Later she told her story. Nelly had showed up there via boxcar early that morning, but Ira was working on a hurry-up job at the garage and didn’t know about it. Nelly had made his sister and the children stay in the house all day. Finally he persuaded the youngest boy that it would be great fun and a joke on everybody if he would go downtown and buy him two boxes of .45 shells.
But all this revelation came later, for Clyde Boston was well occupied at the telephone. He called the courthouse and sent a carload of vigilantes after Nelly on Primary No. 37. He called the telephone office and had them notify authorities in Liberty, Prairie Flower, Mannville, and Fort Hood. Then he called the state capital and talked to federal authorities himself. Government men started arriving by auto and airplane within two hours.
About suppertime Nelly showed up at a farmhouse owned by Larry Larsen, fourteen miles southwest of Elm City. He had been circling around all afternoon, trying to break through the cordon. They had heavy trucks across all the roads; late-summer cornfields don’t make for good auto travel, even when there has been a drought.
He took Larsen’s sedan and made the farmer fill it with gas out of his tractor tank. Nelly had cut the telephone wires; he forced the farmer’s family to tie one another up, and then he tied the last one himself. Nelly saw to it that the tying was well done; it was after eight o’clock before one of the kids got loose and they shouted forth their story over a neighbor’s telephone.
Things were wild enough down at the Chronicle office that evening. But I had a reliable staff, and at eight-thirty I thought it was safe to take a run up to the courthouse.
“I kind of expected you’d be up, Dave,” said Clyde Boston.
I told him that I thought he’d be out on the road somewhere.
“Been out for the last four hours.” He took his feet down off the desk, and then put them up again. “If I can get loose from all these state and national efficiency experts, how’d you like to take a little drive with me in your car? Mine’s kind of out of order.”
Well, I told him that I’d be glad to drive him anywhere he said, but I didn’t want to come back with bullet holes in the cowling. So he got loose from the efficiency experts, and he made me strike out south of town and then east, on Primary No. 6.
Clyde didn’t talk. Usually it was his way to talk a lot, in a blissful, middle-aged, baldheaded fashion. We passed two gangs of guards and identified ourselves each time, and finally Clyde had me stop at a farm where some cousins of his lived. He borrowed a log chain—a good big one with heavy links. This rusty mass Clyde dumped down into my clean back seat, and then he directed me to drive south again.
The katydids exclaimed in every grove.
“You know,” said Clyde, “I used to do a lot of rabbit hunting and prairie-chicken hunting down this way, when I was younger. And you used to do a lot of hiking around down here with the boys. Fact is, only boys who were raised in these parts would know this country completely. Isn’t that a fact? Outside officers wouldn’t know it.”
Well, I agreed that they wouldn’t, and then Clyde began to talk about Nelly Tare. He said that Nelly’s one chance to get out of those several hundred square miles that he was surrounded in was to ride out on a railroad train. He wouldn’t be likely to try it on foot, not unless he was crazy, and Clyde Boston didn’t think he was crazy. Except gun crazy, as always.
“Now, the railroads all cross up here in this end of the county, up north of the river. Don’t they?”
“That’s right.”
“So to get from where Nelly was at suppertime to where he’d like to be, he’d have to go diagonally from southwest to northeast. Now, the river timber runs diagonally from southwest to northeast—”
I began to see a little light. “You’re talking about the old Rivermouth road.” And Clyde said that he was.
He said that he had picnicked there with his family in recent years. The ancient timber road was still passable by car, if a driver proceeded slowly and cautiously enough. It meant fording several creeks; it couldn’t be managed when the creeks were up.
“It comes out on the prairie just below the old Bemis farm,” said Clyde. “You go down between pastures on a branch-off lane, and then you’re right in the woods. That’s where I think maybe he’ll come out.”
When he got to the Bemis place we turned off on the side lane and drove to the edge of the timber. The forest road emerged—a wandering sluice with yellow leaves carpeting it. We left my car parked at the roadside, and Clyde dragged the log chain down the timber road until he found a good place.
