Dutch Curridge Page 15

  49

  On a cold January day with about three inches of ice on the ground, I stopped off at the Star Telegram warehouse on Sixth Street and found Alto trying to get the engine in his GMC pickup to turn over.

  I gave him a jump and then asked if he could answer a couple of questions for me.

  "I've already told you everything I remember, Dutch,” he said.

  "This don't have anything to do with Whitey," I said. Okay, it had a little to do with it, but not much.

  "I just have a few minutes,” he said.

  "You ain't gone Methodist on me yet, have ya?” I said. He laughed hard, his breath coming out like smoke in the frosty air.

  "Who told you that?” he said.

  "I'm looking for someone who knows something about the old Indian ways,” I said.

  "I know a little something,” he said. He rubbed his hands together, even though he was wearing thick leather gloves. I noticed that they look decidedly Injun on him, even though a similar pair looked nothing of the sort on me.

  "What happens to a person when they die, according to you people?” I said.

  "Depends, Dutch," he said. "How did they die?"

  "Say they just died young, before their natural time," I said.

  "The old beliefs say that if a person isn't given a proper burial, their soul cannot go home,” he said. "This is why I have tried my best to help you find the young man you're looking for.”

  "So you believe in ghosts?” I said.

  "I didn't say that,” he said. "But the Tonkawas believed a man would stay behind and haunt those that did him wrong in life.”

  "Would you stay behind and do that even if you weren't a Tonkawa?” I said.

  "There was a Tonkawa warrior called El Mocho, the Maimed, who taught that if a man were to lose his scalp, he would not be permitted to go home in the afterlife,” he said.

  "You guys really did that kind of stuff,” I said.

  "I haven't yet,” he said.

  I remembered seeing a picture in a book, years before, of a man with a patch of his head scalped in one of the Indian wars. He'd survived, but that patch had never grown back. I wondered if he'd lived out the rest of his life, knowing that he couldn't pass into the Happy Hunting Ground when his days were over.

  "I guess the same would go, even if it was a little girl or something,” I said.

  "Course not,” he said. "Souls of girls, of all women, go straight to the home in the west, singing as they go.”

  "Singing as they go?” I said.

  "That's the way I recall it," he said.

  "Singing as they go," I said. "Wonder what they would be singing."

  I thanked him for his time and let him go on his way. I remembered hearing stories of my dad's grandmother, a full blooded Indian of some sort, and resolved to find out more about her as soon as I could. I knew that generations had passed, diluting any Indian blood within me to a splash, and yet I felt a spirit move within me.

  Maybe the Tonkawas were right. Maybe it was the spirit of Whitey Calhoun himself, leading me on in my pursuit, pushing me to make things right. I lit a cigarette and blew a few smoke signals of my own as I slowly made my way downtown.

  50

  When I pulled in to Fast Mike's, there was no one else there. I didn't even think Mike was there, which suited me fine. I figured I'd get out, look around the lot, kick a few tires and be on my way. Soon as I slammed the door on the Chummy, he poked his head around the side of the little cinder block office building along the back of the property. He looked like a flamboyantly dressed gopher.

  "Alvis Curridge,” he said. He was one of the few who called me by my real name, a detail that I found odd, since he was flagrant about ingratiating himself into people's affairs. I'd decided he was using reverse psychology. If everyone called me Dutch, it made him seem to have some kind of special arrangement to call me Alvis.

  "Mike,” I said.

  He led me on a quick tour of the lot. Showed me a 1950 Buick Roadmaster with a Fireball engine, a '51 Hudson Hornet, a '51 Studebaker Starlight Coupe, a '49 Olds. I took a liking to the Hornet, a two-tones blue and gray model with white wall tires. I almost forgot that I'd been thinking about a V-8 Ford.

  "I can do you a real good trade on that Hornet,” he said. "You know why the call me Fast Mike.”

  "I certainly do,” I said.

  "I can get you out of that Austin and back on the road in this one before supper gets cold. You want to go inside and start signing papers?”

