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  Violent Saturday

  W. L. Heath

  Copyright © 1955 by William L. Heath

  This edition copyright © 2011 by Merrill Heath

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission of the publisher.

  Violent Saturday is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For Will and Granny and Uncle Jack,

  and also for my father.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  The three men arrived in Morgan Friday afternoon on the two-thirty train from Memphis. They were the only strangers to get off the train that day, and several people noticed them but didn’t pay them much attention. They might have been salesmen or businessmen of some sort. The only reason they were noticed at all was because there were three of them.

  One was a tall man with a round, kind face, wearing rimless glasses and a hearing aid in his left ear. He had the look of a schoolteacher about him, maybe even a Sunday-school teacher, and although he was perspiring, he didn’t seem to be bothered much by the heat. He had on a plain summer worsted suit that was wrinkled from the trip, and his hat – a white Panama with a black band – was set perfectly square on his head, as if he wasn’t used to wearing a hat and had let someone else put it on for him.

  The other two were about the same in height, a little taller than average, and they both wore blue gabardine suits and gray hats. The similarity ended there, however, because one was slender and neat looking, and the other was heavily built and careless about how his clothes fitted him. The heavy-set one seemed to be bothered a great deal by the heat. When they walked out on the platform to look for a cab, he had a handkerchief in his hand mopping the back of his neck, and when they didn’t find a cab, he set his bag down, took off his hat and wiped the sweat from around the inside of the band. He had an undershot jaw, like a shark.

  The three of them stood there for several minutes on the platform, squinting against the bright July sun; and then just as the train was pulling out, Frank Dupree, who owned one of the two taxicabs in Morgan, came driving around the corner and the neat-looking one hailed him.

  “Where’s the hotel?” he asked through the window of the cab.

  “Over there about two blocks,” Frank said. “On the corner of the square.”

  “Only a couple of blocks, eh?”

  “Let’s ride, let’s ride,” the one with the undershot jaw said impatiently. He was suffering from the heat.

  Frank took their bags and the men got in. The tall one who wore the hearing aid sat in front beside Frank and the other two rode in the back.

  “Jesus H. Christ it’s hot,” said the heavy one in the back seat. “I never seen anything like it in my life.”

  “Well, it’s been bad all right,” Frank said. “Dry is the trouble. We ain’t had a drop of rain here since the twentieth day of June. You ought to see what it’s doing to the crops.”

  “What do they grow around here, anyhow?” the heavy one asked.

  “Cotton mostly, and some corn.”

  “What about corn liquor? They grow a little of that too?”

  “Oh yes, they’s always been a little of that around.” Frank glanced up at the rear-view mirror. “Mind me asking what you gentlemen’s business is here?”

  “We’re with the TVA,” said the neat one, lighting a cigarette. “We’re down here to see about some property settlements.”

  Frank looked up at the mirror again, then turned the corner into the north side of the square. He expected the men to make some remark about the town – either that it looked like a nice little place to live or that it looked like a mighty dull little place to live – most newcomers did express one of those opinions when they first saw the courthouse square. But these men said nothing. They looked around taking it all in, from the Confederate monument to the watermelons piled up like cannon balls beside the sulphur well; but they made no comment whatever. At the second corner Frank was stopped by a red light and as they waited for it to change, a group of Negro girls wearing blue jeans and loafers crossed the street in front of the cab. The man sitting beside Frank turned and looked at him.

  “Lot of smokes in this town, I guess.”

  Frank was surprised by his voice. It was high and soft, not the kind of voice you expected from a man his size.

  “Yeah, they’s quite a few colored here,” Frank said. “They don’t give us no trouble however. You take Detroit, Michigan, places like that, they have more trouble with them than we do. No matter what you read, either.”

  When the light changed, Frank drove diagonally across the intersection and drew up in front of the hotel, an old two-story brick building with a deep porch and a deep, shady balcony above it with green wrought-iron balustrades. There were a dozen or more rocking chairs on the porch and on the balcony, and in one of them at the far end of the porch, an old man wearing yellow suspenders and high black shoes was asleep. He held a fly swatter in his hand.

  “Well, here you are, gentlemen,” Frank said. “That’ll be ten cents a head.”

  “Pay him, Preacher,” said the man with the undershot jaw.

  “I got no change.”

  “Don’t worry,” the neat-looking one said. “I’m going to pay the fare.”

  They got out and Frank lifted their bags from the trunk and set them on the sidewalk. A Negro man wearing a white jacket such as Pullman porters wear came out of the hotel, took the three bags and followed the men inside.

  Frank watched them go in and shook his head. “I doubt it, mister,” he said to himself. “I doubt if the TVA ever heard of you.”

  The three strangers registered at the hotel as Mr. Thomas, Mr. Blake and Mr. Brown; but when they were upstairs in their room they called each other by different names. The neat one was Harper, the heavy-set one was named Dill, and the tall one with the hearing aid was called simply “Preacher.” They took off their coats and hats, and the one named Dill stripped down to his underwear. He was soaked with sweat. He lit a cigar and stood by the window to get some air.

