“Probably to flirt with you, I doubt he knows I’m home,” Charley said, pushing back his chair. “Either that, or he wants me to go set a trotline with him. We caught that eighty-pound catfish on a trotline. Bert’s never got over it.”
Ruby felt anxiety rising in her when she saw the sheriff’s car, but Charley didn’t seem the least bit concerned. He had been pals with Bert Cotton all his life; maybe Bert was coming to set up a fishing trip.
“Come on in, Bert. You missed the cornbread, but there’s plenty of beans left,” Charley said, opening the front door. Bert Cotton was a tall, lanky drink of water, so skinny that if he turned sideways, a fellow would have to look close to spot him. He had left Sallisaw to go work in the oil fields for a while; then, in a wink, he had come home and got himself elected sheriff of Sequoyah County.
“Sorry to interrupt your supper,” Bert said politely.
“You ain’t interrupting it, you’re just in time for it—Ruby’s made a cobbler,” Charley said. “Get in here, I’m lettin’ in flies.”
Charley stepped outside, since Bert didn’t seem to want to step in. The next thing he knew, Bert had handcuffed him, both hands. He did it so quick and so smooth that Charley felt like a fool. He had walked out his own front door, right into a pair of handcuffs.
“Is this a joke, bud?” Charley asked, feeling anger rise.
Bert looked him right in the eye, perfectly friendly and perfectly firm.
“Nope, I’m arrestin’ you, Charley,” he said.
Ruby was on her way to the door with Dempsey in her arms when Bert said it. When she saw that Charley was handcuffed, she almost dropped the baby. It was as if a hole had suddenly opened up in her life, and she had fallen into it. Solid ground had been there a moment before, but now there was only empty space.
“If this is a joke, I wish you’d waited till I finished supper,” Charley told him. “Take these damn things off, and let’s go eat.”
“We’re goin’ to the jail, Charley,” Bert informed him. “Ruby can bring down a dish of cobbler a little later, if she’s a mind to.”
At that moment, Charley remembered what the elderly guard had said—Ma Ash had said it, too: The cops will be on you like flies on a turd. He had thought it was just scare talk. But here he stood, handcuffed, and it was one of his oldest buddies that had caught him, too.
“But I ain’t done nothin’, Bert!” Charley protested. In fact, he had almost forgotten about robbing the armored car, though it had happened only a little more than a week earlier. It felt more like something he had dreamed about than something that had actually happened.
But the handcuffs reminded him it wasn’t a dream—there they were, squeezing his wrists.
“You know me, you know I ain’t bad,” he said to Bert.
“Oh, I never said anything about you bein’ bad, Charley,” Bert said. “I don’t think you’re bad, particularly. But I do think you robbed an armored car, up in St. Louis, which is why I’m takin’ you in.”
Charley turned his face for a moment, looking for Ruby’s. She was standing just inside the screen; he could hear Dempsey fussing. The sun was setting, and the screen was golden with light. But he couldn’t see Ruby. All he could see was the golden screen.
“It’s all right, honey, it’s a mistake,” Charley said, in the direction of the amber screen. “Bert’s just doin’ his job. I’ll go on down to the jail and straighten this out. Keep the cobbler warm.”
“With the evidence we got, she’d have to keep it warm several years at least, before you’ll be back to eat it,” Bert said. “Ruby, you’re welcome to bring a dish on down to the jail—I’m sure it’s first-rate cobbler.”
Ruby didn’t say a word. She knew she ought to say something to comfort her husband; but her throat closed up, and she couldn’t speak.
When Dempsey saw his daddy being led away, he began to squall. Charley looked so forlorn, walking across the yard to the sheriff’s car, that Ruby could hardly stand it. In just a few moments, he seemed smaller, as if he had shrunk. Tears began to sting her eyelids; she felt like squalling herself.