  "Well,” I said. "You wouldn't happen to have a good deal on a Ford?”

  He showed me a '48 Ford Fordor sedan at the end of the lot. A dark green that almost looked black in the twilight. Had big seats that looked like church pews compared to the Chummy.

  "Clyde Barrow drove a Ford Fordor,” I said. "Did he not?”

  "Barrow loved the power of the Ford's engine,” Mike said.

  I sat there in the driver's seat like a kid at Christmas, but in my mind, I was already disappearing down a dirt road in a cloud of dust.

  "Of course, Barrow probably preferred the other Ford V-8's to this particular model,” Mike said. "I believe the Fodor was the car he got killed in over in Louisiana.”

  No, I wasn't sitting in the car that Clyde loved. The one everybody in Fort Worth that was worth his salt wanted. The one Clyde used to outrun every backwoods copper from Texas to Kansas. I was just about to pay my sheckels for the model he got himself killed in.

  "He should have been driving that damn Chummy,” I said. "No one would have ever believed it was him. They'd have never fired a shot.”

  "I'm happy to take that Austin Chummy off your hands,” Mike said. "There's not many like 'em on the road anymore.”

  "It's got me everywhere I needed to go,” I said.

  "You ready to get this thing done?” Mike said.

  As I followed him to the office, I studied the intricate patterns on his Mexican jacket and wondered if he used it to hypnotize people. Part of me seemed to rise up out of my own body and watch myself walking away. I took a look over at the Chummy, and, honest Injun, it looked at me just like Dandy had, when I had driven away from Terrell State Hospital.

  "No sir,” I said, "not many left like her. That's for sure.”

  Fast Mike laughed and spun around, his secret weapon steadily losing power in the disappearing light of day.

  "You say 'no sir,' it about give me a start,” he said. "Don't you go backin' out on me.”

  I had already backed out without even noticing it. The thirty-five dollar Chummy had gotten me that far, there was no reason to trade horses in mid-stream. I tried to talk Mike into selling me the Mexican jacket, just to make up for wasting his time, but he wasn't parting with it.

  I promised him that if I changed my mind, I'd remember how to get back to him.

  "I can make you a sweet deal on that Hornet,” he said. "Hell, you can even keep the Chummy to, just for Sunday driving.”

  When I left the lot, I felt like I'd wasted some time, his more than mine, but I'd saved some money and maybe even some self-respect. Ruthie would say I'd gone yellow. That I needed to be more impulsive. She was dead wrong, though. I was just following a completely different impulse. One that had been waiting in the back of my mind for weeks, maybe even years.

  I didn't have far to go. Not far enough to change my mind anyway. The Chummy would get me where I needed to go just in time.

  51

  The lampposts in the back parking lot of the Sheriff's Department always had a tint to 'em, as if the whole place had a case of the blues and couldn't shake it.

  I stepped out of the Chummy like Lash La Rue coming after Duce Rago. I'd seen Stubblefields' Olds sedan parked in its usual place, so I knew he was on duty. I didn't know he was in the car until I heard him call out.

  "Curridge,” he said.

  I walked to the driver's side window and looked into the car. He had a rolled up newspaper in his lap.

  "I didn't think you read t
he Fort Worth Press,” I said. He raised it like you do to hit a dog on the nose when he shits in the house.

  "See what the sons of bitches said today?” he said. I knew Ruthie had collaborated on an article that questioned Stub's explanation of the whole Whitey Calhoun calamity. She had portrayed him as a man with many enemies, a fact he'd taken pride in until lately.

  "That kinda reminds me what I wanted to talk to ya about,” I said. "I finally figured out, I been runnin' from my job way too long, Stub.” I was nervously fingering the .38 Colt revolver underneath my jacket and trying not to be obvious, even thought it felt like I was carrying a ham hock.

  "Dutch,” he said, "there ain't nothin' for you to do down here.”

  "Maybe there ain't,” I said.

