Pretty boy, p.2
Pretty Boy, page 2
“Shoulder holsters,” he says. “That’s the only way to pack heaters.”
“That’s why you’re working as a harvest hand?” I say. “Because you’re so terrific as a robber?”
“Laying low right now till things cool off, boyo.”
We keep picking that cotton, the sharp boles nicking our fingers. I feel the weight of my pistol in my waistband, the butt pressed up hard under my ribs, my fingers sore and bleeding, the sun scorching my back, sweat dripping in my eyes. I see the field boss riding the water can, jawing with men who drag their long sacks up to empty them in the wagons. I see how fat he is. Smart men don’t work like mules and I wonder why I’m not smarter than that fat man.
“Listen,” Fred the Sheik says. “I know how we can make a lot easier dough than doing this.”
“You know so much, how come you’re not out doing it? How come you’re here same as the rest of us damn dumb bastards?”
“The action I’m talking about needs two guys.”
“I’m listening.”
“I know where there’s some Kroger stores we can rob if you’re interested.”
Kroger stores?
I thought of Daddy Walter, that little grocery store he had started and how hard he had to work to make an honest dollar, the credit he gave those poor people who came through his door. I wasn’t going to rob any damn grocery store and I told Fred so.
“I’m not into robbing grocery stores. My old man’s a grocer.”
“No, it’s not the same thing at all, boyo. Kroger’s is a big chain. They’re like the banks. They’re all owned by rich men with fat wives and fat kids and big black Packards.”
I had my doubts until Fred the Sheik said, “Look around you, tell me what you see.”
“See lost men, no future.”
“That’s right.”
“See dust and cotton and a fat field boss hogging the water can.”
“Go on.”
“See another year of my life gone with nothing to show for it.”
“That’s what I see, too, boyo. I’m about fed up with working like a nigger, ain’t you?” I had a twelve-foot-long sack slung out behind me, dragging it along like the gray shadow of a dead man. A fellow could pick all day and not fill such a sack if he didn’t go at it hard, didn’t take no more than ten minutes to eat lunch. And if he did fill it, he got two dollars. Walking those rows all day under that sun for two damn lousy dollars.
I thought of Ruby and our boy Jackie, and that little shotgun shack we lived in and how none of us were going anywhere fast. I thought of Daddy Walter and all the other men around those parts and how it seemed everyone was living just to be waiting to die. I thought of the rich bankers and their big fancy houses and the tax collectors and the prohibition agents the government sent to bust the whiskey stills. I thought about a red roadster and what it would feel like to have a nice suit of clothes and cash in my pockets. I thought about a lot of things as I humped up and down those rows of cotton.
But most of all, I thought about that easy money Fred the Sheik talked about.
“What’s the use of carrying that pistola if you don’t intend to use it?” Fred the Sheik says.
It was a good question, one I had no answer for.
Ruby Floyd
Charley stole my heart the first time he spoke to me. We met at a pie supper in Bixby and he took up all my dance time. Other boys asked me, but I only said yes to Charley. I guess it was the way he danced with me. Close, so our bodies never stopped touching. He was smooth and hard all at the same time, a dream lover, his hair blond from the sun. I could feel his desire pressing through my dress. I wasn’t wild or anything, but Charley just brought the wild in me out. He courted me for several weeks. My daddy wasn’t crazy about him, but I was.
“That boy’s got trouble written all over him,” my daddy said. “You be careful Ruby.”
“A girl’s reputation means everything to her,” my mother said.
“There’s no food for extra mouths,” my daddy said. “I don’t want you coming home someday knocked up.”
But it was already too late for such warnings. That first night Charley and me made love I knew I was already knocked up. I could feel his seed deep in me glowing like a match head. Charley and me were a wildfire right from the start. A flame that never got blown out.
The world seemed filled with lonesome smiles.
&
Charley Floyd was my first and only true love.
&
I his.
