by Roy Scranton
“There’s your premonition right there!” he says.
“At least we’re close to the road” I says “so’s we can get a ride.”
“What’ll we do with a ride?” he shouts at me. “Ain’t nowheres they can take us!”
“Ain’t you a outlaw yet, Charlie Starkweather?” I says. I’s starting a get angry. “You a outlaw by true, you best start thinking like one. We kill em and we take their car. We take what we want, Charlie Starkweather. Don’t you know you’re free? You’re a free man now, a free white American, you better start acting like it.”
“You’re right” he says, nodding his head. “You’re right. We’ll hitch up a ride then bang, I’ll just shoot em and take their car. I love you, Caril.”
“I love you, Charlie.”
So we took our knives and a couple guns and I took my red swim bag and we walked out to the road and it was getting dark so we waited and waited and finally it was dark and then a big old Chevrolet come up and the man driving it was a big, fatheaded square with his Miss Priss girlfriend, and she give us a dirty look but the feller said “You need a ride?” and Charlie said “Sure nuff and yes we do.”
We got in the back and the feller tried to help Charlie with the rifle what was wrapped up in a blanket but Charlie tole him I got it. The feller introduced hisself as Bob Jensen and his snotty little Miss Priss was Carol King, and we said we was Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate. Bob knowed Charlie from somewheres and they got to talking about cars for a minute then he ast where we was going. Charlie said we just needed to call somebody to come pick us up, so Bob said he’d take us into Bennet where he knowed a service station with a phone. We got there and the station was closed, and Bob said he knowed the guy who lived in back of the station and was gonna go get him up so Charlie could use the phone but then Charlie put his rifle against the back of his big fat stupid head and said “I don’t think we need no phone, Bob. I think you’re gone drive us all the way to Lincoln, then we’re getting on State Highway 2.”
“You’re not gonna kill us are you?” Bob Jensen ast all scared-like.
“I ain’t gonna kill you unless you try something stupid” Charlie said. “So let’s just go get it done.”
So then Bob pulled out the station and headed back toward Lincoln. It was electric in the car and I got a feeling of what it must a been like for Charlie when he killed Bob Colvert, it was like we had power over them and they was scared of us and in our mercy. It weren’t like when we killed Ma and Marion, or like when he shot ol Gus Meyer, but it was something tickly and wonderful how they kept looking back at us, frowning and acting like whupped dogs, and it was like if we told em boo they’d sure as heck pee theyselves. Now I knowed what it was like to have a power over somebody, and have them be bossed at for a while, and when they tried to talk up some kinda way out, Charlie tole em just drive. We headed back towards Lincoln but then Charlie changed his mind and had them drive back at the Meyer place. “You know that ol blown-down school by the Meyer place?” he says, and fathead says “Yes I do,” so Charlie says “That’s where we’re goin’.”
“But there ain’t nothing there” fathead says. “You ain’t gonna kill us are you?”
“No, I ain’t” says Charlie, winking at me, “I just gotta put you somewheres so we can head off fore you go to the police.”
“We wouldn’t go to the police” fathead says.
“You must think I’m pretty stupid to believe that load a pucky. How bout you just drive?”
Then I says, “Charlie, we forgot a take their money.”
And he says that’s right, and he tole em to give over whatever money they had.
“Why don’t you leave us alone?” the girl cried, like a little baby, and I grabbed her by the hair and said “I’ll kill you myself, bitch! You just do what we tell you!”
Eventually we got out to the old school and parked and Charlie had them get outta the car and then he got out and covered em with his rifle and marched em over to the cellar. I stayed in the car waitin, watchin em go down. He sent the girl down first, then ol fathead, then just after fathead started goin down Charlie shot him, over and over, I member it was like ten times cuz I counted. I saw him there standin in the headlights at the mouth of the cellar, shootin down into it like he’s shootin rats. Then he went down in the cellar and I set and waited. I thought he was gon shoot that hussy right off, but oncet I set there for a minute I realized he must a been doin somethin else, and then I figgered out what he must a been doin so I got out and went and shouted down “Charlie!” and then I shouted again. He shouted back “What?” and I shouted down “Come up here!” and then a minute later he come up the stairs with his gun and said “What?”
“I’ll kill you right now, you dirty no good runt, I’ll kill you my own self.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know what you’re doin down there.”
“No, it ain’t what you think. I ain’t done nothin.”
“Charlie Starkweather, I’m giving you two minutes to go down there and kill that hussy or I’m gonna drive off and tell the police what you done.”
