Most of the money I’d had went to the women Mars and I had found along the way that last night in Chicago. My plan was to get to the next town and buy a car, some rundown piece of shit, and drive down to Nebraska.
I didn’t have the money for it. I didn’t even have two nickels to rub together for new clothes. I hung out in the town I’d walked to, did some odd jobs, and made some dough. Not enough to buy a car, but at least I got new shoes. Especially if I was going to be walking my way back to Charlotte. My new plan was to keep going, get jobs along the way to feed myself, and soon I’d find myself in Charlotte’s backyard.
Didn’t work that way.
First of all, people didn’t trust me for shit. They were more apt to give jobs to people they knew rather than some transient that wandered by. Second, jobs were hard to come by. The stock market crash had started a wave of depression across the whole United States. Even if I could get a day job, all it paid was food and maybe some water.
I didn’t use the name Arcangelo de Bacchio anymore. Fuck that. I was good old Bacchus now. I didn’t have to pretend to be anyone other than myself. I also didn’t want any of Capone’s cronies to find me.
Ah, Capone. His empire crumbled once he got sent to prison. His dipshit brother couldn’t hold a candle to the real thing. More gangs sprouted up, and I sure as shit didn’t think they even worried about me anymore.
I spent the winter at a farm in Iowa. The woman’s husband broke his leg and needed a good farm hand for the season. The guy didn’t make it to Christmas. She was left with six kids and no money, not even to bury him. I couldn’t leave her that winter. I tried to help her plant in the spring, but by then she’d given up. Her plan was to go back East to her family. I could’ve told her there wasn’t much back there, but she wouldn’t listen. She saved her pennies and bought gas for her rusted out Model-T and packed those kids up as soon as the grass started to grow. Didn’t even sell the land. No one wanted it. No one had the money.
I was off again.
Deats had let slip where Charlotte called home. I could have combed Nebraska for years if he hadn’t told me, and I kept that info in my brain. First city I came to in Nebraska, I hit up a general store and asked for a map.
Turns out Ringo, Nebraska is in the middle of fucking nowhere and as far south as you can get. Really, Charlotte? Damn. The storekeeper asked me to leave when he heard me curse so I committed the map to memory and started my hike.
Shit was bad everywhere. Even if I’d had money I would’ve been out of it in no time. I wanted to help all the people I saw. Fucking kids panhandling outside of the post offices I passed. Grave markers just off the road where entire families were buried. I even saw a couple kids walking their own way. I tried to get them to come with me, but hell, by then I was a grimy bastard and they took off running.
All the while, I kept thinking of Charlotte.
Her golden curls. Her trim little body. Her fucking lips. Her fucking pussy. I woke up in the middle of the night with erections that hurt, for fuck’s sake. And every day, it seemed like I was so much farther away from her than any closer. I remembered that last time we’d made love, her body sucking me in, her breasts a full handful. What I wouldn’t give to hold her right then.
The idea of Charlotte kept me walking.
Day after day, I walked on. I stopped more than I wanted. Once I stopped because there was a house fire. I helped beat the flames out with the other farmers. Then I stayed to help build the new house. Another time I helped a man fix his wagon that had a busted axle. He offered to give me a job on his farm for a few days. A few days turned into a few weeks and I finally left in the middle of the summer when the sun was just too damn hot and the crops were failing miserably. He and his family understood. As I walked down his long driveway, I heard a clear shot ring out.
So then I stayed for his funeral.
By August of 1931, a full year after I’d left Chicago, I was finally converging on Ringo, Nebraska. My heart was beating frantically, thinking about seeing Charlotte again. How would I explain how I was alive? Fuck, how would I explain what took me so long to get here?
When I found it, Ringo was a dead town. I went straight down the main street, its pavement cracked and storefronts boarded up. Not one car or horse passed me or asked me to get out of the way. There was a combination post office/general store and I went there for information.
I took my hat off when I went inside. A man was behind the counter reading a newspaper, his glasses slid all the way down his nose. The shelves in the store were nearly bare, just a few canned goods and some flour and sugar.
He glanced up as I came closer. “We ain’t hiring.”
“Not looking to get hired on, sir,” I responded. “I’m looking for a friend.”
He looked me up and down. “You got a friend here in Ringo?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
He sniffed. “Unlikely.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not good enough to be friends with anyone here?”
