Pretty Boy Floyd by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana

Author:Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Western, Historical
ISBN: 9780743230186
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

5

Robbing two banks in one day was a bank robber’s dream—Charley and Birdwell soon got so slick that they were able to do just that. The second robbery was in the small town of Atoka, and baseball season had just started. As soon as they got the money safely under the back seat, they blazed out of town at top speed, passing a ballfield on the way.

“I ain’t seen a ball game in a while,” Charley remarked. “That bank was way down in the middle of town. I doubt folks at the ball game even know it’s been robbed.”

“I doubt it, too,” Birdwell said. “When I was pitching baseball, I once struck out ninety-one batters in a row.”

“Ninety-one batters?” Charley said, skeptical. “Bird, that’s a lie.”

“It was eleven batters, at least,” Bird amended. “I can’t remember the figures, but it was a good many batters.”

They drove out of town a few miles, took off their coats and ties, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and went back to the ball game. There were no bleachers, so they sat on the fender of the car. The game ended in the sixth inning because the community only possessed one ball, and a big, blond-haired boy hit it so hard it sailed out to the highway, landing in a truck that happened to be passing by.

The game had been close up to then, and the spectators looked gloomy.

“It ain’t just the game that’s over,” Birdwell said. “It’s the season—they lost their ball.”

“Shucks, I love baseball,” Charley said. “Let’s buy ’em some balls and drop ’em off in front of the bank, next time we come through.”

“Okay, Robin Hood,” Bird said. “They say charity begins at home, though.”

“Not at my home, it don’t,” Charley said, morose himself over the abrupt end of the ball game. “Ruby hardly ever makes biscuits anymore. I like makin’ a pot of spaghetti once in a while, or a pie, but that don’t mean I like to do the cookin’ all the time.”

When they drove out of Atoka, Birdwell was in high spirits, but before they had driven ten miles down the highway, Charley’s mood darkened even more. They passed a little shack of a farmhouse, with a family on the porch. Charley glared at them for a moment, and then looked wistful.

“Reckon we’ll ever be normal, Bird?” he asked.

Birdwell, who was driving, cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t know about you, bud,” Birdwell said. “I am normal. I been pretty much normal ever since I was born.”

“Applesauce,” Charley said. “You ain’t a bit normal.”

“We just watched a ball game,” Birdwell pointed out. “Ain’t that normal?”

“Not if you rob a bank first, it ain’t,” Charley said. “If all we’d done was watch baseball, that’d be normal.”

“But robbin’ the bank was normal, too,” Birdwell insisted. “We’re bandits—bandits gotta rob something, and banks are a helluva lot easier than trains.”

“How would you know?” Charley asked him. “The James boys robbed trains, I guess we could too, if we tried.”

“I did try, once,” Birdwell told him.

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