“I rode a calf once,” the little boy said. “We don’t have no pony.”
“You rode it two steps,” his mother reminded him.
“No, Ma—five steps!” the boy insisted. His voice reminded Ruby of George Birdwell. She started to say as much to Bob, but caught herself at the last second. She didn’t know if it was wise to mention George.
“You’re welcome to stay for supper if you like mush,” Bob said. “We’re mostly a mush family, these days.”
“You don’t have to be tonight,” Ruby said. “Charley gave me some money to leave with you. It’s for helping with the last job.”
“How much?” Bob asked.
“Two hundred,” Ruby said, though Charley had only asked her to give them one hundred. Her resentment had disappeared completely. She took the bills out of her purse and handed them over. Bob counted the money quickly, and then stuck it in the pocket of her muddy trousers.
“At least he ain’t tight, like George,” Bob said. “Course, George wasn’t tight with everybody.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Ruby agreed. “He paid my hospital bill when I had pneumonia.”
“Yeah, and left us eatin’ mush,” Bob said. “Charley Floyd left me money once before. He bought me a side of beef, too—if the butcher ever delivers it, we’ll be fryin’ steak every night.”
Then she looked Ruby in the eye, a direct look that took Ruby slightly aback.
“Ol’ Charley leads you a merry chase, don’t he?” Bob said.
Ruby didn’t know what to say, so she just shrugged.
“George had a whore, too,” Bob informed her. “Had her for years. I think she died a week or two after George did.”
“Did you hate her?” Ruby asked.
Bob shook her head. “Whores gotta live, too,” she said. “I hated George, even though I loved him. He could have all the pussy he could handle, anytime he cared to come home—what’d he need a whore for?”
“Did you ever ask him?” Ruby asked.
“Sure, I asked him,” Bob said. “The first time I asked, he lied. The second time I asked, he told me to mind my own business. I told him where he put his pecker was my business, and he popped me. After that, I kept my trap shut. I didn’t have much choice.”
“Charley said George talked about you all the time,” Ruby told her. “Charley said he talked about you so much, he got tired of listening.”
“I don’t doubt it—talk’s cheap,” Bob said. “Any hard dick can make a baby, but hard dick sure can’t raise one. George was a rover—I expect Charley is, too.”
“He’s got no choice but to rove,” Ruby said. “Not now.”
“If he’s much like George, he’d rove anyway,” Bob told her. “When I married George, I was young and foolish. I thought he’d stay home and help me put in a garden, and maybe raise a few kids. We planted one garden, and George was off rodeoin’ before the tomatoes got ripe.
“I never forgave him,” she added. “I meant for us to pick those tomatoes together. Maybe that’s why he took up with that whore. She was from town, I heard … she probably didn’t care about growin’ tomatoes together.”
The look of disappointment on Bob Birdwell’s face was so sharp, it scared Ruby—it made her want to leave, as fast as she could. But she couldn’t bring herself to drive off and leave the lonely woman and the three ragged children in the cold, bare house. Every time she looked at Bob’s kids, she felt that she and Dempsey were lucky in some ways. She needed a little relief, though. Maybe Bob’s mood would pick up if she left for a while. So she did what Charley had done: drove to the little grocery store and bought groceries, including peppermint sticks for the children. The butcher, looking embarrassed, insisted on sticking the side of beef he owed the Birdwells in Ruby’s trunk. It was huge; the trunk wouldn’t close. It took all of Bob’s and Ruby’s strength to carry the meat into the smokehouse when she got it back to Bob’s.
“There was supposed to be a pig, too, according to Charley,” Bob said. “I ain’t complainin’, but if he bought it, I want the pig, too.”
“The butcher said his truck was broke,” Ruby told her. “He said he’d bring the pig soon as he got it fixed.”
There was a bottle of gin in Ruby’s car that Charley had overlooked when he left.
“I hope you don’t mind gin,” she told Bob, while they were frying some meat. “Charley drove off without it.”
“Do you regret not going with him?” Bob asked her.
