Full dark,no stars (15 page)

Already? you ask, and I answer simply: Yes. Already. And I knew it not just as it happened, but at least part of it before it happened. The last part of it.

How? The answer is simple. My dead wife told me.

You disbelieve, of course. I understand that. Any rational person would. All I can do is reiterate that this is my confession, my last words on earth, and Ive put nothing in it I dont know to be true.

I woke from a doze in front of the stove the following night (or the next; as the fever settled in, I lost track of time) and heard the rustling, scuttering sounds again. At first I assumed it had recommenced sleeting, but when I got up to tear a chunk of bread from the hardening loaf on the counter, I saw a thin orange sunset-streak on the horizon and Venus glowing in the sky. The storm was over, but the scuttering sounds were louder than ever. They werent coming from the walls, however, but from the back porch.

The door-latch began moving. At first it only trembled, as if the hand trying to operate it was too weak to lift it entirely clear of the notch. The movement ceased, and I had just decided I hadnt seen it at all-that it was a delusion born of the fever-when it went all the way up with a little clack sound and the door swung open on a cold breath of wind. Standing on the porch was my wife. She was still wearing her burlap snood, now flecked with snow; it must have been a slow and painful journey from what should have been her final resting place. Her face was slack with decay, the lower half slewed to one side, her grin wider than ever. It was a knowing grin, and why not? The dead understand everything.

She was surrounded by her loyal court. It was they that had somehow gotten her out of the well. It was they that were holding her up. Without them, she would have been no more than a ghost, malevolent but helpless. But they had animated her. She was their queen; she was also their puppet. She came into the kitchen, moving with a horribly boneless gait that had nothing to do with walking. The rats scurried all around her, some looking up at her with love, some at me with hate. She swayed all the way around the kitchen, touring what had been her domain as clods fell from the skirt of her dress (there was no sign of the quilt or the counterpane) and her head bobbed and rolled on her cut throat. Once it tilted back all the way to her shoulder blades before snapping forward again with a low and fleshy smacking sound.

When she at last turned her cloudy eyes on me, I backed into the corner where the woodbox stood, now almost empty. Leave me alone, I whispered. You arent even here. Youre in the well and you cant get out even if youre not dead.

She made a gurgling noise-it sounded like someone choking on thick gravy-and kept coming, real enough to cast a shadow. And I could smell her decaying flesh, this woman who had sometimes put her tongue in my mouth during the throes of her passion. She was there. She was real. So was her royal retinue. I could feel them scurrying back and forth over my feet and tickling my ankles with their whiskers as they sniffed at the bottoms of my longjohn trousers.

My heels struck the woodbox, and when I tried to bend away from the approaching corpse, I overbalanced and sat down in it. I banged my swollen and infected hand, but hardly registered the pain. She was bending over me, and her face dangled. The flesh had come loose from the bones and her face hung down like a face drawn on a childs balloon. A rat climbed the side of the woodbox, plopped onto my belly, ran up my chest, and sniffed at the underside of my chin. I could feel others scurrying around beneath my bent knees. But they didnt bite me. That particular task had already been accomplished.

She bent closer. The smell of her was overwhelming, and her cocked ear-to-ear grin I can see it now, as I write. I told myself to die, but my heart kept pounding. Her hanging face slid alongside mine. I could feel my beard-stubble pulling off tiny bits of her skin; could hear her broken jaw grinding like a branch with ice on it. Then her cold lips were pressed against the burning, feverish cup of my ear, and she began whispering secrets that only a dead woman could know. I shrieked. I promised to kill myself and take her place in Hell if she would only stop. But she didnt. She wouldnt. The dead dont stop.

Thats what I know now.

After fleeing the First Agricultural Bank with 200 dollars stuffed into his pocket (or probably more like 150 dollars; some of it went on the floor, remember), Henry disappeared for a little while. He laid low, in the criminal parlance. I say this with a certain pride. I thought he would be caught almost immediately after he got to the city, but he proved me wrong. He was in love, he was desperate, he was still burning with guilt and horror over the crime he and I had committed but in spite of those distractions (those infections), my son demonstrated bravery and cleverness, even a certain sad nobility. The thought of that last is the worst. It still fills me with melancholy for his wasted life (three wasted lives; I mustnt forget poor pregnant Shannon Cotterie) and shame for the ruination to which I led him, like a calf with a rope around its neck.

