Going to Chicago (14 page)

GLADYS

(as the door)

Knock, knock, knock.

BUD HEMPHILL

(as Mr. White)

Who could that be knocking at the door of our little cottage in the country at this time of night?

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

I'll put down my mending and get it, Father, since you are both blind and crippled from a lifetime of unrewarded toil.

BUD HEMPHILL

(as himself)

If I'm blind how can I be reading this?

GLADYS

(as herself)

Good lord, flyboy. You ain't blind. Only your character is.

BUD HEMPHILL

(as himself)

Oh. Sorry.

GLADYS

(as the front door)

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

Hello! You're a stranger, aren't you?

WILL

(as the Dashing Stranger)

Why yes I am. I thought perhaps a green-eyed beauty like yourself, with your father sitting there before the crackling fire, might have an odd job or two, for an honest traveling man down on his luck.

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

Well, let me think for a moment.

BUD HEMPHILL

(as Mr. White)

Who is it, Eleanor?

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

A handsome young traveling man, Father, in a tattered but clean coat, looking for an odd job or two.

BUD HEMPHILL

(as Mr. White)

Say young fella, you haven't—

GLADYS

(as herself)

You have to say it loud. Like you're calling out to somebody at the door.

BUD HEMPHILL

(as himself)

Oh. Sorry.

BUD HEMPHILL

(loudly, as Mr. White)

Say young fella, you haven't ever repaired a levee before, have you? With nothing but a shovel and your strong back? Farmer's Almanac says it's going to rain cats and dogs, and it'll wash away our little cottage by the river if that levee isn't fixed in time.

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

Please! Will you fix that levee for us?

WILL

(as the Dashing Stranger)

By golly! I'll do it!

And so it went. During the commercial break at the end of Act One, Gladys gave Bud exactly one minute to drink a warm Coke. Except for a couple more lines at the beginning of Act Two, Bud's part was over. From there on out it was all Eleanor White and the Dashing Stranger—Gladys and Will—as the imaginary sky threatened and the imaginary levee was repaired. Bud told me Will and Gladys seemed to get lost in each other as they read. Their eyes were glued on the script, he said, but their voices were looking at each other. “It was as if him and Gladys really were Eleanor and the Dashing Stranger,” Bud said. “I was so enraptured I completely forgot about you flying my Jenny.”

I've read that old Daphne Darnell script many times over the years, picturing Will and Gladys sitting there in the cabbage field by the river, her thigh against his, their voices looking at each other as Bud said.

GLADYS

(as herself)

A torrent of rain can be heard.

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

You did it, my dashing stranger. You fixed that levee just in time!

GLADYS

(as herself)

Eleanor hesitates, uncertain, then lets her love for the stranger gush.

GLADYS

(As Eleanor White)

Please stay a few more days. Please stay forever!

WILL

(as the Dashing Stranger)

It would be easy for me to stay. To fall in love with you. Especially the way those raindrops are cascading down your porcelain cheeks like tears.

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

Those raindrops on my cheeks are tears.

WILL

(as the Dashing Stranger)

I am a traveling man. The open road is in my blood. Sure kid, I could stay. We'd get married. Build a cottage of our own. But drat it. Sooner or later, my old wanderlust would return, as certain as the rains always return. And I'd leave. Break your heart. Break both our hearts. No, I gotta travel on.

GLADYS

(as Eleanor White)

Good-bye—my dashing stranger.

GLADYS

(as herself)

The end.

After they finished Gladys's radio script, Will read aloud from his guidebook. Bud said it was a lot more interesting than the “Dashing Stranger.” He said Gladys drew her legs up under her chin and listened with closed eyes, as if Will's descriptions of industrial exhibits were romantic poems, which, of course, to Will they were.

I'm not surprised Gladys and Bud were moved by Will's reading. I always was when he read his guidebook to me.

