Heed the Thunder

by Jim Thompson

  The news butcher of that time, and, to some extent, this, was so much batten for the corporation that employed him. Rather than depend upon a percentage of his sales, they absorbed his cash bond by means of “loading” him with near-spoiled fruit, perishable sandwiches, and unsalable knickknacks. Then, when he could not or would not supply more bond, they wrote him off and employed another agent. The individual (at that time, of course) could not get his desserts in a contest with a corporation; and so the news agent who hoped to survive did so at the traveling public’s expense and by the predication of his own morals. He who has wondered at the quick spreading of a filthy joke has never seen the news butch’s line of pornographic booklets. The news butch was in on the green-goods racket. He was a peddler of brass watches and glass diamonds. He sold marked cards and crooked dice. And almost always he sold whisky.

  “Yes, sir, boss. Now you want something cold?”

  “Please,” said Courtland.

  “Something cold, you said.”

  “Please.”

  “Uh…you wouldn’t want something hot, would you?”

  Courtland gave him a level look. “Just what are you driving at?”

  “Well, uh, now, uh, boss, seein’ as how you’re sick, I thought you might like something like this.…” He opened his coat and displayed a bottle. “Last one I got,” he lied. “If you want it, you’d better take it now, boss.”

  The bank clerk hesitated. He had touched no liquor since the day he had beaten the Czerny boy, and he had resolved then never to drink again. But that had been a long time ago, and in the back of his mind there was the memory of the many times he had imbibed pleasurably and harmlessly. Then, it was a long ride to Omaha and the train was slow, and he needed something to buck himself up.

  He paid two dollars for the bottle and stepped into the toilet for a drink. He came out again, smoked one pipeful, and went back into the toilet.

  When he took his next drink five minutes later, he remained in his seat.

  Thirty minutes later he got up, shoved the bottle into his pocket, and set off in search of the conductor. He had a thing or two he intended to tell him about the train, and they were not at all complimentary.

  The roadbed was rough and he was flung from one side of the aisle to the other. His heavy grip, banging against the other passengers, brought him many black looks and from some, more than looks. If he had proceeded very far he would not, to coin a contradiction, have been able to proceed much farther. But a hand took him by the elbow as he was passing through the second car, and he found himself drawn down into a seat with Jeff Parker.

  He deliberately removed his elbow from the attorney’s hand and looked into the youth’s smiling face with suspicion.

  “What are you doing on here?” he demanded.

  “Why I’m going to Lincoln, to the legislature! You knew I was elected, now, didn’t you?”

  “Why didn’t I see you at the station?”

  “Well, I was there since early this morning,” Jeff grinned. “I reckon I got on before it really stopped; didn’t want to take a chance on missing it. I guess you must have come along later.”

  The Englishman stared at him coldly, and Jeff’s smile widened.

  “Say, you’ve had one and then some, haven’t you? Got any left for a poor politician?”

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “Golly, yes!”

  Courtland motioned. “Go get yourself a cup, then.”

  “Why, that’s all right. I don’t need a cup.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Well”—Parker got up grinning—“you’re the doctor.”

  It did not occur to him that he was being insulted—not even when he returned and Courtland drank out of the bottle and poured his drink in the paper cup. He thought it was kind of funny, but Englishmen were funny people. In all his hard starved life, no one had ever been deliberately mean to Jeff. They played rough jokes on him and cursed and kidded him, but he knew, as one always does know those things, that they liked him.

  He tilted the bottle in Courtland’s hand, spilling another drink into his cup, and leaned back happily. He had given up his cowboy regalia as being too flashy for a gentleman of the legislature. Now, he had on a brand new broadcloth suit and a fancy Homburg hat and real lace shoes; and for the first time in his life there was a watch on the end of the heavy chain that dangled across his breast.

  “What do you think of that?” he asked proudly, drawing the turnip-shaped instrument from his vest. “Some beauty, eh?”

  “Brass,” said Courtland.

