Jess leaned down and come up with a pint whiskey flask that’d been strapped to his leg. “You thirsty from all that escaping?”
“I think I am.”
I didn’t say nothing right off. I just watched while Dock held that flask up to his mouth and poured. Agin my better judgment, I let Jess pour too. Joe passed on it, but I took a little snort, just to show Dock how glad we was to have him with us. Then, while I had my hand on that bottle, I pulled back and SLAM!
It smashed into a thousand pieces.
“Damn you, Willis!” Jess was hopping mad. “What’d you do that for!”
“’Cause we got a job tonight,” I said right back. “And in my business, we don’t drink.”
“You’re worse’n a Baptist preacher!”
“You wanna meet up with a real Baptist preacher, Jess?” I said to him. “You keep drinking like you do, and I guarantee you you’re gonna meet up with a real Baptist preacher. He’s gonna be stooped over your dead body. And you ain’t gonna be on your way up.”
“I like down. The Devil makes better barbeque.”
“I ain’t kidding here, Jess. No corn. No barley. No rye. No tequila. No nothing.”
He still didn’t like my rule, not a’tall. But when he seen I meant business, he said, “Oh … all right,” and set down on a big rock and sulked. I knowed I was gonna have trouble with Jess that way. And with Dock too, now that he’d got the taste of corn again.
Dock wasn’t grousing, just hanging his head. “Aw, burr balls! I coulda drunk that whole thing by myself, Willis, and no kidding.”
“Cheer up, old boy.”
Back in Omaha, I’d bought Dock a fine gray suit, extra big, and a hat to match. So I give him his new outfit, along with a razor, and told him to slick hisself up. He went back through them snapped cattails, and when he come out, you’d a-thought he was the Baptist preacher.
Only I wasn’t done yet. I told ’em all to set down, that I had something to go over with ’em, and that I’d buy ’em all rib-eyes soon as I was done. I went back to the car and got a big, yellow envelope. I pulled a big picture out.
“We don’t kill people,” I said. “If you kill somebody, that’s when all hell breaks loose. And the public goes agin ya. I want you to know I mean it.”
All three of their jaws dropped.
It was one of them doctor’s medical drawings, how a man looks on the inside, if all his wrapping and skin was took off. I’d bought it off a crook doctor in Tulsa for fifty dollars. He was the one that give me the lesson I was about to give my brothers.
“Most times, boys,” I said, “you’ll be carrying shotguns. And we load our shotguns with Number 7 birdshot. But if I give you a pistol.…”
I pointed to the part of the drawing that showed the man’s heart. It was drawed in bright red. “A man’s heart ain’t way over on the left, like you might think. It’s right here. Near to the middle. Look hard. You don’t ever wanta shoot a man in his heart. Ever. Got that?”
The boys knowed what I was saying.
Birdshot pellets are just bitty things, see, what you use to shoot doves or quail. They wouldn’t kill no human if you was careful the way you shot your gun, they’d just sting and make ’em turn tail. But the pistols was loaded with thick lead bullets. And that was a diff’rent story.
“Okay. If you gotta shoot, here’s where you aim.” I pointed to one of the man’s shoulders in the drawing, where the bones and the gristle come together. “Just wing ’em. Don’t shoot unless you have to. But if you have to, hit ’em right, if they’re right-handed, left if they’re lefties. Got it?”
Jess and Dock nodded.
Joe just blinked.
“All we’re doing here, Joe, is getting ready for what ain’t gonna happen.”
We drove into Glenwood after dark. Wasn’t much to see, mostly just one and two-story buildings on the main street. When we drove past the First National Bank, we seen a night marshal setting in a chair on one side of the building. He was a old feller, white hair and whiskers, and his chin was rocking on his breastbone.
“See that?” I said. “Naptime.”
“This town’s a flea trap,” Jess said. “Bet nothing ever’ happens here.”
We stopped on a back street and switched off the car lights. Since this was gonna be the Newton boys’ first job as a team, and all my brothers was green, I told Dock to wait in the car. If something went wrong, I didn’t want him caught and sent back to the joint. Being that he was a escaped con, they was likely to throw the book at him.
