which bank to rob, and when, and how he could enlist our mother so he could lessen the likelihood anyone would find out, therefore keeping them out of jail. Which didn’t happen.
Chapter 8
L ATER, WHEN I KNEW THE WHOLE STORY, AS MUCH as I’d ever know, I found out that the Friday before the Saturday my father talked to my mother when she was in the bathtub, then drove off into the night, the Indians had delivered four butchered Hereford carcasses to Digby at the Great Northern loading dock and had gone away expecting to be paid the next day by our father. Digby had decided that because the stolen beef arrangement worked so seamlessly, he could now take receipt of even more beef, which he would supply to a friend who was the head waiter on another Great Northern train, a concession for which he, Digby, would be well paid. Our father had considered this an excellent development for everyone. But when he went on Saturday night to Digby’s little bungalow in Black Eagle to collect the money—part of which was our father’s for dreaming up the scheme—Digby told him two of the carcasses had arrived in a rancid state (it was summer, and too hot to transport dead meat in an unrefrigerated carpet truck) and weren’t fit to serve to other Indians, much less to dining car passengers luxuriating between Seattle and Chicago. Digby said he wasn’t about to pay our father for meat like that. He’d in fact already had the beeves trucked off and dumped downstream in the Missouri in case anybody—the railroad police, for instance—found him with it, uninspected, without a bill of sale or any explanation for it being in the depot’s cold box.
This was an unwelcome surprise to our father, who told Digby in no uncertain terms that he ought not have taken delivery if the meat was “off.” But since he had taken it, the meat and its cost ($400) was his—Digby’s—responsibility.
What our father believed was that Digby, who was a spindly, bug-eyed, little-girlish-voiced character in a bow tie and white jacket, had become frightened of the Indians—whom he already distrusted and who distrusted him—so that his elaborate plan to buy more beef had begun all at once to seem like the bad idea it was. This realization expanded into an even greater fear of being caught and losing his high-paying dining car job. There was other illegal activity, it later came to light, that Digby was embroiled in, for which the Great Falls police would’ve loved to put him in jail. Dining car employees and Pullman porters were known to run strings of girls all along the main line. A girl climbed on in one town, transacted business during the ride, then climbed off the next morning.
Our father didn’t for an instant believe the meat had arrived spoiled. That had never happened before and he saw no reason it ever should. But when he returned to Digby’s house (after he’d counseled with my mother in her bathtub), to again demand his $400, and ready to pound it out of Digby with his fists (which was not like him, except he was desperate), Digby had already left town on the Western Star and was on his way to Chicago, where he had another separate life, leaving our father to contend with the Indians.
Our father was then in the exact predicament he might’ve known he could land in and ought to have taken precautions about. (For example, being present when the meat changed hands would’ve been such a precaution; having an amount of cash in his pocket sufficient to indemnify the sale should something go wrong would’ve been another.) However, all he had in his possession at that moment that could ensure the deal was whatever was left from his monthly Air Force pension, whatever little money our mother had from teaching nine months a year in Fort Shaw, and our Chevrolet. Our parents had nothing set aside for an emergency, which this had become. They had never even had a checking account. They paid for everything with cash.
The next
Chapter 8
L ATER, WHEN I KNEW THE WHOLE STORY, AS MUCH as I’d ever know, I found out that the Friday before the Saturday my father talked to my mother when she was in the bathtub, then drove off into the night, the Indians had delivered four butchered Hereford carcasses to Digby at the Great Northern loading dock and had gone away expecting to be paid the next day by our father. Digby had decided that because the stolen beef arrangement worked so seamlessly, he could now take receipt of even more beef, which he would supply to a friend who was the head waiter on another Great Northern train, a concession for which he, Digby, would be well paid. Our father had considered this an excellent development for everyone. But when he went on Saturday night to Digby’s little bungalow in Black Eagle to collect the money—part of which was our father’s for dreaming up the scheme—Digby told him two of the carcasses had arrived in a rancid state (it was summer, and too hot to transport dead meat in an unrefrigerated carpet truck) and weren’t fit to serve to other Indians, much less to dining car passengers luxuriating between Seattle and Chicago. Digby said he wasn’t about to pay our father for meat like that. He’d in fact already had the beeves trucked off and dumped downstream in the Missouri in case anybody—the railroad police, for instance—found him with it, uninspected, without a bill of sale or any explanation for it being in the depot’s cold box.
This was an unwelcome surprise to our father, who told Digby in no uncertain terms that he ought not have taken delivery if the meat was “off.” But since he had taken it, the meat and its cost ($400) was his—Digby’s—responsibility.
What our father believed was that Digby, who was a spindly, bug-eyed, little-girlish-voiced character in a bow tie and white jacket, had become frightened of the Indians—whom he already distrusted and who distrusted him—so that his elaborate plan to buy more beef had begun all at once to seem like the bad idea it was. This realization expanded into an even greater fear of being caught and losing his high-paying dining car job. There was other illegal activity, it later came to light, that Digby was embroiled in, for which the Great Falls police would’ve loved to put him in jail. Dining car employees and Pullman porters were known to run strings of girls all along the main line. A girl climbed on in one town, transacted business during the ride, then climbed off the next morning.
Our father didn’t for an instant believe the meat had arrived spoiled. That had never happened before and he saw no reason it ever should. But when he returned to Digby’s house (after he’d counseled with my mother in her bathtub), to again demand his $400, and ready to pound it out of Digby with his fists (which was not like him, except he was desperate), Digby had already left town on the Western Star and was on his way to Chicago, where he had another separate life, leaving our father to contend with the Indians.
Our father was then in the exact predicament he might’ve known he could land in and ought to have taken precautions about. (For example, being present when the meat changed hands would’ve been such a precaution; having an amount of cash in his pocket sufficient to indemnify the sale should something go wrong would’ve been another.) However, all he had in his possession at that moment that could ensure the deal was whatever was left from his monthly Air Force pension, whatever little money our mother had from teaching nine months a year in Fort Shaw, and our Chevrolet. Our parents had nothing set aside for an emergency, which this had become. They had never even had a checking account. They paid for everything with cash.
The next
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