Infamous

21

They waited the next morning nearly ninety minutes for Sheriff Faith and the deputies he’d promised to show. Jones walked from car to car, idling on the lone highway, clicking the timepiece open and closed in a nervous fashion, while the hands crept up to six, the sun well on its way. He didn’t hesitate when he said to hell with ’em, and the caravan moved on northwest from Rhome on Texas Highway 114, passing over the railroad tracks at Boyd and motoring on through the pasture and worthless farmland till they neared the county road turnoff to the Shannon place. The morning sun shone sharp and bright into the vehicle’s windshield while Jones unhitched the circular clip of the Thompson, checking the rounds of ammunition, as Doc White loaded the two thumb busters he wore from a belt rig, smoking down the last of a hand-rolled cigarette and spying the farmhouse growing in the distance.

Agent Colvin drove the automobile this morning, some kind of Ford, or perhaps a Chevrolet, and beside him in the passenger seat-much to Gus T. Jones’s disliking-was Mr. Charles Urschel, holding a handsome duck-hunting shotgun with a French walnut stock, his pockets loaded down with more buckshot. The man had just had a fresh haircut, the back hairline shaved up high and tight above his earlobes, and you could see the white, untanned skin for a good inch on his thick neck, talcum powder on the collar. Jones shook his head. Hell, what was a man to do?

He’d been cabled at the Blackstone Hotel, where they domiciled the night before, direct from Hoover himself, that Urschel was to accompany the raiding party. Hoover said to keep him back from the action, if there were action, as a spectator, requested special by the governor of Oklahoma.

“This is gonna be like kicking over a hornet’s nest, Mr. Urschel,” Jones said. “And there’s no telling what kind of desperadoes will be shooting their way out. So I’d ask that you stay back near the vehicles. Behind them, to be more exact.”

Urschel said nothing, just watched the windshield like it was a moving picture, while the automobile wheeled past a crooked mailbox tacked to a cedar post, an open cattle gate, and zipped down a potholed road, kicking up big, thick balloons of dust and grit. The back window dulled with a brown haze so thick that Jones couldn’t see the men following.

“Get within a quarter mile of that front porch, Mr. Colvin,” Jones said. “Don’t even draw your weapon unless you hear a shot.”

The eastern skyline lit up hard and clear blue, and soft, rounded shadows fell from the columned, one-story house and lay down long across the rows of dead corn and live beans, trailing and crooking up strings tied to a dozen or so poles. Jones felt he’d stepped back a bit, with a cluttered heap of old wagons, a rusted mule plow, scythes and gears, and the spinning windmill, creaking and turning as slow as the second hand of a watch.

Colvin stopped, and killed the engine. Men piled out of cars, careful to close the doors with a light touch. With shotguns, pistols, and three machine guns, the detectives and federal agents started down Boss Shannon’s gully-washed drive, shadows retreating at their feet.

That’s when they heard the dog’s breath and feet, and saw the little brown shape bound-almost in midair-for the men.

HARVEY BAILEY COULDN’T FALL ASLEEP EARLIER THAT NIGHT. Ma Shannon had cooked up four whole chickens, along with some mashed potatoes and slices of tomato. She’d even made a lemon icebox pie-although they’d been so famished the pie was still warm to the touch, but nice with a side of coffee and poor cigars on the front porch. Underhill and Clark had decided to sleep at Armon’s shack, where he kept a stack of French naturalist magazines, and Miller slept on the Shannons’ couch, smoking and listening to an orchestra from a top hotel in Dallas. Harvey found himself on the porch, lying on a cot and staring across the pasture, sweating like a son of a bitch and wishing they’d go ahead and a get some kind of word on George so he could take a decent shower and kick the dust off his shoes and this godforsaken shithole.

But the stars were electric. Being in the city, he’d forgotten just how many there were, and on a hot summer night, not a cloud in the sky, it was just the kind of blackness up there that led a man to contemplate things, where he was headed, with a few rough directions and some half-formed ideas.

And so he took the cot off the porch and made his way behind the Shannon home, far from the artificial light that spilled from a kitchen window, everyone alone and asleep, the din of the radio-signal static-already signed off for the night-sounding like an ocean’s surf.