Arlette showed me the shack where he went to ground, and the bicycle stashed out back-that bicycle was the first thing he purchased with his stolen cash. I couldnt have told you then exactly where his hideout was, but in the years since I have located it and even visited it; just a side-o-the-road lean-to with a fading Royal Crown Cola advertisement painted on the side. It was a few miles beyond Omahas western outskirts and within sight of Boys Town, which had begun operating the year before. One room, a single glassless window, and no stove. He covered the bicycle with hay and weeds and laid his plans. Then, a week or so after robbing the First Agricultural Bank-by then police interest in a very minor robbery would have died down-he began making bicycle trips into Omaha.

A thick boy would have gone directly to the St. Eusebia Catholic Home and been snared by the Omaha cops (as Sheriff Jones had no doubt expected he would be), but Henry Freeman James was smarter than that. He sussed out the Homes location, but didnt approach it. Instead, he looked for the nearest candy store and soda fountain. He correctly assumed that the girls would frequent it whenever they could (which was whenever their behavior merited a free afternoon and they had a little money in their bags), and although the St. Eusebia girls werent required to wear uniforms, they were easy enough to pick out by their dowdy dresses, downcast eyes, and their behavior-alternately flirty and skittish. Those with big bellies and no wedding rings would have been particularly conspicuous.

A thick boy would have attempted to strike up a conversation with one of these unfortunate daughters of Eve right there at the soda fountain, thus attracting attention. Henry took up a position outside, at the mouth of an alley running between the candy store and the notions shoppe next to it, sitting on a crate and reading the newspaper with his bike leaning against the brick next to him. He was waiting for a girl a little more adventurous than those content simply to sip their ice-cream sodas and then scuttle back to the sisters. That meant a girl who smoked. On his third afternoon in the alley, such a girl arrived.

I have found her since, and talked with her. There wasnt much detective work involved. Im sure Omaha seemed like a metropolis to Henry and Shannon, but in 1922 it was really just a larger-than-average Midwestern town with city pretensions. Victoria Hallett is a respectable married woman with three children now, but in the fall of 1922, she was Victoria Stevenson: young, curious, rebellious, six months pregnant, and very fond of Sweet Caporals. She was happy enough to take one of Henrys when he offered her the pack.

Take another couple for later, he invited.

She laughed. Id have to be a ding-dong to do that! The sisters search our bags and pull our pockets inside-out when we come back. Ill have to chew three sticks of Black Jack just to get the smell of this one fag off my breath. She patted her bulging tummy with amusement and defiance. Im in trouble, as I guess you can see. Bad girl! And my sweetie ran off. Bad boy, but the world dont care about that! So then the dapper stuck me in a jail with penguins for guards-

I dont get you.

Jeez! The dappers my dad! And penguins is what we call the sisters! She laughed. Youre some country palooka, all right! And how! Anyway, the jail where Im doing times called-

St. Eusebias.

Now youre cooking with gas, Jackson. She puffed her cig, narrowed her eyes. Say, I bet I know who you are-Shan Cotteries boyfriend.

Give that girl a Kewpie doll, Hank said.

Well, I wouldnt get within two blocks of our place, thats my advice. The cops have got your description. She laughed cheerily. Yours and half a dozen other Lonesome Lennies, but none of em green-eyed clodhoppers like you, and none with gals as good-looking as Shannon. Shes a real Sheba! Yow!

Why do you think Im here instead of there?

Ill bite-why are you here?

I want to get in touch, but I dont want to get caught doing it. Ill give you 2 bucks to take a note to her.

Victorias eyes went wide. Buddy, for a 2-spot, Id tuck a bugle under my arm and take a message to Garcia-thats how tapped out I am. Hand it over!

And another 2 if you keep your mouth shut about it. Now and later.

