by Peter Corris
'Shit.' I slumped down into a chair, remembering Westwood's vindictive, greedy little eyes. 'I knew it all sounded too good to be true. Tell me.'
'He's pissed at missing out on his big arrest. The city police found the note and the Packard and put it together. Had to be that way. Westwood doesn't like it.'
'There's no more money,' I said. 'Eight for you, two for MacMurray. That's the lot!'
Kurtz took a spotted handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly; a nose that length has considerable resonance. 'There's a solution,' he said. 'It's all logical if you look at it right.'
'Well?'
'The car's the key to it. Westwood wants to prosecute you for grand theft auto. Carries five years, three minimum. State farm, most likely.'
I shook my head. 'I couldn't handle it.'
'Figured that. Now, that car's worth a lot of money, and I understand there's a considerable quantity of quality wine and liquor inside.'
'Take it,' I said. 'For God's sake, take it all.'
There was a discreet knock at the door, and the warden came in. He acted as if he was used to seeing inmates sitting in his office smoking his cigarettes and crooked lawyers packing up wire recorders. He nodded at us, sat down at his desk, lit a cigar and started reading through FBI 'Wanted' flyers – maybe he thought he had some of the poor buggers in there already, and he could claim the rewards.
Kurtz and I went out quietly. The guard who'd brought me there was outside waiting, and Kurtz nodded at him. The guard smiled. 'Well, you're leaving us, Mr Brown.'
'Yes, thank Christ.'
'Don't talk dirty in here, sir, please. Come this way.'
We went down the corridor and through a fenced-off section of the exercise yard, where the blacks and Mexicans were playing handball and trading insults. A few of them spat at us, and the gobs of spittle hung on the heavy gauge wire. The guard poked his billy at the spitters and grinned at them.
'Farm'd be worse than this,' Kurtz said.
'I know.' I had to force myself not to shrink away from the dripping wire.
I was given my clothes and a stall to change back into them. At the discharge counter, I got my watch and ring back after signing for them, and was paid six dollars thirty for the work I'd done on the soap and the mailbags. Kurtz stood by impassively while I endured these humiliations. I signed the discharge paper.
'Man had some cash on him, I believe,' Kurtz said.
I straightened my shoulders. I've noticed this before and since – it's a wonderfully confidence-boosting feeling to get out of uniform and into civilian dress. Some men like the sensation of going the other way, but not me. 'That's right,' I said, 'fifty dollars.'
The discharge officer looked at me and poked inside a grubby envelope. He extracted some notes and coins and put them on the counter. 'Twenty-five dollars,' he said.
I looked at Kurtz, who gave one of his shrugs.
The guard cleaned his fingernails with the keen edge of a tightly folded ten dollar note.
'That's right,' I said, 'twenty-five dollars.'
Kurtz drove me to the Red Springs Greyhound station. He had a duffle bag in the back of his car which contained some of the stuff I'd taken from Three Cedars – a few shirts, a change of underwear and socks, a razor and a few copies of Readers' Digest. I got out of the car, and he handed me the bag.
'Go any place you like from here,' he said. 'But I'd advise you to catch the first bus, Nick.'
I shouldered the bag. 'Why's that?'
'Sheriff Westwood's given me twenty-four hours.' He checked his watch. 'Ten gone already.'
It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Several coaches were already lined up in the terminal – I could see their destination boards: Phoenix, El Paso, Bakersfield. I was on my way to the ticket office when Kurt called me back.
'Nick.'
I thought of ignoring him, but then, just possibly, he was going to be useful. I walked back and leaned on the roof of the car. The driver's seat in the Ford had been specially modified to go back far enough to give Kurtz leg room. He looked like a stretched out snake, sitting there.
'What?'
'I told you I'd handle it.'
'You did, Kurtz. You certainly handled most of the money. How about something to get me to New York?'
He grinned and started the motor. 'Got some advice for you, Nick. You're a pretty good-looking fellow, and you look smart and brave, which you aren't, but that doesn't matter. Why don't you try your luck in the movies?'
