Me and Billy (8 page)

He raised his eyes up to the sky once more, like he was begging the saints to help him bear it. Then he looked back at us. “Fellas, you don’t understand the amount of expenses we run to each day. This business don’t run on air. It takes money. Some days we don’t even make expenses.”

“Still, there’s got to be a few dollars left over. What’s the point of us being in a business if we can’t get anything out of it?”

“Possum’s right, Prof. You got to pay us something.”

Prof pursed his lips. “Well, I tell you what, boys. I can see nothing I say is going to touch your greedy little hearts. Suppose we make it a dollar each. A dollar’s a lot of money for boys your age.”

“You said a dollar a day.”

He picked up a stick and started scratching in the dirt by the fire, like he was adding up the numbers. “All right, I guess I could find two dollars each. But that’s as far as she’ll stretch.”

“Five dollars,” I said.

“You’re breaking my heart, Possum. After everything I done for you, practically working my fingers to the bone just to see you got some decent grub for a change. Make it three dollars.”

“Four,” I said.

“Split the difference,” he said. “Three-fifty each.”

But of course in the end he said he didn’t have the right change, and we got three dollars and a quarter
each. He was careful to turn his back to us when he counted the dollars off his roll of bills. Still, we’d get some of it. That was the first time in my life I ever had any money of my own. Three dollars and a quarter seemed like a fortune. Oh, it was a glorious feeling, all right, to have that much money. I wasn’t thinking about what I could buy with it. In fact, the last thing I wanted to do was spend it. I just wanted to have it.

But now that we’d got some money, I was stuck with staying with the Professor for a while. We didn’t have enough money to branch off on our own; Billy’d make me stay with it until we did. I’d sort of trapped myself.

A couple of days later, we came over a rise and saw below us, a few miles along, one of those big towns the Professor had been talking bout. Even at a distance we could see that it was more than just a main street. It had four or five streets running one way and four or five more running across them. I counted three church steeples and some kind of stone courthouse, too.

But there was something else in the view that took my breath away. In the distance was a line of mountains—not hills, but real mountains. I kind of shuddered from excitement. “Look, Billy.”

“You think it’s them?”

“I don’t know.” Prof was standing by the van staring down into the town like it was the Promised Land and the Lord was parting the Red Sea for him. “Prof, is that Plunket City?”

“Why, yes, Possum. How’d you know that?”

“Somebody told me about it.” So there it was: somewhere up in those mountains was that lake full of gold.

We pulled the van off into a stand of trees by the road. Prof set Billy to unhitching the mules and currying them and sent me into town with a dollar to buy supper. “Have a good stroll around, Possum. See what you can see. I got to do some heavy thinking. There’s good pickings in that town if I can come up with the right idea.” Going off by myself was just what I wanted to do. He sat down with his back against a tree, pulled off his boots and closed his eyes so he could see all the stuff flying around inside his head better. I reckoned he’d be sound asleep before I was a quarter mile down the road.

I set off, and by and by I came to a sprinkling of houses along the road. In a bit the road turned into a cobble street, and I was going along a wood sidewalk with a good many shops and stores, mingled with some nice houses. There were plenty of people, too. Somebody would know about those mountains. So I sauntered along, looking around at this and that, just taking in the sights, when I came across that stone building I’d seen from the rise. It was three stories high, with a clock tower in the roof, and carved across the front in stone letters was
PLUNKET CITY TOWN HALL
.

Somebody in there was bound to know all about those mountains. It made me a little nervous to go in there and ask: suppose I wasn’t allowed. But I’d never find out about those mountains if I didn’t ask, so I took a deep breath, marched up the town-hall steps, swung the door open, and went in.

It was nice and cool in there. I was in a corridor with doors all along it—county sheriff, tax assessor, department of public works, and such. I ought to stay away from the sheriff; that was clear. I didn’t even know what a tax assessor was, but I figured I’d better stay away from him, too. The department of public works sounded safer. I went up to the door. I didn’t know if you were supposed to knock or just go in, so to be safe I knocked. Nothing happened. I pushed the door open. There was a railing across the front of the room, a couple of people waiting in chairs in front of the railing, and behind the railing three or four people at work at desks. I sat down in a chair to wait my turn. Next to me was a farmer in overalls, smoking a corncob pipe. “I hope I’m not bothering you, but I was wondering about those mountains out there.” I certainly wasn’t going to admit about the golden lake.

