In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [51]
"Alvin, do you think we'll ever get back to normal living?" Mrs. Dewey asked. Their normal life was like this: both worked, Mrs. Dewey as an office secretary, and they divided between them the household chores, taking turns at the stove and the sink. ("When Alvin was sheriff, I know some of the boys teased him. Used to say, 'Look over yonder! Here comes Sheriff Dewey! Tough guy! Totes a six-shooter! But once he gets home, off comes the gun and on goes the apron!'") At that time they were saving to build a home on a farm that Dewey had bought in 1951 - two hundred and forty acres several miles north of Garden City. If the weather was fine, and especially when the days were hot and the wheat was high and ripe, he liked to drive out there and practice his draw - shoot crows, tin cans - or in his imagination roam through the house he hoped to have, and through the garden he meant to plant, and under trees yet to be seeded. He was very certain that some day his own oasis of oaks and elms would stand upon those shadeless plains: "Some day. God willing." A belief in God and the rituals surrounding that belief - church every Sunday, grace before meals, prayers before bed - were an important part of the Deweys' existence. "I don't see how anyone can sit down to table without wanting to bless it," Mrs. Dewey once said. "Sometimes, when I come home from work - well, I'm tired. But there's always coffee on the stove, and sometimes a steak in the icebox. The boys make a fire to cook the steak, and we talk, and tell each other our day, and by the time supper's ready I know we have good cause to be happy and grateful. So I say, Thank you, Lord. Not just because I should - because I want to." Now Mrs. Dewey said, "Alvin, answer me. Do you think we'll ever have a normal life again?" He started to reply, but the telephone stopped him.
The old Chevrolet left Kansas City November 21, Saturday night. Luggage was lashed to the fenders and roped to the roof; the trunk was so stuffed it could not be shut; inside, on the back seat, two television sets stood, one atop the other. It was a tight fit for the passengers: Dick, who was driving, and Perry, who sat clutching the old Gibson guitar, his most beloved possession. As for Perry's other belongings - a card-board suitcase, a gray Zenith portable radio, a gallon jug of root-beer syrup (he feared that his favorite beverage might not be available in Mexico), and two big boxes containing books, manuscripts, cherished memorabilia (and hadn't Dick raised hell! Cursed, kicked the boxes, called them "five hundred pounds of pig slop!") - these, too, were part of the car's untidy interior. Around midnight they crossed the border into Oklahoma. Perry, glad to be out of Kansas, at last relaxed. Now it was true - they were on their way. On their way, and never coming back - without regret, as far as he was concerned, for he was leaving nothing behind, and no one who might deeply wonder into what thin air he'd spiraled. The same could not be said of Dick. There were those Dick claimed to love: three sons, a mother, a father, a brother - persons he hadn't dared confide his plans to, or bid goodbye, though he never expected to see them again - not in this life.
Clutter - English Vows given in Saturday ceremony: that headline, appearing on the social page of the Garden City Telegram for November 23, surprised many of its readers. It seemed that Beverly, the second of Mr. Clutter's surviving daughters, had married Mr. Vere Edward English, the young biology student to whom she had long been engaged. Miss Clutter had worn white, and the wedding, a