I turned my back on him and put my hand in my pocket to make sure I still had the thirty-one dollars thirty.
9
I can remember that bus depot clearly – it was pretty crowded, with people carrying more baggage and wearing more clothes than they do today. There also seemed to be more small kids around in those days – noisy little buggers, some of them, and others spick and span and quiet. I think kids have changed over the past fifty years but, as I've had very little to do with them, I'm probably no judge. Anyway, I looked along the departure boards and one word took my eye – Butte. I'll never know why – it's not a pretty word or a very interesting one. To this day I still don't know what it means; perhaps it just suited my state of mind at the time – I wasn't much interested in beauty or the meaning of life.
I bought a ticket to Butte on a bus that was leaving in half an hour. Then I went out of the depot, crossed the street and bought cigarettes in a barber store opposite. The barber was a bald man with a thick handlebar moustache. He kept a toothpick in his mouth, shifting its location with his tongue.
'Travelling far, mister?' Flick, flick went the toothpick.
'Butte, Montana.'
'Quite a ways. Be cold up there this time of year. Need a little heart-warmer?' Flick, flick.
This was the secret language of prohibition. I glanced around; no one in the chairs, no one about to come through the door. 'Sure. Pint?'
Flick. 'The best.' His hand went under the counter and came up covered with a towel. I put my duffle on the counter and the transfer was made.
'Two bucks.' Flickety-flick.
I paid him and left the store.
I remember re-crossing the street and going back into the bus depot for a very good reason – I had spotted Sheriff Clint Westwood parked in his Dodge. He watched me, and I had the feeling he knew where I was going, how much money I had and what was in my bag. I guess I scurried into the depot. I got a seat near the front by the window, left-hand side. The bus was only half full, and it pulled out dead on time – 5.20. The watch I had then kept strictly accurate time, not like the crap they sell these days. The seat next to me was empty, and I put my bag on it. I looked the other way as we passed Westwood, and I recall thinking that Red Springs was one of the most boring towns I'd seen, worse than Goulburn, even worse than Yass.10
I dozed, then I smoked a cigarette as the last of the light faded. It was early in the evening, and the bus had crossed the border into Arizona, when I pulled the pint of bootleg whisky out my bag. I was very dry and very depressed. It was a flat pint bottle with a long cork that stood up out of the neck so you could get a grip on it. I pulled the cork and took a long swig of the hooch . . . [Browning's voice becomes indistinct at this point, and the recording breaks off. When he resumes he is evidently in the grip of a strong emotion, and it is some time before he regains his customary assured tone. Ed.]
To this day, I'll maintain there was something strange in that bootleg whisky. I say this because I have to admit that the next few years are a blur of separate, unconnected memories, all bad. I don't mean that the pint itself sent me into a tailspin; I'd been under a lot of strain for years and I guess I just cracked. But I've hit the bottle pretty hard at various times since without completely flipping out. A solid seven-day-bender of the kind old Spence Tracy used to go on is one thing, a lost five years is another. There was something in that bottle, must have been.
Anyway, I was on the skids well and truly. I remember waking up with the horro
rs in hobo jungles and hospitals; riding freights and being thrown off them; sleeping in doorways, and sometimes in cinemas when I had the price of admission. Through the mists, I recall finding a comfortable spot in a fleapit movie house someplace and staying there for days with a bottle for company. King Kong was showing; I missed most of it but saw some scenes twenty times. A monkey on top of the Empire State11 – and they keep on making it. The movie business is the strangest show on earth.