Cottonwoods and thin saplings made a wall along either side, where the road twisted out of the gully. A driver couldn’t tell that the road was blocked until he had climbed the last curve in low gear.
Clyde wrapped the log chain around two cottonwoods. It sagged, stiff and heavy, across the path.
I said, “He’ll kill you, Clyde. Don’t expect me to help you try to grab him and get killed at the same time.”
“There won’t be any killing.” Clyde settled himself in the darkness. “I’m going to take Nelly Tare back to Elm City. Alive.”
* * *
—
Old logs and gullies are thick in the Rivermouth country; hazel brush fairly blocks the forgotten road in a hundred places. It was long before Nelly’s headlights came sneaking through the trees. The katydids spoke a welcome; the dull parking lights went in and out, twisting, exploring, poking through the brush; they came on, with the motor growling in low.
Nelly made quite a spurt and went into second for a moment as the car swung up out of the gorge; sleek leaves flew from under his rear wheels; little rocks pattered back into the shrubbery.
Then Nelly saw the log chain. He jammed his brakes and the car slewed around until it was broadside. Nelly turned off the motor and lights in half a second; the car door swung; he was out on the log-chain side, and he had a gun in his hand.
“Don’t shoot, Nelly,” said Clyde Boston, stepping in front of the trees and turning on his flashlight.
I didn’t want to be killed, so I stood behind a tree and watched them. The flashlight thrust out a long, strong beam; Clyde stood fifteen feet away from the car’s radiator, but the shaft of his lamp was like whitewash on Nelly Tare.
“It’s Clyde,” the sheriff said. “Clyde Boston. You remember me? I was up at your sister’s place today.”
Nelly cried, “Turn off that light!”
“No,” Clyde said. “And I’m warning you not to shoot the light out, because I’m holding it right in front of my stomach. My stomach’s a big target. You wouldn’t want to shoot my stomach, would you, Nelly?”
Nelson Tare’s hair was too long, and he needed a shave. He looked like some wild thing that had been dug out of the woods. “Clyde! I’m telling you for the last time! Turn it off!”
Clyde’s voice was a smooth rumble. “Remember one time when we went hunting rabbits?” He edged forward a little. “You and Dave and me. Remember? A big jack sat down, waiting for you to kill him. And you couldn’t pull the trigger. You couldn’t kill him.”
Nelly had his face screwed into a wad, and his teeth showed between his lips.
“Never shot anything or anybody, did you, Nelly?” There was a snapping sound, and I jumped. It was only a stick breaking under Clyde’s foot as he moved nearer to the car. “You never shot a soul. Not a jackrabbit or anything. You couldn’t.”
He was only ten feet away from Nelly and Nelly’s gun.
“You just pretended you could. But the guards in Oklahoma and Missouri didn’t know you the way I do. They hadn’t ever gone hunting with you, had they?”
He took another step forward. Another. Nelly was something out of a waxworks in a sideshow, watching him come. Then a vague suffusion of light began to show around them; a carload of deputies had spotted my car at the head of the lane; their headlamps came
hurtling toward us.
“You shot telephones off of desks,” Clyde purred to Nelly, “and tires off of cars. You’ve been around and you’ve done a lot of shooting. But you never shot things that the blood ran out of…Now, you drop your gun, Nelly. Drop it on the ground. Gosh, I was crazy this afternoon. I shouldn’t have laid down when you told me to. I should have just stood there.”
Maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong, I don’t know. The car stopped and I heard men yell, “Look out, Sheriff!” They were ready with their machine guns, trying to hustle themselves into some position where they could spatter the daylights out of Nelly Tare without shooting Clyde Boston too. Clyde didn’t give them a chance to do it. He dove forward; he flung his arms around Nelly and crushed him to the ground.
