by Jon E. Lewis
Jubal smiled. His teeth were only a year old and he was just a few months past grinning like an ape all the time. “Then dime writers made out like Floyd ran the match, but that was just because the Pinkertons found out his name first and told the papers. We all called him Doc on account of he was always full of no-good clabber and he claimed to study eye doctoring back East for a year, when everyone knew he was in the Detroit House of Corrections for stealing a mail sack off a railroad hook. He told me I’d never need glasses.” He took his off to polish them with a coarse handkerchief.
Brundage had a long notepad open on his knee. He stopped writing. “I guess I should have accepted that watch when you offered it.”
“It ain’t worth no sixty dollars. I got it off a fireman on the Katy Flyer when we hit it outside Choctaw in ’73.”
“You mean that was a story about Wild Bill?”
“Never met him. I had them initials put in it and made up the rest. It pulled me through some skinny times. Folks appreciated a good lie then, not like now.”
“Readers of the New Democrat are interested in the truth.”
He put his spectacles back on and peered at the journalist over the rims. But Brundage was writing again and missed it.
“Anyway, if there was someone we all looked to when things went sore, it was Doc’s brother Micah. I reckon he was the smartest man I ever knew or ever will. That’s why they took him alive and Doc let himself get shot in the back of the head by Kid Stone.”
“I always wondered if he really did that just for the reward.”
“I reckon. He was always spending his cut on yellow silk vests and gold hatbands. I was in prison two years when it happened so I can’t say was that it. That blood money busted up all the good bunches. The Pinks spent years trying to undercut us with the hill folk, but it was the rewards done it in the end.”
“The Kid died of pneumonia three or four years ago in New Jersey. He put together his own moving picture outfit after they let him go. He was playing Doc Holliday when he took sick.”
“Josh always said Virge was a born actor. Virgil, that was the Kid’s right name.”
“I forget if Joshua was your older or your younger brother.”
“Older. Billy Tom Mulligan stabbed him with a busted toothbrush first year we was inside. They hung him for it. Josh played the Jew’s harp. He was playing it when they jumped us after Liberty.”
“What really happened in Liberty?”
Jubal pulled a face. “Doc’s idea. We was to hit the ten-twelve from Kansas City when it stopped to water and take on passengers, and the bank in town at the same time. We recruited a half dozen more men for the job: Creek Eddie, Charley MacDonald, Bart and Barney Dee, and two fellows named Bob and Bill, I never got their last names and couldn’t tell which was which. Me and Josh and my kid brother Judah went with Micah and Charley MacDonald on the bank run and the rest took the train. Bart and Barney was to ride it in from Kansas City and sit on the conductor and porters while Doc and them threw down on the engineer and fireman and blew open the express car with powder. Doc said they wouldn’t be expecting us to try it in town. He was dead-right there. No one thought we was that stupid.”
“What made Micah go along with it?”
“Fambly bliss. Doc was threatening to take Kid Stone and start his own bunch because no one ever listened to them good plans he was coming up with all the time, like kidnapping the Governor of Missouri and holding him for ransom. Creek Eddie learned his trade in the Nations, so when we heard he was available, Micah figured he’d be a good influence on Doc. Meantime Creek Eddie thought the train thing was a harebrained plan but figured if Micah was saying yes to it, it must be all right.” He showed his store teeth. “You see, I had twenty-nine years to work this all out, and if I knew it then – well, I wouldn’t of had the twenty-nine years to work it all out.
“Micah and Charley and Josh and Judah and me, we slid through that bank like a grease fire and come out with seven thousand in greenbacks and another four or five thousand in securities. And the bank president and his tellers and two customers hollering for help on the wrong side of the vault door on a five-minute time lock. We never made a better or a quieter job. That was when we heard the shooting down at the station.”
“A railroad employee fired the first shot, if I remember my reading.”
