“Don’t do that!” Ruby said, jumping back. “Your feet smell. What are we gonna do about the policeman?”
“Nothin’,” Charley said. “Cops have to live somewhere. There’s no law saying a cop can’t live across the street from a bandit.”
“But what if he recognizes you?” Ruby said. “He might see a poster or something.”
Charley just yawned. “Across the street from a cop is probably the safest place to live,” Charley said. “It’s the last place anybody would expect to find me.”
Ruby wasn’t satisfied. “I still think we oughta move,” she said. “I’ll be a nervous wreck in a week, wondering when he’s gonna recognize you.”
“You’d worry on a clear day with the doors locked,” Charley said, reaching for her with his hand this time. Ruby eluded him, and began to unpack the soap.
“If the doors were locked and you were on the inside, I’d have plenty to worry about,” she said. “Gettin’ pregnant, for one thing.”
Charley had been looking cheerful and sort of silly—his hair was all cowlicks—but he turned gloomy the minute she made the remark about getting pregnant.
“I wish we could have another kid,” he said. “I wish we could have five or six. Dempsey deserves some brothers and sisters—we had ’em.”
Ruby felt melancholy, too. There was a time when they could have had five or six children—they both would have enjoyed a big family, she thought. But that time was past. Charley could wake up any day and find himself bound for prison, or worse. Ruby could never watch him drive off calmly, even if he was just going to get smokes—she could never be sure he’d come back alive. There was a thousand-dollar reward posted for him already, and the bounty would only go up if he kept robbing banks, which she knew he would: it was what he did. It wasn’t a choice anymore. Charley couldn’t get a real job, like everybody else—it was too late. She wasn’t foolish enough to think he would change, just because she and Dempsey had come to live with him.
“Let’s just enjoy Dempsey, Charley,” Ruby said, sitting on the mattress beside him. “Let’s just enjoy this time together.”
Later, Charley looked out the window and noticed the policeman changing a flat on the old police car. He immediately went downstairs, crossed the street, shook hands with the man, and helped with the jack.
“Thanks, Mr. Hamilton,” the policeman said, shaking hands again when they finished. “I ain’t mechanical, changing tires is about the extent of it.”
“Call me Charley,” Charley told him.
2
On the day they were supposed to go fishing, Dempsey was the first one up. He quickly put on his clothes and slipped downstairs to the kitchen, just on the off chance that his mama or his daddy might be there. But they weren’t. The sun wasn’t even up; there was mist in the back yard. His daddy told him they would go out and dig worms, first thing, and they had even got an old coffee can and put some dirt in it, for the worms to live in.
But his daddy wasn’t up. Dempsey’s new pole, with the line and the cork and the hook already fixed, was leaning up against the back porch. It was annoying that his parents were sleeping so late. Dempsey tiptoed back upstairs, just to make sure his daddy wasn’t shaving, or his mama brushing her teeth. His daddy wasn’t shaving, and his mama wasn’t brushing her teeth, either, so he very carefully pushed open the door to their bedroom, and peeked in.
When Dempsey peeked into the bedroom, he saw that his mother and father were still asleep, their arms around one another. The rising sun had just begun to shine through the bedroom window, covering them with light. Dempsey was a little disappointed; it was the day his daddy had promised to take him fishing, emphasizing how important it was to get up early and be at the river just as the sun was coming up.
Now the sun was up, and they weren’t even at the river yet. But his mama and daddy looked so peaceful and so happy, sleeping in the sunlight with their arms around each other, that Dempsey decided to let them sleep. Maybe they were extra tired from staying up too late or something.
He went back downstairs, and found a biscuit in the oven. The biscuit was left over from supper, but Dempsey ate it anyway. There wasn’t much else to eat. Then he found his worm can with the dirt in it on the back porch, and took it down the steps. He meant to dig for worms. There was a spade in the garage, which he carried into the back yard. To his annoyance, he discovered that the grass in the back yard was really tough grass. He wasn’t strong enough to push the spade through it. He got it through a little ways, but not deep enough to get to the worms, and when he tried to pry some dirt up, all he got was grass.
