In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [80]
Later that same evening, another woman, in another kitchen, put aside a sock she was darning, removed a pair of plastic-rimmed spectacles, and leveling them at a visitor, said, "I hope you find him, Mr. Nye. For his own sake. We have two sons, and he's one of them, our first-born. We love him. But . . . Oh, I realized. I realized he wouldn't have packed up. Run off. Without a word to anybody - his daddy or his brother. Unless he was in trouble again. What makes him do it? Why?" She glanced across the small, stove-warmed room at a gaunt figure hunched in a rocking chair - Walter Hickock, her husband and the father of Richard Eugene. He was a man with faded, defeated eyes and rough hands; when he spoke, his voice sounded as if it were seldom used. "Was nothing wrong with my boy, Mr. Nye," Mr. Hickock said. "An outstanding athlete - always on the first team at school. Basketball! Baseball! Football! Dick was always the star player. A pretty good student, too, with A marks in several subjects. History. Mechanical drawing. After he graduated from high school June, 1949 - he wanted to go on to college. Study to be an engineer. But we couldn't do it. Plain didn't have the money. Never have had any money. Our farm here, it's only forty-four acres - we hardly can scratch a living. I guess Dick resented it, not getting to college. The first job he had was with Santa Fe Railways, in Kansas City. Made seventy-five dollars a week. He figured that was enough to get married on, so him and Carol got married. She wasn't but sixteen; he wasn't but nineteen hisself. I never thought nothing good would come of it. Didn't, neither." Mrs. Hickock, a plump woman with a soft, round face un-marred by a lifetime of dawn-to-dark endeavor, reproached him. "Three precious little boys, our grandchildren - there, that's what came of it. And Carol is a lovely girl. She's not to blame." Mr. Hickock continued, "Him and Carol rented a good-size house, bought a fancy car - they was in debt all the time. Even though pretty soon Dick was making better money driving a hospital ambulance. Later on, the Mark Buick Company, a big outfit there in Kansas City, they hired him. As a mechanic and car painter. But him and Carol lived too high, kept buying stuff they couldn't no how afford, and Dick got to writing checks. I still think the reason he started doing stunts such as that was connected with the smash-up. Concussed his head in a car smash-up. After that, he wasn't the same boy. Gambling, writing bad checks. I never knew him to do them things before. And it was along about then he took up with this other gal. The one he divorced Carol for, and was his second wife." Mrs. Hickock said, "Dick couldn't help that. You remember how Margaret Edna was attracted to him."
" 'Cause a woman likes you, does that mean you got to get caught?" Mr. Hickock said. "Well, Mr. Nye, I expect you know as much about it as we do. Why our boy was sent to prison. Locked away seventeen months, and all he done was borrow a hunting rifle. From the house of a neighbor here. He had no idea to steal it, I don't give a damn what nobody says. And that was the ruination of him. When he came out of Lansing, he was a plain stranger to me. You couldn't talk to him. The whole world was against Dick Hickock - that's how he figured. Even the second wife, she left him - filed for divorce while he was in prison. Just the same, lately there, he seemed to be settling down. Working for the Bob Sands Body Shop,