I thought I’d understood but it wasn’t until I looked at Junior’s stunned eyes that I was sure I had.
“Anyway, Mavis’ll be home about five. Sister’s …” Aunt Dell cleared her throat. “Sister’s out shoppin’. She ought to be back any minute. We didn’t have any notion of just when you all’d be gettin’ here.” We soon learned that “out shopping” meant that Sister hadn’t come home after work in the night club. When she did get home and I saw her for the first time in two years, I caught my breath. She was more beautiful than I’d ever imagined. I was glued to her side.
That nice-looking man standing shyly back by the front door was the new man in Aunt Dell’s life. Roy Blake. A World War veteran, now a cattle inspector for the Arizona State Meat Board, an amateur bronco-buster, ex-cowboy and now live-in … Well, it was never explained adequately since Aunt Dell made a big point that he had the room at the back of the garage and was just a boarder and lodger who’d become part of the family. “Well, Milly,” Aunt Dell said. “How’d you start out? Roomin’ and boardin’ with us Slokums down on Indian Creek when you’as teachin’ school there. Now look what it got you. Two big chips off that old block of Woods that you married.” She hugged me and Junior. “And no way out.” Then she hugged Mom. “We’ll just see if we can’t get Roy in here permanent.” She rolled her eyes suggestively. “Into the family, that is.”
“I’ve paid six-months’ rent in advance,” Roy said quietly. “If she throws me out, I’ll sue.” His light blue eyes were so steely I thought he was serious. But of course everybody laughed. He really looked like a cowboy—sort of like Gary Cooper—blondish with a craggily handsome face.
Within minutes of our arrival, Aunt Dell was at work preparing what she called a down-home Woods Pow-Wow. The food portion of this festive Pow-Wow was always hamburgers with every conceivable sauce from catsup to pickalilli, sliced onions, lettuce, Kraft cheese and toasted buns. She went at the job of creating the meat patties with the seriousness of a French chef. The liquid accompaniment of the Pow-Wow was already lined up on the kitchen table: bottles of bourbon and every sort of mix from Nehi to Seven-Up. “But not a Zest-O, you’ll notice,” she yelled above the din of voices—Sister’s and Mavis’ now added to the rest—all trying to fill the two-year gap at once—“and there’s one hell of a story about good ole Zest-O that I’m dying to tell you if I ever get the chance.”
Stories were coming hot and fast. Grandma’s funeral, the general exodus from around Galena, Aunt Dell’s adventures with Sister and Mavis hitch-hiking across the country, how she’d met Roy (he’d had the good fortune to be the one to provide the purtiest hitch-hikers in the world with their last ride—right into Phoenix city limits and hadn’t been far from them since), the death of Woody’s Café became a comic disaster story in Dad’s hands. Also in Dad’s hands the bourbon was fueling and feeding his storehouse of tall tales and he was enjoying himself enormously, having found an appreciative audience in Roy.
A new audience didn’t produce new stories, necessarily, but Dad’s set-pieces took on fresh paint, bright and colorful and almost sounded new to us. He was off and away and his stories would always last longer than the bourbon.
He was in tip-top form and kept us all laughing. When he launched into my favorite story that never failed to keep the idlers around the Court House in Galena riveted, Roy had the same awe-struck look they got when Dad mentioned Bonnie and Clyde’s name with easy familiarity. According to Dad’s eyewitness account, Bonnie and Clyde had just robbed a bank in Crane and he’d been in the sheriffs office when the call came in that the robbers were headed toward Galena. This, of course, had thrown Maude Stevens in the telephone office into a frenzy and everybody in town who had a phone had the news in seconds.
Clem Walters, Dad’s friend and the recently elected sheriff, had Dad deputized by the time they hit the first landing of the Court House. Dad had been deputized by Clem before and all it seemed to take was a wink and a nod. Being deputized couldn’t have been very exclusive since almost every man in Galena swore he’d been in that famous posse. They probably were. As Dad explained it, Sheriff Walters didn’t actually pin badges on anybody and on that great day, he just yelled, “It’s Bonnie and Clyde! Let’s go!” And all those who could, went. With Dad in the lead car with the sheriff.