Bud Hemphill was happy I looked him up. Having his Jenny stolen was the highlight of his life, he told me. Nobody in town had been much interested in hearing about it. With the despair and disillusionment of the depression all around—with real criminals like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson all around—that one week in August, as quirky as it was, was after all just one week in August. So Bud was happy to talk over old times with me. He told be where I could find Sheriff Orville Barnes's whore ladyfriend and where I could find the sheriff's cousin, Albert Finley, and Lloyd Potts, too.

Goddamn. Sonofabitch. I miss Will. I loved him. And I'm not at all shy about saying so. Not at my age.

Today you talk about loving someone of your same sex and they write you off as either queer or a Democrat. Believe me, I'm neither, though I did vote once for Bill Clinton. Will was more than a friend. I've had lots of friends. Friends I respected. Friends I liked to laugh with. Bull with. Fish with. Go out for chili with. Will was more than that. He was always on my mind and in my heart. I felt different when we were together. Better. More like the real Ace Gilbert. Felt the world was OK. Felt God pretty much knew what he was doing when Will Randall and I were together.

It is one of the great secrets of our age that men love other men that way. We call somebody our best friend and let it go at that. But what we're talking about—and what other men know we're talking about—is some guy we really love. A guy we wish we could be with all the time. A guy that makes us feel more like ourselves when we're with him. That makes us feel personally proud when he accomplishes something and makes us feel personally like shit when things go bad for him. That changes our life forever when he dies.

I've read that ancient civilizations, the Greeks I think, understood this kind of love between men. Relished and honored it. We don't today. At least not publicly. But all men know what the feeling is. I know I sure do. I loved Will Randall and he loved me. And I'm not the least bit ashamed that the other old men here at the Sparrow Hill Retirement Villa know it. Goddamn it I'm not. Sonofabitch I'm not.

Women have an easier time with this kind of love. Once at a wedding I remember watching my mother polka with her dearest old friend from high school. Arm in arm. Around and around. Smiling faces no more than three inches apart. Sharing their love with the world. I'm sure my father and Eddie Rickenbacker never did the polka together. But if Will Randall could be here right now, I'd polka him right up the goddamn hallway, right up through all the wheelchairs and walkers.

“
The skyride was built by five great companies, Otis Elevator company, Mississippi Valley Structural Steel Company, John A. Roebling's Sons Company, Inland Steel Company, and Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company and is an appropriate expression of their faith in the future of American industry
.”

O
FFICIAL
G
UIDE
B
OOK OF THE
W
ORLD
'
S
F
AIR

Fifteen/Thanks a Million, Lloyd!

I flew the Jenny back along the river toward the cabbage field. We'd only been gone an hour or so, but it seemed like years. I'd taken off three times and landed twice. Terrified a riverful of Baptists. Had nearly been killed by professional ballplayers. Most people didn't achieve that much in a lifetime. If only I hadn't lost that wheel on the scoreboard.

As I skimmed the trees my brain bounced back and forth between two big questions: How was I going to land on one wheel and what were Will and Gladys doing on the ground while I was up in the air with Gus and Clyde? I knew what I'd be doing. Steering Gladys toward a poke! I played out the improbable scene in my head. “Oh Ace,” she'd say to me. “I was hoping you'd want to. It's all I've wanted since I first saw you by that pile of melons.” We'd make Bud Hemphill look the other way, or maybe put an empty cement bag over his head. Then I'd glide right in like the Ace I was, as masterfully as I'd ridden that old Jenny into the air. Goddamn. I could see Gladys and me entwined, rocking like a sonofabitch. I could also see the Jenny cartwheeling through the cabbages, Clyde, Gus, and me on fire, blood spurting, bones protruding through our bruised, blistering flesh. How was I going to land on one wheel? Goddamn. Sonofabitch.

Clyde held up one of the watches we stole from the Baptists. He studied it sideways, then took out his medicine bottle. He jabbed Gus in the chest to get his attention. It was time for his drops. Still dumb in the head from the Moon Man's beaning, Gus thought he was being offered a drink. He took the bottle, unscrewed the top, and sucked the oily medicine down his throat. He gagged and threw the bottle right through the spinning propeller. Now I had two problems: getting on the ground alive and then staying that way when Will learned what happened to that three-dollar bottle of drops.

