[Ma Barker was] the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.
—J. Edgar Hoover, upon Ma Barker’s death by FBI shootout, 1935
The most ridiculous story in the annals of crime is that Ma Barker was the mastermind behind the Karpis-Barker gang . . . . She knew we were criminals, but her participation in our careers was limited to one function: when we traveled together, we moved as a mother and her sons.
—Alvin Karpis, in his autobiography
Ma looks out at the calm, foggy lake. Two sandhill cranes take flight, rattling out their haunted, undulating call, their heads bloodred. Morning again. Another morning. Ma waits at the upstairs window. Ma has always been at the upstairs window in the house her son rented. She never thought she’d have such a thing: two stories on a lake, white clapboard siding, brick chimney, and screened-in porch. An upgrade from dirt floors, from dirty men. When Ma and Freddie arrived in Ocklawaha, Florida, in December 1934, it felt like coming to the end of the Earth. Ancient, armored tortoises munched on prickly pears. Sandspurs stuck like spiky sins. Ma kept her Bible on the nightstand, and its pages grew limp in the damp air. At first, the nightly creaking of pines, deep-throated gator grunts, and moths striking the windowpanes kept her restless. But now, these sounds are her most consistent of companions. She waits at the window as the day unfolds, then tucks itself back in at dusk. Ma no longer thinks of time as the passing of hours, days, years. She just thinks—passing. Stars riddle the wall of the night sky like bullet holes. The round white moon takes a bow, exits; the sun waits in the wings, steps on stage.
Morning again. Another morning. Next door, in one of the remaining cracker houses, an old woman shouts: I worked all my life for this house! I deserve to die in it! She shakes her frail fist at her adult children. One wheels a suitcase and carries a beat-up hat box. The other places his hand gently on his mother’s hunched back. A grandchild sits on the front steps, staring at a screen. Ma cannot hear what the men say to the old woman as they load her up in the car, but she thinks the neighbor should listen. Sons only want what is best for their mothers.
An osprey lands on the tall pine by the window, a fish in its mouth. Ma remembers arguing with Freddie when they first arrived. She thought they were bald eagles. Freddie said though they looked like eagles, they were some other bird. They argued on the front porch, Freddie smoking a stinking marihuana cigarette. Finally, the groundskeeper settled it, passing by deadheading the camellias. Osprey, Willie had said. A fish hawk.
From the window, Ma watches the bird swallow the fish whole. For a flick of a second, she feels a yearning. It must be time to make breakfast. She’ll ask that boy Willie to go get fresh cream for their coffee. Ma was not accustomed to affording hired help but found it was something she got used to quick. She got used to the money, the pearl necklace—never daring to ask from where it all came. She looks out the window and suddenly night has fallen. The moon is so large it feels very close indeed. Its twin reflects orange on the surface of the lake. Freddie? Ma whispers. Coyotes howl in the distance.
Machines arrive to tear down the neighbor’s house. Ma has seen it happening all around the lake, all around her, passing after passing. The old homes plowed down to piles. Gathered up and disposed of by stocky men. Beeps and bangs of equipment startle her, make her retreat to her corner, away from the windows. But she can never get far enough away from the windows, not really. Just a quarter inch of glass protects her from the swampy world beyond. A mini-mansion is erected next door faster than Ma can get down the stairs, which she rarely does anymore. Rich developers retreat from the sprawl of their suburban dynasties to the lake and fling their soft-skulled children on tubes behind speeding motorboats. Ma watches, hand on the window despite herself each time a thin-limbed kid flies in the air and smacks on the water. She waits for the child to pop up, laugh, wave his arms. These modern parents. Don’t they know to protect the child’s head? To protect the temple from cracking?
