They Don't Dance Much: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

busted, and some wobbly old chairs, and some leaky pots and pans. I left a grandfather’s clock there too, but it wouldn’t run.
    In a way I hated to leave and give up the place. I had been hard up there and lonesome too, but it was a place I could always go to. When I was a kid and out bumming around I always knew I could go back there if I got too hungry and too discouraged. I was going to Smut Milligan’s place, but that wasn’t any home of mine. Unless he made a profit out of me I knew Milligan wouldn’t waste any time about booting me out of there. He was a man that valued a dollar.
    I slept on a mattress on the floor in the back of Smut’s place that first Sunday night. Smut had a cot back there, but he filled that up. It was a pretty crowded place that we lived in, but we got by. The front of the place was a big room, about fifty feet by twenty feet. It was full of merchandise, counters, Coca-Cola crates, and things like that. There was a stove in the front too, and an icebox to keep the drinks in. There were two slot machines, one on each side of the front door. Behind the front part there was another room, the same width as the front part, but shorter. There was more merchandise in that, for a sort of reserve. Smut had a good trade with the niggers and farmers that lived down there on the river. Back of this second room, on the right, there was an annex that was divided into two rooms. Smut had built the first room to sleep in, and later on had another room added for a kitchen. They played poker in the kitchen a lot in the winter, Smut told me. Most of the liquor was hidden in the second room. The kitchen looked like a better place, but it was a lot of trouble to walk that far to get it.
    I was green as a stalk of corn, and the first two days Smut had to show me my way around. He showed me where the different things were, how much they cost, and how to work the cash register. He showed me where he kept an extra supply of liquor, in case we happened to run out sometime when he wasn’t there. It was in the little cellar under the car shed.
    John Morrison, Inc., a contractor from Blytheville, was the company that Smut had contracted with to build the place. They started work on Wednesday of that week. Smut certainly had things planned out. He told me that he borrowed a couple of thousand dollars by giving a mortgage on the place and half a dozen notes. He had some money of his own to start with. He had been to Charlotte and had an architect to draw up a blueprint of the roadhouse. It cost him plenty of money, but he said he was determined to do it right while he was about it. ‘Things done by halves are never done well,’ Smut said.
    The carpenters and the masons started putting up a new building right beside the filling station. While they were working we kept on doing business at the old stand. When they finished the new building Smut aimed to have them remodel the filling station into a dance hall and connect it with the new part.
    Smut stayed in a sweat then, hurrying up the carpenters and then cussing them out and telling them they’d better do a good job. He went to Corinth a lot, and sometimes to Charlotte. When he was gone I ran the joint. In the week there wasn’t much to it. After I cleaned up the kitchen and swept out the store I would spend the rest of the morning reading the paper, or talking to the men working on the building. Sometimes somebody would come in for gas, or a Coca-Cola, or a package of cigarettes. In the afternoon I usually took a nap, but I always woke up in time to listen to the baseball game. It was always the Washington Senators and as a rule they got the tar whipped out of them, but sometimes they’d slip in and win a game. About five o’clock business would pick up a little. Several boys from the river farms worked in the cotton mill in Corinth, and they’d stop by in the evening on their way home from work. Usually they didn’t trade much. Just drank Coca-Colas and played