I told Dock, if he thought me and Jess and Joe was captured, to take off by hisself. We could take care of ourselves. Then I reached under the back seat and pulled out our shotguns and pistols. One of the shotguns I give to Dock, the other to Joe. One pistol I give to Jess, the other I pocketed myself.
“Okay,” I said. “First thing we gotta do, we gotta sneak up on that old nighthack and take him round back, gag him and tie him up. Joe and me’s gonna do that. Jess is lookout. Somebody else comes by, talk rough to ’em.”
With that, me and Jess and Joe started down the alley. It was dirt, so we wasn’t making much sound. Creeping slow and easy, like cats. But just when we come up close to the back of the bank, we was just about one building away, what pops up right in front of us but a little black shadow. Kinda like a ghost.
Only that ghost was growling.
Joe turned sideways to me. “Uh-oh.”
“Damn.”
“He ain’t gonna let us by, Willis.”
It was a fearsome-looking little bulldog.
I thought quick. I knowed if we took another step forward that growl was gonna explode into a yowl, and we was gonna get bit and ranked both. If we’d a-had a lasso, one of my cowboy brothers coulda roped and jaw-tied that ugly old dog. Only we didn’t have no lasso.
Then something come to me.
“Go back slow,” I said to Joe, “behind the back of that store, get me that crate.”
Joe turned his head and seen what I was talking about. One of them wood-slat crates they pack bananas in.
He backed up slow. That dog had its eyes glued on my little brother. But it didn’t move a muscle.
Joe come back, holding the crate.
I took it and started moving, real slow, towards the dog. Its growl got deeper, coarser. Its head shot out a coupla times. Snapped back. When I’d got about a yard off, I stopped, give that dog one mean look, ragged back on my heels and …
JUMP! CLUNK!
“Okay, Jess.” I motioned him over. “Somebody’s gotta set on it.”
“Oh, hell,” he said. But he set.
Well, I’ll tell you what, that bulldog was ramming and jumping and rocking the sides of that crate like nobody’s business. But the box was muffling them yelps and howls. Only as it come out, our problems wasn’t over. Here comes a big black shadow! “What the devil’s going on here?” it’s saying.
All that ruckus had woke somebody up. And when that big shadow come a-loping up, damned if it wasn’t that sleepy old marshal!
“What you boys doin’ here this time of night?”
“There’s a mad dog under that crate.”
“Huh? Who are you men?” He wasn’t a very smart old boy. ’Cause if he was smart, he’da had his gun out—if he had a gun. He didn’t have nothing.
“Well sir, we’re.…”
“Okay, put ’em up!” Joe yanked his shotgun out from under his coat and jabbed it into the old man’s back. “You make a move, I’ll blow your head off!”
Damn! You’da thought my little brother was the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the world.
The marshal throwed up his hands and went to trembling. “Aw no … don’t shoot … please don’t shoot me, boys.…”
Outa my pocket I pulled a thin rope. I tied up the man’s hands and legs. Then I put a handkerchief gag in his mouth. His eyes was just round as the moon, but he didn’t make no more trouble. Didn’t even sniffle.
“Come on,” I said to Joe.
We left Jess setting on the dog.
Outside the bank I bear-hugged up a telephone pole and cut the cable.
“Ain’t that gonna tip ’em off, somebody tries to use the phone?” Joe asked.
“Naw. Country town like this, something’s always going wrong with the telephone.”
We used a small crowbar to open the bank’s rear window. And in we went. The safe was a big old Packer, easy to blow. In my overcoat I had a bottle of grease and two bars of soap. After I thumbed the soap in the cracks, I poured in the nitro and set a cap and fuse and told Joe to start heading out the door.
I lit the string and was on his heel.
We watched the sizzling fuse from a side window.
BLOOEY!!
Off flied the safe door. We run back into the bank, and there it was! Hard and soft, silver and greenbacks. Joe’s jaw near dropped to the floor, he’d never seen nothing like it. We quick put the hard in one gunny sack, the soft in another. I give Joe the sack of hard.
“Let’s get the hell out.”