He looked me over. “Ain’t much to wonder about,” he said finally. “They’re mountains.”

“Well, yes, I can see that. I was wondering what kind of mountains they are. What they’re called and all.”

He thought about it for a minute. “Blame if I know what they’re called. Don’t have any special name, I reckon. Around here they just call them the mountains.”

“If you wanted to go up there, are there any trails and such?”

“Folks don’t go up there too much. Easy to get lost. Lots of fellas has went up there and never was seen again. Some folks says they put a spell on people deliberate. Every time you turn your head, things look different. Don’t believe in spells myself, but there might be something to it. I knew a fella who went up in there twenty years ago and still ain’t come out.” He looked me over again. “You fixin’ on going up there?”

“No,” I said, getting excited again, for it sounded like the right mountains. “I’m new around here. I was curious is all.”

Then I realized that the door to the office was open, and a man was standing there, watching me and listening. He was wearing a suit and tie and a gold watch chain across from one side of his vest to the other. He hadn’t got the pistol in his belt, but I figured he could lay his hands on it pretty quick if he wanted to.

I got hot and sweaty, and my heart began to race. I was giving myself away, but I couldn’t help it. I turned back to the farmer with the corncob pipe. “I don’t suppose you know of any jobs around here? My pa and ma died, and I’m trying to get back east to live with my uncle Will. But I ran out of money.” It sounded pretty limp to me—I wished I had Billy along to do the lying.

The man stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. I knew I oughtn’t to pay him any attention, but I couldn’t help giving him a quick look. I said to the farmer, “That’s why I came in here. I figured they might have some jobs with the public works.”

Then I realized that the man with the gold watch chain was standing right over me, staring down. “So,” he said, “Johnny McCarthy’s in town.”

I looked up at him, trying not to blush. “You talking to me, sir?”

“I’m talking to you, yes. Where’s McCarthy?”

“Sir, I don’t know anyone named McCarthy. I don’t know anyone at all around here.”

His hand shot out, and he grabbed ahold of my shirt front. The cloth was old and faded, and I could hear it give when he jerked me to my feet. “Sir, I don’t know—”

He gave me a shake. “Now you listen to me, you little skunk. You tell McCarthy I want him out of this town as fast as he can skedaddle. If I see him anywhere pulling his skin game, he’s going to be mighty sorry he ever crossed the city line. Am I clear?”

There wasn’t anything else for me to say. He let me go, and I ran out of there, leaving the door open behind me. I dashed down the wide town-hall steps and headed back toward where I’d come from, every once in a while looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was chasing me.

The whole thing shook me a good deal, and I forgot all about buying supper. But when I brought the news back to the Professor, it kind of took away his appetite, and we made do with some bread and cheese. Prof didn’t say much while we were eating—“pass the mustard” and such. But I figured we had a right to know, as we were in it, too. “Who is he, Prof?” I said.

He frowned so deep his eyebrows almost touched. “Fella name of Robinson. Harper Robinson. Surveyor by trade. That’s why you came upon him in the works department. Laying out a water line or a piece of property somewhere, most probably. He ain’t from up around here. Comes from a place south a hundred miles. Town called Deep Creek. He travels on the surveying business all the time, so you’re likely to come
across him anywhere in these parts. See, suppose a fella down in Deep Creek wants to speculate in land up here, he’s going to send his own surveyor out, and not go by a local one who might be a friend of the seller and lay out the land a few acres short.”

“What’s he got against you?” Billy said.

“Oh well.” He sat there thinking about it for a while, hunched together, his whole face moving in the direction of his nose. Finally he picked up a stick from the ground and began playing around in the campfire coals with it. “It was an accident. I don’t see why he had to blame me for it. It wasn’t like I did it on purpose. He might as well take it out on God, for He had a hand in it, too—more’n I did, surely. Like I say, it was an accident.”

“But what happened, Prof?” I said.

“I came into this here Deep Creek. I had a little thing going that I called Bailey’s Baby Powders. It wasn’t anything but cornstarch with brown sugar and spices mixed in—nutmeg, cinnamon, and such—so the kids would beg for it. Mix a teaspoon in their milk. Folks go for anything that shuts their babies up awhile. There was a lot of diphtheria going around down there at that time, which was why I was pushing the baby powders. There wasn’t any harm in it—a kid could eat a box of it and wouldn’t be hurt. Do the kid some good, like as not.”

