Infamous

29

Kathryn drove straight to Biloxi and then right back around to Texas in that old Model A truck, her ass flying up and off the seat, shifting those crazy, rusted gears all the way across on Highway 80, west through New Orleans and Lafayette, Lake Charles, and over the state line into Beaumont, before cutting up Highway 6 to Navasota, College Station, and Marlin, where she nearly dozed off at the wheel, hitting the clutch, sputtering, and killing the engine, and then starting off again, limping that hunk of junk up to Waco, way past midnight, with a leaking radiator and a shot of gas. She had to drive a mile and then cool down, drive and cool down, that hose spitting and spewing, before finding the Waco Hilton, an oasis in the Texas night. She parked that flatbed truck, shuddering and creaking and steaming, at the front door, and snatched her leather grip, knowing she looked like a damn sight to the bellhop, in her damp red wig and sweat-ringed gingham. The boy stared at her openmouthed as she asked the manager to be right quick in getting her to the finest room they had.

She’d taken a bath and ordered up a steak, baked potato, and Jell-O salad with a couple bottles of ice-cold Shiner Bock. She didn’t wake up the next day till way past one o’clock, having pulled the shades tight, and would’ve slept later if that nigger maid hadn’t made all that fuss about wanting to bring her up some towels and fresh bleached sheets. Oh, Lawdy, miss. Oh, Lawdy. She paid for the room in cash, got the hose fixed at a Sinclair Oil station, and headed on up 171 through Hillsboro to Cleburne, where the goddamn hose-the new one-busted again, spewing up clouds of steam, the engine running hellfire hot, limping on-Another mile to go, another mile to go-till she saw the billboard for another filling station, this one a Texaco that promised to sell WESTERN GIFTS AND NOVELTIES while they checked your engine.

Goddamn George. Goddamn Sam Sayres.

Goddamn all men.

The three miles to that Texaco might’ve been a million. Kathryn was more sure than ever that George had found that pretty blond lifeguard-the one who he’d said resembled a mermaid-and run off to Miami or, worse yet, headed back to Coleman to harvest their loot and split the country like he always wanted. Either way, brother, she knew she was out of the picture. Her gingham dress hugged her long body and firm fanny like a second skin, the slow going of the old truck not giving up a bit of wind, her mouth parched and dry, aching for a Dr Pepper, the setting sun coming straight into her eyes. The red wig felt like a winter hat, but Kathryn knew nobody in Texas figured the infamous Kit Kelly for a daring redhead.

She didn’t know who she hated more at that very moment, George R. Kelly or Samuel Sayres, thinking that old Sam Sayres may have the edge for making her give up that Chevrolet for this old metal carcass, not having the decency to trust her word that she’d be wiring him the money. Kathryn kicked in the clutch like she was riding a stubborn mule down that twisty, two-lane highway, past dead-weed gullies and handmade signs for the Texaco perched on fence posts. Nothing but cotton around her forever, making her think that North Texas sure looked a hell of a lot like North Mississippi, waiting for the next stop to be purgatory.

George R. Kelly sat at a linen-covered table with his tanned whore, a cigar in the side of his mouth, a fist of cash in one hand and the girl’s fat Southern ass in the other. Sam Sayres sat at a wooden trough of ice cream, eating and slurping it up like a hog.

The filling station was on the edge of downtown Itasca, population 1,280. The station was a lean, skinny building made out of stone, with two garage doors and twin, globe-topped pumps. Behind the station were stacked junked cars from when they just started making cars, Kathryn wishing she could just add this son of a bitch to the heap because walking to Fort Worth might just be easier.

Two attendants came running out to meet the fuming, jittery truck, as she pulled in and hit the brake and jumped out to kick the tires, just aching to do that for the last forty miles, and then walked to the edge of the highway to light a cigarette. She hadn’t said a word to the men, the men being smart enough to figure it the hell out.

She wanted to rip the crazy wig off her head but instead just stared at all those junked cars and the big, endless acres of cotton getting ripe. She thought back about standing at the edge of the Gulf after she found out George was gone and throwing shells out into the water till her arm ached, salt water licking her toes as an insult.

She walked back to the shade of the filling-station roof to where a split log had been laid across some milk jugs. She sat and spread her legs, feeling just the hint of coolness and breeze between them. She leaned back against the stone wall, ran a sweaty forearm across her brow, and looked north at the endless road, crooking up and forgotten, ’round the bend.

