Strib

Note: The following is the first third of my novella "Strib," based on recollections of my late grandfather, concerning a real-life criminal outlaw, who was a distant relative. Everything related herein is based on material Granpa found in the book A History of Bath County Kentucky by John Adair Richards, published 1961. Both Strib Tencher and Ruben Fields really lived, and really died.

Lord but Mr. Strib was an honest man. For a crook and a killer, that is. He always played straight with you, always had a crooked smile, and a wink and a twinkle in his eyes.

And, man alive, could that man fill out a suit of clothes.

Oh, you must not think he was a big man. No siree! But then, Clyde Barrow weren't a big man either, and look how far he done went. Right up to the raid in Joplin, Missouri, when them laws was gunned down, and he and his brother Buck and Bonnie and Blanche (a lot of B names must be BAD LUCK) barely got away, and the whole thing went down in the papers and on the radio and no one ever heard tell of the like.

Yeah, alright, I'm telling this story. The writer fellow, Mr. Baker, said, "I'm going to take a back seat here, Rufus, and just let you go and go. I'll be like a secretary. You just tell the story in your own way."

So he brings out this thing, has two wheels on the front of it what has some strips of what looks like electrical tape running through it, and I guess a microphone like in the radio studios, and I just talk and talk. It was forty-five years ago, I reckon.

Now, in those days, there was a Depression. Sure, you've heard about all those men sleeping under newspaper blankets in city parks, and seen pictures of them lining up for bean soup, and a bunch of fellers looking dragged down and grey. And didn't stockbrokers and Wall Street tycoons jump from windows on Black Tuesday, and go splat with their brains leaking out of their ears on the pavement?

I know I've heard of such things. Anyway, It must have been '31 or '32 I first met Mr. Strib Tencher and his girlfriend Anita. Man alive, a prettier, more gussied-up pair you ain't never laid eyes on before!

It was at the Roadhouse. I remember the music, the smoke, the smell of beer. The toilet had backed up; I remember that smell, too.

Prohibition was still on, but that didn't stop the drinking none. Men and women still got liquored up. Hell, seems they did it more, flinging it in the face of the law and taking their chances. And the sell of booze was an open secret, bribes and under-the-table stuff. Occasionally, a joint might get raided, but like I said, liquor is liquor and people still took their chances.

The Roadhouse was always dark inside, dim, but I remember I was looking over the frosty top of a tall glass of beer when Mr. Strib came sauntering in like maybe he owned the place.

Shifty little feller was with him. Ratty eyes, dark hair combed over. Dressed just like Mr. Strib, only this fellow, whose name was Chester, was never going to be the equal in the looks department. I recall Anita sort of gravitating up at the bar.

Her mouth was working in a little circle, but I couldn't hear a damn thing she was saying over the sound of that dismal honky tonk coming out of that scratchy old Vic. Now, hell, they got full-blown HIFI stereo systems and whatnot...I can hear the radio loud from cars passing as I sit out on the back porch and play pinocchle. And the music? You call that shit music? Nosiree! Not I, said the sailor.

Anyway, these two crazy hoods come sauntering up, and sit down at the table next to me, and, right away, I start to feel a little nervous because one of them, Mr. Strib, seems to be sizing up the clientele. I don't know him from Adam, but he suddenly pops a wary eye at me and I freeze because, no matter what circles I drift in and out of, I never have been a killer.

And this guy, I felt, almost certainly was.

He fiddled with his hat a moment, considering, then, got up, popped it on his cabesa, and strode over, casually. He was standing over me, smiling, but his eyes held something flinty, hard; and I could tell by the set of his jaw that his mind was working like a meat grinder, devouring some secret thoughts or plans he was cogitatin' on.

"Hey pardner. Mind if I sit here for a spell?"

Well, I realized this wasn't really asking a question, but the last thing I wanted to do was offend this particular gentleman, so I quite naturally replied that it was okay by me.

He took his seat, shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, popped a cigarette in the side of his mouth, struck a match on the bottom of his shoe, lit, dragged, exhaled, and then announced, "Name's Tencher. My buddy here is Chet. We, uh, we're looking for a fellow as might want to make a boodle. Someone reliable. Someone we can trust."

I thought this sounded like the most amateurish come-on in movie history, so I said, "Trust don't come easy."

He didn't respond to this. Stubbed out his butt. Lit another.

"We have it on good authority that YOU might be such a man."

I put on my poker face.

"Whose authority? Someone been tellin' tales out of school?"

In truth, I had pulled a "job" or two before, usually working as the driver. Just sit out in front with the engine idling, the day passing like a slow breeze around you as time crawls to a veritable standstill. Flies dying on the windshield.

Inside, they have the guns and the masks and the teller is counting out the boodle, and everyone else is standing stock-still with their hands in the air and looks of terror struck on their faces. Like pictures in a fancy book. But I reckon crime scene photographers don't keep fancy books (they only ever snap photos afterwards, anyway).

So the engine is chugging, and the outside is clear; but then, maybe, all of a sudden, someone somehow has tripped some sort of secret alarm--they have them things you know. Had 'em way back in '31 or '32, I suspect.

But maybe it's just bad luck that the law pulls up to the curb behind you, maybe suspicious. And, all of a sudden, they come flying out the door with a couple of canvas bags and kerchiefs covering the bottoms of their faces, and the laws jump out of the car and draw their heaters, and point and say "Halt! In the name of the law!", or some damn thing.

And then shots are fired, and someone tumbles in the back. The other gunzel jumps up on the running board with a sack full of boodle and a tommy gun blazin'...yeah, and I speed away into the slanting rays of an unforgiving sunset.

So I can't see a damn thing, and the rays of the setting sun are getting in my eyes along with the bugs and the dust, and we go spinning out down the road, never figured out what the hell I hit.

And the posse behind me, and bullets shattering the back window, and one fellow up on the running board shooting, and another in the back bleeding all over the upholstery.

