Sutton

by J. R. Moehringer

  At dusk they stop at a four-room inn. There’s still an hour of daylight. Bess wants to go right away to the nearest justice. Happy says he’s worn out from changing the flat.

  We’ll go without you, Bess says.

  Happy’s offended. How you going to get married without the best man?

  Willie hugs her. First thing in the morning, Bess. That way we’ll be able to buy you a proper wedding dress.

  Oh Willie. Yes.

  Then, he thinks, Niagara Falls, and on to Canada, far beyond her father’s reach. Willie’s not sure what they’ll do with Happy at that point.

  They all turn in early. Big day tomorrow, they say at the top of the stairs. Willie falls asleep instantly. Hours later he wakes, Bess nudging him. Willie Boy, I can’t sleep.

  Yeah. Me either.

  She laughs. He gropes for his suit on the floor, finds his cigarettes. Lights one, lies on his back, takes a long drag. Bess confiscates the cigarette, puffs it, hands it back. The room is ice cold. She spreads the squirrel coat across them as an extra blanket, lies on her side facing him. We’re outlaws, she says.

  I guess so.

  Never thought I’d be an outlaw.

  It wasn’t in my plans either.

  She jabs a finger into Willie’s ribs. Stick em up.

  Bess.

  You heard me.

  He puts the cigarette in his mouth, raises his hands.

  Put the money in the bag, she says.

  Say, you’ve got the act down pretty good.

  Your money or your life?

  Those are my options?

  Yup.

  My life.

  She props herself on one elbow. Have you ever committed a crime, Willie?

  He sighs. Not for a while.

  What’d you do?

  Eddie used to shoplift, break into stores. Happy and I would stand lookout sometimes.

  She twirls his chest hair. Have you ever been with anyone else, Willie Boy?

  He blows a smoke ring. It encircles her face like a cameo. I don’t know.

  Who? Who was she, Willie?

  Ah, no one, Bess. She was just—no one.

  Who, Willie?

  If you must know. A whore lady. On Sands Street.

  Sands Street?

  Happy. He took me and Eddie.

  Figures.

  It wasn’t anything.

  What was she like?

  Skip it.

  Tell me.

  She was nothing like you.

  How did she do it?

  Ah come on.

  Tell me.

  What’s it matter?

  How?

  Bess.

  Willie.

  God you’re stubborn. Your old man said you were willful.

  You don’t know the half. How?

  On top mostly. There. You satisfied?

  Bess takes the cigarette from his hand, puts it in the ashtray on the nightstand. She climbs on top, the squirrel coat around her shoulders. She takes him, guides him. He doesn’t last. She falls on top of him, buries her face in his neck. He holds her tight. She’s trembling, her hair is damp with sweat. This is what the whole world is after, he says, breathless. Yes, she says. This is why everyone’s trying to beat everyone else, Bess, this is why people are ready to lie, cheat, kill. For this, Bess. This is what makes the world go round. This, Bess. This.

  Sutton adjusts his glasses, brushes away the dirt on the cedar wall. Ah—I knew it’d still be here.

  Reporter moves closer. What?

  Bess’s initials. I carved them. There.

  Photographer moves closer. I don’t see anything, brother.

  Right there. S-E-E. Sarah Elizabeth Endner.

  Photographer hands his Zippo to Reporter, takes a folding knife from his back pocket. He scrapes at some dirt on the wall. There’s nothing there, he says.

  You’re blind, Sutton says.

  Photographer closes his knife. He fires the flash on his camera, illuminating the wall. Nothing, he says.

  Get your eyes checked kid.

  In the morning they go for a walk around town, wearing some of their new clothes. Bess has never looked more dazzling—black cloche hat, black silk skirt, white blouse with a chou of chiffon. She wears the squirrel coat like a tunic. They buy the papers, read them on a bench in the square. The headlines are grim. Half the country looking for work, the other half striking. Nearby, Boston cops are incensed about their wages. They’re threatening a walkout.

  Willie folds back the newspaper, smoothes the page. Says here the average cop earns a thousand bucks a year.

  Happy pats the plaid grip. We could buy ourselves thirteen cops.

