Love isn’t something you forget easily. Maybe you tuck it away for a little while, or maybe you bury it in a mess of other feelings, but it’ll still be right there, nestled in the back of your mind. And I know for a fact that as soon as she saw me, she remembered.
Not my name in the paper, or my face behind bars, she remembered not Pretty Boy Floyd. Instead, it was Choc Floyd she saw when she opened the door that day. The man from her youth, the one who pulled at her hair when she was a child and married her when she blossomed into an adult. The man who made her spaghetti dinners on Wednesday and took her into town on the weekend. The same man who smiled at her quirks and gave her flowers picked fresh from the field. Oh yes, she remembered.
“He looks just like you, Choc. He’s grown to look just like you.”
“Where is he? I want to see him.”
“He’s…with his father.”
“Jim is not his father Ruby, he never will be. He is my blood. I don’t care what that ring says.”
“You were gone for a while.”
“Did you ever tell him about me? Does he even know?”
“What other stories do I have to tell him at night? He knows you as well as any eight-year old should.”
I remember we got pretty silent for some time after that, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Then she spoke softly.
“I still love you, Choc.”
“Then why did you have to go off and marry Jim? Why did you have to run and marry that s***-for-brains?”
“You’re the one who ran off.” Her tone grew defensive. “When’s the last time you came around here? How old was Jack when you last saw him?”
“I’m a changed man. I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“I don’t think—“
“Come to Oklahoma with me.” I said before she took another chance to speak. It startled her. “Come with me. You get Jack and we’ll just leave, okay? We’ll get outta here.”
She stole a glance at window. “You need to go.”
“Ruby… Come on we—”
“I’ll be there. Go, go. Jim will be home any minute.”
Dusk was quickly approaching and as I head out the door I heard her whisper ever so faintly, “I love you.”
I smile. I knew she would remember.
* * * *
We’re happy. I take Jack to school on weekdays. I’m making spaghetti dinners again. We go to church.
Ruby says I ought to be careful. We don’t want anyone recognizing me.
You’re a wanted man.
I don’t care about anyone who wants me except you.
She would blush and just insist I be careful. I go by the name Bill now. I can’t go out too much, and if any of these people paid much attention they would notice how I don’t ever quite look at people straight on, or that I always come up with an excuse to not go to the town barbeque or the school fairs and they might notice that my wife does most of the shopping in town. I’ve come to know the inside of my house quite well. It’s a good thing I didn’t pick a very bright town to settle into.
But I’m happy. We’re happy. For the first time in my life, everything is falling into place just as I imagined eight years ago when I first signed that marriage certificate and found out Ruby was pregnant. I always dreamed a life like this.
Then the talk started.
“We’re getting low on flour.” I heard Ruby mutter one day around lunch time. Jack had come home with the news that he won a spelling bee in his class that day and she was baking a sweet cake to celebrate.
“My cake!” Jack squealed.
“Don’t worry buddy, I’ll run to town and get the flour and be back faster than you can count to eighty. I’ll just—”
“No,” Ruby cut me short, “I’ll go, I’ll go.”
“You can’t drive.”
“Oh, the walk will do me some good. It’s not as if town is far.”
“I’ll have no lady of mine walking to town when we have a perfectly good car with a full tank of gas sitting right outside there.”
“You don’t need to go. I’ll make do with what I have left.”
I looked in the pot. “This isn’t enough for so much as a biscuit.”
I could tell she saw my suspicion, what’s the big idea anyway? She sighed. “I overheard some of the ladies talking about your… resemblance… at choir on Monday.” She brushed a little piece of my hair down. “You need to lay low for a little bit… They’re starting to notice.”
All at once I was embarrassed and I was angry. Who cares if they recognize me? I’m a criminal. There are lots of criminals. Liars, cheaters. Thieves. I thought of the wanted posters. I guess I was the thief. Anyway, what would they do if they did recognize me? They’d send me off to jail and take Ruby and Jack away from me. I’d probably never see them again. Another prison break wasn’t likely. All I wanted to do was stay here in our own bubble. I didn’t want the world to keep interrupting, poking its long nose into our home, peering at us through the windows. I wanted to be alone.
I looked at Jack, standing by the table, picking off little pieces of peeling lacquer. The last time I saw him, he was two and I was just stopping by. I remember he had little black tuffs of hair on his mostly bald head and his hands were pink and soft and small. Babies are so small; I hadn’t really realized before that day. And even now that he’s eight and doesn’t remember the visit, and I missed out on six years of my little boy growing up, even now that we’ve been living in this house together for just a little under three and a half months, I feel closer to that child than I’d ever been. I feel like a father for the first time. And it’s now my job to make up for those years of his life that I couldn’t be there. I can’t ruin this for us. I can’t ruin this for Jack, for Ruby. And yet at the same time, I felt like I was a burden to them.
