Going to Chicago (9 page)

I went behind the counter expecting to pick up money. Instead Gus handed me his shotgun. He got down on all fours and chased the rolling coins. I couldn't aim the gun at Hal like Gus wanted. I was jelly. The gun just hung from my arms, pointing right at Gus's hillbilly head. “Would you mind getting that out of my face, Ace? Hal's the dangerous one, not me.”

Will couldn't believe it. His blinky eyes implored me to do something. My eyes told him I wasn't that crazy. Will's eyes went cold and still and for the rest of his life he never looked at me the same. But what was I going to do with that gun? Shoot Gus in the head? Of course not. Tell him to “Get those arms up, mister”? Like I was the Lone Ranger? Gus would've laughed and gone on chasing nickels. Goddamn. Sonofabitch. Will wouldn't have done anything either! But it didn't matter. I had joined forces with the devil! Succumbed to the temptations of thoughtless, unplanned adventure! Gus Gillis had wedged us good. Probably on purpose.

When the cash drawer money was recovered and the customers husked of their valuables, Gus made me fill a milk crate with clean plates and cups from the kitchen, and we headed for the door. “Folks,” he said. “I'm sure you agree this terrible crime must not go unpunished, that a bastard like me ought to be shot down like a frothin' old dog. After we've driven off, someone please call the law. Tell them you've just been stuck up by the famous Gus ‘The Gun' Gillis and the beautiful Gladys Bartholomew, and that the three boys in our tow are unwilling kidnappees.”

The mousy man at the counter raised his hand. Gus let him speak. “How about a dime for the call?”

Gus admired his courage. Flipped him a dime from his hat. We fled. I thought for a moment Gus might take one of the real cars—there were some dandies in the parking lot—and set us free, having firmly established that we were unwilling participants in the affair. But he didn't. We piled in the Gilbert SXIII and flew. Not toward one of the important places equal distances from Hal's Half Way, but back down the gravelly side road, into the cover of the Indiana corn. “You know boys,” Gus said. “The great Clyde Barrow always drove Fords. Of course nothing like this overgrown horsefly of yours, Ace.”

“
At the east end of the ground floor there stands a giant man. He is six feet tall, and rises from a pedestal three and one-half feet high. He is transparent. As though you were suddenly endowed with X-Ray eyes you may view the inside of the human body
.”

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

Nine/Mincemeat

We flew unencumbered along the dusty roads of Weebawauwau County. Gladys helped Clyde with his midmorning drops. We ate the cookies Aunt Mary baked. Will read his official guidebook. I took as many peeks at Gus as I could.

He didn't seem much older than us. Twenty-two, twenty-three maybe. I remember thinking that if I was wearing an expensive suit and hat like that, and holding a double-barreled shotgun between my legs, I'd probably look as mean and mature as he did. Then I started to feel silly. Here I was nearly this man's age and what was I doing? Pretending my T was an airplane. Wearing an aviator's cap and goggles like I was some moron. When everybody's eyes were elsewhere I pulled them off and stuck them under the seat.

As for Gladys, I figured she wasn't much older than Will or me. Sand off that face powder and lipstick, yank her out of that floozy dress, drive that jazz music out of her head, and she was just another skinny kid politely asking permission to leave the supper table. But of course she did have that makeup on, and she was wearing that dress, and that jazz music was playing away in her head. She was the most sumptuous thing I had ever seen, Will's aunt notwithstanding.

In the mirror I could see her leaning against Will, chin on his shoulder, sharing the guidebook with him. “That's not a real dinosaur in that picture is it?” she said.

“Naw, it's mechanical,” said Will. “It's part of the Sinclair Oil Company exhibit. But it's as big as a real dinosaur. And it moves. See what it says there: ‘The forty ton brontosaurus swings his long neck, jerks his huge tail, clashes his jaws and emits life-like screeching grunts.'” Will then explained that motor oil was made from the grease of long-dead animals like dinosaurs, and that's why Sinclair had those mechanical monsters in its exhibit, which incidentally was located right next to the Firestone exhibit where they demonstrated how tires were made. I tipped my head back and told Gladys my father worked at Goodrich and that during the war he flew with Eddie Rickenbacker and that's why my Model T had wings and a propeller.

