Ace Atkins - Infamous

So this is how it goes, Kathryn thought, life goes back to canning your goddamn crummy crops and waiting for a rainy day. She watched George walk far into a weedy pasture, where a muddy creek was crossed by a lone willow, limbs hanging loose and breezy over the stagnant water. When she turned, Grandma Coleman had felt her way to the screen door and was staring in the direction of that lone tree, her milky blue eyes seeing nothing as she coldly spit into her coffee can.

Kathryn touched her face without thinking, wondering what it must feel like to have a face like a road map.

“WHAT ABOUT COLEMAN?” DOC WHITE ASKED.

“I sent a couple agents,” Jones said. “They turn up somethin’, and we’ll fly back in the evening. Right now, just keep the motor running.”

Jones mounted the steps of the courthouse in downtown Dallas. He removed his Stetson at the door and politely asked a bailiff where to find the Shannon hearing, the man pointing down the hall, and Jones finding the courtroom packed with newspapermen. He brushed past all the men standing in the back row and wandered down to the front, where he spotted a clerk he’d known for some time, tapping the fella on the shoulder.

“Mornin’, John.”

“Buster.”

“Full house today.”

“Don’t you know it.”

“What you got ahead of the Shannons?”

“Two more on the docket,” the clerk said. “Shouldn’t take long.”

“They got counsel?”

“Fella named Sayres,” he said. “Came over from Fort Worth half hour ago.”

“I know him.”

Jones spotted the fat-bellied attorney with the bald head huddled up with Ora and Boss, Potatoes sitting off to the side, flipping and twirling the tie on his neck like a dog with a new collar.

“He’s gonna fight it, y’all movin’ ’em.”

“So I heard.”

“What’s it matter where they’s tried?”

“Let’s say I got reasons to distrust who’s minding the jail.”

The clerk nodded.

Jones leaned into the desk over the man’s shoulder and whispered, “Don’t burn your britches with the paperwork.”

The clerk heard him but didn’t say a word, and Jones walked away, back along the wooden walls, finely oiled and polished, and stood among the gaggle of newspapermen that nervously checked their watches and glanced down at the empty pages of their notebooks. He saw one of the men wore a watch with that cartoon mouse on it, and he thought these people sure were of a different ilk.

Didn’t take but five minutes before the Shannons were called, and the three of them stood with roly-poly Mr. Sam Sayres of Fort Worth. The judge heard the request from the federal prosecutor to have the family extradited from the Dallas district to that of Oklahoma City, where the crime occurred, and the judge looked over his glasses at Sam Sayres, and Sam Sayres argued that the Shannons were charged with crimes that happened in Texas and would be treated fairly only by Texans. He said it was widely known in the press that the Oklahoma authorities were looking for warm bodies to convict, and this decent Texas family needed a fair shake.

The reporter with the Mickey Mouse watch snorted.

The judge looked down at the Shannons, the ragtag lot of them dressed in clothes that looked to be borrowed from an undertaker. Armon and Shannon both wore black suits from another time, with out-of-date ties, and pants that hung down, loosely pinned and sloppy at the boots. Ma Shannon wore an old gingham farm dress and a small hat with feathers and a dead canary in the crown. They all looked as solemn and sorry as sinners at a tent revival.

“Motion granted,” the judge said.

Jones parted the newspapermen, walked down the center aisle, and grabbed a bailiff by the elbow, showing him his piece of tin and telling him he’d be taking custody. Another bailiff joined them, and Ma, Boss, and Armon were marched out of the courtroom through a side door and down a long hallway.

Their attorney shouted for an appeal.

The judge told him to take it up with the clerk.

“Your Honor, those agents are rushing my clients out of the courtroom.”

“They’re within their rights,” the judge said. “I just ordered their removal. If I were you, I’d hurry up and file that appeal-I can’t make an order without it.”

Sayres’s fat ass ran to the clerk. Jones passed him before the bench.

“Hurry up, goddamnit.”

“Can’t do nothin’ till I read ’em to make sure all’s in proper form, Counselor,” the clerk said.

Jones slipped on his hat, tipping the brim at the red-faced attorney shouting at the clerk.

Jones followed the armed men pushing the Shannons down courthouse hallways and through concrete bowels till the Shannons were out a side door and marching toward Doc White and the idling government sedan. He held the back door to the sedan open, an armed agent sitting with the family in the back. Jones found a spot up front.

“Go,” Jones said.

“You rotten son of a bitch,” Boss Shannon said.

“Good to see you again, Boss,” Doc White said. “Sit back and get comfortable.”

“I got to pee-pee,” Ora Shannon said. “I can’t hold it till Oklahoma.”

“Don’t worry, darlin’,” Jones said. “It’s a short flight.”

“Good Lord in heaven,” Ora said. “I’m not getting on no flying machine.”

“Flying machine? Darlin’, this here is 1933. We call ’em ‘airplanes.’ ”

“You’ll have to shoot me dead first,” Ora Shannon said. “It ain’t natural.”

“Natural as a crow’s wings.”

“Oh, pshaw.”

“What you did was illegal,” Boss Shannon said. “Don’t think I don’t understand my rights.”

“Was keeping Mr. Urschel tied up like a goat legal?”

“Don’t confuse a matter of the court,” Boss Shannon said, crimson-faced, from the backseat.

“Don’t confuse legal with what’s right.”

Doc White wheeled them past the front gate and onto the tarmac to the waiting airplane, a twin-engine DC-2 the director had chartered that morning. Four agents met the car and opened the doors, Jones noting two of the men carried Thompsons and the other two held shotguns.

The men pulled out Potatoes first, and he didn’t give them a bit of trouble as he mounted the aircraft steps, his father in tow behind. But old Ora Shannon was the wildcat she promised, shaking her head and saying, “I’ve never been in one of those things in my life and I’m not goin’ now.”

“Suit yourself,” Jones said.

He motioned for the agents, and they pulled the fighting old woman from the car, her back arching as she tried to claw at the men with manacled wrists, until she was held under her arms and by her feet, lifted high off the ground, and taken up the ramp. She launched a final fight at the top, right at the airplane’s door, thrashing and hollering, her screams drowned out by the approaching siren.

A sheriff ’s car had followed them from the courthouse. From the top of the stairs, Jones could see Sam Sayres in the front seat.

“Start her up,” Jones said, hollering.

An agent told the pilot. Men spun the props.

Sam Sayres waddled from the official car, hollering and cussing, holding a piece of paper aloft. Jones pointed to his ear and shook his head. White walked past him and into the DC-2. Jones smiled down on the tarmac and waved good-bye just as the wind from the props knocked the papers loose from the lawyer’s hands and sent them, scattering and tumbling, toward the tower.

Two minutes later they were in the air, headed back to Oklahoma City.

“GIVE ME A SIP,” KATHRYN SAID.

George passed the pint of Old Schenley, straight rye whiskey.

“Bottled in bond under U.S. government supervision,” Kathryn said, reading the label before uncorking the bottle.