He had been running so hard he didn’t hear the riflemen or the shots. Only as he came out of the spin and tried to move toward the trees again did he spot them. They knelt at the foot of the slope, not a hundred yards away. A G-man in a brown hat stood behind them, pointing. Charley drew one of his guns, but popping at the deputies at that distance would be as futile as shooting at turtles in a tank.
“Shoot—don’t let him get to the trees!” he heard the G-man shout.
Charley knew he had to run, but his feet were heavy, as if caked with pounds and pounds of Red River mud. He began to move toward the trees again, but so slowly that he wondered if he could be in one of those dreams where he never quite reached the place he was headed for. But it couldn’t be a dream; just minutes ago, he had stolen a flivver and run through a cornfield. He was awake and moving, but too slow. He dropped the pistol, but didn’t stop to pick it up. He was thirty yards from the woods now. Out of the corner of his eye, he could still see the kneeling riflemen. There was not a weed or a sapling between him and the deputies—just open hill. If you can’t hit me now, you’re piss-poor shots, Charley thought.
Then he fell. Something had gone wrong with his balance. Of all the times for his sense of balance to fail him, when he was almost safe!
“Don’t let him get up!” the G-man shouted. Before the next bullet hit him, Charley realized what had happened to his speed and his balance. He had been running too hard to hear the guns, or feel the bullets. But the bullets had found him. He looked up, and saw that the welcoming trees were still thirty yards away.
Charley heard feet behind him; he heard the click of a rifle bolt. He pulled out his other pistol, and threw it as far as he could. No sense inviting assassination, not while he was still breathing. He saw a line of men coming up the slope toward him, all with rifles or revolvers drawn.
“Hold off!” the G-man said. The rifle whose bolt had clicked behind him didn’t fire.
“He’s down—you got him, Bob!” another voice said.
“He’s hit in the lights, he’s done for, if it’s him,” a third voice said.
Charley knew he must be wounded and wounded bad, but he had felt nothing, and didn’t know where the slugs had hit him. His feet were growing numb, which was worrisome.
“He had two pistols—wonder why he didn’t shoot?” a young voice asked.
“Son, we were way out of range,” the sheriff said. “He’s stayed on the loose all these years, he’s no fool. He wouldn’t waste ammunition.”
“I would’ve wasted some, if I was him,” the boy said. “I’d figure maybe I’d get lucky.”
Charley lay back on the grass. He was caught; the running was over, though the numbness in his feet still troubled him. Pretty soon, he was surrounded by legs, some of them in leather boots. A few of the men’s feet were as muddy as his own feet had felt when they got heavy, right after his curious spin.
The skinny G-man in the brown hat knelt beside him. The hat was a bad fit, in Charley’s view.
“That hat don’t fit,” Charley remarked. “You must’ve been in a hurry when you bought it.”
Purvis ignored the remark. “You’re Pretty Boy Floyd, aren’t you?” he asked.
“That’s your guess, mister,” Charley said. “I ain’t tellin’ you sons-of-bitches nothin’ …”
The truth was, he could summon little interest in the legs massed around him, or the feet, or the dangling rifle barrels, some of which were still pointed at him. He felt like taking a nap; he wanted to drowse, while he digested the good pork chops.
The thought nagged at him, suddenly, that he might have forgotten to pay the woman for the meal. After all, she had interrupted her work to feed him. He thought he had offered her money, but he couldn’t remember. He had a bill in his coat pocket, and managed to get it out. He couldn’t see it very well; he thought the bill was a ten, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Mister, give this to Mrs. Conkle,” Charley said. “She’s a first-rate cook … I meant to pay her, but I may have forgot.”
“Floyd, you’re losing blood,” Purvis snapped. “Just own up to it … you’re Pretty Boy, aren’t you?”
Charley lay still for a moment on the soft grass. He had never been much for sleeping on the ground, but the slope he lay on was as comfortable as a bed. The last of the day’s sunlight shone on the legs of the deputies, and on their rifle barrels.
“Say, didn’t you get Dillinger?” Charley asked. He had a vague recollection of seeing the skinny G-man’s picture in a newspaper, though the hat he’d worn then had a better fit.
“I was there, yes …” Purvis said, impatient. The man’s eyelids were half closed—Purvis saw that he was dying.
“Are you Pretty Boy Floyd?” he asked, once more.
Charley thought about it for a second; he remembered the night Beulah Baird, pretty as the sunrise, had bounced into Lulu’s dining room in St. Louis. She had started off their acquaintance by calling him Pretty Boy, and the nickname had stuck, though he himself had never liked it. It rankled him that a skinny little G-man, with an illfitting fedora, would be barking it at him now, when all he wanted to do was take a long nap.
“Get this,” Charley said, raising up on one elbow. “That ain’t my moniker … the papers started that … I’m Charles … Arthur … Floyd.”