“Oh,” she said.

They went on flipping pages. “Look at that,” she said. “You can see that man's insides.”

“That's the famous Transparent Man,” Will said. “He's not any more real than those dinosaurs. Made of plastic. He's located in the Medical Section of the Hall of Science, which is centrally located between the North and South Lagoons. See what it says: ‘He is six feet tall, and rises from a pedestal three and one-half feet high. He is transparent. As though you were suddenly endowed with X-Ray eyes you may view the inside of the human body.'”

I watched Gladys wince and turn the page. “I'm glad real people aren't made of plastic,” she said.

We drove all day, stopping once to use the outhouse behind a Mennonite school and once to rob a country grocery. At the grocery Gus appropriated a long chain of wieners, buns, ketchup, and pickle relish to go along, a case of Whistle orange soda, plenty of gum and candy, and of course the contents of the cash drawer. He made Will take a picture of him and Gladys with the storekeeper and then launched into his speech about how his crime should not go unpunished and how the three of us were “unwilling kidnappees held begrudgingly against their own inclinations.”

Late in the day Gus made me drive right into a field of high corn—a quarter mile or more—to a secluded cow pasture. He ordered Will and me to put up the Boy Scout tent and then took off with Clyde and the box of dishes we stole from Hal's Half Way. For all we knew he was going to kill Clyde and eat him. Soon it was clear he had nothing worse in mind than a little skeet shooting. We watched as he made Clyde throw the plates in the air so he could blast them.

Gladys sat on her suitcase while Will and I struggled with the tent. Her legs were hinged just like she was wearing men's pants, which she wasn't of course, and you could see the back of her legs right up to her underwear. She knew we were trying not to look. Every few seconds there'd be a boom and the shatter of china. “He's really fast on the trigger isn't he?” Gladys said.

“How long have you and Gus been at it?” Will asked her. “Robbing rubes I mean.”

The setting sun was in Gladys's eyes, making her squint. “About three weeks, I think.”

Will was amazed. “I figured you'd been at it for years.”

She knocked her knees together and laughed. “Don't you think we'd be robbing better than gas stations and greasy spoons if we'd been at it for years?”

Back in Bennett's Corners Will couldn't put two words together in front of a girl, but suddenly here in Indiana, he was talking with this yellow-haired gangster girl as easily as he could talk to me. I forced myself into the conversation. “How'd you and Gus meet? In a fancy Chicago whorehouse or something?”

“I wish it was that romantic. Actually Gus and I met when he first held up my daddy's store in Mingo Junction. Gus was just getting started in his life of crime and he stuck up Daddy's store every day for a week. Every night at closing time he'd come storming in, waving a shotgun. Demanding all our money. Smiling at my smooth white legs.”

She let us take a long look at those smooth white legs before tucking them under her dress. “It was so exciting. I couldn't wait for the next night to come. After a few days I realized I'd fallen helplessly in love with him. I was already helplessly in love with the idea of getting the hell out of Mingo Junction.”

We could relate to her desire to kill Mingo Junction. It sounded an awful lot like Bennett's Corners. “So you just took off with him?” Will asked.

“Not right away. He had to escape from the Jefferson County jail first. It was so funny! Just as Daddy was telling me how glad he was they finally put that stump-jumping maniac away, Gus himself barged in, toting his brand-new shotgun. He smiled at my legs, made Daddy hand him the day's receipts, and away we went.”

“Jailbreaker,” I marveled. “How'd he escape?”

She shrugged with modesty. “Gus says Ohio cops always underestimate West Virginians.”

Neither of us had ever met anyone from West Virginia. Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Germany, and that was it. “I could tell he was a hillbilly,” I said.

Gus's shotgun boomed. Dishes shattered. The tent went up.

“You really going to be a radio actress?” Will asked.

Gladys nodded proudly.

“I listen to the radio all the time,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose like I was a turd. “Everybody listens to the radio all the time.”

