The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown (the reader ebook TXT) đ
- Author: Fredric Brown
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âAverage speed is all,â I said. I thought of something. âMaybe it was because he had arthritis in his hands and arms for a while, quite a few years ago. He couldnât work at all for a few months, and maybe that slowed him down from then on. That was while we were in Gary, just before we moved from Gary to Chicago.â
Uncle Ambrose said, âHe never told me that.â
I asked, âDid you and he ever get together again, outside of visits, I mean?â
âOh, sure. I was in dutch with the shamus outfit already, so I quit and Wally and I traveled together with a medicine show. He did juggling and stuff, in blackface.â
âCan you juggle?â
âMe, no? Wally was the one who could use his hands. Me, I make with the mouth. I did spieling, and put on a vent act.â
I must have looked pretty blank.
He grinned at me. âVentriloquism, to you mooches. Come on, kid, we really got to move on. If you want the story of my life and Wallyâs, you canât have it in one sitting when we got a spot of work ahead. Itâs almost nine now.â
I walked to Kaufmanâs in a sort of a daze.
Iâd never known that Pop had been anything but a linotype operator. I just couldnât think of him as a wild kid, bumming across Mexico, having a duel, wanting to be a bull-fighter in Spain, juggling with a medicine show, being part of a vaudeville troupe.
All that, I thought, and he died in an alley, drunk.
Kaufmanâs place was busier. There were half a dozen men and two women at the bar, couples in two of the booths, and a pinochle game at a back table. The juke box was blaring.
Our table, though, was empty. We sat just as we had before. Kaufman was busy at the bar; he didnât see us come in or sit down.
He saw us, and met our eyes watching him, a minute or so later. He was pouring whiskey into a jigger glass in front of a man at the bar and the whiskey came up over the rim of the glass and made a little puddle on the varnished wood.
He rang up the sale, then came around the end of the bar and stood in front of us, hands on his hips and looking belligerent and undecided at the same time.
He pitched his voice low. âWhat do you guys want?â
Uncle Ambrose took it deadpan. There wasnât a trace of humor in his face or in his voice. He said, âTwo white sodas.â
Kaufman took his hands off his hips and wiped them slowly on his apron. His eyes went from my uncleâs face to mine and I gave him the flat, level stare.
He didnât meet it long. He looked back at Uncle Ambrose.
He pulled out a chair and sat down. He said, âI donât want any trouble here.â
Uncle Ambrose said, âWe donât like trouble either. We donât want any. We wouldnât make any.â
âYou want something. Wouldnât it be a lot easier if you levelled?â
âAbout what?â my uncle asked.
The tavern-ownerâs lips went together tight for a second. He looked like he was going to get mad.
Then his voice was calmer than before. He said, âIâve placed you. You were at the inquest on that guy got slugged in an alley.â
My uncle asked, âWhat guy?â
Kaufman took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He said, âYeah, Iâm sure. You were in the back row, trying to keep outa sight. You a friend of this Hunter guy, or what?â
âWhat Hunter guy?â
Kaufman looked like he was going to get mad again, then he pulled in his horns.
He said, âLemme save you trouble. Whatever you want, it ainât here. I ainât got it. I levelled with the coppers and at the inquest. I donât know a damn thing about it I didnât tell âem. And you heard it; you was there.â
My uncle didnât say anything. He took out a pack of cigarettes and handed it toward me. I took one, and he held it out to Kaufman. Kaufman ignored it.
Kaufman said, âItâs all on the level. So what you coming in here for? What the hell do you want?â
Uncle Ambrose didnât bat an eyelash. He said, âWhite soda. Two glasses.â
Kaufman stood up so suddenly that the chair heâd been sitting on went over backwards. Redness was spreading upward from his neck. He turned around and picked up the chair, pushing it back under the table carefully, as though its exact position there was a matter of importance.
He went back of the bar without saying another word.
A few minutes later the bartender, the tall skinny guy, brought our white sodas. He grinned cheerfully and my uncle grinned back. The little wrinkles of hell-with-it laughter were back around the corners of his eyes and he didnât look deadly at all.
Kaufman wasnât looking our way; he was busy at the other end of the bar.
âNo Mickey?â Uncle Ambrose asked him.
âNo Mickey,â said the bartender. âYou couldnât make a Mickey with plain white soda so it wouldnât taste.â
âThatâs what I figured,â said my uncle. He handed the slim guy a dollar bill. âKeep the change, Slim, for the babyâs bank.â
âSure, thanks. Say, the kid was nuts about you, Am. Wants to know when youâll be out again.â
âSoon, Slim. Better run along before his nibs sees us talking.â
The bartender went back to the pinochle table to take their order.
