Pretty boy, p.23
Pretty Boy, page 23
Ruby Floyd
I was in the yard hanging fresh washed-clothes when the sky darkened suddenly from a single small cloud passing in front of the sun. I looked up and thought that one little cloud in that whole big sky has caused the world to go dark. And in those few moments, the air turned cool and goose bumps welted up along the length of my arms, for it seemed fully unnatural that such a thing could happen.
I went inside and called Bradley, I don’t know why.
He said, “What is it, Ruby?”
“I don’t know, but I think something bad has happened to Charley.”
“What’d make you think a thing like that?”
“A woman just knows certain things that can’t be explained.”
“Lord, I hope you’re wrong.”
“I hope I am too, but I know that I’m not.
Something bad has happened to Charley.”
Bradley was silent for a long time. I was too. Then he said, “Maybe we should pray for him.”
“I never found a prayer yet that would fix anything, have you?”
“About all we got is prayer,” he said. “Pray to Jesus that he’ll save Charley.”
I hung up and went outside and the sun was bright again. But the strange part was, that one little cloud was nowhere to be seen. It was like the sun burned it up for daring to cross its path.
Adam Richetti
The worst thing about that day was abandoning my friend. I never thought I’d be the kind to run at the first sign of trouble. But when that fellow started shooting at me all I could think about was how all Charley’s other partners had gone down to a bullet. I wasn’t ready to die. I don’t know if a person ever is. I should have killed the guy, he was that close to me, but every shot missed and that told me my luck wasn’t any good that day and if I didn’t run I’d be a dead man. So I ran.
I got to a house and tried getting inside but the door was locked and I about busted my fists trying to bang that door down then I heard someone say, “I can shoot you where you stand, or you can give yourself up . . . it don’t make a piss of difference to me.”
And when I turned around it was that same fellow I should have killed — I don’t think I could have killed him that day with a stick of dynamite. I thought of poor Charley up there in that fog running round in those hills, maybe being hunted like a rabbit. They’d have every copper in Ohio after him, if he wasn’t already dead. I just had a bad feeling that this time he wasn’t going to get away.
I saw the dull sun bleeding through the fog and thought the fog was about the only friend Charley had left now if a friend he had at all.
Pretty Boy Floyd
I come through the trees of the pear orchard and almost smack into those two boys who had throw away their shotguns earlier. Only by now, they had picked them up again and I cut loose with the Thompson about the same instant they cut loose with those shotguns. I heard one of them scream, then I turned and ran until I hit some rocks that I threw myself behind and waited. I waited a few minutes then saw something moving around in the lifting fog and treated it to a lead sandwich before the tommy gun jammed. I heard whatever it was fall over with a thud then waited until the last gauze of fog burned away. I see I shot a cow.
There wasn’t anybody having much luck that day including that damn poor cow, but as long as I was still breathing, I had a chance and a chance is all a fellow like me can hope for.
I feel the world withdrawing whatever sympathy it may have had for me
Like an old lover who’s lost all her passion and desire and has walked
Out the door on me, has caught a cab never more to be seen or heard from.
The world, I think, has just written me a Dear John letter.
27
Pretty Boy Floyd
That pear-picker was right: those pears were hard as stone, but they were all I could find to eat while I kept to wood and orchard and hillside. Once I fell and slipped in a dirty creek and got my knees wet, and I tore a sleeve on a fence of barbed wire and I must have looked like hell when I came down at last onto a road across which I saw some men bent under the hood of a truck. I figured I’d ask them politely for a ride to Youngstown, a place where I knew some people who could help me out. If these fellows refused, I’d offer to pay them, and if they still refused, well hell, I still had my .45 and not many men will refuse you with one of those in your hand.
By this time the fog had burned off and the sky was that perfect blue sort of sky you get that time of year, crisp and clean and not a hint of winter in it. I wondered if the cops had got Rich or the girls. Jesus I felt bad for the girls even though I was about sick of their company.
“How do,” I say to the men under the truck’s hood.
They are wearing faded overalls and you could tell looking at them there wasn’t probably fifty cents between them.
They look around without coming out from under the hood; one is holding a distributor cap in his greasy hand. Two have on stained caps.
They sort of grunt and I say, “I’d pay one of you gents for a ride to Youngstown.”
They stare at me for a long spell, then one says, “You broke down somewheres?”
“Yes, way back yonder, five, six miles.”
“Well, we could go get your automobile and tow it into Wellsville,” the fellow says. “I got a tractor we could tow it with.”
“No sir, she’s got a busted axle and I don’t have time to sit around two, three days waiting for a new one to be sent. I got me an emergency in Youngstown.”
They blink. One leans off to the side and spits.
“My wife,” I say, hating to tell a lie on one of my own because you do, it could come true. “She’s sick as hell.”
“Boy that’s a piece of tough news,” the one holding the distributor caps says. “I’d sure enough give you a lift but this dang truck probably is needing some parts as well and I don’t know if Earl can get them sent down today, or maybe even by tomorrow.”
