why don’t we let him go to the picture show today?”

  Daddy didn’t say nothing for a minute or so, but that was a whole lot better than just saying no, so I walked up and just looked up and him and said, “Please.”

  I held my breath as Daddy slowly nodded his head “Yes,” and I rushed for the car. In a few minutes we pulled up in front of the Ritz Theater, and I hopped outta the car with Daddy reminding me to be standing there on the curb at one. I walked over to the ticket line and pretended I was gonna buy a ticket, as I waited for Daddy to drive off. Soon Daddy’s car turned the corner, and I got outta line and walked back down Main Street toward the Randolph Hotel.

  In a few minutes I’d slipped through the big double doors and into the lobby of the hotel. I walked up to the front desk and asked the man if I could sit in one of the big leather chairs and wait for my daddy. He was real nice and after I checked out the coffee shop to be sure Miss Emma wasn’t in there I sat down and waited. I figured sooner or later she’d come through the lobby, and I could ask her about Doctor Carl. Two hours passed and then, when I had only thirty minutes left before I had to be back at the theater, the elevator doors opened and Miss Emma stepped out. I jumped up and ran over to her.

 
; “Miss Emma, Miss Emma, I need to talk to you real bad.”

  “Why, Richard, why aren’t you at the Ritz? If I remember right, you don’t miss a Saturday morning.”

  “Oh, Miss Emma, I’m in a whole lot of trouble and it’s a whole bunch more important than seeing a picture show. I’ve been arrested and put on probation, and if I do one little thing wrong, they’re gonna send me to reform school over in Texarkana―and Miss Emma, Daddy’s foolin’ round with Miss Simpson who works at the refinery office, and Momma is so upset she’s talkin’ ’bout takin’ me and movin’ to Oklahoma.” My hands were shaking I was so upset.

  Gosh, Miss Emma looked so shocked when I blurted all that stuff out that she put her hand over her mouth, got real close to me, and whispered, “Richard, I can’t believe all of this.”

  “Miss Emma let’s go over and sit in the corner, and I’ll tell you everything.” We walked over to a big leather sofa that was facing the wall, and I told Miss Emma every little thing about Doctor Carl, and, oh my gosh, when she realized it was Doctor Carl Donaldson, she got real nervous and lit a cigarette. I went on and on with every detail, and then I came to last Saturday night, and when I told Miss Emma I saw her get out of the car and go into Doctor Carl’s office at eleven o’clock she nearly fainted. “Oh my god!”

  “Miss Emma, you gotta help us. That Miss Tina told us that they were gonna do something else, and I could just pack my bags ’cause I’d be off to Texarkana real soon.”

  “Oh, Richard, you should never have gotten involved with Doctor Donaldson. He’s a dangerous man, and if he knew you saw us go into his office last Saturday night, well, uh, uh, your life would be in danger.”