  “How do you like that cabbie?” he said. “We’re in his cab two seconds and already he’s got to know all about us. I told you, Harper. Didn’t I tell you? People in a place like this, they got too much nose. We’re making a big mistake. We’re going about the whole thing wrong.”

  “No we’re not,” Harper said. He was looking around for a place to put out his cigarette. “He wouldn’t have got curious if you hadn’t said that about corn liquor. You’re going to have to learn to keep your mouth shut, Dill.”

  “Yeah,” said Preacher.

  “I can keep my mouth shut,” Dill said. “Don’t worry about my mouth.”

  “What kinda crops you grow around here?” Preacher said, mimicking Dill. “He’s got to know about the crops. Naw, we ain’t worried about your mouth, Dill.”

  “All right,” Dill said. “What’s the matter with a question like that?” He looked at Harper. “What is this guy, funny or something? Who was it asked about the colored girls?”

  “Take it easy,” Harper said.

  Preacher loosened his shoelaces and stretched out on one of the beds. Dill looked out the window again. He could see a narrow dirt street that ran close behind the hotel, and also the back yards of half a dozen houses. To his right, looking obliquely down the dirt street, he saw a used-car lot that faced the east side of the hotel. Two men were standing at the gate of the lot, and one of them held a rolled newspaper in his right hand, slowly tapping the palm of his left hand with it as he talked. Heat shiv
ered on the polished tops of the cars, and from somewhere in the distance came the sound of hammering on metal – the sound of work going on at a filling station or a garage. Otherwise the town was quiet.

  “Well, I’ll say one thing,” Dill said. “We sure picked the hottest hole in the forty-eight. You feel that air coming in the window?”

  “Yeah,” Preacher said, and winked at Harper. “I feel plenty of hot air in this room.”

  Dill turned to look at him again and took the cigar out of his mouth. “I’m telling you, Preach, you better let it lie. I don’t have to take anything off you, and that’s for sure.”

  Preacher laughed softly.

  Harper went in to use the bathroom. “Just take it easy,” he said. “Both of you.”

  “No fooling, I don’t get this guy.” Dill said seriously. “First he begs his way into this, and then soon as we say all right he’s in, he tries to take over. Now he’s going to tell me when to open my mouth and when not to.”

  “Sometimes that’s what you need for somebody to tell you,” Harper said from the bathroom.

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t happen to see it that way. I don’t happen to see it that way at all.”

  “All right,” Harper said. “Just don’t let it upset you, will you? We got other things to think about. We got a schedule to set up.”

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” Dill went on. “He gives me the creeps with that voice of his. He gives me the plain goddam creeps.”

  “I told you, take it easy, Dill.”

  Preacher was lying on his back, gazing up at the ceiling and smiling. He adjusted his hearing aid. “What do we do this afternoon, Harp?”

  “We go down and take a good look. We check a few things that need checking – such as the car, for instance – and then we walk around and look some more.”

  “In other words,” Dill said, “we get seen by as many people as we can. Is that it? I think you’re out of your mind.”

  Harper flushed the commode and came out of the bathroom tightening his belt. “All right, look, Dill,” he said. “What difference is it going to make who sees us and who don’t? They don’t know us and they never will, chances are. All we got to concentrate on is getting back to Memphis. Once we make Memphis we’re all right.”

  “You think we’ll ever get to Memphis?”

  “If Slick holds up his end, I know we will.”

  “I don’t know about that Slick,” Dill said, “I got no confidence in that boy, never have.”

  “Slick’s all right. Anyhow it’s simple, what he has to do.”

  Dill shook his head. “Negroes scare too easy. Up in Council Bluffs we had us one, remember? He gummed the works but good, that boy did.”

  “Don’t worry about Slick,” Harper said. “Slick’s going to be all right.”

  “Yeah,” Preacher said. “Don’t worry about nothing, Dill. Just the mouth is all we want you to worry about.” He closed his eyes and gave a high soft giggle.

  Dill looked at Harper. “No crap, Harper, don’t he give you the creeps? Listen at that laugh, will you? I swear to God.”

  Preacher raised himself on one elbow and looked at Dill. He looked him over from head to foot – a hairy, pot-bellied man with a big nose and no chin at all.

  “You know what you ought to do, Dill?” he said. “You ought to try changing your underwear once in a while.”

  “Go to hell,” Dill said, turning back to the window. Over the tops of the trees he could see the semaphores and the peaked roof of the railway station they had just left. He sighed and tapped his cigar ashes into a corner of the window sill. “Well,” he said, “this is it, eh? The mighty metropolis of Morgan, Alabama.”

  Shelley Martin, who worked as an expediter for the Fairchild Chenille Company, was one of those who saw the three men when they arrived in Morgan that day. Shelley had gone to the Express office to ship a case of rug samples, and when he came out again and walked across the platform to his car, he saw them standing there in the sun, looking for a taxi. He noticed that they were strangers, all apparently traveling together, and he wondered more or less automatically who they were and what they were doing in Morgan. But that was as far as it got. He had other things on his mind. The train was still in the station, panting and sighing in the blistering heat when Shelley backed his car out and drove away toward the Fairchild plant. He didn’t see the men get into Frank Dupree’s cab. He didn’t even give them a second thought.

