“I got to watch my weight, ma’am,” he said. “I ain’t got a naturally handsome figure like you and your fine-looking brother.”
Lennie giggled and spit at him; feelin’ pleased, you know. Myra blushed and said he was just a great big flatterer.
“Me? Me, flatter a woman?” Ken said. “Why, I never heard the like!”
“Oh, you! You know I don’t have a really good figure.”
“Well, maybe not. But that’s because you ain’t fully developed yet,” Ken said. “You’re still a young girl.”
“Tee-hee,” Myra giggled. “You awful thing, you!”
“You just wait until you fill out a little,” Ken said. “Wait until you’re as old as your brother.”
Well, sir, lies like that can take a lot out of a man even when he’s feeling good. Which Ken sure wasn’t. He was just carrying on out of habit, and from the looks of him he was just about to the end of his rope. Fortunately, it seemed to occur to Myra about then that she was being a little too friendly with Ken and that she was letting him get pretty gay with her. So she froze up all of a sudden, and started clearing away the dishes. And Ken said his thank-yous and goodbyes, and I got him downstairs to my office.
I handed him a quart bottle of white whiskey. He took a long, long drink, gagged, gulped and leaned back in his chair. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He shuddered all over, and his face turned a few shades whiter. For a minute I thought he was going to be one sick man; all that lying and flattering to Myra had been just too much for him. Then, all at once, the color flooded back into his face, and he stopped sweating and shaking. And he drew a long, deep sigh.
“God-dang!” he said softly. “I shore needed that.”
“Fella can’t ride a horse with one stirrup,” I said. “Have another one, Ken.”
“Well, god-dang it,” he said. “God-dang it, Nick, I don’t care if I do.”
He had a couple of more drinks, which brought the bottle down to about the halfway level. Then he said he guessed he’d better slow down a little bit. And I told him to just take his time, he couldn’t get a train back home for a couple of hours yet.
We sat there for a minute or two, not saying much of anything. He looked at me and looked away again, and a kind of shy-sly look came over his face.
“Mighty handsome young fella your brother-in-law,” he said. “Yes, sir, mighty handsome.”
“And he’s an idjit,” I said. “Anyways, he sure ain’t quite right in the head.”
Ken nodded and said, yeah, he’d noticed that. “But maybe that might not make too much difference to a certain kind of woman, you know, Nick? Say a woman that was a lot older than he was. A woman that was pretty ugly and pretty apt to stay that way.”
“Well, I just don’t know about that,” I said. “I wouldn’t say you were wrong but I sure wouldn’t say you was right either.”
“Well, maybe that’s because you ain’t real bright,” Ken said. “Why, I’ll bet you there’s a woman right in this town that would really pree-fer Lennie to a fella like you. I ain’t saying that you ain’t a plenty good-lookin’ fella yourself, but probably you ain’t got as long a dingle-dangle as he has—they tell me them idjits are hung like a stud-hoss. And, anyways—”
“Well, now, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I ain’t never had any complaints in that department yet.”
“Shut up when I’m talkin’!” Ken said. “Shut up and maybe you’ll learn somethin’! I was about to say that everything else being equal, which I doubt like hell in your case because all of them idjits have got dongs you could skip rope with, but—but irregardless of that a woman still might rather have a dummy pour it on her than a normal fella. Because she don’t have to put on for him, know what I mean? She can boss him around. She can be just as haggy as all hell and twice as mean, and she can still get what she needs.”
I scratched my head and said, well, maybe so. But I still thought he was wrong about Lennie. “I know for a fact that there ain’t no woman in this town that’s got any use for him. They pretend that they do, to keep on the good side of Myra, but I know they all hate his guts.”
“All of ’em!”
“All of ’em. Except Myra, of course. His sister.”
Ken snorted and ran his hand over his mouth. Then, he kind of got a grip on himself, and his talk slowed down a little. But he still couldn’t get off the subject.
