“When he comes if I ain’t here you go out with Hodges and take four or five of these highbinder with you. Hodges got a trick he aims to play on Blalock.”
Jiminiz nodded, he had the phone off the hook, dialing.
“What I like about you is you never ask me why,” Hardin said. “Why is that, Jiminiz?”
“I’m afraid you’d tell me,” Jiminiz said.
Bright in the winter sun the Morgan came up from the copse of trees when Hardin approached the wire. It paused a few feet from the wire fence and watched him, halfarrogant, halfinquisitive. Its breath steamed in the cold air. “You want to ride around awhile or see us a show here directly?” he asked the horse. He lit a cigarette and returned the lighter to his pocket, feeling as he did so the empty cartridge he had palmed. He withdrew the shell and studied it a moment wondering where he had heard the story he had told Hodges or even if he had heard it at all, if it was just some tale his mind had told them both. He tossed the shell into the sere weeds and stood leaning against the gate smoking. “All right, we’ll ride then,” he said. “We’ll go in a minute. We waiting on a truck right now.”
There was less time than he expected between the cessation of the truck motor and the shot. There was a man’s voice and a shout and he was swinging into the saddle when the explosion came. When it did a tremor coursed through the horse’s withers and its steel shoes did quick little dance on the frozen ground. He kicked its ribs and they went through the gate toward the branch. They crossed the stream and went up the steep slope, the horse laboring on the unsure limestone footing, faster then through the stony sedgefield.
He did not look back until they were on the ridge and when he did he could see the tableau of men gathered about the truck in the winding chert road with the Chrysler fleeing down it in silence. He watched it out of sight. The men looked like animated miniatures, unreal, against the muted winter landscape they milled and moved without purpose about one of their number who had fallen and lay unmoving, a puppet unstrung perhaps, or one who had fled at last the exhortation of a mad puppeteer.
The bentlegged waitress watched Winer across the tall vase of celluloid flowers, across the worn tile of the Snowwhite Cafe, where he sat near the plateglass window watching the street, occasionally sipping from his coffeecup, a menu face up but unread before him. There was a curious air of indecision about her but after a time she seemed to make up her mind. She took up her cigarette from the ashtray and crossed the room.
“What on earth happened to your face? You don’t even look like yourself.”
Winer looked up at her approach then back toward here the street tended away into the darkness near the railroad tracks. “I got in a fight,” he said. “Have you seen Buttcut Chessor around?”
“No I ain’t and I ain’t likely to. He’s barred from here. He come in here the other night and started a fight and they like to tore the place apart. I had him barred.”
“Oh, he was just mad. Ollie Simmons fired him from the sawmill. He’d been cuttin logs and he got into it with the sawyer over somethin. Then he cut a beetree and it was solid at the top and the bottom, the log was, and he plugged the hole in it and carried it to the mill with the other logs. When the sawyer sawed it open they said the bees just boiled out and they like to stung him to death. They fired him.”
“I guess he’s down at the poolhall then.”
“I wouldn’t know. He beat up Ollie and two that tried to stop it and I called the law. They locked him up but I think he’s out. Why you want to waste your time on a crazy thing like him?”
“I just wondered where he was.”
“Wherever he is he ain’t worth botherin about. That other buddy of yours is long gone, ain’t he? Motormouth?”
“So they say.”
“Reckon he really killed that Blalock feller? I heard Hardin had it done.”
“I don’t know. All I know is Blalock’s dead and Motormouth’s gone in my car.”
“You look lonesome tonight.”
“I don’t reckon.”
“Say you don’t reckon? Well, are you lonesome or ain’t you?”
“I’m not lonesome,” Winer said.
“You may be later on,” she said enigmatically.
Buttcut studied Winer’s face by the harsh white glare of the poolroom. “Lord God, son,” he said. “Somebody sure took a strong dislike to your face.”
“That’s what they keep telling me. I got into it with that Mexican that started working down at Hardin’s.”
“Did he whip you?”
“Right down to the ground and then into it.”
“How big is he?”