Morning again. Another morning. A storm darkens in the east. Palmettos whip in the wind, clumps of Spanish moss drop to the ground like dead squirrels, and the old house shivers. Ma feels the pressure build, then drop. It makes her heavy, as if blood has pooled in her feet. Filled her with cement, with embalming fluids. Freddie should be here, Ma thinks. Freddie should be in the room with her. Freddie was in the room with her. Sometimes she thinks she hears him downstairs, Freddie as he once was, hears the laughter of children, but when she reaches the stairwell he is never there. Herman, Lloyd, Arthur, Freddie? She goes down the line. Sometimes there are other children. Children of the people who come and fix the windows, spackle the walls, pack up Ma’s things, move the furniture. Sometimes she thinks she sees him, her youngest, her baby, standing by the dock, his dark red hair, his hands in his pockets. She wonders if he stays in the boat house. She wonders if she is still asleep, and this is all a bad dream. A limb from an oak crashes through the front porch; the screen flaps in the wind like peeling skin. Ma wonders where the birds go when it storms. She wonders where Freddie went.
Machinery arrives and plows down Ma’s trees. The tall pine topples, taking with it the osprey’s nest. The stoic oaks, the camellias, the resurrection ferns—gone. A machine scoops up Willie’s shack. The house will be next. Fred! Ma tries to scream. Freddie! Get the guns, son! But the machines power down, rest in poses like steel dinosaurs. The osprey circles above, searching for her nest. Circling and searching and circling until dusk falls and then night. The moon is bright as a spotlight and Ma’s two-story house shines center stage.
Ma’s memory comes and goes, pulled like a tide by the moon. On the last night with Freddie, the moon was thin as a fingernail. They’d been in Ocklawaha for less than two months. Hadn’t even fully unpacked. When Ma tried to open their duffle bags and find a place for the few possessions they’d brought, Freddie would remind her they were only there for a short time. A break. To escape the dangers of Chicago in winter. And then he’d hide the duffle bags again. But Ma saw the stacks of cash, the drum of a gun. She was tired of moving. Tired of the motels, tired of the dusty drives across the country, tired of the starts and stops of her heart. Missouri, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Illinois, and now Florida. Herman dead seven years. Lloyd alone in prison. Arthur on the run in the other direction. Fred driving and driving and driving. These boys of hers.
Though at first she complained incessantly about the humidity, she had to admit she liked watching the sun rise over the lake. The arched entryway in the family room. The porch where she would sit in the sun and watch anoles puff their orange throats. Ma recognized the feral look in the reptiles’ eyes, the desperation in their throat flares—hunting for a mate. At least Fred had left the girlfriends behind and there was nowhere on this lake to find another, in this Podunk town at the end of the Earth. At night Ma sometimes heard her son thumping and sighing in the bedroom next to hers—his mournful self-release. She wished in these moments to comfort him but also to reprimand him. Which was how she felt about her sons most of their messy lives.
The evening before the feds arrived, Freddie stood down on the dock, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders so tense it seemed his suspenders might snap, watching the lake reflect a pink sky. This pose was Freddie. A tight-knit brow and puckered mouth, always caught in a plan. No surprise the boy had grown into criminal life; it was the only thing his brothers would share with him. Their father gone, living in sin. Ma would call—Fred, Freddie, son—and eventually the spell would break, his eyes would unglaze, and he’d return to Earth with that smile. That smile got him whatever he wanted. Got Ma to write begging letters to get him released from prison. Got Ma to come stay on this buggy lake, with Willie ambling about, and the dead-toothed locals talking of colossal alligators. When watching her son on the dock, Ma feared Old Joe would launch out of the tannic water, grab Fred with his prehistoric mouth, and pull her baby deeper and deeper into the dark weedy lake.
Most people never really know when it’s their last night, and Ma was really like most people.
The night before the end, Ma lay in bed, thinking she would treat Freddie to a nice breakfast in the morning. Thick salty bacon might ease the tension in his shoulders. Yes, tomorrow would be a new day. Ma faded into sleep, snores stumbling out of her nostrils for the last time. Most people never really know when it’s their last night, and Ma was really like most people. They’d gotten away so far. Why should this night, with its crescent moon, be the last?
Out the window, in the shadows, men in dark suits and bulletproof vests sheltered in the boathouse, hid among the trees, smoked cigarettes behind Willie’s shack. They loaded their guns. They waited for dawn.