Joe took a-hold of the sack but when he tried to lift it, it near dragged him to the floor.
“Dad-gummit, Willis! It’s heavier’n rocks!”
“Hell, kid,” I said. “When I was your age, I could run a mile with a sack like that.”
He didn’t laugh. His knees was a-wobbling.
Lucky for us, we didn’t meet another soul on the way to the car. We found Dock snoring in the driver’s seat of the Studebaker, his jaw hanging open, just like that night marshal when we’d first rode in. I give Dock a prod with my pistol and up he woke and off we went—to pick up Jess.
Jess was still parked on top of the dog. And when he got off, he done it with a jump and vaulted over the door into the backseat just like a rodeo cowboy when he’s making a running leap onto a horse.
The crate come flying up. The bulldog stood there a second, kinda stunned, before he charged. But with us all inside the car, there was nothing he could do except jump up against the door—a-banging and a-howling.
“Yowwwwwwwww!!!! Yowwwwwwwwwwww!!!!”
Well, that done it.
If that nitro blast didn’t wake up the town, that dog sure as hell did. Windows popped open and heads come poking out. One man wearing a nightcap hollered: “Shut up, dog!” But by that time me and the boys was tearing down that alley—and that ugly old bulldog was eating our dust.
The Newton Boys was on their way.
TWENTY-TWO
Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Mattoon, Illinois. Walnut Ridge, Arkansas.
During that fall of nineteen and twenty and winter of nineteen and twenty-one, we worked the cotton country in the South and the corn and wheat country in the Middle West. Wherever they’d been picking and ginning cotton, or wherever they’d been pulling and shipping corn, or harvesting wheat, wherever banks was full of that crop money.
We never hit ’em in a line. It was one here, one there. One here, one there. This week one in Texas, next week one in Missouri. Anywhere that’d keep the laws from figuring out it was the same people getting ’em all.
There was no problem about who was gonna be the leader, like there’d been with Frank and Dago and Slim. I was the one that’d brought us all together and I was the one that knowed all the angles. And the boys went with it. They even took to calling me “old man.” “Old man” is what cowboys call the boss-man on a ranch; it’s also what thieves call the leader of a gang.
Well, we wasn’t no gang. We was just brothers working together in a business. But I was the head man of that business, and I give the orders, so I never did mind being called “old man.” And when I give my brothers orders, like “go here” or “stay there” or “no falling asleep in the getaway car,” they turned out to be real reliable. They done it and didn’t go helty-skelty.
Ever’ so often, Jess’d slip off to some bootleg joint and get drunk and shoot off a bunch of “windies,” them Texas bull-shit stories. But whiskey’s thinner’n blood, I guess, ’cause he was pretty good about stopping his drinking when we was going out on a job. He knowed if he was skunked, it could get all of us killed, him too. And he never one time got his pints of whiskey mixed up with our pints of nitro.
As it come out, Jess ’n Joe forgot all about my deadline, where I’d promised ’em a Pullman ticket back to Texas, plus a thousand dollars pilon, if they didn’t like my business. Sometimes, Joe’d get quiet and I could tell his morals was acting up. But I’d called the deal right: soon as the boys was making good money, it was never “enough.” All three of ’em, Joe too, was enjoying ever’ dollar that come into their pockets and ever’ dollar that leaked outa their pockets.
And plenty was going both ways.
After ever’ job, we’d lob together the money and take out our expenses first, and then split it up even. I didn’t take no extra cut. The biggest expense we had was cars. We mostly drove Studebakers, they was the most reliable, and they cost about $1,800 to $2,400. And we traded in for a new one ever’ ten thousand miles, soon as the rubber on the tires wore out. It wasn’t no trouble to rob the banks; the getaway was the thing.
Other expenses: The best hotels them days was twelve to fourteen dollars a night, except for the Astoria in Chicago, and that was twenty-five dollars. So that was about four hundred dollars a month for room rent. Meals was running us about six hundred dollars to a thousand dollars ever’ month, with Joe at the high end, because he was young and hungry and wanted to eat! Then there was the speakeasies, the burlesque shows—and the clothes they needed to slick it up.
