They Don't Dance Much

Tags:  crime-fiction, noir,

James Ross’ country noir, They Don’t Dance Much, published in 1940, takes place in and around Corinth, North Carolina, around the year 1939. Prohibition has ended, the Great Depression is in full swing, and many people, including the book’s protagonist, Jack McDonald, are down on their luck.

McDonald is a failed farmer in a mostly poor Southern town. His crops won’t grow, the bank has a lien on his land, he can’t pay the undertaker who just buried his mother, his chickens won’t lay, and even his cow is mortgaged. Drifting around town one day, looking for a drink, he visits Smut Milligan’s gas station to spend one of his last dollars on a pint of bootleg corn liquor.

Smut runs a profitable business selling legal and bootleg liquor. He pulls in extra cash by fleecing some of his dumber, drunker customers in rigged, back-room poker games. Regular payoffs to the sheriff and to the local political fixer, Astor LeGrand, assure that his business doesn’t get raided.

The sheriff sums up the operations of this corrupt little Southern town during one of his conversations with Smut. He asks for information about a gun that may have been used in a recent crime. When Smut is reluctant to answer, the sheriff says:

“I know you been running a gambling house out here all along. I reckon you sell plenty of liquor too; if you don’t, it ain’t my fault. I notice you got some tourist cabins out here, and sometimes those things are used for something other than sleeping.”

“What are you driving at, sheriff?” Smut Milligan asked.

“You do a little remembering for me and I’ll do plenty of forgetting for you,” the sheriff said.

Smut offers Jack a job as cashier at his burgeoning roadhouse, and Jack accepts. The roadhouse includes the filling station, kitchen, bar, dance hall, slot machines and tourist cabins. The clientele consists mainly of hard-drinking workers from the cotton and hosiery mills, while the staff is mostly misfits, drinkers and men too down on their luck to find better work.

While Jack narrates the novel, Smut drives the action. Noir novels focus almost entirely on the tragic consequences of two of the seven deadly sins: lust and greed. Smut has been a dangerous character his entire life–an orphan adopted by strict Christian parents who couldn’t control him, a dropout, a hustler willing to take almost any risk, and a tough guy who can’t be intimidated. All of these traits make him appealing to the young women of the town, but lust is not Smut’s weak point. The man wants money more than anything, and as the story progresses, we see that he will do almost anything to get what he wants. When Jack remarks on Smut’s greed and callousness, Smut responds, “When you start at the bottom, you have to be tougher than everyone between you and the top.”

The portrait of poverty, hypocrisy and corruption in this novel goes even deeper than what we see in Jim Thompson’s novels of the same era. For all his smarts and daring, Smut still has to watch out for the more powerful, corrupt figures looming above him. Sheriff Pemberton, Astor LeGrand, the political kingmaker, and his cronies in the local bank are all respectable citizens at the top of the social hierarchy. All are just as corrupt as Smut, living off of kickbacks, extortion and graft. But they do it with a veneer of respectability.

As Smut’s roadhouse becomes more profitable, he can see, as one hustler invariably sees into another, that LeGrand wants the business to be his. LeGrand can make it happen, too. Sitting at the top of the good-old-boy network, LeGrand uses his connections in the bank to wring money from Smut on his outstanding debts. When the financial pressure gets too high, Smut looks for an easy solution. Where can he get his hands on a load of cash, quick?

The answer, it turns out, is from one of his more cagey customers–a tight-lipped, middle-aged man who never works but seems to have plenty of money. The rumor in town is that the man has buried cash somewhere on his property. Caught in a financial vise, and unable to resist the allure of quick money, Smut goes out to find it, hauling Jack along with him.

If Smut’s fatal flaw is greed, Jack’s is a kind of moral sloth. With no home, no family, no belongings and no direction, he drifts whichever way life pushes him without ever asking what he’s getting himself into. Such a man–willing and unquestioning–will invariably be put to use by a man like Smut, who always has definite schemes and goals.

As Smut’s search for the buried treasure goes off the rails we see, in one very brutal chapter, just how cruel and devoid of conscience the man can be. Jack is as horrified as the reader at Smut’s actions–more so, even, because his presence implicates him in Smut’s crimes.

No noir is complete without a femme fatale, and in this one, the town beauty, Lola Fisher, has her eyes on Smut. Lola is married to the town’s wealthiest young man, a jealous simp named Charles, who knows she doesn’t love him. Lola’s own housekeeper describes her as a woman with ice-water in her veins.

In most noir fiction, the man’s lust is his undoing. He blindly follows his desire to his own doom. The woman, however seductive she may appear, is merely the catalyst that activates the flaws that are already present in the man.

Smut, however, clearly values money above women, and these he and Lola will need some outside help to meet their doom. As Smut draws Jack deeper into trouble, Jack sees only one way out, and it’s a bad one.

Jack’s narration, the author’s prose, and above all, the dialog are exceptionally well rendered. This book does a better job of portraying 1930s Southern small-town life than almost any I’ve ever read. Its portrayal of social and political dynamics is a cut above Jim Thompson’s, whose many similar novels portrayed the dysfunction of small-town life as a backdrop for his primary focus, which was his character’s psychopathy. Ross’ novel reads like Jim Thompson handed Flannery O’Connor his most twisted plot and told her to go to town with it. That’s high praise indeed.

I don’t know how I had never heard of Ross, but I’m glad I did. If you want an immersive noir, this is the one.