Then she remembered she had set the coffeepot on the stove. Charley liked strong coffee with his pie. Ruby stumbled back into the kitchen, and moved the coffeepot. Then she sat down at the table, and bawled. Dempsey managed to get hold of a small chunk of corn-bread, which he promptly crammed in his mouth. She raked most of it out, but he swallowed a little bit, and choked and sputtered and slobbered until he could get enough air in his lungs to squall some more. Ruby let him squall. All she could think of was Bert’s comment about several years passing before Charley would be back to eat his pie.
Several years? She knew there was no way she could stand it. Alone, just her and Dempsey, for several years? Thinking about it made her numb in the head—she had gone numb like that when her grandpa died, when she realized she would never see him again.
Dempsey finally stopped squalling, and began to bite on his teddy bear. Ruby had a little coffee herself, and then she dished up a big plate of cobbler to carry down to her husband at the jail. It was vinegar cobbler, with raisins in it, Charley’s favorite.
12
“Don’t sit over there and sull up on me,” Bert said, as he was driving Charley to jail. He had known Charley long enough to recognize when he was mad, and Charley was mad enough to bite.
“You said it to Ruby yourself,” Bert added. “I got my job to do.”
“You’re mighty slick with them handcuffs, bud,” Charley said. “If I’d had any idea you was about to pull a trick like that on me, I’da knocked you into next week.”
“Stuff like that just adds to your sentence,” Bert advised.
“There wouldn’t have been no sentence,” Charley informed him. “I’d have been gone down the road. You and no other law would’ve got tin bracelets on me.”
Bert didn’t answer.
“I think you arrested me ’cause I bought a car that’s twice as fast a this jalopy,” Charley said. “Since when is it a crime to buy a new car?”
“It ain’t a crime to buy a new car,” Bert told him. “But it is a crime to buy one with money stolen from the Kroger Bakery in St. Louis.”
“I never heard of no Kroger Bakery,” Charley said. “I been in Kansas City most the time.
“Me and you been friends since the third grade,” he added, looking at Bert reproachfully.
“Seems like you was smarter in the third grade, Charley,” Bert said. “I’m a sheriff, not a saint, and I can’t say what I might have done if I’d been lookin’ at an armored car full of money. But one thing I can say is that if I pulled a robbery, I wouldn’t be leavin’ evidence like this around—at least, I hope I wouldn’t.”
He reached in his shirt pocket, and pulled out one of the little paper bands that the fifty-dollar bills had been wrapped in. The paper band was orange. The stamp on it read: Tower Grove Bank, St. Louis, Missouri.
“I don’t even know what that is,” Charley said. “I never seen it before. Why would you arrest me because of a little scrap of paper?”
“Because I found it in the glove box of your new Studebaker,” Bert said. “This one, and a few more like it.”
“Who asked you to look in my glove box?” Charley said. “I never thought you’d be sneaky enough to search my car.”
“You was smarter in the third grade,” Bert said.
Charley stopped feeling mad, and began to feel sick. He remembered that Ma Ash had mentioned a place called Jeff City, where they put fellows that did crimes in Missouri. He didn’t know where Jeff City was, but it was bound to be a long way from Ruby and Dempsey, and Bradley, and Ma and Pa. He began to get a lonesome feeling, even though he was still in his hometown. The lonesome feeling made his stomach feel real empty, all of a sudden.
“I hope Ruby don’t forget to bring me some pie,” he said. “I could sure use a little pie.”
13
After she walked home from the jail and washed the pie dish, Ruby
lay awake for many hours, listening to the crickets, and looking at the shadows the moon made on the plains. Now and then, a cloud would block the moonlight, and the night would seem very dark; she wished there could be Charley beside her, with his arms around her, when it grew so dark.
Then the cloud would move on up toward Kansas, and the silvery moonlight would shine into the little bedroom. Ruby scarcely moved, and her eyes were wide open. She could hear Dempsey’s light, regular breathing. He was in a crib across the room—Bradley Floyd, Charley’s brother, had made them the crib as a wedding present.
Ruby tried to imagine what several years without Charley would mean. The thought made her so numb that she hardly even cried—now and then, she leaked a tear.
