Infamous

22

Nearly an hour passed, and no one had fired a shot. Colvin ran down through the gully and found Jones conferring with Doc White and Joe Lackey about setting fire to the barn, while Charlie Urschel eyed down the twin barrels of his shotgun, just waiting for one of those chickens to stick its head out. Jones gave the order to toss some kerosene lanterns into the hayloft and told Colvin to shoot down every last bastard who came running from that barn. They had one man dead, two men in some rough shape, one in a pig trough and another bleeding under a tractor. Jones studied the agent’s face to make sure he understood all this but only saw the neatly parted hair and eager eyes of that young agent from back at Union Station in Kansas City. “Keep your head down. You hear me, son?”

Jones exchanged glances with Lackey.

Colvin nodded, and scurried back down in the gully to the gauntlet of bullet-filled cars blocking the road from around back of the house. Urschel remained, sighting that damn shotgun, arms starting to tremble from fatigue.

There was the sound of glass breaking, and a few minutes later they smelled and saw the smoke drifting, lazy and slow, in the hot, airless day. The gunshots started again, the rat-a-tat-tatting of the Thompson, the rapid fire of automatics. Young men yelled and returned fire. Jones told a couple detectives from Dallas to keep their eyes trained on the front porch and windows, and he ran for the barn with Detective Ed Weatherford in tow.

Bullets zinged past Jones, and he ducked behind the shithouse, the smell something awful, and Weatherford followed, falling down at his boots.

The lanky detective found his feet, brushing off his pants and grinning, having a hell of a time, as he pointed the barrel of his pistol around the old outhouse and squeezed off some shots.

“You see ’em?”

“I hear ’em,” Weatherford said. “You think it’s Kelly?”

“It ain’t Greta Garbo.”

“They got a Thompson.”

“So do I.”

“He ain’t no expert,” Weatherford said. “That’s just a lie.”

“You wanna test that theory?”

Weatherford grinned. “You first.”

HARVEY FRIED SOME EGGS IN A BLACK SKILLET WHILE VERNE Miller counted out the rest of the ammunition on the kitchen table, divvying it all out in old coffee cans. Ma Shannon trained a shotgun out the salon window, already brought to tears over her shot-up china and brand-new RCA, while Potatoes held a.22 rifle, watching the rear of the house and the rolling black smoke coming from their barn. Boss was off somewhere, trading duties of watching the child and taking up the gun. The baby girl had run wild through the house, screaming and crying, while bullets had zipped past her in what a superstitious man might call a miracle. Somewhere in the house, he heard old Boss singing a lullaby.

“Y’all got any bacon?” Harvey asked.

“In the icebox,” Potatoes said.

“I looked in the icebox.”

“I guess I was thinkin’ of my icebox.”

“You think you could run back to the house and fetch me up a pound?”

“No, sir,” Potatoes said. “Not right now. I just seen them two bank examiners run behind the shitter. What in the world are they doin’ here?”

“Armon, were you dropped on your head as a youngster?” Verne Miller asked, five guns ready to go. He placed a.45 in his belt and carried the Thompson to the window beside the boy.

“Now, that’s a hell of a question, Verne,” Harvey said, cracking an egg into the hot skillet. He figured since they were going to be in here a while, there was no sense in starving.

“This is the greatest day of my life, fellas,” Armon said. “I sure am glad my family’s here to see it.”

Ma Shannon turned from the busted window and spit some snuff on the floor.

“You need to get them out of here,” Miller said.

“How come?”

“How come?” Miller asked, shaking his head.

Old Boss Shannon walked into the kitchen, rocking the baby girl in his arms, while the child’s teenage mother thumbed bullets into her rifle and took careful aim on the law outside.

“Can you give us cover?” Harvey asked the boy.

“I’ll die tryin’.”

“Potatoes?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I wish you’d quit saying things like that.”

