“This here’s interstate crime,” Lem said. “I expect this lady’s right. Governor Murray wouldn’t appreciate us driftin’ around up here. It’s Mr. Hoover’s job. The Bureau and the G-men will get him.”
“Yeah, but he’ll spend my money before they can get it back,” the bank manager said.
“Are you guys gonna stand there jawin’, or are you gonna leave our state?” Bob demanded.
“Arrest her, she’s a moll! They’re all molls!” the little man demanded, but the Texas Rangers made no attempts to comply. They even tipped their hats to the three women before they drove back down the road to Texas.
On the way home, Ruby hardly said a word. Despite herself, she couldn’t stop thinking about Charley and Bob Birdwell. She tried her best, when Charley was gone, never to imagine him with other women. When it was night and she was lonely in bed, wondering where Charley was, she tried to walk her mind way around the thought that he might be in another bed somewhere, with another woman. Sometimes she was successful; sometimes she wasn’t. Now, she could hardly look at Bob’s short, frizzy hair without having bad thoughts. Bob had skinny legs, too, and Charley had always been keen on women with skinny legs. When he and Ruby first dated, she was so young and skinny that he said her legs were like a roadrunner’s. In those days, whenever he grabbed her, he’d exclaim, “Ha, I caught a roadrunner!”
The road grew slicker as the day faded and the drizzle began to freeze. Ruby thought they would never get back to Bessie’s house. Bob and Bessie chattered, but Ruby didn’t join in the conversation.
Despite herself, she couldn’t stop thinking about Charley, and how much he liked women with skinny legs.
11
The old bus bumped into Lawton about eleven o’clock at night. There were only six passengers on it: two cowboys, three Indians, and Ruby. She was the only woman, which made her nervous. She was not used to traveling at night; that also made her nervous. It was still bitter cold, and she didn’t really know where Charley would be. She just knew she was supposed to look for him in a cheap hotel near the bus station. He would be registered as Arthur Charles. Ruby had always heard that Lawton was rough—an oil town where the cops were hard on Indians.
The bus station was just one room, painted yellow. The floor was covered with spit and cigarette butts. Ruby needed to use the rest room, but when she got into the ladies’ room, the smell nearly knocked her out. The toilet was broken, and turds floated in it like dead fish. Bad as she needed to go, Ruby couldn’t bring herself to use it. Two roughnecks, drinking in a corner, looked at her when she came out.
“You’re a good-lookin’ squaw, come on over here and sit with us,” one of the men said, with an insolent grin.
Ruby pulled the fur collar on her coat tight around her throat, and went out into the chilling wind. An Indian was lying drunk on the sidewalk, just a few feet from the door of the bus station. He was an old man. Ruby thought she should probably drag him inside, so he wouldn’t freeze, though the thought of going back into the room where the roughnecks sat drinking didn’t please her. But when she tried to lift the old man, he suddenly pushed her away, struggled to his feet, and lurched off into the street.
There was a sign that said “Rooms” on a brick building only a block from the bus station, but it was one of the longest blocks Ruby had ever walked. The sidewalk was icy, and she was afraid she would fall. She was also afraid that Charley wouldn’t be in the hotel; if he wasn’t, the roughnecks might follow her and catch her. She was freezing, and she was worried about Dempsey, who had been running a fever when she left him with her sister. Much as she wanted to see Charley, she wanted even more to be back with Dempsey in their home. They didn’t have much, but it was better than being on the street in Lawton, in the middle of the night, looking for a man that most of the cops in the country were looking for, too. It almost seemed to Ruby that there were two Charleys—the sweet one, who liked to come home and cook spaghetti and bake pies; and the restless one, who drove around robbing banks, being shot at, and hiding in cheap rooming houses. Ruby wished there could be some way for the second Charley to just sort of melt into the first Charley. But she knew there wasn’t.
As she was about to turn into the rooming house, she looked up and glimpsed somebody peeking at her from behind a cracked window shade. She knew it must be Charley, and it was.