  Bess points at a photo of Calvin Coolidge, the governor of Massachusetts. What a sourpuss, she says.

  Willie can’t find one line in any of the papers about a robbery in Brooklyn. Which seems ominous. How could it not be in the papers?

  I have no doubt, Bess says, that my father is doing all he can to keep it quiet.

  He has that kind of influence?

  She frowns. They look around the square, as if Bess’s father might jump out from behind a tree or the Civil War cannon.

  They spend the rest of the morning shopping for a wedding dress. Bess doesn’t see anything she likes. She stomps her foot. The stores were so much better back in Poughkeepsie, she says.

  Then we’ll go back, Willie says. Whatever my Bess wants.

  Willie drives. Bess sits in the passenger seat, Happy in the rumble. They pass through virgin forest filled with overnight snow. The ancient trees look as if they’ve been splashed with white paint. And yet the air is warm. February thaw, says the young attendant at the Esso station when they stop for gasoline.

  Bess lights one of Willie’s cigarettes. The attendant stares as if she’s removed her blouse. Women don’t smoke in public in 1919. Especially not in backwoods Massachusetts. As they chug away from the Esso station, Bess gives the attendant something else to remember. She stands and arches her back and whips her hair in a circle. She looks like the hood ornament, Happy says.

  That wind in my hair is heav-en, she shouts.

  Willie yells over the engine: Your hair in that wind is heaven.

  She leans over, kisses Willie. You two are making me sick, Happy says. She leans into the backseat, kisses Happy.

  Bess, Willie says, why don’t you take a turn.

  Finally, she says.

  They pull onto the shoulder and she and Willie trade places. He tries to explain the clutch but she says she’s got it, she’s got it. In no time she’s smoothly shifting gears, though she’s still gripping the wheel too tight. Relax, Happy says, relax. As she does, as she gains confidence, she goes faster and faster. Then nearly drives them into an oncoming logging truck.

  They stop for lunch at a roadside diner. Deviled eggs, tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches. Pecan pie for dessert. The bill is three dollars. Willie leaves a five-dollar tip. The prosecution will call this Exhibit C.

  In Poughkeepsie they buy Bess’s wedding dress. Lace-embroidered, a bodice of silk and taffeta. Then they drop into the courthouse, inquire about the local marriage laws. The clerk says the age of consent in New York is the same as in Massachusetts, fourteen for males, twelve for females. So there’s no need to drive back to Massachusetts. Except that Justice Symonds has left for the day. Family illness. He’ll return in the morning. They check back in to the Nelson House, eat dinner in the formal dining room. Over two bottles of red wine they talk about Prohibition. By this time next year alcohol will be against the law. What a gyp, Bess says, just when I was developing a taste for it. Don’t worry, Willie says, we’ll be in Canada by then, you can get good and stiff every night.

  They take their coffee into the hotel parlor. Happy wants to plink at his ukulele, but there are older people sitting around the fire, reading, playing checkers. He entertains Willie and Bess with jokes, stories, which make them laugh so hard that Bess gets the hiccups. When the old people leave at last, Happy tunes
his ukulele. My dog has fleas, my dog has fleas. Bess asks him to play her favorite. She stands with her back to the fire and while Happy plays she serenades Willie.

  You can’t holler down our rainbarrel

  You can’t climb our apple tree

  I don’t wanna play in your yard

  If you won’t be good to me

  She’s wearing another of her new dresses, a gray-green tweed, and the long skirt swishes as she sways to the music. Willie wants to watch her, listen to her, forever, but she makes him get up, dance. Happy plays fast numbers and she teaches Willie the latest steps, including something called the Bunny Hug, a kind of tango that started in Paris. Willie twirls her around the parlor, his head whirling, Happy strumming, the bellman laughing. They ask the bellman to throw more logs on the fire. They order hot toddies. Then more hot toddies. Bess can’t dance anymore. She can’t stand. Uh-oh, she says—someone had too many tooodies. Happy stops playing. He helps Willie carry Bess up the carpeted stairs to the suite. She smells of buttered rum and tweed and youth. Happy and Willie drop her on the bed. Happy laughs. Willie puts a finger to his lips, steers him into the hall.

  Happy, leaning against the doorframe. So how’s about letting me have a turn?

