Two blocks from the edge of town, Charley told Richetti to stop. A few hunters were running toward them, but they were far out of shotgun range. He got out and helped each lady off the running boards, handing them each a fifty-dollar bill.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, ladies,” Charley said, tipping his hat again.
“Why, we’re out here by Cousin Ella’s, Georgette,” the old lady said to her companion, as if surprised.
Charley jumped back into the car, and Richetti gunned it to the limit.
“George is bad wounded,” Charley said. “We need to find a town with a good doc. Maybe Ponca City.”
The floorboards of the back seat were puddled with blood from George Birdwell’s wounds. Birdwell’s eyes were closed, but he was still breathing.
Richetti glanced back over the seat a few times as he drove.
“No doc’s gonna help him,” he said. “The man’ll be dead before we get ten miles.”
“You were hired to drive, keep your eyes on the damn road,” Charley said. “George Birdwell’s tough—he’ll pull through.”
But Charley had his doubts—Bird was losing a lot of blood, and there was a red froth on his lips. Charley used his handkerchief to wipe it away, but it soon bubbled up again. Both Charley’s shoes were covered with blood from the puddles on the floorboard.
As they were crossing an old, rickety bridge on the Arkansas River, just south of Ponca City, Birdwell suddenly opened his eyes. They had a wild look in them, a look far different from any Charley had ever seen.
“Where’s Bob, I gotta have a word with her about the tykes,” Bird-well said.
“George, she’s not here,” Charley said. “You need to keep quiet and rest till we get to the doc’s.”
“I fear the big water,” George said, struggling up so he could look out the window. “If we’re over the big water, I’m a goner.”
“It ain’t that big, George,” Charley said, trying to reassure him. “It’s just the old Arkansas. You and me’ve crossed her many a time.”
“I’m afeared of the big water,” George said, getting frantic. “You better let me out, Charley … I’ll steal a horse and lope off home to Bob, she’ll be waitin’ for me.”
“Settle down, now, Bird, just rest,” Charley said, trying to make the delirious man lie back down in the seat.
But Birdwell was possessed of a wild strength—he wouldn’t lie back down. He kept his eyes fixed on the river below. Though it took only a minute to cross the old bridge, it seemed to Charley like an hour.
“Charley, you gotta let me out,” Birdwell insisted. “I need to find me a horse … I’m afeared to cross the big water …”
“We’re nearly to Ponca City, I don’t think you can find a horse this close to town, George,” Charley said—he was so distraught, he ran a bloody hand through his hair, before he realized it was bloody.
“You’re talkin’ to a dead man,” Richetti said, as they drove off the other side of the bridge. “Birdwell’s gone.”
Charley looked, and saw that it was true: George Birdwell was gone, one hand hanging off the seat in a puddle of his own blood.
“Oh, God, George!” Charley moaned. “What am I gonna tell Bob, and Red?” He began to cry, then to sob. Richetti kept driving—he didn’t make a sound.
By the time they had traveled another ten miles, Charley had stopped sobbing and was staring out the window, a blank look on his face.
“There was an armed man in the vault,” he said, finally. “He had a .30/.30. That’s what finished George.”
“Whatever it was, he’s finished, and the nigger burglar along with him,” Richetti said. “We need to find a place to dump him.”
“What?” Charley asked, not connecting the remark with Birdwell at first.
“Dump George—he’s dead,” Richetti said firmly, as if Charley were dense. “We can’t be drivin’ around with a corpse in the car.”
“What kind of a skunk are you?” Charley asked. “This is George Birdwell—we’re not gonna dump him!”
Richetti decided Charley Floyd must be a little crazy. Only a crazy person would want to drive around with a dead man in the car.
“That blood’s gonna be smellin’ pretty bad by mornin’,” he said.
Charley knew the man was right: George was dead. They had to do something with him, and just driving up to a funeral home didn’t seem to be an option.
Right outside of Ponca City, they saw a little shack of a grocery store, with a porch on the front, and several hounds under the porch. Smoke was coming out of the chimney.
