A Dust Bowl Tale of Bonnie and Clyde by James Lee Burke Page A

second man and another woman are in back. They’re passing a bottle around.”
    “Are they wets?”
    I removed the binoculars from my eyes. “If wets drive four-door cars.”
    “My first wife had a sense of humor like yours. The only time I ever saw her laugh
     was when she realized I’d developed shingles.”
    I focused the binoculars back on the driver. I thought I had seen his face before.
     I heard Grandfather get up heavily from his chair. He was over six and a half feet
     tall, and his ankles were swollen from hypertension and caused him to sway back and
     forth, as though he were on board a ship. Sometimes he used a walking cane, sometimes
     not. One day he seemed to teeter on the edge of eternity; the next day he was ready
     to resume his old habits down at the saloon. He had gin roses in his cheeks and skin
     like a baby’s and narrow eyes that were the palest blue I had ever seen. Sometimes
     his eyes did not go with his face or his voice; the intense light in them could make
     other men glance away. “Let’s take a walk, Satchel Ass,” he said.
    “I wish you wouldn’t call me that name.”
    “You’ve got a butt on you like a washtub.”
    “There’s a bullet hole in the rear window of the car,” I said, looking through the
     binoculars again. “My butt doesn’t resemble a washtub. I don’t like you talking to
     me like that, Grandfather.”
    “Wide butts and big hips run in the Holland family. That’s just something to keep
     in mind as you get older. It’s a family trait, not an insult. Would you marry a woman
     who looks like a sack of Irish potatoes?”
    He pulled open a kitchen drawer and removed a holstered revolver that was wrapped
     with the belt, the loops stuffed with brass shells. The revolver was the dull color
     of an old Buffalo nickel. It had been converted long ago for cartridges, but the black-powder
     tamping rod was still in place, fitted with a working hinge under the barrel. The
     top of the holster had been worn smooth and yellow along the edges of the leather.
     Six tiny notches had been filed along the base of the revolver’s grips. Grandfather
     hung the belt from his shoulder and put on his Stetson. The brim was wilted, the crown
     sweat-stained a dark gray above the brim. He went out the screen door into the waning
     twilight.
    The windmill was ginning furiously, the stanchions trembling with energy, a thread
     of water coming from the spout, the tank crusted with dirt and dead insects and animal
     hair along the rims. “The moon looks like it was dipped in a teacup. I cain’t believe
     how we used to take the rain for granted,” he said. “I think this land must be cursed.”
    The air smelled of ash and dust and creosote and horse and cow manure that feathered
     in your hand if you picked it up. Dry lightning leaped through the heavens and died,
     like somebody removing an oil lamp from the window of a darkened house. I thought
     I felt thunder course through the ground under my shoes. “Feel that?” I said, hoping
     to change Grandfather’s mood and my own.
    “Don’t get your hopes up. That’s the Katy blowing down the line,” he replied. “I’m
     sorry I made fun of your butt, Satch. I won’t do it no more. Walk behind me till we
     know who’s in that car.”
    As we approached the tree line, the driver of the car walked out of the headlights
     and stood silhouetted against the glare, then got back in his car and started the
     engine and clanked the transmission into gear. The trees were so dry they made a sound
     like paper rustling when the wind blew through the canopy.
    “Hold up there,” Grandfather said to the man.
    I thought the driver would simply motor away. But he didn’t. He stuck his elbow out
     the window and stared straight into our faces, his expression curious rather than
     alarmed. “You talking to us?” he asked.
    “You’re on my property,” Grandfather said.
    “I thought this was public woods,” the driver said. “If