“I ain’t made pies since we were in Fort Smith,” he said. “I been gettin’ a strong urge to make pies. You sit back and relax—leave the meal to me.”
The kitchen was warm and comfy. Charley liked to sprinkle cinnamon on his piecrusts. Soon, the kitchen was filled with good smells. Dempsey kept staring at Charley, as if he wanted to be sure his daddy was really there.
“Can we have spaghetti, too, Daddy?” Dempsey asked, as Charley was rolling the piecrusts.
“Yep, spaghetti and pie, that’s the menu,” Charley said.
Dempsey ate three helpings of spaghetti, and a whopping piece of cherry pie. He had an appetite like his father’s. Ruby held Charley’s hand under the table while they ate. She didn’t eat much; food wasn’t what she wanted. She knew it would be impossible to get Dempsey to bed, so the three of them sat at the table—Charley and Ruby drinking coffee—until Dempsey started to yawn. His eyes grew heavier and heavier. Finally, he put his head on the oilcloth, and went to sleep.
Ruby wanted to carry him upstairs, undress him, and put him to bed, but Charley had other plans. Ruby was the one who got undressed.
“Every time I’m about to give up, you come and do this,” Ruby said, lying in his arms. “I wish you could stay, Charley … I wish so much that you could stay.”
Charley went back downstairs, and carried Dempsey up to his room.
“He’s like a rag doll,” Charley said, when he slipped back under the covers beside Ruby. “I thought I’d never get him into them pajamas.”
The smell of the three pies came up the stairs. In the night, it started snowing; then the snow turned to sleet. Ruby heard it peck against the windowpanes. With Charley warm beside her, she didn’t care if it snowed or sleeted. She clung to him all night, but when she dozed a little and woke up, he was putting on his overcoat. It was still dark, and sleet was still pecking at the windowpanes.
“If they don’t know you’re here, couldn’t you stay just today?” Ruby asked. “I’ll let Dempsey stay home from school, if you like.”
“Honey, I can’t,” Charley said. He sat on the bed for a minute, and put both his warm hands on her face.
“Why? They don’t know you’re here.”
“George waited in the car all night, he’s probably froze by now,” Charley said. “I better sneak out before the bulls bring in the day shift. Them old boys I saw last night are probably pretty hung over.”
Ruby was thinking of how much she’d be wanting to touch him, in the nights ahead. She’d be wanting to touch him so bad that she’d have to sit up reading movie magazines half the night before she could trust herself to try and sleep.
Two mornings later, when Dempsey looked out the window, a black-and-white spotted pony was tied to the back yard fence. It was cold; the pony’s breath made big puffs of smoke.
“Mama, Mama, my pony!” Dempsey yelled, as he ran out the back door. He was so excited he forgot to put on his coat; Ruby chided him, but he was too happy to notice.
Ruby had to go out in her bathrobe and houseshoes to saddle the pony, so Dempsey could ride around the back yard before he went to school.
22
When Willie the Turnip, as he had come to be known, was captured, Charley wanted to go north, way north—but Birdwell got stubborn, and wouldn’t budge.
“Willie ain’t gonna rat—we don’t need to panic,” Bird said. They had slipped over to Arkansas for a few days, to think matters over. A little hotel in Clarksville was their home away from home. For a whole day, they drank hootch, and debated their next move.
“It ain’t a matter of Willie ratting,” Charley said. “It ain’t that he’d rat, it’s just that he’s dumb. He’s the dumbest person I’ve worked with since Billy Miller. A dumb person is apt to say things that would give us away—you know, clues.”
“What clues? We don’t hardly have a clue ourselves where we are, or what we’re gonna do next,” Birdwell informed him. “Willie even confuses me, sometimes. Why wouldn’t he confuse the cops?”
Willie had been arrested in Lawton, for pocketing a can of snuff. He had meant to buy the snuff, but he had left his coin purse in the car. The car was parked two blocks away, and Willie was lazy. He didn’t want to walk to the car and walk back, so he pocketed the snuff. The old lady who ran the general store saw him do it, and promptly pointed a .44 revolver at him.