She should’ve known George would’ve pulled something as boneheaded as this. Maybe Ma Coleman was right. Maybe he was Satan put upon this earth, maybe Kathryn was paying for sins going back to that creek in Saltillo when she let the preacher’s son stick his skinny willy in her. Maybe she had lured him there. Maybe she had the same kind of affliction as George and needed to get right in His eyes. Could she change? Could she walk deep into the river-any river-and have her sins and filth and road sweat washed off her and drain on down to Mexico?

Kathryn did something she hadn’t even thought about since she’d had a child’s mind. Kathryn Kelly, now thinking she could become Cleo Brooks again, began to pray. She started with something simple, about the only thing she could recall, about how great He was, how powerful He was, and how she wasn’t nothing but dirt. O heavenly Father, I’m so damn stupid and trusting…

When she opened her eyes, she saw three figures-shadows, really-in the big blot of the afternoon sun, coming down the road. Two tall and one short. Kathryn was worn-out from the prayer and lit another cigarette, wondering if one of those grease monkeys fussing over her truck might have a spot of liquor on him, knowing she’d give up her last hundred-dollar bill to be good and drunk right about now.

The figures grew closer, coming down the road. She could hear the men knocking around in the garage, but also the cicadas and crows. A nice, new Packard blew past the filling station, scattering up dirt and trash from the roadside. Some of the grit blowing across to her, into her eyes and onto her tongue.

She spat, spread out her legs farther, and used the front pages of the newspaper to fan her undercarriage. JUDGE ORDERS SHANNONS TO OKLAHOMA.

The shadows became people, and those people became a short man and a taller woman and a little girl in a dress made out of a flour sack. The sack hadn’t even been disguised, Kathryn clearly seeing WESTERN STAR MILL written across her middle. The girl trudged along, wearing a pair of oversize men’s brogans and kicking a tin can, a sharp stick in her hand. The man behind her looked to be about Kathryn’s age but with plenty of wrinkles and scars, wearing overalls and work boots. The woman was slope-shouldered and poor-mouthed, in her tattered flowered dress that had been washed threadbare. They stopped a good bit shy of the filling station, and the little girl plopped to her butt, the man rousting through a junk pile to find an old metal bucket where he sat down, not even offering the comfort to the woman or child, and Kathryn nearly laughed at the sight of it.

Another car passed, and the man stepped a long, skinny leg onto the road and put out his thumb.

Those people. They were everywhere.

The mechanic came out after a while and told Kathryn the damage, and it was only going to be twenty dollars, and she reached into her purse and handed him the money without looking at him or making the fuss he clearly expected.

She fanned her face and between her legs again with the newspaper, Boss and Ora’s hardscrabble faces staring back.

Advertisements on tin all around her. DRINK COCA-COLA. SMOKE CAMELS. BUY FIRESTONE. She lit her Lucky and waited for another car to pass and kick up a little wind.

“Sure love the smell of a cigarette,” a little voice said.

Leaning into the stone wall, legs spread, opening one eye, Kathryn Kelly looked at the little girl in the flour sack standing in front of her. She opened the other eye and muscled her sweaty forearms onto her knees and took in some more of the Lucky, blowing the smoke right into the girl’s face and pug, freckled nose.

The little girl winced a little, but then sniffed the air like a rabbit and said, “Yes, ma’am. That’s smells right stylish.”

“You’re an odd little duck.”

“Don’t take me on account of my clothing,” the girl said. “My father lost our suitcase in a card game.”

“You don’t say…”

“He almost won, too.”

“Where’s your car?”

“We don’t have a car,” the girl said. “We’re just tramping.”

“I see.”

“You have a car.”

“If you can call it that.”

“Must be nice.”

“What’s your angle, kid?” Kathryn asked, crushing the cigarette under the heel of her shoe. The sunset cut across the girl’s light eyes and blunt, bowl-cut hair. She wrinkled her nose. “Thought maybe we could hitch a ride, is all. Don’t want to be no trouble, ma’am. We just walked a fur piece.”

The mechanic pulled the truck around. He had black teeth, and black grease across his red neck, and he winked at Kathryn as he opened the door, at the ready.

“Some town,” the little girl said. “Even the people have fleas.”

The grease monkey spat.

