“Shucks, I was gonna give some to Grandpa,” Charley said. “I completely forgot. I wonder what he thought of the robbery?”
“He was asleep when we drove off,” Turnip said. “He slept through it, I ’spect.”
“At least he got to see the Tommy gun,” Charley said. “His eyes lit up when he seen it.”
“Mine might light up if I seen a diamond bracelet,” Beulah said.
Charley didn’t answer—he kept his eyes on the road.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me, Charley Floyd,” Beulah said. “You shouldn’t have left me out of the picture.”
“The only reason I did was because some G-man might see it and come down here just to flirt with you,” Charley said, thinking fast. “You’re a damn sight prettier than Bonnie Parker any day.”
“You think so?” Beulah said, softening a little.
“You bet,” Charley said. “You’re the cutest thing in the Red River Valley.”
“I still might want that bracelet,” Beulah replied.
17
It snowed on Dempsey’s birthday. Even so, he put on his earmuffs, and his big coat, and a pair of mittens his Grandma Mamie had knitted for him, and he went out in the snow to wait for the mailman. His mom was in bed, coughing. She’d been sick for two weeks, but there was going to be a birthday party anyway, with a cake and candles.
The wind was cutting that day. Dempsey’s feet almost froze before the mailman came driving up in his little pickup. There was so much snow on the windows of the postman’s pickup that the windshield wipers would barely go up and down. Dempsey had been stomping around in circles, trying to keep his feet from turning to ice. His mama had assured him that his daddy wouldn’t forget his birthday; he would send a package, or at least a card. Dempsey wanted to be right there waiting for his daddy’s package, snow or no snow.
“Howdy, son—if you’re an Eskimo, why didn’t you build us an igloo?” the mailman asked.
“I don’t know how to build an igloo,” Dempsey told him. “It’s my birthday. Do you have anything for me?”
The mailman was an old fellow with one eye that didn’t see. Dempsey had always wanted to ask him why his eye didn’t see, but he wasn’t sure if it was polite to ask about such things, so he held back. One of the mailman’s ears was bright red from the wind—he had to leave one of the windows down in the pickup so he could reach out and keep the snow off his rearview mirror.
“Well, I’ve got somethin’ for a Dempsey Hamilton,” the old man said. “Would that be you, sonny?”
Dempsey felt a moment of confusion. Sometimes he was one, sometimes the other. In Arkansas, he had been Dempsey Hamilton, but now that they were settled in Tulsa, it seemed to him his name might be Floyd again—he wasn’t sure.
The mailman was untying the tarp that covered all the packages in the back of his little pickup. He had to blow on his hands a few times to get his fingers working well enough to untie it. Dempsey sympathized—his own feet felt like stumps of ice, and despite his woolly ear-muffs, his ears were letting cold air into his head. He knew he’d be lucky not to get an earache, in which case his mama would have to hold a sock filled with hot cornmeal against his ear until it stopped hurting.
The mailman finally got the tarp off and lifted down a big, big package. Though Dempsey had hoped his daddy would send a good present—a punching bag, maybe, or a BB gun, or even a .410 shotgun—he had not expected a box as big as the one the mailman lifted out of his pickup.
“Want me to tote it to the door?” the mailman asked. “Be all you can do to lift it, sonny.”
“No. I’ll scoot it,” Dempsey said. “Thank you, mister.
“It’s from my daddy,” he added, proudly. “He remembered my birthday.”
Then he began to push the box up the icy sidewalk toward the front door. It was so big it wedged in the door. He had to crawl over it, and run to the bedroom to get his mama to help him. His mama was still coughing; she didn’t look well.
“Mama, Daddy didn’t forget,” he said. “A big package came.”
That was good news—the only good news. Ruby had worried all night about how she was going to find the energy to make Dempsey a proper birthday. Two or three times she dreamed that Charley appeared, to help her with the cake, and the games. She knew it couldn’t be, though. Coming to Tulsa would have been far too dangerous. But at least she could dream; and at least a package had come. It meant Charley still thought of them.
Sometimes, when her spirits were lowest, Ruby wondered if he did still think of them, or if she was just fooling herself.