“Pull over there,” Charley said. “Maybe these folks will take him.”
Richetti stopped in front of the porch. The hounds bayed, but Charley paid no attention to them. He eased Birdwell’s body out of the back seat, and carried him up onto the porch. As he did, an old lady with a cob pipe in her mouth opened the door. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to see a man carrying another man up her front steps.
Once Charley laid Birdwell down, he went back and got his Stetson. It was a little bloody, but it still had a perfect crease. Charley placed it gently over his friend’s face, and then looked at the old woman.
“Ma’am, my friend’s met his death,” he said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out five one-hundred-dollar bills.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d call a funeral home, and arrange for him to have the best of care,” Charley said, handing her the money. “A hundred dollars of this is for your trouble—the rest is for his funeral.”
“Who shot him, son?” the old lady asked, taking the cob pipe out of her mouth.
“A man over in Boley, Oklahoma,” Charley replied. “I didn’t get his name.”
“I reckon Dad can run into Ponca City and roust out the undertaker,” the old lady said. “Does your friend have a name?”
“Yes, a famous one,” Charley said. “This man is George Birdwell. I suppose you’ve heard of him?”
The old lady shook her head. “No, can’t say as I have,” she said, puffing slowly on her cob. “One of my second cousins was married to a Birdwell, but that was in Kentucky, and his name wasn’t George.”
Richetti, impatient, tapped the steering wheel. Charley ignored him.
“Ma’am, would you have a pencil and a tablet?” he asked. “I’d like to leave a little note, for the authorities.”
“I’ll get the tablet,” the old woman said, shuffling back toward the door. “There ain’t too many authorities around here, though.”
When she came back with the tablet, a toothless old man in a greasy hat came with her. He peered down at Birdwell.
“Admire his hat,” he said. “That’s a 30X beaver Stetson. I’ve hoped all my life for a hat like that.”
“Yeah, and you can hope all your next life, too,” the old lady informed him. “That hat’s beyond you, Dad.”
Charley sat on the steps to write his note:
To Whom It May Concern
This is George Birdwell, great bandit of the prairies. He was a true friend and loyal companion. Never deserted a comrade. Treat him with respect and bury him nice, we will all miss him.
Chas Arthur Floyd
He tucked the note into Birdwell’s shirt pocket, and started down the steps. The old couple stood where they were.
“Much obliged,” Charley said, as the hounds milled around his legs.
“Just kick them dogs, if they’re in your way, son,” the old lady said. Charley managed to make it to the car without having to kick any of the dogs.
He climbed in the passenger seat and Richetti pulled off, leaving behind them a cloud of red dust, and the body of George Birdwell.
24
Charley folded the newspaper carefully and put it in his pocket, as he walked into the little hospital in Salina, Kansas. It was a chilly day, and there was frost on the dried stems of grass on the hospital lawn. Thin sunlight glinted on the frost, but it didn’t improve Charley’s mood any.
George Bi
rdwell had been buried the day before. The newspaper estimated that ten thousand people came to his funeral. The photo on the front page of the Oklahoma City paper showed the fields around the cemetery, filled with people. Every time he looked at the picture, Charley wept. He had not been able to get the thought of Bob Bird-well out of his mind. He had driven all night to tell her the sad news—she had been so shocked, she walked straight out the door, barefoot and in her nightgown, to feed her hens.
Charley only stayed thirty minutes—he was afraid the cops would stake out the house. Bob was sitting at the kitchen table, all three children in her lap, dripping tears into her coffee cup, when Charley had to leave. Richetti was nervous—he kept honking every five minutes. Charley knew he should leave, but the honking still annoyed him.
“I’ll be back, Bob,” he said. “Can I bring you anything?”
“Yeah, bring me a new husband,” Bob said, absently rubbing one of the little girls’ heads.
“You need to lay off that honkin’,” Charley said, when he got back to the car. “That woman’s grief-stricken. She don’t need to hear a lot of honkin’.”
