Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [92]
Milo waited for Lily to continue. On screen, Etta was hanging her feet out of a hayloft, throwing hay down at Butch as he rode in circles in front of the barn. Finally, when it was clear that Lily wasn’t going to continue, he said, “I don’t get it. What’s the sticky part?”
“Who a girl chooses to marry. A girl has to decide whether she wants the dangerous guy or the safe guy. Marry the dangerous one and your life may be exciting, but you’re just as likely to end up pregnant and alone, or even worse. Marry the safe guy and you’ll always have your man beside you, but you risk a lifetime of boredom. That’s what Etta’s problem is. Her dilemma. Butch or Sundance? Safe or dangerous? Like most girls, she chooses dangerous. But you can tell that part of her wants to choose Butch. Just look at her. Even Sundance knows it.”
“You’re crazy, Lily,” Eugene said in a whisper, as if the three were sitting in an actual movie theater. “All girls care about is money. Who got the biggest paycheck.”
“Shut up, Eugene,” Lily whispered back. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. When was the last time you even had a girlfriend?”
“I don’t want a girlfriend,” Eugene countered. “Too damn expensive.”
Milo couldn’t help but wonder if Christine saw things the same way Lily (and perhaps Etta Place) did. Did she equate her husband to a law-abiding, exponentially safer version of Butch Cassidy? Was Christine suffering from a lifetime of boredom?
And if so, was Thick-Neck Phil currently starring in the role of Sundance?
Milo tried to push those thoughts out of his mind and focus on the film. “Well, at least that makes this scene a little more bearable. The way you describe it, I mean.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I hate this scene. It nearly ruins the movie. Sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s like one minute I’m watching a Western and the next I’m watching some ridiculous musical. I have no idea what the director”—who Milo knew was George Roy Hill, Academy Award winner and two-time nominee who died in December of 2002—“could have been thinking when he included this scene.”
“Oh, but I love it,” Lily said. “I think it says so much, and without any words. Without any dialogue, at least. The song isn’t so important. I could take it or leave it. That doesn’t matter so much. Just the way Butch and Etta are together. They way they want to be together but can’t. The scene says it all, but without a single word. It’s perfect.” She paused a moment before adding, “But a couple of people in my film class felt the way you do, so you’re not alone, Milo.”
“I’m with you, man,” Eugene said, still whispering. “This scene sucks.”
Milo, Lily, and Eugene sat silently on their wooden bench as Butch and Sundance botched the second robbery of the Union Pacific Flyer, blowing up the safe and the money in the process. They laughed at the conversation between Butch and Woodcock, the man assigned to guard the safe, and especially at Woodcock, the spectacled, mousy, unlikely protector of anything precious.
Butch, you know that if it were my money, there is nobody that I would rather have steal it than you.
A minute later, the second train, loaded with a posse specially trained to hunt and kill Butch and Sundance, arrived on the scene and the chase was on.
“Oh, shit,” Eugene murmured to himself. “This ain’t good.”
Eugene was right, Milo knew. Across miles and miles of desert and scrubland, the posse, led by a man in a white hat, followed Butch and Sundance, undeterred.
The three sat nearly silently for the next hour, watching Butch