One Good Deed

Chapter 23

“Hey, fella?”

Archer was crossing the lobby of the Derby when the front desk clerk called out to him. It was the same one who had initially checked him in.

“Yeah?” said Archer, coming over to him.

“You got to pay up if you want to stay here.”

This was not what Archer had been expecting. “What’s that again, mister?”

The clerk swung the register around. “You only paid for three nights. You been here way longer than that. Woulda caught it before ’cept poor Mr. Pittleman got murdered.”

“How much we talking then?” asked Archer, and the clerk told him.

Archer reached into his pocket and counted out his remaining cash, including the two half-dollars he’d gotten for loading the crates.

The clerk snatched all this up and said, “That don’t even cover what you owe. And what about going forward?”

“That’s all the money I got, brother.”

“Then I guess you’re gonna have to find other accommodations.”

“But if I don’t have any more money, how am I gonna do that?”

“Not my problem, fella. Now, go clean out your things. And, see here, I’ll be watching. You got ten minutes. Gotta get that room ready for a paying guest.”

Archer went to his room, collected his few possessions, and marched out of the lobby while the clerk watched him go every step of the way. Archer looked up and down the street and decided he had only one option. He headed over to the Courts building and waited on the steps with his hat tilted over his eyes.

“Mr. Archer?”

Archer pushed his hat back and gazed up at Ernestine Crabtree.

She had on a plain blue A-line skirt with a pleated front, a long-sleeved white blouse, puffy in the arms and tight at the wrists with a wide, open V-neck collar, and low pumps with chunky heels. Her dark hat, made of felt, was narrow brimmed with a band around it and a little bow of ivy green in front. The hair was not done in the usual tight bun. It was actually down around her shoulders, in the same style that he had complimented her on before.

“What are you doing here?”

“Coming to see you about a job.”

“You mean you need work to pay back the forty dollars?”

“I mean I got kicked out of the Derby and I’m flat broke, so yeah.”

“Come on up.”

They took the interior stairs up to her floor and he followed the woman down the hall.

Another man passed them going the other way, leered at Crabtree, and then wolf-whistled. “Woo-wee, baby. You got something I need.” Smiling, he eyed Archer. “You’re a lucky man getting that skirt all for yourself, pal.”

Archer had done this very same thing more times than he could count. But that was before he had read about Ernestine Crabtree’s terrible past. And when he glanced at her and saw first embarrassment and then resignation, he wasn’t sure which one made him angrier.

“Hey, buddy,” said Archer sharply. He dropped the things he was carrying, grabbed the man by the lapels, and slammed him up against the wall, knocking his porkpie hat off in the process.

“What’s your problem, fella?” barked the man.

“Show the lady some respect.”

“Respect? You kidding, pal? Dames love when guys do that.”

“Not this dame. Now apologize to her, right now, before I smash your damn nose in.”

Crabtree called out, “Mr. Archer, it’s all right. Let it be. Please.”

“But—”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble on my account. Please.”

Archer slowly and reluctantly let the man go. The shaky fellow grabbed his fallen hat and rushed off down the hall.

Archer picked up his things and followed Crabtree down the hall but looked back twice at the man.

“I’m sorry about that idiot,” he said.

“Yes, well... Thank you, Mr. Archer, that was very... chivalrous.”

She opened the door and let him into the office.

“Have you had anything to eat?” she said. “Or some coffee?”

“No, ma’am, but I’m fine.”

“You sure? You look hungry.” She opened her purse and held out two dollars, but Archer put his hand up.

“I’m not taking money from you, ma’am, though I thank you. It’d be against the rules, no doubt, and I’m not gonna put you at risk for losing your job. Back there you said you didn’t want me to get into trouble. Well, I feel the same way about you. Just let me get to work and earn some on my own.”

She closed her purse and looked up at him with her wide, depthless eyes and said, “Well, I know what you said earlier, but the only thing I have where you can start work immediately is the slaughterhouse.”

“I’m in no position to be choosy, so if you could call ’em and tell ’em I’d like the job, that would be good. And how do I get out there?”

She looked at the clock on the wall. “A truck takes the men out there every day. Leaves at eight-thirty sharp right down the street from here. You’ll see them gathering.”

“Sounds fine.”

She looked at his suit. “However, I would not wear your new clothes to do that sort of work.”

He looked down. “You’re probably right about that. I got my old ones in this bag.”

“There’s a bathroom down the hall on the right.”

He changed his clothes in the bathroom and put the new ones into his bag.

When he came back to the office, Ernestine was just hanging up the phone. “It’s all settled.” She eyed his new suit in the bag. “Why don’t you leave those here? I can hang them up. You can pick them up when the truck brings you back.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Like you said, my job is to help people like you. Just come and see me after. I’ll wait for you.”

“Thank you, Miss Crabtree.”

