They Don't Dance Much: A Novel by James Ross Page A

Jack,’ he said, ‘you ain’t got a match, is you?’
    I gave him a paper book of matches. He began fumbling around in his overall jacket. He turned the pockets as close to inside out as he could, then he went to fishing around in his pants pockets. Finally he took his hat off and scratched his head. ‘Confound my soul!’ he said. ‘I done come off and left my sack of tobacco to the house. You ain’t got a cigarette, is you, Mr. Jack?’
    I gave him a cigarette. I ought to have gone in the store and got him a sack of tobacco and charged it to him. But the way I felt right then I’d rather give him the cigarette than go open up the books.
    He got the cigarette lit and he looked mighty contented flopped down there in the dirt, with smoke all around him like a brushpile on fire. He took his hat off and threw it down on the ground beside him and propped himself up on his elbow. I noticed the shape of his face; it was like a wedge.
    ‘Sho is fine weather we havin,’ he said.
    I kind of grunted. ‘But not much good for makin liquor,’ he went on. ‘Little too dry. Kinda dangerous havin a fire out in the woods this dry weather. Smoke show up mighty clear too.’
    He smoked on awhile and I didn’t open my mouth to him. Finally he said: ‘Where Mr. Smut? Ain’t he here today?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Where he gone to?’
    ‘Gone to Charlotte.’
    ‘I be dog! Gone to Charlotte! I use to live in Charlotte. Didn’t stay there long. Didn’t like it.’
    I saw I was going to have to knock him in the head or listen to him. ‘How come you didn’t like Charlotte?’ I asked him.
    ‘I don’t like that there niggertown they got in Charlotte. We use to live on a creek; Sweet Creek they calls it there. But I never called it no Sweet Creek.’
    ‘What’d you call it?’
    Catfish spat over his shoulder. ‘Sonofabitchin Creek,’ he said.
    ‘How come you called it that?’
    ‘On account that there dang creek gits outen the banks and rises up in all them nigger houses. Ever time use to come a rain the water git three foot deep in the house.’
    ‘Whyn’t you complain to the landlord?’ I asked him.
    ‘Don’t do no good. Landlord say, “If you don’t like it, git out.” But them was the only kind of house a pore nigger can git in Charlotte.’
    ‘I think Wilbur Brannon has got some shacks in Charlotte,’ I said. ‘I wonder how much he gets out of them.’
    ‘If he’s got many he gits plenty,’ Catfish said. ‘Plenty money. Them landlords puts up a little bark house what don’t cost nothin and they don’t paint nothin nor fix up nothin. They don’t never make no repairs neither. They don’t pay no taxes to amount to a hill of beans cause them houses is listed mighty low on the tax books. But they gits they rent outen them just the same. Why, one man had fourteen nigger houses right there together on that there Sonofabitchin Sweet Creek and not but one garden house for all that bunch! You had to hold yourself in and watch your chanct.’
    ‘I reckon Wilbur makes a pretty good thing out of his houses, then,’ I said. ‘He’s a strange bird to me. I always wondered where he got his money.’
    Catfish was in a smoking notion that day. He raised up and said, ‘Got air nother cigarette you could spare me, Mr. Jack?’ I gave him another one, and he went on. ‘Mr. Brannon got money, but not like that there Mr. Bert Ford.’
    ‘I’ve heard Bert had money,’ I said, ‘but he don’t spend it like Wilbur Brannon does. Bert always wears overalls and drinks corn liquor. He’s just a country jake.’
    ‘May be a country jake, but he got the money just the same,’ Catfish said. ‘I use to live on Mr. Bert’s place one year. I know he got the money. He got it buried.’
    ‘Buried?’ I said. ‘Where’s it buried?’
    ‘He don’t say. But one night he tell me he done buried thutty thousand dollar.’
    ‘Hello!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he talked like that.’
    ‘Don’t as a ginral rule,’ Catfish