In the jail, Charley had just sat. He looked like a balloon that had had most of the air let out of it. By the time she got there with the cobbler, he had lost his appetite. Bert Cotton ate most of the pie; Charley told her to let Bert have it. When she asked him if he had done the robbery, he just looked at her sadly. He never gave her an answer one way or the other. It was as if he had decided to stop living, in the last half hour, and he was already so far away that Ruby couldn’t reach him.
“Ten years, I’d ’spect,” Bert said, when she asked him how long Charley’s sentence might be, if he got convicted.
Bert was immediately sorry he said it, the way Ruby’s face turned pale. Ruby was a girl—just eighteen—and she was a nice girl, too. She didn’t deserve to have such misery heaped on her so young.
“It might be less,” he said, hoping some color would return to her cheeks. “They might let him out early, if he behaves.”
Ruby didn’t sleep.
Later, toward morning, she went to the kitchen and lit the lamp. Then she sat at the kitchen table, and drank cold coffee for what remained of the night.
14
The state of Missouri sent two deputies all the way to Sallisaw to bring Charley back to St. Louis. Both of them were big and round. When they marched him onto the train, Ruby broke down. She had left Dempsey with her mother so he wouldn’t have to see his daddy handcuffed between two fat deputies. Bradley and Bessie, his wife, had come to the station to see him off, and to help Ruby as best they could. Mamie Floyd had visited him in jail once; she didn’t say a whole lot, and neither did he. Walter Floyd stayed home.
“Has Pa been coon huntin’ much?” Charley asked.
“Coon huntin’ and drinkin’,” Mamie replied—that was about the extent of the conversation.
“Hurry back, bud,” Bradley said, as they were putting Charley on the train. He felt silly saying it, since it was obvious Charley wouldn’t be hurrying back. But Charley was his brother, and he felt like he had to say something.
“Don’t worry about Ruby none,” he added. “Me and Bessie will see that she don’t come to no harm.”
Charley just nodded. Bessie had been a good sister-in-law to Ruby. She had her arms around Ruby while Ruby sobbed. A norther had struck the night before, a strong one, and lines of prairie dust were skating along the bare platform.
“Your wife’s got some squaw in her, ain’t she?” one of the fat deputies said, as the train pulled out. Charley didn’t answer. Both deputies chewed tobacco, and they passed an old coffee can back and forth between them, using it as a spittoon.
Ruby had come to the jail four or five times a day. She was so torn up about what had happened that Charley was almost glad when it came time for them to put him on the train and take him north. Ruby had kept wanting him to talk about the robbery—to admit it, or deny it, or explain why he did it, or something.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, and that was all he said. Sometimes at night in his cell, he could almost convince himself that he hadn’t really done it—that someone who looked like him had taken over his body for a while, tied up the guards, and taken the money. How could he explain to Ruby how easy it had seemed, and how polite he had been to the guards? It had been such a foggy morning, and the whole thing hadn’t taken five minutes. It had seemed so simple. He never dreamed anything could go wrong, even though the guard warned him, and so did Ma Ash. The thought of having to be in jail for years never crossed his mind, or Billy Miller’s mind, either, so far as he knew.
But now the train was moving north, picking up speed. Sallisaw was behind them. There was nothing to see out the window but the windy prairie, and now and then, a farmhouse. One of the guards offered him a chew, but Charley shook his head.
“Don’t you chew?” the guard asked, surprised at having his offer declined.
Again, Charley shook his head.
“I reckon he’ll be chewin’ before he sees this part of the country again,” the other guard said. “There ain’t nothin’ to do in the Jeff City pen but chew.”
Charley kept his eyes on the floor. He tried not to think about Ruby and Dempsey. He tried not to think about anything.
His insides felt as cold and thick as mud.
15
“Well, you ain’t such a pretty boy now, are you?” Ma Ash said, looking at Charley—he was slouched in one of the straight-backed chairs in the ugly, green-walled visiting room in St. Louis City Jail.
“Who ever said I was pretty?” Charley asked.
“I said it, and I doubt I was the first gal you ever heard it from, either,” Ma replied, handing him a pack of smokes.
“They sheared me like a sheep,” Charley said, ruefully. “If I don’t shave quick in the morning, I got more hair on my face than they left on my head.”
