Читать книгу Slow Joe - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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He came over and gave me a hand and a smile. He had the sort of a smile that soaks right through to the heart, in a jiffy.

“Mr. Lew Ellis, if I ain’t mistaken,” says I.

“Mr. Joseph Hyde, I believe,” says he.

“That same,” says I. “Will you sit down, sir? No, take the armchair. I’ll ring for scotch and—”

“Thanks,” says he. “Brandy, if you please. How are you, you old wall-eyed son of a gun?”

“I’m pretty good,” says I. “How are you, Babyface?”

“You don’t forget nothing, do you, Runt?” says he, darkening a good bit.

“I was always too big for you,” says I.

“You picked on me when I was a kid,” says he, sticking out his jaw.

“That’s because you can’t grow up,” I told him.

All at once he grinned at me, and the blue-gray of steel went out of his eyes.

“Old Slow Joe Cactus,” said he. “I’d kind of forgot about your thorns. How’s things, boy?”

“Just turning green,” said I. “We look for ten sacks to the acre, out our way. What does you pa say about your section of the country?”

“Bumper crops,” said he.

“Grain?” said I.

“Yeah, yellow grain,” said he. “How are you raising your crops, boy?”

I made a puffing, popping noise with my mouth.

“Soup?” said he.

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Oh, around the corner,” I told him.

“Going to freeze up on me, Joe?” said he.

“Why should I tell you where I’ve been cracking safes, handsome?” I asked him. “I’ll tell you, though, after I get something between my backbone and my belt. What’s your yellow grain?”

“Guess,” says he.

“Chinese,” says I.

“Yeah.”

“Are they running free?”

“We’ve been sliding a lot of them across the border,” says he. “But things are tightening up on me. Werner is around a good deal. That gopher is underground getting information all the time. That’s why I sent for you. I want you in the job, son.”

“You don’t get me,” I answered him.

“Where not and why not?” said Lew Ellis.

“Werner is where not, and the Chinese are why not.”

“Are you scared of Werner?” said he.

“Yeah, and so are you,” said I.

He stopped. He didn’t want to boast, of course. But as a matter of fact that yellow-headed kid was afraid of nothing in the world.

“Well,” he said, “I think you could let Werner ride. He’s smart and he’s deep, but he’s not as smart and as deep as all of that. We’re working a big plant, son, and if he closes one door, we’ve got plenty of others.”

“That’s all right,” says I.

“While it lasts, you make about a thousand a week for your split,” says Lew.

I whistled.

“It must be a cinch of a job,” says I, with a sneer, “if you come across that big.”

“It’s not a cinch,” he admitted, “but it’s pretty hot while it lasts. Do you want to cut in?”

“No.”

“What’s Werner done? Tied a tin can to you, sometime?”

“I’m scared of Werner,” I admitted again, “but that’s not all. There’s the other part of it. Running in Mexicans is all right. They got almost as much right to the Southwest as we have, I suppose. But the Chinese are different. I don’t want to run in no Chinese.”

“Why not?” he insisted.

“Because,” I said, “a Chinese and his five kids can live on five cents worth of rice a day, and they get fat on a rabbit once a week. They can undersell your white men every time.”

“They crowding into your line of work?” asked Lew Ellis, making himself a smoke, as he gave up his argument.

“Yeah. They’ll be puffing a few safes, too, before long,” I suggested. “In the meantime, when do we chow?”

“Right now you chow,” says he.

And in comes Mike Doloroso with two plates. One was tortillas, a foot deep of them, each as thin as a cigarette paper. The other plate wasn’t a plate at all. It was a platter. And it was piled with red frijoles, steaming. Those beans were so full of peppers that just the steam from them set me to sneezing.

“Mike,” I told him, “sometimes I love you just like a father. Where’s that music?”

“Alicia,” says he, licking from his thumb some of the red sauce that had spilled on it, and looking at me pretty thoughtfully.

Well, she came in, with all the sass out of her, and her eyes on the ground, and a new dress on, and her hair twisted into a knot at the back of her head, and little bright slippers on her feet, and a big guitar in her hands.

“Alicia,” says I, “you’re a honey. Take that stool there in the corner. Imagine that you’re the whole damned orchestra, and let’s have a song out of you.”

She gives me a curtsy. Mike Doloroso stood in the doorway. First he narrowed his eyes at the girl, then at me. But he wound up considering yellow-headed Lew Ellis. Ellis hadn’t said a word. He was just looking, but he was one of those fellows who can look their way out of jail.

I was wrapping up beans in tortillas, not tidy, but fast. Don’t bother me with forks when I see a chance to feed myself frijoles. Leave me to a couple of stacks of good, cold, thin tortillas, and I’m the boy to show you how the morning paper wraps its mail orders!

Alicia, while she was tuning up, managed one look over at the table, and she was so interested in watching me eat that she forgot what she was doing. She just sat and opened her mouth and her eyes. She was only a baby, that kid. But she was a sweet thing to look at.

