Up in Honey's Room

“The soldiers buy the three-two and the shots,” Narcissa said, holding a cold bottle of Mexican beer in each hand. “He tells one story after another and comes home looped.”

Carl said, “First he tells how he was blown off the Maine and held in the Morro for being a spy.”

Virgil said, “Once that’s out of the way I tell how you shot the cow thief off his horse from two hundred yards, with a Winchester.”

Carl said, “You remember his name?”

“Wally Tarwater. I got all their names written down.”

“I see him moving my cows I yelled at him.”

“You were fifteen years old,” his dad said. “The marshals were ready to hire you.”

“I could see he knew how to work beef without wearing himself out.”

“Later on,” his dad said, “I asked if you looked at him as he’s lying on the ground. You said you got down from that dun you rode and closed his eyes. I asked did you feel any sympathy for him. Remember what you said?”

“That was twenty-five years ago.”

“You said you warned him, turn the stock or you’d shoot. I imagine all the cow thief saw was a kid on a horse. You said to me later on, ‘Yeah, but if he’d listened he wouldn’t of been lying there dead, would he?’ I said to myself, My Lord, but this boy’s got a hard bark on him.”

Narcissa, who had nursed Carl for the first months of his life, placed the Mexican beers on the table and stooped to put her arms around his shoulders. Now she was touching his hair saying, “But he’s a sweet boy too, isn’t he? Yes he is, he’s a sweetie pie.”

Finally they let Carl Webster step down as acting marshal of Oklahoma’s Eastern District and gave the job to a marshal from Arkansas, an old hand by the name of W. R. “Bill” Hutchinson. He and Carl had tracked felons together and shared jars of shine over the years, each knowing the other would be watching his back. Today in the marshal’s office was the first time Carl had seen him without a plug in his jaw, in there behind his lawman’s mustache. Bill Hutchinson asked Carl if he was sure he wanted to go to Detroit.

“You know it’s still winter up there. I’ve heard they have snow in May.”

Carl stared at the angle of bones in Bill Hutchinson’s face, the creases cut into the corners of his eyes. Marshals had told Carl he reminded them some of Bill Hutchinson, that same look, only without the old-time mustache the marshal from Arkansas favored.

“I’m going after the Krauts,” Carl told him. “You can send me or I’ll take a leave of absence and do it without pay. If you want to send me, let me have the Pontiac and enough gas stamps. It’s the car I was using before I spent the past five and a half months sitting here with my feet on the desk.”

“What else you want?”

“Expense money.”

“You know those officers up north are different’n us, their manner of doing things, the way they dress up.”

“The agent I’m seeing is from Bixby, Oklahoma, if you know where Bixby’s at. Directly across the river.”

“I imagine you’ll observe the thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit,” Bill Hutchinson said. “It shouldn’t take you more’n two, three days. Can you tell me where you’ll be staying?”

Not till Kevin Dean found him a place.

A thousand miles to Detroit from Tulsa through St. Louis, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, head for Toledo following cars on the two-lane highways moping along at thirty-five, Carl wearing himself out looking to pass, not able to bear down until it was dark and he took the Pontiac up to seventy through Indiana farmland, a five-gallon can of gas in the trunk just in case. Carl left Tulsa at 6:40 a.m. hoping to make the trip in twenty-four hours, but it was eight the next morning before he was approaching Detroit from the southwest and going on nine by the time he was downtown looking for West Lafayette. Carl had a map in his head that showed him the general layout of Detroit’s downtown streets with marks indicating the buildings where the federal courts were located and a few hotels, in case Kevin Dean from Bixby hadn’t yet learned his way around. Carl turned onto Lafayette and came to the Federal Building, right where it was supposed to be, waiting for him.

He let Kevin take him through the FBI office introducing him as the Oklahoma deputy marshal the Hot Kid book was written about, Carl shaking his head at Kevin sounding like his press agent. It surprised Carl these boys all seemed to know who he was.

They had to wait a few minutes to see John Bugas, special agent in charge; he was being interviewed by a writer from the Detroit News. When he came out, a photographer trailing behind, the writer walked up to Carl standing in the hall and offered his hand saying he was Neal Rubin.

“Did you know John Bugas was your biggest fan?”

“You’re kidding me,” Carl said.

“He’s looking forward to meeting you. I asked him if he’d read the book about you and John said, ‘Every word.’ He asked me if I’d read it. I said, ‘John, I reviewed it for the News and sent you my copy.’ That was ten years ago and he’d forgotten where he got it. I asked him what the Hot Kid was doing in Detroit. He said he thought you were just visiting. But I’m betting you’re after some wanted felon or escaped convict, aren’t you?”

“I don’t want to give anything away,” Carl said, “and spook him. Have him take off on me.”

“You know what my favorite part was? When you out-gunned that Klansman Nestor Lott, Nestor pulling his pair of .45 automatics. He was an oddball, wasn’t he?”

“He was a snake,” Carl said.

Neal Rubin looked at his wristwatch.

“I got to get going. I’m meeting Esther Williams for lunch at the Chop House and have to change my shirt.” The one he had on looked like it was from Hawaii. He said, “Pick up the News tomorrow, I’ll have something in my column about you.”

Carl wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but the writer and the photographer were already heading down the hall.

Kevin told John Bugas Carl had only left Tulsa yesterday in his car and was here first thing this morning. John Bugas didn’t seem impressed. He asked Carl why he thought the two escaped POWs were still in Detroit, assuming they did come here.

Carl gave his stock answer. “ ’Cause Jurgen Schrenk used to live here and there’s no word they’ve been picked up.” He told John Bugas his office had done a good job finding Peter Krug, the escaped Nazi flier, and sending the traitor Max Stephan to Atlanta.

“Nice going,” Carl said. “I think someone on your enemy alien list is helping out Jurgen and Otto, but isn’t showing him off the way Max paraded the Luftwaffe guy around. I think they’ve found themselves a home and are waiting out the war.”

The writer had said Bugas was looking forward to meeting him, but Carl didn’t get that feeling, Bugas standing at his desk since they’d entered the office, like he was waiting for them to hurry up and leave. John Bugas wished Carl luck, shook his hand again, and said if he located the POWs, let this office know and they’d decide how to handle it. “Call Kevin, he’s your guy.”

Carl thought he was handling it, but didn’t say anything.

In the hall walking toward the lobby, Kevin said, “He might not’ve acted like it, but he was anxious to meet you. Yesterday he told me to get you accommodations at the Statler or the Book. He said, ‘We want to show this man our respect.’”

Carl said, “He did?”

“When we started talking on the phone,” Kevin said, “I didn’t know you were famous. I reserved a room for you at the Book Cadillac on Washington Boulevard. Across the street and down a couple of blocks you come to Stouffer’s, the best cafeteria I’ve ever been in, even better’n Nelson’s Buffeteria in Tulsa.”