  Willie stares. What?

  You know. Let old Happy have some fun.

  Happy, what the?

  She won’t even know the difference.

  I’m getting married to her in the morning.

  That’s tomorrow. This is today.

  No, Happy. This isn’t just some—I love her.

  Of course you love her. Everybody loves her. The bellman loves her. Christ, look at her.

  Happy—

  I gave her to you, Willie, didn’t I?

  Yeah. Sure. But.

  Happy sends Willie a hard look, something between a snarl and a sneer. It’s a look Willie has never seen on Happy. Who are you? Willie whispers.

  I’m the guy who helped you pull off this whole caper, that’s who I am.

  Yeah. But.

  We’re like brothers aren’t we?

  Yeah. Sure.

  We share everything don’t we? The girls on Sands Street?

  This is different.

  Happy moves forward. Willie blocks the door, braces himself. Happy puts a hand on Willie’s chest, pushes him into the door, hard, then staggers away down the hall to his room.

  Lying in bed beside a sleeping Bess, Willie strokes her hair and goes over and over the scene with Happy. At first light there’s a knock. It’s Happy, ready to apologize. Then Willie remembers. Happy doesn’t knock. It’s the sheriff. With two private detectives from Brooklyn who drove all night. They put Willie in handcuffs. They put Bess in handcuffs. They drive them in separate cars to the same courthouse where they inquired about getting married.

  Handcuffed, standing before the judge, Willie hears a side door bang open. Two cops drag in Happy, who doesn’t look frightened, doesn’t look worried. They stand him next to Willie.

  Young man, the judge tells Happy, do yourself a favor. Wipe that goddamn smirk off your face.

  We were caught within a week, Sutton says.

  How?

  We left quite a trail of bread crumbs.

  What did they do to you?

  Dragged our asses back to Brooklyn, threw us into Raymond Street Jail. The Brooklyn Bastille they called it back then.

  They tore it down. Not long ago.

  Good. But we’ll still go have a look.

  Photographer groans. Willie—why? If it’s not there, what’s the point?

  Sutton rises to his full five foot nine, peers at Photographer. You know kid, a couple years ago, I got to know an old Indian. He was doing a twenty-year bit for setting off bombs to protest the war. He told me that whenever an Indian is lost, or sad, or near death, he goes and finds the place of his birth and lies down on top of it. Indians think that gives a man some kind of healing. Closes some kind of loop.

  We’ve already been to the place you were born.

  Each of us is born many places.

  Did the old Indian say that?

  Sutton stares at Photographer. It just hit me kid. You remind me a little of Happy.

  NINE

  Bess is kissing Willie. He feels her eyelash fluttering against his eyelid. He smiles. Stop, Bess, I’m sleeping. He opens his eye. A cockroach is crawling across his face. He swats it away, sits up. He’s on the floor of a small cell. The only light comes through a Judas hole, but it’s enough to see that the floor is alive with cockroaches.

  A cup of water sits next to the door. He crawls to it. His throat is raw, scorched, and yet he can’t drink the water. It smells like piss. The cops tell him later: they pissed in it.

  The cops appear at the Judas hole once an hour and torment him. They ask about his whore. They tell him what they’d like to do to his whore. She’s in a cell down the hall, his whore. Any message for his whore?

  Mr. Endner bails out Bess right away. Willie’s family can’t afford bail, nor can Happy’s. After several days the cops bring Willie to a visiting room. Mother sits at a scarred wood table wearing her mass dress. She hasn’t slept in years. She’s lost another child. First Agnes, now Willie. She asks Willie what he has to say for himself.

  Nothing, he says. Not a thing.

  It’s not just your name in the newspaper. It’s ours too. They printed our address. The neighbors, the priest, the butcher, they all look at us different.

  Willie lowers his gaze. He apologizes tearfully. But he also asks for her help. He needs a newspaper, a magazine, a book, a pad and pencil—something. He’s going crazy in here with nothing to do but swat cockroaches and listen to cops say horrible things about Bess.

  You want something to do? Mother says.

  Yes.

  Pray.

  She stands, walks out.

