She said confidentially,
“Oh, him an’ Granma sleeps in the barn.
They got to get up so much in the night.
They was stumblin’ over the little fellas.”
Pa broke in,
“Yeah, ever’ night Grampa’d get mad.
Tumble over Winfield, an’ Winfield’d yell, an’ Grampa’d get mad an’ wet his drawers, an’ that’d make him madder, an’ purty soon ever’body in the house’d be yellin’ their head off.” His words tumbled out between chuckles. “Oh, we had lively times.
One night when ever’body was yellin’ an’ a-cussin’, your brother Al, he’s a smart aleck now, he says,
‘Goddamn it, Grampa, why don’t you run off an’ be a pirate?’
Well, that made Grampa so goddamn mad he went for his gun.
Al had ta sleep out in the fiel’ that night.
But now Granma an’ Grampa both sleeps in the barn.”
Ma said,
“They can jus’ get up an’ step outside when they feel like it.
Pa, run on out an’ tell ’em Tommy’s home.
Grampa’s a favorite of him.”
“A course,” said Pa. “I should of did it before.” He went out the door and crossed the yard, swinging his hands high.
Tom watched him go, and then his mother’s voice called his attention.
She was pouring coffee.
She did not look at him.
“Tommy,” she said hesitantly, timidly.
“Yeah?” His timidity was set off by hers, a curious embarrassment.
Each one knew the other was shy, and became more shy in the knowledge.
“Tommy, I got to ask you—you ain’t mad?”
“Mad, Ma?”
“You ain’t poisoned mad?
You don’t hate nobody?
They didn’ do nothin’ in that jail to rot you out with crazy mad?”
He looked sidewise at her, studied her, and his eyes seemed to ask how she could know such things.
“No-o-o,” he said. “I was for a little while.
But I ain’t proud like some fellas.
I let stuff run off’n me.
What’s a matter, Ma?”
Now she was looking at him, her mouth open, as though to hear better, her eyes digging to know better.
Her face looked for the answer that is always concealed in language.
She said in confusion,
“I knowed Purty Boy Floyd.
I knowed his ma.
They was good folks.
He was full a hell, sure, like a good boy oughta be.” She paused and then her words poured out. “I don’ know all like this—but I know it.
He done a little bad thing a’ they hurt ’im, caught ’im an’ hurt him so he was mad, an’ the nex’ bad thing he done was mad, an’ they hurt ’im again.
An’ purty soon he was meanmad.
They shot at him like a varmint, an’ he shot back, an’ then they run him like a coyote, an’ him a-snappin’ an’ a-snarlin’, mean as a lobo.
An’ he was mad.
He wasn’t no boy or no man no more, he was jus’ a walkin’ chunk a mean-mad.
But the folks that knowed him didn’ hurt ’im.
He wasn’ mad at them.
Finally they run him down an’ killed ’im.
No matter how they say it in the paper how he was bad—that’s how it was.” She paused and she licked her dry lips, and her whole face was an aching question. “I got to know, Tommy.
Did they hurt you so much?