  “It is?” The youth’s face fell. “Why, that fellow that comes around selling soda pop and stuff said it was solid gold!”

  The Englishman laughed unpleasantly.

  “Of course,” Parker went on, “I guess I didn’t get beat too much. I gave him a counterfeit gold piece I’ve been carrying for a pocket charm.”

  “You’re all alike,” said Courtland, taking another drink. “Always out to skin someone.”

  “But he thought he was skinning me!”

  “You’re all alike,” Courtland repeated.

  The attorney looked at him uneasily. It wasn’t his place to tell Alf Courtland what to do and what not to do. But he didn’t seem to act like old Alf usually did. He didn’t seem to be drunk, but he just didn’t act right. He wondered what he ought to do about it.

  “Well, I think I’ve had enough myself,” he said airily.

  “Meaning that I have?”

  “Aw, now, I didn’t say that, Alf.”

  “That’s another way you’re all alike. Always sticking your noses into other people’s business.”

  “Uh…where are you headed for, Alf?” said Parker, at a loss for anything else to say.

  “There you are. I was wondering when you’d ask that.”

  “Well, I mean, it’s none of my affair, but—”

  “You’re quite correct, it isn’t.”

  “But wait a minute!” Jeff demanded desperately, and an emotion that was wholly strange to him began to spread through his thin little body. “I was just going to say I hoped you were going to Lincoln, too. You know I’ve never been out of Verdon before, and it kind of scares me. I was just thinking how fine it would be if we were going to the same place so you could sort of show me the ropes.”

  He looked at the Englishman with his pleading, ingenuous eyes, and Courtland leaned back in his seat and laughed. He made no other answer.

  Jeff, his face very pale, turned to the window. He guessed he was trash, after all. He’d worked hard and done everything he could to live it down. And he’d felt so fine getting on the train, going off to the legislature with money in his pockets and good clothes, and—and everything. And now he was just trash again.

  “So you’re a representative of the people, now,” said Courtland.

  “Y-yes.”

  “You’re a mountebank, you know.”

  “No!” said Jeff. “NO, I’m not.”

  “You’re a clown. And the pity of it is you can’t see yourself as others see you. What do you know about law that entitles you to do anything but dust books in some shyster’s office? Why—”

  The little attorney whirled and struck him.

  It was an open-palmed stinging blow upon the jaw, and it did much to bring him to his senses. And the conductor hurrying up at that moment supplied the rest.

  “Here, now,” he said, jerking the Englishman to his feet. “I’ve been a-watchin’ you. I’ve been a-watchin’ you swig out of your bottle while you bedeviled this poor lad here. Sure, and he should have used his fist on you!”

  “I’m sorry, Jeff,” said Courtland. “I wasn’t thinking what I was saying.” He was sick with disgust for himself, and he was frightened, too.

  “Just get away from me!” said Jeff, his face white.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “G-get away!” The little attorney almost screamed.

  The conductor gave Courtland a shove. “You hea
rd the lad. Now, be on with you. Get back to your smoker and stay there!”

  Courtland started back down the aisle, his grip swaying and banging against the seats. Somehow he ran the gauntlet of those angry and leering faces and reached the smoker. He sat down shaking, the perspiration dripping from him.

  Bitterly he cursed himself.

  What a fine time to start a row! And to row with Jeff Parker, of all people, one of the best-liked men in his own town! He didn’t blame Jeff for what he had done. He could only hope that that would be the end of the affair. And he was hideously afraid that it would not be. Jeff had many friends; he had become a man of importance. While he—well, he, so far, had merely been suffered, not liked.

  Why, he thought, agonized, why did I do it? What has come over me?

  Infinitely worse than his fear of what Jeff might do, was the knowledge that he had hurt the youth so inexcusably and deeply. He had always liked him, too. Of course, he was amused by his high-flown language and his gaudy mannerisms; and he could not bring himself to regard him as any very stout political timber. But he had liked him. He wished he could see him now and make some adequate apology; but that, naturally, was out of the question. It was too soon, and the conductor undoubtedly would take him in hand if he started wandering again. He would have to talk to him, though. He couldn’t rest until he did.