My time in prison was short and unmerciful. Maybe I deserved it, maybe I didn't. At any rate, I had plenty of time to lay back on my piss-stinking bunk, listening to the infernal and never ending tornado of sound all around me...joint never is quiet. And bugs all in my mattress, and the food rotting my guts, and my cellmate.

No, I never got punked-out.

Never happened. Hate to disappoint you; suppose you all are waiting to read details like that in this book. People today like a little good filth mixed in with their adventure yarns...people today, seems like, all they ever think about is sex. Turn on the television, all you see is sex, sex, sex...women walking around half-naked, hanging out of their tops. And, what's more, men lying with other men, working what the Apostle Paul called "That which is unseemly!"

Well, I guess this is a different altogether age. Maybe I don't understand such things. Mr. Strib had his own notions about sex, which he didn't mind sharing, because he considered them proper and righteous. 23 Skidoo.

So I've gone off the rails a bit in my story, but I just wanted to impress to you that I wasn't some inexperienced punk when it came to such things. I had pulled a job or two myself, always as a driver, but it ain't as if I had never had a few shots fired at me, or been in the thick of the action, when it went down.

But getting back to Mr. Strib.

He looked at me with that lopsided, evil leprechaun grin of his, and I guess it must have stirred up the old demon in me, the one that wanted to trespass upon the authority of the state. The one that wanted what it wanted, and would take it any way it could.

"Jooley," he said (he always called me that; I ain't sure why), "I'm looking for a man to drive the car. Just you, me, and Chet here. We hit the McGurdy General Goods Depot. Old Pop McGruder keeps about four thousand dollars cash in the safe. We split it three ways, down the middle, even."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, the brazen way Strib just sat down and laid out what he wanted to do. He didn't mince words or bat around the proverbial bush; he was always honest and forthright about his plans, whatever they were. He once told me he was the world's only straightforward outlaw. I sort of believed that.

I could feel my eyes squint in the smoke and suspicion. I suddenly didn't know how much I liked this punk, and I sure didn't want to be seen talking to him, a co-conspirator, even in a dingy roadhouse speakeasy that served watery beer and acted as a hangout for men looking to get up to no good.

I said, "Nobody gets hurt?"

He acted like the question surprised him. He spat it out like an absurdity, said, "Shoot! Hell no, nobody gets hurt. We take the old man in the back, tie him up, put a rag in his mouth, I dunno. Anyway, piece of cake. We take four thousand dollars just as easy as you please. Only thing is you can't fiddle and fart around. Now, are you in, or aren't you?"

His lady friend hovered at his shoulder, holding a frosty stein in one hand before asking him, all polite and demure if it were okay, sugar, she took a seat with the menfolk.

Her face was too old for someone so young. Strib said, "Oh, I guess I should introduce you. Jules, this here's my girl...Annie. Annie, this here's Jules. He's agreed to be our driver."

I didn't like that. I had, in fact, agreed to no such thing. But I put out a hand anyway, and she put out a hand, and it was like gasping a bunch of brittle twigs. Her skin was dry and white as paper. I wondered if she weren't counted among the living dead.

Now, I ain't one to recollect a lot of what was said forty-five plus years ago. It was probably somethin' along the lines of:

"Well, sugar, I sure am pleased to meet you."

She smiled. Her face was tough, too-pale, and her eyes looked as if she hadn't slept in a dog's age. And of course, they were bloodshot from drink. She had a chipped tooth or two. Strib grabbed her around the waist, said, "She's a peach, ain't she Jooley? Man alive, I didn't know what livin' was until I hooked up with this little girl?"

"Aw, you say that to all the ladies. You and your good looks, Mr. Gangster."

"Shhh! Honey, you're giving away my secrets."

I suddenly piped up, "I don't recall, really, having agreed to anything yet. Not to be a killjoy, but, if you'll pardon. I just got out of Hanksville nigh on a week and a half ago. I'm not real eager to go back."

Matter of fact, I didn't know how in the hell I was going to make it out here, eat and the like, if I DIDN'T go back. The downside of that was putting up with the deadly dull routine, bad food, brutal guards and psychotic bunk mates. Oh, and in the state penitentiary, a man can be attacked and killed at any time.

Strib looked at me a little bewildered, and then looked as if I'd just cut a monstrous fart during a particularly endearing romantic interlude. His buddy Chester sort of leaned back in his chair, huffed, fiddled with his hat.

Strib said:

"Now Jooley, as I live and breathe, are you actually telling me you don't want in on this here little escapade? Why, Jooley, I'm shocked. NO, astounded, really! Why, I imagine a man such as yourself, what's got a dollar to his name and holes in his shoes--"

I quipped:

"--Better holes in my shoes than in my head."

He spat angrily. I could see the white-hot anger of the little tough come shining, laser-like, behind the gentlemanly facade he tried to portray with his eyes.

"Nobody gets hurt, Jools. Hell, you'll be waiting out in the car. Ain't as if I'm gonna be robbing the National Guard Armory! It's just a little one-man mercantile! And that one man should be easy as taking candy from a baby! Now, everyone I talked to said you got guts, but I'm starting to think Hanksville sucked all the fire out of your belly."

He picked up his glass, doffed the rest of his brew, and then set it down on the table a little too hard. It flew into fragments, spilling beer across the surface. " What? You don't have the cajones to pull a real job anymore?"

Chester sat up, nudged him on the shoulder, said something in a stage whisper, and then realized the puddle of beer was threatening to spill off the sides of the table. Anita grabbed an old rag out of her purse and tried to wipe up the spill.

"Man, you sure know how to make a mess, baby! Reminds me of back when I use to be a waitress.

Mr. Strib ignored everything else going on and just continued to look at me with that fiery, burned-over gaze of his.

"Okay, Jooley, I don't like playing games and I don't like waiting around for an answer. I ain't about to beg nobody to ride with me, what's lost the fire in his belly and the iron in his spine! So. One question and I need a straight answer: Are you IN, or not?"

