“What’s the soup?” Dick asked.
“Tomato,” she said. “Campbell’s best.”
“How’s the breaded veal cutlet?” Jack said.
“I ate it tonight, and I’m livin’.”
“Any veal in it?” he wanted to know.
“Some,” she said.
We all took the soup and cutlet. The pot. and vegs. turned out to be home fries and string beans. If we hadn’t been so hungry, we would have starved. The ice cream was warm; to make up for it, the coffee was cold.
But the drinks were big, and for every two rounds we bought, the house bought one. A pleasant custom. When Rose brought our coffee, Donohue asked her, “That guy behind the bar, is he Hoxey?”
“Nah,” the waitress said. “Hoxey was smart, sold out to us and moved to California. We never got around to changing the name.”
“The bartender—he’s your one and only?”
“That’s what he thinks,” Rose laughed. “Yeah, that’s my hubby. Ben Lufkin.”
Donohue slid out of the booth, went over to the bar. In a minute the two men were shaking hands. Then they leaned toward each other, their heads together. I saw Jack slip him money, so neat and quick and smooth, I think I was the only one in the restaurant who noticed it. Donohue came back to the booth.
“Think we could get a couple of cold six-packs, Rose?” he asked.
“I think maybe I could fix you up. Anything else?”
“Not right now, thank you, ma’am. The food was fine.”
“I always did like a cheerful liar,” she said, adding up our bill. “Please pay at the bar. Ben won’t let me handle the money. He figures if I see more’n five bucks, I’ll take off after Hoxey.”
We drove slowly back to Mrs. Pearl’s, watching a lemon moon come bobbing into a cloudless night sky.
“Nice people,” Dick Fleming said.
“Uh-huh,” Donohue said. “Most of them. Some ain’t so nice. Like everywheres.”
“I saw you give Ben some money,” I said.
“Yeah. He’s going to keep his eyes and ears open. Give us a call out at Mrs. Pearl’s if anyone comes around asking for us.”
“You trust him?” Fleming asked.
“Got no choice, do we?” Donohue said. “But I think he’s straight. Hell, let’s forget it and just relax. That bastard Rossi is probably knocking on doors in Jacksonville right now.”
Mrs. Sniffins was rocking on the porch, a white wraith, when we arrived. Jack parked on the crushed stone driveway alongside the house. We walked around to the front, Dick carrying two cold six-packs of beer in a brown paper bag.
“Evenin’, ma’am,” Donohue said. “Right pretty night, with the moon and all.”
“Right pleasant,” she said, nodding. “If you’re of a mind to set a spell, there’s plenty of chairs.”
We thanked her and pulled up wicker porch chairs with thin sailcloth cushions.
“Would smoking bother you, Mrs. Sniffins?” I asked her.
“Land, no,” she said. “I smoke a ciggie myself ever’ now and again.”
So we lighted up, Black Jack holding a match for Mrs. Pearl’s cigarette. She gripped it between thumb and forefinger of her left hand and smoked it importantly. I don’t think she inhaled. But it was obvious she was enjoying the smoke, and enjoying our being there. Donohue had been right: She wanted company.
“Ma’am,” he said, “we picked up some cold beer at Hoxey’s. It’d be a downright pleasure if you’d share it with us.”
It wasn’t hard to persuade her. So there we were a few moments later, all four of us sipping Budweiser from cans, smoking our cigarettes, and talking lazily of this and that. I couldn’t remember when I had been happier.
After a while, Jack got Mrs. Pearl talking about her family’s history. It wasn’t difficult; it almost seemed as if she had been waiting for an opportunity to tell the story. She didn’t want it to die with her.
She herself was from Alabama, but this piece of land had been in her husband’s family since before the War Between the States. She had met her husband, Aaron, at a church convention in Athens, Georgia. They had corresponded and then he had traveled to Evergreen, Alabama, to meet her family. She and Aaron had been married a year later, in Evergreen, and she had returned to live with him in the big white house in Whittier. Aaron’s mother was alive then, living with them, and it was evident the new bride and the mother-in-law didn’t hit it off.
“I won’t say a word against that woman,” Mrs. Pearl Sniffins said firmly, in a tone of voice that implied if she ever started, she might never stop.