The package was tied with such heavy twine that Ruby had to get a butcher knife to cut it. While she was sawing at the twine, Dempsey stood on one foot, and then the other.
“Mama, are we Floyd now, or are we Hamilton?” Dempsey asked. “Sometimes I can’t remember.”
Ruby stopped sawing and looked at her son a moment, all eager for his present, his woolly earmuffs hanging around his neck.
“All you have to remember is that I’m your mama,” she said, looking serious. “The names don’t matter. I’m Mama, and I always will be—you and me are mother and son.”
“Oh … all right,” Dempsey said. She looked like she might cry when she said it. Dempsey didn’t want her to cry. He wanted her to cut the heavy twine so he could find out what his daddy had sent him for his birthday.
Ruby was beginning to fear that she had pneumonia, or even TB. She couldn’t seem to get her lungs clear, and she didn’t have any strength. It took half an hour to get Dempsey’s present unpacked. It turned out to be a fine, hand-tooled saddle, just Dempsey’s size, with a bridle, and a quirt, and a pair of little spurs, and a pair of furry chaps. The note with the birthday card read:
For my little cowpoke—when I come home, we’ll buy a pony.
Love,
Your Daddy
“Mama, it’s just what I wanted,” Dempsey said.
“I know, honey,” Ruby said, pleased. All Dempsey’s favorite picture shows were cowboy shows. He spent half his time popping a cap pistol.
“I hope Daddy comes home real soon,” Dempsey said.
“So do I, honey,” Ruby said.
“I need that pony,” Dempsey said. “I need that pony real bad.”
18
Every time the door to her hospital room opened, Ruby had the hope that it might be Charley. There had been no word from him since Dempsey’s birthday; the cold weather hung on, and her cough got worse. Finally, her sisters persuaded her to go to the doctor, and the doc listened to her chest for a minute, and then put her in the hospital. At least it was pneumonia, and not TB.
“At least, nothing!” her ma said, when she found out. “Pneumony will kill you quicker than you can swat a horsefly.”
Her ma and her sister Janie moved into the house to look after Dempsey. Ruby worried constantly that they wouldn’t do a good job. Until she went to the hospital, she had not been separated from Dempsey a day in his life, except to visit Charley when he was in the Jeff City pen. Of course, she knew her mother and her sister were competent to take care of one child—her sister already had three kids of her own—but Ruby worried anyway: she couldn’t help it.
The other thing Ruby worried about was money. Usually, Charley would send her money through Brad. But since the death of Erv Kelley, it had been too dangerous for him to go anywhere near Brad. The money had stopped coming. Ruby had less than five dollars when she went to the hospital. She had no idea how she’d get the cash to pay for her treatment, much less to keep groceries on the shelf after she got out.
Worse, though, was that she had no idea where Charley was, no idea what he was doing. He could be in Canada for all she knew; he had often talked of trying Canada. She read the Tulsa papers every day, hoping for news that he’d pulled a bank job and gotten away. If she could just get a picture in her mind of where Charley was, she thought she might feel better. Not knowing what part of the country he was in, or if he was even in t
he country, kept her awake nights, worrying.
When her ma brought Dempsey to the hospital, he was subdued. They had strapped the saddle his daddy had sent him for his birthday over a trunk. Dempsey would sit on it for hours—with his chaps and spurs on, his quirt in his hand, staring out the window, pretending to be a cowboy.
“My daddy’s gonna buy me a pony pretty soon,” Dempsey said, to anyone who commented on his saddle and his cowboy attire.
Then, to Ruby’s surprise, a cowboy stepped right into her hospital room one morning, when she still had a thermometer in her mouth. They had put a mustard plaster on her chest the night before, and she hated the smell of it. Her hairbrush had fallen off her bedside tray, so she hadn’t even had a chance to brush her hair, when George Birdwell came tiptoeing in. He had on cowboy boots, and a blue coat, and his Stetson was creased as neat as if it had just come out of a hatbox.
“Oh, George, where’d you come from?” Ruby asked, feeling tearful.
“Me? I just flew in from the Panhandle,” George said. He flapped his arms briefly, pretending he was a bird.