“No, look darling, it’s too cold to do anything. Look, I ain’t—”
But I knowed he’s lyin so I says “You kill her right now, or else” then I got back in the car, this time in the driver’s seat. He shook his head at me then went back down the steps then I heard his gun go off and seed him coming back up the steps. When he got back I shifted over in the seat and he got in and asks me if I’s happy and I says yes. Then he tried to get out but the car was stuck, and he cursed and hit the wheel. We both got outta the car and I couldn’t stop thinkin of that little hussy in the cellar and of Charlie getting his wick all in her and I just kep getting madder and madder, so while he was working on getting the car unstuck I took my knife and went down and made sure she was dead. First I pulled her dress up to see if she had Charlie’s milk all on her, which she din’t, but she din’t have no panties on neither so I knowed what he done, the little egg-sucker, and then thinking of it I got so mad I just stabbed her in her nastiness all over, stabbing her again and again and again till I was sure, then I went back up and stood by the cellar stairs looking at Charlie trying to get the car out. Eventerlly he did and we drove off. Charlie and me didn’t talk, cause I’s mad at him and he din’t know what to say, he just looked at my bloody knife and hands what I tried to wipe off on that girl’s dress and din’t say nothing. So he was headed back to Lincoln and oncet I realized, I said “What are you doin going back to Lincoln?” and he said “We ain’t got no food or nothing and we need somewheres to sleep.” So I said huh you must be stupid, which showed true just as soon as we was back in Lincoln when we drove by my old house, which Charlie wanted to see again, and there was police cars in front and all over. So we drove on and then headed west out of town. Back on the road Charlie said he thought we’d go out West a ways and outrun their dragnet, and I said how bout that, and then he put his hand on my knee and said we had time for a little go, we could just pull over and have a little one, and I took his hand away and said “You already got yours today, Charlie Starkweather.”
We drove west and west on the highway, not hardly talking, me thinking how nice it was to finally be rolling down the highway going somewheres and finally outta the mess behind us and we could finally start over, then I started getting sleepy so I went a sleep there with Charlie still driving, then I woke up later and saw a sign said lincoln.
“That’s funny” I says.
“What?” he ast.
“That sign says lincoln.”
“I had a idea” Charlie said. “I knowed this rich ol man, Mr. Ward, he lives in town and he got a whole bunch a money saved up that’d get us all the way to Washington State and get us a house too maybe, and I thought we go back and just take it. I knowed him from Donny’s route, when I was haulin garbage, in the country-club pa
rt of town. Then I thought we can’t go back to town cause the police are looking for us. But then I realized that’s the last place they’d look. The police are gonna be going from Lincoln, looking for somebody leaving, they ain’t gonna be looking for nobody coming back! Soon as I figured that out, I figured we orta head back and relieve ol Mr. Ward of his moneys.”
And oncet I thought about it, that idea seemed pretty good to me, so I just went back to sleep until Charlie woke me up again saying we’re here and I said what time is it and he said 3:40 in the a.m. We parked on a side street in town and went to sleep and didn’t get up till after the sun come up. Then we drove to the ol Ward place and pulled in the driveway and Charlie said “Wait here till I signal” then went in with his gun. A few minutes later he waved me in and I went in the house. I tell you the truth, I never seen a kitchen so nice. They had a new icebox and lovely little dishes and all kinds a nice things, and Charlie was standing over two old women sitting at the table, and he said this here’s Mrs. Clara Ward and this here’s Lillian the maid, who’s deaf but she can read your lips, he says. I thought about that later, how it must be like reading lips, like how do you know it’s one word and not the other? Then I thought how if people can read lips they must be able to read eyes and faces and all of it, like it’s not even words you say just words you think, just there on your face and in the air like it weren’t even had to be said. There was a retriever too named Queenie and Mrs. Clara had a poodle lapdog named Suzy. I petted Queenie and sat down in a chair with the old women and said “Now what?”