“Ain’t much family resemblance between Lennie and your wife. Hardly know they was brother an’ sister unless someone told you.”
“That’s right, I guess,” I said. “Can’t say that I ever thought much about it.”
But I had thought about it. Yessir, I’d thought plenty about it.
“Was you acquainted with Lennie before you married? Know that you was goin’ to have a idjit for a brother-in-law?”
“Well, no, I didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t even know that Myra had a brother until afterwards. Came as quite a surprise for me.”
“Uh-hah!” Ken snorted. “Well, don’t be surprised if you get another surprise some time, Nick. No, sir, don’t you be surprised at all.”
“What?” I said. “How do you mean, Ken?”
He shook his head, not answering me, and broke out laughing. I laughed right along with him.
Because it was a pretty good joke, you see. I was a joke. And maybe I couldn’t do anything about it right now, but I figured I would some day.
Ken took a couple more long drinks. I stood up and said maybe we’d better be going. “Got quite a little walk to the station, and I want you to meet a few fellas. Be a big treat for ’em to meet a big-city sheriff like you.”
“Why, now, I bet it would be that,” Ken said, staggering to his feet. “Prob’ly ain’t every day they get to meet a real man in a pisspot of a town like this.”
“Tell ’em how you took care of them two pimps,” I said. “They’ll be right impressed hearin’ how you took on two pimps all by yourself, and gave ’em what-for.”
He blinked at me owlishly. He said, what pimps, what the god-danged hell was I talking about, anyway? I said, the pimps I’d warned him about last night—the two that were bound to try to give him some trouble.
“Huh?” he said. “What? Did you tell me somethin’ like that?”
“You mean you let ’em get away with it?” I said. “Ken Lacey took dirt from a couple of low-down pimps?”
“Hah? What?” He rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Who says I took dirt from pimps?”
“I knew you didn’t!” I said, giving him a slap on the back. “Not Ken Lacey, the bravest, smartest peace officer in the state.”
“Well,” said Ken. “Uh, you shorely spoke a mouthful there, Nick. You shorely did, and that’s a fact!”
“Any other man, I wouldn’t have let him go over there last night. But I knew you could stand up to those pimps if they come at you with guns and knives. I knew you’d make ’em wish they’d never been born.”
Ken put a stern look on his face, like that fella William S. Hart does in the movies. He squared his shoulders and straightened up, or as much as he could straighten with the whiskey wobbling his legs.
“What’d you do to ’em, Ken?” I said. “How did you settle their hash, anyways?”
“I, uh, I took care of ’em, that’s what.” He gave me a lopsided wink. “You know, I—hic!—took care of ’em.”
“Good. You took care of ’em for good, Ken?”
“God-danged right, I did. Them’s two pimps that won’t never bother a white man no more!”
He started looking around for the whiskey bottle. I pointed out that he was holding onto it, so he had himself a couple more drinks, and then he held the bottle up to the light.
“Why, god-dang! Danged if I ain’t drunk almost a whole quart of whiskey!”
“What the heck?” I said. “It don’t hardly show on you none.” And the funny part of it was that it suddenly didn’t show much.
I’d seen him drink before, and I knew how whisk
ey acted on him. A fairly small amount of booze, say, a pint or so, and he’d get drunk as a skunk. He’d show it, I mean. But when he went over that certain amount—and up to a point, of course—he’d seem to sober up. He’d stop staggering, stop slurring his words, stop playing the fool in general. Inside, he’d still be dead drunk, but you’d never know it by looking at him.
He finished the rest of the whiskey, and we headed for the railroad station. I introduced him to everyone we met, which was a big part of the population, and he stuck out his chest and told everyone how he’d taken care of the two pimps. Or rather, he just said that he had taken care of ’em.
“Never mind how,” he’d say. “Never you mind how.” And then he’d wink and nod, and everybody would be pretty impressed.
