Pop. 1280

'I got a trade-last for you,' I said. 'A fella was saying to me the other day, he said, 'Nick, you got the prettiest mother in town.' So I asked him who he meant, naturally, because my mama's been dead for years. And he said, 'Why, that lady you call Myra. You mean to tell me she ain't your mother?' That's just what he said, honey. So now you got to tell me something nice that someone said about me.'

She still didn't say anything. She just leaped at me, sort of meowing like a cat, her hands clawed to scratch my eyes out.

She didn't do it, because I'd been kind of expecting something like that. All the time! was talking to her, I was easing back toward the door. So instead of landing on me, she came up against the wall, clawing the heck out of it a-fore she could come to her senses.

Meantime, I went on downstairs and opened the door.

Ken Lacey busted in. He was wild-eyed, heaving for breath. He grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking me.

'Have you done it yet?' he said. 'God-dang it, have you already gone an' done it?'

'Wh-what?' I tried to shake free of him. 'Have I gone an' done what?'

'You know what, god-dang it! What I told you to do! Now, you answer me, you consarned idjit, or I'll beat it out of you!'

Well, sir, it looked to me like he was pretty excited about something. Might get himself in such a tizzy that he'd keel over with the frantics. So I just pushed him into my office and made him set down at my desk, and I struck a lamp and made him take a big drink of whiskey. And then, when he seemed to be calmed down a little, I asked him just what it was all about.

'What am I supposed to have done, Ken? The way you're actin', you'd think I'd killed someone.'

'Then you didn't,' he said, his eyes hard on my face. 'You didn't kill anyone.'

'Kill anyone?' I said. 'Why, what a riddicerlous question! Why for would I kill anyone?'

'And you didn't? You didn't kill them two pimps that was sassing you?'

'Ken,' I said. 'How many times have I got to tell you? Why for would I kill anyone?'

He heaved a big sigh, and relaxed for the first time. Then, after another long drink, he slammed down the jug and began to cuss his deputy, Buck.

'God-dang, just wait until I get hold of him! Just you wait! I'll kick his mangy ass s'hard he'll have to take off his boots to comb his hair!'

'Why, what'd he do?' I said. 'What's old Buck gone an' done?'

'He frazzled me, that's what! Got me so god-danged excited an' worried that I was plumb out of my mind,' Ken said, cussing Buck up one side and down the other. 'Well, it's my own god-danged fault, I reckon. Had the proof right before me that he was a low-down maniac, but broad-minded like I am, I went and closed my eyes to it.'

'How come?' I said. 'What you mean you had the proof, Ken?'

'I mean I caught him reading a book, that's what! Yes, sir, I caught him red-handed. Oh, he claimed he was only lookin' at the pitchers, but I knew he was lyin'.'

'Well, I'll be dogged!' I said. 'I will be doubledogged! But what's Buck got to do with you being down here?'

So Ken told me how it had happened.

It seemed like after he left me, Buck went back to the office and began to fret out loud. Wonderin' whether I'd really be crazy enough to kill those pimps, which would leave Ken in a peck of trouble. The way Buck saw it-in his out-loud worryin'-Ken had told me! should kill 'em, and if! went ahead and did it he'd be just as guilty as I was.

He kept on fretting about it, Buck did, saying I just might kill the pimps because I'd always taken Ken's advice in the past, no matter how nutty it was. And then when he saw how upset Ken was getting, he said that the law probably wouldn't be too hard on him. Proba'ly wouldn't be hard on him, a-tall, like they would me, but maybe let him off with thirty, forty years.

The upshot of it was that Ken finally tore out of his office, and caught the Red Ball freight to Pottsville. He hadn't had too nice a trip because the caboose, where he was sittin' had had an awful flat wheel. He said he was probably a lot sorer in the behind that I was from getting kicked, and all he wanted to do now was go to bed.

'I just had more'n one poor body can stand in a day,' he yawned. 'I reckon you can put me up all right, can't you?'

I said that I was right shamed, but no, I couldn't. We just didn't have no place where an extra fella could be bedded down.

'God-dang it!' he scowled. 'All right, I'll go to the hotel, then!'

I allowed that that might be kind of hard to do, seeing that Pottsville didn't have a hotel. 'If it was daytime, you could bed at the Widder Shoup's place; that's what the travellin' salesmen do. But she sure wouldn't let you in at this time of night.'

'Well, where the god-danged hell am I gonna sleep, then?' he said, 'I sure as heck ain't sittin' up all night!'

'Well, let's see now,' I said. 'Danged if I can only think of but one place, Ken. A place that could bed you down. But I'm afraid you wouldn't get much sleep there.'

'You just lead me to it! I'll do the sleepin'!'

'Not at the whorehouse you wouldn't,' I said. 'Y'see, the girls ain't had much business lately, and they'd all be mighty raunchy. Prob'ly be makin' demands on you all night long.'

'Uh-hah!' Ken said. 'Well, now! I reckon a fella can put up with anything if he has to. Nice young gals, are they!'

'No, they ain't,' I said. 'Most of 'em are fairly young, maybe seventeen, eighteen. But they got this one old gal that's every bit of twenty-one. And she just won't leave a fella alone! She purely won't, Ken, and it wouldn't be fair not to warn you.'

A streak of spit was trickling down his chin. He brushed it away and stood up, a kind of glassy look in his eyes.

'I better be goin',' he said. 'I better be goin' right this minute.'

'I'll put you on the right road,' I said. 'But there's something you got to know first. About them two pimps…'

'Don't you worry none. I'll take care of 'em!'

'You won't have to,' I said, 'because they won't be there. They'll be off somewheres drunk by now, and they won't wake up until noon.'

'What the hell, then?' Ken took a fidgety step toward the door. 'If the girls think they ain't there-'

'But they don't think that. The pimps have got 'em kidded that they're watching the place day and night, which naturally makes it hard for the girls to relax and have fun like they want to. So-'

'Uh-huh? Yeah, yeah,' Ken said. 'Go on, god-dang it!'

'So here's what you do as soon as you go in. You tell the girls that you've taken care of the pimps real good, and that they won't be nosing around a-tall. You tell 'em that, and everything will be just fine an' dandy.'

He said he'd tell 'em what I said to. (And as it turned out, he told them exactly that.) Then, he went out the door and across the yard, moving so fast that I could hardly keep up with him.

We crossed through the edge of town, and I lined him upon the river road. He went on by himself, then, without so much as a nod. And then I reckon he remembered his manners, because he turned around and came back.

'Nick,' he said, 'I'm obliged to you. Maybe I ain't been too nice to you in the past, but I ain't forgettin' what you've done here tonight!'