Ma misses her trees, the osprey. Something, everything, feels different. She feels exposed. Hears voices. She looks out her window and sees a smattering of motorboats on the lake, all facing the house. A flat barge is pulled up to the sandy shore. Ma is surrounded, again, but this time her assailants are boldly out in the open. After all, there is no shack, no boathouse, no trees behind which to take cover. There are men in hard hats and orange vests, barking orders and directing with their hands. A big yellow machine slides its flat arms under the house. They are going to tear down Ma’s house. Going to tear it down with her inside. Get out of here with your dingy faces! she tries to shout, but feels only cold air pulled up from the bottom of her toes. There are even a few cops down below, standing with their hands on their holstered hips. The feds busting up her home again! Freddie won’t let them. He’ll know what to do. The house shakes, then lifts in the air like that time a tornado came through and everything floated for a moment before settling back onto the raised foundation. Today there is not a cloud in sight. The house wobbles and something crashes downstairs. Ma retreats to her corner, hides beside her bed. Waits for the gunfire from Freddie, waits for the bullets to bust the windows again, waits for the walls to collapse around her. The house slowly moves forward. Over a bump. Then stops, lowers, settles. Ma feels a tugging, as though the house is sliding ever so slowly across ice. She goes to the window, but the view has shifted. Her house now sits on top of a barge in the lake. Ma looks down; the hard-hat men navigate small boats next to the barge. An American flag flaps from the yellow machine. She notices now there are many more boats, and the shores are lined with people watching, taking photos of her house floating across Lake Weir. She looks back at her plot of land. She sees the abandoned cinderblock foundation and limestone sand white as spilled sugar.
The osprey takes flight, startled from a nearby cypress by the chaos of men and equipment. She circles above the house, then lands on the chimney. As she does, she feels an angry pulse rushing out like invisible smoke. An energy that wants to possess her. That wants her wings and her nest and her chicks. The osprey peers over the edge of the roof into the water with her predator eyes and her curved beak. Down below, under the barge, small minnows dash along in shadow, protected momentarily by this new shelter. Above the house, flying machines whir and startle the osprey. She takes off for the forested area across the lake, away from the humans and their noises and their machines and that furious energy inside the old house.
Ma waits at the window as her house floats across Lake Weir. She is taken aback by how unfamiliar the lake appears from this new point of view. There are many more houses along the shore. In 1934 there was next to nothing. Ma tried not to complain much. She knew Freddie knew what was best for her—and also, she knew he was capable of gruesome things, so she kept her trap shut. Her only real complaint, other than the humidity, was that there was no cinema. You’re the most wanted woman in America, Freddie had said, slapping her on her broad back. What do you need the movies for? Ma had to admit that her stomach somersaulted with pride. She had always wanted to be wanted.
That cold January morning in 1935, a surprising chill went straight to Ma’s bones. She awoke to shouts: Police! You’re surrounded! Come out with your hands up! Ma thought she was dreaming—dreaming of that big blank cinema screen and all it might reveal. Gangster getaways and cowboy shootouts. Much-anticipated first kisses and silver Hollywood grins. Freddie came in, shaking her, a gun under his arm. Ma, get up! Ma, get down! Hide. Quiet. Whatever happens, don’t surrender.
The gunfire began, no overture, and the shootout lasted hours. Glass shattered. Freddie ran from room to room firing from all sides, like he was defending a fortress.
No matter how many mornings Ma waits at her window looking out at the lake, she can never remember exactly what happened. When did the bullets get Freddie? Get her? When did they collapse onto the floor? Did she see him fall, or did he see her? Not often does a mother get to die next to her son.
The house stops moving. Ma is now on the other side of the lake. A sign reads recreation & conservation area. Nearby, children climb on a playground, watching the house get moved onto the shore. One boy has red hair and freckles. He stares at Ma’s window as if he can see her. Freddie? Have they brought her over to Freddie? Is this where he has been all these passings? But the child slips down the slide and runs over to his young mother. The yellow machine revs back on, carrying the house in its metal arms. It pivots, pivots, then sets the house down on a new foundation. People clap and cheer. The hard-hat men slap each other on the back.
For a long passing, it is just Ma. Ma in her house on the other side of the lake. She is unmoored. Flip-flopped around. Now her window faces west instead of east. Now she watches the sun set after so many years of watching it rise.
