by Jim Thompson
“Shoot,” said his opponent.
Jeff sighed and turned to the table. Effortlessly he shot in one ball after another. He put up his cue as the last two balls were clattering into their pockets.
The bumpkin sheepishly handed him a dime and dropped a nickel on the table, and the loafers roared with senseless laughter at his discomfiture. Jeff donned his black broadcloth coat, set his five-gallon hat on his head at a careless angle, and gave a tug to his flowered vest. His trousers were corduroy and tight-fitting around the thighs. He pulled the legs up a little, so that the cuffs would catch around the top of his high-heeled boots.
He looked, as he intended to, like the great Southwestern lawyer, Temple Houston.
“Hey, Jeff, when you goin’ back to the eighth grade?”
“I was back, yokel. Hadst not heard about the plaster falling off?”
“Hey, Jeff, why don’tcha ever stay in your office?”
“I have no hogs to keep me warm like you, my lout. And coal is high and fires are fleeting.”
“Hey, Jeff, Old Man Simon’s put a mouse-trap in his cracker barrel.”
“Ah? And do I see bruises on thy filthy fingers?”
He made his exit while they were still laughing; and there was a smile and a quip on his lips as he rocked down the slippery walk on his high heels. But inside he was hurt by their banter; inside, he ached.
Jeff Parker was Josephine Fargo’s step-sister’s boy. A sand-hiller and one of a family of fourteen children, he had been literally ejected from the fold when he was twelve. Lawyer Amos Ritten had taken him in in exchange for the minor labor of sweeping out and firing up and the major one of trotting back and forth to the saloon for him. And after a year or two, under pressure of talk, he had even started him to school. Jeff had gone through the eight grades in five years, and by dint of omnivorous reading and some cramming by Ritten, he had passed the none-too-strenuous bar examinations when he was twenty-one. He was now twenty-three.
When Ritten had been elected county judge the year before, Jeff had automatically become the custodian of his practice. He had never been in court. He existed on the few and slender fees he obtained from notarizations, drawing deeds and wills. Those, and his winnings at pool and other games. And there was even less future than there was present. Ritten might lose out in the next election, and, if so, he would necessarily want his practice back; and Jeff couldn’t see himself setting up in opposition to the man who had befriended him. And if Ritten did stay in office, well, he was still getting nowhere.
He wished to gosh that someone would get murdered or something. Something that would bring in a few dollars and get him some attention. He wished he were blind like that lawyer down in Oklahoma, whatever his name was, so people would elect him to Congress. Why, gosh, if he could just get in the state legislature for a term—just that much—he wouldn’t worry any more.
He passed Alfred Courtland with a merry nod, and Courtland called after him.
“Oh, Parker. Sherman Fargo was looking for you.”
“You mean Josephine?” said Jeff, stopping.
“No, Sherman. He went around to your office, but you weren’t there.”
“Why, no,” said the attorney. “Sherman ought to know I wouldn’t be there. Where is he now?”
“I believe he and his father went up to my house for lunch. Where will you be afterwhile?”
“In the store, here. Uh—he didn’t say what he wanted, did he?”
“I’ll tell him where you are,” said Courtland.
Jeff went into the store, puzzled. He couldn’t figure out what Sherman would want, unless Josephine had sent in some old clothes for him. She did that now and then, and he wished that she wouldn’t. Everyone ribbed him about it, and he had a hard time getting back at them. Anyway, he had all the clothes he needed.
He had timed his entrance into Simon’s store nicely, for all the loafers had gone home to lunch. Fumbling in the pocket of his flowered vest, he drew out a nickel and tossed it onto the counter.
“Give me five cents’ worth of cheese, Sim.”
“Kind of blowin’ yourself, ain’t ye?” said Simon, arising leisurely from his chair.
“Oh, well, that’s the way I am. Think no more of a nickel than the railroad does of a locomotive.”
He joshed the old man anxiously while the storekeeper raised the glass case from the cheese and began to carve. But the joshing did not have the desired effect.