The little girl turned to walk back to her old bucket daddy, Momma sitting like an Indian beside him. Kathryn wondered where in the hell were those Western gifts the billboards had promised.

She kicked in the clutch and clattered up slow to the girl, having to shout over the coughing motor and through the open passenger window. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Gerry.”

“Y’all want a ride, Gerry?”

“Can my folks come?”

“Why not.”

A mile down the road, Gerry sitting up on an apple crate beside Kathryn and talking ninety miles an hour, her poor-faced folks in back on the Ford’s flatbed, Kathryn started to think about the miracle of prayer and how that family, cresting over the hill with holes in their shoes, just might be some kind of crazy redemption, like they had in the Bible and in the movies.

Cleo Brooks knew she could be good. She just goddamn well knew it.

“YOU SAY SHE’D JUST UP AND LEFT YOU, MA’AM?” JONES ASKED. “Did your granddaughter say where she was headed?”

“No, sir,” Ma Coleman said. “I can still smell him among us.”

“How does he smell?”

“Like sulfur and hellfire.”

“I think it smells right pleasant, ma’am,” Jones said. “Smells like you baked a pie.”

“Coconut,” she said. “Just starting to cool. Yes, sir, it is.”

Jones looked to the ledge, where dozens of flies had gathered over the pie, taking off and landing in a spotted black swarm. He sat across from the old woman, on the other side of a table cobbled together with barn wood, coffee-ringed and beat to hell. Behind her, he had a clear view of the agents walking the land, and he could see young Agent Colvin conversing with that sharpshooter Bryce by a willow growing in the bend of a narrow creek.

A black row of clouds inched toward them, about to blot out the sun.

“It’s nice to converse with a fine young man, for a change,” Ma Coleman said. “Picks up the spirit. May I offer you some more sweet tea? I brewed it in the sun this morning. My son brought me a block of ice just before you men arrived.”

“I don’t mind if I do,” Jones said, reaching across to grab the sweating pitcher. “I appreciate you inviting us in.”

“It’s a hot day,” she said.

“It’s supposed to rain.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jones said, fanning his face with his Stetson. “Sure would cool things down.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Ma Coleman said, cold and vacant as a broken doll on a ladder-back chair, flies buzzing off from a half-eaten cheese sandwich. “You will find that man she’s with?”

“Kathryn’s husband?”

“If that’s what he claims.”

Bruce Colvin walked through the front screen door and was careful not to let it bang closed. He’d sweated through his white dress shirt, perspiration ringing his neck in an effect that looked like a halo. He looked to Jones and shook his head.

There was dirt across the front of his pants.

“She left some things here?” Colvin asked.

“Her furs and trinkets,” the old woman said. “Vanity has no shame. He bought them for her. He made her wear them. They feel like dog skins to me.”

“I understand,” Jones said.

“You are a fine bunch of men,” she said, rocking a bit to herself and smiling. “You understand that he’s the one to blame?”

“Of course,” Jones said, shifting his eyes over to Colvin. Colvin rested a shoulder against the wall, flowered wallpaper peeling from the wood planks, listening. “We only want George Kelly.”

Jones reached out his hand and grabbed the frail old woman’s arm. “Tell us what you know, ma’am.”

Colvin shook his head and looked away from Jones, letting the screen door slam behind him. Jones watched the young man walk away down a rutted path but then turned back to the blind woman, who smiled and rocked. “You do know she has a friend named Louise in Fort Worth? You do realize she’s a demon, too?”

KATHRYN RENTED A CABIN IN A LITTLE MOTOR COURT NEAR Cleburne for herself and Gerry and her parents, the Arnolds. Flossie Mae and Luther. She’d left them there to get cleaned up and she’d gone to town to try to phone Sam Sayres again, getting the runaround from his secretary and finally giving up, bringing back some boxed dinners of fried chicken and some fresh clothes for the family. The family sat together on a short bed opposite an identical short bed where Kathryn sat and gnawed on a chicken bone. She was thinking of Sam Sayres being so almighty stupid as to let her momma get sent back to Oklahoma when Luther Arnold coughed in the silence of hungry people eating and said how much they appreciated meeting a real-life angel out on a Texas highway.

“Don’t mention it,” Kathryn said.

“’Preciate the dress,” Flossie Mae said, looking down at the floorboards and lifting her eyes just for a moment to give Kathryn a ragged smile.

“You gonna eat that?” Gerry asked her father.

