Going to Chicago (18 page)

Will went scientific on her. “You can't see a soul.”

“I can see yours just fine,” she said. She kissed him on the lips.

Right on the goddamn lips! Sonofabitch! I'd only been kissed on the lips once myself and it sure wasn't by anybody what looked or smelled or walked with jazz music playing in her head like Gladys Bartholomew.

Not knowing what to do with the kiss, Will started squeaking off ears like a madman. Gladys stopped him. “We pick any more corn and Gus will know for sure we weren't up to any good.”

Halfway through their corn picking, Gus came out to the chicken yard. “Having some trouble, Ace?”

“I almost had her a couple times,” I said.

I saw Gus' eyes drift over the cornfield, then land on the hen. “Don't feel bad about being outfoxed by this old hen,” he said. “If she wasn't wily, she wouldn't be the last one in the yard.”

It was one of the smartest things anyone ever said to me. Over the years it has helped me accept life's sudden surprises and slow inevitabilities. Good as you may be, you sometimes find yourself up against someone—or something—better. Going bust at the R&R Luncheonette wasn't my fault, it was the Big Boy chain's fault. The Dairy Doodle's demise was McDonalds' fault. Getting too old to run the Clam Shack was God's fault. So when Gus said that—“If she wasn't wily, she wouldn't be the last one in the yard”—my embarrassment floated right through the holes in the chicken wire.

Gus now entered the ring. He edged sideways toward the hen, so it would think he was really moving in the other direction. His ruse appeared to be working. The hen clucked some but didn't move. When Gus got within three feet of the hen he stopped and sank slowly down on hinged knees.
Zzzzip!
His arm shot out like the sticky tongue of a frog. The hen went right over his head. Glided to a stop and started pecking for bugs.

Gus wasn't any better at this than me! He tried again. Missed again. He pushed back his fedora and scratched his hair. “Ace,” he said, “you are witnessing here one of the major lessons in life.”

“What's that, Gus?”

“Eating a chicken is a helluva lot easier than catching a chicken.” Another bit of West Virginia wisdom that from time to time has seen me through life's little surprises. My marriage to Lois Cobb comes to mind.

Gus and I now went after that hen with all we had. Finally got her, too. Gus carried her out to the block. I handed him the hatchet. “You ever kill anyone?” I asked as he stretched the hen's neck out. The hen seemed as interested in Gus's answer as me.

“Naw, I ain't ever killed no one. Not that I couldn't. Not that I wouldn't if I had a good reason to.” Humility and threat in one answer. That was Gus Gillis.

“Clyde Barrow killed lots of men,” I said. “The newspapers say for no reason at all.”

Gus spit on the hatchet blade. “The papers are right on that score. But sometimes you have to look past a man's faults to see his true greatness. And Clyde Barrow was a great man, Ace, driven to his miserable behavior by a miserable world.”

“I suppose,” I said.

“You bet you suppose,” Gus said. He raised the hatchet high. He looked me square in the face. “What about me, Ace? You think I'm a great man?”

“I sure do. Absolutely.”

“You really mean that?”

Naturally I didn't really think he was a great man. But I didn't think he was such a bad man either. Not at that time. Sure he wielded a gun and shot it off more than was necessary. Sure he committed lots of crimes. But they were all low rent. And the way he wanted to die—in a hail of bullets—seemed almost heroic, sacrificial. An imperfect soul voluntary retiring to the nether world. “Gus ‘The Gun' Gillis,” I said. “Greatest lawbreaker of all time.”

“Thank you, Ace.” He brought the hatchet down. The hen's head skipped off the block like a tiddlywink.

“
Boy Scouts are on duty throughout the grounds, ready to speed messages, help to find lost children and in any way serve visitors according to the Boy Scout code of courtesy
.”

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

Nineteen/Nobody's Going Nowhere

Gus looked up from his ear of corn, butter-soaked niblets stuck all over his face. “What's the matter, Clyde? You don't like Lloyd's cooking?”

Clyde stopped humming. “I like it fine.”

Gladys licked the chicken grease off her white fingers. It was ten after six.
The Gladys Bartholomew Theater
went on in just fifty minutes. Everybody but Lloyd Potts was antsy. “Your ear hurting worse?” Gladys asked Clyde.

