The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  They’d have to hope for that. It was too late to be looking around for replacements.

  The train to Montreal was ten minutes late.

  Before Johnny and Tom left for the station Tom saw that the cars were abandoned some distance away and the license plates removed and buried. While that was going on Johnny opened the suitcase where he’d stored the still-uncounted money from the Renssler bank. He gave each man two hundred dollars for past expenses. This was his way around the listing of expenses that he’d proposed at the planning meeting in New York. The money for the Gipson brothers, however, was given into Harry Churchman’s care.

  Besides the expense money, he gave Gunny and Betts and Franks cash for the train fare. They’d take the same 5:28 train to Montreal.

  Harry and the Gipsons would be heading in the other direction. Johnny estimated train fare to Halifax and expense money for a few days. While he counted that money into Harry’s palm he suggested that Harry ration the two hundred dollars he owed each of the brothers. It would be a way of keeping them in line.

  Randy didn’t like the arrangement. He bitched until Harry told him to shut up. Either that or he’d break his mouth for him. “I already owe you for that crap in the bank,” he said. The threat quieted Randy, even if it didn’t satisfy him.

  At 5:38 Johnny and Tom boarded the train heading west. Gunny and Betts and Vic Franks bought their tickets at the last moment and took seats in a different day coach.

  Head back, trying to catch some sleep, Johnny worried about the three men he’d left behind in Butler. A lot depended on them. One whole half of the plan he’d put together. They screwed up in Halifax, and you could forget the whole deal.

  It was up to Harry. He trusted Harry. He had to.

  Tom sat in the window seat and watched the passing countryside. An hour out of Butler they passed through a heavy rainstorm. Rain covered the window in sheets. With nothing to watch, he closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind.

  It was a backwoods café and bar. It was directly across the street from the train station. Outside, you could smell the grease from a block away. Inside, that scent was overpowered by the odor from new oilcloth that covered the tables.

  The customers were all working people, men from the train-yard and from the sawmills outside of town. It was hot in the café, and the ceiling fan didn’t do much more than stir the heat and the smell.

  The few women at the tables were heavy and thick-legged. The waitress was on the other side of fifty. Everybody seemed to know everybody. There was talk and joking—some of it in French—from table to table.

  It was still early when Harry took the Gipsons to the café for supper. He ordered three bowls of the beef stew and bread and coffee.

  Harry ate without any real interest in the food. For him, eating was putting gas in the car or stoking the furnace. Anyway, didn’t it all turn to shit in the end? Whether it was fancy French food, the kind Mr. Arkman had liked, or chicken potpie.

  He kept his eyes on the Gipsons. Clark wasn’t a problem. He was docile enough. Most of the time he acted like sweet little Jesus. Randy was another matter. The dumb shithead. Harry didn’t have any regrets about the banker, about having to point the power at him. He asked for it. Still, it wouldn’t have been necessary if Randy hadn’t needed a feel of the blonde’s bottom. Goddam, and right in the middle of the job.

  Dumb. Double dumb.

  It was an indication of the weakness of the outfit that Randy was as close to a train expert as they’d been able to find. He hadn’t been important in the bank job, and he’d just about done that in. How the hell would he be when the outcome really depended on him? It wasn’t a happy thought.

  While Harry ate his stew he made himself a promise. When the job was over, whether it came off or not, Randy was expendable. Expendable was one of Mr. Arkman’s favorite words. As soon as it was over, Randy lost his value. He’d be left somewhere, buried or unburied. Let the dogs eat him.

  It was such a pleasant thought for Harry that he relaxed. He didn’t notice that Randy had developed a strong interest in what was going on in the other half of the café building. The part that was the bar. A doorway connected the café to the bar. Most of the diners, after they’d finished eating, passed through that doorway and out of sight.

  Randy finished his beef stew and mopped his bowl with a chunk of French bread. He gulped his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I sure could use a beer,” he said. “How about you, Clark?”