While he was struggling with the spade and the tough grass, he heard the screen on the back door slam. He looked up, and there was his daddy, with some fishing boots on and his shirt unbuttoned.
“I see an early bird, trying to be the one to get the worm,” Charley said, taking the shovel from Dempsey.
“Daddy, we’re late,” Dempsey pointed out. “The sun is up already.”
“Don’t worry about it, son,” Charley said. “I heard on the radio that the fish are sleepin’ late today. We’ll be there by the time they’re ready for breakfast.”
His daddy had no trouble with the grass—he pushed the spade right through it, and the second spadeful of dirt he dug up had seven fat, squirmy worms in it. Dempsey pulled one worm apart, trying to pull it out of the dirt, but his daddy said not to worry about it, they could use both parts of the worm for bait.
At the river, two old men were already fishing, floating quietly in a little boat.
“Daddy, why don’t we have a boat?” Dempsey asked. “If we had a boat, we could go out where the fish live.”
“It’s just one of those things we ain’t got around to yet,” Charley said. “I expect we’ll round us up a boat one of these days.” He had brought a little .22 single-shot with him, in case Dempsey wanted to plink at turtles, or bottles, or any good target that might be floating by.
After only a few minutes of fishing, Dempsey’s cork went out of sight in the brown water, and when he yanked on his pole a small, fat, shiny fish came out of the water, attached to his hook.
“It’s a perch,” his father said. “Perch are bony. Let’s throw this little feller back, and see if we can’t hook a big old catfish.”
“Where will he go now?” Dempsey asked, when he had pitched the little fish back in the river.
“He’ll go home and tell his ma an expert fisherman named Dempsey Floyd caught him and let him go,” Charley said. He had forgotten the thermos of coffee he had meant to bring, and was feeling a little empty.
“Dempsey Hamilton,” Dempsey corrected. “I’m not Dempsey Floyd anymore.”
“Sharp thinkin’, buddy,” Charley said. “You’re Dempsey Hamilton, all right.”
“Daddy, will I ever be Dempsey Floyd again?” Dempsey asked.
“Well, maybe,” Charley said. He was glad Ruby wasn’t there to hear the conversation. Dempsey’s confusion about their names, which Charley couldn’t blame him for, sometimes set her crying.
“I like Dempsey Floyd better,” Dempsey confessed. “That’s the same as my Uncle Bradley and my cousins.”
“Yep, it is,” Charley admitted. “But they live in Oklahoma, and we live in Arkansas. It’s better to be Dempsey Hamilton while we’re over here in Arkansas.”
Just then, Dempsey’s cork went way under, and when he tried to pull the fish out of the water, nothing happened. He pulled and pulled, but it was all he could do to keep the fish from pulling him into the river.
“You must have hooked Old Grandpa Catfish,” Charley said. “It’s gonna take both of us to get this monster to the bank.”
He grabbed the pole, and with the two of them pulling, they did get the monster to the bank, only it wasn’t Old Grandpa Catfish, it was a snapping turtle as big as a washtub. He had an ugly green shell with mud on it, mean little red eyes, and a snapping beak that scared Dempsey every time the big turtle snapped it.
&
nbsp; “Oh boy, that’s the end of this fishing trip,” Charley said. “This old devil looks like he wants to eat us both.”
“Daddy, I’m scared,” Dempsey said, staying as far away from the turtle as he could get. “Can’t we shoot him with our gun?”
“Be like shooting mud,” Charley said. “He’s got a brain the size of a pea—we could shoot a whole box of shells into him, and I doubt he’d die.”
“What will we do?” Dempsey asked, looking at the ugly monster.
“Want to put him in the trunk and take him home to Mama?” Charley asked. “Mama could use him for a pet.”
“No!” Dempsey said. “I don’t want to take him home!”
“The next best thing is just to cut him loose and let him go,” Charley said, getting out his pocketknife.
Just about that time, two elderly colored men with fishing poles came walking along the riverbank in the clear sunlight. When they saw that Charley was about to cut the line and let the big snapper go, they hurried over.
“Mister, could we have ’im?” one of the old men asked.
