Desperadoes

‘There’s still a girl asleep on the floor of the bathroom and a barefoot man at the piano playing “Swanee” with his left hand. The houseboy’s taking care of them.’

‘Was I missed?’

She smiled. ‘They make allowances for you. They think you live in a foreign country. A reporter asked about you.’

‘Did he use the word “truculent”?’

She ignored that and said, ‘There’s a young man here who’s read your book,’ and in the doorway there appeared a boy in a green zigzag sweater and a white shirt with the collar spread out to his shoulders. I put him at twenty. I said, ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m not sure. I drove all the way from San Bernardino.’

I flicked my hand out. ‘Drive all the way back.’

But Julia said, ‘You could at least visit for a minute, couldn’t you, Em?’

The boy stood next to the coat tree with a tablet in his hand. ‘I read your book,’ he said. ‘It’s fascinating.’

I removed my bifocals and pulled up from the stuffed chair with pain. ‘Do you want to see my gun? I’ll show you my gun and you can go back to San Bernardino and brag in some soda shop.’

I limped to a mahogany cabinet where the pistol, a .44–40 Colt, was wrapped in red velvet and stuffed between some manilla files, a protection against common house thieves. I heard Julia say, ‘He’s not really such a grouch; that’s just his way of teasing.’

I suppose the boy wrote that down.

Then Julia left and the boy and I sat at my library table next to the study lamp. He weighed the pistol in his hand, aimed it at a streetlight, folded the velvet cloth over it. I showed him a black bullet big as the top knuckle of his little finger. ‘That was dug out of my shoulder in Coffeyville. I was awake and face down on a mattress and rifles were held to my head. I remember it dropped in the doctor’s pan like a marble.’

He slouched in the chair, amused. ‘That must’ve hurt.’

I squinted and asked him if he knew anything about the Old West.

‘Not much, I’m afraid.’

‘You’ve heard about Jesse James.’

‘Yes.’

‘The Younger brothers?’

‘I think so.’

‘Cole Younger was my cousin; neighbored the James boys in Kearney, Missouri. The James-Younger gang was our inspiration. They robbed stagecoaches, trains, the Kansas City Fair, a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, that did them in; shopkeepers took after the villains with shotguns, spade handles, and rocks they’d picked up in the street.’

I was boring the boy; I could see his eyes stray. But I kept on and talked about other things: the Coffeyville reunion that Julia and I were just back from, about the movie Hollywood was making; about Eugenia Moore with her wing chaps, the law books my brother Bill read, the rifle called the Yellow Boy that Bob used once on a man; and the horses we rustled, the Mexican cantina we robbed, the locomotives big as shoe stores. I storied long enough to burn a candle down and when I quit the boy just sat there and frowned. He said, ‘You don’t seem very sorry about any of this.’

I stared at him.

‘I mean, you murdered all these people.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Okay, your brothers then. I sort of expected you to repent more than you do.’

‘I was in a Kansas prison from 1893 to 1907. Penance is something I’ve already done.’

‘But you don’t even—’

‘Get out.’

‘Excuse me?’