“It’s him, all right,” an old man said. “It’s Pretty Boy.”
“Yep, it’s him,” another voice said.
“That’s him … that’s Pretty Boy Floyd,” the young man said.
“Damn right it is, that’s Pretty Boy,” Bob, the rifleman, said.
“Did you take part in the Kansas City Massacre?” Purvis asked.
“You Hoover boys ask too many damn questions …” he replied wearily.
Charley lay back on the grass of the easy slope, and stared at the golden evening sky for a moment.
Then he closed his eyes.
EPILOGUE
ELLEN CONKLE
When he finished his buttermilk, I got the feeling that he really didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t nothing he said. I asked him if anything was wrong, and he said no. I didn’t believe him, but men are like that—young men, particularly. They’ll look you in the eye, and deny what anybody with a lick of sense can see. Charley Floyd complimented me on my cooking, stared at that ring on his finger, and went on down the road. He had a look in his eyes that I’ll never forget—I figure he knew then that his time had run out.
Stewart Dyke was so mad about Charley running off with his car that he didn’t speak to me for a year. He decided it was all my fault. Martha couldn’t do a thing with him. If you want to know why she married a cranky fellow like Stewart, you’ll have to ask her.
Once the word got out that Pretty Boy Floyd had eaten his last meal at my house, visitors came in droves. Some of them I liked; others, I didn’t care for.
I kept the plate that I served him on, and the knife and fork, and the glass he drank the buttermilk from, for over a year. I didn’t let nobody else use any of it. Then a man came along, offered me a hundred dollars for the whole kit and caboodle, and I sold it to him.
A hundred dollars was a lot of money, in the Depression.
AGENT MELVIN PURVIS
We’d run a long way, most of it uphill. After I realized that Floyd was dead, it took me a few seconds to catch my breath. The sheriff came up beside me, and put his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s a big day for you, Purvis,” he said. “I reckon this will get you a promotion.”
“You don’t know the Director,” I told him. “What’ll happen is, it’ll get me fired.”
The sheriff looked at me like I was crazy, but like I said, he didn’t know the Director. It was Mr. Hoover’s Bureau; he wanted the headlines. If a G-man got too many headlines, that was usually the beginning of the end.
I got two big headlines in a row—Dillinger, and then Pretty Boy Floyd.
The next thing I knew, Mr. Hoover went down to Louisiana and made i
t look like he caught Alvin Karpis all by himself—that’s when the Bureau came to be known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Ten months after we shot Pretty Boy down, on a hillside in Ohio, I left the FBI.
SHERIFF JACK KILLINGSWORTH
When I got out of the car in Kansas City that night, I took a look at Charley, and I thought right then that he was a man who didn’t have long. The hounds was nipping at the wolf’s heels, and the wolf knew it.
It ain’t like me to take a shine to an outlaw, but I took a pretty good liking to Charley Floyd. We got to be plumb good friends. His sidekick, Richetti, would have shot me in an instant, but Charley wouldn’t allow it. For a man in his profession, he was a decent fellow.
I changed my mind about the golf clubs Charley offered me, and went back to get them. But I was too late—there was nothing in the car but an empty whiskey bottle. I guess some traveler with a bent for golf seen them clubs, and took them home.
Nowadays, when I think about Charley, I regret I didn’t go back a little sooner and get them clubs.
VIVIAN BROWN
Sam Raines took the news off the ticker. He must have known it would upset me, because he kind of hemmed and hawed before he told me. Sam didn’t like to be around crying women, which was why I tried to do most of my crying at home.
When he finally told me about Charley Floyd, I couldn’t help but cry—I burst right out, and cried for twenty minutes.
Later in the day, I calmed down enough to write the story for the paper. But it wasn’t the end of my sorrow. For years, I got sad every time I thought of Charley Floyd. I know he did bad things, but life isn’t all cherry pie. Some good men do bad things. Charley was good to the folks that were good to him. The country people around Sallisaw thought Charley was a decent man, and I take my cue from the folks who knew him best.
His deeds, good and bad, will be remembered forever around Oklahoma territory.
BOB BIRDWELL
I don’t think Charley Floyd had any notion of what it was to be honest. George Birdwell was the same way. Either one of them would say something and mean it, but if you expected whatever they said to hold true for more than five minutes, you’d be a fool. George would tell me he loved me fifteen times an hour when we were in bed. Then he’d get out of bed, put his boots on, kiss me goodbye, and be gone for three months.
Charley Floyd was the same. All he talked about was how much he wanted to settle down with his family, and be normal. But nobody could’ve kept him in the same place for a year if he had twenty anvils tied to his legs.
He was crazy about Ruby, and plenty fond of Beulah Baird, too. But it didn’t stop him, any more than it stopped George.
Now, me and Ruby are paying the price—Beulah, too.