  Harry lifted his head. He put his hard eye on Clark. He realized that it was a play script. Clark knew, without being told, what his answer was supposed to be.

  “It’s been a long day all right,” Clark said. “We’ve come a far piece. A cold beer might cut the dust.”

  Harry looked at his watch. A little after seven. It was a long time before the midnight train to Halifax. Too long to ride herd on them. Hard to expect them to sit on their hands in the train depot for five hours and be good.

  Too bad about the movie. He’d considered that earlier. The only movie house in town, the Gem, was showing some film called 21 Days Together. It starred somebody named Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Love mush, it looked like from the posters outside. It wasn’t the kind of movie that interested Harry, and he knew it wouldn’t hold the Gipsons for an hour. Damn the Gem anyway for not having a war movie or a cowboy picture. Anything but a sappy love story.

  “It’s dusty all right,” Randy said. It was part of his act not to look at Harry. He even managed a feeble cough.

  “Might be,” Harry said, “if I get your promise.”

  “You’ve got it,” Randy said.

  “Don’t you want to know what you’re promising?”

  “Oh, sure.” The bland, idiot’s face.

  “No trouble. That’s the promise. We have our beers and we don’t mess with anybody.”

  “You’ve got my word,” Randy said.

  And you damned well better keep it, Harry thought as he paid the supper check for the three of them.

  The promise lasted two beers and almost into the third.

  The waitress working the tables and booths didn’t appear to belong in the bar or the town. She wasn’t huge and cowlike. She was a baby step past being a child. She was thin and awkward with the first buds of breasts beginning to push out at her gingham blouse. Her legs were like plaster slats. Her straw-colored hair was loose and reached her waist. Her face was that of an innocent who sees everything but doesn’t understand one tenth of what she sees.

  Harry had his back to the wall, relaxing, feeling good. There wasn’t a woman in the bar worth making trouble over. If that was what Randy had in mind, then he had drawn one big goose egg.

  Randy and Clark were on the aisle side of the table.

  It was going too well. Harry should have expected it.

  The young girl came from the bar with three bottles of Moosehead on a tin tray. As she reached the table, she stepped forward, between Randy and Clark, and reached across the table to place a bottle next to Harry’s empty glass. It happened then.

  Randy leaned down, as if to tie his shoelaces. He was bent over. It was then he reached a hand up the girl’s skirt and rubbed it across the girl’s almost hairless crotch.

  The girl’s eyes widened. Her mouth sucked at air and then she screamed. The tin tray flipped out of her hand. One bottle of beer hit the floor. The other turned over and spilled across the table and into Clark’s lap.

  The scream brought every head in the bar up and around. The bald man behind the bar counter reached down and brought up about half a pick handle. Three men at the bar, closest to the girl, pushed away and headed for the table. One of them, the one in the center, was a bruiser with a bent nose. He reached out gently and put an arm around the stunned girl. He led her to the side, away from the table. When he returned he looked at Randy. He brought up his huge hands. The skin on the palms and the knuckles were like dried leather. He closed the hands into fists and hissed s
omething. It sounded like “pervert.”

  Harry stood. Randy was still seated. He was grinning, the dumb shit.

  “Randy?”

  Randy turned to face Harry. “Yeah?”

  It was close, too close. It wasn’t a choice anymore. Not that Harry would have chosen otherwise. There was the matter of the broken promise.

  Harry hit him. It was a short punch, but it had all Harry’s weight behind it. The fist hit Randy in the corner of the mouth and the cheekbone. The chair Randy sat in tipped over. Randy rolled across the floor and landed at the feet of the man with the huge hands. He wasn’t out but he was stunned.

  The bruiser opened his hands and looked at Harry. There was a puzzled, questioning look on his slow face.

  “My cousin,” Harry said, “would apologize if he was still awake.”

  The big man smiled.

  Harry circled the table. He did it slowly so the big man wouldn’t misunderstand. When he passed Randy he drew back his foot and kicked Randy in the ribs a couple of times. “Wouldn’t you, cousin? Speak up.”