“Get your grimy little hands off my chicken,” he said.

“You can have mine,” Kathryn said. “I’m not that hungry.”

She passed over the little greasy box to the girl, who snatched up another drumstick, rocking her feet to and fro on the little bed.

“Where y’all headed?” Kathryn asked.

“Where we can find work.”

“Where you been?” she asked.

“We was thrown off our land in April,” Luther said, closing his eyes and shaking his head with the memory.

“Where?”

“Ardmore.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Flossie Mae shot a surprised look at her husband, and he reached down and tweaked her kneecap.

“Daddy was a good farmer,” Gerry said, bright and wide-eyed. “I had me a little goat that would pull me in a wagon. He was a good little goat.”

“Hush now, doll,” Luther said, cleaning down a breast to the bone. “Quit talkin’ ’bout that gosh-dang goat.”

“What kind of work can you do?” Kathryn asked, crossing her legs at the knee and lighting a cigarette. She could see her reflection in the mirror over the cheap bureau. A sign read WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE LODGING FOR THOSE OF LOOSE MORALS.

“I’ll do any work that can feed three hungry people.”

“I’m sorry,” Kathryn said.

“Don’t pity us, ma’am,” Luther said, putting a scraggly arm around Flossie Mae and hugging her close, the woman looking as uneasy as a caught barn cat. “We’re together and that’s a gift from the Lord Himself.”

“Amen,” Kathryn said. “Are you all right with God?”

“Gerry was baptized at two.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Where are you headed, Mrs. Montgomery?” he asked. A long pause. “Mrs. Montgomery?”

Kathryn turned from watching herself in the mirror and said, “I’m meeting my husband, who’s on a business trip.”

“And what does Mr. Montgomery do?”

“He’s in the liquor business.”

“You don’t say,” Luther said, leaning in, rubbing rough old hands together. Flossie Mae stood and asked to be excused, and Kathryn shrugged at her, waving her hand through the smoke. “What kind of liquor?”

Kathryn recrossed her legs, and said: “All kinds.”

“I bet you’ve been to the World’s Fair!” Gerry said. “I read Budweiser ran a team of horses with barrels of beer all the way from Saint Louis!”

“Not yet.”

“Sure wish we could go to the World’s Fair.”

“Don’t mind the girl, ma’am. Her head is filled with a lot of foolishness. We don’t have but three dollars left amongst us.”

Kathryn reached for her purse and Luther held up a hand, shaking his head. “We appreciate all you done, ma’am, but the Arnold family don’t take no handouts. I work to feed my family.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t think nothin’ of it,” Luther said, straightening his shoulders and running a hand over his thinning hair, dabbed down with grease. “We do appreciate the hospitality of a fellow Christian.”

“I knew you were good country people the moment I set eyes on you,” Kathryn said. “Why do such good people always have a road of sorrows?”

“Just the way it is, ma’am.”

“I’ll take some money,” Gerry said brightly, jumping to her feet and twirling before the mirror in her fifty-cent dress and quarter shoes.

“Gerry!” Luther said. “Apologize to Mrs. Montgomery.”

She did.

Kathryn winked at her. Over her father’s sloped shoulder, Gerry winked back.

The toilet flushed, and Flossie Mae tramped back into the room and sat at her husband’s side, head down, waiting for her chance to be asked a question, usually replying in a single word. The room was nothing but a bureau, two iron beds, and a single framed picture that looked to be cut out from a feedstore calendar, a nymph on a rock, looking at the moon, shielding her goodies with an open palm.

“Mrs. Arnold, may I speak to your husband in private for a moment?” Kathryn asked, standing, clicking open her cigarette case, and retrieving a fresh Lucky. “I have a business matter that may hold some interest for him.”

Luther hopped to his feet and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He followed her outside the tourist cabin into the coal-black night, not a sign of the moon; a family two cabins down the line cooked meat on a split oil drum. All the people in the camp had been discussing this big hurricane that had already hit Galveston and was headed their way.

“Yes, ma’am…”

“I saw you staring at me, Mr. Arnold.”

Luther rubbed his stubbled, weak jaw and nodded. “Sorry, ma’am. I just ain’t never seen somethin’ so purty.”

She nodded. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Please don’t tell Flossie Mae. A man just can’t help himself sometimes.”

“I know who you are.”

“Good Lord in heaven,” he said, stepping back to the door.

