Bandit Blood

by Joyce Yarrow

Exiting the theatre, Frank blinked in the glare of the streetlight, finding himself in that confusing zone, somewhere between movie-land reality and flesh-and-blood life. At the sound of the first gunshot, the crowd around him froze, their heads awkwardly tilted in interrupted conversation. Three or four more shots quickly followed and then pandemonium, as people scattered, some seeking shelter in doorways, others running down the street.

Word quickly spread about who it was the police had gunned down. Frank was one of the first to venture around the corner into the alley and one of the first to walk as close to the body as the line of policemen would permit. He was a fastidious man who insisted that his wife, Mary, iron the overalls that he wore every day to his job at the hardware store. Seeing a pool of blood next to the body, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a starched, clean handkerchief, which, still folded, he dipped into the sticky red substance. He held his prize up for his timid neighbors to see.

"Wait until I show this to my wife. John Dillinger's blood--it's got to be worth something."

A man laughed nervously, and the woman standing next to Frank turned away and vomited. "What's the matter?" Frank asked. "It's just blood, like yours and mine, only famous."

When Frank got home to the damp graystone house, where the broken rocking chair he'd promised to fix six months ago sat accusingly on the porch, he hid the bloody handkerchief in the bottom drawer of his dresser, the one that Mary never bent down to open because of her bad back. After changing his shirt, he joined her in the parlor. She was listening to The Shadow on the radio and was so engrossed she didn't hear him come in.

"They shot Dillinger right around the corner from the Biograph," he told her, but she shushed him. "Tell me about it later, dear. They're just getting to the good part."

Disgusted, he went into the kitchen, but there wasn't much to get excited about in there. The ice box was empty, no money to pay the ice man. A bottle of milk, one quarter full, stood outside on the window ledge, carefully saved by Mary for breakfast. He opened the window and finished off the milk in one gulp. Serves her right.

When he lost his job at Murphy's Hardware downtown, he'd intended to tell her right away, but the words just wouldn't come, not in the face of her brave smile and the pride with which she set the skimpiest dinner on the table, complete with cloth napkins and on Saturday nights, a tapered candle. Mary was seven months pregnant and could no longer take in washing or clean houses as she had been doing before. She had what could only be called blind faith in his ability to provide for her--never mind that the soup kitchen down the street could have stayed open 24 hours a day without diminishing the long line of dull-eyed unemployed, with their down-at-heel shoes and worse-for-wear coats from the Salvation Army.

On the first Friday after the boss told him the news, Frank had taken the dusty banjo that he'd inherited from his pop out from under the eaves of the attic and walked it over to the pawnshop on Oak Street. The old man wrapped his gnarled fingers around the head and sighted up the neck to make sure it was true. The geezer looked at Frank and then he looked at the dozen or so guitars and banjos hanging from a rack attached to the ceiling.

"Can't give you much," he said.

Frank waited patiently while the pawnbroker considered what was the least he could offer.

"A dollar fifty," the old man said.

On the way home, Frank made up a story to account for his lack of funds. He'd lent money to a co-worker who promised to pay him back next week. Mary was soft-hearted and wouldn't mind doing without, not so long as they were giving someone a helping hand. She had been through some hard times herself, what with her father losing his farm last year and going off the deep end. Mary didn't like to dwell on the past, but she did confess to Frank, after they'd been courting for a year, that she'd fashioned the dress she wore on the night they met out of a car seat cover that her brother brought home from the junkyard.

On the following Friday, he pawned his grandfather's gold watch at the same shop on Oak Street where he'd left the banjo. That was the night he went to see Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph, telling Mary that he had to work late. He hated lying to her, but he needed time to think about what he was going to do.

