Pretty Boy Floyd

by Larry McMurtry

  Her visitor was a little thin in the cheeks—he looked hungry. Anxious as Ellen Conkle was to get on with her work, she decided she might as well take a break and deal with the fellow. There was a depression on, and it was not uncommon for a hungry man to show up on her doorstep.

  “Yes, sir, can I help you?” Ellen asked, stepping out of her smokehouse.

  The sky had cleared in the afternoon; it was going to be a beautiful fall evening, with a full harvest moon expected. Just looking across the golden fields was a pleasure to Ellen Conkle; she was a farm woman, through and through.

  “Beg your pardon, ma’am—I’m lost, and I’m hungry,” Charley said. “Would you have a little food?”

  He had been two nights and the better part of three days in the woods now, and had had nothing substantial to eat except the few scraps he had scavenged from the deer hunters’ camp. The farmhouse sat all by itself in a clearing near some fields; the paved road where the G-men and local posses patrolled was a mile and a half away. Charley had passed up several other farmhouses because they were situated too close to the highway. He knew he was going to have to gamble soon and get some grub, or else begin to weaken.

  “Mister, I live on a farm,” Ellen said. “I’ve got food. The point is, I ain’t got no food that’s fixed. Food don’t just jump on the table and plop itself on a plate, you know.”

  “I know that, ma’am,” Charley said, smiling. “I’ll be glad to pay.”

  Ellen strode briskly past him, up the steps and into her house. One thing Ellen Conkle had never been accused of was a shortage of energy. Even the menfolks admitted that she could outwork the average farmhand.

  “Payin’ ain’t the point,” she said to Charley. “I ain’t runnin’ a restaurant, and I don’t want you to pay.”

  She held the back door open for him, a little impatient.

  “I’m Ellen Conkle—come in and get washed up,” she said. “You look like you slept in a ditch.”

  Charley grinned at her, sheepish. It was the grin of an overgrown boy. Ellen had three boys of her own, two of them in the overgrown category. She was familiar with the grin, and still susceptible to it.

  “It wasn’t a ditch, but it wasn’t no feather bed, neither,” Charley admitted. “My brother and me went squirrel huntin’, and I guess we got lost.”

  Ellen turned, and gave him a what-kind-of-fool-do-you-take-mefor look.

  “I reckon you was huntin’, all right,” she said, “but I doubt it was squirrels you was after, not in that suit. That suit needs a good pressing, but I ain’t a laundry, no more than I’m a restaurant. I’d bet you got fresh with your girlfriend, and she put you out on the road, which is exactly what she should’ve done. She must still be mad, ’cause she ain’t come back looking for you, has she?”

  “No, ma’am, she sure ain’t,” Charley said, with a tired smile. He felt he had made the right choice—this woman was going to feed him.

  “You’re a good-looking young fella,” Ellen said, leading him into the kitchen. “Maybe she’ll overlook it. I wouldn’t, but then that’s me. I can make you pork chops—you like ’em with applesauce?”

  “Yes, ma’am—I like ’em with applesauce,” Charley said.

  Ellen directed him to the bathroom, and had the pork chops and applesauce almost ready by the time he had made himself more presentable. While he ate, Ellen peeled apples expertly, each apple yielding one long, unbroken strand of peel.

  The sun had begun to settle, and a warm light shone through the kitchen window. The young man looked gaunt to her, and tired—as soon as he got his belly full, he’d be wanting to go to sleep.

  “You must be a banker,” Ellen said, as she briskly sliced the apples she had just peeled. “You got a mighty nice suit to go courtin’ in.

  “Bankers are apt to get fresh, too,” she added. “I’ve even had bankers get fresh with me, old as I am.”

  Charley had been drinking buttermilk—he was on his third glass. Ellen Conkle, though nearing fifty, was an appealing woman. He grinned at her shyly.

  “Ma’am, you ain’t so old,” he said. “And I ain’t a banker—but I was a farmer, once.”

  “Oh yeah? What part of the country?” Ellen asked.

  “Oklahoma,” Charley said. He put his hand in his pants pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, laying it on the table.