Charlie set hisself down and said “We gone wait for Mr. Ward to come home so he can undo the safe and get us all the money we need. Why’nt you two women do some cleaning or something while we listen to the radio?” So we set there listening to the radio while the women did some cleaning, then Charlie left me with a gun to watch em and he poked around the house some, then a little later Charlie had Mrs. Ward make him some pancakes. Then when she made the pancakes he said “These pancakes taste like horse pucky. Make me some waffles.” Then she made us some waffles and we et em. I told Charlie I was tired and wanted a go to sleep but he said we had to stay up to watch the women and I said why don’t we just tie em up? Then he said we had to keep watch for Mr. Ward cuz we din’t know when he was comin back. So we just set there and listened to the radio and the old women set there and ever so often they’d try to talk to us but me or Charlie’d tell em to shut your faces. What was one good thing was that they had the papers and we was all over them papers from killing Ma and Marion, so we went through and clipped out all the times they had us, looking for fugitive nineteen years old Charlie Starkweather, cold-blooded killer, and his kidnap girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, and how he was a killer on the loose. They even had stories about ol Meyer being killed and fathead and his girlfriend gone missing. They was right behind us, we realized, and it’s a good thing we come back to town like Charlie thought cuz now we done stymied their expectations. We thought it was all real funny but then when Mrs. Clara said “I think it’s awful” I turned at her and showed her my knife and said “How’d you like me to stab you in your nastiness, you old hag?” and that shut her right up. We also wrote a letter “For the Law Only” explaining what we done, and discussed whether to leave it at the scene of the crime. A little later Mrs. Clara tole Charlie she needed to go upstairs a change her shoes and when she went up there she was gone for a while and after almost a hour I tole Charlie you better go find her. He did then I heard a gunshot and a scuffle and what I thought was great was how when the gunshot went off that deaf maid din’t even look up—she really couldn’t hear a thing! She just kept working on her knitting like it weren’t nothing. It must be strange a be deaf, like you’s at the bottom of the ocean or in a cave all the time, not being able to hear people, walking around like a secret.
Well anyways Charlie come back down and says she tried to shoot him so he had to stab her. He stood where the maid couldn’t see his lips so she wouldn’t know and he said don’t tell her or she’ll go crazy. Then he handed me the gun and went back upstairs with his bloody knife. He’s up there for a while and I knowed what he was doin. I figgered that’s what he’s like now, I guess, no better’n a wild animal, and there weren’t no changing him. He come back down later and said he done tied her up on the bed and left her there, and I said I bet you did, and he said for me to stay there while he moved the cars outside for when ol Ward came home. After he done that we set for a while readin the papers and jokin about how stupid everone was. Then Charlie looks over at me and says you know darling there’s a chance we might not make it out alive.
“We’ll make it out to Washington just like you said” I tole him.
“It might be a hail a bullets for us, darling. We should think on that. It may be we ain’t maybe gonna make it out alive. But I say one thing: a man don’t ask no greater glory till life is through than to spend one last minute in the wilderness.”
I sushed him then and tole him quit being a dummy, but I thought he might just mean it, maybe he means for us to not make it, then I thought that’s dumb. I din’t know what but I thought we’d make it to Montana at least.
Anyways, after that, I said I’d go upstairs for him and wash the blood off the knife he left up there, so I went and got the knife and saw old lady Ward tied to that bed up there, bleedin slow and passed out, her face all white and doughy and wet, and I got a sense a what Charlie must a done, pulling up her old lady’s dress and giving it to her, I could see him rutting hisself in between her spindly old knobby legs, and I walked up and felt her dress myself and looked at her saggy old skin and face and then I thought you little sumbitch you gon just keep stickin it in everwhere you can so I stabbed her in the neck and in her floppy old-lady udders, just stabbin and stabbin. It’s hard when you stab a body in the chest cuz the knife gets up against the ribs there, but I kep goin and getting blood all over, then I got tired so I left her there. Fore I left I thought the room smelled awful a blood so I sprayed some a her perfume on her. I washed the knife up and my hands too in the bathroom and took it back downstairs and gave it to Charlie and said “You got yours and I got mine.” He din’t know what I’s talkin about and he’s thinking of his plans for getting ol man Ward, so he tells me all about his big sheriff plan and how he wants me to go wait in the dining room and give a holler when the old man drives up so that’s what I done. I curled up with a blanket in the dining room and kep a eye on the window and then by an by his car rolls up so I holler. I stay there in the dining room like I’m a supposed to and I hear Charlie and the Ward man talkin in the other room, then there’s a scuffle and some fightin, then I hear somebody fall down the stairs into the cellar and a gun goes off, and I think, I sure hope that’s Charlie, but to be honest I din’t know if I hoped it was Charlie doing the shootin or Charlie the one who got shot. I loved him true, but things were turnin funny and I thought if somebody din’t kill him soon I might have to, waitin up in the night maybe while he slept and stabbin him in the throat, but then I heard some steps and another gunshot, then some more steps, and the old man bangs through the door heading for the front, stumbling kinda and looking scared, and Charlie bangs through behin him and just as the old man gets the front door Charlie plugs him again, bang, I remember the sparks coming out the rifle against the china hutch where he was standing like a snapper on the Fourth of July and the old man stumbled and leaned against the door and fell down. Charlie looked at me and got out his knife and said “Go get that deaf maid in the kitchen” then he went over to finish off old man Ward. I got up like he said and went into the kitchen but there weren’t no maid. The back door was still closed so I thought she must a gone down the cellar. The light was on down there but I couldn’t see her, so I shouted for her to come up then I membered she was deaf. I’d a gone down there but I thought she might have a gun or something, which is what I tole Charlie when he come back into the kitchen and started washing the blood off his knife. So we set and wai
ted for her and after a bit we saw her at the bottom of the stairs and she din’t have no gun or nothin, and Charlie went down and got her, then me and him took her upstairs and tied her to a bed.
