The Love of a Bad Man

by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

  Actually, it’s just Clyde, asking if I can go across the court and buy them some fried chicken and beer.

  We’re woken in the night by a light flashing on our windows, a pounding on the door. ‘Daddy,’ I whisper. Buck’s eyelashes flutter. The door keeps pounding. I jump over the foot of the bed and start dragging on my breeches. ‘Daddy … what should I say?’

  Buck sits up, long-faced in the dark. ‘Ask who it is and what they want.’ He yawns, but I know from his voice he’s more scared than all that. ‘Stall ’em as best you can.’

  He starts putting on his trousers as I tiptoe to the door. I open it a crack and they shine a light in my face, so bright I can’t see.

  ‘Who are you?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re the law,’ says the man in front. As my sight flashes off and on, I notice his brown uniform.

  ‘Well … What do you want?’

  ‘We want you to send out your men.’

  ‘There ain’t no men here.’

  ‘Step outside yourself then, ma’am.’

  I glance at Buck, tucking his trousers into his boots. He murmurs something and I repeat it, loud and clear. ‘The. Men. Are. In. The. Other. Cabin.’

  ‘Step outside, ma’am.’

  ‘I ain’t dressed,’ I snap. ‘Can I put some clothes on, at least?’

  The laws look at each other. I wonder if there are more hidden nearby. ‘Be quick about it.’

  I turn around and bump right into Buck. He’s slipping his pistol into his belt, reaching for the rifle leaning by the sofa. ‘Stay close as you can to the wall,’ he says. ‘I sure am sorry, but I’m gonna have to kill those men.’

  Before Buck can do anything, there’s a revving and a ramming outside the garage. A bullet flies through the window nearest Buck and he shoves me against the wall. I cross my arms over my face as bits of plaster and mirror explode. Then the shooting stops as soon as it started and the car that was ramming the garage backs out, sounding its horn like a hurt goose.

  ‘Aw, hell. They’re calling more laws.’ Buck lowers his rifle and cocks his head to the cabin wall. ‘Hey, brother, you alright?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Clyde calls. ‘Let’s get outta here.’

  I try to grab for the door handle, but Buck shoves me aside again, mutters, ‘Don’t, baby! You’ll get killed! Go after I go!’

  It seems to me we’ll both be dead before we stop arguing about who gets to face the fire first.

  We hear Clyde’s motor start. Buck gives the word and pushes out before me. Clyde and W.D. are already at the wheel of the Ford, cocking their rifles as Bonnie hops in on her one good leg. I keep my eyes on Buck’s back, broad like a shield. Out of nowhere, a shot pings past my head.

  Buck falls.

  Buck falls, and he’s bleeding.

  ‘Daddy!’ I go down to my knees.

  ‘I dropped my gun …’ Buck mumbles, right before he passes out.

  All of us are squashed into the car and Clyde is backing out of camp as fast as he can. I’m trying to keep Buck’s eyes open, his head from rolling. ‘Daddy, it’s me. Daddy, wake up …’ It’s hard sapping the tears from my voice when I can feel his head leaking. Clyde tells me to keep talking like I am. I don’t know how he can be so calm, but it makes me feel better about getting Buck out safe — that is, till the bullets start raining again.

  ‘Hell!’ Clyde cusses, not so calm anymore.

  Glass smashes, and something hard streaks across my forehead. I can’t see anything, but I’m covering Buck’s face, screaming as more sharp things fly at us. The car swerves. I try to see if Buck has been shot again but everything stays dark and there’s hotness dripping from my eyes, too thick to be tears.

  ‘I’m blind,’ I say. Nobody seems to hear me.

  I don’t know which way we turn or how far we drive, only that it gets quiet after a while. Clyde says something about a flat tire and there’s cussing then more quiet as the car slows. I pipe up asking if they can check on Buck. ‘Why can’t you do it?’ Bonnie asks.

  ‘I’m blind,’ I say again.

  They get out of the car and someone starts on the tyre — W.D., I think. Someone else strikes a match and holds it to my face. ‘There’s a lotta blood,’ Clyde says. ‘But the eyeballs ain’t busted.’ I hear Bonnie striking a match near Buck and ask how bad he is. She doesn’t answer at first. I ask again.