  “Keep your money, I told you I wasn’t running no restaurant,” Ellen said. “I guess you ain’t a banker after all—no banker would offer ten dollars for two pork chops … and you didn’t even eat your rice pudding.”

  “I would, but I’ve got to get going and try to catch a ride home,” Charley said. He finished the third glass of buttermilk, and stood up.

  From the back porch, Ellen could see across the fields. She spotted her sister and brother-in-law walking slowly out of a cornfield down by the creek.

  “That’s my sister and her husband,” she said to Charley. “If you hurry, I expect they’d give you a ride into Clarkson, or part-way, if that’s the direction you’re headed.”

  “I’d surely appreciate it,” Charley replied.

  “They live about a mile from town,” Ellen informed him. “If Stewart Dyke is too cranky to haul you all the way in, you could hoof it the last mile and call your girl—she might be in a better humor by now.”

  “I thank you from the heart for that food, ma’am,” Charley said.

  He let himself out the screen door, and started down the back steps. Ellen was right behind him, eager to finish up the smokehouse before she lost the light. But before the young man turned and started to walk away, Ellen looked at his face and felt a disquiet—a mother’s disquiet, really. She saw that the young man was very tired, weaving on his feet. But more than the unsteadiness was a weariness in his eyes, a melancholy that was troubling. She had seen it in the eyes of her own boys when they were low. It was as if one of life’s many problems had suddenly brought them to the brink of desperation.

  “Are you okay, son?” she asked the young man. “You don’t look right.”

  Charley turned to her and smiled a little smile.

  “I’m just fine, ma’am,” he said.

  Charley turned back, and looked off toward the fields. “If I could choose a heaven, I reckon it would be to sit in your kitchen and eat your cookin’, till I couldn’t hold no more,” he said.

  Then he started on down the dirt road that would lead him to the Dykes. But Ellen Conkle, still troubled by the look in his eyes, decided to make one more try.

  “Son?” she asked.

  Charley stopped walking, and again he turned.

  “You look like a nice young man,” Ellen said. “If you’ll just calm down with the courtin’, I expect your girlfriend would take you back. Get on home, and have a good rest—things will look better when you’re rested.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Charley said. “Your husband’s lucky, to be married to a good cook like you.”

  “My husband dropped dead five years ago,” Ellen confessed. “But I’ve still got our three boys.”

  Charley looked down at the cameo ring Ruby had given him last Christmas. For a moment, thinking of Ruby and Dempsey, his eyes filled. He twisted the ring a little on his finger. Then he wiped his eyes, looked up, waved to Ellen once more, and went on down the road, in the golden light of the late afternoon, toward a black jalopy parked at the edge of a cornfield.

  Ellen Conkle lingered on her back steps for a moment, watching the young man go.

  She was troubled, and not sure why.

  25

  Stewart Dyke was surprised to see a young man in a suit approaching his car from the direction of his sister-in-law’s house. His wife, Martha, a few steps behind him, carrying a little sack of corn, hadn’t spotted the visitor yet.

  “Howdy, folks,” Charley said. “Mrs. Conkle thought maybe you’d allow me to bum a ride to Clarkson.”

  “We don’t live in Clarkson, son—we’re out of town a ways,” Stewart said. “Ellen’s alw
ays coming up with chores for other folks to do.”

  “Why is it a chore?” Martha asked. She had arrived in time to hear the conversation. “We’re going that way, ain’t we?”

  “Part-way, yeah,” Stewart admitted. He wore a torn straw hat and could not quite conceal his annoyance that both his sister-in-law and his wife had chosen to butt into his affairs.

  “Well, then, what’s the matter with us taking him into town? It’s only a mile,” Martha said. “My time ain’t so valuable but that I could give a boy a lift. If yours is, then maybe I’ll walk, too.”

  “Who said anything about time? It’s gasoline I was thinkin’ about,” Stewart said. “Automobiles don’t run on air, you know.”

  Charley was hoping the Dykes would finish their argument. He was uncomfortably aware that he was standing in full view of the highway; he would have liked to slide into the jalopy, out of sight, but he knew he couldn’t afford to be acting pushy. It was plain that Mr. Dyke would use any excuse to leave him hoofing it—and he was about hoofed out.