“Going with Charley? He wouldn’t have taken me,” Ruby said. “Charley’s on the run. He’s Public Enemy Number Two now.”
“I regret not goin’ with George. I should’ve insisted,” Bob said. “If I’d been in Boley, at least I might have shot the son-of-a-bitch that killed my man.”
The Birdwell kids ate their peppermint sticks before supper. Bob was finishing off the bottle of gin, when Ruby left to drive home to Dempsey.
13
“Go with me, Ma,” Charley said. “We’ll just stay a minute.”
“I don’t want to go to the graveyard with you, Charley,” Mamie said. She was making him chicken and dumplings, and cutting salt pork into a pot of red beans. Charley sat at his mother’s kitchen table, drinking his coffee out of a saucer.
“You go pay your respects if you want to, son,” Mamie told him. “I paid my respects to your pa while he was alive. I’m not one for standing around graveyards.”
“I got to be skedaddling north,” Charley told her. “I came here against my better judgment.”
“Why did you, son?” Mamie asked. He was neatly shaven, and wearing a suit and tie. Mamie could not quite get used to seeing him look so fancy. He had grown up in overalls, just like his brother Brad. So far as she knew, Bradley Floyd didn’t even own a suit. They were very different men, Bradley and Charley; and yet, they’d had her for a mother and Walter Floyd for a father. Bradley was fair, plain, hardworking, and sad; Charley was dark, handsome, wild, and sad. Mamie could remember when both her boys had happy eyes.
“I just wanted to come home,” Charley said. “Every once in a while I feel like comin’ home. It’s nice to sit in this kitchen and watch you cook. Nobody’s cooking ever smells as good as yours, Ma, or tastes as good once it’s done.
“I don’t know when I’ll get this pleasure again,” he added. “It’ll probably be a while before I can get back to see Ruby and Dempsey, either.”
To Charley’s surprise, Mamie had taken up pipe smoking in her old age. Lots of old mountain women in the Cookson Hills smoked corncob pipes, but Charley had never supposed his mother would acquire the habit.
“When’d you give in to tobacco?” he asked, as he was eating his chicken and dumplings, and soaking up red bean juice with several biscuits.
“It’s somethin’ to do while I’m worrying,” Mamie informed him. “If I didn’t have my chickens and my pipe, it’d get mighty lonesome around here. I been thinking of gettin’ turkeys, and maybe a few guinea hens. If Bessie quits Bradley, her and me might go into the turkey business.”
“Why would Bessie quit Brad?” Charley asked.
“Why is water wet, and dirt dry?” Mamie asked. “I don’t know the answers to riddles of the human species. But if she does quit him, her and me might just do it—it’d be something to occupy us.”
Charley lingered in the kitchen till dark fell. Mamie had nothing on hand to make a pie with, but she had some clabber and she sprinkled a little cinnamon on it for her son’s dessert.
“You look wild as a bobcat, Charley,” she said, when it was full dark. “Why don’t you go out to the Rocky Mountains, or somewhere you ain’t well known. You need a rest from all this runnin’.”
“I’m well known everywhere, Ma—thanks to Mr. Hoover,” Charley said. “I’ll be better going north, where there’s more people. I went out to the Rockies a few years back, and got arrested before I could walk three blocks to a hotel.
“Strangers stick out more there,” he added. “I’ll do better up in Clevel
and or Chicago—somewhere that’s full of people.”
“Did you leave Ruby any money?” Mamie asked. “Times are so hard now, folks ain’t sending out their laundry much. That’s about the only work Ruby knows.”
“I left her some cash,” Charley said. “There’s some people from Oklahoma City who’ve been after her to do a show. It might pay pretty good, if it works out.”
“A show?” Mamie asked, surprised. “What could Ruby do in a show? She can barely sing a lick, as I recall.”
“I don’t think she’d have to do much singin’,” Charley said. “They’re thinkin’ of calling it ‘Crime Doesn’t Pay.’ All she’d have to do is talk about how hard it is to be the wife of a bandit like me.”
“Why, they ought to have hired me,” Mamie said. “I could tell ’em how hard it is to be the mother of a bandit like you.”