“You ever been on the radio?” Will asked.

“Not yet. But I will once Gus dies in a hail of bullets. He's got it all figured out. After he's dead and pictures of his riddled body are spattered all over the newspapers, he says I can trade on his ill fame and become a famous actress. Gus says the public loves fallen angels like me almost as much as it worships dead criminals. And I'll have starring roles, too, right off the bat. Gus says if he works his death right, I won't have to work my way up from the bottom like all those other dizzy biscuits.”

Will was entranced. “I bet you'll end up the most famous radio actress ever.”

Gladys was suddenly girlish. “You ever see a real radio script before? I've got three episodes of Daphne Darnell's
Country Girl Theater
right here in my suitcase. Gus stole them for me when we stuck up the Kokomo School for the Performing Arts.” She slid off her suitcase. Popped the finger locks.

I'll tell you, there is no greater aphrodisiac than the inside of a woman's suitcase. Nothing more intimidating either. It's like looking into a woman's vagina and soul at the same time. You don't know whether to look away or lunge. First there's the smell of it, the intermingling aromas: perfume; sweat; fresh hankies and already worn underwear; musky hairs caught in combs and hairbrushes; the leather of extra shoes; the tang of creams and powders and other mystical greases. And then there's the look of it, necessary and unnecessary things given equal space: blouses folded smooth and sharp; socks and panties in wads; bras; belts of many colors; sprinkles of jewelry; candy and razor blades.

Gladys' suitcase also contained those Daphne Darnell scripts stolen in Kokomo, a pistol with an inlaid silver kitten on the pink pearl handle, and a Bible, if you can believe it. What a place that suitcase was! Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene sharing the same little windowless apartment.

“My mother never misses Daphne Darnell,” Will said. “I listen too sometimes.”

“When I'm famous on the radio, you and your mother can listen to me.”

“We will.” He took one of the scripts from the suitcase, reached right in there like a gynecologist. “Hey! ‘The Handsome Hobo!' I remember that one.”

Gladys joyously watched him fan the pages. “I'll be a better actress than Daphne Darnell, that's for sure.”

Will assured her she would.

“I just wish Gus would hurry up and get riddled,” she said. “Waiting for fame and fortune is boring as the flu.”

While they flipped through the radio scripts, I watched Gus and Clyde destroy Hal's dishes.

I didn't have much contact with Clyde after that week in Indiana. For a long time I stayed on the farm on Stony Hill road and then a few days after Thanksgiving my father got me a job stacking tires at Goodrich. My attention drifted away from Bennett's Corners and more toward Akron. When I came home from England in 1946, I went to the Corners to see Mrs. Randall. Clyde was still running the garage, though he was thinking about closing the place and taking a job delivering bread for Spang Bakery. Clyde was twenty-five. Married. A new father. He was happy to see me. He bought me a Pepsi and we eased our way into our 1934 trip to Chicago.

“Bet you were scared when Gus took you off alone,” I said.

“Alone?”

“That day in the meadow. With that box of dishes from Hal's Half Way.”

“Not really. He said up front I was going to help him target practice.”

“Will and I thought he was going to eat you.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely—no, not really. Did you and Gus have a chance to talk much? Between plates?”

“He never stopped talking. You remember how he was. Of course I couldn't hear much of it. Not with one ear clogged with wax and the other ringing from his shotgun.”

I begged him to remember what he could.

“I do remember him telling me I had a good arm, the way I was flinging those dishes. He said I was probably good with a gun, too.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I'd made my share of mincemeat out of field mice with my father's .22. You remember that rifle, don't you, Ace? He was always letting Will and me shoot it. Didn't please Mother much.”

“He used to let me shoot it, too. Couple of times. What did Gus say then?”

“He asked me if I wanted to make mincemeat out one of those plates.”

“He didn't!”

“He handed me the shotgun. Just like he gave it to you in that diner. Remember?”

The memories were sad. But we both laughed. “Your brother wanted me to shoot Gus in the head. We were never the same after that.”

“He had his chance, too.”