I considered. My hands were shaking a hair, but I could feel the temptation burning inside of me. Oh, in those days it was like an addiction. Risk or no risk, prison or no prison, or death or glory, I ask you: what did a man have to lose? Of course, later I actually read the Bible, and what's the verse? 'What profit a man if he gain the world, and lose his soul?' I can't remember, directly, where that's located, but it sort of sums up the wisdom I learned only too late in life.

I got up.

"I'm...I'm bleedin' Honey!

Strib unfurled his hand. He looked, all of a sudden, as if he were going to be ill.

"Oh, baby, you cut yourself and didn't even realize it. Here--"

Anita digs in her purse for another hankey. I get up, slightly amused that the big, tough gangster is so disturbed by a little of his own blood--to his credit, he looked as if he were doing a pretty good job of controlling himself. He didn't vomit, although he looked about two shades greener than a block of bad cheese.

I doffed the rest of my brew.

"Too much smoke and stale air in here," I said. "A man needs fresh air to think about things. Otherwise, his head gets foggy and fuzzy. I got a hell of a headache coming..."

Strib and Anita looked up at me. She was tenderly sopping the blood off of his hand.

They looked like a couple of ugly kids to me. A couple of no-good punks.

So whatever possessed me I'll never know, but I said, suddenly:

"Where at and what time?"

***

I tossed and turned all night, remembering that infernal grin and those too-white, bone-like fingers, and not liking the thing that I had agreed to one little bit. I tossed and turned in my smelly, bug-infested little room. It was June in Southern Indiana, and that means it was sweaty and hot and you could feel the sweat seep down your spine and gather in your shorts, and you were drippng the stuff and if you smoked, your wind was always spent and you sometimes walked around like you were trying to breathe cotton.

And that's cause I had a touch of asthma or some damn thing. Doctor says I have COPD now. I ain't smoked in twenty years, but I guess that don't matter none. Anyway, when I was coming up, everyone smoked. But I'm rambling again.

I turned over on my bunk, lit a smoke, looked out at the moon which was big and blue like cheese and seemed to shine down mercilessly on a sleeping, evil, sinister world. A world of men like Strib, and myself, who had already seen most of the evil up close and personal.

I had had bad dreams.

I had dreamt about a group of women that you might see in one of those old photos from 1870, 1880...Hoop skirts and thin bodies, severe jaws and mountains of hair done up in heavy buns on the top of the skull. And in my dream, they were standing outside of this house, what looked as big and old and spooky as any house I'd ever seen. A house full of secrets.

And that must have actually been a house full of secrets, too, because I had an indication that I was talking to a policeman, standing outside looking at that weird display of department store dress dummies, or whatever.

"All dead inside," said the man in THAT VOICE, that voice that reminds you a little of WC Fields any time you hear it. They must have coached people seventy, eighty years ago on how to talk on those old films, because so many of the men and women seemed to always sound the same, and the most ridiculous of them always had THAT VOICE.

But I guess the really strange thing is I was somewhere off-camera myself, looking at those women in their weird dresses, and the man that was sort of crouched over at their feet. And then suddenly I realized that they were all dead, posed upright with hidden stands and things to get the image just right for the photographer.

Memento Mori, remembering the dead by posing them in old photographs. It's what a generation before mine did, I remember, to keep the memory of their loved ones alive. Dress them up, sit them up, hell, even STAND them up, and then photograph them, as photographs were considered rare and magical. Don't you know they steal a man's soul?

THE VOICE beside me (whom I could not see) said, "More dead. More dead inside, if someone is fool enough to go in there and find out where they're hidden in that place."

He said this as if the damn place gave birth to new wings and forbidden passages every hour on the hour; or as if the interior had never been explored or mapped by any sane, living man. I looked around me. We were standing on a hill.

Up the hill, the house.

On the cement balustrade midway between a flight of stone steps, the dead ones.

And the world about us looked grey. In the dream, I couldn't see my own body.

The dead woman my vision kept straying back to truly did look cadaverous. Bone-like; it looked as if every once of fat that had ever been on her old, decaying skeleton had been sucked right out.

She was brittle, thin; looked like a stick of wood.

I suppose I was thinking quite a bit about death as I looked out on that fat moon. I supposed mine would come early to me, in a hail of gunfire. Alternately, if I were ever forced to kill a man, and I was captured alive, I supposed it was a given I'd end up in the electric chair. Even if I somehow evaded it, as I told you before, a man's life can be cut out from under him at ANY TIME while he's serving time.

And even if I grew old in prison, I pretty much figured that, eventually, I'd get tired of the grinding, hellish existence behind bars, and probably just hang myself, or jump off a catwalk or something. Damn, I was really working myself up into a sorry state.

The moon outside reminded me of a rare bird my Pa use to talk about, a fellow from Bath County he once met called Rube Fields. I could see Rube sort of come to life in my head as I sat there contemplating, smoking. It brought some joy to me that troubled night, I can tell you.

***

Ruben was a big man. Well, a big child, really. He was what you call a "breech birth." I reckon you already know what that is, correct? Anyway, he came out with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and the doctor thought he must surely have strangled to death, but that isn't what happened. Nosiree! He slapped him in the ass, and the little bastard started bawling like...well, like a baby. They cleaned him up and hoped for the best. But Ruben (named after the Bible character I reckon) was always going to be really special, if you know what I mean.

But keen! Man alive! He could add up whole lists of numbers in his head; got so where, come inventory, the owner for the dry goods mercantile and the candy shop, and the feed lot, and the general store would all hire Ruben out to add up the numbers for him as if he were some sort of human adding machine. As if you could just crank the sonofabicth by one arm, and get the correct answer every time.

They even tested him on this WITH an adding machine, and found out that he was correct every time. He only ever flubbed once or twice, and only by a few cents or a couple of digits. But, man, could he really tally up those totals, no matter how big they were.