It wasn’t until I began to feel the ache in my hand that I realized how tightly my fists were clenched. I released the death grip.
“I’ll lay low.”
“Thank you. I’m only worried about you, Choc.”
“Yeah I know.”
She came over then and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, planting a small kiss on my cheek. “I’ll be back before sundown. I love you.”
And so it went on like that for a week. I didn’t leave the house. I stayed home every day excepting Sunday –for church— and then I stayed home some more.
I wasn’t meant to be homebound and Ruby noticed the toll it was taking on me. I slept and ate and watched Jack and cut wood. And I was tired. But still happy.
“Hey, why don’t you and Jack go fishing?”
“Fishing?”
“Yeah.”
“Well doesn’t that just sound like an idea! What do you think, Jack?”
“I’ve never been fishing.”
“Neither have I.”
We had a few old fishing poles in the garage that I had bought for exactly this purpose, but never actually put to any use. Ruby packed us sandwiches and tea in a small cooler and we stuck it in the trunk, waved good bye and went on our way.
“Where are we going?”
“To the crick by Mulberry Park. That seems like a good place. Where there’s water, there’s fish, right?”
“Right.” Jack was beaming.
When we got to the crick, I had realized that we didn’t have any bait for the lines, so I had Jack dig for some worms. He giggled and screeched as they wiggled around in my hand when I tried to bait the hook.
“Does that hurt them?”
“Well, no! They just feel this little prick—no, less than a prick—they feel this tickle.”
“A tickle?”
“Yeah, a little something like… this!” I pinched his sides, sending him into another fit of laughter.
We sat and watched the sun drop in the sky and waited for the fish to bite while we munched on our sandwiches. Despite being so young, Jack was a very patient child. He didn’t get bored or fidgety like you would expect from a kid his age. He was calm.
Once Jack almost caught something, but the sucker just nabbed the worm and ran off. And then when I reeled in a clump of grass, we started to get desperate. We made up different ways to lure the fish to the hooks, wiggling the line, and talking sweetly to the vacant water, as if it would make a difference.
“When are the fish coming?”
“I don’t know. They seem to be a bit late today.” I looked at the sky; the sun would start setting soon. “You know what? We'll shoot 'em.”
I walked to the car, parked a little ways off the crick and grabbed my gun out of the trunk. I loaded the bullets carefully and aimed it… at the water. To be honest I wasn’t really aiming for anything the water was so muddy.
“Get ‘em!” Jack shouted, the excitement bubbling in his voice, and I opened fire.
He covered his ears as the bullets smacked into the water.
“Did we get anything?”
“Hmm… I don’t think so.”
“Can… Can I try?”
He’d asked to shoot my gun before but Ruby had always forbid it. “As long as you don’t tell your mother.”
I reloaded the gun and handed it to him, guiding him from behind.
“Alright, do you know what you’re aiming at?”
“Yes. Well sorta. The water, right?”
I smiled to myself. That was pretty much what I had done. “Yep. Okay, pull the trigger, make sure you hold it firm, it’ll jump at you and—”
BAM. He shot one off into the water before I finished talking. “Not bad. Try one more.”
BAM.
No fish. I took the gun from his hands. “Well, we still didn't get any, but we sure scared the hell out of 'em.” A smile played at the corners of my lips and Jack giggled excitedly. “We’ll get ‘em next time. Come on, your mother will be wanting us home for dinner pretty soon.”
When we got home, there was another car parked alongside the woodpile.
“Who’s here Daddy?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t recognize the vehicle.
“Stay close to me, alright?”
Glancing in the window of the backseat I spotted what looked like the handle of a cutting torch* jutting out from underneath a thick blanket on the floor.
S***.
I could feel my heart racing as a whole jumble of scenarios ran through my head about what I would find on the other side of that door.
Please be a friend.
I grabbed Jack’s shoulder and pushed him behind me slightly as I peeled the door open.
There was no one in the living room.
“Ruby?”
“We’re in the kitchen.” She called from the next room over, no panic evident in her voice.
I turned the corner to see George Birdwell sitting at the table while my wife set out four dinner plates. Upon seeing me, he stood up to shake my hand.
“George!” I exclaimed. “Well you’re the last person I expected to see here. It’s good to see you! When’d you get here?”
“Oh about an hour ago I’d guess. Say, you’re getting old! Is that a gray hair?”
“Come off it!” I batted his hand away from picking at my head.
“George is quite the gentleman.” Ruby chimed in. “He went out there and chopped some of that wood for you.”
“I suppose you owe me now.” He smirked.