“How come you’re laid up?” he asked. Nothing seemed to get George Birdwell down.
“I took pneumonia. How’s Bob?” Ruby asked.
“Mean as ever,” George replied. “She wants you and little Charley to come live with us, once these horse doctors turn you loose.”
“We might do that,” Ruby said. “It’s lonesome living by ourselves. The cops watch the house all the time. I guess they think Charley will be dumb enough to drive up and let himself get caught.”
Then she remembered that Bird was wanted—there was a reward on his head, too. They were known to be partners in crime. It touched her that Bird had thought to come see her, despite the risk.
The old lady in the next bed was wheezing so loud, two nurses ran in from the hall to tend to her.
“That poor old soul sounds like she’s got a piece of barbed wire stuck in her craw,” Birdwell said. “Where’s your purse?”
“Hanging on that chair,” Ruby said. “Why?”
“Bob and me thought you might be short,” Birdwell said, sticking a wad of bills into her purse.
“Short ain’t the word for it,” Ruby informed him. “Busted’s more like it.”
“This’ll tide you over till your dashing young husband shows up,” Birdwell said. “I see some law out front. Think I’ll squeeze out the back door and gallop off.”
“Are you on a horse, George?” Ruby asked, thinking the man must be crazy. Why would a wanted outlaw ride up to a hospital on a horse?
George gave her a big grin, and then a kiss.
“Don’t, you’ll catch pneumonia,” Ruby said,
“I ain’t horseback, but I’ve had plenty of nags that could outrun that flivver I’m driving,” George said. “You get well, Ruby. I’ll send Bob after you and Dempsey, if you’ll just say the word. Bob’s bought too many hens. She could use somebody to help her gather eggs.”
Then he tipped his hat to the nurses, and left. The old lady with the bad wheeze died later in the day.
When they brought the paper the next morning, the first headline Ruby saw was about George Birdwell robbing a bank in a little town west of Tulsa. The robbery had occurred only a few hours before he had showed up at the hospital with the wad of money. In the night, she had counted it—it was nearly four hundred dollars. It made her feel a little better about Charley; at least he had a good friend. She had no doubts that part of the reason Birdwell robbed the bank was to help her out with her hospital bills.
When she told Dempsey they might go live in the country with Birdwell and Bob, Dempsey immediately jumped on his saddle and began to quirt the trunk.
“That’s fine, Daddy can bring my pony there,” he said. “If we’re living in the country, I can ride him a long way, can’t I, Mama?”
“You sure can, darlin’,” Ruby said, smiling at her boy.
19
Viv Brown didn’t look around, but she knew a car was following her along the street, hanging back a little. Viv assumed it was one of her beaux, Rodney Black, the only suitor she had who would be dumb enough to follow her along the street as she was walking home from the newspaper office. She only lived six blocks from the offices of the Muskogee Blade. In the spring and summer, she rode her bicycle to work; but in the winter, she usually walked.
Rodney Black’s parents had more oil money than they could spend in three lifetimes, but it didn’t make up for the fact that Rodney had buck teeth, and a nervous laugh that he laughed every two seconds or so. He had been pestering Viv for a year—she had gone out with him three times, and all three times she had come home with a headache from having to listen to his nervous laugh.
The one good thing about Rodney was that he was so shy, he had never even tried to hold her hand, much less kiss her. If there was one thing she knew about men, it was that she didn’t enjoy kissing them if they had buck teeth.
When Vivian was safe on the front porch of her rooming house, she turned, meaning to wave at Rodney as if she had just that minute noticed him. But she had been wrong: a woman with frizzy hair was driving the car. Viv was relieved; just having Rodney in the neighborhood made her nervous. She had never seen the woman before. The woman had pulled up in front of her house, and was looking right at her.
“May I help you?” Vivian asked, thinking maybe the woman was hoping to get a room in the boarding house.
“Are you the girl who writes for the newspaper?” Bob Birdwell asked.
“Yes, I’m Vivian Brown,” Viv said. “Who are you?”
“Don’t get nosey,” Bob said, but she grinned when she said it. Her nose wrinkled when she grinned, and her eyes were merry.
