McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

by Michael Chabon

  Carlos had his hand on his stomach. “I don’t feel so good. I upchucked my supper.”

  Virgil lowered the newspaper to look at his boy. He said, “You took a man’s life today,” and watched Carlos nod his head thinking about it. “You never said, but did you look at him laying there?”

  “I got down to close his eyes.”

  “Made you think, huh?”

  “It did. I wondered why he didn’t believe I’d shoot.”

  “He saw you as a kid on a horse.”

  “He knew stealing cows could get him shot or sent to prison. I mean anytime, but it’s what he chose to do.”

  “That’s what you thought looking at him? You didn’t feel any sympathy for the man?”

  “I did; I felt if he’d listened to me he wouldn’t be lying there dead.”

  The room was silent, and now Virgil asked, “How come you didn’t shoot the other one?”

  “There weren’t any cows on the trailer,” Carlos said, “else I might’ve.”

  It was his son’s quiet tone that got to Virgil and made him realize, My Lord, but this boy has a hard bark on him.

  II

  June 13, 1927, Carlos Huntington Webster, now a six-footer, was in Oklahoma City wearing a new light-gray suit of clothes and a panama with the brim curved on his eyes just right, staying at a hotel, riding a streetcar for the first time, and being sworn in as a Deputy United States Marshal; while Lindbergh was being honored in New York City, tons of ticker tape dumped on the Lone Eagle for flying across the ocean; and Frank Miller, released from McAlester in bib overalls, was back in Checotah with Faye Harris, his suit hanging in the closet these six years since the marshals hauled him off in his drawers. The first thing Frank Miller did, once he got off of Faye, was make phone calls to get his gang back together.

  Carlos was given a leave to go home after his training and spent it with his old dad, telling him things:

  What the room was like at the Huskin Hotel.

  What he had to eat at the Plaza Grill.

  How he saw a band called Walter Page’s Blue Devils that was all colored guys.

  How when firing a pistol you put your weight forward, one foot ahead of the other, so if you get hit you can keep firing as you fall.

  And one other thing.

  Everybody called him Carl instead of Carlos. At first he wouldn’t answer to it and got in arguments, a couple of times almost fistfights.

  “You remember Bob Cardell?”

  “R.C. ‘Bob’ Cardell,” Virgil said, “the quiet one.”

  “My boss now. He says, ‘I know you’re named for your grandaddy to honor him, but you’re using it like a chip on your shoulder instead of a name.’ ”

  Virgil was nodding his head. “Ever since that moron Frank Miller called you a greaser. I know what Bob means. Like, ‘I’m Carlos Webster, what’re you gonna do about it?’ You were little I’d call you Carl sometimes. You liked it okay.”

  “Bob Cardell says, ‘What’s wrong with Carl? All it is, it’s a nickname for Carlos.’ ”

  “There you are,” Virgil said. “Try it on.”

  “I’ve been wearing it the past month or so. ‘Hi, I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Carl Webster.’ ”

  “You feel any different?”

  “I do, but I can’t explain it.”

  A call from Bob Cardell cut short Carl’s leave. The Frank Miller Gang was back robbing banks.

  What the marshals tried to do over the next few months was anticipate the gang’s moves. They robbed banks in Shawnee, Seminole, and Bowlegs on a line south. Maybe Ada would be next. No, it turned out to be Coalgate.

  An eyewitness said he was in the barbershop as Frank Miller was getting a shave—except the witness didn’t know who it was till later, after the bank was robbed. “Him and the barber are talking, this one who’s Frank Miller mentions he’s planning on getting married pretty soon. The barber happens to be a minister of the Church of Christ and offers to perform the ceremony. Frank Miller says he might take him up on it and gives the reverend a five-dollar bill for the shave. Then him and his boys robbed the bank.”

  Coalgate was on that line south, but then they veered way over west to Kingfisher, took six thousand from the First National but lost a man: Jim Ray Monks, slow coming out of the bank on his bum legs, was shot down in the street. Before Monks knew he was dying he told them, “Frank’s sore you never put more’n five hundred on his head. He’s out to show he’s worth a whole lot more.”