“Oh I don’t owe you nothing. You get dinner with us tonight. That makes us even.”
“Okay, okay, come on, let’s eat.”
“Alright,” said Ruby, “So where’s that fish?”
“Well…”
“We couldn’t get any, we tried to shoot them out with the, the gun, but we couldn’t get any fish!”
“You tried to… shoot them?” I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. Ruby waved her hand. “You don’t need to explain.” She laughed. “I made a roast… you know, just in case.”
All throughout dinner I couldn’t help but worry about why George stopped by. People don’t just carry a cutting torch around in their car for no reason. Right after dinner, while Jack was helping Ruby clean up, I grabbed George and took him outside.
“So what’s really brought you here George?”
“I’ve got a job for you.”
I stole a glance in the direction of his car. “Look George, I’m not about that life anymore, you hear me? I’m stayin’ straight for Ruby. We have a good life here. I’m not about to—”
“Wait Choc, listen—”
“No! I already told ya. I’ve got too much to lose. I have a family now. You know what that’s like.”
“Yeah, I uh, I do. That’s what I came here to talk to you about. We’re hurting real bad down south. The farms are dry. We barely have enough food to feed ourselves let alone make money off of it.”
“George I don’t know…”
“Where have you been getting your money from anyway?”
“I’m using what I have left over… you know. I can’t get a real job; I’m trying to maintain this whole ‘low profile’ thing Ruby’s fussing about.”
“Well what happens when that runs out?”
“Well I… I—”
“What then, Choc?”
“I don’t know!”
“We need you.”
“I’ll have to talk to Ruby about it.”
He hugged me then suddenly. “Thank you, thank you. We really needed this. I didn’t trust asking anyone other than you!”
“What? You’re, uh, welcome. Come on now, get off of me!”
George composed himself, unable to keep the smile off his face. “Thanks.”
We started walking back inside. “You know, we really oughtta get you some dye or something for those gray hairs of yours.”
“Oh, shut up.”
* * * *
Ruby was surprisingly obliging when I told her what George had proposed to me. I had all my reasons in order, and even an argument planned for the rebuttal but she might as well have suggested the idea herself she agreed so readily. And that’s how within our first month of living here, I became known as the mysterious traveling salesman.
That’s why I was never at the functions of the town, the social gatherings. That’s why I didn’t go to town to shop. I was out making money for my family. Which was true. Mostly. And it satisfied people’s minds enough for them to stop questioning the truth.
George Birdwell and I had a routine. We were long time friends, even before the trade. He was the pastor of my hometown and when I came to him for help after my first jailbreak he showed me the way. Since then, we’ve only been stealing the money that we needed and giving the rest to others in poverty, destroying debt records along the way. We were heroes in our hometown. But I gave it up when an almost forgotten longing for Ruby resurfaced out of the blue and being without her was driving me mad. Now Pretty Boy was back. And I was growing more notorious by the hour.
In Kansas you would read in the news that Pretty Boy hit the local bank down town and was seen in Missouri robbing a convenience store the next day. I was getting pinned with everything. But as long as the news stayed out of Oklahoma I was okay with it.
We went out and stayed in Oklahoma for a straight week, planning a heist for a huge bank, and I got so homesick I could have given it all up. When we got back I ended up giving Jack the coins we got.
When I pulled up alongside the house he came running out to me.
“Hey, buddy! Hear, hold I, I got you something.” I looked at the door real quick before handing him the heavy sack. His face lit up as he peered inside.
I put a finger to my lips. “If you can bring it in without your mother seeing, you can have it. Go along and hide it. And whenever you want to go out and get an ice cream with your friends, you go right ahead.”
He ran inside, right past his mother on the way through the door.
“What’s that he had there?”
“Oh that? I don’t know, just a little present I got him.”
“Oh?”
“I missed you, darling.” I grabbed her waist and kissed her.
“You shouldn’t leave for so long, Choc. We missed you too.”
It wasn’t long before Ruby discovered Jack’s stash and made him buy a suit with it. And she made him wear it every Sunday despite his complaints of it being itchy and too small there and too big here.
It was a particularly hot Sunday and Jack had been squirming all throughout service. I know he just wanted to go home so as soon as church ended, instead of staying around and making polite conversation, I grabbed Jack and Ruby and headed to the door.
“Hey Bill!” I heard someone call. “Bill!” It took me a minute to respond, because although we had been living here for almost half a year now, I wasn’t quite used to my alias.
I turned. It was Erv Kelley. One of the town’s police officers.
“Go on ahead to the car. Go, go. I’ll catch up.”
“Hey, can we talk a minute?” Erv asked, finally catching up to me.
“Sure.”