Mamie Floyd looked at her boy, in his pretty suit with his wild eyes. It was easy to be angry about how he lived his life while he was off living it, but it wasn’t easy to stay angry once he showed up at her door. Charley had a look about him, an innocence, that tugged at her heart every time she looked at his face. It must be just as hard for Ruby, she thought.
“I bet I could lecture them proper on how hard it is,” she added. Charley had tears in his eyes when he gave her a hug and a kiss. “You’re still the best cook, Ma,” he said. “Them dumplings was first-rate.”
“There’s half a dozen biscuits left,” Mamie told him. “If you’re going to be drivin’ all night, you oughta take ’em with you. I worry about your eatin’ habits, when I don’t see you for months at a time.”
She wrapped the biscuits for him, and made him two egg sandwiches for the road. Charley had always had a big appetite for egg sandwiches.
When he finally drove off, Mamie let a couple of her favorite hens into the kitchen and listened to them cackle, while she smoked her pipe.
14
Knowing Beulah would expect a bauble, Charley stopped in a little jewelry store in Cincinnati and bought her a gold watch with rhinestones around the face. When he finally found the rooming house where they were staying, Adam Richetti was sitting in the car, smoking and sulking.
When Charley parked behind him and walked up to shake hands, Richetti stuck a paw out the window, but his general demeanor didn’t improve.
“Hi, bud,” Charley said. “Long time no see.”
“Hi,” Richetti mumbled.
“It’s nice you’re so glad to see me,” Charley remarked. “Are you livin’ in the car now, Eddie?”
“I slapped Rose—she sassed me one time too many,” Richetti informed him.
“Rose sassed you?” Charley asked. “Rose never sasses anybody. You sure it wasn’t Beulah? Sass is her middle name.”
“Aw, it was Rose all right,” Richetti said. “She called me a pud—she must think I’m soft, but I showed her different.”
“Called you a what?” Charley asked.
“A pud,” Richetti said.
“What’s a pud?” Charley asked. “I ain’t familiar with the term.”
“I ain’t either, but I won’t tolerate insults,” Richetti said. “Rose deserved a shiner, and she got one.”
“If you don’t know what a pud is, how do you know it’s an insult?” Charley asked. “Maybe she meant it as a compliment.”
“I doubt it,” Richetti said, taking the dim view. “Even if it was, I don’t appreciate it.”
At that point, Beulah stuck her head out a second-story window, her hair in pin curls. She looked excited.
“Charley, get up here!” Beulah yelled. “Quit talkin’ to that skunk, he just gave Rose a nosebleed.”
Several people walking along the street looked up when Beulah yelled his name.
“Why don’t you rent an airplane and write my name on a sheet and pull it all over town?” Charley said, when he got upstairs. “That way, Hoover don’t have to even look for me.”
“Shut up, you lug,” Beulah said, jumping into his arms. “I been waitin’ months for a kiss, and all you want to do is pick on me.”
Charley gave her the kiss, and then a few more.
“Where’s Rose? I wanna see her shiner,” he asked, when they stopped kissing for a moment.
“She locked herself in the closet,” Beulah said. “She’s crying, I ’spect. It was a nosebleed, not a shiner.”
“It ain’t safe to leave Eddie in the car,” Charley pointed out. “He’ll either steal it, or start shooting pedestrians. Rose just needs to keep her head tilted back for a few minutes, that’ll stop the bleedin’.”
“Got anything for me, cutie?” Beulah asked, her eyes dancing.
“Here, since you’re so bold as to ask,” Charley said, giving her the watch with the rhinestones around the face.
“Aw, are them diamonds?” Beulah asked, throwing her arms around his neck.
“What else would they be?” Charley lied. “Do we have our own bedroom in this joint, or do we have to bunk on the couch?”
Hearing Charley’s voice, Rose Baird came out of the closet.
“How’s Bradley?” she asked, before Charley could give her a hug. He couldn’t tell that she had either a shiner or a nosebleed.
