“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 of 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 an’ 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 mean-mad. 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’t 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 licked her dry lips, and her whole face was an aching question. “I got to know, Tommy. Did they hurt you so much? Did they make you mad like that?”
Tom’s heavy lips were pulled right over his teeth. He looked down at his big flat hands. “No,” he said. “I ain’t like that.” He paused and studied the broken nails, which were ridged like clam shells. “All the time in stir I kep’ away from stuff like that. I ain’ so mad.”
She sighed, “Thank God!” under her breath.
He looked up quickly. “Ma, when I seen what they done to our house—”