  The bank after Kingfisher was American National in Baxter Springs, way up on the Kansas line. The gang appeared to specialize in robbing banks in dinky towns, rush in with gunfire to get people’s attention, and ride out with a hostage or two on the running board as a shield. Hit three or four banks in a row and then disappear for a time. There were reports of gang members spotted during these periods of lying low, but Frank Miller was never one of them.

  “I bet anything,” Carl said, standing before the wall map in Bob Cardell’s office, “he hides out in Checotah, at Faye Harris’s place.”

  “Where we nabbed him,” Bob Cardell said, nodding, remembering. “Faye was just a girl then, wasn’t she?”

  “I heard Frank was already seeing her,” Carl said, “while she’s married to Skeet, only Skeet didn’t have the nerve to call him on it.”

  “You heard, huh?”

  “Sir, twice I drove down to McAlester on my day off, see what I could find out about Frank Miller.”

  “The convicts talk to you?”

  “One did, a Creek use to be in his gang. He said it wasn’t a marshal shot Skeet Harris in the gun battle that time. It was Frank Miller himself to get Skeeter out of the way so he could have his wife.”

  “You learned this on your own?”

  “Yes, sir. It was after that witness in Coalgate said he spoke of getting married. I thought it must be to Faye—don’t you think? I mean if he’s so sweet on her he killed her husband? That’s what tells me he hides out there.”

  Bob Cardell said, “Well, we been talking to people, watching every place he’s known to frequent. Look it up, I’m sure Faye Harris is on the list.”

  “I did,” Carl said. “She’s checked off as having been questioned and deputies are keeping an eye on her place. But I doubt they do more than drive past, see if Frank Miller’s drawers are hanging on the line.”

  “You’re a marshal four months,” Bob Cardell said, “and you know everything.”

  Carl didn’t speak, Bob Cardell staring at him.

  Bob Cardell saying after a few moments, “I recall the time you shot that cattle thief off his horse at four hundred yards.” Bob Cardell saying after another silence but still holding Carl with his stare, “You have some kind of scheme you want to try.”

  “I’ve poked around and learned a few things about Faye Harris,” Carl said, “where she used to live and all. I believe I can get her to talk to me.”

  Bob Cardell said, “How’d you get so sure of yourself?”

  Marshals dropped Carl off a quarter mile from the house, turned the car around, and drove back to Checotah; they’d be at the Shady Grove Café. Carl was wearing work clothes and boots, his .38 Special holstered beneath a limp old suitcoat of Virgil’s, a black one, his star in a pocket.

  Walking the quarter mile his gaze held on this worn-out homestead, the whole dismal hundred and sixty looking deserted, the dusty Ford coupe in the backyard abandoned. Carl expected Faye Harris to be in no better shape than her property, living here like an outcast. The house did take on life as he mounted the porch, the voice of Uncle Dave Macon coming from a radio somewhere inside; and now Faye Harris was facing him through the screen, a girl in a silky nightgown that barely came to her knees, barefoot, but with rouge giving her face color and her blonde hair marcelled like a movie star’s. . . .

  You dumbbell, of course she hadn’t let herself go, she was waiting for a man to come and marry her. Carl smiled, meaning it.

  “Miz Harris, I’m Carl Webster.” He k
ept looking at her face so she wouldn’t think he was trying to see through her nightgown, which he could, easy. “I believe your mom’s name is Atha Trudell? She worked at the Georgian Hotel in Henryetta doing rooms at one time and belonged to Eastern Star?”

  It nudged her enough to say, “Yeah . . .?”

  “So’d my mom, Narcissa Webster?”

  Faye shook her head.

  “Your daddy was a coal miner up at Spelter, pit boss on the Little Gem. He lost his life that time she blew in ’16. My dad was down in the hole laying track.” Carl paused. “I was ten years old.”

  Faye said, “I just turned fifteen,” her hand on the screen door to open it, but then hesitated. “Why you looking for me?”

  “Lemme tell you what happened,” Carl said. “I’m at the Shady Grove having a cup of coffee, the lady next to me at the counter says she works at a café serves way better coffee ’n here. Purity’s, up at Henryetta.”