Of course, there were other strange things about him, too. For instance, he very seldom wore his pointy-toed boots on the right feet. No matter how many times his Ma took them off and put them on the RIGHT FEET, he'd always take 'em of later and put them on the WRONG feet, with the cowboy toes pointing all cattywampus in the wrong direction.

And he always wrongly buttoned the shirts, and his belt was always hanging loose, and the buttons on his trousers were always misbuttoned; he sometimes put his pants on backwards. No, I don't think Rube was trying to make a fashion statement; he was just daft, ya'unnerstan'? But, man alive, that old boy was smart as a whip when it come to the numbers! And he was smart in other ways, too.

A man once told my father that he actually spent the night over at Rube's as a house guest, although I can't imagine why. This man had been taken by the claim that Rube could be awakened in the middle of the night, out of a dead sleep, and could be asked what time it was, and he could tell you EXACTLY, to the minute, what time it was. And he never, ever failed at this. So the man was skeptical.

And roundabout half past three a.m. , the man (who must have been staying awake in anticipation of just such a test of the legendary Rube Fields's chronometric acumen) tiptoes into the room where Rube is sleeping and very politely wakes the man, asking him, "Say Rube, my watch has stopped. Do you know what time it is?"

Oh lordy! Of course, Rube still half-asleep, sat up and shook his great greasy head and said, "Why Clem, I believe it's 3:45," and then must have laid back down and started snoring again almost immediately, because the man who woke him found himself just about amazed at the demonstration.

And maybe he found himself feeling a little creepy, too.

But, you know those aptitude tests where they ask you about the velocity of an eastbound train and a west bound train and when it will arrive and so on and so forth? I had something like that on a test they gave to me at Joliet, but I'll be damned if I could ever answer such a question. But Rube, well, he could tell you sure enough and not miss by a minute.

And that man, believe it or not, could tell you how many times a railroad wheel turned over from Lexington to Louisville and back again. Got to where the railroad conductors wouldn't even charge him fare, only for his meals. He was what I suppose in these days they call "celebrity."

Lord, though, that man was a big eater. Daddy said Rube was tall, greasy, cross-eyed, stuttered and stammered, always looked like he just crawled up out of bed, and his bed might have been a hayloft. I guess his Ma tried to keep him clean but it was a hard task.

Long legs, big, enormous gut...Daddy always said Rube was like a big man baby. Man child.

Brings me to another point about him, and this one is strange. Robert Ripley strange. Now, Rube was a BIG eater. Man just loved to eat. And when he was a little boy, and would hang around the school playground--Rube never went to school himself, but he sometimes was allowed playtime with the other kids, although I think they teased and bullied him a piece.

Well, Rube liked the idea of eating all them lunch pails full of crackers and cheese and sandwiches and whatnot. But he didn't have any way to get his mitts on them, and Rube wasn't no bully; he wasn't going to strong-arm a bunch of smaller kids to get their lunches.

So Rube got kind of blue about it I guess. Well, one day, Rube is supposed to have been sitting out in the sugar cane field with a machete, cutting and eating that sugar cane. I'm sure Rube was probably happiest when he was all alone, when there weren't nobody there to mock him or stare at him or pick on him. Anyway, he goes to cut him some more sugar cane and, whaddya know?

Suddenly, a snake popped up out of the cane.

According to local legend, Rube stared at that snake. And I reckon the snake stared at Rube. And maybe they made eye contact...Hey, maybe you can help me with this? I once heard that snakes are actually blind. Is that true? You guess so? Huh. Well, maybe something a might strange was going on, because time must have stopped for a moment like they say. And Rube just looked that snake in its beady little eyes, and reached out his hand, and I don't guess he even dropped a bead of sweat...and he just picked t up by the neck and put it in his pocket. And then, remembering all those school lunches he wanted, he went to work looking for more snakes.

They talked about it for years.

Rube sneaking around the playground, his pockets bulging with wiggly, squiggly snakes. Well, when the bell rang, and the kids came outside with their pails, what do you think that big, crazy lummox did, huh? [Laughs]

Well, tiptoed up to the edge of the playground, and just threw them snakes everywhere. A little girl gets a snake crawling across her little show, and some barefoot boy with dirty toes sure don't want to step on no snake, and, all of a sudden, you have a veritable Exodus of little tots run screaming from the playground like the most deadly of all devils has appeared in a puff of sulfur smoke on the playground sand.

And Rube just waited until they were all gone, and then went around to where they had dropped their lunch pails, and scooped up what he wanted. And they talked about that for YEARS after it happened, old codgers sitting around the stove in the general store, spinning tales and rememberin'

[laughs]

But Daddy said it didn't always work out so well for Rube. Isaac Lamphere was one of the meanest old cusses in the county and he and his brother Dud were usually drunker than a pair of proverbial skunks on Kentucky Bourbon or their own sourmash concoction.

Well, one day, as they were sitting on the porch of their shack, passing the jug back and forth, here come Rube, just as innocent as can be, carrying his lunch pail. And they both started hollering at him some, I guess sort of being friendly but sort of mocking him as the village idiot. Whatever the case, Rube didn't pay it much mind, but just held out his arm and waved and continued walking down the road until he was out of sight.

Well, those two hillbillies drank some more, and some more, and a little more, until finally, they were full-on soused. And they must have wandered in and out of the shack here and there, and left their jug of sourmash out in the sun, and then come back out...and somebody tipped up the bottle. And do you know what happened?

Out pops a snake! Yep. Straight from the neck of that jug. Well, they reared back in surprise and anger, and finally, after their drunken noggins cleared a bit, they started grumbling about how it could have happened. And, remembering the story of Rube and the school lunches, and knowing the man had a special way with snakes, they soon began to blame Rube for coming back and putting a snake in their jug when their backs were turned. Something like that.