Winer studied him. “About your size,” he said.
“Well, it ain’t no matter for you then. You ought to know better. I heard there was a killin down there.”
“I reckon. Motormouth was supposed to have shot Blalock, but I don’t know. He came by my house like a bat out of hell and I had a sinking feeling when my car went by. I got a good look at his face and he didn’t look like a man who planned on coming back.”
“He’s crazy but I didn’t think he had the nerve to kill nobody.”
Winer drank from his Coke and studied the pool game in progress. Roy Pace had found a sucker. Roy was paralyzed from the waist down and went in a wheelchair. His head was oversized and pumpkinshaped and there was a peculiar mongoloid cast to his face but he had won a small fortune off traveling salesmen who put great stock in appearances. As Winer watched he wheeled the chair smoothly to the end of the table. He shot from an awkwardlooking open bridge and the tip of his cue trembled with histrionic nervousness but he ran all the small balls then the eight and shook his huge head as if wonderstruck at such beginner’s luck. The sucker shook his head too. “Rack,” he called.
“I don’t no more believe he killed Blalock than nothing. I believe they set him up somehow.”
“I don’t know. He was crazy about his old lady and she was livin with Blalock.”
“Hey, you want to go over the General awhile?”
“I don’t think so.”
Buttcut gestured with his head toward the restroom. “I got a bottle in there. You want a little drink of who shot John?”
“I reckon not.”
“Hell, you don’t want do to nothin. You about as much fun as a Pentecostal preacher. What you are even doin in here?”
“To tell the truth I just couldn’t stay around the house any longer. The walls had started talking to me. I figured I’d leave before I started answering them back.”
They stood for a time before the Strand Theater, waiting for the show to let out, Buttcut’s car parked at the curb should there be ladies needing escorts home or elsewhere. Such ladies seemed few and far between. Overalled farmers with stoic broadshouldered wives. Stairstep children with stunnedlooking eyes still dreamy with Technicolor visions. Country boys fresh off the farm with manure on their brogans and placid, oxenlike looks on their faces.
“Goddamn it,” Buttercut said. “I never seen such a crop of hairyankled men in my life. You’d think with a war bein fought a man might stumble upon a little stray pussy just ever now and then. But hell no.”
Two or three people turned to stare at him but his size and his stance stayed them from comment. Winer grasped his arm.
“Hell, let’s go. We’ll find some women somewhere else.”
“Do you still not want to go to the General?”
“No.” Winer grinned. “We might go down to the Snowwhite.”
“I can’t go down there. They barred me. Said they’d get a peace warrant and lock me up if I went back.”
“I heard you cut a beetree.”
“That lopsided cunt had to call the law. She’s pissed cause I won’t go with her. She’s the same as sicced Ollie Simmons on me. Played up to him and he was goin to kick my ass. That’s the last time that’ll cross his mind. I had him down and he was goin, ‘Let me up, I’ve had enough.’ I said, ‘The hell you say. I’m doin this asswhippin.
I’ll let you know when you’ve had enough.’”
“I guess we could go back to the poolhall.”
“We won’t find no women there. Let’s go down to Hardin’s.”
“I’m slow study but I do learn.”
They got back in the car. “I need a drink anyway,” Buttcut said. “I hide my bottle in the restroom. That way if they pick me up they won’t find no bottle on me. They can get me for a public drunk but they can’t prove possession.”
“What’s the difference?”
“About forty dollars.”
The long black Packard sat parked before the poolhall like a waiting limousine. Winer halted a moment looking at it then after a moment followed Buttcut into the glare of light. There were three of them: the girl demure in a white dress sitting at a scarred red table with a fat man in a blue gabardine suit. He was drinking whiskey from a bottle in a brown paper bag and chasing it with beer and the girl was taking delicate sips of Coke through a straw. When she saw Winer her eyes for a moment widened in shock, then she lowered them and fell into a study of her blurred reflection in the worn formica. Winer looked away and studied the fat man’s back, the shape of the wallet outlined through trousers too tight across the hips.