He took me over to the side yard of the church where it was more vacant. Children were chasing each other around the bushes but our presence scared them off.
He looked at me a moment and we didn’t say anything to each other.
“What’s up, Erv?”
“Are you Pretty Boy Floyd?”
I didn’t know what to say. I froze. As if taking another breath would take me away. I was getting ready for him to put the handcuffs on me right then and there. I contemplated attacking him. Kidnapping him maybe. Blackmailing him into keeping this a secret. I couldn’t lie and tell him that no, I wasn’t in fact Pretty Boy Floyd, I was his twin brother. I knew he was already convinced of my identity.
“Yes.”
He did nothing. He just stood there. Maybe he was shocked I said yes, like he expected me to refuse this accusation. No, I was definitely Pretty Boy alright.
“Maybe we can just keep this between you and me? I have a wife and a child to look after. Don’t think I wouldn’t fight for them.”
He was still silent, and I took this as my cue to leave.
“What did Erv Kelley want with you?” Ruby asked when I got in the car.
“Nothing, just a matter of business.” I inched my way out of the church parking lot. Jack already had his jacket off and he was working on the buttons of his shirt.
“A matter of business?”
“Yep. Hey buddy, wait to do that ‘til we get home, okay?”
“I hate this suit!”
“Choc, what did he want?”
“I’ll tell you when we get home, okay?”
As soon as we pulled in the driveway, Jack ran for the house, trailing his jacket behind him. Ruby sat quietly in the passenger seat. Boy, was it hot. I opened the door to let some air in, but I didn’t get out of the car. I sighed.
“Erv Kelley knows.”
“He knows? Is that what he wanted to talk to you about? What did he say, Choc?”
“He asked if I was Pretty Boy Floyd. I told him yes.” I was staring straight through the windshield at our house. “He didn’t say anything after that.”
“Oh, Lord.” I felt her break after this. “Do you think…”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“But we were so careful…” She whispered.
“It was only a matter of time.” I didn’t want to say it but deep down, I knew it was true. That’s why I never thought of the future; I never thought about what I would be doing for money next. I clearly couldn’t just rob banks for the rest of my life. This was it.
Just then George’s car peeled around the corner, just barely missing our wood pile. He stumbled out frantically.
“Choc! Choc! They’re after ya.” A sheen of sweat dripped from his forehead. “Kelley has the whole team coming over here.”
“Damn.” I cursed under my breath, pounding my fist on the steering wheel.
“Where are we going to go, Choc? I don’t know where to go. Do you, I—” Ruby broke into tears.
“Hey,” I looked at her, grabbing he palm. “I love you. I want you to have a good life. I’m done being a burden to you, Ruby. You and Jack go. They won’t chase you. I’ll lead them away okay?”
“No, no, Choc, I want to be with you—”
“I’ll lead them away. You get Jack and go to the bus stop okay? Get out of here. Get away from this town. You’ll see me again okay?” I kissed her fingers. “Come on. I need to know you’re safe. I need to know you’re out of here. Please don’t follow me. I’ll be safe for you okay? I’ll be safe for you and Jack. I promise nothing will happen.”
I saw Jack poking his head out of the doorway.
“Be strong for Jack. If anything happens to me, you tell him how much I loved him okay? You tell him how much he meant to me. Tell him how I was always there for him. I love you, Ruby.” I felt my face get hot as tears pricked at my own eyes.
Jack came running at me as soon as I got out of the car.
“What’s wrong Daddy?”
I lowered myself to him, kneeling on the cracked ground. “Oh, I have to go away for a while buddy.”
“How long?”
“Hopefully not too long.” I pinched his side.
He hugged me. “I love you, Jack.”
“I love you too.”
“Now listen, when I’m gone, you’ll be the man of the house, okay? You be a good boy for your mother. Do what she tells you to do.”
“I will!”
“Choc…” George was glancing around nervously. “We need to go.”
“You two go to the bus stop, okay? Go to your mother’s. I’ll meet you there when I can.” We got into the car, and as we peeled away I swear I could just barely hear Ruby shouting, “I love you.”
Love isn’t something you forget easily.
Just as we made it onto the main road, a line of police cars were on our tail. “There’s a gun in the backseat!” I heard George yell. Aim for the tires. Aim for the tires. I thought as I shot out the back window.
Maybe you tuck it away for a little while,
“You have to shake ‘em! They’re getting too close!” I yelled. They were firing back now. One of the cars pulled close beside us.
Or maybe you bury it in a mess of other feelings,
It was the smiling face of Erv Kelley in the driver’s seat, aiming a hand gun. I promised I would be safe for you, Ruby. I pulled the trigger.
But it’ll still be right there, nestled in the back of your mind.