And two old hillbilly cusses like that, you don't want to make angry at you. Meaner than hell, both Isaac and...oh, what was his brother's name? Angus? Maybe that was it. I can't rightly remember now.

Anyway, they fetched their dog, a big, black monster looked as if he could eat a baby and come back for second helpings, not a dog you wanted to tangle with, in other words--and they put a log chain around his neck, and set off after Rube.

At this point, Rube was probably about halfway home when he heard the dog barking and the men yelling and cussing, and he turned, and, as daft as he was, he figured out pretty quick that neither of them meant him anything in the way of good.

Well, Rube took off running, heading off into the brush and across a field, with those two old hornets and their killer hunting dog hot on his heels.

Daddy was plowing when he said he looked up, and lo and behold, here come Rube running as fast as his fat body would allow him across the open field, all sweat dripping down into his eyes, and frog legs with the pointy boots on the wrong feet, and huge sweat stains all over his chambray shirt.

And Daddy stopped plowing and Rube come up to him and just fell at his feet blubbering, saying, "Silas, aw! You got to help me Silas! Them bad boys is gonna switch me!"

Truth be told, they was going to do a right more than just switch him. Could hardly be called "boys" either, considering they both were on the high side of forty, but Daddy always got a kick out of telling this story, and I'm sure that's the way Rube actually said it; Daddy would have remembered that.

Anyway, so Daddy ushers him into the barn , and tells him to go hide in the hayloft, and here come the brothers and their dad blamed mean old junkyard dog. And they both have fire in their eyes and whiskey in their guts, and they're just plum certain that Ruben Fields is the one that put that serpent in their jug o' syrup. And one of 'em says, "You seen that cotton-pickin', plug-ugly, bandy-legged, feeble-minded polecat Rube Fields come runnin' past here, Silas? We mean to string that sonofaheifer up!"

Daddy acted surprised and like he couldn't find his backside with a flashlight. Which, in them days, it was advisable for a black man to act like when confrontin' a couple of angry, drunken white hilljacks. But I digress, I guess.

"Why, no sir, Dud! Ain't seed nor heerd nuthin'! Say, What's that scoundrel been up to now!"

The hair on old Isaac's head stood straight out like a porcupine, and his entire face turned beet red, and Daddy said you could just about see steam coming out of the skinny old bastard's ears. His eyes popped out like a cartoon character, and he shouted, "Did? Did? Damn it! I'll tell you exactly what he did! That halfwit went and put one of his infernal serpents onto us, that's what! Like to have bit my arm clean off, and that's no easy feat! Why, I'm amazed we're still here to tell you the sorry story! Why, when I find that fat, bandy-legged no-account, I'm..."

But he couldn't finish his sentence, because he was about to erupt like a volcano, and frankly, it seemed as if, as he stood there with spit flying out from between his half-dozen or so teeth, he had actually forgotten the faculty of speech. Daddy said it was all he could do to keep from laughing, knowing that Rube was inside hiding in the hayloft. Daddy also said he was scared they were actually going to hurt Rube if they laid hands on him.

Somehow or other though, he convinced those two idjits to go ahead and give it up. Or, at least, he managed to steer them on the wrong trail, knowing that the more they sobered up and the more time passed, they'd gradually give up and go home. Until then, though, Rube was going to be spending the night with us. Which was fine, except Daddy said later he should hitch Rube up to the plow and send the mule back in his place, considering just how much food Rube could put away.

I guess the last thing I know about old Rube is the story of a time he actually did stick one of his snakes in the mouth of a tea kettle. Here, this is sort of funny.

Rube's mother was baking rhubarb pies for a church social, and Rube's nose for rhubarb pie was pretty good, and, as I've already told you, his stomach was pretty much a bottomless pit. And so his ma is sweating over the cook stove, and old Rube comes in across the yard, and he has a few slithery friends stuffed into his pockets. He comes up the back steps there, I guess, into the kitchen, just following his nose after being outside, playing in nature--alone, as he always was.

"Hey Ma! Man alive, that's a good smelling pie!"

Rube must have looked at those pies like a wolf sizing up a stray sheep. Maybe his eyes started blazing and his jaws started dripping like in a cartoon, I don't know, but his ma turned to him and said "Now Rube, you just keep your hands off boy! Them's for the church picnic tomorrow. Now, scat!"

And she turned her back, and swished out of the kitchen a moment, giving Rube plenty of time to work his trick.

Now, I don't know if he did it for meanness, or because she hurt his feelings...or just because he thought it might be a way to scare her out of the kitchen in time for him to get him a hunk of one of them rhubarb pies, but, man alive, when he saw that tea kettle, he crept up to it like a bandito, and put one of those damn snakes in the tea kettle. Can you believe that?

So anyway, his Ma comes back in the kitchen, and Rube is standing there looking as guilty as a polecat in a chicken coop and, after a few minutes that tea kettle starts to whistle, and his Ma goes up to it, and she screams! And screams! And goes running out of the house with her apron over her heard, screaming like a madwoman, and everyone near enough to hear her turning out of their houses and onto the porch, pulling from pipes and smokes and wondering just what in cotton-pickin' hell had done got into that feeble-minded Fields woman. Must be something to do with her idiot son, they probably reckoned, and of course they were right.

I never did catch what happened to Rube. I reckon as he moved north when his folks died. Maybe he found some folks to take care of him, or was moved to an institution; 'cause a feller like that sure as heck couldn't take care of his self. I can sort of see him in my mind's eye: a fat, frog-legged, sweaty, dirty man, with pie stains running down his shirtfront, and his boots on the worng feet. I can see him walking into the sunset of them yesterdays, counting the times the wheels on them trains turn over and over. And do you know what?

Anyway, I guess I went off on a tangent, even though as you made out it was okay. You came to hear all about Mr. Strib, the third-rung Clyde Barrow. Not about Ruben Fields, God rest his soul.

You do know they cooked Mr. Strib in the electric chair, correct? Sure.

So this is that story.

