Ace Atkins - Infamous

“You boys were Rangers?” Jarrett asked.

“Did you know Jim Dunaway?”

“Sure,” White said. “He lasted two weeks before being mustered out for drunkenness and insubordination.”

The silence was broken by the grumble of a low-flying airplane, and the men craned their heads to watch it pass in the night.

They continued on, following the tracks, Colvin driving slow behind them, the engine ticking and their feet crunching on gravel, moonlight leading the way.

About a half mile down from the crossroads, Jarrett about jumped out of his britches at the sight of a coiled rattlesnake raising its head, ready to strike.

“Holy shit!”

Jones shined his light, and the snake slithered off into the ditch.

“Shoot it,” Jarrett yelled. “Shoot it!”

“I’m not gonna shoot it,” Jones said. “Has the same right bein’ out here as us.”

“You ever been bit?” Jarrett asked. “Nearly killed me one time.”

“They just actin’ according to their nature,” Jones said. “Can’t fault ’em for it.”

“Shoot it.”

“No, sir.”

Jarrett walked off in the moonlight and returned with a fat river stone he had to hold in both hands. He got within six feet of that old rattler, shaking its tail for all it’s worth, and launched the stone at the snake, sending it writhing and turning with a broken back. He retrieved the rock and slammed it back down a half dozen times before the snake, bloody and broken, tried to coil and strike a final time, but only twitched on account of the nerves.

In the moonlight they watched Jarrett spit and try to catch his breath.

“Man can’t show anger toward nature,” Jones said in a whisper to White. “Any fool knows that. That’s what separates us.”

Monday, July 24, 1933

Okay, so the song went like this: Harvey Bailey and Verne Miller had robbed three banks since Kansas City, none of them worth squat, but the little stash growing into something neat and tidy, a figure to work with, something respectable, and a number that would be well worth telling the dealer, “I’m okay with this. I’m out.” They slept in cars and ate by cook fires. They turned their heads from friendly folks in restaurants who wanted to chat about the weather; they wore common clothes and drove common cars. Their lives, their futures, were road maps purchased for pennies at Texaco, Sinclair Oil, and Standard Red Crown service stations. They pissed in drainage ditches and fell asleep with whiskey bottles in their hands, often reaching for guns when a deer would scamper across places where they laid their heads. All in all, Harvey had been having a hell of a time since breaking out of jail. Everything was just that much sweeter.

“So if it’s good, why do we bring in Underhill and Clark?”

“Because we need more men,” Harvey said.

“Those hicks are the types that find a sexual interest in the barnyard.”

“Didn’t say I wanted to take them to dinner with us.”

“If they fuck up, we leave ’em or kill ’em.”

“You run a hard code, Verne.”

“You got more patience?”

Harvey shrugged. They stood over the hood of his Buick, parked at the edge of a rolling hill at the foot of the Cooksons, and studied the git out from Muskogee, the People’s National Bank. “Big beautiful cage on the left wall,” Harvey said. “Safe will be open for business behind them.”

“How many?”

“Eight and the president.”

“When?”

“Right before closing.”

“And then what?”

“I head back to my family,” Harvey said. “ Wisconsin and all that. And you can go back to Vi.”

“Vi’s in New York.”

“Then you go to New York.”

“I think she’s fooling around on me.”

“You’d have to be pretty stupid to step out with Verne Miller’s gal.”

“We had some trouble before she left.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“She complained that I got a temper.”

Dust kicked up on the horizon, and a black speck soon took the shape of a sedan not unlike the black Ford they’d stolen in Clinton. “Mad Dog” Underhill and Jim Clark crawled out, and Harvey and Miller spoke to them. Harvey hadn’t seen the boys since the Lansing breakout. Underhill was a bony fella with big mean eyes and dirty little hands. Clark had no neck, thinning hair, and dimples. He was a fat man who shifted from side to side when he walked.

Cigarettes were smoked. The git shown to everyone there just in case Harvey was hit and couldn’t drive. Underhill laid down a sharp fart as he studied the map and didn’t even say he was sorry.

“I got some aigs and a skillet,” Underhill said, scratching his crotch.

“Stole some bread at the Piggly Wiggly,” Clark said, and spat.

“Fire’s over there, boys,” Harvey Bailey said, pointing to the little grouping of stones he’d laid out last night. “Help yourself.”

Verne Miller had walked off to the edge of a little hill where the earth had been blasted away to make room for train tracks. He carried with him a little bucket of water, a straight razor, and a mirror. Sitting on an old tree stump, he began to shave as the new boys guffawed it up by the fire.

“Don’t think about it so much,” Harvey said.

“Mad Dog? You got to be pulling my leg.”

“Vi.”

“You know, I met her at a carnival,” Verne said. “She was working in a kissing booth, and some rube tried to reach under her skirt and touch her pussy.”

“And you didn’t like that.”

“I nearly choked the man to death.”

Miller had shaven half his face with nothing but muddy water. The mud slid down off his cheek and into the bucket as he turned to stare at Harvey. He shook his head and slid the razor down his other cheek, the blade sounding like the soft ripping of a paper bag.

“Those morons know about Kansas City?” Miller asked.

“Nope.”

“The G’s gonna hang us for that,” Miller said. “You were right. Jelly Nash wasn’t worth it.”

“We weren’t there,” Harvey said. “Don’t ever tell yourself anything different.”

“People blame me for killing Nash.”

“Wasn’t your fault.”

“Underhill said he heard I killed Nash because he looked at me wrong.”

“Underhill doesn’t have much sense,” Harvey said.

“Why do they call him ‘Mad Dog’?”

“You really want to know?”

“MOR E COFFEE?” MRS. URSCHEL ASKED.

“I’d appreciate it, ma’am,” Gus Jones said.

She sent a negro boy back to the kitchen to refill the silver pot.

“I want you to go,” Mrs. Urschel said. “I want all these lawmen gone.”

“May I ask why?”

“No one will call with every policeman in the state in this house.”

“I’d like our people to stay.”

“From your office.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jones said. “We don’t want to interfere.”

“Is Charlie dead?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Will they kill him?”

“I can’t rightly say.”

“But they might.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Like the Lindbergh child.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mr. Urschel is a tough, resourceful man. He’s cunning and shrewd and quite strong. He can take care of himself.”

“I don’t doubt it, Mrs. Urschel.”

“Do I call you ‘Agent Jones’?”

“ ‘Buster’ is just fine.”

“Why do they call you Buster?”

“Just what I’ve always been called. My mother called me that.”

“Did she approve of your line of work?”

“She understood it,” Jones said. “My father was the same.”

“Worked for the government.”

“He was a lawman.”

She nodded. The negro waited until there was a pause in the conversation to pour the coffee into the china cups. The furniture was stiff and hard, the kind you’d seen in a museum but never used. A large portrait of Charles Urschel hung on a far wall over a small wooden bookshelf filled with leather-bound editions. Jones would be damned if it didn’t seem like old Charlie was staring dead at him.