the Hot Kid (2005) (7 page)

Louly laughed out loud. She couldn't help it, seeing Joe Young lying in a feed trough with Baby Jesus, the three Wise Men looking at him funny. She asked Joe how many times he'd had his picture in the paper.

"When I got sent to Jeff City they was all kinds of pictures of me. Some I'm handcuffed."

She watched him sit back as the waitress came with their supper and he gave her a pat on the butt when she turned from the table. The waitress said, "Fresh," and acted surprised in a cute way. Louly was ready to tell how Charley Floyd had his picture in the Sallisaw paper fifty-one times in the past year, once for each of the fifty-one banks robbed in Oklahoma, all of them claiming Charley as the one who robbed them. But she knew it couldn't be true, so didn't mention it. They finished their supper, breaded pork chops, and Joe Young told her to pay the bill--a buck-sixty for everything including rhubarb pie for dessert--out of her running-away money. They got back to the tourist court and he screwed her again on her full stomach, breathing through his nose, and she saw how this being a gun moll wasn't all a bed of roses.

In the morning they set out east on Highway 40 for the Cookson Hills, Joe Young driving the Model A with his elbow out the window, Louly holding her coat close to her, the collar up against the wind, Joe Young talking a lot, saying they'd go on up to Muskogee and hold up a filling station along the way. Show her how it was done. Heading out of Henryetta she said, "There's one."

He said, "Too many cars."

Thirty miles later leaving Checotah, turning north toward Muskogee, Louly looked back and said, "What's wrong with that Texaco station?"

"Something about it I don't like," Joe Young said. "You have to have a feel for this work."

Louly said, "You pick it." She had the .38 he gave her in a black and pink bag Sylvia had crocheted for her.

They came up on Summit and crept through town, both of them looking, Louly waiting for him to choose a place to rob. She was getting excited. They came to the other end of town and Joe Young said
,
"There's our place. We can fill up, get a cup of coffee."

Louly said, "Hold it up?"

"Look it over."

"It's sure a dump."

Two gas pumps in front of a rickety place, paint peeling, a sign that said eats and told that soup was a dime and a hamburger five cents. They went in while a bent-over old man filled their tank, Joe Young bringing his whiskey bottle with him, almost drained now, and put it on the counter. The woman behind it was frail, flat-chested and appeared worn out, brushing strands of hair from her face. She placed cups in front of them and Joe Young poured what was left of the whiskey into his. Louly did not want to rob this woman.

The woman saying, "I think she's dry," meaning his bottle. Joe Young was concentrating on dripping the last drops into his cup. He said, "Can you help me out?"

Now the woman was pouring their coffee. "You want shine? Or I can give you Canadian whiskey for three dollars."

"Gimme a couple," Joe Young said, drawing his Colt to lay it on the counter, "and what's in the till."

Louly did not want to rob this woman. She was thinking you didn't have to rob a person just 'cause the person had money, did you? The woman said, "Goddamn you, Mister." Joe Young picked up his gun and went around to open the cash register. Taking out bills he said to the woman, "Where you keep the whiskey money?"

She said, "In there," despair in her voice.

He said, "Fourteen dollars?" holding it up, and turned to Louly.

"Put your gun on her so she don't move. The geezer come in, put it on him, too." Joe Young went through a doorway to what looked like a kitchen.

The woman said to Louly, pointing the gun from the crocheted bag at her now, "How come you're with that trash? You seem like a girl from a nice family, have a pretty bag . . . There something wrong with you? My Lord, you can't do better'n him?"

Louly said, "You know who's a good friend of mine? Charley Floyd, if you know who I mean. He married my cousin Ruby." The woman shook her head and Louly said, "Pretty Boy Floyd," and wanted to bite her tongue.

Now the woman seemed to smile, showing black lines between the teeth she had. "He come in here one time. I fixed him breakfast and he paid me two dollars for it. You ever hear of that? I charge twenty-five cents for two eggs, four strips of bacon, toast and all you want of coffee, and he give me two dollars."

They got the fourteen from the till and fifty-seven dollars in whiskey money from the kitchen, Joe Young talking again heading for Muskogee, telling Louly it was something told him to go in there. How was this place doing business, two big gas stations only a few blocks away? So he'd brought the bottle in, see what it would get him. "You hear what she said? 'Goddamn you,' but called me 'Mister.' "

"Charley had breakfast in there one time," Louly said, "and paid her two dollars for it."