THE SMOKE WAS SOMETHING TERRIBLE, AND JONES BURIED HIS face into his forearm as big clouds of it would scatter on past, bringing tears to his eyes, the heat tremendous. He held the Thompson’s grip in his right hand and peered out again at the big barn’s mouth, the flames licking up high in the loft, tearing at the walls and boiling the paint, black smoke pouring out of stalls as the timber beams started to crack and fall. A milk cow and two swaybacked horses trotted out and off into a field with heavy-hoofing steps while two black shadows appeared in the barn’s mouth, loose hay sparking electricity at their feet. The men held hats across their faces and waved their arms to dispel the coils of black smoke coming through every crack in the barn.

A big crash inside the barn and out rushed a pug-nosed thug in an undershirt, firing off.45s in each hand and running for a Buick that’d been parked sideways out behind the Shannon place. His face was soot black like a minstrel-show player, and his eyes were like eggs, wide with meanness and fear.

The son of a bitch didn’t get five feet before the boys opened fire on him, giving him a short pause, him spinning in a comical dance and then falling face-first into a pile of cow shit. He tried to rise up, lifting his head, but his face fell right back.

The second man appeared high in the loft, raking his Thompson back over the automobile blockade and trying to grab hold of a rope pulley. He was bone thin and wore a rumpled suit, scurrying down the rope while holding down the trigger, twirling halfway to the ground before Jones had a hell of a clear shot at the bastard, taking quick aim with a short burst of the machine gun. Maybe three bullets wasted before the man fell and rolled, foot caught up in the ropes, dangling upside down like a broken puppet.

He sprayed the Thompson a final time before it gave out and fell to the ground.

From where Jones stood, he could hear the man crying for the Lord Jesus.

“Funny how they always get religion,” Ed Weatherford said.

“Come on.”

Jones walked from behind the shitter, up far and around the open land between the house and the barn, while three men now covered the rear of the property. He kicked over the portly man in the undershirt. His face was covered in shit, but a quick eye on his mug told Jones they’d just brought down Jim Clark, escapee from Lansing back in May. And if logic followed… He turned and walked a few paces to the man hanging by a single leg and swinging back and forth. Yep, just who he thought.

“Hey, Mad Dog.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Jones reached into his pocket and tore into the rope with a folding knife, dropping the bastard in a fallen heap, where he rolled and moaned, his teeth bright pink and red in a frozen smile at his last breath.

HARVEY HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD LIKE THE way old Ma Shannon handled a Winchester. She’d spit some snuff and take aim. She’d squeeze off a shot and lever out the round, plugging in a fresh bullet and spitting in a steady rhythm. She turned to Harvey, who watched her in amazement, and said, “Don’t just stand there. Pick up a weapon, you fool.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Harvey grabbed a pistol, an old.38, and stuffed a handful of bullets into his pant pocket. Verne had changed into a fresh shirt he’d taken from Boss, the material stretched tight against his chest, with the sleeves riding halfway up his muscular forearms.

He put down the skillet of eggs and thanked Harvey.

“Don’t mention it.”

“If the boy covers us, you think that old Buick will ride it out?”

“You’d rather take a tractor or a cow?”

“I don’t care for jail, Harv.”

“Jail isn’t my biggest concern.”

“Potatoes, you see those fellas behind the barn?” Harvey asked. “I want you to keep firing at them till we get the car turned around. Can you do that?”

Potatoes nodded.

“Good boy.”

“You ain’t gonna leave us, are you?” Boss Shannon said. “You cowards.”

“They’re goin’ for help,” Potatoes said.

“My foot,” Boss said. “They’re hightailin’ it out. You boys just try, and them cops will shoot your insides out!”

“I’m not dying in this place,” Harvey said.

“That’s what a man does.”

“Do I look like Davy Crockett?”

Verne Miller clutched the Thompson and held the handle to the back door. He looked to Harvey Bailey and waited a beat before snatching it open and running for the shot-up Buick, the ground under them seeming to disappear.