  The bruiser’s smile got even wider.

  Harry nodded across the table at Clark. “Take him to the depot. Clean him up and keep him there.”

  Clark didn’t move.

  “Do what I say.” Harry reached across the table. He swung his open hand and cuffed Clark across the mouth. “Do it now.”

  Harry walked away. He put a hand on the big man’s shoulder and eased him toward the bar. The bartender still remained at the counter with the pick handle in one hand.

  The girl sobbed on the shoulder of a fat woman. It was a muffled crying, and Harry was glad about that.

  Everybody stared at Clark and Randy. Randy was sitting up now, wiping at blood that trickled from his torn mouth. Clark hunched over him, trying to get him to his feet.

  The big man nodded. The blood seemed to satisfy him.

  “I don’t want you to think all men from the States are that kind of scum,” Harry said over his first drink.

  The big man heard him. He didn’t agree or disagree. But he did drink the beer Harry bought him.

  Harry bought two rounds for the bar. He told a funny story. The big man, in return, told a funny story that Harry didn’t understand. It was more than a hour before Harry could get away from the bar.

  But he’d calmed it down. Nobody followed him from the bar. He stood outside the train station for a few minutes and watched the street to be sure of that.

  He’d smoothed the waters. There wasn’t going to be a lynching in Butler tonight.

  It was 8:30, full dark, when the train arrived at Bonaventure Station in Montreal.

  The five of them walked down Peel Street in a light mist of rain. They carried their suitcases. Either it was the war or the late hour. There hadn’t been a cab at the station.

  Vic Franks and Richard Betts took turns struggling with the extra bag Gunny had packed before they abandoned the cars back in Butler. The extra bag weighed over a hundred pounds, it seemed. In it were the handguns, two stripped-down pump shotguns, and several boxes of ammunition.

  Ahead of them, Johnny and Tom took turns with the extra bag that held the money. It didn’t weigh very much at all.

  At the Mcnt Royal, Johnny and Tom went in to check on rooms. The others waited outside, getting their breath. On the way through the lobby, Tom bought a Montreal Daily Star.

  The headline was: RUMANIA ACCEPTS SOVIET DEMANDS.

  Tom left the inquiry to Johnny. He settled into a chair and watched as Johnny joined the end of a line and worked his slow way toward the desk clerk.

  The Star’s right-hand column had a smaller headline.

  NAZI BOATS MUSTERED IN NORWAY. SMALL CRAFT MAY BE USED IN U.K. ATTACK.

  London, 26 June. Germany today was reported concentrating a fleet of small ships in Nazi-occupied ports facing Great Britain—arousing speculation as to whether the hour was near for Adolf Hitler’s expected attempt to invade the British Isles.

  Tom folded the paper and looked around the lobby. It was crowded for that hour of night. And he noticed, for the first time, that everybody under forty seemed to be in uniform. It shouldn’t have surprised him. He’d been in London when the war started. But, here, only hours from the American border, a country was at war. Not that you’d know it on the American side. Johnny reached the desk. Tom watched him arguing with the clerk and he knew he wasn’t having much success. Johnny was red-faced and angry when he walked over to join Tom.

  “Full up. The man says there is a war going on over here.”

  Tom stood. “Other hotels?”

  They walked toward the entrance.

  Johnny shook his head. “He says our best bet is one of the tourist homes.”

  Outside the hotel they flagged down a passing taxi. The driver took them on a tour of Montreal while they tried three tourist homes. At the fourth one, on Rue Ontario, they found rooms.

  Johnny locked the door to the room he and Tom had been assigned. It was a small room, two cots almost side by side, a closet next to the door, and a washbasin in one corner.

  Johnny unbuckled the straps on the imitation-leather suitcase. He dumped the contents on the cot. It was a jumble of money. Some of it, what he’d taken from the bank vault, was counted and banded. The rest of it, what came from the teller windows, was a mixture of denominations.