“Gollee, Sim, that ain’t no nickel’s worth.”
“It’ll make up to a nickel by the time you get through helpin’ yourself to other stuff.”
“Well, gollee,” said the young attorney, but he took the yellow wedge extended to him on the carving knife.
Hoisting himself to the counter, he reached into the cracker barrel and brought out a foot-square block of crackers. Taking great bites of them, he nibbled stingily at the cheese.
The storekeeper watched him, grinning. He liked Jeff; the whole town did. In a way, they were all sort of proud of him.
“Jeff…”
“What?” said the youth, gloomily.
“There’s still some coffee on the stove.”
Jeff’s face broke into its usual sunny smile. “Ah, now you’re talking, Sim. Just let me borrow that cup there, will you?”
He took the tin cup Simon handed him and lifted the coffeepot from the round-bellied stove with his bandanna, sniffing its fragrance with a beatific expression. He asked Simon for cream and was told to go to hell. He helped himself from the sugar barrel and sat back down on the counter, his left hand straying toward the box of gingersnaps.
“Go ahead,” sighed Simon. “Just don’t fill your pockets like you usually do.”
“Sim, you wound me! You hurt me in my rearior posterior. You know I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Well, you won’t today because I’m watchin’ you.”
“Ah, Sim, when I’m sitting in the Governor’s chair, you’ll regret those words.”
“I see you being Governor. You’d have a pool table in your office instead of a desk.”
“Now that’s an idea. Remind me of it when I’m elected. I’ll give you a job racking balls.”
Merrily, Jeff went on talking and eating while worry and ambition fretted silently at his thin stunted body.…What was it all about? What was the sense in it? Was the rest of his life to be like this—starving, slaving, the butt of the town? He liked a joke as well as the next one, but it was pretty hard to keep it up when you were hungry and cold so much of the time. It was hard always having to defend yourself and pretend like you weren’t.
Sherman Fargo banged through the front door, and Jeff hastily slid off the counter.
“Why, hello there, Sherm!” he called smartly. “How’s your testicles and you’re golden spectacles?”
Sherman grunted, scowling. “Where the hell you been? I’ve been looking all over for you!”
“Oh,” said Jeff, somewhat taken aback, “did you want to see me?”
“Goddammit,” said Sherman, “why would I be lookin’ for you if I didn’t want to see you? A hell of a lawyer you are! Why ain’t you ever in your office?”
“Well…” Jeff began, and then he saw that the question was merely rhetorical.
“Well, come on!” snapped Sherman, wheeling. “I’ve wasted half the damned day on you now!”
Jeff Parker said no more. Half-trotting, half-walking, he followed the farmer around the corner to his little frame office next to the barber shop. Lincoln Fargo was there, impatiently chomping a cigar, his hands clasped around the crook of his cane. Next to him on the lounge (on which Jeff slept) was Mrs. Fargo. A comforter lay around her stodgy shoulders. There was fright on her dull face.
Jeff shuddered visibly as he noticed the heat of the room and his empty coal hod. His first action was to step to the monkey-stove and turn the damper.
“Now, what can I do for you?” he asked, putting his thumbs in his vest pockets and leaning against
his desk.
Sherman dropped heavily into the room’s one chair. “Prob’ly nothing,” he said. “But you’re the only lawyer in town, so we had to come to you.”
“I see,” said Jeff.
“Well, it’s this way,” said Sherman. “Me and Pa intended to feed stock this year and we didn’t have the money, so we figured we’d borrow the money on his place and it’s in Ma’s name and we went down to the bank and Bark claimed that the title’s clouded and we can’t get it. Of course, it ain’t really clouded, but that damned Bark is so careful and cautious…and now, what the hell are you going to do about it?”
“But why does he think it’s clouded? It’s a homestead. If the title to that’s clouded, everything in the county is.”
“Yeah, dammit, but—Pa, can’t you tell him?”
Lincoln coughed with a snarling sound, and sent a shriveling glance at his wife. He opened his mouth to speak, turned quickly to give her another look, and emitted a pleased but scornful snort at the result. Leaning forward on his cane, he waved his cigar.