Jiminiz was shooting nineball with Roy Pace. He glanced once at Winer with the corners of his eyes widening, then the eyes flicked away. There was no recognition in his face. He chalked his cue and leaned to the green felt to shoot.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Hell, no. Ain’t this a public place? That’s him, ain’t it?”
“That’s him. How’d you know?”
“Well, I didn’t expect two Mexicans that size in Ackerman’s Field. I thought you said he was big. That son of a bitch is enormous. Was you fightin over Rose there?”
“That’s what it started about.”
Buttcut studied her serene profile across the length of the bar. “I can’t say I blame you. She batted them long eyelashes a time or two at me I’d go a round myself. Who’s that Goddmamn salesman or whatever with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“I seen her a time or two in here with different fellers. Hardin was usually with her. Say, you look kindly down in the mouth, son. How about a little drink?”
“Why not. I guess I might as well.”
“I’ll go in first and get me one and leave it settin out for you. “ Buttcut was only in the restroom for a moment. He kicked the door open and it slammed against the block wall. He came out gagging and spitting and wiping his mouth on a sleeve. Nobody seemed to notice save Winer. Buttcut picked up Roy Pace’s beer and turned it up and drank and rinsed his mouth and spat. He stood studying such latenight inhabitants as the poolroom held with a black and malignant eye.
“Who’s the son of a bitch that drunk my whiskey and then pissed in the bottle?”
No one answered. Jiminiz leaned and shot gently, the cueball kissing off the three and sinking the four in the corner pocket. He chalked his cue and walked around the table to where the cueball had come to rest near the wall.
“Did you piss in my whiskey?”
Jiminiz studied him with a cold and distant contempt. “No. I didn’t,” he said.
“Leave this man alone, Chessor,” Pace said. “Let him play pool. I’m winnin me a Florida vacation.”
“You done it, Goddamn you,” Chessor told Pace. “You stillborn chickenfucker. It’s just the childish kind of meanness you’d think was funny. If I knowed for sure it was you I’d slap you even sillier than you look.”
“It wasn’t me, Buttcut, honest.” Pace was all bland innocence.
“Well, it was somebody,” Buttcut said. “And me and him is goin around and around just here in a minute?”
“You hold it down back there,” the barkeep called. “Any goin around in here and I’m goin to be on that phone to the law.”
Buttcut paused momentarily. “Somebody pissed in my whiskey,” he said sullenly.
“Well, it wasn’t me,” the barkeep said. “It’s against the law to even have whiskey in here if you didn’t but know it.”
“Tell that to the feller with the paper sack,” Buttcut said. “But I guess he got permission from Hardin.”
The fat man looked up at Buttcut briefly then quickly away. The girl seemed not have heard but Jiminiz froze in midstroke for a second. Then he completed his shot.
Buttcut ordered a beer and sat on the bench beside Winer. They sat silently watching the game progress. Buttcut sipped from the beer then gave it to Winer and ordered another. He seemed possessed by a dull, malevolent anger. Winer finished the beer and drank another, studying the fat man across the length of the room. Every time the man looked up Winer would be watching, and he glanced up often as if he could feel the weight of Winer’s eyes. Roy Pace and Jiminiz seemed almost drunk. Jiminiz was still losing. The fat man looked at his wristwatch a time or two and then he came and said something to Jiminiz but Jiminiz didn’t reply or acknowledge his voice.
Finally, Buttcut spoke. “You ain’t got a hair on your ass if you don’t go talk to her,” he said. “You got to take up for yourself. You let these sons of bitches run over you and it’ll be somebody runnin over you all your life.”
“I tried that. It didn’t work so well.”
“Hellfire. You talked to Hardin. Hardin ain’t even here. Don’t worry about his guard dog. I got him covered.”
“It’s my fight, Buttcut, not yours.”
Buttcut shrugged. “I aim to try him sooner or later anyway. You might as well get a little somethin out of it.”
Winer went with his amber bottle to her table. “Hello, Briar Rose,” he said.