“Well, good luck to you, Mr. Archer. At that place, you, um, you may need it.”

Archer saw the men collecting at the corner and headed over to join them. And, as he had expected, there was old Dickie Dill smack in the middle of them. He and a few other men were engaged in a game of “back alley” craps right there against the front steps of a building. Archer watched this for about a minute while the men were focused on the game and took no note of his presence.

Dill’s final roll of the dice brought a curse and an evil look from the man. Archer saw a dollar bill pass between the ex-con and another fellow.

“Hellfire, Archer, thought I might see your butt out here before long,” exclaimed Dill when he spied Archer.

“Hey, Dickie,” he said with little enthusiasm.

“This here’s Archer, boys,” announced Dill to the group of rough-looking gents. Most were smaller than Archer, but a couple were giants who looked like they were put out by having to share the same air with him.

“He’s one of us,” said Dill.

“What were you in the joint for?” growled one of the giants. His clothes were filthy and so was his thick beard. One eye lurched inward too far, giving him an unsettling expression.

Archer looked up at him. “Something stupid. What were you in for?”

“Killing a man who needed it. And he wasn’t the first one who bought the farm with me. Just the only one they caught me on,” he added proudly.

“How long did you do?”

“Long enough. This was in the Big House, ’cause the son of a bitch was a snitch for Hoover and the G-men. Woulda done a lot longer ’cept the guards got too scared ’a me.” The man did not appear to be joking.

Dill pulled Archer aside. “Buddy ’a mine got put back in Carderock.”

“Who might that be?”

“Dan Bullock. You saw him at the Checkered Past. He told me you gave him some good advice. Only the man got all cockeyed and didn’t take it.”

“Hey, I’m always looking out for people like us.”

Dill grinned. “You always were okay in my book, Archer.”

But there was something in the little man’s features that made the hair on Archer’s neck stand up and salute. A man like Dickie Dill did not understand nuance. And when he put his arm around Archer’s shoulders, the steely fingers bit in a little too deep, relaying critical information his mouth had not.

An old Ford truck with a sputtering radiator pulled up. Its open rear bed had wood slats on the sides and rough wooden bench seats. The driver came out and dropped the rear gate, and the men climbed on one by one. Dill sat next to Archer as the truck pulled away.

“What’cha gonna be doing at the slaughterhouse?” asked Dill.

“Don’t know yet. Guess whatever needs doing.”

“If it’s killing the hogs, I’ll show you how.”

“Thanks. Hey, saw you rolling the dice back there.”

Dill’s friendly expression faded. “So what? You ain’t thinkin’ ’bout snitchin’ on me to Miss Crabtree?”

Dill plucked something from his pocket. Archer saw it was the man’s switchblade.

This was the Dickie Dill he remembered and loathed.

Archer leaned over and whispered, “All’s I’m saying is you better watch yourself around games of chance. You remember inside Carderock?”

“Hell, that game was fixed by that bastard Riley.”

“Yeah, it was. And just like with Riley, you crapped out five times in a row back there except for your first roll, where you got your eleven and sweetened the pot and then crapped out right after. And the man who took your money palmed the dice after each throw. He sees you as a patsy for sure. So next time he asks you to play, just tell him, ‘no dice.’ Funny, huh?”

Something seemed to go off in Dill’s head and he looked viciously over at the man who’d taken his dollar. “I’m gonna cut the bastard up.”

“No, you’re not. Remember, third time’s the charm. You’re not going back to prison. Now, put the blade away. You’re not even supposed to have a weapon, Dickie. That’ll get you put right back in Carderock.”

Dill slowly slid the knife back into his pocket, but he kept shooting looks at the other man the whole ride out.

Archer could smell the place about two miles before they arrived there. The stench made his nostrils seize up. Dill noted this and chuckled, as did two other men on the truck.

“Hellfire, Archer, after a while you can’t smell nothin’,” said Dill. He touched his nose. “Goes dead in there.”

“Well, I like to smell things.”

“Like Miss Crabtree’s perfume?” said Dill with a wicked look.

“We already talked about that, Dickie.”

“Man can damn well dream.” He licked his lips, his lascivious look turning Archer’s stomach as he thought about what a man like Dill would do to a woman like Ernestine Crabtree given the chance. He was glad he had fixed the woman’s bedroom door. But then he heartened himself by thinking that Crabtree might just shoot the little bastard before he could do her any harm.

The slaughterhouse was a large, one-story cement block building with hog pens on three sides, teeming with very much living stock.

When Archer asked about this, Dill said ominously, “Ain’t for much longer,” as they marched through a door after climbing off the truck. “This here is where the hogs come to die,” he added gleefully.

They were processed in by a burly foreman wearing a long white coat and safety hat. The man told Archer, “Yeah, she called. Pays five dollars a day. Get your money end of the day on Friday.”

“Look, can I get an advance, friend?” said Archer.