For that you dont have to pay extra, she said. I love pulling the business on those holier-than-thou bitches. Why, they smack your hand if you try to take an extra dinner roll! Its like Gulliver Twist!

He gave her the note, and Victoria gave it to Shannon. It was in her little bag of things when the police finally caught up with her and Henry in Elko, Nevada, and I have seen a police photograph of it. But Arlette told me what it said long before then, and the actual item matched word for word.

Ill wait from midnight to dawn behind yr place every night for 2 weeks, the note said. If you dont show up, Ill know its over between us amp; go back to Hemingford amp; never bother you again even tho I will go on loving you forever. We are young but we could lie about our ages amp; start a good life in another place (California). I have some money amp; know how to get more. Victoria knows how to find me if you want to send me a note, but only once. More would not be safe.

I suppose Harlan and Sallie Cotterie might have that note. If so, they have seen that my son signed his name in a heart. I wonder if that was what convinced Shannon. I wonder if she even needed convincing. Its possible that all she wanted on earth was to keep (and legitimize) a baby she had already fallen in love with. Thats a question Arlettes terrible whispering voice never addressed. Probably she didnt care one way or the other.

Henry returned to the mouth of the alley every day after that meeting. Im sure he knew that the cops might arrive instead of Victoria, but felt he had no choice. On the third day of his vigil, she came. Shan wrote back right away, but I couldnt get out any sooner, she said. Some goofy-weed showed up in that hole they have the nerve to call a music room, and the penguins have been on the warpath ever since.

Henry held out his hand for the note, which Victoria gave over in exchange for a Sweet Caporal. There were only four words: Tomorrow morning. 2 oclock.

Henry threw his arms around Victoria and kissed her. She laughed with excitement, eyes sparkling. Gosh! Some girls get all the luck.

They undoubtedly do. But when you consider that Victoria ended up with a husband, three kids, and a nice home on Maple Street in the best part of Omaha, and Shannon Cotterie didnt live out that curse of a year which of them would you say struck lucky?

I have some money amp; know how to get more, Henry had written, and he did. Only hours after kissing the saucy Victoria (who took the message He says hell be there with bells on back to Shannon), a young man with a flat cap pulled low on his forehead and a bandanna over his mouth and nose robbed the First National Bank of Omaha. This time the robber got 800 dollars, which was a fine haul. But the guard was younger and more enthusiastic about his responsibilities, which was not so fine. The thief had to shoot him in the thigh in order to effect his escape, and although Charles Griner lived, an infection set in (I could sympathize), and he lost the leg. When I met with him at his parents house in the spring of 1925, Griner was philosophical about it.

Im lucky to be alive at all, he said. By the time they got a tourniquet on my leg, I was lying in a pool of blood damn near an inch deep. I bet it took a whole box of Dreft to get that mess up.

When I tried to apologize for my son, he waved it away.

I never should have approached him. The cap was pulled low and the bandanna was yanked high, but I could see his eyes all right. I should have known he wasnt going to stop unless he was shot down, and I never had a chance to pull my gun. It was in his eyes, see. But I was young myself. Im older now. Olders something your son never got a chance to get. Im sorry for your loss.

After that job, Henry had more than enough money to buy a car-a nice one, a tourer-but he knew better. (Writing that, I again feel that sense of pride: low but undeniable.) A kid who looked like he only started shaving a week or two before, waving around enough wampum to buy an almost-new Olds? That would have brought John Law down on him for sure.

So instead of buying a car, he stole one. Not a touring car, either; he plumped for a nice, nondescript Ford coupe. That was the car he parked behind St. Eusebias, and that was the one Shannon climbed into, after sneaking out of her room, creeping downstairs with her traveling bag in her hand, and wriggling through the window of the washroom adjacent to the kitchen. They had time to exchange a single kiss-Arlette didnt say so, but I still have my imagination-and then Henry pointed the Ford west. By dawn they were on the Omaha-Lincoln Highway. They must have passed close to his old home-and hers-around 3 that afternoon. They might have looked in that direction, but I doubt if Henry slowed; he would not want to stop for the night in an area where they might be recognized.