Fred the Sheik Hilderbrand
I’m a two-gun man and I took down the Kitlark Electric Company in St. Louis, Missouri for almost two grand — that figures out to a grand for each gun. I use my guns as I need them. I’ve clubbed guys over the head with them and I’ve shot guys with them and I wear them in shoulder holsters under my coat wherever I go.
I’ve been shot at and I know what trouble is and I know what the risks are when you take up the gun. But I ain’t dead yet and don’t ever plan to be. But if I were dead, I’d be the best looking corpse in St. Louis.
I met Charley Floyd in the harvests fields. We had one thing in common: we both hated working like niggers under a hot sun all day, our backs near broke from the work. One, two dollars a day was the best a man could make, just enough to blow every night at the roadhouses on booze and women, which we did regular. That goddamn Charley was a dancing fool and so was I. The girls went crazy over good-looking guys who could dance.
Once when we were picking cotton a pistol dropped out of Charley’s pants — a Police model Smith & Wesson with rubber grips and most of the blue wore off the barrel. I told him a guy could lose his pecker carrying a gun inside his pants like that. He laughed, said it would take a bigger gun than it to do the job. I laughed. We got along good and at night hit the pool halls and gin joints in whatever town we happened to be near. I could shoot pool like nobody’s business — Charley couldn’t shoot worth a shit. I made us a little extra dough shooting pool with farmboys who thought they were a whole lot better than they were. You get inside a man’s pride, there’s no telling what you can do. Hell, they never seen anything like me around those parts until later when Charley got to be famous and would come back wearing his flashy clothes and driving his fancy cars — wanted by every lawman in the country.
Charley was as much hell on girls as I was. We were both crazy about girls and fast cars. I told him about the electric company heist. He didn’t believe me at first. Then I told him about how easy it would be to rob the Kroger stores — St. Louis was loaded with them. He didn’t want to, he said his old man owned a grocery store. I said what kind and he said, a little one where he gave credit to dirt farmers. I said, it wasn’t the same thing. We argued back and forth over it, our backs sore, our hands raw from picking that damn cotton.
“I’ll have to think on it,” he said. “You do that, boyo.”
“Just because I got a gun doesn’t mean I’m willing to shoot anybody.”
“Who says you got to shoot anybody?”
“Chances are good you go to stealing people’s money, you’re going to have to shoot somebody sooner or later.”
I lied, told him I’d done a lot of robbing and never had to shoot anybody.
Two, three nights later we were sleeping under the stars and Charley said, “You sure about that money being easy and lots of it?”
“Sure as I am me and you are going to starve to death picking cotton.”
Two nights later we just stole a car and drove to St. Louis.
We took down five Kroger stores in one week and made almost six hundred dollars. We stole some cigarettes and candy too. I don’t think we worked more than an hour total for the lot of it. Charley said he knew then why Henry Starr had taken to robbing banks — it beat hell out of being poor-assed in Oklahoma.
We had us a couple of girls we’d picked up in a speakeasy and they were on the bed and we covered them with that money and that’s all they were wearing until we took it off them.
Pretty Boy Floyd
Daddy Walter stands on the porch looking at the roadster Fred the Sheik and me stole in St. Louis after our last robbery and rode back to Sallisaw.
“Picking cotton must pay a lot more than it did when I was doing it,” Daddy Walter says. I think he knew we didn’t earn enough for a roadster picking cotton.
We stayed close to the Hills for a time, shooting pool, dancing with pretty girls, me trying to smooth things over with Ruby, which was nearly impossible to do because of her Indian temper.
“You go away and come back whenever you want and I never know from one minute to the next what you’re up to,” Ruby says. I hold Jackie up to my face and can see me in him and it makes me feel bad I can’t easily patch things with Ruby.
I think she knew that the Sheik and me were up to no good. I feel sorry for that part of my life, for what I put Ruby through. She didn’t deserve my wildness. I was young and crazy about the fast life. It didn’t take me long to go through that easy money and find myself needing more of it.