The town had gone crazy. I’ve heard it claimed that some sheriffs would do everything but direct traffic to assure Bonnie and Clyde a safe getaway—they were heroes—but Clem Walters wanted to be famous. He wanted the extraordinary feather in his cocky Stetson that the capture of the notorious team would bring. People were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Men had grabbed rifles and guns and were piling into cars, cranking them up and roaring around the town square following the sheriff s car with Dad and a bunch of other men packed in on top of him. Dad said Clem kept yellin’, “For Christ’s sake, sit down! I can’t see out the fuckin’ windshield!”
They headed out the road that led to the high school which was on the main highway from Crane. They’d wait there, the sheriff explained, trying to be very calm and cool, Dad said, but the fact that he was whispering like a kid playing hide and seek gave away the fact that he was scared shitless.
They must have looked plumb silly, Dad said, a whole line of cars—the number varied from fifty to over a hundred—bumper to bumper, backed up the hill across the railroad tracks and some at the tail end still back up in the town square. And there they sat, motors being gunned, guns being cocked and uncocked, hundreds of pairs of round excited eyes on the highway and not a sign of traffic. They sat there for over ten minutes, not a cat stirring on the road, dead silent, not daring to take their eyes off the road even to light a cigarette. “Shit!” was the only word Dad heard in the sheriffs car when somebody burned his fingers on a match until all of a sudden Clem opened his door and said, “God damn! I’ve got to piss.”
“Pure nerves,” Dad said. The minute the sheriffs stream was seen or heard, the whole damned bunch as far as the eye could see had jumped out of the cars and started creating a small flood flowing down the hill. “And right then, in mid-piss, somebody yelled, ‘Jesus Christ, here they come!’ And sure enough,” here Dad really starting rolling with his story, “roundin’ the nearest bend was a Ford V-8, spanking clean and gleamin’ chrome, spare tires fitted into the front fenders—just like in the pictures. That was it all right. Well, everybody started scrambling back into their cars, half of them with their cocks still hanging out, others pissin’ down their legs. Never seen anything so funny in all my life. Clem jumped back in the car, tryin’ to get it in gear and his cock in his pants at the same time and I’ll be damned if he didn’t stall the fuckin’ motor.” Dad grinned. “He’d been better off to let his cock drive the car. I mean, there they was—Bonnie and Clyde, for Christ’s sake!—barrelling down on us and the whole damned posse lined up with piss runnin’ down their pants’ legs and the sheriff stalled!
“I stuck my head out the window and yelled back to Wilbur Simms—he was behind us—‘For Christ’s sake, Will, give us a shove!’ Will looked plumb disgusted and hauled off and rammed us so hard the two bumpers caught. I tell you I like to’a died. Stuck! Stuck like a couple of dogs fuckin’ and by this time that V-8 was whizzin’ past us so fast I couldn’t hardly see who was in it. They got a good quarter-mile ahead of us by the time we got out on the main road, still stuck, with Will sort’a pushin’ us and us sorta pullin’ him. Then Clem said, ‘I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna’ miss the chance of a lifetime,’ and he done the quickest maneuver I ever seen. He sort of double-clutched and gunned her and slammed on his brake all at the same time, causing something to snap loose and we took off like a big-assed bird. I mean, we was flyin’!
“I could hear something bangin’ and clatterin’ and I looked back and seen Will had lost his front bumper. I knew what we was draggin’ then. But it sure as shit didn’t hold us back. We started gainin’ on that V-8 by the time it swerved left onto the bridge�
�� you got to slow down on that corner or you’re in the James River. I don’t know who was drivin’ that Ford, but he shore knew what he was doin’. They went around that corner on two wheels and how he ever pulled that vehicle back down on all fours is still a mystery to me. But Clem? What’d he go and do? I’ll be goddamned if he didn’t cut that corner too short. Not only that, but bashed in the left rear fender and we lost momentum and careened like a pig on ice. I figured for sure we’as goin’ have to swim. We bounced off both sides of the bridge like a ball-bearing in one of them pin-ball machines. By the time Clem straightened her out, that V-8 was all but out of sight. I knew it was useless to go on, they had us outclassed in every way and had gained on us by a country mile. But Clem floorboarded that old heap of his and kept tryin’. He ain’t a piker, I’ll give him that.
“But Bonnie and Clyde by then was headed toward Reedspring, going up that hill off the bridge like it was flat as a pancake. I don’t think they even had to shift gears. Clem sure as hell had to. We went all the way down to low before we even started up that damned hill. I was sick. I just closed my eyes and groaned. We didn’t have a chance in hell now of catchin’ ’em. Several cars behind us started honkin’ and tryin’ to pass us. I thought Clem would bust a gut. It was pitiful. Clem was all hunched down, head workin’ like a chicken’s, bobbin’ back and forth in the seat trying’ to coax her up that hill. He was urgin’, talkin’ to that pore ole heap—‘Come on, baby. Come on, goddammit!’
