“Lemme tell you what happened,” Carl said. “I’m at the Shady Grove having a cup of coffee? The lady next to me at the counter says she works at a café serves way better coffee’n here. Purity, up at Henryetta.”
Crystal said, “What’s her name?”
“She never told me.”
“I use to work at Purity.”
“I know, but wait,” Carl said. “The way you came up in the conversation, the lady says her husband’s a miner up at Spelter. I tell her my dad was killed there in ’16. She says a girl at Purity lost her daddy in that same accident. She mentions knowing the girl’s mom from Eastern Star, I tell her mine belonged, too. The waitress behind the counter’s pretending not to listen, but now she turns to us and says, ‘The girl you’re talking about lives right up the road there.’”
“I bet I know which one it was,” Crystal said. “She have spit curls like that boop-oop-a-doop girl?”
“I believe so.”
“What else she say?”
“You’re a widow, lost your husband.”
“She tell you marshals gunned him down?”
“Nothing about that.”
“It’s what everybody thinks. She mention any other names?”
What everybody thinks. Carl put that away and said, “No, she got busy serving customers.”
“You live in Checotah?”
He told her Henryetta, he was visiting his old grandma about to pass. She asked him, “What’s your name again?” He told her and she said, “Well, come on in, Carl, and have a glass of ice tea.” Sounding now like she wouldn’t mind company.
There wasn’t much to the living room besides a rag rug on the floor and stiff black furniture, chairs and a sofa, their cane seats giving way from years of being sat on. The radio was playing in the kitchen. Crystal went out there and pretty soon Carl could hear her chipping ice. He stepped over to a table laid out with magazines, True Confession, Photoplay, Liberty, Western Story, and one called Spicy.
Her voice reached him asking, “You like Gid Tanner?”
Carl recognized the radio music. He said, “Yeah, I do,” as he looked at pictures in Spicy of girls doing housework in their underwear, one girl wearing a teddy up on a ladder with a feather duster.
“Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers,” Crystal’s voice said. “You know who I kinda like? That Al Jolsen, he sure sounds like a nigger on that mammy song. But you want to know who my very favorite is?”
Carl said, “Jimmie Rodgers?” looking at pictures of Joan Crawford and Elissa Landi now in Photoplay.
“I like Jimmy okay…How many sugars?”
“Three’ll do’er. How about Uncle Dave Macon? He was on just a minute ago.”
“‘Take Me Back to My Old Carolina Home.’ I don’t care for the way he half-sings and half-talks a song. If you’re a singer you oughta sing. No, my favorite’s Maybelle Carter and the Carter Family. The pure loneliness they get in their voices just tears me up.”
“Must be how you feel,” Carl said, “living out here.”
She came out to hand him his cold drink saying, “Don’t give it another thought.”
“Sit here by yourself reading magazines…”
“Honey,” Crystal said, “you’re not as cute as you think you are. Drink your ice tea and beat it.”
“I’m sympathizing with you,” Carl said. “The only reason I came, I wondered if you and I might even’ve known each other from funerals, and our moms being in the same club. That’s all.” He smiled just a little saying, “I wanted to see what you look like.”
Crystal said, “All right, you are cute, but don’t get nosy.”
She left him with his iced tea and went in the bedroom.
Carl took Photoplay across the room to sit in a chair facing the table of magazines and the bedroom door, left open. He turned pages in the magazine. It wasn’t a minute later she stuck her head out.
“You’ve been to Purity, haven’t you?”
“Lot of times.”
She stepped into plain sight now wearing a sheer, peach-colored teddy, the crotch sagging between her white thighs. Crystal said, “You hear about the time Pretty Boy Floyd came in?”
“While you were working there?”
“Since then, not too long ago. The word got around Pretty Boy Floyd was at Purity and it practically shut down the whole town. Nobody’d come out of their house.” She stood with hands on her hips in kind of a slouch. “I did meet him one time. Was at a speak in Oklahoma City.”
“You talk to him?”