She accepted a second can of beer graciously from Dick Fleming, and said, “I thank you kindly,” when he removed the tab for her. She took a deep swallow and belched gently before continuing her story.
She and Aaron had six children. One boy died at childbirth, one girl died at the age of three months from a respiratory ailment. “Just coughed up her pore little lungs.” Another son died aboard a battleship in World War II. The others, three girls, married and moved away. They were all over: Arizona, Chicago, Toronto. Mrs. Pearl had eleven grandchildren.
For a few years after they were married, the girls came back to Whittier to visit with their husbands and new babies. But they didn’t come so often anymore. But they wrote regular, Mrs. Pearl assured us, and sent pictures of the children and gifts on her birthday.
“I already got their Christmas gifts,” she said proudly. “All stacked up. I’ll open them Christmas morning.”
We didn’t say anything. Just sat there in silence on a balmy night in Georgia, staring at moon shadows.
“What about your own family, ma’am?” Jack Donohue asked softly.
“All gone,” she told him. “I was an only child and my folks passed. Uncles and aunts passed. Cousins passed or scattered. We just lost track.”
“Yes,” Dick Fleming said slowly, “that’s what happens: We just lose track.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Pearl Sniffins said. “It just seems a shame that a family should break up like that. It wasn’t always so. My land, my husband’s family just went on for years and years. I’ve got all the pictures. Tintypes, they called them then. And some little paintings framed in velvet. And bundles and bundles of letters, so faded now you can hardly make them out. But that was a family that lasted. Now it seems like they bust up so fast. People die or move away. No one stays in the same place anymore. So we lose track. A name used to mean something. People knew who you were. They knew your people. But no more. Well … I ain’t one to pity myself; don’t you go thinking that.”
“No’m, Mrs. Pearl,” I said, “we’d never think that of you. But times change, and customs, and the way people are. And we’ve got to go along with the changes, like it or not.”
“You maybe,” she said sharply. “You’re young enough. Not me. I don’t hold with the new ways, and don’t have to. I just wish I had my children around me, that’s all. My own sons working this land that’s been in the family so long. Great-grandchildren I could see and hug. This house is big enough for all. But it’s not to be, and that’s God’s will, and we must accept it and believe it’s for the best. And now I do believe that delicious sip of nice cold beer has made me drowsy enough to sleep, so I will excuse myself and go off to bed. You all set out here just as long as you like.”
We all stood up and Dick Fleming helped Mrs. Pearl out of her rocker. She smiled at us in the dimness.
“Good night, all,” she said in a tremulous voice. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Now that’s just a little saying we have. You won’t find any bedbugs in this house, I do assure you.”
Then she was gone. The screen door closed behind her. We sat down again. I took Mrs. Pearl’s rocker, the cushion still warm. I closed my eyes, rocked back and forth and saw it all. I hoped no one would say anything, and no one did.
After a while, the beer finished, we went inside, locked the door carefully, and went up to bed. We heard Mrs. Pearl snoring in t
he parlor, and we moved on tiptoe, not talking, so as not to wake her.
That night we all slept naked together in the double bed in the big bedroom. I was glad I was between two men, being held by both. I never wanted to be alone again. I fell asleep, the old straw rustling gently beneath me: a derisive whisper.
Our stay in Whittier was twenty-four-hour champagne, the days sun-crisped, the nights moon-cooled. It was a shared dream that changed us all, in ways we could not understand. Something deep was happening to us, but what it was we did not know.
Our daily routine was simple enough. We slept together, although I kept my personal suitcase in the small bedroom. I rumpled the bed, scattered toilet articles about, left cigarette butts in ashtrays, gave the room what I fancied was a lived-in appearance. All this to mislead Mrs. Pearl in case she made an unexpected climb to the second floor, and to fool the cleaning lady when she appeared.
But we slept together. Every night but one.
We rose before 8:00, dressed, went downstairs to have breakfast with Mrs. Pearl in the big kitchen. And the size of the breakfasts matched that room: orange juice; oatmeal; eggs; bacon, ham, or pork sausages; pancakes; grits; corn muffins, blueberry muffins, toast; waffles; sweet butter; jams, jellies, and homemade preserves; milk or coffee.
