Michael Martone - Alive and Dead in Indiana

The alarm is ringing on the building. Red is jumpy, getting the money when a cop walks in. He thinks it’s some kind of mistake. His blue overcoat is buttoned over his gun. Just what I was looking for , but it’s trouble. There are more outside. They’re lining up behind cars. Grab somebody and go! I yell to Red.

Someone says, Can I get my coat?

Out the door with the cop ahead of me and someone is calling the cop’s name and the cop is running off down the street. I feel the bullet hit the vest. It knocks me back. I shoot at where the smoke is, and get hit twice more. I hear glass crashing and the alarm. I shoot some more at the smoke, see Red go down to the right, grab him, grab the money. My back is to the guns.

We get away in the car.

East Chicago still has Christmas stuff up.

Red took the bullet under his arm. My chest hurts. Red says from the backseat that being shot ain’t nothing like being shot.

The ramps are crowded with people. He runs into Jim, and they shake hands, leaning forward and grabbing each other’s arms with their other hands. Jim tells Blackie that he is running for DA and that Blackie’s crowd better watch out. Blackie tells Jim that he’s all for him and that Blackie’s going straight. There is a roar from the crowd and Blackie says , Dempsey. They talk about the fight and say that they will have to get together. There is another roar, and Blackie says , Firpo.

Patty wants to hold hands in the dark. Puts my hand on her knee. She’s got no stockings on. It’s warm between her legs. We’re both looking straight ahead. Watching the movie. I’m slumped down and my hat’s on my lap. I’d say the man next to me is crowding me. His arm takes up the arm rest.

Her dress is nice. I think about what it’s made of, stitch by stitch. What if the parts fell apart? In the shop I made double task, triple sometimes — yoking sleeves, setting collars with a Tomcat. The white thread in the blue work shirts. Thinking of pulling one thread and having the whole thing fall apart. It just feels good now, the cloth and what’s underneath. She is moving.

The new DA is tired. Election night and all that. A woman breaks through the crowd and hops into the limousine after him. She says that Blackie sent her. They settle back in the seat and pull a blanket over their legs .

In Tucson, they took us one at a time, and me and Terry just getting back from looking for Indians. She stood there with her fingers crossed and her hands on top of her head. They cuffed me.

I do some shouting. Hey, I tell you, I’m Sullivan! You got the wrong man!

Some vacation , says Terry.

They had the prints on Pete and Mac by the time I made it to the station.

I don’t know them . That’s what I say. The place is lousy with reporters. The cops take me into a room where they start going through papers. They snatch my hand, turn over my wrist.

Well, what do we have here?

One bent down and undid a shoe.

The other foot, Charlie , says a guy.

They look at my heel a long time. I remember Pendleton and the foundry and pouring metal on it to get out of the heat. And then Charlie, he takes my face in his hands, and I say, Hey . He holds my head still while his thumbs feel through my mustache, pressing my lip on my teeth, my head down. This is the guy , he says.

They open the door and the reporters come in.

Guess who we got , they say.

Where’s Indiana? I ask a farmer who’s standing in his field. He points to the road crossing just ahead. Terry says, You can’t tell them apart. Illinois looks just the same. It’d be something if they were the colors on the map .

I stop to change the plates and put the chains on. The roads are thawing and it’ll just get worse as it gets warm. My dad won’t know me now with these new clothes and hat. I want him to see Terry and the car. Hubert’ll be there and the sisters. We’ll hide in the barn if anybody comes. The hay will all be gone, and we can shoot baskets in the loft.

It wasn’t warm enough for a picnic. But they filled the house with everyone bringing a covered dish and their own service.

I told them all about Crown Point. Once in the front room. Once in the kitchen. The kids on the porch. The men around back. Hubert took my picture with Terry. Then with me alone with the gun. Says he’ll not have it developed till they catch me.

The people on the floor kicked the gas candle back and forth. Homer went in to get Red out of the vault. I’d been shot already. Green bent over where the gas shell hit him. We’re all crying. I’m holding a girl when we go through the revolving door. It’s my right shoulder so it’s her I push against the glass.

She gives a little grunt.

Homer’s behind me.

We’ve got people lined up all over. It’s like a picket fence.

Red comes out and gets hit. It’s coming from up above us and behind. We all get our guns going. The people got their hands up. Lester sets them out on the Buick. Two on the fenders like deer. They’re on the back bumper, the running board, between us in the car. There must be twenty.

Slow! I yell .

Homer’s reading off the directions when someone on the running board says, Here, right here is where I live . We stop and she gets off. Cars go by honking, thinking it’s a shivaree. My arm hurts, all crowded in like that. Lester’s leaning out the back with a rifle. We stop to let some more off, and he gets out to spread some tacks. I’m thinking that he’s getting them under our car.

Some law you got! he’s yelling at the locals.

The new DA and Blackie’s girl are sitting at a table in a nightclub. A woman is on the stage, singing. After the song, everyone pounds on the tables with little wooden hammers. Then we see Blackie asleep in a room. He wakes up, and magazines fall to the floor. The phone rings, and he answers it. A woman, in bed, is on the other end of the line. She asks him to guess who she saw that night at the nightclub. Blackie hangs up and looks at the magazines .

Tellers always telling you to use the next window. Not believing you unless you have a mask. Walking in the door and wasting a whole clip above their heads. Less chance of shooting maybe, but you never know when somebody will get a wise idea, think they’re in a movie.

That boy in South Bend, looking at his hand where the bullet went through.

The sheriff in Lima saying, I’m going to have to leave you, Mother .

The bullet that killed him on the floor next to him.

Margaret so surprised when the gun went off on the beach in Florida.

All the things we didn’t do too. And did.

They’d draw my face all wrong. I don’t smoke. Finding out later, after Pete and Mac got shipped to Ohio, that Leach told the papers to give me all the play.

Didn’t matter to Pete.

Blackie closes the door, leaving the body inside. He catches up with his bodyguard, who is waiting by the elevator. It is New Year’s Eve. The bodyguard is wearing a derby .

Cops are at the door , Terry says. And I’m a Lawrence something, something Lawrence. Get dressed , I tell her, fitting in a drum.

I am always waking up to these things. I can’t remember my name. I’d been leaving every morning, heading downtown to make it look like I had a job.

Terry’s put her blouse on backwards. She’s remembering what happened at Dr. Eye’s.

Shots from the hall.

That’ll be Homer coming over for breakfast.

Hurry up , I tell her, and spray the door.

Think about the cake the neighbor lady from across the hall brought over the first day, her husband with the pipe, saying he has a crystal set.