Still, I was able to get Ruby over her mad and we played like children, went for drives in the country, had picnics, fished, went out dancing, made love in the late night and early mornings when the land was still asleep. In between, I read the newspaper and paced. It doesn’t take long doing the same things over and over again, no matter how good they are, before I start to grow restless.
“You got itchy feet, boy,” Daddy Walter says when I tell him I’m thinking about taking off again for a while and would he and mother mind keeping an eye on Ruby and Jackie.
“I know I got itchy feet, Daddy.”
“You hear that highway calling you like it called me once.”
“That’s where I get it from.”
“I was a hellion before I met your mother.”
“I’m as poor a hand at marriage as I am at being a farmer,” I say.
“Hell, it don’t take a genius to figure that out.”
I go see Fred the Sheik. He’s staying at the hotel in Sallisaw.
“Man, I don’t know how you people do it,” Fred the Sheik says.
“Do what?”
“Stay around this one-horse town and not go nuts.”
“Most folks like it just the way it is. Nice and peaceful.”
“St. Louis is starting to look good to me again, ain’t it you?” Fred the Sheik says.
My pockets are as empty as government promises.
“All a fellow needs is one good score,” Fred laments, “and he’d be on easy street the rest of his life.”
By then I was feeling untouchable. Robbing was so damn easy it was scary.
“Kroger’s got their headquarters in St. Louis, you know that, Charley?”
“So what?”
“That’s where they do the payroll for all the Kroger stores in Missouri.”
“How much you figure?”
“Got to be at least twenty grand.”
“Twenty grand.”
Fred whistles, says, “Shit, what do you think?”
I drove back to Aikens and kissed Ruby good-bye in the middle of the night.
As I lay dying, I still see that look in Ruby’s eyes when I tell her we are going.
“Don’t count on us being here when you come back,” she warns.
Her words were like fire on my skin. I tried to make it up by getting in the bed, but she won’t let me.
“It’s me or the road Charley Floyd, you choose.”
Too late, too late.
My fate was planned by a hand greater than my own.
Daddy, I’m wearing a silk suit, spats, two-tone shoes that cost forty dollars a pair. Got women, guns, and money like you wouldn’t believe. Got a friend named Dillinger. A real cool customer.
I swallow the night wind.
And the night wind swallows me.
3
Pretty Boy Floyd
St. Louis rises out of the fog, a jagged line of gray bleak buildings. Already I miss my wife and son. We pull up in front of a boardinghouse with trash cans out front, a scruffy butterscotch cat pauses atop one of the cans to look at us with amber eyes. Fred and me get out of the car stiff from the long drive and climb the stairs of the house to the second floor, go down a hallway to the end where Fred knocks on a door. A guy in an undershirt opens it partways, looks at Fred the Sheik, then me, then Fred again and steps back allowing us in.
There’s an old brown sofa and a threadbare carpet and a canary flittering around in a cage with crap-covered newspaper on the bottom. There are smells: fried grease, cheap aftershave, an unflushed toilet. There’s a side table with True Detective magazines stacked on it.
“This is my pal Joe,” Fred the Sheik says, introducing me to this guy I never met before. “Joe’s going to throw in with us on the Kroger job.”
Joe doesn’t offer to shake hands, says, “I was just in the toilet, excuse me while I finish my business.
I ask Fred the Sheik why we need another guy once Joe goes to finish his business.
He laughs, says, “Kid, you got a lot to learn about robbing. Joe’s the best wheelman in St. Louis.”
“Wheelman?”
“Oh, Christ!” he laughs, then tells me a wheelman is an expert at driving getaway cars.
“Hell, anybody can drive a car,” I say. “I can do the driving, why we need him?”
“Let me ask you something. You know your way around St. Louis, do you?”
I shake my head.
“Joe knows his way around St. Louis, that’s why we need him as our wheelman.”