Freddie must still be in the boathouse across the lake, Ma thinks. She couldn’t stand that musty boathouse. Surely it sheltered snakes, maybe even Old Joe. They came to Florida to get away from danger, not thinking about all the danger there was in Florida. Ma waits at her window, hoping to catch sight of Freddie across the lake, his hands in his pockets, looking out, wondering how his house, how his Ma, got all the way to the other side. But then she remembers the boathouse was torn down with the shed, with the trees. The sun sets and sets and sets.
On the new side of the lake, some of the things Ma had thought lost return: her Bible, her pearl necklace, Freddie’s hat. People trail in and count the nearly two thousand spackled bullet holes. The longest shootout in FBI history, a docent says. The visitors shiver by the window where Ma and Freddie fell. Listen to the story of how Ma was the mastermind, a tommy gun discovered next to her dead body. The matriarch known by many names: Arizona, Old Lady Arrie, Kate, Katie, Ma.
The docent doesn’t mention that when the gunfire ceased, the coward cops sent Willie into the house first, a bulletproof vest on his thin frame. It’s just me. His voice shook as he crept up the stairs, slid along the wall, and saw them lying like slaughtered pigs. Only Ma knows how Willie touched her leg with two frightened fingers. They dead, he whispered. Out the busted window, an osprey landed in the tall pine, turned its head, and glared with one eye. They dead! Willie shouted to the officers, running down the stairs and out the door.
This Ma remembers, but she does not remember the gun.
Evening again, another evening. A brightly colored restaurant has been built on the plot of land where Ma’s house originally stood. There is loud music. Children play in the shallow water. Men drink in the open, on boats. Women sunbathe, wearing next to nothing. If Freddie is still over there, Ma thinks he will never make his way across the lake, back into the house, back to her. Will never leave the beer bottles and nearly nude women on the other shore.
An osprey, another osprey, builds a nest in a nearby tree. Ma watches it feed those eager chicks. She wishes the bird would come closer. Come to the window so she could hop on its back, ride away like a cowboy into the sunset. Fly across the lake, circle the place where her house once stood, call Freddie’s name so he can join her on the other side. Ma pushes a glass perfume bottle off the dresser. Enjoys the sound of it shattering. Enjoys watching the docent sweep up the shards, his eyes searching the room. For what? For her.
In recent passings, Ma has grown restless. She locks doors. She knocks over framed photographs. In particular, the one from after. The one of her and Freddie under the white sheets.
The docent says things Ma did not know, could not know. Says what happened to her boys. Herman, the oldest, was the first to die. He took his own life, the docent says. Suicide to avoid arrest. Arthur was killed attempting escape from Alcatraz. Lloyd the loner lived the longest. He served as an Army cook at a prisoner of war camp in Michigan. The docent enjoys the irony. But Ma feels pride when she hears Lloyd was awarded a medal for good conduct. At fifty-two he was killed not by cops, not by gangsters, not by bombs falling from the sky, but at the hands of his own wife.
In another frame is a letter—a letter in Ma’s handwriting. It’s one she sent to Arthur to update him on their hideout in Florida. In it Ma made a joke about hunting for Old Joe. The naming of the fabled monster led the feds straight to Lake Weir, the docent says. Straight to the Midwestern man fleeing winter with his aging mother. Straight to the two-story house they’d recently rented. Ma wishes to set it on fire, this letter that betrayed her and Freddie, but all the gift-shop lighters shaped like tommy guns pass through her hands and fall to the ground.
One night Ma startles as steps sound on the stairs. Freddie? She hopes but turns and sees a circle of gray-haired women holding white candles. Sees closed eyes and clasped hands. Ma can hear them call her names, her many names. Arizona? Katie? Ma? Hear them better than she’s heard anyone in many passings, as if cotton has been pulled from her ears.
She’s here, a woman says. The others nod.
This woman who speaks is the boss. Ma can tell a lady in charge.
But the son. The woman sighs. The son has moved on. The others suck in air.
Ma, the women say in unison, it’s time to go. There’s nothing left for you here.
