Read They Don't Dance Much: A Novel for Free Online Page A

toted a gun the same as he would a pocket handkerchief.

4
    ONE EVENING ABOUT DARK Charles Fisher drove up. I was inside, putting some empty bottles in a crate when I heard the tires crunching in the dust and gravels outside. I stepped to the door to see who it was and if they wanted anything. But I guess Smut had been sitting out front. He was filling up the gas tank. I saw who it was in the car and I walked out the door and sat down on one of the nail kegs.
    Lola was driving and Fisher was on this side of her. He partly hid her from my sight. She was slumped down over the steering wheel like she was tired. Fisher yawned like he was sleepy, or maybe tired too. I guess they were just getting in from Florida.
    Smut finished filling up the gas tank and came up to the front of the car. He took a rag out of his pocket and stepped up on the running board. He began cleaning the windshield and whistling a song about ‘A beautiful lady in blue. I thought she was someone I knew.’ Lola had on a blue sweater. When Smut began whistling she straightened up and looked out the side of the car.
    Smut finished wiping the windshield and hopped off the running board. ‘Anything else, Mr. Fisher?’ he said.
    Fisher took out his pocketbook and pulled up a bill. He gave it to Smut and said, ‘I think not.’
    Smut gave him some change and then Fisher said: ‘Looks like you’re expanding here. Business must be good.’
    Smut pushed back his cap and nodded. ‘Fair,’ he said, ‘just fair. But I hope it’s going to be better after I get my new roadhouse opened up.’
    Fisher took off his octagon-shaped glasses and ran his fingers around the rims. ‘So you’re building a roadhouse?’ he said. ‘Well, you ought to do a good business. You haven’t any competition locally.’
    ‘I hope it does all right,’ Smut told him. ‘Drop by to see us when we get things lined up.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Fisher said, and yawned again.
    Lola Fisher looked over at Smut Milligan right quick and then looked back at the steering wheel. She started the car and they drove off.
    Smut came back and sat on a nail keg on the other side of the door from me. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘My old gal sure has gone up in this world. She’s done well for a horse doctor’s daughter.’
    ‘I wonder how she managed to suck him in,’ I said.
    Smut looked sideways at me. ‘Suck him in? Hell, that dope’s lucky to get her.’
    ‘Maybe so,’ I said.
    ‘Sure he’s lucky. What’s he got that makes him so extra?’ Smut asked.
    ‘Money,’ I said.
    ‘That’s right too,’ Smut said, ‘but he don’t look like much of a man to me. I often wonder if he’s man enough to take care of Lola.’
    ‘He’s the man that’s got her,’ I said.
    Smut took his filling-station cap off and scratched his head. ‘Well, he’s the man that supports her, anyway,’ he said.
    The carpenters and masons worked pretty fast on the new building, and Smut got so he would go and cuss them out three or four times a day. He wanted the building finished as soon as could be, but he said anything that was built as fast as this one couldn’t be put up right. The first building was almost finished by the day that Lola Fisher drove out in her Nile-green roadster. It had white-walled tires and was a hot-looking number.
    It was a fine afternoon in the last of September and the air was crisp. The leaves were turning all red and yellow. Lola pulled up beside the gas tanks and I went out to wait on her.
    She was dyked out in green this time. To match the car, I reckon. Green sweater that was too tight, as usual, and green skirt. Her hair was partly covered with a red bandanna of some sort. Her eyelashes were long and black, like she had just had them worked on in the beauty parlor. She looked pretty and up to something. When she smiled at me I looked away from her.
    ‘Yes, mam, how many?’ I said.
    ‘Hello, Jack,’ she said. I looked back at her and she was still smiling. It made me feel