Kathryn snatched his hand from the handle and leaned in close enough to smell his tired, old onion-and-chicken breath. “You people are good folks, salt of the earth and all that. And you are exactly what I need.”

“Ma’am?”

She pointed a long, manicured finger at Luther Arnold’s skinny breastbone and said, “You are the answer to my prayers. A gift.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You know who I am?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Come on. Don’t read the papers?”

“Sure.”

“You ever heard of Kathryn Kelly?”

He shook his head. Kathryn stepped in closer and said, “Wife of the desperado and gangster ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly?”

“You know ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly? Shoot. If that don’t beat all.”

“I’m his wife,” she said. “Luther, are you a man I can trust?”

“With all my heart.”

“I need you to do something for me tomorrow,” she said. “I need you to go to Fort Worth and find an attorney named Sam Sayres. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I will pay you fifty dollars in cash for your trouble, and two nights here for your family.”

“Sam Sayres,” Arnold said, nodding. “Got it. What do I do?”

“I need to find out what’s going on with my family’s case. You tell him that you are my emissary.”

“What’s that?”

“You work for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll give you bus fare that you can take to Cleburne, but you are not to tell a soul.”

“Not even Flossie Mae.”

“’Specially not Flossie Mae.”

“You got my word, ma’am. I swear to it on the Arnold family name.”

He put out a small, weathered paw, and Kathryn shook it in the weak light from a single bulb screwed in by the cabin door.

THE FILE DEPUTY MANION HAD PASSED TO HARVEY IN A SLOPPY handshake only nicked the thick iron bars of the cell wall. It wasn’t until he really got his muscles into a solid rhythm, working in the midnight heat, that he made some progress, thinking that goddamn son of a bitch wanted ten g’s in exchange for a rusted file and a lousy razor blade.

Harvey tried a downward stroke on the barred wall, the way you might play a fiddle, and he thought of a fiddle and dance music and devil deals with backstabbing bastards, until his mouth went dry again and his hands and arms had about locked in spasms.

He wished he had a watch, knowing he didn’t have much time till the trusty would come roaming down the hall to slide his breakfast under the cell door.

The first bar from the wall-Harvey figuring he needed at least three to squeeze through-didn’t fall until an hour later, Harvey’s arms quivering and undershirt soaked as he reached for the sink, where he scooped out mouthfuls of water. Hard winds shook the building and screamed around corners. That big hurricane blowing off the Gulf had started to tickle Dallas, and Harvey knew if he could time this thing just right the confusion of it just might be a hell of a gift.

Manion promised to meet him at his home out on old Eagle Ford Road, just outside Irving. He said he’d bring another car, a change of clothes, and a rifle, and Harvey would pay him the balance on his freedom, Manion knowing enough about Harvey to value an honest crook. But, goddamn, there was a long way between the cell, ten floors of armed guards, and the road. A goddamn long way. And all Manion had seeded him with was rusted junk, refusing to give him a gun but telling him that he’d hid a pistol in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk.

If he made it down to the sixth floor.

Harvey kept playing that fiddle. The wind pounded the jail, rain pinging the lone window. The light outside was a queer purple, and that made it all the harder to guess the time, as if time itself had stopped, caught in the blurred picture from an old-time camera.

The last bar fell as he heard the gears and pulleys of the elevator going to work, groaning and straining down the shaft. He reached for the razor blade he’d hid under a stained pillow and stuck his head through the gap, facing the open row, and then inched his body through, letting out every drop of air till he could snake out, cutting the hell out of his shoulder before tumbling to the floor and finding his feet.

He hit the ground with such a thud that he wondered if he hadn’t been heard ten floors down.

Harvey inched back, watching the barred window of the door. He hoped it would be only one man, like yesterday, unarmed, as was their procedure, and holding cold biscuits, colder coffee, and shithouse gravy.

He found the next cell’s door open, and Harvey slipped inside and slid under the bunk. It was very dark, blacker than night, and the storm-it must be a hurricane now-beat the hell out of the tall building, almost feeling like it just might decide to topple all the concrete and steel and make all this effort for naught.

Harvey held on to the rusted blade and just listened to that beautiful storm, the single bulbs hanging from the ceiling flickering off and on, the rain coming down on a parched country like some kind of unnatural act.

He smiled. He hoped that Manion at least had enough sense to pick out a stylish suit and shine his shoes.