“So you believe she made the wrong choice then?”
“Well, don’t you?”
“I have no right to judge her, as I haven’t walked in her shoes.”
Archer thought about this for a bit and once more came away with the depth of the woman’s wisdom. He nodded. “I guess you’re right about that.”
Crabtree said, “And now? With Pittleman gone?”
“That ride might have run out for Jackie. And who knows if Pittleman left his wife a dime when all is said and done.”
“It sounds like a dilemma all right.’”
“But Jackie is one smart gal. If anyone can survive this, she can.”
“You care for her, don’t you?”
Archer was startled by this question. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. I think...”
“You think what?”
“I think she got a raw deal in life and deserves to be happy in spite of that.”
Crabtree looked at him with those mile-deep eyes, and for a moment Archer could see himself plunging through their depths to who knew where.
“That speaks well of you, Archer.”
He took out his Lucky Strikes and offered her one, but she declined. He lit up and said, “You got a man in your life, Ernestine?” Before she could say anything, he put up a hand. “I know that’s a personal question, and you can just tell me to shove off. But I was just wondering. I never had a steady gal. I left home, roamed a bit, then went to college. Then I volunteered and spent years of my life fighting a war across the ocean. Then I got into trouble and there went more years of my life. Now?” He picked up the book. “Maybe these will be my friends. Keep me company at night.”
“Books are wonderful, Archer, but they can’t be the only things in your life. Humans are built for companionship, at least they should be.”
“So, you got somebody?”
“I have someone I care for, yes.”
“Does he live in Poca City?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a lucky man, then.” He rose and took the book. “I’m gonna read a bit and then get to bed. Butchering hogs takes it outta you.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sure it does.”
Ernestine rose and disappeared into her bedroom, while Archer put his smoke out in the sink, stripped down to his skivvies, and lay on the pulled-out wall bed. He put the book on his chest but didn’t open it. He just lay there wondering when anything in the world would begin to make sense to him.
Chapter 29
“How you know that man, Archer?” said Dickie Dill with a snarl accenting his query.
Archer was outside the slaughterhouse eating the lunch that Ernestine had prepared for him. Before he’d left for work, he’d found her in the kitchen making him a hot breakfast, which he’d devoured before heading out. And per Shaw’s instructions, he had kept his eyes and ears open while working there.
“What man is that, Dickie?”
Dill was cutting an apple into spirals with his switchblade and somehow managing to do it in a menacing fashion. He stuck a piece into his mouth and chewed with his few tobacco-stained and crooked teeth, mostly gumming the pulp and swallowing it with an effort.
“That policeman what’s-his-name.”
“Lieutenant Detective Irving Shaw of the state police.”
“Yeah, him. What you doing with a cop?”
Dickie tossed the apple core and lit a Chesterfield, blowing his smoke right at Archer.
“Just looking into the murder of Hank Pittleman.”
“Shoot, man don’t pay his workers, he deserves to die.”
“You confessing?”
Dill took a puff of the Chesterfield and looked at him funny, his mouth caught between a grin and a grimace. “You pullin’ my leg, ain’t’cha?”
“Maybe I am.”
“You hang around cops, folks think shit.”
“Like what?”
“Like you ain’t one of us.”
“I’m an ex-con, you’re an ex-con. Nothing can change that, Dickie. We’re bad boys. Forever.”
“But still. Gotta watch out, Archer.”
“I’m always watching out.”
Especially for you, thought Archer.
“You still at the Derby then?”
Archer started to say no, but then realized Dill would inquire as to where he was lodging, and he didn’t want any inkling of his staying with Ernestine to get out to this loathsome man. Shaw’s telling him about the murders of two women by Dill’s hand had reinforced many times over his already instinctual desire to keep the man far away from his parole officer. Or any woman. Or anybody else, for that matter.
“Yeah, but I’ll be moving on soon. So Pittleman owns this place?”
“What about it?” Dill tapped his cigarette out on the bench next to Archer, uncomfortably close.
“So, you know anybody here that worked directly for him?”
“What you mean by directly?”
“Meaning more than killing and butchering hogs.”
“Why you want to know?”
“Just wondering.”
Dill grinned in a way that never came close to reaching his eyes. “That was you in the joint too, Archer, thinking ’bout shit too much. You got to learn to leave things be, boy. Ain’t healthy otherwise.”
“So, is that a no?”
Dill made a show of closing up his switchblade. “That means it ain’t your business. And put it outta your goddamn head.”
They went back to work, Dill sledgehammering and Archer cutting and sawing.
The man next to Archer, who had shown Archer the ways with the tools of butchering said, “Heard you talking to Dill.”
“That right?”
“You asking about Pittleman?”
“I was, yeah.”
“He was an odd bird.”
“So you knew him?”
“There were some here who knew him. He had his fingers in lots of pies, they say.”
“Man had a lotta businesses, that’s true.”
“You know a man named Malcolm Draper?”
“I’ve met him. Why?”
“He’s around here a lot too. And he ain’t butchering hogs.”
“He runs Pittleman’s businesses.”
“He runs something, all right.”
Archer was about to ask another question when Dickie Dill came into Archer’s workspace holding his sledgehammer.
“Hey, Archer?”
“Yeah?”
“Thought I’d give you a look-see at what it is I do here.”
Another man came in dragging a fat hog by a leather cord. The terrified beast, perhaps sensing what was about to befall it, was squealing and pulling against the tether with all its strength. Its hooves were digging into the wooden floor and creating an unsettling clatter as it struggled to survive.
All the men in the butchering room, including Archer, stopped what they were doing and looked that way.
The other man faced the hog, knelt down, and pulled the leather cord to the floor, forcing the poor beast’s head down and keeping it stationary.
Dill circled around behind the hog and raised his sledgehammer, the look on his face one of unadulterated excitement.
A moment before metal hit skull, Archer closed his eyes.
The sound of the sledgehammer crushing bone was nearly as horrible as the dying squeal made by the unfortunate animal.
When he reopened them, the hog was lying dead on a floor full of hog scraps, bleeding from its crushed head, but also from its nose and mouth. Its one blood-filled and lifeless eye looked up at the man who had just killed it.
Dill held up his homicidal tool in triumph.
“And now you know how it’s damn well done, boy.”
The message conveyed was perfectly clear to every man in the place. And most particularly to Archer.
“Knowledge is a good thing, Dickie,” said Archer, drawing another funny look from Dill.
Archer went back to his butchering.