  “Stewart, it’s one mile,” Martha reminded her husband.

  “Two,” Stewart said. “We’d have to take him in, and then we’d have to come back, unless you’re plannin’ to move to Clarkson tonight.”

  “I might, if you keep on bein’ this ornery,” Martha said. “If I’d known you were so tight with your time that you’d begrudge a young man a mile in your flivver, I doubt I’da married you.”

  Stewart saw that Martha had her back up—she would stand there and argue from sundown to sunup, unless he yielded. That was the way it was with Martha and with her sister Ellen, too, a prime busybody if there ever was one.

  “Get in, mister,” he said, with not much grace. “I’ll carry you as far as our road—from there in, you’ll have to hoof it.”

  “No he won’t, I’ll drive him myself!” Martha said.

  “You’ll drive him?” Stewart said, startled. “Who will cook supper, if you drive him?”

  “You can skip supper tonight,” Martha said.

  “I ain’t in a mood to cook for a tightwad who won’t help out a young fella in need.”

  “That ain’t the only consideration,” Stewart reminded her. “You can’t drive.”

  “I can drive a mile and back,” Martha said. “It’d be a good chance to learn.”

  “No, it would be a good chance to wreck my car,” Stewart said. “Get in, young fella—what are you waitin’ on?”

  The invitation came a moment too late. Two black cars, traveling almost bumper to bumper, came speeding around a curve on the nearby highway. The second they came into sight, both hit their brakes and skidded to a stop.

  Charley knew at once that he’d been spotted. He patted the two guns he had in his belt, to reassure himself that they were still there.

  “Pardon me, folks, I know it’ll inconvenience you, but I have to borrow your car,” he told the surprised old couple. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  He jumped in, switched on the ignition, and took off toward the highway, hoping to make the road before the cops cut him off.

  The Dykes were too surprised to say a word as they watched their car race away. Stewart was the first to recover his powers of speech.

  “Now see what your sister’s nose trouble’s got us into,” he said, resignation in his voice.

  26

  Agent Purvis was in the lead car, with the sheriff and two deputies. The two deputies were said to be the best shots east of Cincinnati. Both had rifles with scope sights.

  “Hit the brakes, that’s him!” Purvis yelled, the instant he saw the man in the dark blue suit and the two people standing at the edge of a cornfield, next to a black jalopy.

  “Anybody know those two?” Purvis asked.

  “Why, that’s Stewart and Martha Dyke, and that’s their flivver,” the sheriff said.

  Just then, Charley jumped into the car and headed toward the road.

  “He must of snuck up on ’em,” the sheriff added, as the jalopy picked up speed.

  “We’re lucky,” Purvis said, excited. “Ten more seconds, and he would have gotten away.”

  The approaching car veered south, across the corner of an open field. Evidently, Charley meant to smash through the wire fence, jump a ditch, and try to make it to the highway.

  “Turn him, turn him—jump out and start shooting!” Purvis yelled.

  Both deputies piled out, dropping to their knees. In a second, the deer rifles began to spit bullets at the car as it bounced across the field. One bullet flattened a front tire, and the car spun and nearly tipped over.

  “Keep shooting,” Purvis said. “You’ve turned him.”

  The deputies kept pouring bullets into the car, which spun and headed back the way it had come.

  “Where’s that road stop, can he get away in that direction?”

  “It stops at the Dykes’ corncrib,” the sheriff said. “He can’t get away on that road, unless he flies.”

  Deputies, most of them local and very recently deputized, poured out of the second police car and began to pump lead in the direction of the flivver, to the sheriff’s intense annoyance.

  “Hold your fire, you goddamn idiots!” he yelled. “You’re shooting at the Dykes!”

  Stewart Dyke was not unaware of the danger. The highway wasn’t that far away. Bullets began to kick up dirt a few yards in front of them; meanwhile, the car was coming back, which would surely mean more bullets. The only cover handy was a wheelbarrow he had been using to tote fertilizer into the corn patch. He quickly turned it over, and yanked Martha down behind it. His anger at his sister-in-law’s inconsiderate behavior was rising sharply.