“Bradley’s lonesome for you—Ma thinks Bessie might leave him, if he don’t improve,” Charley said. He himself didn’t expect Bessie to leave Bradley, but he didn’t see much harm in telling Rose what she wanted to hear, especially since she had been putting up with the likes of Adam Richetti for several months.
“I wish I could see Brad,” Rose said simply.
“You can’t, but you can see my new watch with diamonds on it,” Beulah said, handing the watch to Rose. Charley wished she hadn’t—Beulah was too nearsighted to tell a rhinestone from a diamond, and much too vain to wear specs—but Rose had excellent vision. Charley tried to look at her, to indicate that she should go along with his little deception, but Rose was thinking of Bradley, and didn’t see his look.
“Aw, who’re you kiddin’?” she asked her sister. “Them’s rhinestones.”
“Hey, girls, let’s go eat,” Charley said quickly. “My stomach’s empty as Eddie’s head.”
“What makes you think you can tell a diamond if you see one?” Beulah asked—she was annoyed with her sister.
“’Cause I worked in the five-and-dime, and I can tell rhinestones when I see ’em,” Rose said calmly.
“Why’d you call Eddie a pud?” Charley asked—he was anxious to change the subject.
“A pud? What’s a pud?” Rose asked.
“It’s what he said you called him,” Charley told her.
“I never heard of a pud,” Rose said. “I called him a dud, and I could have said worse.”
“I don’t blame you,” Charley said. “I’ve called him worse, myself.”
Beulah peered at the watch—the stones that sparkled in her blurred vision seemed diamondlike to her. Even if they weren’t, she wasn’t interested in having her mood dampened, not just then. After all, Charley was back, and full of energy.
“It ain’t Charley’s fault you got a dumb Sam for a boyfriend,” Beulah said. “Go fix your face, and let’s get some eats.”
Richetti was still sitting in the car when the three of them came out. Charley got in the front seat with Richetti, and the Baird sisters slipped in the back.
“She didn’t call you a pud—it ain’t a word,” Charley informed Richetti.
“Mind your own business, you wasn’t even there,” Richetti said. “I know what I heard.”
“You don’t know that, or anything else, either,” Beulah informed him testily. “Start the car and drive, Charley’s starving.”
“I won’t put up with but so much,” Richetti said, trying to stand his ground.
“Aw, applesauce,” Charley said. “I been back half an hour, and I ain’t heard a pleasant word yet. Let’s have some of this famous Cincinnati chili, maybe it’ll cool you two off.”
While they were eating bowls of the
famous chili, the man in the next booth got up to leave. He put down a nickel tip for the waitress, but neglected to take the newspaper he had been reading. He went on out the door, chewing a toothpick, and Richetti promptly reached back and grabbed the paper.
“Let me have the funnies,” Charley said.
“Why can’t I read ’em first?” Richetti asked.
“I been traveling the back roads,” Charley said. “What papers I’ve seen didn’t have much in the way of funnies.”
“Let’s see if any good movies are playin’,” Rose said. “I’d like to see a movie—maybe there’s something with Jean Harlow in it.”
“I’ve been told I look a lot like Jean Harlow, myself,” Beulah said, pouring a little more ketchup on her chili.
Richetti gave Charley the funnies, and kept the business page. He liked to think he understood the stock market. Beulah and Rose huddled over the movie ads.
“They don’t put Jean Harlow in enough movies,” Rose said, disappointed that her idol wasn’t in any of the movies playing in Cincinnati at the time.
When Charley finished the funnies, he turned to the front page, to see if any wars had broken out. His eyes immediately spotted a big headline:
DILLINGER KILLED IN CHICAGO!
PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE
NABBED BY G-MEN
“Oh, no,” he groaned—he felt like all the breath had been knocked out of him. He looked out the window for a moment, and then back at the headline. A skinny waitress walked over and handed him their check. Charley took it without looking at it, and started to read the story under the headline.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Beulah asked. She noticed that Charley suddenly looked peaked. “Don’t the Cincinnati chili agree with you?”
“They got Dillinger,” Charley said, handing her the paper.
“Who did?” Richetti asked, startled out of his dream of Wall Street riches.