“I gotta live, too,” Richetti said. “The heat will be on us like ants on sugar, if we don’t keep moving.”
“I don’t care, I would’ve liked more time with Bob,” Charley said.
Richetti also resented the fact that Charley wanted to stop and break the news to Whizbang Red.
“We could spend the rest of our lives lookin’ up George’s girlfriends just to tell them he’s dead,” he complained.
“Shut up and drive,” Charley said. “You wasn’t hired to make the plans.”
“If I’da been makin’ the plans, we wouldn’t have tried to rob no nigger bank,” Richetti whined.
“We’re runnin’ low on hootch, too,” he added.
“We can get more hootch—just keep the car on the road,” Charley said. He himself had a blinding headache. What he would have liked to do was turn back to Tulsa and curl up in bed with Ruby for a few days, but he knew that was a hopeless dream.
“Don’t be honkin’,” he warned Richetti, when he got out at the hospital in Salina. “This is a hospital. There’s sick folks to think of.”
“We’ll be sick folks, too, if the law corners us,” Richetti said. “This jalopy is barely running. We need to steal a car, when you can spare the time from comfortin’ the bereaved,” he added sarcastically.
Charley went on in the hospital. The thought that Whizbang was dying, so soon after George, weighed heavily on him. He found her in a ward with a little boy and two old people. The little boy had a leg cut off by a harrow; the old people had the vacant looks that dogs sometimes got, when they were waiting for the end.
Whizbang was in the last bed. Charley knew right away that he didn’t have to break the news, because a copy of the Oklahoma City newspaper was on her lap. She had gone to sleep. Charley pulled up a little straight-backed chair, and when the chair scraped across the floor, Whizbang opened her eyes. Charley was shocked at how thin she was. She’d always had chubby cheeks, but they were chubby no more. Her hand was so fragile, Charley was almost afraid to touch it—it looked as if her fingers might just break off if he lifted them.
“Hello, Red,” Charley said. “I see the bad news beat me here.”
Whizbang nodded. “I didn’t get to go to his funeral, and now he won’t get to come to mine,” she said weakly. “It don’t seem right. If there was anybody I would have liked to pay my respects to, it was George Birdwell.”
“Red, you need to get well and get out of here,” Charley told her. “Once you get on your feet, I’ll take you down and we’ll visit the grave.”
He knew it was a lie: Whizbang Red wasn’t going to get well, and neither of them would be likely to visit George Birdwell’s grave. He didn’t know why he said it; the words just sort of popped out.
“Aw, stop kiddin’, honey,” Red said. “They can’t fix what I’ve got.
“Even if they could, I wouldn’t let ’em, now that George is gone,” she added. “He was the light of my life—did you know that?”
“Sure, I knew it,” Charley said. “He sent me here. We were on our way to see you when the trouble happened.”
“To see me?” Red asked. “George was comin’ to see me?” She smiled a ghost of a smile, and her eyes stopped being quite so dull.
“He heard you was doin’ poorly, and he wanted to bring you some cash to help with the doctor bills.”
“He was always talkin’ about robbin’ that nigger bank,” she said. “Once he took a notion, you couldn’t talk him out of it, no matter how foolish the notion was. Did he tell you about the time him and me set off for Canada?”
“No, I guess I ain’t heard that one,” Charley admitted.
“There’s a big rodeo up in Calgary, which is way north of here,” Whizbang said. “George set his heart on winnin’ the bronc ridin’ at the Calgary rodeo. He told me if he won it, he’d marry me. This was before he ever set eyes on Bob.”
At that point, her strength seemed to give out. She stopped talking, and stared out the window. The weak sunlight made dust motes in the little room.
Charley waited a bit. Whizbang’s eyes closed for a minute; he thought she’d fallen back to sleep. He took some bills out of his pocket. He knew he couldn’t afford to stay much longer. He meant to slip the bills into her hand and leave, if she stayed asleep.
A nurse walked into the ward, and looked at Charley a moment too long. He knew she recognized him. He was about to leave the money and slip out, when Whizbang opened her eyes.