  Faye said, “What’s her name?”

  “She never told me.”

  “I use to work at Purity.”

  “I know, but wait,” Carl said. “The way you came up in the conversation, the lady says her husband’s a miner up at Spelter. I tell her my dad was killed there in ’16. She says a girl at Purity lost her daddy in that same accident. She mentions knowing the girl’s mom from Eastern Star, I tell her mine belonged too. The waitress behind the counter’s pretending not to listen, but now she turns to us and says, ‘The girl you’re talking about lives right up the road there.’ ”

  “I bet I know which one it was,” Faye said. “She have kind of a Betty Boop hairstyle?”

  “I believe so.”

  “What else she say?”

  “You’re a widow, lost your husband.”

  “She tell you marshals gunned him down?”

  “Nothing about that.”

  “It’s what everybody thinks. She mention any other names?”

  What everybody thinks. Carl put that away and said, “No, she got busy serving customers.”

  “You live in Checotah?”

  He told her Henryetta, he was visiting his old grandma about to pass. She asked him, “What’s your name again?” He told her and she said, “Well, come on in, Carl, and have a glass of ice tea.” Sounding now like she wouldn’t mind company.

  There wasn’t much to the living room besides a rag rug on the floor and stiff black furniture, chairs and a sofa, their cane seats giving way from years of being sat on. The radio was playing in the kitchen. Faye went out there and pretty soon Carl could hear her chipping ice. He stepped over to a table laid out with magazines, True Confession, Photoplay, Liberty, Dime Western, one called Spicy. . . .

  Her voice reached him, asking, “You like Gid Tanner?”

  Carl recognized the radio music. He said, “Yeah, I do,” as he looked at pictures in Spicy of girls doing housework in their underwear, one girl up on a ladder in teddies with a feather duster.

  “Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers,” Faye’s voice said. “You know who I kinda like? That Al Jolson, he sure sounds like a nigger on that mammy song. But you want to know who my very favorite is?”

  Carl said, “Jimmie Rodgers?” looking at pictures of Joan Crawford and Elissa Landi now in Photoplay.

  “I like Jimmie okay. . . . How many sugars?”

  “Three’ll do ’er. How about Uncle Dave Macon? He was on just a minute ago.”

  “ ‘Take Me Back to My Old Carolina Home.’ I don’t care for the way he half-sings and half-talks a song. If you’re a singer you oughta sing. No, my favorite’s Maybelle Carter and the Carter Family. The pure loneliness she gets in her voice just tears me up.”

  “Must be how you feel,” Carl said, “living out here.”

  She said, “Don’t give it another thought.”

  “Sit here by yourself reading magazines . . .”

  “Honey,” Faye said, “you’re not as cute as you think you are. Drink your ice tea and beat it.”

  “I’m sympathizing with you,” Carl said. “The only reason I came, I wondered if you and I might even’ve known each other from funerals, and our moms being in the same club. . . . That’s all.” He smiled just a little, saying, “I wanted to see what you look like.”

  Faye said, “All right, you are cute, but don’t get nosy.”

  She left him with his iced tea and went in the bedroom. Now what? Carl took Photoplay across the room to sit in a chair facing the table of magazines and the bedroom door, left open. He turned pages in the magazine. It wasn’t a minute later she stuck her head out.

  “You’ve been to Purity, haven’t you?”

  “Lot of times.”

  She stepped into plain sight now wearing a pair of sheer, peach-colored teddies, the crotch sagging beneath her white thighs. Faye said, “You hear about the time Pretty Boy Floyd came in?”

  Carl could see London, he could see France. . . . “While you were working there?”

  “Since then, not too long ago. The word got around Pretty Boy Floyd was at Purity and it practically shut down the whole town. Nobody’d come out of their house.” She stood with hands on her hips in kind of a slouch. “I did meet him one time. Was at a speak in Oklahoma City.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Yeah, we talked about . . . you know, different things.” She looked like she might be trying to think of what they did talk about, but said then, “Who’s the most famous person you ever met?”

  He wasn’t expecting the question. Still, he thought about it for no more than a few seconds before telling her, “I guess it would have to be Frank Miller.”