“You trying to be funny or stupid, or what?”

“Guess so.”

“Coat, gloves, helmet, and goggles in that room over there. Find what fits.”

“So, what’s my job? Not crushing hog skulls, I hope.”

“Naw. We got enough of those. You’re gonna be sawing up the meat and racking it. You just watch the fellers in there to get the hang of it.”

“Why the hat, goggles, and all the rest?”

The man laughed. “You’ll see why. Now beat it.”

Archer put on a long white coat that was stained with blood, and a helmet, goggles, and gloves.

Dill, similarly dressed, came over to him. “Hey, you wanna watch me bash some hogs in the head? Got a guy who ropes ’em by the neck, holds ’em steady like, then I come in from the rear, so’s not to spook ’em, and bam! Hog brains all over.”

“No thanks, Dickie, I’ll take your word for it.”

Archer was led to the room where he’d be working. There were long wooden tables all over and hog parts of all descriptions hanging from ceiling hooks connected to a powered conveyor belt.

An older gent showed him how to use the saws and knives, how to make the cuts, and then how to rack the parts on the hooks.

“They kill ’em and then slit their throats to bleed ’em out. They boil ’em next, that makes the hair and skin a lot easier to get off. Then they split ’em in half and hang ’em up for a while, let the meat get right. Then it comes our way to carve up. When the hooks are full, the belt takes ’em to the cold room.”

After watching Archer a few times, he deemed him ready to do the work on his own.

Within the hour, Archer was covered in blood, bits of bone, cartilage, and hog meat. He had to keep wiping his goggles clear from foul things and the film of humidity, for it was uncommonly warm in here. And more than once he suffered a coughing spell because of some foreign matter getting inside him. His gloves were soon soaked in blood and other unsavory detritus. By the end of his shift his arms, back, and legs ached with the sawing and slicing and the lifting of the heavy carcasses onto the hooks.

A horn sounded and the men instantly stopped what they were doing, midslice, or mid — brain bash, for that took place in the next room over. Archer had heard nothing but the squeals and terrified sounds of hogs about to die and then dying, for it was clear that the suffering beasts were not always killed instantly with the first blow from the sledgehammer.

As Archer was taking off his coat, helmet, gloves, and goggles in the locker room, he asked the older man who’d helped him, “How long you been doing this?”

The man closed the door of his locker. “Too damn long, son. Too damn long.”

I feel that way after one day.

There was a sudden commotion in the next room. Shouts and cries and the sounds of a struggle.

Archer rushed into the next room with a group of workers to find the man who had cheated Dill at craps holding his shoulder and looking pale and nauseous while Dill circled him holding a sledgehammer.

“You lying, cheating sack ’a shit,” bellowed Dill.

Archer looked around and saw the man who had checked him in standing idly by. It was apparent that no one was going to step in and help the injured fellow.

Archer pushed through the crowd and stood in front of the man.

“Dickie, I told you this was a bad idea. Now, put down the sledgehammer and just walk away. Or else your butt is going back to prison. You know what happened with your buddy and Miss Crabtree.”

“Yeah, you keep telling me that, Archer. But why do I think you got the hots for that broad yourself? You just calling me off so’s you get her all by your lonesome.”

“That’s got nothing to do with you going after this man.”

“Son of a bitch cheated me,” Dill snarled. “You said so yourself.”

Archer glanced at the man, but kept one eye on Dill. “And I think you taught him his lesson, right, friend?”

The injured fellow mutely nodded. Archer could see that the man’s shoulder had been shattered by Dill’s blow. “In fact, he needs a hospital.”

“What he needs is a grave,” barked Dill. “Now get outta my way.”

“Not going to do that, Dickie.”

“Then you’re a dead man too.”

Dill came at him, the hammer raised high. Dill was deceptively strong, Archer knew that, and tenacious as hell. But the man had not fought in a world war for years where every day was an act of survival.

Archer didn’t retreat from the attack as most would have. He sprang forward and slammed his shoulder into Dill’s gut before he could bring the sledgehammer down. Archer was a good sixty pounds heavier than Dill, and the physics of that competition meant that Dill was launched backward into a wall, and the hammer flew from his grasp.

Archer picked it up and stood over the fallen man. Dill put his hands up in a defensive posture, but Archer shook his head and tossed the hammer down.

“I’ve no intent to hurt you, Dickie. Just wanted to make my point.”

He turned to look at the crowd. “Nobody here saw anything.” Then he pointed to the manager. “And get that man to a hospital or else there’s gonna be trouble.”

The man came out of his lethargy, gripped the injured man’s good arm, and hustled him from the room.

Archer helped Dill up. “You okay?”

Dill did not look the least bit friendly. “You better watch yourself.”

“I do, all the time.”

When the truck dropped Archer off back in Poca City, he walked down the street, still rubbing hog shit off his person.