“If you don’t think I can shoot, ask the last thief I plugged,” the old lady told him.
Before Willie knew it, he had been identified as a member of the Floyd/Birdwell gang. It made him quite a celebrity in the Lawton jail, which was filled mostly with Indians who had been arrested for going on toots. While Willie was being led into the jail, Charley and Bird drove by in the car. They didn’t look at him, and they didn’t wave. Willie knew it wouldn’t have been wise for them to look at him, or wave, but the fact they didn’t made him blue anyway. They passed within twenty feet, and the deputy sheriff didn’t even notice.
“We ain’t prosperous enough to go north,” Birdwell argued. “What we need to do is rob one of them nigger banks—then we can go north in style!”
Oklahoma was full of towns that were all Negro. There were about thirty of them. The Negroes were descendants of slaves freed by the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks. Birdwell had it in his head that one of the black townships in particular, a little community called Boley, would be ripe for the plucking.
“George, we’re white, and they’re colored,” Charley argued. “If we drive in there and jump out at the bank, we’re gonna stand out like whores at a church picnic.”
“That’s the whole idea,” Birdwell said. “Ain’t you ever heard of the element of surprise? They won’t think we’ve come to rob no bank, they’ll think we’ve come to buy it.”
“Who’s gonna drive?” Charley asked. “Who’s gonna watch the street? The girls are in K.C., and Turnip won’t be out for at least a couple of years.”
“I know a nigger burglar,” Birdwell said. “Pete Glass. Maybe he’d drive—folks in Boley will think he’s our chauffeur.”
“What makes you so optimistic about this particular bank, Bird?” Charley asked. “You’re all smiles. Here we are, in a fleabag in Arkansas. We can’t see our wives but once a month, if we’re lucky, and our girlfriends ain’t even handy.”
“How would you know how handy my girlfriends are, bud?” Bird-well asked. “I might have more girlfriends than you suspect.”
“If you’ve got a couple here in Arkansas, why are we sittin’ in this fleabag, playin’ rummy?” Charley asked, disgusted. “You could loan me one, and we could go somewhere and cut a rug.”
“Very few of my girlfriends like to consider themselves available for loan,” Birdwell said, smirking.
“Hell, I’m as famous as you are,” Charley said. “I can go out and look for my own girlfriend, if you’re gonna be so damn stingy.”
Birdwell suddenly looked solemn.
“Did you ever do business with Red?” he asked, much to Charley’s surprise. Charley was so surprised, in fact, that he decided to pretend he’d heard the question wrong.
“Business with who?” he asked.
“Red. Whizbang Red,” Birdwell replied. “The whore that’s in love with me.”
“Oh,” Charley said. “I did do a little business with her, Bird. In Seminole, when I was roughnecking. She was working out of a tent.
“That was a while back,” he added, wondering if George was going to take offense.
“She’s dyin’, Charley,” Bird said.
“Whizbang’s dyin’—why didn’t you spill it sooner? My God, George,” Charley said, shocked.
George Birdwell put down his cards, and looked out the window.
“Where is she?” Charley asked. “What is it she’s dyin’ of?”
“Dyin’ of a tumor, down in … her parts,” George said, grave. “Red’s a right good gal.”
“I’ll second that,” Charley said. “I like Red a lot. Where is she?”
/> “In a hospital up in Salina, Kansas,” Birdwell said. “Her ma lives there. It ain’t too far from Boley.”
“What’s Boley got to do with the fact that Red’s drawn a bad hand?” Charley asked.
“I thought if we pulled the job, we could go up and see her,” George explained. “I been meaning to go—Red’s been worried about the funeral—her ma don’t have a cent. I’m low myself, but if we was to pull a good job, I’d give Red money enough that her ma could afford to bury her nice.”
“Why does it have to be a nigger bank?” Charley asked. “Why can’t we just pull some job, and take Red the money?”
“Well, we could, but Boley’s right on the way,” George said. “We could pull the job and head straight for the hospital. Nobody would ever look for us in a hospital.”
“I used to think you was a sane fellow, but the longer I know you, the less sure I am about that,” Charley said. “You want to rob a nigger bank, to pay for the funeral of a redheaded whore.”