  Faye said, “Oh . . .?” like the name didn’t mean much to her. Carl could tell, though, she was being careful, on her guard.

  “Was in a drugstore when I was a kid,” Carl said, “and Frank Miller came in for a pack of Luckies. I’d stopped there for a peach ice-cream cone, my favorite. You know what Frank Miller did? Asked could he have a bite—this famous bank robber.”

  “You give him one?”

  “I did, and you know what? He kept it, wouldn’t give me back my cone.”

  “He ate it?”

  “Licked it a few times and threw it away.” Carl didn’t mention the trace of ice cream on Frank Miller’s mustache; he kept that for himself. “Yeah, he took my ice-cream cone, robbed the store, and shot a policeman. You believe it?”

  She seemed to nod, thoughtful now, and Carl decided it was time to come out in the open.

  “You said people think it was marshals gunned down your husband, Skeet. But you know better, don’t you?”

  He had her full attention, staring at him now like she was hypnotized.

  “And I’ll bet it was Frank himself told you. Who else’d have the nerve? I’ll bet he said you ever leave him he’ll hunt you down and kill you. On account of he’s so crazy about you. I can’t think of another reason you’d stay here these years. You have anything to say to that?”

  Faye began to show herself, saying, “You’re not from a newspaper . . .”

  “Is that what you thought?”

  “They come around. Once they’re in the house they can’t wait to leave. No, you’re not at all like them.”

  Carl said, “Faye, I’m a Deputy United States Marshal. I’m here to put Frank Miller under arrest or in the ground, one.”

  III

  He worried she might’ve acquired an affection for the man, but it wasn’t so. Once Carl showed her his star Faye sat down and breathed with relief. Pretty soon her nerves did take hold and she became talkative. Frank had phoned this morning and was coming. Now what was she supposed to do? Carl asked what time she expected him. She said going on dark. A car would drive past and honk twice; if the front door was open when it drove past again Frank would jump out and the car would keep going. Carl said he’d be sitting here reading about Joan Crawford. He said introduce him as a friend of the family happened to stop by, but try not to talk too much. He asked if Frank brought the magazines. She said they were su
pposed to be her treat. He asked out of curiosity if Frank could read. Faye said she wasn’t sure, but believed he only looked at the pictures. What was it Virgil called him that time, years ago? A bozo.

  He said to Faye, “What you want to do is pay close attention. Then later on you can tell what happened here as the star witness and get your name in the paper. I bet even your picture.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Faye said. “You really think so?”

  They heard the car beep twice as it passed the house.

  Ready?

  Carl was, in the chair facing the magazine table where the only lamp in the room was lit. Faye stood smoking a cigarette, smoking three or four since drinking the orange-juice glass of gin to settle her down. Light from the kitchen, behind her, showed her figure in the kimono she was wearing. Faye looked fine to Carl.

  But not to Frank Miller. Not the way he came in with magazines under his arm and barely paused before saying to her, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Faye said. “Frank, I want you to meet Carl, from home.” Frank staring at him now as Faye said he was a busboy at Purity the same time she was working there. “And our moms are both Eastern Star.”

  “You’re Frank,” Carl said, sounding like a salesman. “Glad to know you, Frank.” Carl looking at a face from six years ago, the same dead-eyed stare beneath the hat brim. He watched Frank Miller carry his magazines to the table, drop them on top of the ones there and glance over at Faye; watched him plant both hands on the table now, hunched over, taking time to what, rest? Unh-unh, decide how to get rid of this busboy so he could take Faye to bed, Carl imagining Frank doing it to her with his hat still on . . . and remembered his dad saying, “You know why I caught the Mauser round that time, the Spanish sniper picking me off? I was thinking instead of paying attention, doing my job.”

  Carl asked himself what he was waiting for. He said, “Frank, bring out your pistol and lay it there on the table.”

  Faye Harris knew how to tell it. She had recited her story enough times to marshals and various law enforcement people. This afternoon she was describing the scene to newspaper reporters—and the one from the Oklahoman, the Oklahoma City paper, kept interrupting, asking questions that were a lot different than ones the marshals asked.