He found a spot of even ground and used both hands to hoist his bad leg up onto the cot. He lay there, staring skyward, in nothing but a pair of BVDs and black socks, and he lifted a cigarette from his pack of Chesterfields, thinking to himself that he’d once believed in the order of man and church and family and now the only order making any sense was chaos. He wondered if he could go back to the farm with his wife and boy and get back behind a mule, hang up the keys to the big cars and put the fancy suits back on the hangers, to collect dust on the shoulders. You just stand there before those teller’s cages and feel your heart up in your throat, hand on the pistol, and, by damn, you feel like God.

Could you get that from planting a turnip? Were you any less a man on the other side of a banker’s pen?

Harvey smoked two cigarettes. He wished for a drink, but he drifted off for a few hours without it. At first he thought it was the morning light that had woken him, but, as he turned on one elbow, he heard the automobiles from way off, knowing this was a one-way road to the Shannon place. He reached for the.38 under his pillow, hoping to see a sixteen-cylinder midnight blue Cadillac, as he stood and almost sleepwalked in the early sunlight across stones and pebbles, watching three long black cars appear and, far off, men crawling from vehicles, men in cowboy hats with guns. And the sight of them startled him, sent him scrambling back and jumping onto the porch, pain shooting from his heel up through his calf, as he woke Verne Miller, who clutched his Thompson on the old couch like a spent lover, and told him to get his crazy ass up because the G had arrived and was about to come a-calling.

Miller calmly got up and tucked his pant legs into his boots. He sat on the couch, checking the weapon’s load, and placed a fresh cigarette in the corner of his mouth. With those cool blue eyes trained on Harvey Bailey, he said: “Wake the old man and woman. Go fetch Wilbur and Jim and Potatoes. And let the dogs out. Give those G-men a nice welcome.”

THEY WEREN’T LIKE ANY BULLDOGS JONES HAD EVER SEEN, brown mongrels with jaw muscles as tight as walnuts, bounding-almost flying-in solid muscular leaps across the dusty ground and launching themselves at Bruce Colvin. He turned his back, careful not to fire and wake the house, but the dog caught a solid bit of his arm and chewed and tore, not letting go. Colvin spun wild and tried to knock the hound away.

Doc White leveled a bowie knife into the mongrel’s back, and it yipped and fell away, skittering far off, yelping and spinning crooked, as if chasing its tail, away and wide in endless loops into the dead cornfield.

The other dog followed and grabbed hold of Gus Jones’s boot, ripping and thrashing. But Jones didn’t feel a thing through the thick leather as he kicked the damn beast ten feet, the animal giving a good cry before darting after the other.

Colvin ripped the material of his suit coat and bound the bloody upper arm, pulling a loose tooth from his torn flesh and gritting his own teeth, trying like hell not to flinch in front of the older men.

“Thanks,” Colvin said.

White wiped the blade on his pant leg and slid it into the scabbard.

“Right outta hell,” Doc said.

CHARLIE FOLLOWED THE MEN, WHO WERE SPREADING OUT FROM the gravel road with weapons hanging from their hands, up and over a small hill, and approaching the farmhouse from the front. There were fourteen in all, including himself, and six of them took a wide loop around the house to cover the back of the property near the barn. Guineas scattered high up and into an old oak and stared down with their small eyes, calling out in a high yell that sounded like a woman’s screams. The old agent, Jones, hadn’t said any more to him, even as Charlie’d crawled out of the automobile with a Browning he’d only fired once and tagged along with the agents in the high, dead grass. The old man using hand signals to send men around to side windows as he mounted the steps at first light and knocked on the door with all the confidence of a Fuller Brush salesman.

He pulled back the screen door, Charlie glancing off at a sprinting rooster, before hearing the six rifle shots from a side window, sending the old man diving from the stairs and scrambling into a gully, where five of them had found lousy cover to return fire, until the whole house was pocked with bullet holes.

“I guess they’re awake,” Jones said. “Kinda hopin’ I could wake ’em gentle.”

The old man took refuge next to Charlie and aimed his machine gun at the door, sighting for any movement in the windows. Three more rifle reports-BLAM, BLAM, BLAM-from a window. The men ducked, and Jones returned with a long rat-a-tat-tat from the Thompson, elegantly raking the house siding. He reached into his coat pocket for another loaded round and snicked it into the frame. The windows had all been busted out, the doorframe hung loose and crooked from a single hinge.

The guineas and chickens grew quiet. That lone black rooster sprinted back and forth across the fine dirt, too foolish to find cover.

And then there was a hard blast from the rifle and half a dozen shots from a cracking pistol. Charlie could just make out the shape of the man from the broken window, as he’d up and disappear, up and disappear, like a metal silhouette from a Midway gallery.

