Full Dark, No Stars

I’ll wait from midnight to dawn behind yr place every night for 2 weeks, the note said. If you don’t show up, I’ll know it’s over between us & go back to Hemingford & never bother you again even tho’ I will go on loving you forever. We are young but we could lie about our ages & start a good life in another place (California). I have some money & know how to get more. Victoria knows how to find me if you want to send me a note, but only once. More would not be safe.

I suppose Harlan and Sal ie Cotterie might have that note. If so, they have seen that my son signed his name in a heart. I wonder if that was what convinced Shannon. I wonder if she even needed

convincing. It’s possible that al she wanted on earth was to keep (and legitimize) a baby she had already fal en in love with. That’s a question Arlette’s terrible whispering voice never addressed. Probably she didn’t care one way or the other.

Henry returned to the mouth of the al ey every day after that meeting. I’m sure he knew that the cops might arrive instead of Victoria, but felt he had no choice. On the third day of his vigil, she came.

“Shan wrote back right away, but I couldn’t get out any sooner,” she said. “Some goofy-weed showed up in that hole they have the nerve to cal a music room, and the penguins have been on the warpath

ever since.”

Henry held out his hand for the note, which Victoria gave over in exchange for a Sweet Caporal. There were only four words: Tomorrow morning. 2 o’clock.

Henry threw his arms around Victoria and kissed her. She laughed with excitement, eyes sparkling. “Gosh! Some girls get al the luck.”

They undoubtedly do. But when you consider that Victoria ended up with a husband, three kids, and a nice home on Maple Street in the best part of Omaha, and Shannon Cotterie didn’t live out that

curse of a year… which of them would you say struck lucky?

I have some money & know how to get more, Henry had written, and he did. Only hours after kissing the saucy Victoria (who took the message He says he’ll be there with bells on back to Shannon), a young man with a flat cap pul ed low on his forehead and a bandanna over his mouth and nose robbed the First National Bank of Omaha. This time the robber got 800 dol ars, which was a fine haul. But

the guard was younger and more enthusiastic about his responsibilities, which was not so fine. The thief had to shoot him in the thigh in order to effect his escape, and although Charles Griner lived, an infection set in (I could sympathize), and he lost the leg. When I met with him at his parents’ house in the spring of 1925, Griner was philosophical about it.

“I’m lucky to be alive at al ,” he said. “By the time they got a tourniquet on my leg, I was lying in a pool of blood damn near an inch deep. I bet it took a whole box of Dreft to get that mess up.”

When I tried to apologize for my son, he waved it away.

“I never should have approached him. The cap was pul ed low and the bandanna was yanked high, but I could see his eyes al right. I should have known he wasn’t going to stop unless he was shot

down, and I never had a chance to pul my gun. It was in his eyes, see. But I was young myself. I’m older now. Older’s something your son never got a chance to get. I’m sorry for your loss.”

After that job, Henry had more than enough money to buy a car—a nice one, a tourer—but he knew better. (Writing that, I again feel that sense of pride: low but undeniable.) A kid who looked like he

only started shaving a week or two before, waving around enough wampum to buy an almost-new Olds? That would have brought John Law down on him for sure.

So instead of buying a car, he stole one. Not a touring car, either; he plumped for a nice, nondescript Ford coupe. That was the car he parked behind St. Eusebia’s, and that was the one Shannon

climbed into, after sneaking out of her room, creeping downstairs with her traveling bag in her hand, and wriggling through the window of the washroom adjacent to the kitchen. They had time to exchange a single kiss—Arlette didn’t say so, but I stil have my imagination—and then Henry pointed the Ford west. By dawn they were on the Omaha-Lincoln Highway. They must have passed close to his old

home—and hers—around 3 that afternoon. They might have looked in that direction, but I doubt if Henry slowed; he would not want to stop for the night in an area where they might be recognized.

Their life as fugitives had begun.