“Lice,” Ma Ash said. “It was in the newspaper. This old jail is crawling with lice.”
Charley bristled at that, although the short barber with the fat stogie told him the same story while he was shearing off his hair with a pair of clippers that looked just like those they used to shear sheep down in Oklahoma.
“Lice,” the little barber told him. “They like to hide up near the roots.”
“I don’t have lice, get me?” Charley told him, indignant. “I know enough to keep myself clean.”
“You’ll have ’em if they don’t sentence you quick and ship you out of here,” the barber said. He had an enormous belly, and wore an undershirt. The ash from his cigar kept dropping on the undershirt, but the barber either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Shock after shock of Charley’s thick hair fell to the floor. Now and then, the barber took the cigar out of his mouth for a second, and moved it from one side of his mouth to the other, causing more ash to drop off. The ash that made it past the fat man’s stomach mingled with Charley’s hair on the grimy jailhouse floor.
“I never had lice in my life,” Charley insisted, first to the barber, then to Ma Ash.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Ma said. She had on a coat with rabbit fur around the collar.
“There won’t be no first time for me gettin’ lice,” Charley said. “I’d know it if I had any.”
Ma Ash grinned. “You’re a stubborn little son-of-a-bitch,” she said. “Maybe that’s what I like about you—that, and the fact you was a mighty pretty boy until you ran afoul of the law and got stuck in this filthy jail.”
“I don’t intend to be here long,” Charley said, realizing that his tone so far hadn’t been too polite. Ma Ash was his first visitor. He had been in City Jail nearly a week, waiting for his day in court. Any visitor was welcome, particularly one who was thoughtful enough to bring him smokes.
“You won’t be here long,” Ma said. “But where you’re going will make this place look like the Garden of Eden.”
Charley kept quiet. He had already heard too many stories about the Jeff City pen. Half the crooks in City Jail had been in Jeff City at one time or another, for one crime or another; they all had stories about what a rough place it was.
“First time I was in Jeff City, I seen a guard jab a crowbar right through a man’s foot,” an old burglar told Charley. The old man’s name was Tommy Pippin. Charley shared a cell with him for two days. The first night, Tomm
y had been coming off a long drunk, and he had the shakes so bad he had to hold onto the bars to keep from rattling his false teeth clear out of his head.
“Ouch!” Charley said, when he heard the crowbar story. “Why’d he do that?”
“Just took a notion to,” Tommy said, still shaking.
“You wouldn’t have any snuff, would you?” he asked, a little later.
“Don’t use it,” Charley replied. “My grandpa uses it, though.”
Tommy Pippin considered that information for a moment.
“What’s the chance of your grandpa gettin’ nabbed?” he asked, finally. “I sure could use a dip.”
Ma Ash’s deep-set dark eyes were studying Charley closely. “Who’s your shyster?” she inquired. His jailbird shirt didn’t fit. His wrists stuck out of his shirtsleeves a good two inches. The pants, on the other hand, were too long. They hid his feet completely, and he had been stepping on his own trouser legs when he came into the visiting room. With his sheared head and clothes that didn’t fit, he looked about seventeen. Looking at him, as dejected as a boy could be, made some of Ma Ash’s motherly feelings come back.
“My what?” Charley asked.
“Your lawyer,” Ma said.
“I ain’t seen none yet,” Charley told her. “Where’s Billy Miller?”
Ma Ash snorted. “That little fool hightailed it to Indiana,” she said. “He’s got a sister in Indianapolis.”
“I hope they don’t catch Billy,” Charley said.
“Listen, bud, your good heart’s gonna be your downfall,” Ma Ash pointed out. “You need to learn to look after number one. If you don’t, you won’t last long in this business.”
“I ain’t in no business,” Charley said. “I just made one mistake.”
“Yeah, but you’re young, you’ll make more,” Ma Ash said. “I’m older than you, and I’m still making ’em.”
“You ain’t in jail,” Charley reminded her.
“I’m not?” Ma said. “Then where are we havin’ this conversation, the Hotel Statler?”