“Were you working alone, Prof?’

“No, no. I had this fella with me—half Indian, half Mexican. Fastest hand at spotting the suckers in a crowd I ever did see.”

“What was his trick?” Billy said. He was jealous, and he wanted to know the secret of it.

“Let’s come back to that,” I said. “I want to hear about this Robinson.”

“Where was I?”

“Selling baby powders.”

“Yes. We was out there in Deep Creek, me and this fella, selling baby powders. This young couple came up, carrying a little girl. Well, not so little, maybe three, four years old. Cutest little thing I ever saw. Head full of curls, shiny brown eyes. But mighty sick, too. Well, of course, they was real worried about her, said she’d got a fever and moaned all night, would the powders do any good. Well, I was kind of stuck. There was a lot of people gathered around, and I couldn’t hardly say the powders wasn’t anything but cornstarch and sugar, for I’d just spent a half hour telling everybody how good they was. So I said they was the best thing in the world. And that’s where I made my mistake.”

He sat there kind of brooding over it for a bit. Me and Billy kept quiet, and finally he began again. “What I should of done was tell ’em to take the kid to a doc just to be on the safe side. That’s what I usually did in these cases. I don’t mind killing some old farmer now and again who hasn’t done anything for mankind but chew straw and spit on his shoes for forty years. But I kind of draw the line at kids. This time it got away from me. A couple of people jumped in with questions, and by the time I got back to the young couple this
Indian fella had sold them the powders and they’d gone home.

“Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it, and I put it out of my mind. I figured if they had any sense they’d take the kid to a doc anyway, and then it’d be on his conscience, not mine, if she died. But they didn’t. They put all their faith in those powders, and blamed if four days later she didn’t die. Of course I didn’t know anything about it—I was three towns away. But it turned out she was this here Robinson’s little granddaughter. He tucked that pistol in his waistband and came looking for me. He caught me spieling in front of a mob of people. He turned my face against the van and put the pistol to my head. I figured I was a dead man. Stood there waiting for the crash, trying to say the Lord’s Prayer, but so scared I couldn’t get past the first line. Then he said he would of shot me, but his daughter had another one on the way, and she needed him out of jail. But he beat me up around the head pretty good with that pistol. And he said if he ever caught me spieling again, he’d shoot me where I stood. Now, in fact, he ain’t likely to shoot me in front of a crowd—sure to go to jail for that, and maybe hang in the bargain. But I wouldn’t want him to catch me out in the woods.”

I sat there feeling cold and sick with myself. What if somebody I’d sold Thurman’s Elixir to had already died? Maybe they had. We’d sold plenty of it to people for their kids. I knew that, for they’d come up and say
their kid had this or that wrong with him, was the Elixir any good for it. When that happened, I was on the spot. I didn’t want to say it was good for anything, but I couldn’t say it wasn’t, not after the Professor had been saying how wonderful it was. Usually I said something like, “Lots of folks have bought it for their kids.” I saw now that was almost worse than telling people straight out that the stuff would cure anything—worse because it was just a way for me to feel better about lying to them. I sat there feeling just plain awful. “Maybe you should have quit the business,” I said in a low voice.

“I did for a while. For one thing, my face was so cut up I didn’t dare go out in public. But after a month it healed. I figured the whole thing would die down and I’d go back to it.”

His face wasn’t scrunched up anymore, but had got back to normal, like it had made him feel better to get the whole thing off his chest. But he looked kind of sad, too. “What else could I do? I spent my life spieling. It’s the only thing I’m good at. When I was young, I tried my hand at a lot of things—driving mules, clerking in a department store. I even worked in a bank for a bit. None of it went too good. Driving mules was hard work—too hard for me. Clerking bored me to death. As for banking, by the end of the first week, I knew I’d never last. All that money there just waiting to be took was more than I could stand. Gobs of it, stacks of tens and twenties and fifties, crisp and new,
and the prettiest sight I ever saw. I was so keyed up I had to keep swallering all the time. By the end of the second week I was twitching so bad I could hardly pick up a pen. I knew I had to quit, or I’d be in jail.” He shook his head. “No, boys, the only thing that ever worked for me was spieling. I didn’t have no choice. So I went back to it. But I was mighty careful to stay out of that county where Robinson lives. What I didn’t reckon on was him being a surveyor and traveling around so much. This makes the third time he’s come across my trail.”