“Red’s been real good to me, Charley,” Bird said. “I’m gonna miss her. It’s only right that I do somethin’ for her.”
“You know what?” Charley said, after a while.
“What?”
“I’m gonna miss her, too,” Charley said.
23
The first thing Charley noticed when they drove into Boley, Oklahoma, was that every colored man on the street seemed to be carrying a shotgun. In fact, except for an old lady here and there, no one was on the streets of Boley at all, except colored men carrying shotguns.
“Say, Pete—do the men in this town always carry shotguns?” Charley asked, looking out the window of the flivver.
“Just on the first day of bird season,” Pete Glass replied. He was the Negro burglar Birdwell had recruited to guide them to the bank and then out of town, once the job was done.
The driver, Adam Richetti, a greasy little hood they had picked up in Little Rock, took a dim view of working with Pete Glass. He didn’t bother to conceal the fact that he didn’t like Pete.
“I didn’t know niggers was allowed to hunt birds,” Richetti said, in as sarcastic a tone as he could manage.
“Anybody can hunt birds, Eddie,” Birdwell said.
“My name ain’t Eddie, it’s Adam,” Richetti reminded him.
“No, but if I call you Eddie, your first name rhymes with your last name,” Birdwell said, winking at Charley. Neither of them had taken a shine to Adam Richetti, but they needed a driver and hadn’t time to be choosy. The news was that Whizbang Red had only a few days to live. Birdwell wanted to get to work, and take her some funeral money.
“This is sharp plannin’,” Charley said, caustically. “Three white fellas decide to rob a bank in a town full of niggers on the first day of bird season, Bird—when everyone’s in town buyin’ shells. It takes a real genius to come up with a plan this idiotic!”
“Those are shotguns, not deer rifles,” Bird reminded him. “If you’re so damn cautious, you better just stay in the car.”
“Yeah, what are you, soft?” Richetti said. “We’ll eat this bank like it was cherry pie.”
Charley looked at Birdwell, who looked uncomfortable after Richetti’s tactless remark.
“How’d you like your goddamn brains squeezed out your ears, chum?” Charley said, leaning close enough to Richetti so that the driver could feel Charley’s breath on his neck.
“There’s the bank,” Richetti said, quickly.
“Pull around back. We’ll park in the alley,” Charley instructed.
“Why? The front door’s only two steps from the curb,” Richetti pointed out.
“The front door’s across the street from the hardware store, too,” Charley said. “Or you could call it the shooting gallery—and we’re the wooden ducks. Pull around to the back into the alley, like I told you.”
“Charley, are you testy today?” Bird asked.
“What do you think?” Charley asked. “Why this bank, on this day, if all we want to do is grab enough money for Red’s funeral?”
“I doubt anybody’s ever robbed a nigger bank before,” Birdwell said. “It’ll make a good story for the newspapers.”
“I hope we’re alive to read it,” Charley said. “Park there, and keep the motor running,” he said to Richetti, pointing near the back door of the bank. “You lead the way, Pete.”
It was early. Only one of the three tellers, Mrs. Forbes, had arrived, and Mrs. Forbes was notoriously nearsighted. She hadn’t even noticed the first customers. She was over in the corner, trying to clean her specs.
Jericho Carter, the bank manager, knew the two white men and the one colored man walking in the back door meant trouble the minute he laid eyes on them. Jericho himself was unarmed, but the bookkeeper, Rawls Yardley, had just gone into the vault, where there was a shotgun and two rifles.
“I’ll watch the door,” Charley said. “You and Pete get the cash, George. I don’t want no crowd pourin’ in from the street.”
When George Birdwell pointed his pistol at Jericho Carter, who also wore specs, the bank manager looked at him calmly.
“You ain’t robbin’ us, mister,” he said to George. “You better uncock that hogleg and just mosey on home.”
“Why, you tar-faced fool,” Birdwell said. “I’ll take that stack of hundreds there, and then I’ll think about goin’ home.”
Charley got the immediate feeling that something was off—a bank manager who talked as bold as this one wouldn’t have a stack of hundreds in easy reach, unless the stack was rigged to an alarm.