Nelly cried, and I don’t like to think about it; sometimes I wake up in the night and think I hear him crying. My memory goes back to our haymow days and to the rats in the chicken pen—the rats that Nelly couldn’t shoot—and I remember the bloody cottontails dangling from Clyde’s belt.
Nelly cried, but not solely because he was captured and would never be free again. He wept because the world realized something he had tried to keep hidden, even from himself. When he was taken back into prison, he wore an expression of tragic perplexity. It must have been hideous for him to know that he, who had loved guns his whole life long, should at last be betrayed by them.
Cyclists’ Raid
FRANK ROONEY
THE STORY
Original publication: Harper’s, January 1951
FRANK ROONEY (1913–?), born in Kansas City, Missouri, was an actor as well as an author of short stories and novels, performing with Maurice Evans in Hamlet at the Hanna Theatre in Cleveland in 1946 after serving in the army during World War II.
He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956 for his fiction. Among his novels were The Courts of Memory (1954), The Heel of Spring (1956), McGinnis Speaks (1960), and Shadow of God (1967), in which a young nun in the Far East is captured by Communists and must choose between death and sexual violation.
Although his novels were generally well-reviewed, it is Rooney’s short story, “Cyclists’ Raid,” for which he is most remembered today.
The July 21, 1947, issue of Life magazine ran an article, with photographs, of what it called a “Cyclist’s Holiday.” It was, in fact, a three-day nightmare for the peaceful little town of Hollister, California, best-known for growing garlic, when it was invaded by an estimated four thousand motorcyclists for a rally over the Independence Day weekend.
This is how Life described the event: “Racing their vehicles down the main street and through traffic lights, they rammed into restaurants and bars, breaking furniture and mirrors. Some rested awhile by the curb. Others hardly paused. Police arrested many for drunkenness and indecent exposure but could not restore order. Finally, after two days, the cyclists left with a brazen explanation. ‘We like to show off. It’s just a lot of fun.’ ”
There is evidence that the article probably exaggerated the level of violence, as Hollister later invited motorcyclists back for a fiftieth anniversary celebration of the infamous weekend.
The article struck a chord with Rooney, inspiring his outstanding short story, which was selected for The Best American Short Stories in 1952. It did not take long for Stanley Kramer to recognize its cinematic appeal and the American classic film The Wild One was released in 1953.
THE FILM
Title: The Wild One, 1953
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Director: Laslo Benedek
Screenwriters: John Paxton, Ben Maddow
Producer: Stanley Kramer
THE CAST
• Marlon Brando (Johnny Strabler)
• Mary Murphy (Kathie Bleeker)
• Robert Keith (Sheriff Harry Bleeker)
• Lee Marvin (Chino)
• Jay C. Flippen (Sheriff Stew Singer)
Rooney’s short story re-creates the magazine article but raises the level of violence. The film adds a rivalry between two motorcycle gangs that results in violence between the gangs until the police order them out of town. They leave for a different town and largely spare the civilians who are enjoying the benefits of the cyclists’ spending spree—especially at the bar. The law is represented by a single sheriff, who is quickly recognized as being weak and ineffectual, encouraging the gang to become more and more rowdy and violent.
The Beetles, headed by Chino, and the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club, led by Johnny Strabler, are bitter rivals, exacerbated when a member of the Black Rebels steals a trophy won by the Beetles, and fights ensue. Strabler, a cop-hating biker, is attracted to Kathie Bleeker, an innocent young waitress at the bar, who finds herself intrigued by the handsome, brooding young man.
Trouble escalates when gang members throw the sheriff into his own jail cell and then go after Kathie, his daughter, but Johnny rescues her. When he takes her for a drive, she decides that she would like to go away with him but he turns her down. Shocked and hurt, she cries and runs away with Johnny in pursuit. A group of tough town vigilantes misinterpret the scene, chase Johnny down, and beat him furiously.