“Hurting like hell,” he said.

Will was smashing his boiled carrots like they were poisonous spiders. I was watching Gladys's fingers, wondering what they would taste like in my mouth.

“He needs his drops,” Gladys said.

Gus took the untouched chicken thigh off Clyde's plate. Sucked it to the bone. “You need to put your mind on something else, Clyde.”

“He needs more drops,” Gladys said. As far as I know they were the first words she had directed at Gus since returning from the cornfield with Will. They were spoken with a coolness I hadn't heard from her before.

Gus threw the thigh bone against the wall. “Judas Priest! How many times do I have to apologize for throwing Clyde's medicine bottle through that propeller? I was nine-tenths unconscious.”

“He doesn't need an apology,” Gladys said. “He needs another bottle of drops.”

Gus threw his ear of corn against the wall. “Where am I supposed to get another bottle of drops? Pick them off a damn cornstalk?”

Gladys looked in Clyde's ear. “Is that wax or pus?”

Lloyd, sitting on Clyde's other side, pulled him over on his lap. He drilled his little finger into Clyde's ear. Came out with a yellow glob. He smelled it. “Looks like pus but it's just mushy wax.” He offered Gladys a smell.

Gus—whose stomach couldn't even handle the aroma of roadside coffee—nearly threw up. “I'm trying to eat here.”

“Then go ahead and eat,” Gladys said. The temperature of her voice was dropping like the first week of January.

Will came around the table now. He took his brother's face in his hands. “Jeez, Clyde. The whole side of your head is swollen. We've got to get you to a doctor.”

Gus threw his boiled potato against the wall. “In case everybody's forgotten, my life's riding on tonight's broadcast.”

“We haven't forgotten,” I said.

“We've got to get you to a doctor,” Will said again.

Gus threw the potato from my plate. “It's only a earache,” he screamed. “A diddly damn earache!”

Lloyd moved his plate before Gus could get his hands on his potato. “I had an uncle who died of an earache once.”

Clyde's hum took off like a fire engine. “I ain't gonna die, am I?”

“Of course you're not going to die,” Will said. “But we better see a doctor.”

Gus couldn't reach Lloyd's plate. But he could reach the chicken platter. The whole carcass went against the wall. “You put your mind on something else, Clyde, before I put it on something else!”

“Earache killed my aunt Myrtle, too, I think,” Lloyd said.

Gladys showed Lloyd the face of Mother God. “Telling us about your dead relatives isn't helping things, Mr. Potts.”

Lloyd retreated. “It was some kind of pain in the head that killed her. I was only about five so I can't remember exactly what her problem was.”

Clyde went limp in Will's arms. “I am gonna die, ain't I?”

“You're not going to die,” Will said. His voice was on the precipice of real anger. “We'll get you to a doctor.”

Gus reached for his shotgun. “Ain't nobody going to the doctor until I'm dead.”

“We should let Will take Clyde,” Gladys said.

Gus threw a quart-sized Canada Dry bottle against the wall. When that didn't calm him, he threw his hat. “Gladys! Your big debut is in just a few minutes. You need Will to play all those strangers!”

“Lloyd can play the strangers.”

“Lloyd? Nobody's going to believe Lloyd's somebody a girl would fall in love with.”

“Then you can play the strangers,” Gladys said.

Gus's head was vibrating. “I can't lower myself to that! I'm Gus ‘The Gun' Gillis, sponsor of the show! The bastard Sheriff Barnes gets so mad at he can't wait to kill me! Will and Clyde are staying right here. That's the end of it!”

It wasn't the end of it. Will stood up, serene as a block of granite. “I'm taking Clyde to a doctor. Ace, go start the Gilbert SXIII.”

Goddamn. Sonofabitch. Was I in a pickle now. I looked at Gus. He was smiling at me, waiting for me to choose sides. Either way I was cooked. If I chose Gus's side I'd really be crossing the line. Crossing it for good. Turning my back on Will Randall and civilization in general. If I chose Will—which of course is what I wanted to do—I'd be condemning all three of us to certain death. No, Gus hadn't killed anybody yet, but not three hours earlier he'd stood with that hatchet and hen in his hands and told me he would if he had to. I looked at Will. He looked away. Goddamn. Sonofabitch. I started for the door.