Mrs. Pearl bustled about, talking a blue streak, and seemingly delighted with our appetites and praise for her cooking. She told us (three times) that her quince jelly had won a blue ribbon at the county fair. I could believe it; it was nectar.
After breakfast we usually drove into Whittier to shop. We knew what those gargantuan breakfasts were costing Mrs. Pearl, so we took her shopping list into town and paid for the milk, coffee, pancake flour, ham, and all the other goodies. We also loaded her refrigerator with beer, cola, and tonic water, and put two quarts of vodka in the freezer.
By the second day of our stay, practically everyone in Whittier knew us, and we exchanged “Howdy” and “Have a nice day” a dozen times as we went from general store to liquor store to gas station to Hoxey’s.
At Hoxey’s, Rose would have a bag of sandwiches made for us. Really dreadful sandwiches: processed cheese on dry white bread, pressed ham on stale rye. But we didn’t care. Everyone was just so nice, it would have been cruel to suggest to them that a luncheon of Twinkies and Yoo-Hoo wasn’t really the best food American agriculture could offer.
Then back to Mrs. Pearl’s with our purchases, usually including a special treat for her. (She doted on licorice-filled mints.) Then, around noon, we took our sandwiches and six-pack of beer across the fields. We dunked naked in the muddy stream (even Dick and I were calling it the “crick” by then), and ate our sandwiches and drank our beer, kept cold by immersing the cans in the running water.
On one of those trips Donohue carried our lunch in the emptied, bullet-riddled suitcase that had provided no shield for Hymie Gore. Jack and Dick scooped out a hole under one of the oak trees near the stream and buried the case.
In the afternoon, back at Mrs. Pearl’s, I worked on my manuscript, and wrote enough so that I was up-to-date and describing current events. The men washed down the Buick, then cleaned up Mrs. Pearl’s seven-year-old Plymouth. They also consolidated all our gear into four suitcases and three canvas carryalls.
One afternoon they left me at Mrs. Pearl’s and drove away, ostensibly to have the Buick gassed, oiled, and tuned. But when they returned, Jack had extra ammunition for all our guns and a complete cleaning kit. He and Dick spent hours stripping down the guns, cleaning them, and reloading. Donohue said Dick was very good at it and could become an expert if he applied himself.
What they also brought back from their trip were two unlabeled pint bottles of a colorless liquid which, Jack assured me, was the finest white lightning in the State of Georgia. I tried a sip and it felt like my vocal cords had been given a shot of Novocain, while sweat ran down from my armpits. I said, when I recovered my voice, that I’d stick to eighty-proof vodka.
But that night, after we returned from Hoxey’s and had a beer with Mrs. Pearl on the porch, we retired to our bedroom, and the two men demolished the pints of alky. Fortunately, they were sitting on the edge of the bed as they drank, and all they had to do was fall back.
I lifted up their legs and left the louts, fully clothed, to their groaning unconsciousness. Then I went into the smaller bedroom. It was the only night I slept alone. In the morning they were full of that crazy macho boasting about which one had the worst hangover. I wasn’t sore at them—just amused, and amazed at the way Dick Fleming was acting.
Because, of the three of us, he had changed, was changing, the most. Some of it was physical. He was leaner and harder. The sun was burning his pale, freckled skin a bronzed tan. His hair was bleached to the color of wheat, and his blue eyes seemed deeper, steadier, more knowing. I saw the looks he got from the women in Hoxey’s and on the streets of Whittier.
But less obvious were the changes within. He took a more active role in our sexual shenanigans, frequently as initiator. He insisted on driving the car more often, ordered for us at Hoxey’s, offered his opinions on a multitude of matters in a firm, decisive manner.
I looked at him with astonishment: a new man. When, alone with Donohue, I mentioned something of this, Black Jack flashed me one of his wise grins and said, “He’s found his balls.” Whatever had happened, was happening, I knew Dick and I would never again indulge in those tickle-and-squirm games. The pistilless and stamenless man had become more than a neuter. I was glad for him, I suppose. I wasn’t certain about my own reaction.