“I’d pay twenty dollars,” I say.
The one who spat shuffles his feet and says, “I got me an old car and I’ll take you to galdang China for twenty dollars.”
“All I need is just to get to Youngstown,” I say.
“I live just up the road a piece.”
I follow him while the other two duck their heads back under the truck.
I look at the sun slipping up through the trees on the highest hill and see cattle eating away at the damp grass and it feels like the day is going to turn out right after all — that maybe my luck is changing. My spirits lift, like the fog.
Melvin Purvis
Word comes by telephone some local law down in Ohio have captured Adam Richetti and they have Pretty Boy Floyd boxed in some burg called Wellsville. I ask if the identification of Richetti is confirmed. It is. I order a plane to take me down there. Pretty Boy doesn’t know yet just how long an arm the FBI has got but he’s about to find out.
By the time I get down to Ohio every local farmer in the area is armed to the teeth and half the cops in the state have been called in. It looks like a turkey fuck and I can see a bloodbath: farmers shooting cops, cops shooting farmers, everybody shooting everybody if somebody doesn’t take charge of the situation and organize things. All the talk is about Pretty Boy Floyd and reward money. They are as excited as a bunch of churchwomen at a bake sale. “We’ll show bandits what they get they come around these parts!” That sort of talk. Someone says a bank nearby was robbed. Everybody has got hot blood.
I talk to a police chief named Fultz.
“It was the goddamndest thing ever happened to me,” this Fultz says. I show him a photograph of Pretty Boy. He nods.
“ ’At’s him. Jesus we were so close to each other we could have shook hands.”
“Might have been better that you slapped some cuffs on him, you were that close.”
“Hell, I woulda, but that little Italian started shooting and then Pretty Boy started shooting and then I started shooting.”
“The way I hear there were three of you to just two of them,” I say.
“Yeah, but my boys were just a couple of local men I deputized. You wouldn’t expect them to stand up to a gunfight with Pretty Boy Floyd.”
“Then why’d you deputize them?”
He looked at me like I was something he stepped in, but I didn’t give a shit about that.
I wanted to take custody of Richetti but Fultz refused. I guess his feelings were hurt that I impugned his story.
“Look Chief, we have to work together on this thing, don’t you see,” I say to him to smooth his feathers. “We don’t, you’ll have more dead men scattered around these hill than cow pies. Look at these boys, armed with everything that will shoot a bullet, their dicks hard for a fight. You don’t want a slaughter, now do you?”
He relented somewhat, but still wouldn’t let me take custody of Richetti. He did allow me to interrogate him though. I acted grateful but down deep saw the chief as a hayseed.
Richetti was leaning on the bars when I went back to where they had him locked up. He looked like a captured monkey, face full of surprise that he had been caught at all. I guess he thought as long as he was with Pretty Boy Floyd, wasn’t nothing could touch him.
I told him who I was. He went pale.
“You’re the one that killed John Dillinger,” he said.
“Yes sir and I aim to kill your friend I get the chance.”
He shook his head. “You’ll never get Choc.”
“Choc, huh? That’s what you call him?”
“Nobody’s got him yet and you won’t either Mr. Purvis. You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette would you?”
I offered him a cigar and he looked sort of comical smoking it. A photographer from the local paper came in and took our picture.
“I’ll get him, Mr. Richetti, don’t you worry about that. Consider yourself lucky you’re not out there with him in those hills or I’d be getting you too. You don’t want to see your friend shot dead, why not just tell me where he’s headed.”
“He’s not as bad as they say he is. Charley’s a standup guy. Best I ever knew.”
“He’s Public Enemy Number One, Mr. Richetti, and that’s all I need to know about him. He didn’t get to be number one because he’s a sweetheart.”
“They’ve told a lot of lies about him, about me too. We never hurt nobody.”
“How’s that cigar?”
“Good.”
“Enjoy it while you can.”
Pretty Boy Floyd
The man I follow up the road says his name is Wesley and that he used to be a carpenter but that everything’s so bad he can’t hardly get any work because nobody can afford to have him build them anything.
I offer him a cigarette and ask, “How far up this road you say your place was?”
“About half mile more,” he says. “Jesus was a carpenter.”
“So I heard.”
“You read the good book?”
“I have. My daddy was often in it.”
“It’s a precious thing to do, read the good book.”
“I never heard of it hurting anybody.”
“No sir, and it won’t neither.”
We finally arrive and there’s an old black sedan parked in the lane of a shotgun shack needs painting. The left back end of the sedan is hanging low like it has a busted spring and there is bird shit splattered all over the roof and hood and fenders.
“Looks like you haven’t run it in a while,” I say.
“No sir, I don’t run her much because of what gasoline costs these days — twenty cents a gallon. I mostly walk when I can.”
Surprisingly the engine fires right up when he turns the key. The seats are dusty, but by this time I’d be happy to ride in a honey wagon if I had to just to get to Youngstown and as far away from this place as I can.