  He shuddered as he thought of the money in the grip. Suppose he had got in a real row and they had searched him! Jeff would have told them that he was a bank cashier, and with that twenty-five thousand dollars…!

  A doctor, that was what he needed. He had been needing one for a long time. When he got to Omaha—

  Omaha? Why, particularly, was it necessary to go there? Lincoln was a big town, too, and it would serve his purpose as well as Omaha. There would be good doctors in the capital city.

  A ghost of a smile returned to his well-bred face. Grand Island was a division point. Jeff would have to change trains there to go to Lincoln, and he would get off, too. He’d make him listen to an apology, and ride on to Lincoln with him. He’d show him the ropes, as Jeff had hoped he would do, and they would be friends again.

  Sighing with relief, he straightened on the straw cushions.

  Unconsciously, he lifted the bottle from his pocket and took a drink.

  Realization of what he had done came to him at almost the same moment, and he choked and strangled. But to his gratification, he still felt friendly toward Jeff and impelled to apologize. He felt better inside, too. More steady. He took another drink—just to test himself—and his decision to make amends to the attorney was only strengthened.

  By the time the train pulled into Grand Island, the bottle was empty.

  The vestibules of the cars were open on both sides (there was no facility for closing them), and Courtland, in his haste to get off, alighted on the side opposite the station. He looked around, befuddled, at the expanse of tracks and freight cars, unable to decide what had happened. When he did, the train had begun to switch and he could not go back through the vestibule to the other side.

  Cursing, he snatched up the grip and started running down the cinder right-of-way toward the rear of the train. He had almost reached it, when the train stopped abruptly, humped, and began to back up. And Courtland, panting, angry, ran toward the locomotive. Finally, he got around it to the wide bricked station platform, and he was just in time to see a man who he thought was Parker enter the depot.

  “Jeff!” he shouted, beginning to run again. “I say, Jeff!”

  The man did not stop or look around, and Courtland ran on, shouting and cursing.

  He reached the station, now quite crowded, and looked around. His coat was buttoned wrong. His derby sat at a crazy angle on his head. He was wild-eyed.

  “Jeff!” he roared, as the people stared at him. “Dammit, man, where are you?”

  A hand gripped his shoulder, and he found himself looking into the beefy face of a blue-coated, gray-helmeted policeman. Angrily, he tried to pull away.

  “Get your hand off of me, you idiot! I’m trying to—”

  “Oh, I’m an idiot, am I?”

  The policeman’s grip shifted, tightened. Courtland was shaken until his teeth rattled, then, choking incoherently, he was dragged through the station.

  He remembered little of what happened after that. It was like a nightmare that becomes exhausted and expunged by its sheer hideousness. He was jolting over the pavement in some kind of closed cage, with the policeman peering in at him from the end. He was in a room with more policemen, and there was one who did not wear a hat and who did most of the talking.

  “You stole that money!”

  “I did not! There’s a letter there—”

  “You wrote that yourself.”

  “I tell you I didn’t!”

  “Jerry, get this man Barkley on the phone. We’ll soon see what’s what.”

  16

  Jeff Parker did not see Alfred Courtland at the station nor did he learn of his arrest. Immediately upon arriving in Grand Island, he got off the train and walked up the street a few blocks until he reached a saloon that suited his eye. His train to Lincoln did not leave until late that night, and he had some time to kill. Moreover, feeling greatly dejected, he wanted to get as far as he could from anyone who might have heard what Courtland had said to him.

  He entered the saloon, had the bartender put his carpetbag beneath the bar, and paid a nickel for a huge glass of beer. Stepping down to the free lunch, he built himself a huge sandwich of rye bread, bologna, tongue, ham, pickles, and mustard. He began to munch contentedly, sipping at the beer.