Charlie took careful aim, waiting for the son of a bitch to pop his head up just one more time. But as he sighted down the barrel he felt the weight of a hand pressing the gun down, and he turned to see Gus Jones, hard light refracting off his glasses, making him appear goddamn blind, or egg-eyed like Little Orphan Annie.

“They’re coming out,” Jones said. “Hold it.”

Charlie didn’t see a thing. In the silence, a hawk circled the Shannon property, taking in all the foolishness from a great height. For some reason, Charlie wanted to blow that son of a bitch out of the sky, too.

HARVEY KICKED WILBUR UNDERHILL OUT OF BED WITH THE heel of his shoe, tossed him his pants and machine gun, and told him to load up. Jim Clark was already on Armon’s porch, grabbing ammunition for two.45 automatics and packing as many bullets as he could hold in his pants, slipping into his felt hat, even though he only sported an undershirt, grinning for the gift of a morning gunfight. They’d loaded into Harvey’s Buick, Armon providing useless directions down the one-way road, and nearly made it to old Boss Shannon’s barn before the law opened up on them, three quick bullet holes appearing out of nowhere, random and thorough, through the windshield, cracking it as cold as ice and sending Harvey veering, fishtailing the Buick, but then mashing the goddamn accelerator and heading straight for the mouth of the barn. Chickens fell under tires, feathers flying up into the air, as he braked near the old slatted barn, crisscrossed with shafts of fine light, Underhill and Clark already out of the machine and scampering high up into the hot hayloft to find a good vantage point to do some shooting.

Harvey made his way into a stall with a half door and saw three men in cowboy hats, holding rifles, take aim from atop black sedans.

“Can I get some help?” Harvey yelled up to the loft.

Underhill answered with a violent spew from the Thompson that shook the entire government sedan, flattening tires, busting out windows, and leaving it pockmarked and sagging, the exclamation of a busted radiator spewing steam. In the silence that followed, government men sprinted from behind the automobile and headed for the front of the farmhouse, right before two quick pistol shots from Jim Clark cut down one of them at the knees, and a stream of hard chatter from “Mad Dog” Underhill’s reloaded drum kicked up the dust and grit in a trailing poof right up to the fine shoes of another federal agent, while yet another agent took a flying leap right up and over the chest-high fence of a hogpen.

One of the men looked to be dead.

Another crawled up and under the axles of Boss Shannon’s farm truck.

The shots continued from the front of the old, single-story farmhouse-rifles, Thompsons, and some pistols, in a small, merry band-Harvey knowing Miller could use some help, and maybe, just maybe, they could get off some shots to clear a way out.

Harvey yelled for Underhill to give cover, as he hurried the best he could on that bum leg across the open chicken ground and rapped on the back door, yelling for the Shannons to open the goddamn door. He turned to see goddamn Armon right behind him, calling out for his pa.

Boss opened up, wild-eyed and sweating, crying that Harvey Bailey had brought the law to his homestead, and Harvey told the old man to put a sock in it. It was George and Kathryn that had landed these bastards on his land.

“I ain’t goin’ down without a fight,” Boss said. “You can’t just come on a man’s property and start a-shootin’.”

“Where’s Verne?”

“He got hit.”

Harvey followed a crooked trail of blood on the slatted wooden floor into a bedroom, where Miller sat with his butt against a metal bed, wrapping his shoulder with his shirt and gritting his teeth as he tied it up tight. He still held on to the machine gun, his naked upper body covered in blood and sweat, and when he moved to a busted-out window for a look-see, it was on his tail, slow and deliberate, getting a good view of the G-men, hiding like cowards behind a row of vehicles they’d moved down from the main road.

“You all right?”

“Peachy,” Verne Miller said, a slight tic in his right eye.

“Wilbur cleared out three of them,” Harvey said. “How many out front?”

“Eight. Maybe ten.”

“Peachy.”

“The Buick still out back?” Miller asked.

“Gassed up,” he said. “Keys in it.”

“We can’t make it down the road. It’s cut off.”

“We can make it,” Harvey said.

Miller shook his head. “What about them?”

“Who cares? Long as we get the boys.”

“Young girl’s pregnant.”

“Where is she?”

“Totin’ a pistol. She grabbed it out of my hand.”

“And Ma?”

“She’s shooting, too.”

“Hell of a family,” Harvey Bailey said. “Always wondered where Kathryn got her set of balls.”