“Leave the hundreds!” he yelled, but it was too late—Birdwell had already reached into the cage and picked them up.
The second Bird grabbed the bills, a siren sounded. It was a loud siren, the kind small towns used to warn neighbors of tornadoes, or grass fires. Charley glanced across the street, and saw that all the hunters were looking at the bank.
Rawls Yardley, in the vault, heard the siren, instantly grabbed one of the .30/.30’s, and peeked out. He saw a tall white man in a cowboy hat holding a pistol, standing at the teller’s window. Rawls let go with a shot, but he was not much of a marksman; his shot missed, and broke out a window.
Startled, Birdwell looked toward the vault and saw Rawls, but couldn’t get a clear shot himself because of the teller’s bars.
When Birdwell looked toward Rawls, Jericho Carter took the one step to his desk and grabbed for a pistol. Just as he turned to fire, Bird-well cut him down—Jericho Carter was dead before his head hit the top of his desk.
Charley quickly opened the front door and fired a blast from the Tommy gun, aiming for the sign over the hardware store. He thought a little song from the Tommy gun might slow down the hunters, and he was right—they ran for cover, though enough of them threw shots at the bank for pellets to rattle on the windows like sleet.
“Let’s scram, George—this is a bust!” Charley said, heading for the back door.
George turned away from the bank manager’s desk, and started for the back door after Charley. But before Birdwell could take two steps, Rawls Yardley, crouched behind the door to the vault, opened fire again with the .30/.30—two slugs took George in the back. He fired as he went down, but the bullet zinged off the heavy door to the vault.
Charley threw a blast from the Tommy gun in the same direction, hoping to cow the rifleman long enough for them to get out the back door. George was down, and blood oozed from the wounds in his back; Pete Glass seemed to be momentarily paralyzed.
Charley went around the counter and stooped down, trying to lift George.
“Help me, Pete,” he said. “We’ll have to carry him—you take his feet.”
Pete did as he was told, grabbing George’s legs. The two of them carried him out the back door. They set George down on the ground, and Charley fired one more blast into the bank—a bullet hit the water cooler, which exploded. Water even sprayed over Mrs. Forbes, who was still in the corner. In the excitement, she had dropped her specs a
nd was afraid if she moved, she’d step on them.
Charley waved for Richetti, who gunned the car toward them. Just as it arrived, two old colored ladies shuffled down the sidewalk past the alley. Both had grocery baskets over their arms.
Pete helped Charley stuff Birdwell into the back seat of the car, and then Charley hurried over to the ladies, tipping his hat as he went.
“Ladies, I need to borrow you for about two minutes,” he said. “I need somebody respectable to ride on my running boards.”
Just as he said it, there was a rifle shot, and Pete Glass went staggering down the alley behind the car—Charley couldn’t see where the shot came from. He had no time to study the situation.
“Hurry, ladies, please,” he said.
“But I got to make my deposit, mister,” one of the old ladies said.
“You can make it a little later, ma’am,” Charley said, raising his Tommy gun so they could both get a good look at it. “There’s confusion in the bank right now, I don’t think they’re quite ready for business yet.”
“We better listen to this young man, Georgette,” the other old lady said, as she grabbed her companion’s elbow and scooted over to the getaway car.
The rifle cracked twice more. Whoever was shooting at Pete hit him with both shots as he lay on the ground. Charley started over to him, but the rifle cracked again, hitting dust right at his own feet. There was a pool of blood under Pete Glass, and he wasn’t moving. Charley ducked back to the car, and put one of the old ladies on each running board.
“Let’s go,” he said, to Richetti. “Take it slow. If we bounce our hostages off the running boards, we’ll be pickin’ birdshot out of each other’s behinds for the next year.”
“I ain’t worried about the shotguns—who’s got that rifle?” Richetti asked, turning out of the alley and onto the street.
Birdwell was sprawled in the back seat. Charley got in back with him, and reached out each window and held his hostages in place by grabbing an arm.
“Just a few blocks, ladies—hold on tight, and don’t get upset,” he said. They were cruising past about three dozen hunters with loaded shotguns; but no one fired.