  I pulled the gun out before I'd even realized it, surprising myself as much as Stubblefield.

  "Got any family, Stub?”

  "What in hell are you doin,' Dutch?” he said.

  He didn't answer the question. I knew he had some kind of family up in Sedalia, Missouri. Maybe it was a mother. Maybe it was a wife and a kid. I didn't know.

  "Ever think about goin' back home to 'em?” I said.

  He looked at me like he must have looked at his own self, right after he brought everything to bear against Whitey. There wasn't any particular anger. It seemed more like an amused relief.

  When I squeezed the trigger, the gun danced in my hand, kicking up from where I had it pointed at his teeth. Dandy, I remembered, had told me long ago: if you have to shoot a man, shoot him in the teeth. That way, you have thirty-two free pieces of shrapnel working for you.

  Maybe, somewhere in my gut, I thought better of it and tried to swing the gun up and out of harm's way. As a result, the single bullet went in about one inch over his left eye, and when it came out the back, it took a hunk of scalp and a good chunk of what was inside. He sat there and looked at me, too bothered to turn around and see himself splattered on the back seat. I had a sudden impulse to apologize for dirtying up his nice car.

  "What you do that for?” he said. He seemed even calmer than usual, as if I had only knocked him into slow motion.

  "Just doin' my job,” I said.

  He set the newspaper down with no finesse, his hand bouncing off the dashboard with a force of a judge's gavel.

  I noticed that his left eye was filling up with blood and was lolled back like the eye I'd seen on some fish, back in my childhood. It looked as if it was trying to take a look over his shoulder, but I was fairly sure it wasn't seeing anything at all.

  "You know that goddamn gal's the one that brought all this down, don't you, Dutch?” he said.

  Which girl? Ruthie? Della? I felt like I was being grilled. I wondered why he hadn't just gone quick, like Kimble had. I wanted to put one more bullet into him, just to shut him up.

  "I think you deserve a fair amount of the credit,” I told him. He tried to laugh it off and hocked up a blood clot.

  I was beginning to feel a little unsteady in the knees, so I leaned against the hood of his car and reached for the Wild Turkey. I offered him a pull, but he waved it off.

  "Can't drink on duty.”

  All of a sudden, his head lurched and fell against the steering wheel, and the horn sounded like Gabriel on the hallelujah morning. A Gabriel that none of us believed in.

  Stubblefield raised a hand to the opened side of his head and looked me straight in the face with his right eye, the only one that looked like an eye anymore. I looked into it like I was El Mocho the Maimed looking into the eye of him and Alvis Sr., Linwood and Whitey Calhoun all at the same time. He opened his mouth, and the back of his head splintered into a few extra pieces, spilling whatever was left of his thoughts on the matter.

  I turned around and walked slow to the Chummy. It was still warm to the touch as I slid my palm across its hood. I could feel the booze trickling down through me real slow. It seemed to be taking my blood along with it.

  I drove up Tenth Street, past the Majestic Theater and A.J.'s Gun Shop, and took a right on Main. If I'd thought about it, I could've taken a look down Twelfth and seen the movie theater. At Thirteenth, I could have seen Burch's Pawn Shop, where they'd given me such a great deal on the Colt pistol, and then Peechie Keen's, waiting at the corner another block down. I could have stopped off and picked up Slant Face. I could've taken Main on up to Exchange and grabbed Ruthie Nell. Instead, I drove straight to the Highway 80 west exit.

  Indeed, the Chummy would get me where I was going. I wasn't going that far at all. Then again, I remembered Dandy once saying it takes a whole lifetime to get where you're going. Looking at it that way, I just hoped I had a fair amount of road left in front of me.

  That day, though, was a noteworthy day. It wasn't the first day I'd ever shot at anybody, but it was the first time I hit them. By the time they got him to Harris Methodist, Stubblefield had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, as Slant would say. His tongue kind of flopped around like a halibut on a river bank, but he never made a word again. They brought in a negro lady to look after him. They said she had to change his diapers and spoon feed him, just like a big old baby. She was standing behind his wheelchair in the picture that ran in the Star-Telegram when the city gave him some award for a lifetime of achievement several months later.