“Yeah, we talked about…you know, different things.” She looked like she might be trying to think of what they did talk about, but said then, “Who’s the most famous person you ever met?”
He wasn’t expecting the question. Still, he thought about it for no more than a few seconds before telling her, “I guess it would have to be Emmett Long.”
Crystal said, “Oh…?” like the name didn’t mean much to her. Carl could tell, though, she was being careful, on her guard.
“Was in a drugstore when I was a kid,” Carl said, “and he came in for a pack of Luckies. I’d stopped there for a peach ice cream cone, my favorite. You know what Emmett Long did? Asked could he have a bite—this famous bank robber.”
“You give him one?”
“I did, and you know what? He kept it, wouldn’t give me back my cone.”
“He ate it?”
“Licked it a few times and threw it away.” Carl didn’t mention the trace of ice cream on the bank robber’s mustache; he kept that for himself. “Yeah, he took my ice cream cone, robbed the store and shot a policeman. You believe it?”
She seemed to nod, thoughtful now, and Carl decided it was time to come out in the open.
“You said people think it was marshals gunned down your husband, Skeet. But you know better, don’t you?”
He had her full attention, staring at him now like she was hypnotized.
“And I’ll bet it was Emmett himself told you. Who else’d have the nerve? I’ll bet he said you ever leave him he’ll hunt you down and kill you. On account of he’s so crazy about you. I can’t think of another reason you’d stay here these years. You have anything to say to that?”
Crystal began to show herself, saying, “You’re not from a newspaper…”
“Is that what you thought?”
“They come around. Once they’re in the house they can’t wait to leave. No, you’re not at all like them.”
Carl said, “Honey, I’m a deputy United States marshal. I’m here to put Emmett Long under arrest or in the ground, one.”
He worried she might’ve acquired an affection for the man, but it wasn’t so. Once Carl showed her his star Crystal sat down and breathed with relief. Pretty soon her nerves did take hold and she became talkative. Emmett had phoned this morning and was coming. Now what was she supposed to do? Carl asked what time she expected him. She said going on dark. A car would drive past and honk twice; if the front door was open when it drove past again Emmett would jump out and the car would keep going.
Carl said he’d be sitting here reading about Joan Crawford. He said to introduce him as a friend of the family happened to stop by, but try not to talk too much. He asked if Emmett brought the magazines. She said they were supposed to be her treat. He asked out of curiosity if Emmett could read. Crystal said she wasn’t sure, but believed he only looked at the pictures. What was it Virgil called him that time, years ago? A bozo.
He said to Crystal, “What you want to do is pay close attention. Then later on you can tell what happened here as the star witness and get your name in the paper. I bet even your picture.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Crystal said. “You really think so?”
They heard the car beep twice as it passed the house.
Ready?
Carl was, in the chair facing the magazine table where the only lamp in the room was lit. Crystal stood smoking a cigaret, smoking three or four since drinking the orange juice glass of gin to s
ettle her down. Light from the kitchen, behind her, showed her figure in the kimono she was wearing. Crystal looked fine to Carl.
But not to Emmett Long. Not the way he came in with magazines under his arm and barely paused before saying to her, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Crystal said. “Em, I want you to meet Carl, from home.” Emmett staring at him now as Crystal said he was a busboy at Purity the same time she was working there. “And our moms are both Eastern Star.”
“You’re Emmett,” Carl said, sounding like a salesman. “Glad to know you.” Carl looking at a face from seven years ago, the same deadeyed stare beneath the hat brim. He watched Emmett Long carry his magazines to the table, drop them on top of the ones there and glance over at Crystal. Carl watched him plant both hands on the table now, hunched over, taking time to what, rest? Uh-unh, decide how to get rid of this busboy so he could take Crystal to bed, Carl imagining Emmett doing it to her with his hat still on…And remembered his dad saying, “You know why I caught the Mauser round that time, the Spanish sniper picking me off? I was thinking instead of paying attention, doing my job.”
Carl asked himself what he was waiting for. He said, “Emmett, bring out your pistol and lay it there on the table.”