The hotel smelled musty; it was just a thirty-five-cent room. Charley looked scared when he let her in. Usually he took a devil-may-care attitude toward his predicament. But he had lost his reckless look, and now he seemed just plain scared.
“There’s no heat—this radiator could make ice,” Charley told her.
“I’m worn out, let’s just get into bed,” Ruby said. “I’ll get you warm, honey.”
The blanket on the bed was thin. They had to pile their coats on top of it to keep warm. When they made love, the coats slid off, and their feet stuck out from under the covers, freezing. Ruby tried to be passionate for Charley, but it seemed like the chill had settled inside her. She did all she could, but her feet were freezing, and her fear wouldn’t go away. Charley was upset. He was used to driving her just about crazy when they made love; if he didn’t succeed, he was apt to be moody for hours.
“How come they don’t give you no blankets in this hotel?” Ruby asked, rearranging the coats. “I’m sorry, my feet are freezing.”
“I guess there’s not much in this world you can really count on,” he replied, with his pouty look.
“Oh, shut up, I said I was sorry. You got plenty to count on,” Ruby said. His pitiful attitude made her want to slug him.
“Wives oughtn’t to talk that way to their husbands,” Charley said.
“Charley, don’t be like this,” Ruby said, impatient. “I come a long way, at night, just to see you.”
“I know it’s a poor bed,” Charley admitted. “I was afraid to stay in any of the better places.”
“Dempsey wanted to come, hon,” Ruby told him. Talking about their child usually put him in a better humor. If she could raise his mood so they could feel happy for a moment—happy with the love they had—it would be worth all the effort it had taken her to get there.
“You did right not to bring him,” Charley said. “A gang of G-men could bust in here any minute. I don’t want Dempsey in the middle of a gunfight.”
“Have you got any whiskey?” Ruby asked. “I can’t seem to warm up on the outside. Maybe if we drank some, I could at least get warm on the inside.”
Charley pulled a bottle out of the drawer in the bedside table. It was a full bottle, but it didn’t stay full for long. Ruby raised up on an elbow and drank several long swallows. Then Charley drank some, and Ruby glugged some more.
A little later, the radiator began to sputter, and heat finally started coming out. Before long, the room had gone from being too cold to being too hot. It kept getting hotter and hotter, until it felt like they were in an oven. They kicked the coats off the bed, and then the covers, too.
“I guess you don’t get perfection for thirty-five cents,” Charley said.
“I gotta go north—it’ll be even colder, up north,” he added, after a minute.
“I wish there was another country we could go to and live,” Ruby said. “I wish there was a country where we could live like a family, and be happy.”
Charley didn’t have an answer for that.
Now that she was warm, Ruby wanted to make love, but Charley showed no interest. When she touched him, he rolled away. Ruby felt rebuffed, and didn’t try again. They lay beside one another all night, not touching, not talking, sleeping little.
In the morning, Charley gave Ruby half the money he had taken from the bank in Crum, Texas.
“I want you to give a hundred to Bessie, and a hundred to Bob,” he told her. “You keep the rest, and be careful with it. If I don’t get back, it’ll get you through summer.”
“Through summer?” Ruby asked, horrified. “That’s six months, Charley!” Since h
e had come to get her and Dempsey in Coffeyville, the longest Charley had been away from them was two whole months. Now, he was talking about being gone for six months, or even more. A lot could happen in six months. Ruby didn’t want to think about it.
“I got to go way north this time, Ruby. Just about every law in the country is after me now. I’ll get back when I can, but it may not be for a while.”
“You take the money to Bob,” Ruby said. “Why are you giving her money, anyway?”
Charley looked at her solemnly. “George was my friend,” he said. “Bob don’t have a cent, and she helped burn the car.”
“Then you take it to her—why should I have to do it?” Ruby asked.
“I ain’t goin’ that way … what’s got into you?” Charley asked, a frown wrinkling his brow. “Just do as I say, and take the hundred to Bob.”
“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,” Ruby said—she was remembering Bob’s skinny legs.
“Hey, now. Behave yourself,” Charley said, glaring. “Bob’s got it coming—you give it to her, first chance you get.”
