“Be sure to take a hostage or two, and don’t rough anybody up, if you can help it,” he said, between puffs on the smelly cigar. “You can let ’em go, once you’re home free.”
Charley listened to Big Carl, more out of respect than a need to understand what he was talking about. Once he got out of the pen, Charley had no intention of ever going back. Robbing banks wasn’t exactly the profession he had in mind for himself, once he was free.
Big Carl kept puffing and kept talking.
“You gotta know your partner better than your gal. Don’t ever run with anybody who isn’t a stand-up guy.”
Big Carl finished his cigar and sat up, his hands on his knees. He looked Charley hard in the eye.
“Listen and listen good. Choler is why I’ll be swingin’ from the end of a rope—my bad temper’s bought me nothin’ but trouble,” Big Carl told him. “If I taught you anything while you’re in here, it’s to keep a cool head—don’t let nobody make a sucker out of you. The biggest suckers are the ones who go off half-cocked, they make the worst mistakes.”
Now Big Carl had only a few hours to live, a fact which bothered Charley more than it seemed to bother Big Carl. While he ate his steak, he studied the racing form.
“I’ll miss the horses,” he admitted, looking thoughtful for a moment. “They’re pretty, horses. I could watch a horse race any day.
“I hope you’ll tell Lulu I done my best to school you,” Big Carl said, a little later. “Lulu’s a good gal. She used to be an A-number-one crook, too.”
“Is that right?” Charley asked. “Did she ever kill anybody?”
Big Carl chuckled.
“That’s between me and Lulu, son,” he said. “She had an eye for business, that’s for sure. Lulu could have been richer than Rockefeller, if she’d put her mind to it.”
“Why didn’t she put her mind to it?” Charley asked. He was becoming more and more curious about Ma Ash.
Big Carl chuckled again. “Money don’t interest her as much as peckers do,” he said. “She likes to run boarding houses.”
“I’d rather be rich as Rockefeller, myself,” Charley said.
“You ain’t Lulu, though,” Big Carl reminded him. “There’s a reason she likes to run boarding houses—that way, there’ll always be a pecker or two around to grab if she feels like it.
“I’d have been richer myself, if I hadn’t liked the horses so much,” he added, as he ate the last bite of steak.
When the guard came to get Charley, Big Carl Bevo scarcely looked up. The last Charley saw of him, he was still studying the racing form.
29
Charley walked up to the diner and then stopped. It was just a dirty little cafe by the side of the highway, but he was afraid to go in. He hadn’t seen anyone but cons for nearly four years. He’d gotten out early for good behavior, but he was afraid he might have forgotten how to talk to normal people. He knew he must look like a criminal, in his ugly prison suit. Folks would take one look at his suit, and his prison haircut, and know exactly where he’d been for the last few years.
He was hungry, though, not to mention nervous. He thought a cup of coffee might settle his nerves. A cup of coffee was about all he could afford. They’d only given him ten dollars when they let him out. He was a far piece from home, and would have to walk it, more than likely. He had to make his money last.
“How do you like your java?” the counterman said, when Charley finally worked up his nerve to go in and take a seat.
“Black,” Charley said. He was sure the counterman knew he had just got out of jail.
As he was sipping his coffee, trying to make it last, a big, elderly trucker with a moon face and scraggly grey hair came in and sat down right next to him at the counter. The trucker gave Charley a friendly look.
“Howdy,” he said. “How long you been out, son?”
“’Bout three hours,” Charley said, keeping his voice low.
“It shows, huh?” he added.
“Sure does. You look like you been livin’ in a closet,” the trucker replied. “So what? A few days out in the weather, and you’ll be as good as new.”
The trucker slapped the counter with a big hand. “How about a little service here?” he said.
The counterman was in the kitchen, but a skinny little waitress hurried over, pulling a pencil from behind her ear.
“You’re a loud bastard—what’ll it be?” she said.
“Coffee, ham, two eggs sunny side up, plenty of biscuits, and no cussin’,” the trucker said. “The same for my friend here.”