I’m thinking of how the payoff split three ways will be a lot less than split two ways. But I don’t say anything more about it because I know I got a lot to learn about the robbing business and maybe it’s better I keep my mouth shut for now.You know how you get certain feelings about some guys? Well I got a certain feeling about Joe the Wheelman. It wasn’t good.
We drive around St. Louis in no particular hurry in Joe the Wheelman’s Ford, which I can hear is not hitting on all eight cylinders. I wonder what sort of wheelman Joe is to drive around in a car with the timing bad. It’s early morning yet and the streets are wet and empty from an all-night rain and the sun hasn’t come up and everything looks gray and dead. Joe the Wheelman’s got a sawed-off shotgun next to him on the seat, and me and Fred the Sheik have pistols. I’m hoping I don’t have to shoot anybody.
Joe the Wheelman pulls up behind a parked Cadillac with a chauffeur behind the wheel, an old black man wearing a cap and driving jacket and drinking coffee, sitting out front of a nice building like he’s waiting for someone. Joe walks up and sticks his sawed-off in the window and tells the guy to get out.
“Start walking there, Dad, and don’t look back,” Joe tells the chauffeur.
“Yes suh,” the chauffeur says and marches off down the street.
“What do we need another car for?” I say. Joe the Wheelman and Fred the Sheik look at me and shake their heads.
Joe the Wheelman drives the Cadillac and Fred the Sheik drives the Ford with me riding passenger. We drive for a while then park the Ford in an alley and get in the Cadillac and drive two more blocks to Kroger headquarters.
“You ready for a big score?” Fred the Sheik says to me.
By now it’s too late to turn back. I wouldn’t anyway; I’ve been spending all that dough ever since we left Oklahoma talking about what we were going to do once we got rich.
In we go, up the stairs to the second floor, guns out, burst into the room where they’re counting the payroll — four employees: one woman, three men.
“First one screams, you’re all dead,” Fred the Sheik yells. “We just want the cabbage.”
“Yeah, ain’t this a grocery store?” Joe the Wheelman says. “We just come for the cabbage,” then laughs waving that sawed-off at them. I grab up the bags of money.
Next thing I know we’re running down the stairs, jumping into the Cadillac, only it’s not Joe who’s the wheelman, it’s me.
“Drive you damn Okie!” Fred the Sheik yells.
“Yeah, kid, drop me off at my Ford,” Joe the Wheelman shouts.
I pull up to the Ford and Joe jumps out, but he’s no sooner behind the wheel and away from the curb than a cop car screeches around the corner and gets on his tail.
“Get up close,” Fred the Sheik yells.
I get up so close we’re almost touching bumpers with the cop car ahead of us, and Fred leans out the window and opens fire shattering the back window. Then I hear lead bouncing off the hood of the Cadillac and realize the cops are shooting back.
“Go, go, kid!” Fred the Sheik is yelling. He’s got a look on his face like he’s happy and drunk as he empties his pistol at the cop car then grabs mine and empties it too. I’m half sick praying nobody gets killed, least of all me.
Fred the Sheik
Next day we read in the papers about the heist. One of the clerks said, “The one guy was just a boy, a pretty boy with apple cheeks.” That’s how Charley got his name, Pretty Boy. They called the heist the most sensational payroll robbery in St. Louis history.
“Hey Pretty Boy,” I say to Charley. “You’re a real outlaw now — like your hero, Jesse James.”
“Don’t call me that,” he says. But I can tell he sort of likes the moniker.
We split the loot three ways, counting it out on the bed in Joe’s apartment: three stacks of tens and twenties, all of it green like cabbage. We spread it out on a cream-colored chenille bedspread. Close to twelve grand total.
“You guys gotta blow town,” Joe tells us after we celebrate and split up the dough. “This place is going to be hot for a while.”
I can tell Charley is not a big fan of Joe Hlavatry’s.