Ruby didn’t answer. She looked out the window at the cold, ugly street. The old man she had tried to save the night before was still lurching around, slipping now and then on patches of ice.
“Don’t you like Bob … or what?” he asked.
“I don’t know Bob,” Ruby said. “She’s your friend. I’ll take the money to her, if that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want,” he repeated.
She turned to him, and her expression made Charley’s face sag.
“Ruby, let’s don’t fight,” Charley said, fearful. “I didn’t mean to get into no fight with you, honey.”
It had been only a day and a night since she’d last seen him, but to Ruby, Charley looked as if he’d aged ten years.
“I don’t feel like we’re fightin’, Charley.” Ruby felt as cold inside as she had the night before. “I feel like we’re dyin’.”
Charley drove her to the bus station in silence. They exchanged a brief hug and a kiss.
Then Ruby caught the same bumpy old bus back to Sallisaw.
12
“You mean they stayed here—both of ’em?!” Ruby asked. For a second, she felt cold with shock; then she flushed with rage.
Bessie Floyd knew immediately that she had let slip information she should have kept to herself. It had never occurred to her that Ruby didn’t know about Beulah and Rose staying at the farm while Beulah recovered from her head wound. She started out to complain that Brad was still in love with Rose Baird. But then she realized, from the look of puzzlement on Ruby’s face, that she had never even heard of the Baird sisters.
“Ruby, I’m sorry,” Bessie said. “I don’t know what to say. I guess it never occurred to me that you didn’t know about Beulah and Rose.”
“Anyway, it’s my husband that’s in love with one of them,” she added, hastily. “Your husband is in love with you.”
When Bessie referred to Charley as Ruby’s husband, it usually gave Ruby a good feeling—she liked the idea that even though they were divorced, folks still thought of them as married—as a family. But all of a sudden, it didn’t feel good anymore to think of herself as Charley’s wife—not when he had a girlfriend, and everyone knew it but her. She felt furious, jealous, embarrassed, all at once.
“That’s mush, Bessie!” Ruby said. “He brings his whore here, and leaves her with his family for six months! I’ll kill him myself the next time I see him, and save Mr. Hoover the trouble.”
“Don’t talk like that, Ruby,” Bessie said, horrified. “It’s bad luck.”
But Ruby’s rage was up; if she had been in her own kitchen, she would have broken everything in it. Her anxieties about Bob Birdwell and Charley were nothing—he had another woman that he thought enough of to board with his family for six whole months, long enough for Bradley Floyd to fall in love with the woman’s little sister. It made Ruby fighting mad: her rage was so intense it made her feverish. It raced through her body, and made her face beet-red. But she had no way to express it. Charley wasn’t there; she had no one to attack.
“Honey, it was when you was still with Lenny,” Bessie reminded her. “Charley hadn’t been out of the pen very long. He felt low as a dog. Then Beulah got shot in the head, in that job they pulled up in Ohio. She was wobbly on her feet for quite a while, so Charley sent her down to us, and Rose came along to take care of her.”
“Yeah, and she ended up taking care of Brad!” Ruby snapped. “What are they, sluts? I don’t see how you stood it, Bessie.”
Bessie felt on the spot. Ruby was staring at her, her dark eyes blazing.
“No, but they were city girls, they were used to different ways,” she said. “I think Rose took to Brad just because she was bored.”
“I would have whacked her with a two-by-four,” Ruby said. “I’ll whack Charley with one, the next time I see him. I suppose he showed up here every few days, for a little visit.”
“No, honey—he was just here twice,” Bessie said.
“You were married to another man, remember?” she said again, hoping Ruby would cool off and take account of the circumstances.
“Whose fault was that?” Ruby said. “I had to live. I had to feed my child. I didn’t ask Charley to leave me, I didn’t tell him to start pulling bank jobs. When they sent him to the pen, I did my best. I just lost hope, finally. I would have gone back with Charley anytime. But he didn’t hurry to my door, and now I know why.”
“I bet Lenny still misses you,” Bessie said. “He seemed like such a nice fella.”
