The Dog of the South Read Free Page B

too. He owned a doughnut shop and some taxicabs. When I said he was a lawyer, I didn’t mean he wore a soft gray suit and stayed home at night in his study reading Blackstone’s Commentaries . If you had hired him unseen and were expecting that kind of lawyer, you would be knocked for a loop when you got to court and saw Jack standing there in his orange leisure suit, inspecting the green stuff under his fingernails. You would say, Well, there are a thousand lawyers in Pulaski County and it looks like I’ve got this one!
    But Jack was a good-natured fellow and I admired him for being a man of action. I was uneasy when I first met him. He struck me as one of these country birds who, one second after meeting you, will start telling of some bestial escapade involving violence or sex or both, or who might in the same chatty way want to talk about Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. It can go either way with those fellows and you need to be ready.
    He had some big news for me this time, or so he thought. It was a postcard that Norma had sent to her mother from Wormington, Texas. “Gateway to the Hill Country,” it said under the photograph of a low, dim structure that was the Wormington Motel. Gateway claims have always struck me as thin stuff because they can only mean that you’re not there yet, that you’re still in transit, that you’re not in any very well defined place. I knew about the card already because Mrs. Edge, Norma’s mother, had called me about it the day before. I had met her in front of the Federal Building and looked it over. Norma said she was all right and would be in touch later. That was all, but Jack wanted to stand there and talk about the card.
    I studied the motel picture again. Next to the office door of the place there was another door opening into what must have been a utility room. I knew that Norma with her instinct for the wrong turn had opened it and stood there a long time looking at the pipes and buckets and tools, trying to figure out how the office had changed so much. I would have seen in a split second that I was in the wrong room.
    I said, “They’re not in Wormington now, Jack. It was just a stopover. Those lovebirds didn’t run off to Wormington, Texas.”
    â€œI know that but it’s a place to start.”
    â€œThey’ll turn up here in a few days.”
    â€œLet me tell you something. That old boy is long gone. He got a taste of jail and didn’t like it.”
    â€œThey’ll turn up.”
    â€œYou should have told me he was a nut. I don’t appreciate the way you brought me into this thing.”
    â€œYou knew what the charge was. You saw those letters.”
    â€œI thought his daddy would be good for it. A slow-pay rich guy maybe. I thought he just meant to let the boy stew for a while.”
    â€œGuy has given Mr. Dupree a lot of headaches.”
    â€œI’m going to report your car stolen. It’s the only way.”
    â€œNo, I can’t go along with that.”
    â€œLet the police do our work for us. It’s the only way to get a quick line on those lovebirds.”
    â€œI don’t want to embarrass Norma.”
    â€œYou don’t want to embarrass yourself. You’re afraid it’ll get in the paper. Let me tell you something. The minute that bail is forfeited, it’ll be in the paper anyway and by that time you may not even get your car back.”
    There was something to this. Jack was no dope. The paper didn’t run cuckold stories as such but I thought it best to keep my name out of any public record. That way I could not be tied into Dupree’s flight. Tongues were already wagging, to be sure. Everyone at the paper knew what had happened but what they knew and what they could print—without the protection of public records—were two different things. All I wanted to do now was to get my car back. I was already cuckolded but I wouldn’t appear so foolish,