I don't know where I went or who I met. I must've drunk every kind of alcohol ever invented and probably came up with a few unique combinations. I seem to remember something that tasted of honey and licorice . . . somewhere warm . . . coloured people around . . . somewhere in the south . . . best not to think about it. Prohibition ended in 1933, not that I was aware of it, but I suppose we travelling drunks found life easier. I worked: I was a fruit picker, a bottle washer, a shoeshine man, but never for very long. I worked in a circus cleaning out the animal's cages. I've got scars on my back that a doctor once told me look like healed wounds from a tiger mauling. I don't remember anything about it. One thing I'm sure about – I was never the geek.12
It was a woman who pulled me out of it, naturally. Glenda found me in the alley at the the back of the club where she was singing, selling cigarettes, checking hats and doing whatever else she had to do for survival. Christ knows why she bothered, I must have looked like death, but she was a smart woman and she knew men so well that maybe she saw the diamond under the dirt. I woke up one morning on a hard narrow couch that felt like a feather bed after the places I'd been sleeping. There was a clean blanket over me and for a minute I couldn't get used to the smells – of the room, the blanket and myself. I put my hand up to my head and felt a smooth face and cropped hair: where were my shoulder-length rats' tails and beard? I was wearing silk pyjamas and there was nothing crawling in my pubic hair. It was all so strange – the softness, the cleanliness. I moved my hand down and felt myself getting hard.
The voice came from behind me. 'Still works, does it? That's good news.'
I sat up and turned. The movements sent shafts of pain through me, but my eyes came open easily and the breath I drew in was sweet. Before this, getting my eyelids ungummed had been a major operation, and the inside of my mouth tasted like one of the animal cages I'd cleaned. I shook my head, and the pain inside my skull was bearable. 'Who're you?' I said.
The question made more sense than it seems. She was a pale-skinned blonde, about middling tall but thinner than you'd believe. The strange thing is that she had a good shape with it – good shoulders, breasts and hips, but all of it cut on slim lines. She was wearing a white nightdress and her almost white hair hung straight to her shoulders. She had a thin nose and lips – why go on? She was thin everywhere but she had these big, dark eyes that seemed to swallow me up. She was the strangest-looking woman I'd ever seen.
'I'm Glenda Barrow,' she said.
'How did I get here? Where is here?'
'I brought you. I found you in the alley outside the club. You're in my apartment.'
'Excuse me, Miss Barrow . . .'
She came closer to the couch; she had a nice walk with a swaying motion that ran the whole length of her body. 'Nice voice you've got. I knew you weren't a bum.'
'I meant, what city am I in, what state?'
She sat down on the couch and put her hand on my leg. 'You're in Butte, Montana.'
10
You can take it anyway you like; myself, I prefer to think that I must have subconsciously begun steering my life back onto its true course when Glenda found, or rather fell over, me. Butte, Montana, after all, had been in my mind when I'd last drawn a sober breath and here I was, washed, shaved, clear-headed, and in the very town itself. I've always had a resilience that hasn't been apparent to others. But Glenda, I'd have to say, was one of the people who over-valued me – like my dear old mother and Song Li . . . but I mustn't get ahead of myself.
Glenda described how she'd got me into a car and brought me home. One of the bouncers from the Copper Club, the place where she worked, had helped to get me up to her apartment which was two stories above Meaderville Road. How she got rid of him I don't know, but I can guess. Apparently I was able to move after a fashion – enough for her to wash and shave me, cut my hair, put pyjamas on me and get me to the couch. She was running her hand up and down my leg as she told me all this, and before too long we were reversing the process – undressing and getting good and dirty. I don't know how long it'd been since I'd had a woman and my first effort was pretty hasty. But I recovered fast and we ushered in 1935 in style. (Did I say it was New Year's Eve? Well, it was, and that was probably one of the reasons Glenda took me in. Smart goodtime girls know the rules of the game – she knew that most of the goodtime Charlies would be home with their wives that night.)
We got acquainted quickly over the next few days, as a man and a woman sharing a bed do. Glenda had been born in Chicago. Her parents were Polish, and Barrow was a re-arrangement of some of the letters that made up her unpronounceable name. She was only twenty-six and had drifted west to avoid tough times in the windy city. But tough times followed her, and her job in the Copper Club was only a few steps above the street, and she knew it.
'But what the hell,' she said. 'Better times are coming, ain't they? The newspapers say so.' She was forever reading newspapers and quoting things. The past few years were pretty much a blank to me – I hadn't heard about the Lindbergh kidnapping,13 for example – but I picked things up fast from Glenda's newspaper snippets, so I didn't seem like a man from outer space. Still, I was caught out sometimes, like the time I showed that I didn't know who the 'Brown Bomber' was.