  “Get us kilt, that’s what your nosey sister’s about done!” he snapped.

  Martha Dyke had listened to her husband gripe about her sister for the better part of thirty years. She had long since learned to turn a deaf ear.

  “You’ll be complainin’ about Ellen when we’re in heaven, I guess,” she said.

  “If you don’t stay down, you’ll soon get the chance to find out,” Stewart said, hunkering as low as he could.

  “No I won’t, because if we’re kilt, you won’t be in heaven, you’ll be goin’ to the other place,” Martha informed him.

  Stewart Dyke was taken aback by his wife’s opinion—his firm intention had always been to go to heaven.

  “What makes you think that, I’d like to know?” he asked, as the bullets whistled closer.

  “Bein’ married to you, that’s what,” Martha informed him.

  27

  When the rifle bullet blew out the front tire, Charley realized he had lost his chance for a breakaway race down the highway. The chance wasn’t much of a loss, since the gas gauge on the Dykes’ flivver was sitting on empty. The car might have taken him a few miles, but then again, it might not have taken him any miles. It was just his luck to have stolen a car from a man who was tight with gas. He thought his best chance might be to get in among the tall cornstalks; maybe he could make it back into the woods. At least his belly was full. If it didn’t turn cold, he would be good for a few more days, and so far, the G-men had exhibited no appetite for following him into the forest.

  As he bounced past the wheelbarrow, he noticed the Dykes crouched behind it. They seemed to be discussing something, which momentarily amused him: talky folks just kept on talking, even with .30/.30 bullets whizzing past.

  There was a heavy wooden corncrib right at the edge of the field. Charley whipped around behind it, and jumped out of the car. At least he would have the crib and the car for cover when he ran for the cornfield. A glance toward the highway was discouraging, though; several more cars had piled off the road, all of them filled with riflemen.

  Charley knew better than to waste time. He ducked as low as he could, and ran into the corn.

  “Circle him!” he heard someone yell, but he didn’t look around, or slow his pace. The cornstalks were seven feet high. Once among the cornstalks, the deputies could s
hoot till their rifle barrels melted and have no chance of hitting him, if he kept low. The fact that there was an army of deputies after him, as there had been for days, buoyed him a bit: He was still free; his luck had held even to the point of finding an excellent cook to fix him pork chops and applesauce. All he needed to do was make it into the deep woods again, and take himself twenty or thirty miles north. Sooner or later, there’d be a car he could steal, a car that would take him home to Ruby and Dempsey. Maybe they could get into Mexico and go on down to South America—that had been Jesse James’s plan, before he got killed by the coward Robert Ford.

  Once in the deep, tall corn, Charley slowed down a little. He didn’t want to wind himself; some of the local deputies were probably coon hunters, as his father had been. They could run after hounds a long way, if their blood was up. He didn’t want to have a shoot-out with some Ohio hound dog man if he could avoid it.

  No sooner had he got into the corn than the shooting stopped. Apparently, the local deputies had some smart G-man directing them, someone as opposed to wasting ammunition as Stewart Dyke was to wasting gas. Charley had two full revolvers, but no spare cartridges. He had no intention of wasting ammunition, or of shooting at all, unless it came down to sheer survival.

  When he trotted through to the west end of the cornfield, Charley got a shock: there was a good quarter mile of open ground, running uphill, between the cornfields and the woods. Sneaking right out of a corn row into some thick underbrush was just one more vain hope.

  Charley knew he couldn’t hesitate. In ten minutes, the deputies would have the cornfield surrounded, and then it would be a matter of time before the dogs flushed him out. He vaulted the fence and went for the trees, running as hard as he could—running as he hadn’t run since he was a boy, in footraces with his brother Brad.

  He was at the crest of the slope and less than forty yards from the trees, when suddenly his run turned into a spin. He spun around as if he were dancing. It was vexing—all he’d had to do was keep up his speed for a few more seconds, then he would be into the trees, and safe.