“You remember that goddam preacher that got run out of town?”
“Yes,” said Jeff; and the puzzlement disappeared from his expression. “Oh, that’s it, eh? Well, we can fix that easily enough. All we have to do is step down to the register of deeds and—”
“I ain’t finished yet,” the old man interrupted. “It would have been easy enough to fix if she’d quitclaimed to the preacher like the rest of the damned fools. But oh, no—she had to go ’em one better.…”
Lincoln laughed and spat bitterly, and the flickering glance that shot from the corner of his yellow eyes was like the lash of a whip.
“Uh-huh,” said Jeff Parker wisely. “Well, of course, that makes it different.”
“Shut up and stop tryin’ to look smart. It’s a waste of time.…As I was sayin’, she quitclaimed in favor of God, and this goddamned preacher carried the deed off with him. And how the hell you going to get ahold of God to get it back?”
Jeff frowned, heavily, wanting to burst into laughter and knowing what would happen if he did.
“Well,” said Sherman, “what you going to do about it?”
“Why, I’m going to fix things up for you,” said Jeff instantly. “That’s why you came to me, isn’t it?”
“How you going to do it?” demanded Link.
“Well, of course, it’s a legal matter. I’m not sure I can explain it so’s you’ll understand.”
“Now, never you mind about us understanding,” said Sherman shrewdly. “You just go ahead and tell us.”
“All right, Sherman. But it’ll take a little time.”
“We got plenty.”
Jeff shrugged, assumed a serious frown, and began to talk.
It probably was not true that he could talk three days running without ever saying anything, as people claimed. But he could talk a very long time, and his nothings sounded like profundities.
After thirty minutes, when even Mrs. Fargo was beginning to squirm, he put a period to the dissertation with an airy wave of his hand.
“Now that’s the contemporary viewpoint of the situation,” he remarked, arising. “To get back to the roots of the matter—the basic, fundamental, and elementary jurisdictionalities—we will have to delve into the English Corn Laws of 1773.”
Taking a worn Blackstone from the shelf, he resettled himself against the desk and began to thumb through the pages. “Ah, yes. Here we are…You see it’s principally a question of corpus delicti or even habeas corpus, depending upon whether the point is debatable under canon, common, or ecclesiastical law. In other words, do we have the body or don’t we, in this case the preacher’s…?”
“I wish, by God, we did,” said Lincoln.
“That would make things much simpler, certainly. But just as there is nothing new under the sun, so has the law wisely provided against all sorts of chicanery and barratry—whether old, young, feeble, middle-aged, or merely impecunious.…Now as long as you have plenty of time, I’ll read you a few pages of this.”
He read to them, his voice rolling sonorously, his quick eyes catching theirs in appreciation as he apparently made one point after another. And Sherman and Lincoln yawned and gaped, and the old woman’s head nodded.
At last, just before they all went to sleep, he snapped the book shut and tossed it triumphantly on the shelf.
“Well, there’s your case,” he said.
Sherman took his pipe from his mouth and studied the bowl. “Well,” he admitted, “it sounds all right.”
“I wouldn’t know if it didn’t,” said Lincoln frankly. “Never seen a lawyer yet that could ask for butter without describing a cow.”
“Well, shall we hire Jeff?”
“Yes, hell. We’ve got to get somebody.”
“All right, Jeff,” said Sherman, getting up from his chair, “you get busy on this right today, and don’t let me catch you hanging around any poolhalls or grocery stores until you get it settled. You hear?”
“Certainly, Sherman. I mean, certainly not, Sherman. I’ll get this thing cleared up for you in no time.”
They all got up.
The attorney jiggled nervously on his heels.
“Uh, now, there’s considerable expense involved in a case like this. I don’t like to mention money to blood kin, particularly when they’ve done so much for me, but…uh…”
“How much?” said Sherman.
“Oh, very little. About twenty-five dollars.”
“We’ll pay it. When you settle the case.”