“You payin’? I know he ain’t good for it,” the waitress said.
“Hell yes, I’m payin’,” the trucker told her.
He slapped Charley on the back, much as he had just slapped the counter.
“You need somethin’ to stick to your ribs,” he said. “Where’s your home, son?”
“Sallisaw,” Charley replied.
“Say, down in the Oklahoma hills?” the trucker asked. “You’re in luck. That’s the way I’m headin’.”
The skinny waitress brought their coffee. After a cup, Charley began to feel a little better. When the food came, he felt better still.
“Eat up now, I don’t like to lag,” the trucker said.
Charley ate up, while the trucker talked.
It rained all afternoon, while the truck roared on south through Missouri. Charley sat hunched against the door, saying very little. Once they got into Oklahoma, he began to get the scared feeling he’d had outside the diner—the feeling that he was branded as no-good. He began to wish he could live in the truck forever, going on down the road. At home, everybody knew he was a jailbird. He’d be lucky if his own family wanted to take him in, or even see him.
“I was never in the pen,” the trucker said. He could see plain enough that the boy was gloomy.
“I been in jail plenty of times, though,” he added.
“What was your crime?” Charley asked, looking out the window.
“Bustin’ heads,” the trucker said. “Most of them needed bustin’, too. I hit one ol’ boy so hard he didn’t wake up for three days. If the ol’ fart had died on me, I guess I’d been bound for the pen, too. But he finally woke up. Then he cheated with a married gal, and her husband shot him. Kilt him dead.
“The stupid son-of-a-bitch never had no sense,” he added. “I ’spect he’s about as well off dead.”
“I doubt he’d see it that way,” Charley said.
It was after dark when they approached Sallisaw. Charley wasn’t feeling any better. He kept picturing people staring at him on the street—of course, it was dark, and there wouldn’t be many people on the street. But the no-good feeling wouldn’t leave him.
“You got family in Sallisaw, son?” the trucker asked.
“My ma,” Charley said. “And my brothers and sisters.”
“Got a wife?” the trucker asked. “I bet it would sure feel good gettin’ home to a wife, after bein’ in the pen a spell.”
Charley didn’t answer; not that he disagreed with what the old trucker said. If he still had Ruby to get home to, he wouldn’t be feeling so bad.
But Ruby and Dempsey were gone, and the closer the truck got to Sallisaw, the worse Charley felt.
When the trucker slowed down, right in front of Pear’s Department Store, Charley was feeling so bad that he thought he might throw up. He realized he wasn’t ready to come home—he started to open the door of the truck, but he stopped.
The trucker, whose name was Sam Campbell, saw that the boy wasn’t happy to be home. He didn’t say anything. Sallisaw was the boy’s home; if he didn’t feel like getting out, that was his business.
Charley felt so confused that his head began to throb. He wanted to see his ma. He wanted to see Bradley. He would have liked to sit out by the barn with Brad and have a few bottles of Choctaw beer.
But he felt low as a worm—he felt like dirt. He was home, but he didn’t feel he had any right to be there. Ruby
was gone, and Ruby was right. He didn’t deserve a wife; he didn’t even deserve a family.
“I’ve heard there’s work down around Seminole, in the oil fields,” he said, finally. “You think I could get on?”
“A big strappin’ boy like you? You bet you could get on,” Sam Campbell said. “But what about your folks? I thought you wanted to see them.”
“Not today, I guess,” Charley said, sitting back. “Better to come home with money in my pocket. I’d rather just ride on down to Seminole, if that’s okay with you.”
“That’s fine, son,” Sam said.
Charley hunkered back down in the seat and stared out the window.
As they drove out of Sallisaw, the rain streaking down the windshield matched the tears that wet Charley’s face.
BOOK TWO
1929–1931
1
“Five dollars a week to sleep on the floor with a bunch of goons?” Charley said, stunned. “I don’t even get a bed, and you want five dollars a week?”
“That’s for inside,” the landlady said. “I got two spots left on the porch—they’ll be three dollars a week. If you just want to sleep in the yard, it’s a dollar a week.”