  Willie, Happy and Bess are charged with burglary and larceny. Willie and Happy are also charged with kidnapping. They’re assigned a public defender, who smells of castor oil and liver pills. Stiff white hairs poke from the tip of his pink nose. Willie doesn’t catch his name. He’s too eager to know if the man has spoken to Bess.

  No, Lawyer says. But I’ve spoken to her family’s attorney, who says Mr. Endner is keeping the young lady under lock and key.

  Lawyer hands Willie a stack of newspapers. The story is on every front page, though each paper slants it differently. One turns it into a tale of two Irish Town thugs and their gorgeous accomplice. Another makes it a tale of two Irish Town thugs who kidnap an heiress. The one constant in every telling is that Willie and Happy are Irish Town thugs.

  The story also makes the papers in St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco. Even Europe, via the telegraph. Everyone, everywhere, can find something of interest in this yarn. Crime, class, money, sex. So the trial, months later, is a sensation. As Willie and Happy walk into the courtroom they find hundreds of spectators, roistering, laughing, eating. It’s like a damn Giants game, Happy says.

  Willie and Happy, wearing suits bought with the stolen money, sit on either side of Lawyer. Willie turns, scans the faces in the gallery. Mother and Father, Happy’s family, all sit in the front row, frowning. Two rows back, his eyebrows a deep V above the stormy royal blue eyes, is Eddie. He’s about to give someone, everyone, an Irish haircut.

  A hush falls as Mr. Endner enters. Guided by a nurse, he moves slowly down the aisle. Lawyer leans over to Willie: The man’s not well, I hear.

  He’s well enough to glare. Willie tries to look contrite. It has no effect. Mr. Endner continues to glare. Willie sighs, faces front, counts the stars on the American flag. He senses a commotion behind him. He turns in time to see a blur. Two of the cops who called Bess a whore grab Mr. Endner just before he wraps his hands around Willie’s throat.

  Willie and Happy will not take the stand. Their codefendant, however, will. Her lawyers have struck some sort of deal for her cooperation. She enters the hushed courtroom, makes her way to the stand. She wears a gray dress with a
blue collar and blue cuffs, black patent leather shoes with white tops, and she holds a blue clutch purse with both hands, tight, as she held the steering wheel of the Nash. Her hair is curled in ringlets that brush her shoulders as she leans forward to put a kid-gloved hand on the Bible.

  Willie hasn’t seen her since the morning they were arrested. Yes sir—those were the last words he heard her speak, when the sheriff of Poughkeepsie said, Put some clothes on, young lady. Not one visit, not one letter or card. Willie wants to leap across the table, run to her, scold her. He wants to caress her, kiss her. He wants to shout, You ruined my life! He wants to whisper, You are my life. He blames her for leading him into this mess. He rues not marrying her when he had the chance.

  Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but so help you God?

  I do.

  Willie imagines her saying I do in a different courthouse, on a different occasion. If only. He bows his head.

  In a halting voice, guided gently but firmly by the district attorney, Bess tells her story. The courtroom is rapt, even though this isn’t the story they came for. It’s not a salacious story, as Bess tells it, but a chaste story of first love. It’s the original human story, the only story. With a capitalist twist. Rich girl, poor boy. They want to get married but her father stands in the way. So they risk everything to be together. And yet they do nothing improper, Your Honor. The boy is a perfect gentleman. Also, it’s all the girl’s idea. She breaks the safe. She keeps the stolen money on her person at all times. The boy does nothing more than drive.

  And this boy’s friend, says the district attorney—why bring him along?

  We thought we needed a witness, Your Honor. We thought the law required it.

  She swears that if she could go back and undo it all, she would. Love clouded her mind. Love made her unwell. Love made her do what she didn’t know she was capable of doing.

  She pauses, asks for a glass of water. Willie knows she’s not really thirsty. He knows this is purely for effect, for sympathy. But anyone who didn’t know Bess would think she was dying from dehydration. It makes Willie wonder if any of this, of her, is real. It makes him think that maybe Bess is a true criminal, that maybe love is a crime. Maybe when lovers say, You stole my heart, it’s not just pretty words. As surely as they stole her father’s cash, Bess stole Willie’s heart. And now she shows no remorse. Not the kind Willie wants to see.