“You sing a good song, beautiful,” I called to her, “or the devil will catch you while you ain’t looking.”

I hooked a thumb at Lew to show her where the devil was sitting.

“You save your mouth for beans, will you?” says Lew to me, very cold and deliberate. Then he adds: “Where did you find this around San Whiskey?”

“She’s the red-headed streak of trouble that belongs to Mike,” says I.

“The devil she is,” says Lew.

“The devil she ain’t,” says I. “And she may be the devil, too, for all I know. Mexicans don’t have to go to Sunday school to learn about things.”

She began to sing and play. Her playing was all right. It had the rip and the swing to it. Her voice was small, but pretty good, also. Only, it was all full of wobbles. This was her first public appearance, anybody could see.

So I gave up my platter and plate, for a minute, and put a bend in my neck, and helped her out on the chorus.

When I got through, Lew says: “You damn Caruso!”

He was ready to slam me with that whole platter of beans, what was left of it. But the girl was laughing. I don’t mind being laughed at, mostly, if it puts people at their ease. And she was eased, all right.

Just then, there came in about ten pounds of roast kid. I sliced off a chunk of it and swallowed.

“Old son,” says I, “this is the only kid that ever was raised on milk and honey. Go get me some of that red wine of yours. I love you, Mike. I’m gunna make you my heir!”

He gave me a satisfied grin and went hurrying out. There was that good thing about old Mike Doloroso. The money he made out of his guests never fed him as fat as the pleasure that he saw them getting. God bless a man like that, I say!

The girl began to sing again. And she let her voice run right out into the song, and she tilted up her head, and she opened her mouth, and by thunder, she was the only human I ever saw that looked as good stretching for a high note as she did making a silence. And, all the while that she sang, she twinkled through her eyelashes, and the twinkling was for me! I pretty near fell out of my chair.

“Look, Lew,” says I. “You don’t know it, but you ain’t in the room.”

“I can’t talk the tortilla-bean language as good as you can,” says Lew, pretty disgusted. And he smoothed down his hair. Well, he was a handsome kid, all right, and I didn’t blame him for being sore.

“Good old Lew,” says I. “You’re a bright lad, but you’re only a lad.”

“What aged you, son?” says he. “A sea-trip, or being tied up in a tree, or was it the wrinkle that the greaser cut into your face, or the frown that the mule planted between your eyes, or the cock of your chin where the flatty socked you with his club?”

“Age,” says I, “is a thing that you take on in different ways. Me, I’m soft and simple, and little things like knives, and kicking mules, they make a lot of difference to me. But long-whiskered hell-fire is about all that’ll make you seem to need a shave, youngster.”

He took this pretty well. He even grinned at me.

“You still got your lingo with you, boy,” says he. “Now, talking about that Chinese business—”

“Try my other ear, kid,” says I.

“Aw, listen, Joe,” says he. “Outside of the money, I need you.”

“Quit it,” says I.

“I need you, honest,” says he.

“To build a happy home?” says I.

“Just,” says he.

I forgot the roast kid, for a moment. I just sawed my knife absently on a bone and stared at Lew Ellis.

“Try again,” says I. “You mean you mean it?”

“Yeah. That’s what I mean. I’ve found her. I want her. She wants me. I need another five grand, is about all. Then we stop!”

“You mean, you mean marriage?” says I.

“How do you think I was raised?” says he. “Didn’t we both go to the same Sunday school? Listen,” he goes on, leaning across the table a little. “I’m crazy about her. She’s crazy about me. My God, I’d wade through fire for her!”

“Is that why you were watching Alicia so hard?” says I.

“Oh, go on, boy,” says he. “You know that old habit is the last dog to stop barking.”

“It’s all right,” says I. “Only I was just curious. This girl of yours, what would she think about the business of running in Chinese? Would she want to found a happy home on that sort of tripe?”

“She don’t need to know a thing about it,” says Lew Ellis. “Now, Joe, I’m putting it to you straight. I’ve got a big bundle of work on my hands. I’ve got a crowd of the Chinamen that’ll be velvet. They need a little handling, though, to steer them all by Werner, damn him. That’s why I asked you to come down here.”

“Wait a minute,” says I, “and—”

“Don’t you tell me that you’re afraid of Werner,” he argues. “I know that you’re afraid of everything, according to you. But the only round the other guy ever wins is the first.”

“Shut up, Lew,” said I. “You read me by your own light. You couldn’t see my print, otherwise. But I’ll tell you this. If you really want me to cut in and help you—”

Just then a door closed, somewhere towards the front of the house, with a sort of muffled sigh.

The girl’s singing and guitar stopped for a quarter of a second. She looked across at me with eyes like a cat’s in the dark.

“Joe, Joe!” she whispered. “They’re coming. Guard yourself!”

And right away, she leans back and pitches herself into her song as though there was nothing at all in the air.