BESSIE FLOYD
The train carrying Charley’s coffin came into Sallisaw at night. There were five hundred folks waiting at the station. It was two in the morning when they finally unloaded him into the hearse. We all followed the hearse through the streets. Nobody was saying much.
Thousands of people came to Akins to the funeral. Beulah and Rose showed up; at least they had the good sense not to come near Ruby.
Once or twice, I thought Ruby was going to collapse. But she got through it all, somehow.
I grabbed a photographer by the leg and yanked him out of a sycamore tree. I just got plain tired of him firing off his flash, while the preacher was trying to say a few words over Charley. He claimed later that I crippled him for life—popped his knee or something. I hope I did, too. He had no business being up in that tree in the first place.
They say the crowd was the largest seen in seven states.
Only two hundred people came to Governor Murray’s funeral.
Twenty thousand came to Charley Floyd’s.
LULU ASH
I was in the hospital, and I thought the only way I was going to be leaving there was in a box. I heard a nurse say they got Charley. I’d never meant to outlive him; I just didn’t want to.
But we don’t always have a choice, in matters like that; I outlived my own boys, and that was real hard.
Why did I have to outlive Charley Floyd? He was my last good sweetie … the ones after him were just bums.
Half the reason I’m dying is because I’m tired of bums.
BRADLEY FLOYD
My best memories of Charley are of us going off beer drinking.
There was a local brew called Choctaw—Choctaw beer. Charley drank so much of it, we nicknamed him Choc for a while. We’d find us a good fishing spot, and Charley would drink ten bottles of it before I could much more than bait my hook. Then we’d use the bottles for target practice. He was a dead shot with a rifle, but he couldn’t hit a wall with a pistol.
They say Charley killed several men. I guess when he was cornered, his aim got better.
After my brother was dead, they handcuffed him anyway, and tied his legs with a rope. I guess they were afraid the Phantom of the Ozarks might try to make one more escape.
His like won’t be seen again in Sequoyah County—not in my lifetime.
MAMIE FLOYD
When the news come, I didn’t believe it—I told everybody around home that it wasn’t so.
Later on, when I had to accept it, I sent a telegram to the U.S. Department of Justice. I forbade any pictures of him; I didn’t want no pictures of my boy laying on a cold slab. I told them to take him to a reliable undertaker, and then send him home to me.
They took the pictures anyway; I despise them for it.
It was way in the night when the train pulled into Sallisaw. Hundreds of folks were waiting outside the station—waiting to walk Charley home.
I wish he’d never left. It ain’t right for a mother to have to bury her own beloved child.
BEULAH BAIRD
“I doubt you’ll ever have anybody buy you nice presents like Charley bought you,” Rose said, when we heard he was dead. Those were the first words out of my sister’s mouth.
I slapped her face, and she cried and cried.
I never laid eyes on Ruby, until the funeral. She glared at me every time she looked my way. None of us had enough time with Charley; his wife shouldn’t begrudge me the little bit of time I had with him.
I kept him fairly happy when there was no way he could have been with Ruby. I had to work at it, too—Charley had them low moods. But when he smiled, it warmed me like the sunlight.
Later, Rose apologized for her remark. She knew it was more than presents that made me stick by Charley Floyd.
“You’re loyal, Beulah,” he told me once. “That’s the best thing a person can be—loyal.”
I wish I had Charley back, to be loyal to again.
RUBY FLOYD
After they killed Charley, I read about a Mrs. Ellen Conkle, who fed him his last meal. She didn’t have a bad word to say about him, not in any paper that I ever saw.
When some time passed, I wrote Mrs. Conkle a letter offering her my thanks for feeding Charley his last meal. I told her Charley was one of the nicest men she could ever meet; I told her that if he had lived, he would have repaid her a thousand times. The thing that made it especially nice, though, was that Charley was a man who really liked to eat.
What it means to have a broken heart is that my heart ain’t whole no more. It works just enough to get me through life—it’s like a car that will run in low gear, but not in high. And the sadness—it feels like a great big overcoat that I wear all the time and never take off, even when I go to bed at night.
That’s me, now; that’s the way it will be until the day I die. I don’t have a whole heart to live my life with anymore, or to offer anyone else. A lot of my heart died with Charley. And if it wasn’t for Dempsey, I would have followed him already.
But you can’t be that selfish—not when you have a child to raise.
DEMPSEY FLOYD
My folks were the best-looking parents any child ever had. My dad was big and handsome, and my mother was tall and beautifu
l.
I used to get out of bed early in the morning sometimes, when we all lived together as a family. I’d tiptoe down to my parents’ bedroom and peek inside. I can still see them, sleeping in their bed. My father would have his arms around my mother, and their heads would be together, like the sweethearts they were to one another. Their faces were so young and innocent. I dream about them still.
When they were in bed together, they looked just like sleeping kids.
THE END
Larry McMurtry, Pretty Boy Floyd
(Series: # )
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