Lightning strikes a nearby oak. I gave up my life in this house. I deserve to haunt it!
Ma whips around the room, the fastest she’s ever moved. She breaks a mirror and knocks over the photograph from after again. She remembers the docent’s voice when he said Herman, after a highway robbery, ran over—killed—a child. She remembers the shame, the fear, the anger. She knocks over the chifforobe. She remembers Freddie insisting her beau had to go. Remembers seeing her lover drunk, flapping his loose lips for the last time; his body was found naked on the side of the road, a single bullet through his head. Ma blows out the candles in one whoosh. She remembers the loneliness, the escape, the cool dark cinema back in Chicago. She knew the boys sent her there to get her out of the house, but she pretended not to know why—their plans, their plots, their robberies. Ma rips the curtains, bursts the light bulbs. Lightning strikes a nearby oak. I gave up my life in this house. I deserve to haunt it! Ma tries to scream but she just pulls up a gust of air so cold she feels her cells freezing, then she awakens to a sunset, some other sunset, it has been many passings, and out the window the lake laps at the doorstep. Water moccasins shelter, procreate under the porch. It rains, storms, the lake rises, and no person steps inside Ma’s house again.
How many passings since Ma last saw a speedboat fling a child across the lake? How many passings since she last saw a child? Out her window grows a jungle. Spanish moss hangs like stalactites of dust. Lichen creeps across the walls, and kudzu claims her bed. Many ospreys, and hawks, vultures, and even bald eagles circle the lake. Sandhill cranes raise their young in the margins. Ma spots a different crane, large and white, standing in the morning mist like a vision. She watches bobcats yawn in the sun, raccoons dig up mussels, and bear cubs wrestle like boys. She watches deer lap at the lake, and alligators snatch unsuspecting fawns.
Opossums move in downstairs. Ma watches from above as two jills give birth: one in a sofa cushion, the other in a patchwork quilt. One mother dies, leaving three pink-snouted joeys on their own. They make sounds like sneezes. The other mother collects them in her pouch. Ma thinks of the other boys. The other men who stole her heart—and stole all that money. The men who called her Ma. Called her Mother. The joeys ride on the mother opossum’s back. They grip her fur, they go in her pouch, they suck on her, they consume her, little by little. They’re the size of a bumble bee, they’re the size of balled-up socks, they’re the size of a pistol. Then they’re no longer joeys, they’re jacks and jills, and that’s when they’re off. They snap slugs from the grass. They click their mouths, calling to mates. They play dead. They leave. Ma does not know what happens to the mother.
Mighty storm after mighty storm, the sky swirling and charged, Ma watches out the window as the lake rises and rises, until finally, one passing, it lays claim to the house. Out Ma’s window, schools of bluegills swim by in the tannic water. A largemouth bass stares, opening and closing its dumb mouth, as though it can see her. A snapping turtle settles in the muck. Alligators shimmy by, and Ma wonders if they are descendants of Old Joe. Underwater, she misses the sandhill cranes, the ospreys, the sunsets. Night falls and she can just make out the full moon shifting above the water like an oil painting. Ma sees the figure of a very large cat swimming above the house, backlit by the moon. It paddles with great paws and uses its tail like a rudder. Two kittens follow in its wake. The lake is the panthers’ home now. The windows burst like when the bullets riddled the house, riddled her body, Freddie’s body, and water fills her room. Ma knows it is time for her to pass. Old Joe! she burbles, floating around the ceiling, I’m ready. I’m ready to be taken under! Ma knows now for sure she will never see Freddie again. Knows Freddie didn’t stay. Knows sons don’t hang around like mothers, like Ma.
Ma’s chimney sits just above the surface of the water, like a brick cypress knee. An osprey perches, peers into the lake, watches for fish, frogs, snakes. All that remains of the people who called this lake home are beer cans, bottles, a dugout canoe, lost coins, keys, wedding rings, a rusted seaplane, and Ma’s sunken two-story house. Night falls and the osprey folds her wings safely in her nest. Up on the moon, children in oxygen-filled domes play cops and robbers. A redheaded boy looks out his window, points a toy gun at the green-and-blue orb: Bang! Bang!