Now, Mr. Strib decided to leave Kentucky and head on out to Minneapolis, which had a reputation in those days. A reputation as a sort of criminal haven. I don't know if that's true or not, but he took the train out there.

Of course, after killing that G-Man, the Federals were closing in on him fast. He may have never got the notoriety from the press and the history books as what John Dillinger or Pretty Boy Floyd did, but he sure made Uncle Sam a fightin' onery. Well, the G-Men find some two-bit floozy Strib paired up with, some woman with no more loyalty in her than Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot...I hate to put it that way but, Man...I mean, even if you are criminals, ya understand, you ought to at least have the common decency not to rat out your compatriots just as soon as the government offers you some kind of deal. But, well, I guess there really ain't no honor among thieves, right?

So they know right where Mr. Strib was headed, and they figure to catch him at the station. But Mr. Strib has reportedly had some kind of surgery to keep from being recognized, so the G-Men aren't quite sure if he'll even look the same.

But they stakeout the station, and every man gets off the train and steps out onto the platform, some detectives standing there and one of 'em says to every man, "Strib? Strib?"

And of course no one knew what the hell the loon was saying. Whoever heard of a name like "Strib"? But, sure enough, here he come, and the G-Man said it again, "Strib? Strib? Is that you?"

And do you know what. As dad-blamed stupid as that boy could be, I never would have imagined he's actually turn around when he HEARD SOMEONE CALL HIS NAME. I mean, what did he expect? How many men in the world are named 'Strib Tencher'? Who else could possibly be calling that name except a cop? Stupid, on the face of it. But I have a theory about that.

Anyway, they said later he cracked that famous, toothsome grin when they put the bracelets on him. Lead him out of that train station to a waiting car, and straight to jail.

And then to trial.

Well, I kept a low profile to say the least during the whole ordeal. But i kept having these nightmares, night after night. Oh, one I remember real well, I was sitting, driving one of them damn getaway cars...but it was like I was frozen in time. I was outside of myself, could see myself, was looking at myself, ya see...The car was buried at the bottom of this long trench in the middle of the road. Maybe fifteen feet deep. I could see cops and lawyers, judges and the like milling about, looking down at our car in the trench. I had the most curious expression on my face, like my face had frozen in a smile that was slowly turning into a scream. My eyes were like twin moons.

Above, a puffy-faced little man that looked like Alfred Hitchcock walked around the top of the trench or pit or whatever (now that I think about it, it almost looked like the nose of the car had burrowed out all that dirt, like maybe it had taken off from the scene of a job like some damn torpedo, and somehow got the nose caught in the ground but kept going...), sweating and making faces. He was dressed like all of them guys back then: wingtip collar, red bowtie, spats, tails, little pince-nez glasses on a cord. Maybe he said things like "Oh, my, what a bloody mess this is, Merriweather. How frightfully gauche! How oorfull an end for them to come to." Most likely he said nothing, and my imagination is filling in the rest.

At any rate, I didn't dare show up at that particular funeral. Place would be crawling with lawmen, I knew. But it was a few days or sometime later I was drinking hooch in an old roadside tavern when I heard a couple of fellas talking. One of 'em turns to the other, says, "Yeah, I was there when they planted Strib. It's true; damn electric chair turned his skin black. Hell, I thought they had fouled up and bagged them a n----- instead. But it was Strib, sure enough."

Of course, I had heard the rumors, but I didn't really want to believe them. This sort of confirmed it for me, of course, place was so dark and quiet the two lamebrains talking didn't realize they had a BONAFIDE high-yaller sitting just a table away from them. Of course, in those days, I always could pass for a white man, I'm so light skinned. Lot of other light-skinned coloreds found out the same thing, too. Made life easier.

But anyway, where was I? Okay, so I'm out at twilight, and watching the sun set over the grimy, ugly little shops and fleabag rooming houses in Jasper, and here chugs up this rust bucket car, a grinding and groaning as if it was just about to blow a gasket, and I do a double-take and damn if it ain't Mr. Strib and his stupid sidekick. And some dame in back.

I say that because it wasn't the same dame I had met earlier. Apparently, that relationship soured real quick. Unlike Clyde, Mr. Strib never quite found him a Bonnie Parker to help make him notorious.

So I look in the passenger side window, and there is Mr. Strib chewing a toothpick and looking wild and like he just toned-up on a couple of snootfulls of really powerful Kentucky bourbon, and the idiot sidekick is driving but Mr. Strib says, "This here is Joolie. He's a good man to have in a pinch. Here, get on outta that seat and get in back, let him take the wheel. We got a night's work ahead of us!"

I could tell by looking at his eyes, just then, that Mr. Strib had already guessed my secret. He had such a sly, devilish, weird little look on his face. Damn if he wasn't a darn sight better looking than that two-bit polecat punk Barrow. except for his teeth. I remember Mr. Strib had bad teeth. Cracked and grimy. He wasn't missing any, mind you (unlike about half the residents of Gatlin and the surrounding area), but, still, B-A-D, bad.

I reached in back and shook hands with the new girl. She had on too much thick, white face make-up over a face that was a little too hard to be called homely. She had a gap in her teeth and her eyes were a little tired, a little old. Maybe she had bad skin, too. Something about her struck me as wrong, and I guess the feeling was mutual, because I got the impression, right away, we weren't going to ever be close friends.

"Pleasure to meet you, Jules." she quipped. By her tone, I could tell it weren't no pleasure, not for her at least.

The idiot slid out of the driver's seat, and I walked around the side, paused for a moment, swallowed my fear, and got in. Strib said,

"Go ahead and park up the street. But keep it running. If anyone gets suspicious, put your arm around Geraldine here, pretend you're just out with your best girl for a little air. Me and Mac will go in and case the joint. It's damn near closing time, so there shouldn't be any customers really; but just in case, Mac will cover them and I'll take the old man in back to the safe. I'm going to tie him up, cold-cock him, and then we'll beat on out of there with the boodle, twenty-three skiddoo. Easy as taking candy from a baby, Joolie. Now, how d'ya like them apples?"