I asked, âWhen did all this happen?â
âLast night. His evening off. Got his name and address from Bassett and went calling. Heâs on our side now.â
âAnother hundred bucks?â
My uncle shook his head. âThere are guys you can buy, kid, and guys you canât. I managed to put a little silver in his kidâs bank.â
âThen that wasnât a gag about the kidâs bankâI mean, about keeping the change out of the buck?â
âHell, no. Thatâs exactly where that change will go.â
âIâll be damned,â I said.
Kaufman was coming to the near end of the bar again, and I shut up and went back to watching him. He didnât look our way again.
We stayed there until a little after midnight. Then we got up and walked out.
When I got home, Mom and Gardie were asleep. There was a note from Mom asking me to wake her whenever I got up, because she wanted to start looking for a job.
I was tired, but I had trouble getting to sleep. I kept thinking about what Iâd learned about Pop.
When he was my age, I thought, heâd owned and run a newspaper. Heâd had a duel and shot a man. Heâd had an affair with a married woman. Heâd traveled across most of Mexico afoot and spoke Spanish like a native. Heâd crossed the Atlantic and lived in Spain. Heâd dealt blackjack in a border town.
When he was my age, I thought, heâd been in vaudeville and was traveling with a medicine show.
I couldnât picture Pop in blackface. I couldnât picture any of the rest of it, either. I wondered what heâd looked like then.
But when I slept, finally, I didnât dream about Pop. I dreamed about me, and I was a matador in a bull ring in Spain. I had black grease paint on my face and a rapier in my hand. And, mixed up like dreams are mixed up, the bull was a real bullâ a huge black bullâand yet he wasnât. Somehow, he was a tavern owner named Kaufman.
He came running at me and his horns were a yard long, with points as sharp as needles, and they gleamed in the sunlight, and I was scared, scared as hellâŠ.
*
We went back to the tavern at three oâclock the next afternoon. Uncle Ambrose had learned that was about the time Kaufman came on. Slim went off duty then, and came back later in the evening when things got busy enough to need two men.
Kaufman was just tying on his apron, and Slim must have just left, when we walked into the place.
He just glanced at us casually, as though he expected us.
There wasnât anyone else there; just Kaufman and us. But there was something in the atmosphere, something besides the smell of beer and whiskey.
Thereâs going to be trouble, I thought.
I was scared, as scared as Iâd been in my dream last night. I thought of it then, the dream.
We sat down at the table. The same table.
Kaufman came back. He said, âI donât want trouble. Why donât you guys move along?â
My uncle said, âWe like it here.â
âOkay,â Kaufman said. He went back of the bar and came back with two glasses of white soda. My uncle gave him twenty cents.
He went back of the bar and started polishing glasses. He didnât look toward us. Once he dropped a glass and broke it.
A little later the door opened and two men came in.
They were big guys and they looked tough. One of them was an ex-pug; you could tell by his ears. He had a bullet head and shoulders like an ape. He had little pig eyes.
The other one looked small, standing by the big guy. But only by contrast; a second look told you he was five-eleven or so, and would go one-eighty stripped. He had a face like a horse.
They stopped just inside the door and looked the place over. Their eyes took in all the booths and saw they were empty. They looked everywhere except at us. My uncle moved in his chair, shifted his feet.
Then they went over to the bar.
Kaufman put two shot glasses in front of them and filled the glasses without their having said a word.
That was the give-away, if thereâd be any need for one.
There was a growing cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if my legs would wobble if I stood up.
I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Uncle Ambrose. His face was perfectly still, his lips werenât moving, but he was talking, just loud enough that I could hear him. It surprised me for a moment that his mouth didnât move, until I remembered the vent business.
He said, âKid, I can handle this better alone. You go back to the can. Thereâs a window; get out of it and scram. Right now; soon as theyâve had a drink, theyâll make a play.â
He was lying, I knew. Unless he was heeled there wasnât a way on earth he could handle this. And he wasnât heeled, any more than I was.
I thought, Iâm the one thatâs supposed to be heeled. Iâm the gun punk. Iâve got a new suit that looks like a hundred bucks and a new snap-brim hat. And Iâve got an imaginary thirty-eight automatic, with the safety catch off. Itâs in a shoulder holster on my left shoulder.
I stood up, and my legs werenât rubber.
I walked around back of Uncle Ambroseâs chair and started for the door of the menâs room, but I didnât go there. I stopped short right at the end of the bar, and stood there where I could watch up the bar, front and back.
Iâd brought up my right hand and let it rest with the fingers just inside my coat, touching the butt of the thirty-eight automatic that wasnât there.
I didnât say anything; I just looked at them. I didnât tell them to keep their
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