  ‘Well, it ain’t deep enough to kill him …’ She pauses. ‘But it’s in there.’

  My eyes start flooding and Clyde says, ‘That’s good. See if you can’t cry some of that glass out.’ He starts dabbing at the blood and water. I see a fuzz of light where the match is and try to focus on it, not the silence around Buck. Then he starts groaning.

  ‘Baby. My head hurts …’

  ‘Daddy!’ I feel my way to him. ‘Keep talking.’

  ‘My head hurts, baby …’ he says again. ‘Can you take my hat off?’

  ‘Not yet.’ I stroke the bloody fabric tied around his head. ‘You gotta keep it on till we get home.’

  If he wasn’t willing to stop at a hospital for Bonnie, Clyde sure as hell won’t for Buck, but that doesn’t keep me from begging as we drive all night and all the next day. Clyde keeps shaking his head. Finally, he turns around.

  ‘You think they’re going to treat my brother? Blanche-baby, they’d sooner put another bullet in him.’

  The truth hits me then. How many laws has Buck killed? Three, four? Not so many as Clyde, but enough to get a bounty on his head. My big, soft-hearted Buck, who’s never raised a hand to me, even on the hooch.

  That afternoon, we stop in a wooded area somewhere in Iowa. I can tell it’s woods because the light in my eyes is greenish instead of brown and there’s a twittering of little birds. Clyde takes out one of the car cushions and spreads it under a tree for Buck. I sit by him as the sky turns and the air gets colder, wetting his lips and checking his pulse whenever he gets too quiet.

  ‘Lie down, baby,’ he tells me, every time he comes to. ‘Lie down on the grass with me. You know I’m hurtin’.’

  But I’m too scared to lie down, in case I close my eyes and wake up with a dead man.

  Clyde makes a fire that night. By the light of it, he picks more glass from my eyes, but there’s a big piece in one of my pupils that just won’t budge. Neither him nor Bonnie can get a grip on it and it hurts so bad that I’d rather they left it alone. So they give me some drops and bandage it up again. No one touches the wound in Buck’s head, except to pour in hydrogen peroxide and change the dressing.

  Later, I hear some noise past the fire, like dirt being moved. When I call out asking what it is, the men don’t answer; only Bonnie comes and sits down beside me. ‘This place ain’t so bad, sis,’ she says. ‘It’s kinda pretty. Peaceful-like.’ Then she offers to watch Buck for the night.

  I stay up with him, though, as the others curl up next to the embers. There are whippoorwills hunting in the trees and a screech owl that won’t quit screeching, even when W.D. throws an empty bean can at it. ‘How the heck do animals sleep out here?’ Bonnie gripes, forgetting all her talk of peacefulness. But soon enough, W.D. is snoring. I can’t say for sure, but I think Bonnie and Clyde start canoodling after that.

  I guess I fall asleep because the next thing I know, I’m woken up by Buck jabbering. ‘Gimme my pistol, baby,’ he’s saying, pawing at my lap. ‘I gotta shoot them soldiers.’

  I don’t see any soldiers, but then I remember it’s night-time and I’m blind on top of that. My heart starts beating real fast and I get an awful taste in my mouth, part nerves and part sickness over how bad Buck’s head is smelling.

  ‘There’s soldiers?’ I ask. ‘Where?’

  ‘Shh. In the woods. They’s gonna kill us.’ He goes quiet for a minute. ‘They’s all around us, baby!’

  All the light from the fire is gone, and I can smell the col
d ashes. I listen out for some sign of the others, but the only sound is my breathing and Buck’s, shallow and wet. I wonder whether if I shut my eyes tight enough, it might be possible to dream the two of us back to that night of the open window and the blowing hackberry tree. Then I hear it, unmistakable: a gun clicking somewhere nearby.

  ‘Gimme my pistol, baby,’ Buck says, softer this time.

  Eva

  According to my sister Ilse, there’s a Jew in Vienna who spends all his time listening to bored women talking. They lie down on a couch with their backs to him, plucking at their blouse buttons and going on about all sorts of things: their dreams, their memories, their childhoods.

  ‘Why?’ I ask Ilse.

  ‘For enlightenment,’ she says. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that.’