“I’ll try the yard,” Charley said. “I didn’t know lodging was this costly down in Seminole.”
“This is a boomtown, mister,” the landlady said. “I got to make hay while the sun shines. Once this oil plays out, you can rent the whole town for five dollars a week.”
“When does the sun shine here, ma’am?” Charley asked. “It sure ain’t shined since I got here, and I been here all day.”
“We’re having a rainy spring,” the landlady admitted. “That’s what makes the porch such a good investment.”
It wasn’t raining hard, but it was drizzling. Charley had already spent five of his prison dollars on some work clothes, including a slicker. Then he had to spend two more dollars on some overshoes—the wagons and buggies in the streets of Seminole were up to their hubs in mud.
“If you think that’s mud, wait till you get out to the fields,” the dry goods salesman said. “This is like a sandy beach compared to the fields. It’s muddy enough out there to swallow an ox.”
Charley was painfully aware that he was down to three dollars. He didn’t relish the prospect of sleeping in the soggy yard, though, even if he did have a slicker.
The landlady hadn’t yet unlatched the screen door. She didn’t offer to show him the room where he could sleep on the floor for five dollars a week.
“This is a take-it-or-leave-it town, bud,” she informed him. “We got a hundred boomers a day showin’ up here. If you don’t take it, somebody else will.”
“I’ll try the porch,” Charley decided. “Do I have to pay the whole week’s rent in advance, or could you trust me for a dollar of it?”
The landlady, Myrtle Bolen, unlatched the screen and stepped outside to take a look at the boy standing on her porch. He was a good-looking boy, though he had a prison haircut and sad eyes.
“I reckon you’d steal, but I doubt you’d cheat,” she said. “Gimme two dollars. I’ll spot you meals till you get work.”
That night, the wind shifted; sheets of rain slashed the porch. Even so, twenty men slept on it, some of them not as lucky as Charley—at least he had his slicker. Thirty or forty men slept in the yard. In the middle of the night, two roughnecks got in a fight—the winner nearly suffocated the loser by pushing his face down in the mud and holding it there. Two men had to scrape out the loser’s nose with their pocketknives, while he gasped for breath through his mouth.
All night long, wagons full of roughnecks and pipe slogged through the streets, big lanterns swinging from the back of each. The mule skinners cursed the mules that pulled the wagons. Sometimes a wagon would stick and all the roughnecks would have to jump out, in mud up to their thighs, to try and get the wagon moving again.
Charley slept an hour maybe, but at least, thanks to his slicker, he kept fairly dry. He had to wait for twenty minutes before he could get a place at the breakfast table, though. When he finally got a spot, he was so hungry he ate seven eggs and a dozen biscuits.
Ten minutes later, he got work driving a pipe wagon. The wagon was stuck a block from the boarding house; the driver had evidently had enough. The foreman, who had worked twenty hours straight in the rain, had nodded for a minute on the wagon seat. When he woke up, he didn’t have a driver, a fact which put him out of temper.
“Sir, could I catch a ride out to the fields?” Charley asked, mistaking the foreman for the driver.
“Can’t you see this goddamn wagon is stuck?” the foreman snapped, irritated.
“It seems to be,” Charley said, trying to be polite.
“Can you drive a mule team?” the foreman asked. “I got no use for mules myself, and they generally refuse to obey me.”
“You bet I can drive a mule team,” Charley said. Of course, he never had driven a mule team, but he had plowed behind Captain Bob.
“If you can drive this one, you not only got a ride, you got a job,” the foreman said. “I think that fella who quit was Canadian. I knew I oughtn’t to have trusted no foreigner.”
Charley was so thrilled at the prospect of work that he jumped right up on the wagon seat and let out a screech he had learned from a Choctaw preacher who lived in a little cabin near the Floyd farm. It was an old war cry of the Indian days—Charley thought it might work on the mules, and it did. They were so startled, their ears all tipped straight up. They lurched against the harness and got the pipe wagon moving again.