  Charlie Heck was promoted one rung up the ladder, but he never would make sheriff. That family from Sedalia, Missouri never showed. Stub waited around for awhile and then finally died of cardiac arrest, of all things. They buried him in Rose Hill Cemetery, not fifty feet from Kimble. Kimble couldn't keep away from him even in death.

  52

  The other thing I remember about that day is the blueberry pie I ate, sitting on the porch of the old farm house.

  "Somebody in town said you was the one lookin' for that negro man, went missing in Fort Worth,” my sister said.

  "I was one of 'em,” I said. "Not the only one.”

  Folks talked about Whitey for a long time, sometimes as far away as Weatherford. Said, like Verbal Whitaker, that he'd been cut up into so many pieces, you could be staring right at him at any given time and not even see him.

  For several years, it went around that Stubblefield had used his neighbor's new International Harvester mechanical cotton picker to rip Whitey's body into tiny pieces and had then spread him over sixteen acres of farmland south of the city.

  Slant Face had it figured out. The machines had spindles that yanked the cotton right off the plant and into the machine. Along the top were power shafts, running from the engine to the spindles. If you started one up, but kept it out of gear, the spindles wouldn't turn, but the power shafts would. You feed part of a body into one of them damn power shafts, it'd pull it limb from limb in no time. I don't know if that's what happened. Whenever I saw a freshly planted field, I wondered.

  The one about Miss Vita hiding a badly wounded Whitey in a secret place also had lots of tongues wagging for a long while. A cousin of Whitey's showed up a good ten, twelve years after it all blowed over. Another white headed boy, same pink eyes. Some said he come from somewhere in Louisiana, others said it was really Whitey. Said if you ever looked him in the eyes you would know, on account of the way one of them shied away. People even got to telling that there actually had been a body in the casket with the deputy sheriff, but some insisted that it had been old Mose Miner. A tale I knew not to be true. But you can't convince some folks.

  Nobody ever asked me if I shot Stubblefield. I imagine it never even occurred to some. A lot of folks swore that Tincy Eggleston was behind it. I was happy enough to let them think it. With a few people, they probably just didn't want to know. Stub wasn't talking and neither was I.

  But as I sat there on Clear Fork road that night, the pie went down just fine. Somebody came speeding by in a Hudson Hornet that looked a little like the one on Fast Mike's lot.

  "I came real close to buyin' myself one of those,” I said to Lizbeth. The guy behind the wheel waved like he knew us or
something, and, of course, we both waved right back.

  Bob Wills is Still the King

  Originally published in REAL Regarding Arts & Letters literary magazine at Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches TX, in the fall of 2009.

  It was New Years Eve, 1950, and I had two tickets to see Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys at the new Ranch House over in Dallas. The Musicians Union had declared a moratorium on recording in '48, and the band had spent most of the time since then in Oklahoma, so we'd gone a long spell without hearing much from them.

  I showed up early, wearing a gabardine jacket and a hand-painted tie. Nobody likes to spend New Years alone, so I brought along a gal named Ruthie Nell. She worked out of the just-reopened Stockyard Hotel, where I kept a room about half the time. Ruth was standing in for my second wife, who had moved back to Arkansas with the baby.

  Fading mental pictures of that unseasonable evening show Ruthie Nell in an Esther Williams-style swimsuit with a cape and long skirt and seamed stockings. I'm not clear about anything but the stockings. The pictures wouldn't reveal it, but I also recall her trying to psychoanalyze me all night long. I let her talk; it made less work for me.

  The show was scheduled to kick off at nine that night. At 8:45 they came out and told us that Mr. Wills had suddenly taken ill. All tickets would be refunded on the spot, but we were welcome to stick around and ring in 1951 anyway. The way I figured, I now had ten more dollars in my pocket, so I might as well invest it in my future. Off to the bar we went.