She wept as I held her; when I left, later that morning, she was mad again. Not speaking.
“Beneath this stone…lies Elmer Gush…tickled to death…by a shavin’ brush! Haw haw! Burma Shave.”
“Beaver Falls,” I said.
“Huh?” Kate Barker said.
“That’s Beaver Falls, up ahead.”
We were on U.S. Highway 151, now, and it entered the little town along a shady street where two-story clapboard houses with front porches with pillars and swings, wide windows and pointed roofs, sat on big lawns, looking prosperous unless you noticed how many of them needed painting. We glided through the downtown, where the trees disappeared in favor of electric posts, and two-story brick buildings stared each other down on either side of Front Street—hardware store, boot shop, floral shop, tavern, J. C. Penney, movie house.
Ma turned around in her seat, as we passed, straining to look back. “What’s playin’? What’s playin’?”
“Huh?”
“At the movie house!”
“Oh.” I looked back; winced when I saw what it was. “
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I seen that. I like Clark Gable, but not when he dies at the end.”
About four miles outside of Beaver Falls was a farm, the mailbox prominently marked gillis. I slowed and turned in the gravel drive. Chickens scooted out of my way. Over to the right was the two-story farmhouse, pretty good size, a swing on the pillared front porch, wide curtained windows, pointed gabled roof, much like the houses in Beaver Falls, only no curling paint. At the left and curving back behind the house were several other structures, among them an unpainted tool shed, a pump with windmill tower, a faded red barn, a silo.
There were no other autos around; I got out of the Auburn, went around and opened the door for Kate Barker. The lawn and house were fenced in with unbarbed wire, and a few pine trees were spread about the lawn in an undiscernible pattern, providing shade. Up on the porch of the house, the door opened and a small man in a rumpled white shirt and equally rumpled brown pants came down the steps quickly and Ma moved toward him.
“Arthur, Arthur,” Ma said hugging him to her; he was sort of stocky himself, but she still seemed to smother him, slapping him on the back. His hands clung loosely to her back, but he was glad to see her, too, saying, “Ma, gee, Ma, it’s good to see you…”
I was getting her bags out of the back when another small figure, in a white shirt and a bow tie and a dark unbuttoned vest and gray baggy pants, came bolting down the steps, feet making a clapping sound. The chickens on the lawn scattered. He had a tommy gun slung over his arm and I swallowed as he approached and pointed it at me. I felt like joining the other chickens.
“Who the hell are you?” he said. He sounded like Jimmy Cagney and I wondered if it was on purpose, maybe to offset his boyish features.
“I’m Jimmy Lawrence,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Don’t you know?” He laughed, like I was the dumbest shit he ever saw. He pointed a thumb back at himself. “I’m Big George.”
“Big George?”
“Nelson!” he said.
Baby Face Nelson said.
29
Ma let loose of her boy Arthur long enough to call out to Nelson: “He’s from Chicago.”
Nelson manufactured a sneer, over which the faint beginnings of a mustache were more threat than promise. “So am I. So what?”
“I’m here on an errand,” I said, “for Frank Nitti.”
The sneer faded, and he blinked. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“No,” I said.
Ma and Arthur wandered over. Arm in arm. She said, “I called and checked on him.”
Without taking his pale blue eyes off me, Nelson said to her, “Did you check with Nitti?”
“No. I called Slim.”
“Slim Gray?”
“Yeah, and he said this guy was jake.”
He thumped my chest three times with the side of the tommy-gun barrel. “I don’t care if he’s jake—I just want to know if he’s Jimmy whosis.”
“Lawrence,” I said, stopping the barrel of the tommy gun with my palm, before it could thump me a fourth time.
Nelson’s eyes flared. “Don’t touch my gun.”
“Then don’t poke me with it.”
“Yeah? Well, fuck you.”
“I got no beef with you, Nelson. But I’m not going to stand here and be bullied and just take it, understand?”
The tommy-gun nose lowered; chickens were making noise in the background. He said, “I got no beef with you, either, Lawrence—if you’re from Nitti. If you’re a goddamn fed, you’re fuckin’ dead.”
Arthur stepped forward and put a hand on Nelson’s arm; both men were about the same size, but Arthur “Doc” Barker had haunted brown eyes and rather sunken cheeks in a baby face of his own, black widow’s peaked hair starting high on his forehead, and my instinct was he was more dangerous than Nelson.
“Watch your language around my ma,” Doc Barker said, in a flat monotone that, unlike Nelson’s Cagney impression, was menacing without trying to be.
Nelson shook the hand off irritably, but said, “Yeah—okay. Okay.” I said, “You really think a fed would be smart enough to get this far?”
Nelson thought about that, while Doc grinned and said, “Hell no!”