Ruby wanted her to shut up about Lenny. Nice fellow or not, Lenny was something she couldn’t do anything about. It didn’t alter the fact that she belonged with Charley Floyd. That Charley’d had a woman in his life for years named Beulah Baird might not affect that fact in the long run, if there was a long run, either. But it would affect the reception Charley got the next time he showed up at her door with a few presents, and a big grin on his face.
“I’ll knock that grin right off his kisser!” she said, thinking out loud.
“I’m sorry, honey—I thought you knew,” Bessie said, again. She knew that whatever she said would probably make matters worse, but she didn’t know what else to do.
“If I’d have known, I’da come right down here, and run her off,” Ruby said—she was imagining herself chasing Beulah Baird and her sister down the dirt lane that led from Bessie and Brad’s, all the way to the highway.
“Wobbly on her feet or not,” she added.
Later, though, when her feelings had settled down, she realized that her anger was selfish. Bessie was the one whose marriage had been harmed by the Baird sisters. Bessie’s husband had fallen in love with one of them; probably, that explained why Bessie’d had such a lost look in her eyes the last few years.
“You could leave him. Let him go find the whore and see how long it lasts,” Ruby suggested.
Bessie shook her head.
“Leave him, and live on what?” she asked. “I got kids I can barely keep fed as it is.
“He ain’t a bad man,” she added, thinking of her husband, who also had a lost look in his eyes, despite which he had continued to work hard and be a good father to their children.
“He’s just susceptible to city girls. They got more stylish ways—at least, I reckon that’s it.”
Ruby got up to leave. She had to take Bob Birdwell the hundred dollars Charley had wanted her to have. She’d already given Bessie the money he had given her for Brad’s family.
“I ought to keep my big mouth shut,” Bessie said, as Ruby was getting into the flivver. “There’s some things a person’s better off not knowing.”
“Speak for yourself. I want the truth,” Ruby said. “I might not know what to do with it when I get it—but I want it.”
“I hate to see you get so mad at Charley. He’s just a man,” Bessie said.
“He needs a better excuse than that,” Ruby
said. She felt annoyed with Bessie for not being more of a fighter. She tried to imagine what she would do to Charley if he had the gall to keep a woman he was in love with under her roof.
If the news Ruby had just received hadn’t taken most of the sting out of any resentment she felt toward Bob Birdwell, the sight of the Birdwell farmhouse would have removed the sting anyway. There wasn’t a blade of grass in the Birdwell yard—just dirt. Water came from a pump by the smokehouse. Bob was out pumping on it when Ruby drove up, but no water was running into the bucket.
“Needs new leathers, not to mention new sucker rods,” Bob said, when she saw Ruby. Her hair had hay in it, and she had on muddy trousers. In fact, her trousers were mud-coated all the way to the knees.
“The sow tried to eat her babies, I had to wade into the slop and rescue ’em,” Bob explained.
Just then, a trickle of water leaked out of the pump.
“I can piss faster than this well runs,” Bob said. “Go on in the house and stand by the stove, it’s chilly out here.
“The kids won’t bite, but they may yell a little,” she added.
The kids didn’t yell at all. They stood timidly in a group, and stared at Ruby. They were all dressed in clothes that were just rags. Compared to these children, Dempsey dressed like a rich city boy.
“Hi, what’s your names?” Ruby asked. The wood stove kept the kitchen warm, but the rest of the house was like ice. Three piglets slept in a basket by the stove.
“Speak up, she asked you a question,” Bob said, coming in with the water bucket.
The children remained silent. They all had Bob’s eyes, Ruby thought. She felt a little embarrassed by her own resentment. It was clear after even a few minutes in the bare, cold house that Bob Bird-well had enough to deal with—she obviously had little energy to spare for cavorting with other women’s husbands.
In an attempt to break the ice with the Birdwell children, Ruby got out a little picture she carried of Dempsey on his pony, Chuck. She thought the children all looked skinny as rails. Dempsey was a butterball by comparison. It was the right move—all three children immediately crowded around, and pretty soon the two little girls were sitting on her lap.