"It's not an easy world to bring a child into," Mary had said when she told him she was pregnant. "But it gives us another reason to try to make things better." She had a way of putting a face on things that made sense. He still remembered the delicacy of their first touch--he met her at a dance--when she took his hand before standing up to walk out on the floor. Her sleek black hair had been pulled back in a bun, but the curls that had broken loose around her face hinted at a side to her nature he soon came to know. She liked a good joke--clean or dirty--and growing up on an Indiana farm had given her a down-to-earth, plainspoken approach to sex that took him by surprise.

Since getting married two years ago, they'd lived in this small but well-built house. When they moved in, Mary had joked about how having indoor plumbing would make them lazy. Now the rent was due and there was a real chance she'd be giving birth in a rundown shack with a shared privy on the other side of town.

First thing Saturday morning Mary went shopping for groceries with the money she thought Frank had earned that week. He promised to fix the clothes wringer while she was gone--the crank needed oiling and some bolts were loose--but as soon as she left he began pacing the floor. For the first time he saw their three rooms of installment furniture--the overstuffed chairs and mahogany bed frame--things he'd been so proud of just a few weeks ago--as weighted objects dragging down his life.

He paused in front of the cherry wood chest, a present from Mary's well-to-do aunt, and bent down to open the bottom drawer. The handkerchief was in the far left corner, under some old family photos. The blood had dried, forming a triangle with scalloped edges, like a rusty clamshell. Frank carefully opened the cloth, pulling at the edges until they broke loose from the dried blood. He found that he could refold the cloth in such a way that it looked clean and innocent again, and on impulse he put it in the pocket of his plaid shirt.

He climbed the ladder to the attic for the third time in as many weeks and brought down a wooden box containing the Freeman civil war pistols his father had given him on his fourteenth birthday.

Frank wasn't sure why, but this time he chose a pawnshop on the other side of town. He waited while a woman with a strange accent haggled over the value of a ruby ring she said had been in her family for generations. When Frank's turn came, the pawnbroker pretended not to know anything about antique pistols. He touched the Freemans gingerly, as if they were dirty. "They're not in very good shape," he said. "But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you three dollars. I can clean them up and hopefully sell them for five."

"What makes you so sure I won't be able to redeem them?" Frank asked.

The man didn't bother to answer, letting his smirk speak for itself.

Frank grabbed the gun box without closing it and headed for the door.

"You'll be back--your kind always is," said the voice behind him.

Frank pulled a pistol out of the box and whirled around, pointing the gun at the pawnbroker as he walked back towards him.

"It's not loaded," the man said, but Frank could see the doubt in his eyes. He could also feel the handkerchief in his pocket warming the side of his chest, as if the dried blood was again running hot in Dillinger's vein.

"Shut up and open the cash register quick!" He spat the words like bullets and the pawnbroker obeyed. Frank walked out with fifteen dollars in his pocket. On the way home from the bus stop, he bought flowers for Mary and returned the pistols to the attic before she got back.

"Stan came by and paid back the money he owed us," he whispered in her ear as she buried her face in the lilies.

Undressing for bed he almost pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket right in front of her. "Think I'll take a bath," he said. He listened for her breathing to make sure she was asleep before quietly opening the chest drawer and returning the talisman to its resting place.

The next day, Mary ran into her old friend Virginia on the street. Virginia was vague about where she was living but she accepted eagerly when Mary invited her and her husband Albert to dinner.

Frank thought he'd never seen two people eat so fast. "Muy bien," said Virginia, after the last of the dumplings and roast chicken were gone.

"Virginia's showing off her Spanish," said Albert. "You should have seen her chattering away with the Mexicans." He explained that they'd just gotten back from Texas. "There's good work there picking fruit."

"So where are you staying since you got back to Chicago?" asked Frank.

"Here and there," said Albert. "We're picky, but I'm sure we'll find a place eventually."

Frank thought they must be living in their car, but didn't pursue it.

After dinner, the talk turned to Dillinger's fate. "You don't think he actually escaped from jail with a toy gun, do you?" demanded Bert. "He had to have help from the inside."

"They didn't call him the Jackrabbit for nothin," said Frank.

