The Outlaw Album: Stories

            An uncle who’d had two ships blown wide and sunk beneath him in the Pacific, and came home with what they called “shell shock”—a cracked and occasionally cascading state of mind that was accompanied by a delicate lacing of public shame—on the phone from Australia, where he’d emigrated in 1955: “I knew Blue from when I ran errands for the men out at Cozy Grove, the bar there. I never saw him with a horse. He wasn’t much higher’n a belt buckle, but he was stronger’n Limburger cheese. He’d carry feed sacks from town for a nickel. I never heard of Dad doin’ much of anything with horses, neither, but go broke bettin’ on ’em. You knew Dad was born well-to-do, didn’t you? Had all that land once out by JJ Highway. Lost everything before I was born on moonshine and ladies in red and mighty slow horses, and never even said sorry, either.”

            So it’s written down for an accident by the law, and the Ballou kids from that home-sawn house on the Hill come along fatherless into the war years, years that were hard on everybody, those wrinkling years of rubber rations, gas rations, meat rations, and unlimited worry, worry, every day the worry and the wrinkling and another supper leached from the same ham bone and more navy beans. See them waiting for dark before touring the square during the holiday season, heavy wet misting clouds between the tall lamps and their feet, pausing before the keenly garish shop windows, dampening scarves molding to their heads, wearing the uncertain slanting gaze of children who’ve been scalded other times for acting too familiar. A damp virtuosity of misshapen reflections on the street, the windows, the eyeglasses of the few walkers passing by, and two girls noting to each other the presents they most favored from shops they’d never go inside.

            My father, drinking the whiskey he loved in the shadowed garage, with meddlers out of sight, fall 1992: “We each of us get dealt a lot of cards by our old ones, son, but you don’t want to play them all.”

            The Hill as it was is vanished now, finished off by high heels and humiliated scolds, flattened to nothing and the scraps carted away in 1956. The sound of her high heels clicking on sidewalk cement brought water to the mouths of men within ear of her sashay, moist and listening as she came along so avid and fluid, with fluctuating mounds, the clicks entering their heads with the rhythm of dreams. A blooming of taffeta and a sweet woozy smell. Her voice was rich and round and rolled on and on, seducing with each spin, and the voice gave her a fresh name—Dyna Flo. A smitten car dealer used her in local radio spots, and she said the tagline so it held within it the promise of everything craved: “It’s the Dyna Flo that makes it magic, folks. Come on out to Yount’s Buick’n see for yourselves.” Mr. Yount fell her way, his wallet held open and his mind helplessly made up. He swung by on Saturday nights with bottles of hooch and sporting friends, and the friends soon fell her way, too, and dripped dollar bills to her floor. Dyna Flo Ballou, her first name lost just as her father’s had been, walked tall and flush and brought stray bits of finery to the Hill: curtains of bright yellow, brittle champagne glasses, expensive dresses from St. Louis in the wrong color for my skin, honey, that were soon worn by young girls mopping the floors of town.

            My oldest living relative, during a warm winter, while her husband cleaned fish near Mammoth Spring: “She was drop-dead gorgeous. That gal got prettier every time I saw her, and she stopped traffic the first time I saw her. And, lordy, that voice—that Dyna Flo voice! No, no, she wasn’t the kind of beauty you could ever miss—had eyes ’bout as blue as yours, Danny. We used to run into her sometimes when you were tiny. She always wanted to touch you. Touch your nose, tickle your cheek. Just touch you.”

            A schedule was arranged between the men with money, and Dyna Flo laughed low and golden from her porch steps until heard by wives who couldn’t stand the sound nor the fact of her. The men were shamed but would not give her up, and marriages split in spots that never healed. Humiliated, the wives gathered uncles, brothers, friends from church with white robes and sticks, and during a rainy spell went to Dyna Flo’s house, kicked the door aside, and threw everything she had into the yard-mud. Get out of town, tonight, or the same train’ll hit you that hit your daddy. A week later every household on the Hill received a letter from the city, telling them to vacate the premises while water lines and sewers were put in and the streets were paved. We’ll let you know when you can come back.

            Mr. Tom Finney: “Most likely St. Louis. That’s what I heard. Folks was rough on colored people then, and black was the main one of them colors.”