The Barkers were on the run after a botched kidnapping; Dock’s Ma had already left—gone all the way to Florida. The hideout in Aurora wasn’t much—four rooms, no electricity, a privy out back—but it was better than Murphy’s saloon. And, like I say, Volney’s girlfriend at least tried to do something. That was on our second night there.
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She set up kerosene lamps all around the bed, then sterilized a paring knife in a pot of boiling water. “If you boys feel pukey,” she said,
“you just choke it back until I’m done.”
“We’ll be okay,” Johnnie said. “Won’t we, Homer?”
I nodded, but I was queasy even before she got going. Jack was laying on his stomach, head turned to the side, muttering. It seemed he never stopped. Whatever room he happened to be in was filled with people only he could see.
“I hope so,” she says, “because once I start in, there’s no going back.” She looked up and seen Dock standing in the doorway. Volney Davis, too. “Go on, baldy,” she says to Dock, “and take-um heap big chief with you.” Volney Davis was no more a Indian than I was, but they used to rib him because he was born in the Cherokee Nation.
Some judge had given him three years for stealing a pair of shoes, which was how he got into a life of crime.
Volney and Dock went out. When they were gone, Rabbits turned Jack over and then cut him open in a X, bearing down in a way I could barely stand to look at. I held Jack’s feet. Johnnie sat beside his head, trying to soothe him, but it didn’t do no good. When Jack started to scream, Johnnie put a dishtowel over his head and nodded for Rabbits to go on, all the time stroking Jack’s head and telling him not to worry, everything would be just fine.
That Rabbits. They call them frails, but there was nothing frail about her. Her hands never even shook. Blood, some of it black and clotted, come pouring out of the sunken place when she cut it. She cut deeper and then out came the pus. Some was white, but there was big green chunks which looked like boogers. That was bad. But when she got to the lung the smell was a thousand times worse. It couldn’t have been worse in France during the gas attacks.
Jack was gasping in these big whistling breaths. You could hear it in his throat, and from the hole in his back, too.
“You better hurry up,” Johnnie says. “He’s sprung a leak in his air hose.”
“You’re telling me,” she says. “The bullet’s in his lung. You just hold him down, handsome.”
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In fact, Jack wasn’t thrashing much. He was too weak. The sound of the air shrieking in and out of him kept getting thinner and thinner. It was hotter than hell with those lamps set up all around the bed, and the stink of the hot oil was almost as strong as the gangrene. I wish we’d thought to open a window before we got started, but it was too late by then.
Rabbits had a set of tongs, but she couldn’t get them in the hole.
“Fuck this!” she cried, and tossed them to one side, and then stuck her fingers into the bloody hole, reached around until she found the slug that was in there, pulled it out, and threw it to the floor. Johnnie started to bend over for it and she said, “You can get your souvenir later, handsome. For now just hold him.”
She went to work packing gauze into the mess she’d made.
Johnnie lifted up the dishtowel and peeked underneath it. “Not a minute too soon,” he told her with a grin. “Old Red Hamilton has turned a wee bit blue.”
Outside, a car pulled into the driveway. It could have been the cops, for all we knew, but there wasn’t nothing we could do about it then.
“Pinch this shut,” she told me, and pointed at the hole with the gauze in it. “I ain’t much of a seamstress, but I guess I can put in half a dozen.”
I didn’t want to get my hands anywhere near that hole, but I wasn’t going to tell her no. I pinched it shut, and more watery pus ran out when I did. My midsection clenched up and I started making this gurk-gurk noise. I couldn’t help it.
“Come on,” she says, kind of smiling. “If you’re man enough to pull the trigger, you’re man enough to deal with a hole.” Then she sewed him up with these big, looping overhand strokes—really punching the needle in. After the first two, I couldn’t look.
“Thank you,” Johnnie told her when it was done. “I want you to know I’m going to take care of you for this.”
“Don’t go getting your hopes up,” she says. “I wouldn’t give him one chance in twenty.”
“He’ll pull through now,” Johnnie says.
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Then Dock and Volney rushed back in. Behind them was another member of the gang—Buster Daggs or Draggs, I can’t remember which. Anyway, he’d been down to the phone they used at the Cities Service station in town, and he said the Gees had been busy back in Chicago, arresting anyone and everyone they thought might be connected to the Bremer kidnapping, which had been the Barker Gang’s last big job. One of the fellas they took was John J. (Boss) McLaugh-lin, a high mucky-muck in the Chicago political machine. Another was Dr. Joseph Moran, also known as the Crybaby.
“Moran’ll give this place up, just as sure as shit sticks to a blanket,” Volney says.
“Maybe it’s not even true,” Johnnie says. Jack was unconscious now.
His red hair lay on the pillow like little pieces of wire. “Maybe it’s just a rumor.”
“You better not believe that,” Buster says. “I got it from Timmy O’Shea.”
“Who’s Timmy O’Shea? The Pope’s butt-wiper?” Johnnie says.
“He’s Moran’s nephew,” Dock says, and that kind of sealed the deal.
“I know what you’re thinking, handsome,” Rabbits says to Johnnie, “and you can stop thinking it right now. You put this fella in a car and go bumping him over those back roads between here and St. Paul, he’ll be dead by morning.”
“You could leave him,” Volney says. “The cops show up, they’ll have to take care of him.”
Johnnie sat there, sweat running down his face in streams. He looked tired, but he was smiling. Johnnie was always able to find a smile. “They’d take care of him, all right,” he says, “but they wouldn’t take him to any hospital. Stick a pillow over his face and sit down on it, most likely.” Which gave me a start, as I’m sure you’ll understand.
“Well, you better decide,” Buster says, “because they’ll have this joint surrounded by dawn. I’m getting the hell out.”
“You all go,” Johnnie says. “You, too, Homer. I’ll stay here with Jack.”
“Well, what the hell,” Dock says. “I’ll stay, too.”
“Why not?” Volney Davis says.
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Buster Daggs or Draggs looked at them like they was crazy, but you know what? I wasn’t surprised a bit. That’s just the effect Johnnie had on people.
“I’ll stay, too,” I says.
“Well, I’m getting out,” Buster says.
“Fine,” Dock says. “Take Rabbits with you.”
“The hell you say,” Rabbits pipes up. “I feel like cooking.”
“Have you gone cuckoo?” Dock asks her. “It’s one o’clock in the morning, and you’re in blood right up to the elbows.”
“I don’t care what time it is, and blood washes off,” she says. “I’m making you boys the biggest breakfast you ever ate—eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, hash browns.”
“I love you, marry me,” Johnnie says, and we all laughed.
“Oh, hell,” Buster says. “If there’s breakfast, I’ll hang around.”
Which is how we all wound up staying put in that Aurora farmhouse, ready to die for a man who was already—whether Johnnie liked it or not—on his way out. We barricaded the front door with a sofa and some chairs, and the back door with the gas stove, which didn’t work anyway. Only the woodstove worked. Me and Johnnie got our tommy guns from the Ford, and Dock got some more from the attic. Also a crate of grenades, a mortar, and a crate of mortar shells. I bet the Army didn’t have as much stuff in those parts as we did. Ha-ha!
“Well, I don’t care how many of them we get, as long as that son of a bitch Melvin Purvis is one of them,” Dock says. By the time Rabbits actually got the grub on the table, it was almost the time farmers eat. We took it in shifts, two men always watching the long driveway. Buster raised the alarm once and we all rushed to our places, but it was only a milk truck on the main road. The Gees never came. You could call that bad info; I called it more of John Dillinger’s luck.