I told him them apples smelled just fine to me. Bugs spattered against the windshield; everything felt unreal. Around me, death, or at least the possibility of death, seemed to settle over everything like a grim pall.

The world looked flat and ugly. Hell, I felt flat and ugly. And stupid as a box of rocks. But, damn, I couldn't very well back out now, could I? I mean, how about all that easy money? Something I needed at the time, money. Everyone needed it, always have and always will.

But some will work for it, and others will beg for it. Me? I had a devil in me at the time, so I guess I just naturally fell in with them what will steal and kill for it. Dig?

So we go over into Rockfish, and it is about a block long with one stoplight and a row of crumbling brick buildings on either side, and one general store, one soda fountain, one gas station...you get the idea. And maybe a townie or two ambling along the way; but, really, Mr. Strib picked an opportune hour because everyone is inside eating dinner and so the streets are deserted. There's a lunch counter with one fat, plug-ugly white man sitting in the window eating a sandwich over a cup of coffee. And then I pull up at the curb, and Mr. Strib says, "Okay, right here."

So I look and see a sign says, "Beeder's Rock-a-Shop," whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. The old man inside, though, sold little polished crystals and pieces of quartz I found out later. He was a tall, rawboned flinty old fart, waked around with a crutch perpetually propped under one arm, and hate just bleeding out of every pore of his body.

So it all went down like this: a real comedy of errors. They go inside, and Mr. Strib and his sidekick start looking over the display cases. Maybe there was someone else inside there shopping, I don't remember right at this point. But I guess it isn't important.

Anyway, they go in, and right away I guess he makes out how nervous and strange these guys are. Beeder might have been a cantankerous old fart, but I guess he didn't fall off a hay wagon yesterday. Strange talking about him like that; he's probably been dead twenty, twenty-five years.

Anyway, Strib tells me later he asks 'em, "Can I help you gentleman?"

And Strib looks up from that display case, and he doesn't like Beeder right from the start, eyes him and they don't like each other like a fox and a hound. Only this time, Beeder played the fox.

And Strib smiles that huge, cracked grin and says "I'll take these."

And he don't specify which watch he wants. So Beeder gets kind of huffy, says, "Well, which one would you be wanting, sir? I don't want to drag 'em all out of the case..."

Suddenly, that stupid fellow Strib carried around with him reaches into the waistband of his pants...maybe he was just adjusting his belt, but Beeder suddenly reaches behind the counter and screams "I knew it! I knew you two was up to no good!"

And suddenly up comes his shotgun, and Strib and his flunky go rocketing out of that store, but Beeder lets fly with a double barrel of buckshot. BOOM!

I'm sitting in the front seat of the car, my heart hammering in my chest, and, all of a sudden, that huge display window with "Beeder's Rock-A-Shop" painted on it real nice blew out in a curtain of glass splinters, and Mr. Strib and the other bandit come running down the street, and that guy dives into the front seat of the car, and Strib climbs up on the running board, and curses and says, "Get us the hell out of here, Joolie! The jig is up!"

And so here I go screeching out of Rockfish, and I look behind me and all of a sudden in the rear view I see that a local sherriff going in the opposite direction has suddenly done a U-turn and is burning up rubber, gaining on us.

And Strib is still hanging on to the running board, and the idiot in the front seat has straightened himself out, and is going for his gun, which I thought was strange because if he shot out the window he was going to end up hitting Strib.

But Strib had a clear shot. Suddenly, something zinged and shattered the back window into an ugly starburst.

"Well, I'll be, that sonofabitch hasn't even given us a chance to surrender!"

The woman in back was stretched across the seat. I looked back there to see she had blood and glass in her hair. She wasn't moving. I wondered if she was dead.

Of course, she wasn't dead. Not just then. (Smiles)

But she had apparently fainted.

The sherriff fired, and Strib fired again. I instantly realized that the pathetic boy I had first encountered in that roadhouse the other day just seemed to have disappeared. Always did, in situations like this. Mr. Strib got a wild, wolfish, devilish look in his eyes; like maybe he had split personalities, or maybe he was Jesse James in a former life...hell, that's exaggerating, I know, but that's the only way I can put it.

We got out of that one, of course. I jumped the line, lead that lawman on a merry chase, and he spun out into a ditch before backing up and deciding maybe getting himself killed wasn't worth it. But we were hurting pretty bad at that point.

It was later we drove out into a deserted campground over in the next county, and we crawl out of the car slowly, like maybe we're all just real happy and surprised we're even still alive.

I get up from the driver's seat, and I realize I ruined the seat covers...that's embarrassing as hell, I know, but nobody at all seemed to notice the stink, and I cleaned myself up good at a little creek off in the brush. That's what we all did.

And Blondie gets out of the car, and she is cursing and talking to herself, and she puts a hand back of her head and brings forth some blood and little sparkles of the back windshield, and she starts screaming. "Oh Jesus! Why'd I ever let you idiots talk me into coming along on this harebrained scheme! Damn it, I could of been killed!"

And Strib don't pay her no mind at first, is just sort of milling around, trying to calm down, and takes his coat off and throws it on the hood of the car. Dimwit is sitting in the door of the passenger side seat with his head between his legs. And me, I just sat in a little clump all to myself, my arms resting on my legs and smoking one cigarette after another, trying to figure out just why the hell I had come along in the first place.

Suddenly, Strib piped up, "All right, all right I heard you the first time, woman! You wanted to ride a long like a big shot. Well, darlin' you can get shot at and take the risks as well as divvy the rewards."

She sneered, "What damn rewards? Ain't no damn rewards. You went in and fouled up the whole cotton-pickin' sorry mess. You meant to tell me you didn't know as Ol' Beeder wouldn't just fold his tail between his legs and run? Are you kidding me?"