We stopped to talk to so many people that it was only a couple of minutes before train time when we got to the station. I shook hands with him and then, before I realized I was doing it, I laughed out loud.
He gave me a suspicious look; asked me what I was laughing about.
“Nothing much,” I said. “I was just thinkin’ how funny it was you rushing down here last night. Thinkin’ I might kill those pimps.”
“Yeah,” he grinned sourly, “that is funny. Imagine a fella like you killing anyone.”
“You can’t imagine me doing it, can you, Ken? You just can’t, can you?”
He said he sure couldn’t, and that was a fact. “If I’d stopped to think, instead of letting that god-danged Buck get me all riled up—”
“But it would be easy to imagine you doing that killing, wouldn’t it, Ken? Killing wouldn’t bother you a bit.”
“What?” he said. “What do you mean, I—”
“In fact, folks wouldn’t have to do any imagining, would they? You’ve as good as admitted it to dozens of people.”
He blinked at me. Then the wild sweat broke out on his face again, and a streak of spit oozed from the corner of his mouth. And there was fear in his eyes.
It had soaked in on him at last, the spot he was in. Soaked clear through a quart of booze until it hit him where he lived and rubbed the place raw.
“Why—why, god-dang you!” he said. “I was just makin’ talk! You know danged well I was! I never even seen those pimps last night!”
“No, sir, I bet you didn’t.” I grinned at him. “I’d bet a million dollars you didn’t.”
“Y-you—” He gulped. “You m-mean you did k-kill—”
“I mean, I know you’re a truthful man,” I said. “If you said you didn’t see those pimps, I know you didn’t see ’em. But other folks might think somethin’ else, mightn’t they, Ken? If those pimps’ bodies was to crop up some place, everybody’d think that you killed them. Couldn’t hardly think nothin’ else under the circumstances.”
He cussed and made a grab at me. I stayed where I was, grinning at him, and he slowly let his hands drop to his side.
“That’s right, Ken,” I nodded. “That’s right. There ain’t a thing you can do but hope. Just hope that if someone did kill those pimps that no one ever finds their bodies.”
The train was coming in.
I waited until it came to a stop; and then, since Ken seemed too dazed to do it by himself, I helped him on.
“One other thing, Ken,” I said, and he turned on the step to look at me. “I’d be real nice to Buck, if I was you. I got kind of a funny idea that he don’t like you very much as it is, so I sure wouldn’t do no more talkin’ about makin’ him peck horse turds with the sparrers.”
He turned back around again, and went on up the steps.
I started back through town.
9
I’d been thinking it was about time to do some political campaignin’, since I had a pretty tough opponent coming up for a change. But I figured there’d been enough going on for one morning, what with Ken’s big talk; and anyways, I just didn’t have a campaign plan this time.
Always before, I’d let the word get around that I was against this and that, things like cockfighting and gambling and whiskey and so on. So my opposition would figure they’d better come out against ’em, too, only twice as strong as I did. And I went right ahead and let ’em. Me, almost anyone can make a better speech than I can, and anyone can come out stronger against or for something. Because, me, I’ve got no very strong convictions about anything. Not anymore I haven’t.
Well, anyway, by the time it got ready to vote, it looked like a fella wouldn’t be able to have no fun at all anymore, if my opponents were elected. About all a fella would be able to do, without getting arrested, was to drink sody-pop and maybe kiss his wife. And no one liked the idea very much, the wives included.
So, all and all, I began to look pretty good to folks. It was a case of nothing looking better than something, because all anyone had to do was listen to me and look at me a while to know that I wasn’t against anything very much, except having my pay stopped, and that I wouldn’t have enough gumption to do anything even if I did want to. I’d just let things go along like they always had, because there wasn’t much point in trying to change ’em. And when the votes were counted, I was still sheriff.