“What can I do for you, then?” Viv inquired. She was trying to write a short story for Redbook, and wanted to get right to work if the lady in the flivver had nothing important to say.
“Are you the newspaper reporter gal who’s been sendin’ letters to Bradley Floyd?” Bob asked.
Viv jumped like somebody had stuck her with a hatpin.
“Oh, my goodness, yes, I am!” she replied. Viv had written several letters to Charley Floyd care of his mother’s address in Akins and had gotten no reply. One of her ambitions as a reporter was to do an interview with Pretty Boy Floyd. She had actually gone to Akins and Sallisaw and spoken to folks who had known him since he was a boy—they didn’t believe he was the killer the police magazines made him out to be. She had kept up with every story written about him so far, and it was her view that a lot of them contained big fat lies. So, Vivian decided she wanted to give Charley Floyd a chance to tell his side of the story and get it heard.
But lately, getting no response from Charley or his family to any of her efforts had made her feel hopeless about the situation: Charley Floyd would never let her interview him. She had gone back to writing short stories for Redbook; the story she was working on at the moment was about a girl reporter who falls in love with a bronc rider while doing a story on the big rodeo over in Oklahoma City.
“Do you know the Floyds, ma’am?” Viv asked. “I would love to meet any one of them, anytime, anyplace.”
“Hop in, then,” Bob said, opening the passenger-side door. “Charley’s waitin’, and guess who else?”
Viv could tell the blunt, skinny woman had a sense of humor.
“J. Edgar Hoover,” she said, trying to respond in kind.
“That hound-dog lookin’ rascal?” Bob said. “Not on your life. The fella waitin’ with Charley is the handsomest bandit in the U.S. of A.!”
“George Birdwell!” Viv said. “Did I guess it?”
“You guessed it, honey—hop on in the car.”
Since she was on her way home from work, Viv had her reporter’s notebook under her arm. She hadn’t had time to freshen up, though—it was windy, always windy—and she hadn’t even had an opportunity to run a comb through her curly brown hair. When she sat down in the passenger seat of the flivver, she thought
she might ask the woman driving to borrow her comb. But when she got a closer look at Bob, whose mop was arranged like it belonged to a crazy thing, she resigned herself to looking merely windblown.
“Are you some relation to Mr. Birdwell?” she asked, as the woman gunned the flivver out of Muskogee.
“No, but I’m married to him,” Bob said, and broke out in giggles. Before they had gone a mile, Viv was giggling, too. Bob told Viv the story of how she had met George, and from then on, everything Bob said struck her as funny.
“I can’t believe this,” Viv said, several times. “I’m so lucky, I can’t believe I’m gonna interview Charley Floyd and George Birdwell!”
After twenty minutes of driving, they turned off the highway. At a narrow, dusty, dirt crossroads, Bob grabbed a big bandana from the back seat.
“Turn your head, I got to blindfold you for this next little stretch. The boys don’t want you to be able to give away their location,” Bob informed her.
“Why, I’d never do that,” Viv said.
“Can’t take the chance,” Bob said. “Besides, it ain’t you they’re worried about. Alfalfa Bill might take it into his head to send some ornery bulls over to Muskogee to beat it out of you.”
“Alfalfa Bill” Murray was the governor of Oklahoma. He had stern views about justice, and had just launched a campaign to reinstate flogging in the state prisons.
“There’s freedom of the press in this country,” Vivian said. “He can’t do a thing to me.”
Bob looked at her, and shook her head.
“Honey, you’re just a girl—he’s the governor,” Bob reminded her. “Now turn your head around, I won’t pull it too tight.”
When the car finally reached its destination, and Bob Birdwell removed the blindfold, Viv was completely turned around. It was a cloudy day, and they were parked between two fields of corn stubble. A green car was parked just in front of them, almost nose to nose. Two men stood beside it, both of them very spiffily dressed: Charley Floyd had on a grey suit and vest; he wore a necktie with a stickpin, and he had on fine black leather gloves. He was even more handsome than Viv thought he’d be. George Birdwell looked just as he did in all his pictures—he was dressed like a cowboy movie star, in a white suit and a beautiful Stetson hat.