And then, as I remember, everything became quiet. And a dark cloud covered the sun.

Now, you heard of the raid on the Joplin Missouri hideout, right? Damn near as I can tell, the raid on Mr. Strib's hideout in Rockfish was nearly identical. Which you think made the papers, though?

As I recall, someone had just put a pot of beans on the stove. Delphine and another woman, I don't rightly recollect her name, was puttering around a dirty kitchen, cooking up a mess of black-eyed peas, pinto beans, corn bread, cabbage; in other words, a recipe for hideous, sour, rotten-egg farts. The day was quiet and cool. Outside, you could hear a motor putter lazily by on a Sunday, when most everyone was still in church.

That was a different world. I'm a hundred and two, and I seen a lot of world go floating by since I was first hatched. Today, folks are as likely to go to church in their living room, watching some mega-rich charlatan squeeze out a few polite words about the "Gospel of Prosperity." Or "Jesus loves positive thinking," or even, and most especially, "Giving till it hurts." i suppose the lot of us missed out on whatever churchin' was aiming to teach us. But, all this is another story for another time. Oh hold on, I do got a little something to relate, Mr. Baker, before you go.

***

Okay, I got a story's gonna kill ya, right? You've heard the old saw, the one about the butcher and the string of sausages? Like, it's supposed to be an urban legend, like something that just gets passed on from a friend of a friend's cousin's chiropractor.

Well, the story is true. Right, right, I know, but, I swear it happened in my hometown. Let me just tell you how it all went down.

There was this new kid working at the butcher shop. he was some stinky, sweaty, pig-like guy, some meshuggah meat head--so maybe it's fitting he should work for the butcher. Kid always smelled like Vitalis and cheap cologne, cigarettes. I think he was probably one of the first guys I knew smoked grass, but that's neither here nor there, right?

Anyway, this old bat Grizelda Van Bilderbutt or some such, comes in one day, and the kid is just looking to get fired. Doesn't like real work, right? So he has this string of sausages, and he slips the end of it under his apron, so the last sausage is hanging out the bottom of the apron he's wearing, which is all bloody anyway.

So he goes to make his deliveries, and he's got this thing hanging out the bottom of his apron, which looks like...well, you know damn well what it looks like. And he delivers a pound of liverwurst this way, and the woman opens the door, and she sees his...sausage hanging down. Oh man! She could just barely contain her embarrassment as he put the package of beef livers or whatever on the end table in the foyer, and this middle class wifey is standing there with her hand over her mouth.

So this chump goes back to the butcher shop, and he's laughing all day until this old bat comes. Well, let's go back to where we started. Old Grizelda or whatever comes in, and he's standing at the butcher shop counter, and she wants some liverwurst or whatever, and then she sees his sausage-shlong hanging out the bottom of his apron. Her head spins, but she thinks it's all some kind of terrible mistake.

"Young man!" she says, snapping her fingers. "Young man, you, you're...you must really..." but she can't get the words out. He suddenly grins a big grin, looks down at the sausage hanging out the edge of his apron, and then, grabbing it, says, "Oh, this old thing? Here, let me cut you off a slice!"

And he throws his phony dingaling up on the counter, and whacks the end of it with his cleaver.

The old bat suddenly turns as white as a sheet. Her old, skinny, withered body goes as tiff as a board, her hands splayed out abover her head in terror...and she drops dead on the spot!

Well, the mook is suddenly kind of scared. Gee, I mean, he didn't MEAN to kill her; it was just a joke, after all.

Now, back then, there was this case of this guy, what stole a corpse from the cematary and lived with it in his house. After he died, the cops found out all about it, and that he was...ahem, well, you know what he was doing to that dead body. But the mook butcher's assistant must have had some odd ideas that this is what he could do to...I don't know.

Anyway, he gets down. Maybe he starts to perform CPR. I dunno. But he starts kissing this old bat, he sort of starts...liking it. And then he starts vigourously rubbing the chest. You know, CPR and all.

Well, before you know it, there's a sausage being slipped beneath his apron, a one hundred percent MAN MEAT sausage! Yep. You guessed it: a little necrophiliac lovemaking.

And, much to his surprise, after a few moments of this, the old bat (who was as dead as corned beef) starts to...move! And she's breathing, counghing up some nasty bile, and the mook, who can't believe it, jumps up from, er, ah, his activity, and says, "I-I thought you were dead!"

And suddenly, the butcher, who was rumbling around in the back, cutting wind and liverwurst, I dunno, comes out and says, "Whatsa goin' on around here? You--"

He points to the old lady, who has sat up and is getting up slowly from the dirty floor.

"I was dead," she said flatly.

"You," the butcher said again, astounded, "you tellin' me you was...dead on my floor?"

She nodded her assent. The mook nodded too. It was a darn strange day.

"Well...did you see heaven, or hell?"

The old lady cussed, spat, and said, with a bitter look on her face, "Heaven? Hell? Hell! I saw this big oaf humping and jumping me, is what I saw! Him and his dirty jokes..."

But the butcher, instead of calling the cops, which he probably should have down, said, "Well...it must have been some magical love making, because it brought YOU back from the dead!"

And they both agreed. The mook, who was sweating bullets, standing there, certain he was headed to state prison, breathed a sigh of relief. The butcher suddenly turned to his ressurrected customer, said, "Hey, you know, we really ought to try and cash on on this thing. Dontcha think?"

And Grizelda Van Bilderass smiled, a horrible, toothless grin.

Soon, the mook was standing all day in the exhinit in the back, his "Miracle Member" thrust through a glory hole in a canvas curtain, adorned with pictures of a male Adonis whose love making could bring women, even old and gnarled grannies with one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel, BACK FROM THE DEAD.

And Japanese tourists with brand new Polaroid cameras ALL wanted their pictures taken with the mook's...eh, you know what they wanted their pictures taken with. I guess those pics still circulate. Underground, you know. Anyway, it's all true. Honest.