“We don’t need a kill her,” Charlie says, “she’s just some deaf old maid.”
Then he went down to load up the car and I looked at the maid, who looked back at me all terrified, and I took out my knife and showed it to her so she’d know I’s serious. I weren’t gone do nothin to her till I thought about why Charlie wanted to keep her alive, and maybe it’s cuz he din’t get his fill with the old lady, and I thought, well he ain’t gon do nothin if she’s dead and she don’t deserve to live anyway, hidin from us like a animal, what good’s it being alive if you’re deaf anyway? Sometimes I think you got a deaf baby or a blind one or something dumb or crippled you oughta just kill it right away, cuz the world’s a hard-enough place as it is without addin to our troubles with being deaf or blind or crippled. So I got up and took a pillow and put it on her face so Charlie wouldn’t hear if she screamed, and I was right cuz she started screaming right away, and I stabbed her in her fat belly and I cut up her arms and legs and stabbed her in her fat old udders too, stupid bitch with her old nag face deserved to die a hunnerd times and I stabbed her and stabbed her. After I was done I washed off again, feeling good about things being takin care of, then went downstairs and saw Charlie had black goo all in his hair and I said what you do to your head and he says “Shoe polish.” “Well, that’s dumb” I said. Then he ast me what that noise was and I tole him “That maid din’t wanna die for nothing.” Then he ast me why I done killed her and I said “Why I done it? Why you done it? Why you done it with that old hag? Why you done it to Ma and Marion? Why you done anything? You’re a dirty sumbitch, Charlie Starkweather, and I ain’t never seen no pot call no kettle black. Why you done it? Why I ain’t done you yet, that’s the question.” Then he snorted and said do it if you’re gonna, but I saw we had some more stuff to load in the car so I just said “Let’s get outta here fore the police come by.” And we did finally and Charlie said he wanted to see the house one more time so we drove by my house and there was a light on in the kitchen and a police car in the driveway and that felt funny, I thought what it must a been like for a lonely policeman standin in our kitchen or maybe eatin cold chicken and drinkin a beer at our table, who knows, and was he waiting for us or just doin police work, like doin for evidence, and if he’s waiting for us I thought for a moment it’d be just as well we obliged him, then we’d tie him up and find out what they knew then kill him too and it’d be one less policeman after us and we’d know their plans but I din’t say nothin and Charlie got the willies so we just got back on the highway and headed west. We was driving awhile and Charlie tells me he’s getting in the mood thinking about how beautiful I am and I tells him “You had yours for today,” and he looked at me funny like he din’t know what I was talking about and I said “Just keep drivin, mister. We got about a hunnerd police after us.” Then we stopped for gas, and then we kept goin, drivin into the night like two lost stars crossin a endless sky. We went through Seward and York and Grand Island and Cairo and Ravenna and Hazard. We stopped at Broken Bow and got some more gas and maps, it musta been after midnight, and the whole place seemed as lonely as you could ever imagine. Charlie tole me he wrote a confession on the bathroom wall there but din’t sign it, then we got back on the road and headed west again, goin through the Sand Hills, that’s the farthest I ever been from home, and all those low grassy hills rolling across the world, covered with snow and ice and dead grass pokin up in the night and the stars twinklin down on us from the coalpile sky, the earth silver like a frozen sea, and I was sleepy and it was late but I finally felt like we got ourselves free a little, like we finally got away from Lincoln, and it was wonderful and scary, like the future was open before us with a darkness dark as a clouded night sky, and it was ours to make into whatever we wanted, like we could just dream it into happening and there weren’t no police behind us and no parents tellin us what to do and no stupid school to go to, it was all just promise and wonderland and we’d have our cabin and babies and freedom and future. It felt like we could just start over. It was a beautiful night and a beautiful dream going into the night, then Charlie fell asleep and almost drove into a ditch and he waked up right away and pulled back onto the road and said “We should stop and sleep.”