I saw the bridge and swung wide for my approach. I could see Will and Gladys and Bud standing in the cabbages, chins up, hands over their eyes like little porches. I turned back toward the field and cut the throttle. The Jenny dropped. Even if I set down gentle as a saltine floating in a bowl of chicken noodle, I knew I'd still snap a wing when my wheelless side hit. Went through the Lord's Prayer, perfectly. Cut my speed some more. Kept the Jenny's nose up. Felt my one wheel touch and roll. Felt the Jenny lean. Felt my wheelless wing dig in and plow. I remembered to trim my elevators. But I'd forgot to close the throttle. The lopsided Jenny tore in a circle like a crazy dog on a chain. Dirt and cabbages flew. The wing ripped away at the shoulder. We shot forward, an arrow unleashed, straight into the river.

It was a shallow river. No current at all. We came to a stop right where we hit. By the time I wiped the water off my goggles, Will and Gladys were wading toward us. Will yelled to his brother. “You OK, Clyde?”

“Gus drank my drops,” Clyde yelled back.

I slid into the river. Smiled at Will. He punched me right in the mouth.

I took my punishment. “At least we're alive,” I said. I could taste a bit of blood. I could feel my lip swell.

We took Gus by the arms and waded to shore. Clyde carried his shotgun. We watched Bud Hemphill flee into the woods. The sun was setting. We gathered some firewood. Nobody was interested in putting up the tent. Decided we'd sleep under the bridge. “It doesn't ever rain in Indiana anyway,” I said. We cooked a big pan of scrambled eggs. Opened two cans of beans. One can of corn. All three tins of sardines. Finished off the apples and pears. Drank milk and Cokes. Clyde hummed. Gus slowly came to his senses. He had a dumpling-sized knot on his forehead, the cross-stitching of the baseball Moon Man threw imbedded into his skin like a tire track.

Surprisingly, Gus was happy that our flight went the way it did. “Maybe we didn't fleece those ballplayers like we did the Baptists, but we sure got everybody's attention,” he said. “Everybody in Weebawauwau County must have been at that game. It's only a matter of time before the law comes after me now. I bet we'll wake up tomorrow surrounded. A hundred gun barrels pointed right at our heads.”

Only Gus slept. He woke up disappointed. There wasn't a single gun barrel pointed at him. “Judas Priest,” he said. “What's it gonna take? What's it damn-diddly gonna take?”

Gladys soaked a ragful of river water and patted Gus's knot. He winced and shouted “Judas Priest” after every pat.

“Am I hurting you?” she asked.

“No, Gladys. It feels so good I just can't take the pleasure.”

We waited all morning for the law to arrive. Gus stood on the bridge and waved his gun. Whistled and shouted. Gladys worked on her makeup. Will tidied up the cabbage field, putting empty Coke bottles back in their cases, carrying the egg baskets under the bridge so they wouldn't go bad in the sun, collecting all the empty cans and candy wrappers. I sat on the bank and watched the Jenny soak up water.

About noon Gus came down from the bridge. He was wound tight. He made us throw everything we'd heisted the day before in the river—all the Cokes and milk and eggs and bread, the three gumball machines and the ready-mix cement, the stacks of
Indianapolis Stars
, and the salesman's case full of doorknobs and hinges. He even made us throw the torn wing from the Jenny in the river. He ran through the field and stomped as many cabbage heads as he could. He piled us all in the Gilbert SXIII. Off we drove. It was Friday already. What a day Thursday had been!

For hours we drove the backroads, lacing in and out of Weebawauwau County like a runaway shoestring. “Why don't we try another county,” Gladys said. Gus slammed his fist against the door. “Because we ain't finished with these Weebawauwauans yet,” he said. We didn't hold anybody up all day, though we did pull away from a gas pump without paying. Will kept his nose in his guidebook. Gladys studied her scripts. I drove and listened to Clyde's quiet hum. Gus slid down in the copilot's seat and sulked, hugging his shotgun like a favorite teddy bear.