I was expecting to feel shotgun pellets in my back. Instead I felt a hand on my collar. Gus yanked me back so hard I skidded right across the top of the table, corn and carrots and potatoes and quart-sized bottles of Canada Dry flying.

Will was the next Christian to volunteer. He put his arm around Clyde and led him toward the door. Gus raised his shotgun. Before I could get off the floor, Gladys grabbed the barrel, put herself between Will and Gus. “Gus, please. We'll do the broadcast but then you have to let the boys go.”

Gus pried Gladys's fingers off his gun barrel. He backed up like she was contagious. “I saw you kissy-facin' in the corn.” He pointed the gun in Will's general direction. “Can't even wait until I'm dead. Can't even wait until I'm diddly damn dead.”

Now my hands were on the shotgun and for a few seconds we had a fairly even tug of war going until Gus stomped on my feet. When I let go he kicked me right in my never-tested manhood. As I went down in a ball of black stars I heard the gun boom. I felt a shower of plaster. Gus had killed the ceiling. He swiveled toward the control room window and killed that, too.

Thirty-four years later, on a patio in Elmhurst, Illinois, I learned that while Gus was going nuts inside WEEB, Sheriff Orville Barnes, Pruitt, and a deputy were outside in the corn, on their bellies, watching with binoculars.

Pruitt rolled over and drew his pistol when Gus shot the ceiling.

Sheriff Barnes continued to play with the ladybug on the ground in front of him, bumping it with his fingernail, making it change directions after only a few tiny steps. “Put that government-issued pecker of yours away,” he told Pruitt. “He ain't shooting at us.”

“He's shooting at somebody,” Pruitt said.

Sheriff Barnes carefully lifted the ladybug and giggled as it skidded down his fingernail. “More than likely at some
thing
. I've been calling around, Pruitt. Gus Gillis seems to like killing doors and windows more than real people. You don't see any blood flying around in there, do you deputy?”

The deputy lowered his binoculars and blinked his eyes into focus. “Just a lot of plaster.”

“See there, Pruitt. Just a lot of plaster. Lloyd and those Ohio boys are safe enough.” The sheriff freed the ladybug. “Let's go home.” He started crawling through the corn toward his car. Told his deputy to stay. “If anything important happens, let me know. Coming, Pruitt?”

Pruitt, disgusted, holstered his revolver and followed, growling every time the dry Indiana dirt ground into the knees of his expensive suit pants.

“I'd invite you to listen to
The Gladys Bartholomew Theater
with me and Millie,” Sheriff Barnes teased, “but I wouldn't want you shooting her girls.”

Pruitt reminded him that prostitution was against the law.

“No worse than defiling the sidewalk with hopscotch chalk,” the sheriff said. He kept Pruitt crawling much farther than was necessary. “Who do you fear most, Pruitt? God or J. Edgar Hoover?”

“God, of course.”

“Not me. Hoover scares the bejesus out of me. Sure there's a few bastards that need frying, but there's also a lot of decent saps hanging on the edge of the law only because there's nothing better. Even some of the bank robbers are decent saps. But Hoover's bent on pushing them all over the edge. Hell Pruitt, the more of these
public enemies
you government boys put away, the more elbow room you create for penny-candy losers like this Gus Gillis. Hoover's the one who scares me. God's never pushed anyone over the edge in his life, from what I've seen.”

Pruitt was still boiling with contempt when he recounted this conversation to me in 1968. As a decent sap who'd spent the better part of a week on the edge myself, I tended to agree with Sheriff Orville Barnes. That's when I went into the kitchen and spit in Pruitt's omelet.

Having had a run-in with one of Hoover's field men—that idiot Pruitt—I was always interested in what J. Edgar was up to. In the forties I read about all the Nazis he was chasing down. In the fifties all the communists he was chasing down. In the sixties all the Negroes and hippies he was chasing down. Except for the Nazis, all decent saps. When he died in May 1972, I was generally happy about it. But when the word got out that Hoover might have been a homosexual—all that stuff about him and Clyde Tolson, his number two man who ate dinner with him every night and went away on vacation with him, went to Broadway shows together and all that—I felt some sympathy. Will Randall and I would have been lifelong buddies like that. What would people have said about us?