'Joe Louis, dummy,' Glenda said. 'The nigger heavyweight. I thought you was a sports fan. Where you been?'
'Oh, sure. Louis.' I had to rush out and get a couple of sports magazine to catch up on Camera and Baer.14 But Glenda was glad to have me around for two reasons: one, we were good together in bed and two, I didn't chew tobacco and spit into the kitchen sink. I changed my underwear and cut my toenails. I didn't wipe my nose on my sleeve. People forget how rough America was in those days. I think I was the first civilised man Glenda ever met.
Glenda was endlessly curious about the wider world but took everything close to home at face value. 'What's your name?' she asked me, straight after our first coupling.
I'd forgotten a lot but not quite that much. Somehow, I wanted to hear it spoken again. 'Dick Browning.'
'Where you from, Dick?'
'Around.'
'You look it. You married?'
'I don't know. I think I might be divorced.'
'Same here. I ain't sure and I don't give a damn. Kids?'
I shook my head. 'You?'
'Nah. I got knocked up in Chi when I was, oh, fifteen maybe. Had it fixed by a butcher, and that was the finish of me as a mother. Can't have 'em. Can't say I mind much.'
My sentiments exactly. In those days, the danger of getting pregnant was always a consideration, and to find a woman with the sure-fire antidote was a great boon. (Women have told me that it's the same these days in respect of vasectomised men. I've often considered putting myself in the category to reap this benefit, but I've never had the nerve.) We got along fine in the little flat all through the long weekend that started the new year. By the evening of the fourth day I was beginning to wonder why Glenda still hadn't got dressed. I wasn't objecting; I could watch her drifting around, all pale and interesting, for more than a few days, but eventually I asked her.
'Butte's a mining town. Miners're the thirstiest workers in the world. Everyone'll be drunk until January third. Club's closed another couple days. I don't drink myself, and you'd be crazy to ever touch it again.'
Right then, I agreed with her. I was tasting food and enjoying coffee and milk the way I hadn't done for years. Glenda didn't smoke, so there were no cigarettes in the flat and no smell of tobacco. I quit smoking without a pang. We listened to the radio and danced
in the tiny sitting room. I learned to dance15 way back from a professional, but I was surprised to find that my five year blackout hadn't robbed me of the skill. I was a little stiff on the turns, but it came back fast. The clean living, the dancing, the eating, the sleep and the sex restored me to good physical condition within a week. Or so I thought.
Glenda went back to work at the club. She took me along and introduced me to the boss, Waldo Fitzgerald. I'd read in one of Glenda's magazines that Butte had filled up with Cornish miners sometime in the nineteenth century. Fitzgerald was the living proof. He was about sixty, big built, with thin, sandy hair and a freckled face that looked as if it had been chipped out of rock.
'Glenda says you're a limey.' He was sitting at his office desk with a cigar going and a brandy by his elbow.
'Not exactly,' I grunted, 'I've spent a fair bit of time over there.'
'Drink?'
This was the first sight I'd had of alcohol and tobacco since I went into the alley behind the club a week back. Some instinct told me his offer was a test. I shook my head and gave him one of the hardbitten grins I'd been practising in Glenda's bathroom mirror. 'Why don't you say "Job?"'.
'What can you do?'
'Be polite, rude when necessary. Tend bar. Pick a phoney. Use a gun.'
'The politeness, the bar work and the phoney-picking I can maybe use. I got no need for the rest.'
I shrugged. I wanted the drink badly, but I looked at his glass steadily before I let my eyes drift away.
'Know much about this town, Dick?'
'What Glenda's told me.'
He took a sip of brandy. 'Great girl. Heard her sing?'
Another test, I thought. 'In the bath,' I said.
He laughed and almost choked. His colour got very bad. I didn't move and watched him fight for breath. After a minute he was sucking air down again and tobacco smoke with it.
'Most men looking for a job would've jumped up and got the boss some water,' he said.