“Why, sure—take him, if you can handle him,” Charley offered. “He may take you.”
The old colored man chuckled. “No, sir,” he said. “We take him. He ain’t gonna take us.”
The old man quickly stuck his foot under the big turtle and flipped him over, and when he did, the other colored man grabbed the turtle by the tail and began to drag him up the bank.
“You men know what you’re doin’, looks like,” Charley said, admiringly. “What are you gonna do with him now that you got him?”
“Eat him, boss,” the old man said. “Makes good eatin’, Old Man Turtle.”
Then he followed his friend.
“Might make good eatin’ to them,” Charley told Dempsey. “Wouldn’t make good eatin’ to me. How about you, Dempsey? Want to eat a snappin’ turtle?”
“No thanks!” Dempsey said firmly.
3
Charley was buying smokes and rubbers at a drugstore on the main street in Fort Smith when he happened to glance at the magazine rack, and noticed his name on the cover of Police Gazette. There was a mug shot taken when he was booked in Ohio, and underneath, in big letters: “PRETTY BOY FLOYD KILLS AGAIN!”
Before paying for the smokes and the rubbers, Charley pretended to browse through the magazines for a bit. He bought Good Housekeeping and Photoplay for Ruby—she loved movie magazines, and was always looking for tips on how to make her housekeeping more efficient. Then he bought True Detective and Police Gazette for himself.
“Thanks, Mr. Hamilton,” the clerk said. “Ain’t seen the missus lately.”
“That’s because I keep her home,” Charley said, winking at the boy. “Mrs. Hamilton is so pretty I can’t allow her out on the street.”
“You’re right about that, Arkansas is nothin’ but mashers,” the boy said.
Charley drove to the river, and parked near the spot where he and Dempsey had caught the turtle. Then he read the article. Two cops had been gunned down in a little town outside Kansas City, and a witness claimed to have seen a gunman who looked exactly like Pretty Boy Floyd.
For a time, Charley felt such apprehension that it was all he could do to keep from jumping in the river and trying to swim across. If he drowned, so much the better. He had been in Fort Smith the day of the killing, helping Ruby paint the garage. He was nowhere near Kansas City, and hadn’t gunned down any cops. But there was his name, on the cover of a popular magazine. What if Dempsey was over at a friend’s house, and the kid’s parents read Police Gazette? What if one of the parents mentioned Pretty Boy Floyd, and Dempsey suddenly blurted out that Floyd was his name? Dempsey was only seven, and Floyd was his name.
For a while, Charley felt hopeless. He could lead an honest life for the rest of his years, never robbing another bank, and it still wouldn’t keep some newsie from printing lies about him. The more lies, the bigger the reward for him, dead or alive. Sooner or later, the lies would bring the cops, or a bounty hunter, or a sheriff who could shoot a deer rifle, and it would be all over.
“If I was a king, I wouldn’t allow no newspapers or no magazines, either,” he said to Ruby that night in their bedroom. Ruby was putting cream on her face.
“I’m glad you ain’t king, then,” Ruby said. “I couldn’t do without my movie magazines. Every once in a while, I need to know what Mary Pickford’s up to.”
“You won’t find it out from no magazines, because magazines don’t print the truth,” Charley said. “Every word of them is lies.”
Ruby turned, and looked at him. He had been dark during supper; he hadn’t said two words, and he didn’t want to read Dempsey his bedtime story, or tell him one, either. Sometimes Charley made up bedtime stories about Sam Bass, or Jesse James, or other outlaws, all about them hiding in caves and racing their horses over the hills and prairies and having gun battles with Indians, or Texas Rangers, or one another. Charley loved those stories as much as Dempsey, and he would keep telling them as long as Dempsey would listen.
“Tell me the Starrs, Daddy,” Dempsey would plead, after supper.
“I told you the Starrs last night, son,” Charley would say.
“Then tell me the Daltons,” Dempsey pleaded. “Tell me Jesse.”
Charley usually would relent and tell Dempsey about Jesse, since Jesse was both’s favorite. But tonight, Dempsey’d had to be content with his mother reading him a story about Daniel Boone.