“Do you know this young man?” the fat man asked. When she made no reply he turned to Winer. “All these other tables are unoccupied,” he said. “Perhaps you’d care to sit somewheres else.”
Winer drank beer. The bitter taste of hops at the back of his mouth. “No,” he said. “I like it here all right.”
The fat man had a hand on Rose’s arm. “Well, we’ll leave it to you,” he said.
“I’ve got to talk to you,” Winer told her.
She was shaking her head. “I don’t want to move,” she told the man. She looked as if she might cry.
The fat man was studyin her with calm, level eyes. “What’s goin on here?” he asked. “Is my money not good enough for you or what?”
She was watching Winer but Winer was lost in the deep waters of her eyes, struggling against the seaweed strangling him. “Go away, Nathan,” she said.
“Then you go with me.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t.”
“It’s easy. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other.”
“I can’t.” She leaned and touched his face. Her forefinger traced the length of a cut. She was crying.
The man turned to Winer in disgust. “I’ve paid her good money,” he said. “Or paid it to Hardin. And I aim to get the benefit of it. Now, I don’t know who you are or what your status is but I suggest you get your ass out of here.”
Buttcut had come up silent as cat. He leaned across the table. “Are you havin words with this young feller here?” His breath was fiery with splo whiskey.
The man turned. “None that concern you.”
“Funny. I was settin way back on that bench over there and I thought I heard you say somethin about him gettin his ass out of here. I reckon you got the deed to this place ridin in your shirt pocket?”
The man didn’t say anything.
“Did I hear that or not?”
“I don’t see how it concerns you.”
“I’ll tell you how it concerns me. You got the look about you of somebody that would drink a man’s whiskey then piss in the bottle and put the lid back on and go off somewheres and snigger about it.”
The fat man just rolled his eyes upward toward the watermarked ceiling as if he’d fallen among fools and looked resigned.
“Ain’t you?”
??
?I don’t know,” the fat man finally said.
“You keep studyin on it. You keep wonderin if you and that Mexican there can do it but you better walk mighty soft around me. You try me and you’ll go up like a celluloid cat in hell.”
Winer arose. “It’s not worth fightin about,” he said. “If she wants him she can have him. We’ll go somewhere else.”
“Goddamn it, there’s not anywhere else. And nobody’s runnin me anywhere.”
“Then you all can have it,” Winer said. He turned toward Rose’s pale face. “I’m leavin. Are you goin with me or stayin with these folks?”
The girl arose, took her purse from the table. “I’m sorry,” she told the fat man.
The fat man grasped her arm. “The hell you are. I got a forty-acre farm tied up in you already.”
The man in the blue suit was sitting glaring into the girl’s face and Winer was standing over them. Without even knowing he was going to Winer hit the man in the face as hard as he could. The man grunted and a mist of blood sprayed down his shirtfront and he went over backward clawing the air. Winer turned rubbing his knuckles to see the green swinging door explode inward and Jiminiz come through it with his poolcue poised like a baseball bat and to see Buttcut fell man and cuestick with a chair. “They Lord God,” the barkeep cried. Jiminiz bounced off the dopebox and lit rolling and fetched up against the barchairs routing scrambling drinkers and then he was on his knees trying to get his fingers into his brass knuckles. He had them almost on when Buttcut kicked him in the head. The knucks rattled on the dirty tile. Buttcut kicked them away viciously and stood waiting with his fist cocked. “You hell on boys,” he said. “Let’s see how you do with a man.”
Jiminiz was laying against the bar. His mouth was shattered and bleeding. If he had any breath he didn’t waste it. He got up warily ducking outside the perimeter of Buttcut’s arms and flicked his long black hair out of his eyes with an abrupt and arrogant movement of his head. He raised his left fist for a guard and came back in. His eyes were expressionless as black glass. He came boring into Buttcut’s clumsy, flatfooted stance with his head ducked and he swatted away Buttcut’s right and knocked him into the pinball machine. Buttcut wouldn’t fall. He just shook his head in a mildly annoyed sort of way as if flies were bothering him and took a halfstep forward and hit Jiminiz in the face.