  This was a lot better, he thought, than going in one of those swank restaurants around the depot where they charged a fellow fifteen or twenty cents for a meal. That was another reason for going to a saloon: he had to save as much money as he could.

  The bartender frowned as the little fellow laid the foundation for another sandwich; then, unaccountably, he smiled.

  “Hungry there, old scout?” he said bluffly.

  “Me?” Jeff’s eyes widened, and he appeared to deliberate. “Well, kind of. I passed a dead horse on the way up here and my teeth snapped so loud it got up and ran off.”

  The bartender roared, his belly trembling.

  “Did you fellers hear that?” he called. “This gent said he was so hungry—he said his teeth snapped so loud a dead horse got up and run off.”

  The habitués of the place grinned, and began drifting up to the bar. They looked at Jeff expectantly, and he obliged with another joke. There was another roar of laughter. The bartender declared it was the funniest damned thing he had ever heard, and bought a round on the house. Someone else bought one. And a third party. Jeff suddenly found a half-dozen beers sitting in front of him, and when he extended a hand toward the free lunch, the bartender only smiled and nodded.

  He began to expand. He was someone. Alf was just mean, by golly, and he wouldn’t forget it. He’d pay him back, all right. But he didn’t have that hurt, uncertain feeling in his stomach any more. He felt just as good as he had when he got on the train at Verdon. Gol-lee, he felt better, even!

  He was someone!

  “What’s your line, mister?”

  “I’m a lawyer. I’ve just been elected to the legislature.”

  “Is that right, now! What county?”

  “Verdon.”

  “Why, hell,” said the bartender, chuckling again and pawing in a drawer. “Why, hell yes, I knew I’d saw you somewhere! Look, gents. I got his picture right here, and that clipping. He’s the man that sued God!”

  They looked at him in amazement, and Jeff’s small chest expanded. The bartender put on his glasses and read the clipping aloud. And the barroom shook with laughter. People began drifting in from the street, attracted by the commotion. The place became packed.

  A dude in a derby hat thrust his way into the front ranks.

  “Senator, I’d be honored to shake your hand!”

  “Why cer
tainly,” said Jeff.

  “Put ’er there for me, too, Senator!”

  They crowded around him, slapping his shoulders (but gently), trying to shake his hand, and Jeff swelled with such happiness that he thought he would burst.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” said the bartender officiously, while he tried to serve the unaccustomed tide of patrons. “Let’s not wear the senator out!”

  “Leave ’em alone,” Jeff called merrily. “I like it!”

  He polished off one beer after another, eating so much that it gave him nothing but a light glowing feeling. He kept the room crackling with jokes. For their edification, he invented a case in which he supposedly had been the defense attorney. And he had the bartender act as judge and the hangers-on as jury.

  They howled until the tears ran down their cheeks, as he pranced and clowned and raved in his surprisingly sonorous voice. Then when he dropped his voice to a whisper and spoke of mother love and home at dusk and the little one on his father’s knee, there were real tears on their seamed, unholy faces.

  The bartender, his jowls streaming, abruptly slammed the overflowing cash drawer and locked it.

  “By God, gents, I’m closing up on that!”

  “Aw, naw, Jack!” There was a chorus of protests.

  “Wait a minute!” The bartender held up his hand. “It ain’t right to keep the senator cooped up here in one place all day! What kind o’ hospitality is that to show a man like the senator? I say I’m going to show him the town!”

  There was silence for a moment. Then:

  “We’ll all go!”

  The cry spread.

  Shouting and laughing, yet still wiping their reddened eyes, they hustled Jeff out to the street. As if by magic, a half-dozen horse-drawn cabs appeared. Jeff was pushed into one of them, and the dude, the bartender, and a hard-faced commission man squeezed in with him. Their hack led the noisy procession. The others clattered along behind them.

  They took him to a beer hall where, much to their delight and his, the lady entertainers kissed him and made over him.

  They took him to a flashy restaurant where he obligingly ate a huge steak dinner, not to mention a dozen raw oysters and several other delicacies.