“You checking in with Miss Crabtree, were you?” asked Dill, eyeing the building behind them. “I was in there not mor’n half hour ago. She’s a looker all right, but a cold fish. Gal needs a man to warm her up.”
Archer briefly wondered if Dill was the subject of the comments on the page in the typewriter. He could see all of them fairly applying. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the balled-up note. And was Dill also the author of that? Archer could see that being the case, too, particularly given the violence and misspellings.
“Just finished up. A woman as a parole officer? What’s her story anyway?”
“Ain’t you never heard of Carson Crabtree?”
“Doesn’t ring any bells. Guess he’s related?”
“Her daddy.”
“Okay, everybody’s got a daddy.”
“Yeah, but Carson Crabtree done killed three people down in Texas, oh, been more than a dozen years gone by now.”
Archer processed this. “Three people. What for?”
“Man was just mean. They ’lectrocuted his ass.”
“Being mean doesn’t sound like enough reason to murder three people.”
Dill thumped his thumb against his temple. “Touched in the head, more like. You know, crazy, I ’spose. To kill a man you got to be, or else he done you a wrong and you’re just settlin’ matters. Not a damn thing wrong with that and I got experience that way.”
“Not sure the law would agree with that, Dickie.”
“That’s your goddamn problem, Archer, you think rules is all there is.”
“More or less what the Army taught me.”
“Hellfire, boy, you ain’t in uniform no more. Live life and kick you some ass now and then.”
Archer looked thoughtful as he glanced back at the steps he’d just come down. “Maybe Miss Crabtree is overcompensating then.” He said this more to himself than Dill.
“Come again?” said Dill, eyes twitching and his sideburns doing the same. “What’s that mean?”
“Her father was a criminal, so now she’s working to help other criminals turn away from their bad ways.”
“Oh, right, I see. Hey, I’m thinking ’bout maybe having a go at her. Like I said, gal needs a man to tell her what’s what.”
Archer emphatically shook his head. “You do not want to do that, Dickie, trust me.”
“Why not? I think she might cotton to me after a while.”
“You do anything, touch one hair on her head, say one word out of line, and they’ll send your butt right back to Carderock, and you won’t be getting out ever.”
Dill eyed him funny, but there was alarm in the man’s eyes, too.
“You sure ’bout that?”
“Damn sure, Dickie. Don’t try it. Promise me now. I’m looking out for you.”
“Oh, all right then. I promise. Thanks for the advice, Archer.”
“You working?”
“Yeah, got me a job at the slaughterhouse. Would be there already ’cept I had my talk with Miss Crabtree and then lined my belly over at a diner. Truck’s gonna take me out now.”
“What’s it you do there?”
Dill grinned ferociously. “Kill the dang hogs.”
“How do you do that?”
“Smack ’em in the head with a sledgehammer.” He pointed to a spot on his own skull. “Right about here. They don’t feel no pain. Less I don’t kill ’em with the first pop. I try to, though. Hell, man, you know how much pork this here country eats?”
“Never gave it a minute’s thought.”
“A lot. Bacon and sausage and something called cutlets. Me, I can’t stomach it. I’m up to my ass in blood and hog brains all day long. Gets to you after a while. But it pays good. Got dollars in my pocket. Got three other ex-cons from Carderock working there.”
“Miss Crabtree’s suggestion?”
“Yep. Got the job same day. They need skull crushers. I don’t mind it. I mean, somebody’s got to do it, if you want your bacon, right?”
“Where are you living?”
“Little room over the mercantile on the west side of town, bath and shower down the hall. Dollar a day. You?”
“The Derby. But I’ll be moving, I ’spect.”
“Yeah, I started out there, too. Guess we all do, but then I moved on. Can’t afford the damn Derby. You working yet?”
Archer hesitated. “Looking around. You know a man name of Hank Pittleman?”
“Pittleman? Yeah, heard ’a him. He’s some big wheel around town.”
“Saw him coming out of a place called the Cat’s Meow last night and we struck up a conversation.”
Dill’s face scrunched up like a frost-bit flower. “You listen up, Archer. Don’t you go near that place.”
“Well, I know we’re not supposed to.”
“No, what I mean is they check for our kind there, boy.”
“Come again?”
“They got, what you call, plants in there. They look for ex-cons breaking parole there. It’s a temptation, like. Send your ass right back to prison in a heartbeat, same as you just now told me if I messed with Ernestine Crabtree.”
Archer’s features remained inscrutable. “Is that right? Well, thanks for the warning. Won’t catch me in there.” Yet Archer wondered if he already had been caught. But then wouldn’t Crabtree have mentioned it?
“Sure thing. Hey, maybe we ought to get together some time.”
Archer shook his head. “No can do, Dickie.”
“Huh, why’s that?”
“Rule Number 2.”
“Come again?”
“Rule Number 2 on our parole list. You can’t be hanging around with other ex-cons. Didn’t you read the papers?”
Dill looked chagrined. “Well, reading ain’t never been my strong suit, boy.”
“They had a book depository at Carderock.”
“Book depository, what’s that then?”
“Like a library.”
“Ain’t nobody told me about that. But then again, I don’t much like books.”
Archer nodded. “Well, good luck,” he said, without any enthusiasm.
He left Dill there and walked off into the sunshine with forty dollars in his pocket and the rest of the day to figure out.
Chapter 5
Poca City had a reasonable number of distractions fraught with legal and other peril; however, Archer managed to avoid them all that day. He wasn’t sure about the next day, though. His natural defenses did have their limits. And when he was presented squarely with choices of right and wrong, Archer could be reasonably counted on to miss the angel’s cue about 20 percent of the time on a good day. But then again, he had been truthful with Ernestine Crabtree — he did not want to return to prison.
He mostly walked the pavements, halting to eat a ham and cheese sandwich for his lunch outside while sitting on a turned-over box, and later an ice cream cone bought from a uniformed Good Humor man perched in his blue-and-white truck. They jawed about matters both important and frivolous. He looked for but never saw Miss Ernestine Crabtree with the murderous father, though he kept a constant sight line on the court building. He thought she might come out to enjoy the sunshine and perhaps smoke one or two, but that never happened. He didn’t know why he wanted this. He was not going to have anything other than a professional relationship with the woman, but the note he’d found and the lawman’s leer and Dill’s telling him about the woman’s violent past made him curious about her.
His spending spree had cost him all of fifty cents, with the twin Jacksons lying in the depths of his pocket undiminished. He managed to scrounge a cigarette off a passing stranger, and he sat on a bench near the town square taking his time whittling it down and watching all who passed by in front of him. There was prosperity in the air, comingling with those clearly in economic despair. But those on that woeful side of the equation would no doubt work hard to get to the “other side” with all due speed, rising to the mountaintop to look down on others scrambling madly for their piece of the pie. And that, to Archer, was the fledgling American dream in a nutshell, particularly after a war that had knocked the stuffing out of just about everyone.