"Showing off," Joe Young said.

He decided they'd stay in Muskogee instead of crossing the Arkansas River and heading south.

Louly said, "Yeah, we must've come a good fifty miles today."

Joe Young told her not to get smart with him. "I'm gonna put you in a tourist cabin and see some boys I know. Find out where Choc's at."

She didn't believe him, but what was the sense of arguing? It was early evening now, the sun almost gone. The man who knocked on the door--she could see him through the glass part--was tall and slim in a dark suit, a young guy dressed up wearing a panama hat. She believed he was the police, but had no reason, standing here looking at him, not to open the door. He said, "Miss," touched the brim of his panama and showed her his I
. D
. and a star in a circle in a wallet he held open, "I'm Deputy U
. S
. Marshal Carl Webster. Who am I speaking to, please?"

She said, "I'm Louly Brown?"

He smiled straight teeth at her and said, "You're a cousin of Pretty Boy Floyd's wife Ruby, aren't you?"

Like getting ice-cold water thrown in her face she was so surprised.

"How'd you know that?"

"We been talking to everybody he knows. You recall the last time you saw him?"

"At their wedding, eight years ago."

"No time since? How about the other day in Sallisaw?"

"I never saw him. But listen, him and Ruby are divorced."

The marshal, Carl Webster, shook his head. "He went up to Coffeyville and got her back. But aren't you missing a motor car, a Model A Roadster?"

She had not heard a word about Charley and Ruby being back together. Louly said, "The car isn't missing, a friend of mine's using it." He said, "The car's in your name?" and recited the Oklahoma license number.

"I paid for it out of my wages. It just happens to be in my stepfather's name, Mr. Ed Hagenlocker."

"I guess there's some kind of misunderstanding," Carl Webster said.

"Mr. Hagenlocker claims it was stolen off his property in Sequoyah County. Who's your friend borrowed it?"

She did hesitate before saying Joe Young.

"When's Joe coming back?"

"Later on. 'Cept he'll stay with his friends he gets too drunk."

Carl Webster said, "I wouldn't mind talking to him," and gave Louly a business card from his pocket with a star on it and letters she could feel. "Ask Joe to give me a call later on, or sometime tomorrow if he doesn't come home. Y'all just driving around?"

"Seeing the sights."

Every time he caught her looking at him he'd start to smile. Carl Webster. She could feel his name under her thumb. She liked the way he shook her hand and thanked her, and the way he touched his hat, so polite for a U
. S
. marshal.

Joe Young returned about 9 a
. M
. making awful faces working his mouth, trying to get a taste out of it. He came in the room and took a good pull on the whiskey bottle, then another, sucked in his breath and let it out and seemed better. He said, "I don't believe what we got into with those chickens last night."

"Wait," Louly said. She told him about the marshal stopping by, and Joe Young became jittery and couldn't stand still, saying, "I ain't goin
g
back. I done ten years and swore to Jesus I ain't ever going back." Now he was looking out the window.

Louly was curious about what Joe and his buddies did to the chickens, but knew they had to get out of here. She tried to tell him they had to leave, right now.

He was still drunk or starting over, saying now, "They come after me they's gonna be a shoot-out. I'm taking some of the scudders with me."

Maybe not even knowing he was playing Jimmy Cagney now. Louly said, "You only stole seventy-one dollars."

"I done other things in the State of Oklahoma," Joe Young said.

"They take me alive I'm facing fifteen to life. I swear I ain't going back."

What was going on here? They're driving around looking for Charley Floyd--the next thing this dumbbell wants to shoot it out with the law and here she was in this room with him.

"They don't want me," Louly said. Knowing she couldn't talk to him, the state he was in. She had to get out of here, open the door and run. She got her crocheted bag from the dresser, started for the door and was stopped by the bullhorn.

The electrified voice loud, saying, "JOE YOUNG, COME OUT

WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR."

What Joe Young did--he held his Colt straight out in front of him and started firing through the glass pane in the door. Drunk. People outside returned fire, blew out the window, gouged the door with gunfire, Louly dropping to the floor with her bag, until she heard a voice on the bullhorn call out, "HOLD YOUR FIRE."