Crystal Lee Davidson knew how to tell it. She had recited her story enough times to marshals and various law enforcement people. This afternoon she was describing the scene to newspaper reporters—and the one from the Oklahoman, the Oklahoma City paper, kept interrupting, asking questions that were a lot different than ones the marshals asked.
She referred to Deputy Marshal Webster as “Carl” and the one from the Oklahoman said, “Oh, you two are on intimate terms now? You don’t mind he’s just a kid? Has he visited you here at the hotel?” Crystal staying a few days at the Georgian in Henryetta. The other reporters in the room would tell the Oklahoman to keep quiet for Christ sake, anxious for Crystal to get to the gunplay.
“As I told you,” Crystal said, “I was in the doorway to the kitchen. Emmett’s over here to my left, and Carl’s opposite him but sitting down, his legs stretched out in his cowboy boots. I couldn’t believe how calm he was.”
“What’d you have on, dear?”
The Oklahoman interrupting again, some of the other reporters groaning.
“I had on a pink and red kimona Em got me at Kerr’s in Oklahoma City. I had to wear it whenever he came.”
“You have anything on under it?”
Crystal said, “None of your beeswax.”
The Oklahoman said his readers had a right to know such details of how a gun moll dressed. This time the other reporters were quiet, like they wouldn’t mind hearing such details themselves, until Crystal said, “If this big mouth opens his trap one more time I’m through and y’all can leave.” She said, “Now where was I?”
“Emmett was leaning on the table.”
“Sort of hunched over it,” Crystal said. “He looked over at me like he was gonna say something, and right then Carl said, ‘Emmett?’ He said, ‘Draw your pistol and lay it there on the table.’”
The reporters wrote it down in their notebooks and then waited as Crystal took a sip of iced tea.
“I told you Em had his back to Carl? Now I see him turn his face to his shoulder and say to him, ‘Do I know you from someplace?’ Maybe thinking of McAlester, Carl an ex-convict looking to earn the reward money. Em asks him, ‘Have we met or not?’ And Carl says, ‘If I told you, I doubt you’d remember.’ Then—this is where Carl says, ‘Mr. Long, I’m a deputy United States marshal. I’ll tell you one more time to lay your pistol on the table.’”
A reporter said, “Crystal, I know they did meet. I’m Tony Antonelli from the Okmulgee Daily Times and I wrote the story about it.”
“What you’re doing,” Crystal said, “is holding up my getting to the good part.” Messing up her train of thought, too.
“But the circumstances of how they met,” Tony Antonelli said, “could have everything to do with this story.”
“Would you please,” Crystal said, “wait till I’m done?”
It gave her time to tell the next part: how Emmett had no choice but to draw his gun, this big pearl-handle automatic, from inside his coat and lay it on the edge of the table, right next to him. “Now as he turns around,” Crystal said, starting to grin, “this surprised look came over his face. He sees Carl sitting there, not with a gun in his hand but Photoplay magazine. Emmett can’t believe his eyes. He says, ‘Jesus Christ, you don’t have a gun?’ Carl pats the side of his chest where his gun’s holstered under his coat and says, ‘Right here.’ Then he says, ‘Mr. Long, I want to be clear about this so you understand. If I have to pull my weapon I’ll shoot to kill.’” Crystal said to the reporters, “In other words, the only time Carl Webster draws his gun it’s to shoot somebody dead.”
It had the reporters scribbling in their notebooks and making remarks to one another. Tony Antonelli, the one from the Okmulgee paper saying now, “Listen, will you? Seven years ago Emmett Long held up Deering’s drugstore in town and Carl Webster was there. Only he was known as Carlos then, he was still a kid. He stood by and watched Emmett Long shoot and kill an Indian from the tribal police happened to come in the store, a man Carl Webster must’ve known.” Tony Antonelli, a good-looking young man, said to Crystal, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think the drugstore shooting could’ve been on Carl Webster’s mind.”
Crystal said, “I can tell you something else about that.”