  Ilse is working for a Jewish doctor when she tells me this. His name is Dr Marx and he’s an ear, nose, and throat specialist. He lets her sleep in a room next to his office and she stops going out with young men, spouts off about apnea and sinusitus whenever she gets the chance. When things start changing and Dr Marx has to move to America, Ilse’s eyes are red for weeks. She looks at me like she hates me and says it’s all my fault, that things could be different if I weren't so ignorant.

  Sometimes I think about that Jew in Vienna when I’m lying around, waiting for Him. By the phone in my little brown-roofed villa. On the terrace beneath the bright umbrellas. Smoking in my suite at the Grand Hotel. I think about my head opening up and everything spilling out of it in a multicoloured jumble, like clothes on the floor when I’m dressing for dinner. My dreams. My memories. My childhood. All of it falling together until I’m enlightened.

  It begins on a couch. In the drawing room of his Prince Regent’s Place apartment, with Him in mourning and me giddy from a half-bottle of champagne. He won’t drink, but I’m determined to cheer him up. I lean on his arm on our way out of the restaurant and, in the Mercedes, blink at him with serious eyes. I tell him I’d do anything to see him happy.

  It is quick and less painful than I expect. Embarrassing in its quickness, like a fish leaping into a rowboat, thrashing about, then sliding back into the deep blue water. His face turns red, like I’ve heard it does when he makes speeches. Once he has caught his breath and buttoned up, he rises from the couch. I pull down my dress and start rolling on my stockings, but they’re full of runs. He touches my golden head and tells me he’ll buy me new ones. He tells me I’m a good girl.

  Before the beginning, I’m working as an assistant at Mr Hoffman’s photo studio. I’ve only been there three weeks, but it’s the longest job I’ve had out of convent school, and the work isn’t bad — at least, not as boring as typing. He comes in while I’m on a ladder, reaching for some files on the top shelf and wearing a skirt that’s hemmed too short. He stands at the front of the shop, wearing a shabby raincoat and talking to Mr Hoffmann in a low voice. I can feel them looking at my legs.

  I don’t recognise Him from his photographs. I don’t recognise any of the men who come in, though I see their faces every day in the darkroom. But after I come down from the ladder that day and he asks for my name and kisses my hand, I start paying attention. I can’t say why, but I feel like I have to.

  Every time He comes into the shop, he makes a point of talking to me. It surprises me that he takes such an interest, him being so much older and serious-looking, me the youngest girl at work and still plump from my convent-school diet. But when we start talking, I find out he’s not so serious. He likes to eat cream cakes and marzipan. He likes to go to the theatre. He likes to pay compliments to pretty girls, me most of all.

  How lovely your complexion is, Miss Eva! Like peaches and cream.

  Those stockings look very nice, Miss Eva. You have the legs of a dancer.

  Miss Eva, you should be in front of a camera, not behind one!

  One day, He brings me an autographed photo of himself in uniform, looking mysterious and thoughtful. I show the photograph to Ilse when I get home from work and she laughs so much I want to slap her, then tells me solemnly that I can’t let Papa see it. ‘You know how he feels about radical politics,’ she says. Together we lift up the lining of my underwear drawer and hide it beneath my schoolgirl wools and cottons. For now, I can only dream of satin and lace.

  Sometimes, my papa says I’m a good girl. Other times, he says I’m bad, wayward, a disappointment. I can be good for getting a B in German. I can be bad for getting a B in German. I can be good for looking pretty. I can be bad for looking pretty. I can be good for playing sports like a boy. I can be bad for playing sports like a boy. It’s so hard for me to keep track of what’s good and what’s bad, I’ve given up trying.

  Ilse never gets in trouble with Papa. Neither does my little sister Gretl, who’s still at the convent. It’s only me who seems to get Papa worked up. One night at the dinner table, I ask Papa if he’s heard of Him, just to see how he reacts.

  ‘That man? He’s a charlatan, a fool who thinks he’s omniscient. He says he’s going to change the world. Not likely!’

  Ilse and I stuff our cheeks full of potato so Papa won’t see us laughing, and are quick to go our own ways once our plates are cleared. I think she’s sneaking out to call Dr Marx. I shut the door to our room and lie down, closing my eyes until I can see His face floating above mine. I see his face and it’s like lying in a field of forget-me-nots, under a full white moon, at the height of spring. I say his name and feel bad, delicious.

