James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

So they come back. And they was all set to get away with it, until they drove up to the piece of road they had built that day, where Will and Heinie had been rolling up to twelve o’clock. But then they seen something they had forgot about. Them two rollers was parked across the road with red lights hung on their water boxes to keep people from driving over the new piece of road that had just been rolled down. And it was a detour they could take, but Luke wouldn’t hear of no detour.

“What?” he says. “Us turn back and drive a half mile further just for a pair of measly steam rollers? Nothing doing.”

So he jumps out, grabs off the red lanterns, and commences waving them around.

“Engineer,” he hollers, “do your stuff, I’m too drunk. ’Stead of us getting out of the way of these here rollers, we’ll make them get out of our way.”

So Herb, he climbs up on the little Buffalo roller what was on the left, and he can’t see so good, and he’s pretty drunk too, but he’s seen Will and Heinie do it, and he grabs a couple of bars, and pulls them, and sure enough the little Buffalo roller begins to move and slides right back in the ditch.

“Whoa!” says Luke, waving his lights out there in the middle of the road. “Engineer, you done great. Casey Jones couldn’t of done it no better. Now get on that other one.”

So Herb climbs up on the big five-ton Acme what was on the right-hand side of the road.

Now a Acme, it don’t work just the same as a Buffalo. The throttle and reverse bar is placed a little different, so when Herb grabbed aholt of them and pulled, he didn’t have no such good luck as he had the first time. ’Stead of going backward, that big five-tonner went frontward. It give a jump and run across the road and whanged right up alongside that other one. And Herb, he got throwed plumb out of the cab on the road. And it wasn’t nothing but steam coming out of both them rollers on account the bump had strained the boilers and they begun to leak. And it was dark all of a sudden. And Herb, soon as he remembered where he was at couldn’t see nothing of Luke. Because that roller, when it jumped frontward, had knocked Luke down and put out his red lights. And it had rolled him flatter than a German pancake.

So the horse give a jump when them two rollers come together, and helloed past them up the road, and turned in at the home gate. So the old man got up and went out, and then he begun ringing all the rings on the party line telephone, and it wasn’t long before him and a bunch found the rollers, and Herb, and what was left of Luke. And then he begun to rave.

“Oh, God,” he says, right out in front of where Herb was crying on the side of the road, “what have I done that you do this to me? Ain’t I always done right? Why did you send me a pair of worthless rascals like this when I asked you for sons?”

So Will Howe, he stood it as long as he could, and then he says: “Well, if God made you, it ain’t much else that I would put past him.”

“Come on, kid,” he says to Herb; “you better stay with me tonight.”

So Herb, he stayed with Will; and the coroner held him, but the state’s attorney turned him loose. And after that, he done some work on the road, but he didn’t never get no razz.

Down in the country they used to have every summer what they called a tournament, and it wasn’t much to it, only a bunch of farmers calling theirself knights, and riding work plugs down a course and spearing iron rings off hooks with a pole they said was a lance. But they generally always had a pretty good time, because the knight that spread the most rings could crown the Queen of Love and Beauty at the dance they had in the Grand Opera House that night, and them that speared next to the most rings could crown the maids of her court, so it was a little excitement anyway, and what with plenty of fried chicken and deviled eggs at the supper they had in between, everybody made out pretty good.

So sure enough, right after wheat-thrashing time one July, they put it in the county paper the tournament would be held the next Saturday, at a farm name of Three Hills what was owned by Mr. Glynn, and when Saturday come it was a big crowd out to Three Hills, and all the women giggling about who was going to get crowned Queen of Love and Beauty.

But what shows up on top of a runty-looking horse with a pole in his hand but a guy name of Bert Lucas. And the committee didn’t hardly know what to do. Because Bert, he wasn’t really no guy to be riding in a tournament. When he was young, he had been kind of wild, and one night he swiped a car and went on a joy ride, and then didn’t have no more sense than to wreck it. So the Grand Jury indicted him and he done the only thing he could do, and that was to skip. And when he come back about five years later to work the little farm what his old man had, nobody didn’t have much to do with him. The indictment, nobody done nothing about it, because his old man had scraped together enough money to pay for the car before he died, so they just kind of let it drop. But there it was just the same, and a guy under indictment don’t hardly look like no knight.

Still, here he come cantering in, and the committee was all crossed up and couldn’t think of nothing to say, so it wasn’t nothing to do but let him ride. He said he was the Knight of Hawthorne Bay and they passed him in.

Well, the first tilt wasn’t hardly over before the whole place knowed that was a big mistake. Because where Bert had went when he skipped was out West and if it was anything he couldn’t do in a saddle that runty-looking horse could pretty near do it for him, because it wasn’t nothing more or less than a cow pony, what he had rode all the way back East from Texas. He could spear them rings so easy he made all them other guys look ridiculous, and he wouldn’t come loafing up on a slow singlefoot either, but on a dead run. And he would kind of holler when he got in front of the people, like them circus cowboys does, and that was kind of a new one in that neck of the woods, and nobody knowed what to make of it.

They couldn’t get away from his score, though, so when the judges read out that he was the winner, they tried to give him a little bit of a hand. So that went to Bert’s head just like it was liquor. I guess it had been pretty lonely out there on the farm without nobody to come and see him, and when Mr. and Mrs. Glynn set the supper out under the trees, he was laughing and cutting up like he was drunk. So all hands thought they might as well kid him along, and pretty soon somebody asks him who is he going to crown Queen of Love and Beauty.

“I ain’t made up my mind yet. I don’t know which one I’m going to pick. It’s so many good-looking women here I’m afraid I’m going to have to shake up all the names in a hat and pull one out.”

So with that, Mr. Glynn went behind the house and got a bunch around him.

“Listen, men,” he says. “Do you know what? That simple-looking nut thinks that winning the tournament gives him the right to pick any woman here and name her Queen.”

“What!” says two or three.

“He certainly does,” says Mr. Glynn. “And I don’t know what to do. Suppose he picks my wife? I can’t have her leading the grand march with that jailbird.”

“Say,” they says. “We got to think about that.”

So Mr. Glynn was grand marshal of the tournament, and of course he had to make the speech handing the crown over to Bert after they had all drove in to the Grand Opera House for the dance. And so he made the speech. And he made it long and flowery, because he was pretty good on that stuff on account he liked to make Fourth of July speeches. And Bert, he just ate it up. Because it look like to him that everything had been forgot and nobody didn’t hardly remember if it was him that was indicted or maybe somebody else. So he kept his eyes glued to Mr. Glynn and kept smiling to hisself. And while Mr. Glynn was talking, Mrs. Glynn and a couple other women kind of tiptoed through the little door that led back of the stage. And two or three more followed them, and then some more, and in a minute they was all slipping through the door like ghosts.