’Course, Dock didn’t get out much since he was a escaped con and had to lay low. But both Jess and Joe was starting to buy more and more expensive suits, up to a hundred dollars each. And they was getting their hair cut sometimes ever’ week. And even their fingers manicured. Can you see that? A rough old cowboy like Jess, who never took but one bath a month back in Texas, getting a manicure?
And both of ’em started chasing after gals like bucks at rutting time.
Jess was the wildest when it come to women. And it seemed like most of his dates was with them manicure gals. Some of ’em was pretty raunchy women, some of ’em wasn’t too bad. Nearly all of ’em liked to dye their hair and paint their faces and lips. None of that made no diff’rence to Jess. He liked ’em all, no matter what they looked like. Just so they was women.
Joe was more particular. He said he’d rather stay in the hotel room and read a Western novel than go out with some bangtail. “I don’t get it,” he said about Jess. “Back home he wouldn’t ride no horse that didn’t look good or have a good gait. And just look at what he’s taking out tonight.” But Joe did his share of chasing gals too. Mostly, he’d hit on the salesclerks at the Kresge and the Woolworth five-and-dime stores. He said they was “solid girls.”
There was only one thing none of my brothers liked, at first. I wanted ’em to wear diamond stickpins and diamond rings, what thieves call ‘ice.’ But Jess and Joe said nothing doing. And Dock said if Jess and Joe didn’t care nothing about jewelry, he didn’t either. So I had to educate ’em: “You get picked up for something, anything, most times it’s a shakedown. You get one of them laws off in a corner and whisper to ’em, ‘Look here, I got a big diamond I don’t got no use for.’ And nine times outa ten, they’ll give you the air.”
Well, damned if my brothers didn’t start liking that ice a day or so after they put it on, particularly Jess and Joe. And liking diamonds didn’t have nothing to do with dirty laws. It was because they seen how all that sparkle made women look at ’em twice, and sometimes three times, and four. Then it was the gals chasing after Jess and Joe instead of the other way around.
When I was on the road, casing towns, I didn’t much care what Jess and Joe did in their free time, and I didn’t worry about ’em. They knowed how to take care of theirselves. I did worry about Dock. I didn’t want him roaming, gallivanting, prowling around town. Laws all over the country had his mug on yellow paper that said in big lette
rs, WANTED ESCAPED TEXAS CONVICT. DOCK NEWTON, STOCKY, VERY STRONG, KNOWN FOR PRIZE-FIGHTING SKILLS. REWARD FOR INFORMATION.
The best thing for Dock, when we wasn’t on a job, was to stay in his room. But being that he was used to doing something all the time, being cooped up in a room made him jittery and down in the dumps. So nobody was happier’n Dock when I come back to town after hunting up a bank and said, “I found some marks.” He’d perk up right away and the only question he ever asked was, “You sure the money’s there?”
When I come back, I always brought maps of the getaway routes. Nearly all counties had “section maps,” crisscrossed with lines and numbers, showing the little back roads on ranches and farms. Anyhow, I’d study all of ’em and draw with a red pencil the route we needed to follow, ever’ crook and turn. I’d mark how far all that was on the speedometer, right down to the hundreds of a mile. I’d draw in landmarks and label ’em, like “Red Barn,” “Stock Pond,” “Broke Down Wagon.”
Even Dock could follow them maps without no trouble. And when I showed him the maps, he’d stay up all night studying ’em, until they was second nature with him. Dock couldn’t read too good, like Jess couldn’t, but he’d match the pictures to the words and he knowed just what I meant. And before long, he become a pretty good getaway driver. Dock wasn’t afraid of the Devil hisself. No matter how rough the road was, he wasn’t afraid to put on the gas if it looked like we was being chased. Or turn a sharp corner.
As time went on, as our first year as a brother team moved into the next one, we started doing jobs that was a little riskier. Like in Spencer, Indiana, I decided to blow two banks in one night—at the same time. They was both on the same street, but at diff’rent corners. One had a vault; the other, a setting safe. Joe’d never blowed a safe before, but he’d watched me do it a dozen times, so I told him to take that one.
All Honest Men Page 20