THE BUICK DIDN’T MAKE IT A HUNDRED FEET BEFORE THAT sharpshooting kid from the Oklahoma field office blew out two tires and the rear windshield. The machine came to a crashing stop into a heap of old wagons and mule plows, and Jones watched as two men climbed out a side door and went running into the rows of dead corn. Jones looked to Doc White and Weatherford, and they followed, Agent Colvin and the rest of the men turning to the house, where an old man with white hair and in overalls emerged from the front door, hollering, “Don’t shoot,” while carrying a small child. “Don’t shoot, we ain’t part of them.”

Jones was swallowed into the rows of corn, sunlight bleeding through the brown stalks, seeing the shadow of Doc White moving by his side. Without a word, Joe Lackey had taken a couple detectives with him to run the perimeter, where the gangsters would be flushed out. But soon there was another shadow to Jones’s left, and the image startled him for a moment before he realized the silent, hulking shape was Mr. Urschel.

The man was talking to himself, in such a low voice that Jones could not hear-or understand-what he was saying. But Jones suddenly became aware that Mr. Urschel had gone crazier than a shithouse rat.

The rows had been irrigated at one time, but now the earth was hard as stone, gullies dug crooked and without care, the parched cornstalks brushing against each other lighter than paper and dwarfing the noise from the farmhouse and burning barn. The air smelled acrid and burnt, more so in the heat of the day, cicadas gone wild in the trees, Jones feeling the sweat soaking his shirt and his hatband. He had to stop to clean his glasses, and, when he would stop, so would Urschel, almost in shadow of the old agent, and then they would move on deeper into the corn.

There was gunfire. Close.

And then more gunfire, men yelling.

Jones ran, trying to find his way out of the corn, but only finding more and more, turning to see he was alone now, Urschel and White gone. And now more gunfire came within the cornfield, and he turned and listened, but the shots hadn’t come from one direction but from all around him. He heard feet, the breaking of stalks, and Jones ran in that direction, suddenly finding himself out of the field and running alongside of it, seeing a loose group of men running for the main road, yelling and pointing, and Jones knew that someone had gotten away.

Another shot from the field, and Jones was back inside now, back in the heat and stalks and loose, lazily planted rows, catching his breath and calling for Doc, finding his knees with his hands and mopping his face and glasses again.

He saw a form at his feet.

“Doc?”

When he looked through the lenses, he stared straight into the eyes of Detective Ed Weatherford, who lay on his back, staring crazy-eyed and wide-mouthed up at the sun, as if paralyzed by its power. In death, Weatherford still looked as if he was waiting for the perfect moment to speak.

Jones held the Thompson and listened. He spotted some broken stalks-broken down fresh, where the insides still showed a bit of green-and he followed the trail, a wild zigzagging, deep into the heart of the planting, to where he saw the broad, sweating back and freshly cut hair of Charles F. Urschel, leveling his 16-gauge on a man who had fallen to the ground but held himself upright on his elbows with a broad smile.

Jones walked up behind him.

“I have him, Mr. Urschel.”

The man didn’t answer, only breathed hard out his nose, sweat rolling down from his hair and down into his eyes, making him squint with the sting of the salt.

“I have him.”

“No. No, it’s not.”

“Sir?”

Urschel lowered the gun and rubbed out the salt with his fists. “That’s not one of ’em. Who are you?”

The man, now flat on his back, lifted his hands in a small truce, laughing a little bit. The nervous laugh of a man trying to get a hold of the situation.

“Why, Mr. Urschel, that there is Harvey Bailey,” Jones said. “The gentleman bank robber.”

“Jones,” Bailey said. “Been a while.”

Jones took off his Stetson and fanned his face. He reached down with a right hand and hoisted Harvey Bailey from the hard earth. “Harvey, if a head bobs up anywhere around here, or another shot is fired, I promise I’ll cut you in two with this machine gun.”