Bert's laugh shook the glasses on the table. "He made a fool of every lawman in the country, chasing him from pillar to post. I have to admit I admired him. The rabbit had a lot of guts and I'm sad he's dead."

No one spoke up to contradict him and Frank, sometime between dessert--a thin vanilla pudding Mary somehow concocted out of nothing--and coffee, decided he'd put his own whittling skills to the test after their company left.

He stayed out on the porch `till well after midnight, when Mary called to him to come to bed. "With so many people losing their jobs you can't afford to go in late," she said.

"That reminds me," Frank told her as he wound the alarm clock. "I may be home a little late tomorrow. We've got a shipment of machine parts coming in and I said I'd work overtime."

In the morning, Mary followed him around the house, talking about their plans for a weekend with her relatives and asking him to do the grocery shopping. She found it hard to carry things in her advanced stage of pregnancy. He looked for his chance, but finally had to leave the house without the handkerchief.

At 6pm, Frank walked into one of the few pawn shops in Chicago where he was sure he wouldn't be recognized. It was just before closing time and the shop was empty. To his surprise, a woman with a pale face and light blue eyes was working the counter. She came out from behind the glass, eager to serve a new customer.

"Can I help you?"

Frank pulled out the ancient pistol and pointed it at her, his face red with the shame of robbing a woman. Instead of cowering in fear, she smiled broadly.

"Buster, you've gotta be kidding." The pity in her voice was unmistakable. "Who do you think you are - John Dillinger?"

He got out of that place in a hurry.

Unable to face going home, he stopped in at Leroy's Bar & Grill for a beer and with fifty cents in his pocket decided to play a few rounds of pool. Frank was totally busted by seven-thirty, played for a sucker by a shark.

Walking home from the tram stop, he saw the Duran & Sons Furniture truck stopped at a traffic light three blocks from his house. Frank hated the way they waited until after folks had eaten their dinner before taking their lives away, leaving them with nothing and no way to remedy the situation, if they could, until the next day.

He knew where the truck was headed and broke into a run, all the while picturing them emptying his house, the installment furniture, even the bassinet paraded outside, with Mary crying on the stoop, their neighbors taking pity on them. Dillinger wouldn't let that happen and neither would he. He wasn't one who couldn't stand the gaff. He was a slugger now. He hurried up the steps and let himself in.

Mary was cooking dinner. He could smell his favorite--beef stew--and heard her humming to herself for the first time in weeks. But this was no time to tiptoe behind her, as he had so many times, to smell her hair, to kiss her neck.

He ducked under the stairs and through the door down to the basement. The object he'd hidden in the coal bucket blended invisibly with the few chunks that were left. The coal dust gave the wooden gun a dull sheen - they'd think it was metal if he was lucky. Frank figured that nobody would be crazy enough to risk his life over a few chairs and some baby furniture. He put the gun in his pocket and brushed off his hands.

A quick trip to the bedroom, where he tucked what he'd started looking at as his lucky charm into his shirt pocket. He ran upstairs, just in time to see the truck pulling up in front of the house. He was about to open the door, to go outside and settle this before Mary could suspect what had happened, when he felt her hand on his arm.

"Where are you going? Dinner's almost ready, Francis." She called him that when she wanted things her way. "Why don't you..." She stopped in mid-sentence and at first he thought she'd seen the truck through the hallway window. But it was something else that bewildered her.

"Your handkerchief. It's got blood on it," she said, pulling it from his pocket as he stood, frozen. "Did you have a bloody nose?" she asked, opening the cloth to inspect the damage and then crumpling it into a tiny ball. "Don't worry. A good wash in cold water will make it good as new."

She kissed him on the cheek and walked back towards the kitchen, the handkerchief still clutched in her hand.

© 2005 by Joyce Yarrow.
Joyce Yarrow has worked as a singer/songwriter/storyteller for many years and recorded an album for the Pacific Arts label. Her mystery novel Ask the Dead was recently published by Martin Brown.