We start off down the road and he says, “I don’t suppose you have another one of them Chesterfields.”
I light it for him and check through the back window to make sure there aren’t any cops on our tails. Ahead is just a narrow ribbon of dusty road that looks like a road of freedom to me. I take a deep breath and hold onto it like a prayer. Maybe I’ll get to see my wife and son after all.
We drive about three miles when the sedan sputters and dies.
“What’s wrong?”
“I done run dry of gas,” he says.
I feel like I just swallowed a stone and curse that my bad luck isn’t going to let up on me.
“I could walk into Wellsville and get a can if I had a dollar,” the fellow says.
I give the poor brute a dollar for his time, but I sure am not going to wait for him to walk to town and learn who I am and come back with the law.
After he heads up the road I take off the opposite direction.
“Daddy Walter,” I say. “If you’re listening to me, tell me what to do.”
I hear a bird chirping — a redwing blackbird standing on the head of a cattail.
“That ain’t you is it Daddy Walter?”
The bird chirps again, jerks its head my direction then flies off abandoning me. I think that old bird knew what was going to happen and didn’t want to have to see it. I guess right about then, I got myself ready for whatever it was that was going to come for me. I guess I knew I was near the end — maybe like Jesse James must have known he was near the end that day in the parlor when he offered his back to Bob Ford. Maybe he knew it was the easy way out — letting someone kill him. Maybe he just got tired of running and hiding and couldn’t bring himself to take his own life so he let someone else take it for him. I suspect that if that was true, it was because he was a man of honor, for it would take a certain honor to offer yourself as a sacrifice.
I feel weary but I can’t be like Jesse was. I can’t just let them kill me because it is the easy way out. I say aloud, “Ruby” over and over again. “Ruby and Jackie” hoping maybe their love will save me.
Melvin Purvis
We drove over to another little town — East Liverpool — to coordinate our efforts after we got a phone call from a local farmer about some man having stopped at his house and asking to be fed. The farmer said the man was a stranger, dressed in a suit but looked dirty and like he’d slept in the rain. It had rained that night before after we’d spent the entire day looking for Floyd. So it seemed like legitimate information.
Floyd was proving harder to track than a fox.
But something else occurred that night besides rain: I dreamed I killed him. I woke up feeling full of piss and vinegar and ready for a fight. Pretty Boy Floyd’s running days would soon be over.
Pretty Boy Floyd
I see a farm and go up to it, desperate now, more desperate than I have ever been because I can feel a darkness growing in me and I’m scared a little because I’ve never felt anything like it before.
I’m surprised there aren’t any dogs around to sound an alarm with their barking. I knock on the door, one hand in my pocket wrapped around the pistol. Whatever it takes to save my neck I’m prepared to do. I see an old car parked by a corncrib.
A woman who reminds me of my own sister opens the door and says, “Yes?”
“I’m afraid I’m in a fix,” I say. “I am ashamed to admit it, but I got a little drunk last evening and run my car off the road into a ditch. I don’t know where I am, but I’m so hungry I could eat the ears off a donkey. I’d gladly pay for a bite to eat — just anything at all, a little cooked meat if you have it.”
She looks at me and she looks out beyond me. She is suspicious, but then with a good heart tells me I can wash up over in the rain barrel around the side of the house and then come on in the house.
The water is sharp cold but feels good when I splash it over my face. It tastes like tin roof when I drink some of it. I don’t care. I clean up as good as I can, use my wet fingers to comb down my hair. I tuck in my shirt then go into the house and sit at the kitchen table. The smell of frying meat almost makes me faint. It has been a day and a half since Rich and me got into the gunfight. I don’t think I could have eaten another pear if someone paid me.
“I don’t suppose you’d have a newspaper?” I ask, anxious to see what they were saying about the gunfight.
“Yes, I get one every day delivered,” the woman says, and brings me the paper. And there it was, front page, all about me, how the law was looking for me, how they’d captured Rich and taken Beulah and Rose into custody. The only saving grace is there wasn’t a mug shot of me in the paper yet.
I eat the fried pork chops, greens cooked in bacon grease, biscuits, turnips mashed with butter on them, coffee, and a slice of apple pie. It is about the best meal I ever ate and I put ten dollars on the table next to my plate even though the woman protests saying it’s only the Christian thing to do, to feed a hungry man.
“I always pay my way,” I say. I know she could use the money. I ask her which way I need to go to go to Youngstown.
“It’s about thirty miles from here,” she says.
“Yes’m, but I have got to get there in a hurry, my wife’s real sick and needs me.”
“Oh dear.”
“I saw an old sedan out along your crib.”
“It belongs to my brother Arthur.”
“He around nearby?”
“He was sharpening an ax out back.”
“Maybe I’ll go out there and ask him if he’d give me a ride into Youngstown.”
“Well, good luck to you, mister.” The woman says this in such a kindly way I want to kiss her on the cheek.
“Yes’m.”
I go out back and climb in the automobile and find that the key is in the ignition. I’m not above stealing a car.