“Charley honey, are you blue tonight?” Ruby asked.
Charley didn’t answer. In a way, he was sorry he had made the remark about the magazines. He didn’t want Ruby to know about the story in Police Gazette. But Ruby was free, white, and twenty-one—she could walk into the drugstore and buy the magazine herself. She couldn’t keep away from magazines; sometimes it annoyed him that she would sit at the breakfast table, reading a movie magazine, when she could be talking to him about something serious, or at least taking care that the biscuits didn’t burn.
“Why ask? You ain’t gonna answer,” Ruby said, thinking out loud.
“It was a stupid question. You can see I’m blue,” Charley replied.
“I can see it, I can even smell it,” Ruby said.
“Applesauce,” Charley said. “You can’t smell no such thing.”
“Sure I can. You smell like a wet sock when you’re blue,”she said, hoping a little joshing would bring him out of his sulk.
“So what, you smell like grease right now from that gook on your face,” Charley said.
Ruby shrugged. “Keeps me beautiful,” she said. “You wouldn’t bother with me for ten seconds if I wasn’t good-looking.”
“I might if you wasn’t so bossy,” Charley informed her.
Ruby shrugged, and let it go. She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth and combed her hair. When she came to bed, Charley handed her a copy of Police Gazette with his picture on the cover, and a big headline about him killing two policemen.
“Every word of that story is a lie,” he said while Ruby was flipping pages, trying to locate the story itself.
“Shut up and let me read it,” Ruby said. “No wonder you’re blue.”
She found the story and read it.
“It is a lie!” she said. “That was the day we bought the radio. You wasn’t nowhere near Missouri.”
“Now do you believe me about magazines?” Charley asked.
“I believe you about this piece of junk,” Ruby said, throwing the magazine across the bedroom. Then she retrieved it, and read the story again, her chest heaving.
Charley didn’t say a word. He lay in bed, smoking. Ruby’s eyes flashed, as she reread the story. But then she stopped looking so mad.
She began to look scared.
“Charley, are you sure every word of this story is a lie?” she asked.
Charley didn’t want to answer.
“You might as well tell me,” Ruby said. “If any of it’s true, I need to know. I’ll find out so
metime, even if it’s not till they come to get you.”
Charley took a long time to answer.
“I haven’t been wanting to talk about this,” he admitted.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” Ruby said, taking his hand. She moved closer to him on the bed.
“I killed that deputy in Ohio,” Charley confessed. “He shot first—it was him or me.”
“What about that one agent in Kansas City?” Ruby asked, her voice low.
“I don’t know about him,” Charley said. “It’s a maybe.”
Ruby looked at him, puzzled.
“What’s a maybe?” she asked.
“Five or six people were shooting. We were trying to get to our cars,” Charley said. “The man popped up right in front of me with a gat in his hand. I thought I just winged him. He kept shooting, and I kept running. Next day, the papers said he died. But lots of people were shooting. I didn’t think he was bad hurt. Somebody else might have put one or two bullets into him after I did, I don’t know.
“But I didn’t kill no two policemen in Missouri last month,” he added. “You know that.”
“I know that, Charley,” Ruby said, quietly.
They lay silent for several minutes. Ruby turned off the bed light. A shaft of moonlight fell across the bed. She looked to see if Charley was asleep, but his eyes were wide open.
“What are you thinking about, sweetie?” she asked.
“How hard it is to stop things, once they start,” Charley said. “I never wanted to kill nobody. I never would have, either, except that it meant survival. I gotta survive, don’t I?”
“Killing ain’t right, Charley—no matter who’s doing it—but I don’t think I could stand it if you were dead,” Ruby said. She hugged him tight, and put her face against his neck.
“Let’s don’t think about it,” Charley said. “Let’s go on a picnic tomorrow. We’ll take Dempsey to the river. We’ll get inner tubes and do some floating. We’ll have some fun.”
“That’s a fine idea, let’s do it,” Ruby said. But she couldn’t stop the scared feeling. She wanted to lie on top of her husband, to protect him from the scared feeling she felt. She snuggled as close as she could get to Charley, and put her leg over him.
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