  Among other things, Shelley was thinking about going fishing. The next day was his day off, and if the weather held, as it was more than likely to do, he thought a man might catch some fish. The bass were feeding at the surface now, coming up for the willow flies along the bank at sundown. He went over it in his mind as he drove, thinking where he might go and what sort of lure would be best. Probably a white popping bug with feather streamers, he decided. A white popping bug was a hard lure to beat.

  He parked in front of the long two-story brick-and-glass building that was the Fairchild main plant, picked up a clipboard from the seat beside him and walked across the pavement toward a door marked “Office.” But before he reached the door it was opened by a well-dressed middle-aged man who paused to light a cigarette and then started down the flagstone walk toward the private parking area. When the man saw Shelley he stopped again and came back a few steps to meet him.

  “What did you find out on the Ward order, Shelley?”

  “Well, nothing yet,” Shelley said, “except that nineteen sets of 22-23’s have disappeared into thin air. I’ve just come from the station. Had to mail some samples for Daisy.”

  “Well, if the stuff doesn’t show up, just ship the rest of the order and wire them a new date on the shortage. It’ll have to be made, I guess. You can check with Boyd on it.”

  “That’s where I’m headed now, to see Boyd.”

  Mr. Fairchild glanced at his watch, then up at the sky and smiled. “Fish ought to bite on a day like this, Shelley.”

  “I was thinking the same thing myself. I may try them tomorrow. Want to come along?”

  “No, I wish I could, but I’ve got to go to Birmingham.” He looked at his watch again. “Matter of fact, I’m going to have to step on it, too, if I want to make that train.”

  “Well, have a good trip.”

  “Thanks. See you Monday.”

  Shelley pushed through the glass door into the office and immediately felt a release from the heat. Three girls were typing at desks along the left side of the room, and on the right a man wearing horn-rimmed glasses was talking on the phone. All three of the girls looked up as Shelley came in and one of them, a bosomy blonde in a green batiste blouse, raised her hand and wriggled her fingers at him. He walked across the room to the water cooler, had a drink and then opened the door to the inner office.

  The floor was carpeted in Mr. Fairchild’s private office, and there were leather chairs and ashtrays and big pictures of the Muscle Shoals dam along the back wall. Behind one of the two mahogany desks sat a good-looking young man wearing a seersucker suit and a blue Oxford cloth shirt with a button-down collar. He was Boyd Fairchild. On the green blotter in front of him there was an expensive camera and several small round pieces of colored glass.

  “What’s that?” Shelley said, pointing to the camera.

  “That’s what they call a Leica,” Boyd said. “It was made in Germany and I paid three hundred dollars for it. Everybody says I’m nuts. What do you say?”

  “I say you’re nuts too.”

  Boyd laughed and pushed the camera away. “What’s on your mind, Shelley?”

  “This Ward order.” Shelley settled himself in one of the leather chairs. “Are you right sure it was all stamped?”

  “Sure I’m sure.” He opened his desk, thumbed through a large loose-leaf book and pulled out a page. “See here? Four hundred 22-23’s – two hundred blue, a hundred chartreuse and a hundred yellow. That’s the whole order, rugs and lids, made up July the first.”

 
; Shelley pushed his hat back and shook his head. “We haven’t got it though. So help me, we’ve looked every-damn-where and there’s only eighty-one of the yellow.”

  “Well…”

  “Wait a minute,” Shelley said. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. “I just had an idea. Hello, Clyde? This is Shelley. Listen, how about checking back there with Buck and see if he’s got any overs in style 22-23, will you?”

  “What color, Shelley?” Clyde asked.

  “Any color. I want to know about all your overs in that style.”

  There was a long silence, and as they waited, Shelley took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one out and reached for the big silver lighter on Boyd’s desk.

  “Shelley?” Clyde said.

  “Yeah?”

  “We got nineteen sets of pink with no order against them.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Shelley said. “Thanks.” He hung up and looked at Boyd. “There’s your missing yellow. The stuff was dyed the wrong color.”

  “Dyed wrong? How could that happen?”

  “Somebody put the wrong number on the dye ticket, I guess. They wrote down a seven when it ought to have been a six.”

  “I still don’t see it,” Boyd said. “Eighty-one of them came out the right color. Why would nineteen get put off in another tub under a different number?”

  “Well, the dye runs are made up by weight,” Shelley said. “If eighty-one happened to fill out say a two-hundred-pound run of yellow, the other nineteen had to go in another run. Trouble is, they got put in the wrong tub.”

  “Oh,” Boyd said. “Well, I guess they’ll have to be made over. I’ll write a new stamping order.” He picked up a pad, then looked at Shelley again. “Who do you suppose made a mistake like that?”

  “I don’t know, but I can find out. It’s bound to of happened in the laundry.”

  “What do you think I ought to do?”