“Well, you know, it’s customary to pay something down as a retainer. In a case like this, now, I usually get five dollars.”
“Damned if you don’t,” jeered Lincoln.
“You never had a case before,” Sherman pointed out. “Here. I’ll give you two dollars, and you make it last you until this is settled.”
“Just as you say, Sherm, just as you say,” said Jeff, and he ushered them out the door, well pleased.
Clicking the two silver dollars together, he paced back and forth in the little office, wondering whether he should eat first or step next door to the barber shop and take a bath. He had not had a bath, now, since the river had frozen over, having never been able to spare the fifteen cents necessary. But it was an expenditure that could not be put off much longer, particularly since he would have to call on Barkley. He did not smell so gamey out-of-doors, and around places like the poolhall it didn’t matter because the others all smelled worse than he did. The bank was always warm, however, and the banker was fairly careful about those things himself. And it wouldn’t do for the legal representative of the important Fargo family to jeopardize their business by smelling.
In his mind’s eye, he could see why Barkley had acted as he had about the loan. The banker was caution itself, inclined to maddening deliberation and the laboring and relaboring of inconsequentialities, to avoid suspicion of haste. Probably, given his time, he would have granted the loan; he would have brushed the cloud from the title for himself. But the Fargoes were not of the type to give him this time. They had tried to hurry him, and, as his stubbornness inevitably arose, so had their impatience. In the end they had probably stamped out, cursing him for a fool.
It was not a matter of legalities, but of tact. Bark knew in his heart that the title wasn’t clouded. It was only a question of getting him to admit it, and Jeff Parker was the lad who could do that.
Barkley liked Jeff, as well he might after all the years the attorney had brazenly flattered him. As long as it didn’t cost him any money, Jeff could get anything he wanted from him. He would drop in and tell him how smart he was for an hour or so, and, then, before he got a chance to see what was happening, he would have him laughing over the impetuous Fargoes who had gone off before he had a chance to grant them their loan.
It would be simple enough. It was too simple, in fact. He wished it had been a real case where he could go into court and show these people what was what.…
He jumped into the air and clicked his heels together. Jerking the door open, he leaped down the steps, skidded across the walk, and went tearing across the street to the courthouse.
Once inside, however, hesitation and self-doubt gripped him, and he entered the sheriff’s office almost timidly.
“Hi, Jake. How’s your liver?”
Jake grunted, leaning back against the wall in his chair. “Just sit down and loaf all you want, but be quiet. I’m plumb wore out.”
“Well, look, Jake, I got some business for you.”
“Huh-uh. I don’t feel like jokin’ today, Jeff. I’m plumb wore out.”
“But this is serious,” the little attorney insisted. “I want you to get out a fugitive warrant for me. Of course, I know the county attorney ought to do it, but—”
Jake Phillips let the legs of his chair down to the floor.
“Sure, I can do it, Jeff. Ned’s up to his farm today, anyways. By God, it’s about time someone did somethin’ around here. Y’know I was talkin’ to the sheriff over at Tuneybird, and he told me he never had less than…” He reached into his desk for a form, while he rumbled on of the fortunate sheriff of Tuneybird County, who had bought a farm from his profits on feeding prisoners. “An’ he don’t feed ’em good like I do, Jeff. He don’t step over to the hotel and plunk down maybe a nickel a meal in hard cash, which ain’t no more’n right considering he sticks the county two-bits. No, sir, he don’t do that. He just cooks him a washtub full o’ beans once a week, and that’s all they get.…Now, who you fugitivin’, Jeff? Funny I didn’t hear nothing about it.”
Jeff cleared his throat. “Well, it’s like this…”
“That Altmeyer boy been stealing hawgs again? I knew it!”
“No. No, it isn’t Altmeyer…”
“That’s right. I already got him in jail.…Uh—oh, Hank Murphy! I tell you, Jeff, you tell Miz. Murphy to let the son-of-a-bitch go. He don’t do nothing to support her. And he sure ain’t doing nothing for the town. It—”
“It’s not Murphy, Jake.”