“Well, as I said, it was just plain pitiful. I didn’t like to say nothin’. I knew Clem was heartbroke. I never felt so sorry for a man in my life. His big chance. It was Bonnie and Clyde, for Christ’s sake!” Dad shook his head sadly. “You might say he pissed it away.”
Dad played the whole story to Roy. I think he somehow judged people by the way they responded to his oft-told tales. Roy proved to be one of the most responsive listeners I’d ever seen. His laughter and attention were in perfect harmony with the narrative, as if he’d rehearsed his role. Perhaps he and Dad had something in common. At any rate, he was in. Dad was beaming with triumph like he had when we danced together in the Domino Cafe. Roy had been fascinated by the occupants of the car. He and Dad whispered lewdly about things too mysterious or improper for women and children’s ears. I remember wondering at the time if they were talking about things that only men could do together. Whatever it was, it kept their heads together and their laughter low and suggestive of dark, devious goings-on.
“Let ’em talk dirty to theirselves,” Aunt Dell said dismissively when she was certain that she wasn’t going to be allowed to listen in. “We got better things to do, ain’t we? Like choppin’ some more ice. Junior, you’re the strong one. Grab a pick—and that ain’t spelled with no ‘r’—if they can talk dirty, so can we. Oh yes. More ice. Never could stand hot bourbon.”
“You might not be able to stand it,” Dad teased, “but I never seen you turn it down. Except down your throat.”
“Don’t say that sort of thing in front of Roy,” Aunt Dell yelled and ran laughing toward Dad with her hand raised ready to slap. “You still ain’t too big or too smart for your old—er, younger sister to give you a right good ’un.”
“Momma,” Mavis called. “You’re pretty feisty for somebody with a busted back.”
Aunt Dell and Roy exchanged a look and Aunt Dell put her hand over her mouth and widened her eyes like a naughty child. “Oh Lord. I’ve been forgettin’ to limp.”
“Oh dear,” Mom said. “Have you hurt yourself, Dell?”
“Well, I did.” She looked at Roy and they both laughed. “That’s what I’ve been dyin’ to tell you about.”
Aunt Dell had been working at a soda pop bottling plant—Zest-O—feeding the caps into a machine that snapped the tops on, sitting on a high stool. One day she almost fell off her perch, and in an effort to catch herself, the stool slipped out from under her— “One of them damned little rubber ends was missin’ on the stool’s leg,” she said then added with a roll of her eyes, “fortunately.”
She had fallen, injuring her back. The company doctor had poked around and examined her and declared her only bruised but Aunt Dell’s back didn’t seem to get better. She went to other doctors and they couldn’t find anything wrong in the X-rays, but would shake their heads and say, “You just can’t tell with the back. A nerve can be pinched, a bone slightly chipped, a vertebrae knocked a bit out of line …” They couldn’t say anything positive but Aunt Dell had kept her ears open and learned something positive. And invaluable. She learned that the back was territory that defied intensive investigation and she also learned that she could sue. She did. With the help of Mavis’ employer, she sued Zest-O and won the case—doctor bills paid and a thousand dollar settlement which she split down the middle with the lawyer. “Smartest man I ever seen. He don’t miss a trick. A real shyster.”
Aunt Dell was in business. She fell in ladies’ rooms in gas stations, in hotel lobbies, department stores, anywhere where a likely suit could be filed. She and Mavis’ boss were a formidable pair— she was a born actress and he wasn’t without histrionic talent himself. They had several cases going at once. Of course, doctors could never find anything wrong but she won at least seventy-five percent of her suits.
We all—except Dad—tried to take her accidents seriously but the scales dropped from my eyes the second day we were in Phoenix. I was with Aunt Dell downtown on Van Buren Boulevard and we went into the Goldwater Department Store. I was eating an icecream cone I hadn’t asked for but when offered could hardly refuse. We stood just inside the doorway, Aunt Dell looking smart in a pretty summer dress and looking over the premises with a practiced eye. There was a perfectly flat, not highly polished wooden floor with no cracks to catch a heel, no sudden changes of level to trip over, not even a carpet to provide a trap for a toe. The staircase to the mezzanine was on the other side of this sea of perfectly safe flooring dotted only by islands of counters. She would never have risked doing herself real damage by falling through a glass-topped showcase. I recall she sighed rather sadly, having taken it all in and then turned abruptly, knocking the ice-cream out of my hand and whispering to me as she did, “Scoot. Git back to the car. Run!”
