“Well, I don’t know,” Sam said slowly. Then he picked up the ax. “Jest one. Then I got to unhitch the mules.”
“Through hauling wood for the day?” Lee asked in surprise. It was only about three-thirty.
“Well, I had thought I might get in another load, but I guess not. Might put me kinda late with the chores. Reckon I’ll unhitch.”
I reckon you will too, I thought. Unhitch and stick around. You’re not going back down there in the bottom and leave two potential drunks wallowing around in your corn crib with a quart of moonshine and that girl wandering around loose. You might as well go off and leave an untended bonfire in a gasoline refinery. I’ll bet you’ll be a happy man the day she’s married and some other poor bastard can watch her.
I could feel the two drinks warming me and I was conscious of the old illusion that about two drinks always give you of seeing everything more clearly. And the thing I saw more clearly than anything else was that I’d better start working on Lee to get him out of here before he got too much. You never could tell what it was going to do to him.
“We’d better get started back,” I said. “It’s a long way out to the car.”
“Plenty of time. Keep your shirt on,” he replied with a vague irritation.
Sam got up and let himself out to attend to the team. He gave us a disturbed look as he left. He didn’t like it a bit. It was plain on his face in spite of the way he tried to cover it up. And I could see his reasons. If you’re making and selling booze in a dry county, there’s no surer way of getting yourself in jail than by letting your customers drink it on the premises and get a load on to advertise where they got it. And Sam had a lot of strict, old-fashioned family virtues. He didn’t think his home was any place for people to get drunk, but he didn’t like to say anything. After all, Lee was a good customer. And, too, the code of hospitality ingrained in men like Sam would never permit him to ask anyone to leave his place. Backwoods people just weren’t like that. They might rip your belly open if anything unpleasant started, but they couldn’t ask you to leave.
“You’re mashing those birds in your pocket,” I said. Lee was lying back on the corn with the quail in the game pocket under him.
“The hell with the birds. The world is full of birds.”
“And I’d better point out another thing. We’re wearing out our welcome around here. Fast. Sam makes whisky, but he’s not running a bar. We’d better get going.”
“I paid him for the rotgut, didn’t I? Do I have to ask him where I can drink it?” His face was becoming redder and I could see the stuff working on him.
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you ever see such a shape in your life?” he asked.
“Sam? I guess he’s not my type.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! You and your goddamned stale jokes. You know who I mean.”
“O.K.,” I said, “I know who you mean.”
“I wonder if she really wants it that bad. Or if she’s just dumb.”
“Why don’t you ask Sam? If you’ll just talk a little louder he can hear you.”
“Look,” he said, setting down the jar and staring at me with disgust. “I’m getting a little sick of hearing about Sam. The sneaky bastard. Why doesn’t he get on with his work and quit spying around here?”
It was getting bad. And I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It wasn’t his getting ugly, or the fact that he might start trouble with Harley by trying to pick a fight or cursing him or something, that worried me. Sam would probably just charge that off to a bad drunk who couldn’t handle his liquor. At least, I hoped he would. But the thing that scared me was Lee’s sitting here getting drunker and drunker with that girl inflaming his mind. I’d seen drunks with something on their minds before. Pretty soon, about the time everything else began to close down for him, there’d be nothing left but the girl.
It would be easy to reach over and take the stuff away from him and throw it out the door. They didn’t call me Mack Truck for nothing. I thought of doing it and wondered why I didn’t, but deep down inside I knew why. It was the thought of facing his ridicule when he sobered up and I had to explain why I’d done it. It would look so silly and old-womanish then. It’s funny, I thought, how you’re afraid of a lot of things all your life, but the thing you always fear most is ridicule.
In a little while we heard Sam going by outside and then drawing water for the mules.
“Hey, Sam,” Lee called. There was no answer. He shouted even louder. “Sam! Come in here!”
He turned and stared intently at me as though trying to fix me in his mind. He frowned and weaved slightly from side to side and you could see he was having trouble bringing me into focus. The stuff was working on him rapidly. He’d only had about six drinks.
“Jesus, but you’re a homely bastard. Where’d you ever get a face like that?”
Maybe it would be easier if I got a little edge on myself, I thought. I reached for the jar and took a drink.
“You ought to take that face out somewhere and bury it. You look like a gorilla. Does it hurt?”
“This is what is known as a good, clean, wholesome face,” I said. “I’m a good, clean, wholesome American youth.”
“You’re a good, clean, wholesome sonofabitch. Always worryin’ about something. What’re you worryin’ about now, Grandma?”
“All right,” I said. “I’m always worrying about something.”
“But right now. What’re you worryin’ about right now?”
“Nothing.”
“Must be something. You wouldn’t be complete without that face and something to worry about.”
I didn’t say anything. He kept on staring at me owlishly, with that scowl of concentration screwing up his face.
“Why don’t you worry some more about Titsy out there? Whether she’s goin’ to throw one of ‘em right out through that dress sometime? Or whether she’s goin’ to get what she’s looking for?”
I can see why you get in so many fights, I thought. I can just guess how far you get with that stuff with somebody who doesn’t love you for what you are when you’re all there.
‘Did you ever see anything like it?” he asked. Every time he stopped talking for a minute and then started in again, it was about the same thing.
“Why don’t you and Sam take the guns and go off hunting for a while?”
I didn’t say anything, so he yelled for Sam again. “Hey, Sam!”
In a minute the door opened and Sam looked in. There was still that uneasiness in his black eyes.
“Sam, you old devil, where you been?” Lee shouted at him. “Come on in and have a drink.”
Sam climbed in and squatted down on his heels by the door. Lee kept saying, “You old devil,” and “You old bastard,” and holding out the fruit jar. Sam tried to give me one of those knowing and indulgent smiles out of the side of his eyes, the look that two sober people always have between them for a noisy drunk, but it was pretty weak and strained.
“Sam, old boy, old boy, I want to show you the best damn shotgun in the United States,” Lee said noisily, reaching back on the pile of corn to where he’d thrown the gun. It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered that he hadn’t unloaded it.
“Yeah, that’s a right nice gun, Lee,” Sam said politely.
“Right nice! I hope to tell you it’s a right nice gun. You can’t miss with it. Ask old Plug-Ugly here how many shots I missed with it today. Go on, ask him.”
“Yeah,” Sam said dutifully. “I shore wisht I could git me one like it. It’s right smart of a gun.”
“Take it outside and feel the balance of it. Take a shot at something. It’s loaded. Say, I’ll tell you what. Look, you old boar, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go out and locate a covey and try a couple of shots? Gable here’ll go with you. I want you to try it out. I’ll just stay here and catch a couple of winks while you’re gone.”