“Where was I, Charley?” she asked.
“About to leave for Canada,” Charley said.
“We broke down in South Dakota,” Whizbang said. “George had to give up on Calgary, but we made it to Cheyenne instead. He didn’t win the bronc riding, though. The first horse he rode pitched him over the fence into the third row of the stands.
“So that was the end of that,” she said, after a bit.
“I suppose it was fun, at least,” Charley said.
“You’re right about that,” Whizbang said. “If George Birdwell was around, you could bet there’d be some fun.”
Charley gave her the money.
“This is the money he sent for the doctor bills,” Charley said.
“For the funeral, you mean,” Red said, looking at him with tired eyes.
Charley couldn’t answer. He started to; but then too much sadness came up.
He gave her a quick kiss, and a long hug, and left.
25
About sunup, four miles from Bolivar, Missouri, the flivver gave out. Charley was asleep at the time; it was a little before dawn. He felt the car lurch three or four times, and then tip to the right. When he opened his eyes, smoke was coming out from under the hood. Richetti had been drinking most of the night, and was bleary-eyed.
“Why are we in the ditch?” Charley asked, rubbing his eyes.
“We ain’t in the ditch, we’re on the shoulder,” Richetti corrected. “Four more miles, and we’d have made it to Joe’s garage. Goddamn the luck.”
Richetti had a one-legged brother who worked in a garage in Bolivar. They had lurched across Kansas most of the night, and then on into Missouri, eating slices off a ham Charley had bought at a country store outside of Salina. He had also bought a half-gallon of moonshine, very little of which was left in the jug.
Charley’d had bad dreams about Ruby and Dempsey during his brief moments of sleep.
“At least we ain’t in Oklahoma,” he said. “I’d rather be in the ditch than be in Oklahoma. I expect they’ve raised the reward. There may even be a reward for you, for all I know,” he said to Richetti.
“I wish Joe would drive by, but he won’t,” Richetti said.
“Why not?” Charley asked. “Ain’t it about time for him to be headin’ for work?”
“Yeah, but he won’t be headin’ up this road,” Richetti said, smoke still billowing out from under the
hood. “He lives on the other side of town.”
A farmer in a rusty pickup drove by, stopped, then backed up. As the old pickup approached, they began to hear a squealing, so sharp and piercing that Richetti had to cover his ears.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“You ain’t seen much country life, have you, bud?” Charley said. “That’s pigs. This old pioneer’s probably takin’ his shoats to market.”
The farmer didn’t back up too accurately; Charley and Richetti both flinched when he missed clipping their left fender by only an inch. Sure enough, five squealing shoats were hog-tied in the back of the pickup. The old man was dipping snuff and sneezing. By turning his head, he could direct his snot out the window, as cleanly as if he were spitting. The sight didn’t improve Adam Richetti’s humor any.
“I never cared for Missouri,” he remarked.
The old farmer in the pickup finished cleaning his passages, and squinted at the two of them through dirty specs.
“You young fellas broke down?” he asked.
“We ain’t sittin’ in this ditch for our health,” Richetti said, in his customary surly tone.
“Here now, be polite,” Charley said.
He got out and went around to discuss the matter with the farmer, who was busy dipping more snuff.
“Would we be holdin’ you up if we asked you to tow us into town?” he asked the old man.
The old man squinted at the car.
“That’s a pretty big car, and I’m totin’ five shoats already,” he said. “Five shoats is dern near a load. Have you got a chain?”
“Damn it, no,”Charley said.
“I ain’t neither, but I’ve got a rope—keep it handy in case these shoats get loose,” the old man said. “It’s in the back there, may have a little shit on it by now. But you’re welcome to hitch me onto your bumper. If the rope don’t break, I can haul you right on in.”
The rope was far too short. By the time Charley got it hitched, there was only about a yard of space between the front bumper of the flivver and the rear bumper of the pickup. Richetti proved useless when it came to tying knots.
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