“I hope you don’t think I am going to keep you in whiskey.”
“I don’t have to buy that, I confiscate it. You might try a little touch of it for your cold.”
“No, thank you.”
“This is the real article. It is double-rectified busthead from Madison County, aged in the keg. A little spoonful would do you a power of good.”
“I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Well, a hundred dollars is my price, sis. There it is.”
“For that kind of money I would want a guarantee. I would want to be pretty sure of what I was getting.”
“I have not yet seen the color of your money.”
“I will have the money in a day or two. I will think about your proposition and talk to you again. Now I want to go to the Monarch boardinghouse. You had better walk over there with me.”
“Are you scared of the dark?”
“I never was scared of the dark.”
“If I had a big horse pistol like yours I would not be scared of any booger-man.”
“I am not scared of the booger-man. I don’t know the way over there.”
“You are a lot of trouble. Wait until I finish this hand. You cannot tell what a Chinaman is thinking. That is how they beat you at cards.”
They were betting money on the play and Rooster was not winning. I kept after him but he would only say, “One more hand,” and pretty soon I was asleep with my head on the table. Some time later he began to shake me.
“Wake up,” he was saying. “Wake up, baby sister.”
“What is it?” said I.
He was drunk and he was fooling around with Papa’s pistol. He pointed out something on the floor over by the curtain that opened into the store. I looked and it was a big long barn rat. He sat there hunkered on the floor, his tail flat, and he was eating meal that was spilling out of a hole in the sack. I gave a start but Rooster put his tobacco-smelling hand over my mouth and gripped my cheeks and held me down.
He said, “Be right still.” I looked around for Lee and figured he must have gone to bed. Rooster said, “I will try this the new way. Now watch.” He leaned forward and spoke at the rat in a low voice, saying, “I have a writ here that says for you to stop eating Chen Lee’s corn meal forthwith. It is a rat writ. It is a writ for a rat and this is lawful service of said writ.” Then he looked over at me and said, “Has he stopped?” I gave no reply. I have never wasted any time encouraging drunkards or show-offs. He said, “It don’t look like to me he has stopped.” He was holding Papa’s revolver down at his left side and he fired twice without aiming. The noise filled up that little room and made the curtains jump. My ears rang. There was a good deal of smoke.
Lee sat up in his bunk and said, “Outside is place for shooting.”
“I was serving some papers,” said Rooster.
The rat was a mess. I went over and picked him up by the tail and pitched him out the back door for Sterling, who should have smelled him out and dispatched him in the first place.
I said to Rooster, “Don’t be shooting that pistol again. I don’t have any more loads for it.”
He said, “You would not know how to load it if you did have.”
“I know how to load it.”
He went to his bunk and pulled out a tin box that was underneath and brought it to the table. The box was full of oily rags and loose cartridges and odd bits of leather and string. He brought out some lead balls and little copper percussion caps and a tin of powder.
He said, “All right, let me see you do it. There is powder, caps and bullets.”
“I don’t want to right now. I am sleepy and I want to go to my quarters at the Monarch boardinghouse.”
“Well, I didn’t think you could,” said he.
He commenced to reload the two chambers. He dropped things and got them all askew and did not do a good job. When he had finished he said, “This piece is too big and clumsy for you. You are better off with something that uses cartridges.”
He poked around in the bottom of the box and came up with a funny little pistol with several barrels. “Now this is what you need,” he said. “It is a twenty-two pepper-box that shoots five times, and sometimes all at once. It is called ‘The Ladies’ Companion.’ There is a sporting lady called Big Faye in this city who was shot twice with it by her stepsister. Big Faye dresses out at about two hundred and ninety pounds. The bullets could not make it through to any vitals. That was unusual. It will give you good service against ordinary people. It is like new. I will trade you even for this old piece.”
I said, “No, that was Papa’s gun. I am ready to go. Do you hear me?” I took my revolver from him and put it back in the sack. He poured some more whiskey in his cup.
“You can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister.”
“I never said you could.”
“These shitepoke lawyers think you can but you can’t. All you can do with a rat is kill him or let him be. They don’t care nothing about papers. What is your thinking on it?”
“Are you going to drink all that?”
“Judge Parker knows. He is a old carpetbagger but he knows his rats. We had a good court here till the pettifogging lawyers moved in on it. You might think Polk Goudy is a fine gentleman to look at his clothes, but he is the sorriest son of a bitch that God ever let breathe. I know him well. Now they have got the judge down on me, and the marshal too. The rat-catcher is too hard on the rats. That is what they say. Let up on them rats! Give them rats a fair show! What kind of show did they give Columbus Potter? Tell me that. A finer man never lived.”
I got up and walked out thinking I would shame him into coming along and seeing that I got home all right but he did not follow. He was still talking when I left. The town was quite dark at that end and I walked fast and saw not a soul although I heard music and voices and saw lights up toward the river where the barrooms were.
When I reached Garrison Avenue I stopped and got my bearings. I have always had a good head for directions. It did not take me long to reach the Monarch. The house was dark. I went around to the back door with the idea that it would be unlocked because of the toilet traffic. I was right. Since I had not yet paid for another day it occurred to me that Mrs. Floyd might have installed a new guest in Grandma Turner’s bed, perhaps some teamster or railroad detective. I was much relieved to find my side of the bed vacant. I got the extra blankets and arranged them as I had done the night before. I said my prayers and it was some time before I got any sleep. I had a cough.
FOUR
I was sick the next day. I got up and went to breakfast but I could not eat much and my eyes and nose were running so I went back to bed. I felt very low. Mrs. Floyd wrapped a rag around my neck that was soaked in turpentine and smeared with lard. She dosed me with something called Dr. Underwood’s Bile Activator. “You will pass blue water for a day or two but do not be alarmed as that is only the medicine working,” she said. “It will relax you wonderfully. Grandma Turner and I bless the day we discovered it.” The label on the bottle said it did not contain mercury and was commended by physicians and clergymen.
Along with the startling color effect the potion also caused me to be giddy and lightheaded. I suspect now that it made use of some such ingredient as codeine or laudanum. I can remember when half the old ladies in the country were “dopeheads.”
Thank God for the Harrison Narcotics Law. Also the Volstead Act. I know Governor Smith is “wet” but that is because of his race and religion and he is not personally accountable for that. I think his first loyalty is to his country and not to “the infallible Pope of Rome.” I am not afraid of Al Smith for a minute. He is a good Democrat and when he is elected I believe he will do the right thing if he is not hamstrung by the Republican gang and bullied into an early grave as was done to Woodrow Wilson, the greatest Presbyterian gentleman of the age.