“It don’t matter who fired it. Bart and Barney Dee missed the train in Kansas City, and the conductor and a porter or two was armed and free when Doc and the rest walked in thinking the opposite. Creek Eddie got it in the back of the neck and hit the ground dead. Then everybody opened up, and by the time we showed with the horses, the smoke was all mixed up with steam from the boiler. Well, you could see your hand in front of your face, but not to shoot at. That didn’t stop us, though.
“ Reason was, right about then that time lock let loose of them folks we left in the bank, and when they hit the street yammering like bitch dogs, that whole town turned vigilante in a hot St. Louis minute. They opened up the gun shop and filled their pockets with cartridges and it was like Independence Day. I think as many of them fell in their own cross-fire as what we shot.
“Even so, only six men was killed in that spree. If you was there trying to hold down your mount with one hand and twisting back and forth like a steam governor to fire on both sides of its neck and dodging all that lead clanging off the engine, you’d swear it was a hundred. I seen Charley take a spill and get dragged by his paint for twenty feet before he cleared his boot of the stirrup, and Judah got his jaw took off by a bullet, though he lived another eight or nine hours. Engineer was killed, and one rubbernecker standing around waiting to board the train, and two of them damn-fool townies playing Kit Carson on the street. I don’t know how many of them was wounded; likely not as many as are still walking around showing off their old gallbladder scars as bullet-creases. I still got a ball in my back that tells me when it’s fixing to rain, but that didn’t give me as much trouble at the time as this here cut that kept dumping blood into my eyes.” He pointed out the white mark where his hairline used to be. “Micah took one through the meat on his upper arm, and my brother Josh got it in the hip and lost a finger, and they shot the Kid and took him prisoner and arrested Charley, who broke his ankle getting loose of that stirrup. Doc was the only one of us that come away clean.
“Judah, his jaw was just hanging on by a piece of gristle. I tied it up with his bandanna, and Josh and me got him over one of the horses and we got mounted and took off one way while Doc and Micah and that Bill and Bob went the other. We met up at this empty farmhouse six miles north of town that we lit on before the job in case we got separated, all but that Bill and Bob. Them two just kept riding. We buried Judah that night.”
“The posse caught up with you at the farmhouse?” asked Brundage, after a judicious pause.
“No, they surprised Josh and me in camp two nights later. We’d split with the Hales before then. Micah wasn’t as bad wounded as Josh and we was slowing them down, Doc said. Josh could play that Jew’s harp of his, though. Posse come on afoot, using the sound of it for a mark. They threw down on us. We gave in without a shot.”
“That was the end of the Hale-Steadman Gang?”
A hoarse stridency shivered the air. In its echo, Jubal consulted his watch. “ Trains still run on time. Nice to know some things stay the same. Yeah, the Pinks picked up Micah posing as a cattle-buyer in Denver a few months later. I heard he died of scarlatina inside. Charley MacDonald got himself shot to pieces escaping with Kid Stone and some others, but the Kid got clear and him and Doc put together a bunch and robbed a train or two and some banks until the Kid shot him. I reckon I’m what’s left.”
“I guess you can tell readers of the New Democrat there’s no profit in crime.”
“Well, there’s profit and profit.” He stood up, working the stiffness out of his joints, and lifted the suitcase.
Brundage hesitated in the midst of closing his notebook.
�
�Twenty-nine years of your life a fair trade for a few months of excitement?”
“ I don’t reckon there’s much in life you’d trade half of it to have. But in them days a man either broke his back and his heart plowing rocks under in some field or shook his brains loose putting some red-eyed horse to leather or rotted behind some counter in some town. I don’t reckon I’m any older now than I would of been if I done any of them things to live. And I wouldn’t have no youngster like you hanging on my every word neither. Them things become important when you get up around my age.”
“I won’t get that past my editor. He’ll want a moral lesson.”
“Put one in, then. It don’t . . .” His voice trailed off.