I’m not saying that there weren’t a lot of folks who really liked me. There was a lot of ’em, folks that I’d been kids with and who knew me as a nice friendly fella who was always ready to do a favor if it didn’t put him out of pocket too much or offend someone else. But it seemed to me that I didn’t have as many friends as I’d used to. Even the very folks I’d favored, them most of all, it seemed like, weren’t as friendly as they had been. They seemed to kind of hold it against me because I hadn’t cracked down on ’em. And I didn’t know quite what to do about it, since I’d never really got the habit of doing anything, and I didn’t know how I was going to get myself elected again. But I knew I was going to have to do something. I was going to have to do something or think of something entirely different from the stuff I’d come up with in the past. Or I’d be out of a job when fall came.
I rounded the corner from the depot, and turned into Main Street. Then I started to duck back off of it, because there was a heck of a racket a couple of blocks down the street, a lot of fellas jamming the sidewalk. It looked like a fight of some kind was going on, which meant that I’d better get out of sight before I had to arrest someone besides maybe getting hurt myself.
I started to dart back around the corner; then, somehow, I caught myself, and I went on down the street to where the ruckus was.
It wasn’t really a fight, like I’d been afraid of. Just Tom Hauck beating a colored fella named Uncle John. It seemed like Tom had been coming out of the hardware store with a box of shotgun shells when Uncle John had bumped into him or vice versa. Anyway, he’d dropped the shells and some of ’em had spilled off into the street mud. Which was why he’d grabbed hold of the colored fella and started beating him.
I pushed myself between them, and told Tom to stop.
I felt kind of funny about it, because Tom was the husband of Rose Hauck, the gal who was so generous with me. I guess a fella always feels kind of funny in a situation like that; guilty, I mean, like he ought to give the fella any break that he can. Aside from that, Tom was a lot bigger than I was—mean fellas are always bigger than I am—and he was about half-loaded with booze.
About all Tom ever did was booze-up and go hunting. His wife, Rose, did most of the farm work when she wasn’t laid up from Tom beating her. Tom would set her chores for her, before he went off on a hunting trip. They were usually more than a strong man and a boy could do, but if Rose didn’t have ’em done by the time he got back, she was in for a beating.
Now, he pushed his big red face into mine, and asked me what the hell I meant by interferin’ with him.
“You tellin’ me a white man can’t whip a nigger if he feels like it? You sayin’ there’s some law against it?”
“Well,” I said. “I don’t know about that. I ain’t saying there is, and I ain’t saying there ain’t. But there’s a law again
st disturbin’ the peace, and that’s what you’re doin’.”
“And what about him disturbin’ my peace? How about that, huh? A god-danged stinkin’ nigger almost knocking me off the sidewalk and making me spill my shotgun shells!”
“Well, now, there’s some division of opinion about that,” I said. “It looks like maybe you might have bumped into him instead of him bumpin’ you.”
Tom yelled that what was the god-danged difference, anyways? It was a nigger’s place to look out for a white man and keep out of his way. “Just ask anyone,” he said, looking around at the crowd. “Ain’t that right, fellas?”
Someone said, “That’s right, Tom,” and there was a little murmur of agreement. A kind of half-hearted murmur, because no one liked Tom very much even if they did have to side with him against a colored fella.
It looked to me like they’d really rather be on my side. All I had to do was change the issue a little, make it between me and him instead of between a white man and a black.
“Where did you get that board you been beating him with?” I said. “It looks to me like it came out of the sidewalk.”
“So what if it did?” Tom said. “You expect me to use my fists on a nigger?”
“Now, never you mind about that,” I said. “The point is, you got no right to beat him with city property. Suppose you broke that board, then what? Why these good taxpayers here has got to pay for a new one. Suppose someone comes along and steps in that empty place in the sidewalk? These taxpayers has got to pay the damages.”
Tom scowled and cussed, and glared around at the crowd. There wasn’t hardly a friendly face among ’em, so he cussed some more and said all right, then, to hell with the board. He’d just get the harness straps from his horse and beat Uncle John with them.