  He often has to go out of town for business, to the capital and other places. Sometimes, months pass without me seeing him. This is okay before what happens on the couch, but afterward, I assume things will be different. I wonder what the point of it all is — his compliments and gifts, his dates with me to the theatre and opera and his chalet in the mountains — if he has so little need of me. I stop being plump.

  He had a niece who lived at his Prince Regent’s Place apartment before he and I become lovers. She was pretty and round-faced, and wore the latest fashions from Vienna — clicky heels and fur coats, beautiful silk dresses. One day, when he was off working somewhere else, she aimed a pistol at her chest and shot herself dead.

  I remember this when I am alone in my parents’ house, waiting for a phone call that never comes. Unlocking Papa’s war pistol from its dusty case and pointing it where I hurt most, then jerking it away right before it goes off. Ilse comes home first, finds me dizzy in a puddle of my own blood. She calls one of Dr Marx’s friends and he fixes me up in the middle of the night. We pass the whole thing off to my parents as an accident.

  And Him? He flies back immediately and promises me an apartment of my own, close to his.

  Papa and He first meet when I’m on tour with his publicity team. I set up equipment for my boss and sometimes get to take photos of Him myself, making speeches and holding his hand up to the crowds. The crowds are always full of women, who give off a bad smell and yell out crazy things — that they love him, that they would die for him, that they want to bear his children. I’m not jealous of these women. They’ll never get as close to him as me.

  We stop at a lodge outside town. I tell my parents to be there for lunch, though our convoy doesn’t arrive until after four. Papa is civil. He hails him, and afterward they shake hands. ‘Your daughter is a very good girl,’ He tells Papa. Papa says nothing. He knows exactly what this means.

  I don’t want to be ignorant, but politics are so boring to me. Every time I try to get through the book He wrote before he became famous, it’s like being back at convent-school among the stink of Bible pages. It’s the same with the newspapers, which I only skim for pictures of Him. And music. I’d rather dance to fast jazz or slow, moony American love songs than listen to the stuff He likes: Strauss, Verdi, Wagner, Wagner, Wagner.

  He doesn’t mind if I’m ignorant. I can sit in the sun and read Oscar Wilde, flick through fashion and movie magazines, and
he’s happy. He says it’s better for a woman to be soft, sweet, and stupid than intellectual, and I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to be like Ilse, always trying to sound smarter than she really is.

  He gives me the brown-roofed villa after I take too many sleeping pills on purpose. My papa won’t visit me there, but Mama and Ilse do. We drink nice wine and I show them the flagstone patio, the table-tennis set, the high garden walls that no busybodies can see over. I show them all the artwork on the walls inside, including some watercolours that He did himself a long time ago. I show them the brand-new TV set, which gets broadcasts straight from the capital. I tell Ilse she’s welcome to move in with me along with our little sister Gretl, who’s coming home from convent in a few weeks. She isn’t interested. Dr Marx is still in town, running his practice.

  He gives me two little black dogs to keep me company in the villa, which follow me around as eagerly as Gretl does. He gives me a monthly allowance and I spend it on pretty things from Vienna and Italy: crocodile leather, silk underwear, shoes by Ferragamo. Nowadays, I don’t work unless he is going somewhere and wants me along as an assistant. Instead, Gretl and I lie on my bed during the day looking at patterns and catalogues, and picking out what will suit me best.

  Sometimes, I think of hurting myself again: not only when He is out of town for too long, but also when he’s in town and cold-shouldering me in public, telling everyone that he’ll never marry, that the only woman in his life is Germany. I think of doing it with poison, like Madame Bovary. But then I remember the fairytales I grew up with, and how everything happens in threes. Three is serious. It’s life or death.

  In summer, Gretl and I hitch rides in the mail truck out to the Königssee, where the waters are the same deep blue as His eyes and icy with reflected snowcaps. There are always bronze-backed young men by the lake whom we have fun with: men with corn-silk hair and names like Rudi, Heini, Bruno. They flick us with their towels, dunk us underwater and bear us up again in their strong arms.