Louly looked up to see Joe Young standing by the bed with a gun in each hand now, the Colt and a .38. She said, "Joe, you have to give yourself up. They're gonna kill both of us you keep shooting." He reminded her again of James Cagney acting mad, in the movie where he squashes the grapefruit in the girl's face.

Joe Young didn't even look at her. He yelled out, "Come and get me!" and started shooting again, both guns at the same time. He stopped long enough to say to Louly, "I die, I'm gonna die game." Louly's hand went in the crocheted bag and came out with the .38 he'd given her to help him rob places. From the floor, up on her elbows, she aimed the revolver at Joe Young, cocked it and bam, shot him through the chest.

Louly stepped away from the door and the marshal, Carl Webster, came in holding a revolver. She saw lawmen standing out in the road, some with rifles. Carl Webster was looking at Joe Young curled up on the floor. He holstered his revolver, took the .38 from Louly and sniffed the barrel and stared at her without saying anything before going to one knee to see if Joe Young had a pulse. He got up saying, "The Oklahoma Bankers Association wants people like Joe dead, and that's what he is. They're gonna give you a five-hundred dollar reward for killing your friend."

"He wasn't a friend."

"He was yesterday. Make up your mind."

"He stole the car and made me go with him."

"Against your will," Carl Webster said. "Stay with that you won't go to jail."

"It's true, Carl," Louly said, showing him her big brown eyes with soul in them. "Really."

The headline in the Tulsa World, over a small photo of Louise Brown, said sallisaw girl shoots abuductor.

According to Louise, she had to stop Joe Young or be killed in the exchange of gunfire. She also said her name was Louly, not Louise. The marshal on the scene said it was a courageous act, the girl shooting her abductor. "We considered Joe Young a mad-dog felon with nothing to lose." The marshal said that Joe Young was suspected of being a member of Pretty Boy Floyd's gang. He also mentioned that Louly Brown was related to Floyd's wife and acquainted with the desperado. The headline in the Tulsa paper, over a larger photo of Louly, said girl shoots pretty boy floyd gang member. The story told that Louly Brown was a friend of Pretty Boy's and had been abducted by the former gang member who, according to Louly, "was jealous of Pretty Boy and kidnapped me to get back at him."

By the time the story had appeared everywhere from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Toledo, Ohio, the most popular headline was girlfriend of pretty boy guns down mad-dog felon.

The marshal, Carl Webster, came to Sallisaw on business and stopped in Harkrider's for a pack of cigarets and a sack of Beechnut scrap. He was surprised to see Louly.

"You're still working here?"

"No, Carl, I'm shopping for my mom. I got my reward money and I'll be leaving here pretty soon. Mr. Hagenlocker hasn't said a word to me since I got home. He's afraid I might shoot him."

"Where you going?"

"This writer for True Detective wants me to come to Tulsa. They're willing to put me up at the Mayo Hotel and pay a hundred dollars for my story. Reporters from Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri, have already been to the house."

"You're sure getting a lot of mileage out of knowing Pretty Boy, aren't you?"

"They start out asking about my shooting that dumbbell Joe Young, but what they really want to know, if I'm Charley's girlfriend. I say, 'Where in the world did you get that idea?' "

"You don't deny it."

"I say, 'Believe what you want, since I can't change your mind.' All I'm doing is having some fun with them."

"And becoming famous," Carl said. "Maybe it can get you something you've thought of doing."

"Like what, become a chorus girl? Yeah, I'll get a job in George White's Scandals." Louly picked up her sack of groceries. Carl took it from her and they walked out of the store to her Ford roadster parked on the street, Carl saying, "I wouldn't be surprised you can do just about anything you want. You still have my card?"

"I keep it in my Bible," Louly said.

Carl, holding the sack of groceries, smiled at this farm girl who'd shot a wanted fugitive and entertained herself talking to newspaper reporters. The photos of her didn't show her hair's blaze of color, or the easy way she could look up at you with those brown eyes. Or the way she said to him now, "I like your hat."

Carl couldn't help smiling. He said, "Give me a call when you get to Tulsa, I'll buy you an ice cream soda."