So the days passed in a dream, peaceful, golden, and each hour separated us further from what had gone before. We sniffed security like cocaine, certain that the chase had cooled, pursuit had ended, and we could leisurely accomplish all that we had set out to do.
Christmas was on a Sunday that year, and on the preceding Friday we bought a sad, lopsided tree in the gas station lot in Whittier. We brought it home to Mrs. Pearl, lashed on the roof of the Buick. We were certain she would have all the ornaments and tinsel necessary. Women like Mrs. Pearl Sniffins don’t throw away Christmas tree ornaments. She didn’t disappoint us.
So on Friday evening, after our return from Hoxey’s, we gathered in what Mrs. Pearl called the “sitting room” and decorated our tree. It was, I suppose, a kind of party. We all drank a bottle of port wine. There were jokes, laughter, remembrances of past holidays. It seemed strange to me to be celebrating Christmas in such a warm climate. How can you lie naked on a muddy crick bed on Christmas day? But that wine made everything seem quite normal. I think we sang some carols, more for Mrs. Pearl’s sake than ours. She surely was partial to “Silent Night.”
Later, in bed together, Mrs. Sniffins snoring peacefully downstairs, we talked quietly of our plans. We decided to spend Christmas day with Mrs. Pearl (she had invited us, promising to roast a turkey “with all the trimmings”), and maybe even go to church with her. Then we would take off on the following Monday. We still had plenty of cash, and Black Jack said we could take back and secondary roads all the way down to Miami, just to play it cool. We’d probably arrive Wednesday or Thursday.
It all sounded good to us. After those glittering days and perfumed nights, it was impossible that anything could turn sour.
On Saturday morning, after breakfast, we drove into Whittier to buy Christmas gifts for Mrs. Pearl. There wasn’t much choice. In the general store I found a quilted bed jacket I thought she might like, and the men bought her perfume, a five-pound box of chocolates, and two palm-leaf fans.
We decided to forgo our afternoon swim, so we didn’t stop at Hoxey’s for sandwiches and beer. We drove directly to Mrs. Pearl’s, planning to spend the afternoon wrapping our gifts and getting a gentle buzz on in honor of Christ’s birth.
And that’s exactly what we did, until about 2:00 that afternoon, Christmas Eve. Then we heard Mrs. Pearl calling from downstairs. Donohue opened the door and went to the top of the stairs.
“Mr.
Morrison,” we heard her say, “you got a phone call. It’s Ben Lufkin at Hoxey’s.”
Jack went down the stairs.
Dick Fleming turned to look at me with bleak eyes.
“Start packing,” he said harshly.
We heard Donohue come up the stairs. He stalked into the room. He took two guns from a canvas carryall, a revolver and a pistol. He pulled back the slide of the pistol, let it snap forward. He put the revolver in his belt, the pistol in the side pocket of his jacket. Then he started helping us with the packing.
“Two guys came into Hoxey’s looking for us,” he reported. “Ben Lufkin says one was wearing a gray suit, vest, hat. Young, clean, fresh-shaved. Doesn’t sound like one of Rossi’s boys. Sounds like a Fed. The other guy was wearing a star, a deputy from the county sheriff’s office.”
Even while I was listening, the worm of fear beginning to gnaw, I noted his accent: “deppity” and “shurf.”
“Ben says he told them nothing,” Jack went on. “Maybe he didn’t, maybe he did. But someone in town sure as hell will; you can bet on that. They had photos of you two, descriptions on all of us.”
“How could they trace us here, Jack?” I asked him.
“Got a line on me, I suppose,” he said wearily. “Found out I came from the Macon area. So they’re covering this part of the state, figuring I might head for home, like some animal going down its hole.”
“That’s what you did,” Fleming said. “What we did. You figure they know we’re here—at Mrs. Pearl’s?”
“I’d make book on it,” Donohue said. “By now, someone’s talked.”
“Why should they talk?” I asked. “Why betray one of their own?”
“A reward maybe,” Black Jack said, shrugging. “Maybe from envy—us driving a big car and throwing money around like we did. Maybe just to see the excitement. A shoot-out. Nothing much happens in Whittier. Who knows why they did it? But someone did, bet on it.”
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