“If they come, we’ll give em a show,” Jack says. “I ain’t going to no electric chair like Harry Pierpont.”
But no one came, and after ten minutes or so we got back in the car and drove out to the main road, all slow and careful. And that’s when I saw something I didn’t like much. “Jack,” I says, “you’re bleeding out your mouth. Look out or it’ll be on your shirt.”
Jack wiped his mouth with the big finger of his right hand, looked at the blood on it, and then gave me a smile that I still see in my dreams: big and broad and scared to death. “I just bit the inside of my cheek,” says he. “I’m all right.”
“You sure?” Johnnie asks. “You sound kind of funny.”
“I can’t catch all my breath just yet,” Jack says. He wiped his big finger across his mouth again and there was less blood, and that seemed to satisfy him. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Turn back toward the Spiral Bridge, Homer,” Johnnie says, and I did like he told me. Not all the stories about Johnnie Dillinger are 91
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true, but he could always find his way home, even after he didn’t have no home no more, and I always trusted him.
We were once again doing a perfectly legal parson-go-to-meeting thirty miles per, when Johnnie saw a Texaco station and told me to turn off to the right. We were soon on country gravel roads, Johnnie calling lefts and rights, even though all the roads looked the same to me: just wheel ruts running between clapped-out cornfields. The roads were muddy, and there were still scraps of snow in some of the fields. Every now and then there’d be some hick kid watching us go by. Jack was getting quieter and quieter. I asked him how he was doing and he said, “I’m all right.”
“Yes, well, we ought to get you looked at when we cool off a little,” Johnnie said. “And we have to get your coat mended, too. With that hole in it, it looks like somebody shot you!” He laughed, and so did I. Even Jack laughed. Johnnie could always cheer you up.
“I don’t think it went deep,” Jack said, just as we came out on Route 43. “I’m not bleeding out of my mouth anymore—look.” He turned to show Johnnie his finger, which now just had a maroon smear on it. But when he twisted back into his seat blood poured out of his mouth and nose.
“I think it went deep enough,” Johnnie said. “We’ll take care of you—if you can still talk, you’re likely fine.”
“Sure,” Jack said. “I’m fine.” His voice was smaller than ever.
“Fine as a fiddler’s fuck,” I said.
“Aw, shut up, you dummocks,” he said, and we all had a laugh.
They laughed at me a lot. It was all in fun.
About five minutes after we got back on the main road, Jack passed out. He slumped against the window, and a thread of blood trickled from one corner of his mouth and smeared on the glass. It reminded me of swatting a mosquito that’s had its dinner—the claret everywhere. Jack still had the rag on his head, but it had gone crooked. Johnny took it off and cleaned the blood from Jack’s face with it. Jack muttered and raised his hands as if to push Johnnie away, but they dropped back into his lap.
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“Those cops will have radioed ahead,” Johnnie says. “If we go to St.
Paul, we’re finished. That’s what I think. How about you, Homer?”
“The same,” I says. “What does that leave? Chicago?”
“Yep,” he says. “Only first we have to ditch this motor. They’ll have the plates by now. Even if they didn’t, it’s bad luck. It’s a damn hoodoo.”
“What about Jack?” I says.
“Jack will be all right,” he says, and I knew to say no more on the subject.
We stopped about a mile down the road, and Johnnie shot out the front tire of the hoodoo Ford while Jack leaned against the hood, looking pale and sick.
When we needed a car, it was always my job to flag one down.
“People who wouldn’t stop for any of the rest of us will stop for you,” Johnnie said once. “Why is that, I wonder?”
Harry Pierpont answered him. This was back in the days when it was still the Pierpont Gang instead of the Dillinger Gang. “Because he looks like a Homer,” he said. “Wasn’t ever anyone looked so much like a Homer as Homer Van Meter does.”
We all laughed at that, and now here I was again, and this time it was really important. You’d have to say life or death.
Three or four cars went by and I pretended to be fiddling with the tire. A farm truck was next, but it was too slow and waddly. Also, there were some fellas in the back. Driver slows down and says, “You need any help, amigo?”
“I’m fine,” I says. “Workin’ up a appetite for lunch. You go right on.”
He gives me a laugh and on he went. The fellas in the back also waved.
Next up was another Ford, all by its lonesome. I waved my arms for them to stop, standing where they couldn’t help but see that flat shoe. Also, I was giving them a grin. That big one that says I’m just a harmless Homer by the side of the road.
It worked. The Ford stopped. There was three folks inside, a man and a young woman and a fat baby. A family.
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“Looks like you got a flat there, partner,” the man says. He was wearing a suit and a topcoat, both clean but not what you’d call Grade A.
“Well, I don’t know how bad it can be,” I says, “when it’s only flat on the bottom.”
We was still laughing over that just like it was new when Johnnie and Jack come out of the trees with their guns drawn.
“Just hold still, sir,” Jack says. “No one is going to get hurt.”
The man looked at Jack, looked at Johnnie, looked at Jack again.
Then his eyes went back to Johnnie and his mouth dropped open. I seen it a thousand times, but it always tickled me.
“You’re Dillinger!” he gasps, and then shoots his hands up.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Johnnie says, and grabs one of the man’s hands out of the air. “Get those mitts down, would you?”
Just as he did, another two or three cars came along—country-go-to-town types, sitting up straight as sticks in their old muddy sedans.
We didn’t look like nothing but a bunch of folks at the side of the road getting ready for a tire-changing party.
Jack, meanwhile, went to the driver’s side of the new Ford, turned off the switch, and took the keys. The sky was white that day, as if with rain or snow, but Jack’s face was whiter.
“What’s your name, Ma’am?” Jack asks the woman. She was wearing a long gray coat and a cute sailor’s cap.
“Deelie Francis,” she says. Her eyes were as big and dark as plums.
“That’s Roy. He’s my husband. Are you going to kill us?”
Johnnie give her a stern look and says, “We are the Dillinger Gang, Mrs. Francis, and we have never killed anyone.” Johnnie always made this point. Harry Pierpont used to laugh at him and ask him why he wasted his breath, but I think Johnnie was right to do that. It’s one of the reasons he’ll be remembered long after the straw-hat-wearing little pansy is forgot.
“That’s right,” Jack says. “We just rob banks, and not half as many as they say. And who is this fine little man?” He chucked the kiddo under the chin. He was fat, all right; looked like W. C. Fields.
“That’s Buster,” Deelie Francis says.
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“Well, he’s a regular little bouncer, ain’t he?” Jack smiled. There was blood on his teeth. “How old is he? Three or so?”
“Just barely two and a half,” Mrs. Francis says proudly.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, but he’s big for his age. Mister, are you all right? You’re awful pale. And there’s blood on your—”
Johnnie speaks up then. “Jack, can you drive this one into the trees?” He pointed at the carpenter’s old Ford.
“Sure,” Jack says.
“Flat tire and all?”
“You just try me. It’s just that . . . I’m awful thirsty. Ma’am—
Missus Francis—do you have anything to drink?”
She turned around and bent over—not easy with that horse of a baby in her arms—and got a thermos from the back.
Another couple of cars went puttering by. The folks inside waved, and we waved back. I was still grinning fit to split, trying to look just as Homer as a Homer could be. I was worried about Jack and didn’t know how he could stay on his feet, let alone tip up that thermos and swig what was inside. Iced tea, she told him, but he seemed not to hear. When he handed it back to her, there were tears rolling down his cheeks. He thanked her, and she asked him again if he was all right.