“No. Unlikely your friend is still in Ringo.”
My heart nearly stopped. He was right. I’d come all this way and I might just be here for him to tell me Charlotte was gone. Left because of this horrible depression. Maybe her family had sold the farm. Hell, maybe her daddy and momma had sold out to that banker after all and all of the effort she’d gone to had been for nothing. My panic must have been apparent on my face because the man took pity on me.
“Son,” he said quietly, “who are you looking for?”
****
I needed courage and the kind I needed came in liquid form. So I found some water, swirled my finger in it, and got roaring drunk behind someone’s barn. The man hadn’t had anything good to say about Charlotte’s family, just that her parents were dead. He called himself a “townsperson,” and Charlotte a “farmperson,” so he didn’t know her well. But he directed me to the cemetery where her parents were buried; her mother’s dirt still fresh.
Fuck.
We’d been apart a year. Sure, I’d taken down the hustling of some women in Chicago, but wouldn’t that have happened anyway with Capone gone? Instead, I’d left Charlotte alone to bury her mother and father and take care of her younger brothers and sister.
I wanted her. Wanted her bad. Wanted to dress her up in silks and satins and lay her on a bed of down and pound the fuck out of her. I wanted to hold her and make sure I was the first person she saw every morning and the last person she saw every night. I wanted Charlotte to smile, even for no reason, as long as I’d been the man to make her smile.
But here she’d been, all along, dealing with death and crops failing. Maybe Mars was right. I didn’t know shit about farming. I hadn’t thought this through. I thought I’d waltz into Charlotte’s life again and the world would stop on its axis and angels would sing.
Life was happening out here. A life I couldn’t relate to. I almost turned around right then, walked my ass back to Chicago. Luckily, I was stone cold drunk, so I just sat there brooding.
Also, because I was drunk, I thought about Charlotte again. Her body and her beauty. Her giving heart and her love. She was everything I wanted and I didn’t want to give up before I started. I’d be on this earth until the Rapture came; didn’t I deserve a little bit of heaven before I was turned to dust?
I passed out behind the barn, nothing decided.
I woke up with a pisser of a headache and a new resolve. Somewhere along the way, I’d given my heart to Charlotte. More than anything, I wanted to see her again and give us a chance. Hadn’t I walked all this way just for that chance? I could walk a little farther.
So I packed up my shit, cleaned up as best I could, and headed in the direction of Charlotte’s family farm. The day was hot, and halfway down the dirt road, I was sweating like I’d run a mile and I probably stunk like it too. Definitely not how I wanted to present myself to her.
My legs were hurting and I was starting to think the aches were never going to go away. I’d always bounced back from injuries, but this one I couldn’t shake. Of course, I had been thrown out of a pretty high window.
At the bottom of the dirt drive, I stopped. The man from the store had said the house was yellow, a cheery color that most of the townspeople teased Charlotte’s father over. But his wife had wanted yellow, her favorite color, and he loved her too much to say no.
The yellow had seen better days. I could see a car parked out to the side of the house and it looked a lot like Mick’s car, even from this distance. A few kids ran around and I could hear their laughter when the breeze blew the right way. There were some outbuildings in disrepair and some hedges around the house. All along the drive was waving Nebraska grass, almost as tall as me.
I took a deep breath and started the last of my journey.
No one noticed me as I walked closer. Probably because of that grass. But I saw Mick on the side of the house. I saw the kids playing. I thought I even saw Fern. But there were two people that I kept my eyes on almost the whole way.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw her. Beautiful as ever, wearing a pink homespun dress, the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was nearly white it was so blonde. I couldn’t see her face, but I could imagine it. Heart shaped and perfect. I stumbled the first time I saw her, that’s what she did to me. Made me forget how to walk when that’s all I’d been doing to get to her side.
And then there was the man. Taller, hair ruffled by the wind. He had a hold of her arm and I almost broke out into a run when I saw it. I wanted to snap his fingers and get him off her. But she broke his hold and started to give him lip, which left him gnashing his teeth and smashing his hat in his hands. Who the fuck was this?
Before I could stop myself, let myself catch a breath, the dirt drive ended in a large front yard. I stepped out from the high Nebraska grass, a little dust cloud kicked up by my shoes. I heard Charlotte say, “No, Jon,” before she pushed him away and turned her head.
That’s when she saw me.