I was too bewildered to do anything else. I ran but caught sight of her stepping deliberately into the ice-cream and falling beautifully onto her bottom and following through onto her shoulder and arm showing just the right amount of a well-shaped leg. It was not unlike Junior sliding into home plate. Being a witness to her methods made me feel like an accomplice and I was careful in the future not to be alone with her in “falling down” territory.
Everybody contributed to the household expenses on Tamarisk Avenue—even Aunt Dell in her erratic and original way. It was imperative that we do the same. We were family, after all, not house-guests. School would start soon and Mom’s Law decreed that school-terms were inviolable and we had to be settled in our own place as soon as possible. We had to get work.
Sister got Mom all tarted up (Roy’s expression) to go to work as a waitress with her at The Ship. Sister was able to choose extra help for the weekends if she wanted to share the tables assigned to her. Mom had had experience as a waitress so it seemed a logical thing for her to do. I thought she looked very glamorous—her short hair had been put up in tight little curls all over head, her eyes were heavily made up and she wore a skirt whose brevity gave Dad a shock although he tried to make a joke of it. Mom bravely pranced up and down the living room trying to get used to her new role, smirking and smiling in a clumsy imitation of a flirtatious vamp. “May I bring you a drink, sir?” she asked, bending down over Junior.
He looked embarrassed but played along. “Why, sure thang, honey-pie. Ah’ll have a … a … Ah’ll have a mint-julep, please. But without the julep.”
Everybody laughed and Mom suddenly looked stricken. “For Heaven’s sake, Sister. I don’t know the names of any of those fancy drinks. What’ll I do?”
“Honey, just come t
o me if you have any trouble. There isn’t a mixed drink that I haven’t heard about.”
“Or tried,” Mavis said in a quiet dry voice. Junior slipped out onto the front porch with me behind him while they all laughed.
He plunked himself down in one of our wicker chairs and squinted his eyes as though he were trying to see through the rusty screening into the night. A night pitch black with only a few lightning bugs snapping their lights off and on. A neighbor’s house here and there had lights on, shining dimly out onto the crab-grass lawns but there were no street lights and no cars to puncture the blackness. I crawled over his legs to where our pallets had been made up and started taking off my shoes. “What’re you looking at,” I asked.
“Nothin’.”
“Well, you’re staring.”
“Staring into space. Empty space.”
“What’re you seeing?”
“Nothin’.”
“Then why stare?”
“Just trying to see.” He leaned back into the chair and closed his eyes. He was quiet until I had my shoes off and stood up to take off my shirt. “Just trying to see what it’s going to be like.”
“What do you mean?”
“What it’s going to be like.” He shrugged his shoulders and leaned over to untie his own shoes. “What we’re going to have to do to make a living.” He pitched a shoe at me which I caught and placed next to mine. “I mean, is Mom going to have to have her hair curled up like Little Orphan Annie and wiggle her bottom and serve a bunch of drunks so we can buy some food?” Another shoe hit my chest. Then a wad of damp socks. I lined them up with the others. “What sort of work will Dad have to do? Dig ditches?”
Junior was always the one to hear the plop of the paper being thrown onto the front yard early every morning during those first desperate days at Aunt Dell’s. He ran with it around the house to the kitchen where Dad was already up, having made a huge pot of coffee for the grownups who’d come drifting into the kitchen one by one. Mavis had to be at the office by eight-thirty. Aunt Dell either had a doctor’s appointment or one with Mavis’ boss by no later than ten, or else was making plans to scout for new places to fall. Mom would sleep only until about eight no matter what time she’d got home from The Ship. Sister’s room was a fortress—we never knew whether she was there or out shopping—until about noon. Roy’s hours were so irregular that he couldn’t be counted on. If a herd of cattle had come into the stockyard during the night, he’d have to be there by five to inspect them “on the hoof” which was his job before they went to slaughter. Sometimes he’d travel out of town to ranches to check on reports of hoof and mouth disease which could mean that he’d be gone for several days at a time.
In Tall Cotton Page 13