  It took the better part of half an hour to sort the bills and do a count. The final total, apart from the cash he’d already handed out as expense money, was $52,826.

  It was, Johnny said, more than enough for the expenses.

  After they returned from supper that evening, Johnny portioned out about half of the cash to Gunny Townsend, to Betts, and to Vic Franks.

  It was time to collect the hardware.

  The last time Clark Gipson saw his mother alive she was in the Buncombe County Hospital. She was in a ward, in there with ten other women, the beds all crowded together. It was the poor ward. He knew that, and she knew it too. It shamed her.

  The tumor that had been growing in her stomach for a year, the growth she had concealed while she prayed to God that it would go away, finally was too large to hide anymore, and the pain of it sapped her strength. She had to give in and ask Clark to drive her to the hospital.

  Randy wasn’t at home then. He’d been away forty-five of the sixty days he’d received from Judge Bennett. It was road-gang time for breaking into the soft-drink machine in front of Stovall’s Gas Station.

  During those last minutes with his mother, all she could talk about was her worry about Randy. He’d been the last born, her favorite, Clark knew, and he sorely disappointed her hopes for him.

  “You are going to have to look out for him,” she said.

  “I will.” There was a damp cloth on the table next to the bed. Clark used it to wipe the pain sweat from her face.

  “I would pray to God to change him,” his mother said. “I would. I swear I would. If I still believed in him.”

  For a time Clark wasn’t sure which him she didn’t believe in. God or Randy.

  Later that day, in the waiting room, while they operated on her, he asked God not to let her suffer, and God had taken him at his word and He took her right there on the operating table. And that confirmed God in Clark’s mind.

  If it had not been for his promise to his mother he would have left railroading and would have answered the Call. God’s Call to the Chosen. Not that God had called him yet. That was because God knew that he was his brother’s keeper and could not answer the Call. God would not ask the impossible, would not ask him to break his deathbed promise to his mother.

  Still, he knew he was of the Chosen. When he was free of his promise, then he would receive the Call. With God’s Call he would not need to go to college like those fancy preachers did. It did not matter that he had never delivered a sermon. When he stood before a congregation God would touch his tongue, and the proper words would come out.

  After he buried his mother and Randy wa
s off the road gang, they went back to railroading. It was the life they knew. They’d have gone on forever if there had not been that trouble over the girl that Saturday night in Atlanta. That trouble put them in the Army and as far away from Atlanta as the Army would send them.

  The girl had been fourteen, it turned out. Her age had worried Clark, but Randy said she had had a lot of experience. She had, he said, as much as begged him to do it to her, and she’d been rubbing it and spitting on the head of it, about to put it in, when her daddy’s car pulled up in the driveway. She was scared of her daddy; her daddy had told her what he was going to do the next time he caught her with a man. That was why she started hollering rape and all that.

  That might be the truth. But the girl was underage. No way Clark could talk himself around that fact. So he convinced Randy to join the Army, and they took the train across the state border into South Carolina using their railroad passes, and they enlisted at Columbia. They did their basic training at Fort Jackson, and Clark watched his brother and thought it was working the way he’d hoped it would. The discipline and the hard work was good for Randy.

  But as soon as they left Fort Jackson and reached their unit it started up all over again. It was like the Devil had taken Randy for a friend.

  He did his best to protect his brother. He tried to be understanding the way He would be. It was a moment of weakness near the end of their enlistment when Clark got angry. It was over Randy taking ten dollars of Clark’s money, right out of his locker, and spending it on whores. Right then and there he asked God to chastise Randy. He wanted God to break his spirit.

  God answered him by putting Randy in the stockade for being AWOL and by giving him a dishonorable discharge.

  It was not God’s fault that the stockade and the way they treated prisoners like animals had only driven the meanness and the Devil deeper into Randy, the way a fisherman sets the hook deep in the guts of a fish.

  At the Fort Bragg Main Gate, watching them march Randy there, he knew. Clark knew that he would never be free of his promise to his mother until he was dead or Randy was dead.