But now voices were chiming in, commenting and asking questions about the Okmulgee reporter’s views:
“Carl carried it with him all these years?”
“Did he remind Emmett Long of it?”
“You’re saying the tribal cop was a friend of his?”
“Both from Okmulgee, Carl thinking of becoming a lawman?”
“Carl ever say he was out to get Emmett?”
“This story’s bigger’n it looks.”
Crystal said, “You want to hear something else happened? How Carl was eating an ice cream cone that time and what Em did?”
They sat on the porch sipping bourbon at the end of the day, insects out there singing in the dark. A lantern hung above Virgil’s head so he could see to read the newspapers on his lap.
“Most of it seems to be what this little girl told.”
“They made up some of it.”
“Jesus, I hope so. You haven’t been going out with her, have you?”
“I drove down, took Crystal to Purity a couple of times.”
“She’s a pretty little thing. Has a saucy look about her in the pictures, wearing that kimona.”
“She smelled nice, too,” Carl said.
Virgil turned his head to him. “I wouldn’t tell Bob McMahon that. One of his marshals sniffing around a gun moll.” He waited, but Carl let that one go. Virgil looked at the newspaper he was holding. “I don’t recall you were ever a buddy of Junior Harjo’s.”
“I’d see him and say hi, that’s all.”
“This Tony Antonelli has you two practically blood brothers. What you did was avenge his death. They wonder if it might even be the reason you joined the marshals.”
“Yeah, I read that,” Carl said.
Virgil put the Daily Times down and slipped the Oklahoman out from under it. “But now the Oklahoma City paper says you shot Emmett Long ’cause he took your ice cream cone that time. They trying to be funny?”
“I guess,” Carl said.
“They could make up a name for you, as smart-aleck newspapers do, start calling you Carl Webster, the Ice Cream Kid?”
“You think so?”
“I’m getting the idea you like the attention.”
Virgil saying it with some concern and Carl giving him a shrug. Virgil picked up another paper from the pile. “Here they quote the little girl saying Emmett Long went for his gun and you shot him through the heart.”
“I thought they have her saying, ‘straight through the heart,’” Carl
said. “I told her, they want to know what I pack, tell ’em you think it’s a Colt thirty-eight with the front sight filed down…” He turned to see his old dad staring at him with a solemn expression. “I’m kidding with you. What Emmett did, he tried to bluff me. He looked toward Crystal and called her name thinking I’d look over. But I kept my eyes on him, knowing he’d pick up his gun. He came around with it and I shot him.”
“As you told him you would,” Virgil said. “Every one of the newspapers played it up, your saying, ‘If I have to pull my weapon I shoot to kill.’ You tell ’em that?”
“The only one I told was Emmett,” Carl said. “It had to of been Crystal told the papers.”
“Well, that little girl sure tooted your horn for you.”
“She only told what happened.”
“All she had to. It’s the telling that did it, made you a famous lawman overnight. You think you can carry a load like that?”
“Why not?” Carl said, grinning at his dad, but starting to show himself.
It didn’t surprise his old dad. Virgil picked up his glass of bourbon and raised it to his boy, saying, “God help us show-offs.”
4
The first piece Tony Antonelli wrote for the Okmulgee Daily Times, about Italian immigrants working in Oklahoma coal mines, he used “Death in the Dark” as a title and “Anthony Marcel Antonelli” as his byline. The editor of the paper said, “Who do you think you are, Richard Harding Davis? Get rid of the Marcel and call yourself Tony.”
Tony Antonelli loved the literary style of Harding Davis, the greatest journalist in the world. But every time he tried to dress up his stories with color, with interesting observations—the way Harding Davis did in “The Death of Rodriguez,” about a Cuban insurgent standing before a Spanish firing squad with a cigaret in the corner of his mouth, “not arrogantly nor with bravado”—the editor would cross out entire passages, saying, “Our readers don’t give a rat’s ass about what you think. They want facts.”
About his interview with Crystal Davidson the editor said, “Did Carl Webster ever tell you he was avenging the death of that tribal cop?”