Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [56]
The noise had brought the hotel manager to the door, and she was not happy when she saw the broken chairs and the sprawled man. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you people will have to leave. This is a respectable place. We can’t have this kind of commotion.”
Bessie pointed at the prone drunk on the floor, who was now moaning louder and had progressed to saying, “I think I’m dying.”
“How can we leave,” said Bessie, “with my husband in that condition?”
“You might have thought of that,” said the manager, “before your husband decided to throw himself around the walls of my hotel room. If you aren’t out of here within the half hour, I’ll call the police and have you put out.”
Somehow, Bessie got her children and drunken husband packed and out on the sidewalk. It took her the better part of an hour to get everybody the four-block distance to the bus depot. She would walk the bags ahead a few feet, go back and get the boys and have them watch the bags and the baby, then go back and gather her husband, who would have fallen asleep on the sidewalk by that point. So it went, until they reached the depot. Bessie had just enough money to get them all to Sacramento and Fay’s place.
When it came time to board the bus, Bessie led the boys on and then went back to get Frank, who stumbled and moaned coming up the bus steps.
The bus driver said, “Hey, lady, you can’t bring that man on here. He’s drunk.”
Bessie looked at the driver, looked at her husband, who was already falling asleep on the bus steps, then sat down next to Frank and started to bawl her head off, telling the driver her sob story.
Either the driver softened or he got tired of hearing it. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You can bring him on as long as you keep him quiet. If he creates any disturbances, he’s out on the side of the road.”
Bessie agreed, wiped away her tears, and dragged her husband to his seat. He passed out immediately and was quiet the whole trip to his mother’s house.
That was one of the better nights. Other evenings the family ended up sleeping in vagrants’ missions, flophouses, in depots or Salvation Army shelters. Sometimes they had a car of their own, sometimes they rode buses and trains, often they hitchhiked. My brothers grew up around desperate strangers throughout this time—people who had lost everything, people who were mad or drunk or violent, or all three. They saw people stabbed, and they saw people die of hunger and sickness.
Sometimes my father would say he was going to the store and then not come back for weeks. My mother would go to a local church and beg the bus fare to take her and her sons on to the next town, or back to Provo. It was like that day after day, for the better part of a decade.
You might think all this sounds heartsickening and damaging, and no doubt it was. Just the same, I would have given anything to have been a part of that time.
ALL THROUGH THESE YEARS, the mythical something stayed on Frank’s tail. My mother recalled one of the times she actually saw the face of one of those who pursued my father.
It was an early summer evening, in 1946, in Sacramento. Frank and Bessie had taken the boys to a diner near downtown, and they were seated in a booth, having dinner. Bessie saw a tall, thin man with slicked-back hair walk in and take a seat at the counter. He ordered a cup of coffee, then swiveled around on his stool and stared at Frank. The man was dressed nicely—he had on a cashmere overcoat and a fresh fedora— but he had a mean countenance, and he was definitely looking at Frank as if he knew him. Bessie nudged Frank’s arm. “There’s a man at the counter watching you,” she said.
Frank glanced up at the stranger, then