“What kind of yellin’ was that?” the foreman asked, impressed. He found a whiskey bottle in his coat pocket, and offered Charley a swig.
“Indian yellin’,” Charley said. He accepted the swig, and handed the bottle back to the foreman.
“I guess them mules didn’t want to be scalped,” the foreman said.
2
Whizbang Red worked with two other whores in a tent behind the barbershop. She spotted Charley for a jailbird from his haircut—but Whizbang was feisty, she didn’t care.
“I been in a few clinks myself,” she said. “What kinda job did you pull?”
“Just a job,” Charley said. He liked Whizbang the minute he laid eyes on her. She had bright red curly hair, lots of it, and her skin was the color of sweet milk.
“When’s the last time you had a gal?” she asked, once their visit was concluded. “You didn’t need a whore, you needed a bucket.”
“Aw, applesauce,” Charley said. “What’s a cute girl like you doin’ workin’ in a tent behind a barbershop?”
“It beats Alaska,” Whizbang told him. “Ever been there?”
“Not yet,” Charley said. “What’s up there besides bears?”
“The two-legged variety,” she said, the corners of her big blue eyes wrinkling with a smile.
“What’s your real name?” Charley asked.
“June,” Whizbang said. “You’re kinda cute, when you smile.”
“So are you. I’ll be smilin’ a lot more now that I’ve met you,” Charley admitted.
“Don’t lose your job,” Whizbang said. “I might decide I want a bigger tent.”
“I’m an expert mule skinner,” Charley bragged. “I won’t lose my job.”
He lost his job that very afternoon.
An old man who had once been a blacksmith in Sallisaw, Curley Miller, happened to be the new foreman at the site where Charley delivered pipe. Charley was helping the crew unload the pipe, trying to keep the mud from squishing down into his overshoes, when Curley Miller spotted him.
“Hey, ain’t you Walter Floyd’s boy?” Curley asked. “Ain’t you up from ’round Sallisaw?”
“Yes, sir,” Charley replied. Since Curley Miller was home-folk, Charley thought he might be about to get promoted.
“Wasn’t you up in the pen somewheres in Missouri?” Curley asked.
Charley was struggling with a length of two-inch pipe—he pretended h
e didn’t hear the question.
“Answer me!” Curley bellowed.
Charley squinted up at the old man. “Yes, sir, but I paid my debt. I’m workin’ honest now.”
“Not for me you ain’t,” Curley Miller snarled. “I don’t employ no cons. Draw your pay and scat.”
Charley was wearing a hard hat to protect his head, in case somebody up on a rig dropped a hammer or a wrench or something. He started to walk off with the hard hat still on his head.
“Hold on,” Curley Miller said. “Hat’s company property.”
Charley took the hard hat off his head and sailed it as far as he could, out into a field of swamp mud.
Then he went and drew his pay, and paid Whizbang a surprise visit.
“I think I’ll just call you June,” he said. “Whizbang’s too much of a mouthful. You oughta give up whizbangin’, anyway.”
“Give it up? For what?” Whizbang asked, a twinkle in her eye.
“To travel the world with me,” Charley told her. “You’re too cute to be a tent whore in a boomtown.”
“Pays like Christmas, though,” Whizbang said. “Another six months, and I can retire.”
“Retire to what?” Charley asked.
“Whatever I wanna retire to,” she said.
“Where could we go on our travels?” Charley asked.
The fact was, he’d gotten tired of Seminole—tired of the drizzle, the mules, the porch, and the oily mud.
“I’m gonna stay here and enjoy Christmas,” Whizbang said. “What about Colorado?”
“What’s so great about Colorado?” Charley asked.
“Denver’s got real nice air,” Whizbang remarked.
“Are you a Colorado gal?” Charley asked.
“Nope, I’m from Spokane, Washington,” the redhead said.
“I’d enjoy Colorado if you’d come with me,” Charley said. “I get blue when I travel alone.”
“I get blue when it ain’t Christmas,” Whizbang informed him. “I doubt you could afford me as a steady thing.”