The film does not include the major violent event in the short story, which did not occur in the real-life episode that inspired it. Instead, in spite of the violent activity displayed in the film, it tended to glamorize the bikers, who had never previously been seen in such a positive light. Instead of being seen merely as criminal thugs, they—particularly the charismatic character played by Marlon Brando—were portrayed as rebels. When Kathie asks Johnny what he is rebelling against, he replies, “Whaddaya got?”
Although now regarded as a great film, it was banned in Great Britain until 1968 because of its romanticizing of the violent motorcycle gangs.
The role of Chino originally had been given to Keenan Wynn, who spent weeks on the film during preproduction, but he was under contract to MGM, which refused to release him. He was replaced by Lee Marvin, who was often drunk during filming, both on- and offscreen. The animosity between him and Brando in the film’s scenario carried over to their private lives. When he was cast as Chino, Marvin did not know how to ride a motorcycle but he had no intention of being one-upped by Brando, so quickly learned, eventually becoming an enthusiastic racer.
The working titles of The Wild One during production were The Cyclists’ Raid and Hot Blood.
CYCLISTS’ RAID
Frank Rooney
JOEL BLEEKER, owner and operator of the Pendleton Hotel, was adjusting the old redwood clock in the lobby when he heard the sound of the motors. At first he thought it might be one of those four-engine planes on the flights from Los Angeles to San Francisco which occasionally got far enough off course to be heard in the valley. And for a moment, braced against the steadily approaching vibrations of the sound, he had the fantastic notion that the plane was going to strike the hotel. He even glanced at his daughter, Cathy, standing a few feet to his right and staring curiously at the street.
Then, with his fingers still on the hour hand of the clock, he realized that the sound was not something coming down from the air but the high, sputtering racket of many vehicles moving along the ground. Cathy and Bret Timmons, who owned one of the two drugstores in the town, went out onto the veranda, but Bleeker stayed by the clock, consulting the railroad watch he pulled from his vest pocket and moving the hour hand on the clock forward a minute and a half. He stepped back deliberately, shut the glass case, and looked at the huge brass numbers and the two ornate brass pointers. It was eight minutes after seven, approximately twenty-two minutes until sundown. He put the railroad watch back in his pocket and walked slowly and incuriously through the open doors of the lobby. He was methodical and orderly, and the small things he did every day—like setting the clock—were important to him. He was not to be hurried—especially by som
ething as elusively irritating as a sound, however unusual.
There were only three people on the veranda when Bleeker came out of the lobby—his daughter Cathy, Timmons, and Francis LaSalle, co-owner of LaSalle and Fleet, Hardware. They stood together quietly, looking, without appearing to stare, at a long stern column of red motorcycles coming from the south, filling the single main street of the town with the noise of a multitude of pistons and the crackling of exhaust pipes. They could see now that the column was led by a single white motorcycle which, when it came abreast of the hotel, turned abruptly right and stopped. They saw, too, that the column, without seeming to slow down or to execute any elaborate movement, had divided itself into two single files. At the approximate second, having received a signal from their leader, they also turned right and stopped.
The whole flanking action, singularly neat and quite like the various vehicular formations he remembered in the army, was distasteful to Bleeker. It recalled a little too readily his tenure as a lieutenant colonel overseas in England, France, and finally Germany.
“Mr. Bleeker?”
Bleeker realized the whole troop—no one in the town either then or after that night was ever agreed on the exact number of men in the troop—had dismounted and that the leader was addressing him.
“I’m Bleeker,” Although he hadn’t intended to, he stepped forward when he spoke, much as he had stepped forward in the years when he commanded a battalion.
“I’m Gar Simpson and this is Troop B of the Angeleno Motorcycle Club,” the leader said. He was a tall, spare man, and his voice was coldly courteous to the point of mockery. “We expect to bivouac outside your town tonight and we wondered if we might use the facilities of your hotel. Of course, sir, we’ll pay.”
“There’s a washroom downstairs. If you can put up with that—”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 159