The journalist looked up. The train was sliding to a stop inside the vaulted station, black and oily and leaking steam out of a hundred joints. But the old man was looking at the pair of men coming in the station entrance. One, sandy-haired and approaching middle age in a suit too heavy for Indian summer, his cherry face glistening, was the assistant warden at the prison. His companion was a city police officer in uniform. At sight of Jubal, relief blossomed over the assistant warden’s features.
“Steadman, I was afraid you’d left.”
Jubal said, “I knew it.”
As the officer stepped to the old man’s side, the assistant warden said, “I’m very sorry. There’s been a clerical error. You’ll have to come back with us.”
“I was starting to think you was going to let me have that extra day after all.”
“Day?” The assistant warden was mopping his face with a lawn handkerchief. “I was getting set to close your file. I don’t know how I overlooked that other charge.”
Jubal felt a clammy fist clench inside his chest. “Other charge?”
“For the train robbery. In Liberty. The twenty-nine years was for robbing the bank and for your part in the killings afterward. You were convicted also of accessory in the raid on the train. You have seventeen years to serve on that conviction, Steadman. I’m sorry.”
He took the suitcase while the officer manacled one of the old man’s wrists. Brundage left the bench.
“Jubal—”
He shook his head. “My sister’s coming in on the morning train from Huntsford tomorrow. Meet it, will you? Tell her.”
“This isn’t the end of it. My paper has a circulation of thirty thousand. When our readers learn of this injustice—”
“They’ll howl and stomp and write letters to their congressmen, just like in ’78.”
The journalist turned to the man in uniform. “He’s sixty years old. Do you have to chain him like a maniac?”
“Regulations.” He clamped the other manacle around his own wrist.
Jubal held out his free hand. “I got to go home now. Thanks for keeping an old man company for an hour.”
After a moment Brundage took it. Then the officer touched the old man’s arm and he blinked behind his spectacles and turned and left the station with the officer on one side and the assistant warden on the other. The door swung shut behind them.
As the train pulled out without Jubal, Brundage timed it absently against the dented watch in his hand.
LARRY McMURTRY
There Will Be Peace in Korea
LARRY McMURTRY (1936–) grew up outside Archer, Texas, which is the setting for many of his novels, among them Texasville and The Last Picture Show. One of America’s major writers, his other works include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment and Horseman, Pass By (filmed as Hud). In 2006 he was co-winner (with Diana Ossana) of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain.
“There Will Be Peace in Korea” was first published in Texas Quarterly 7 in 1964. Its setting and story anticipate The Last Picture Show.
About half an hour before dark there was a bad norther struck, but I figured since it was Bud’s last night we ought to go someplace anyway. He’d been home two weeks on leave, but we hadn’t gone no place – I hadn’t even been to see him. Since him and Laveta broke up and we had that fight and Bud put out my eye we hadn’t run around much together. I didn’t know if he’d want to go nowhere with me, but I thought whether he did or not I’d go over and see him. His Mercury was parked in front of the rooming house – Bud never even had the top up. I parked my pickup behind it and went up on the porch and knocked. I thought Old Lady Mullins never would get to the door. The porch was on the north side of the house and the norther was really singing in off the plains. She finally come and opened the door, but she never unlatched the screen.
“Hello, Miss Mullins,” I said. “ Bud home?”
“That’s his car there, ain’t it?” she said. “I guess he’s here if he ain’t walked off.”
She was still dipping snuff. The reason she never asked me in, my Daddy killed himself in one of her rooms. He wasn’t even living there, it was my room, but I was off on a roughnecking tower and I guess the room was the best place he could find. Old Lady Mullins hardly ever let me in after that. I wished I’d worn my football jacket – the Levi didn’t have no pockets and my hands were about to freeze. Ever time I turned into the wind my eye started watering.
When Bud come to the door he acted kinda surprised but I believe he was glad to see me. Anyhow, he stepped out on the porch. He had on his home clothes, just some Levis and a shirt and his rodeo boots. I didn’t know what to say to him.
“Goddamn that wind’s getting cold,” he said. “Why didn’t you come inside?”
“She never unlatched the door,” I said. “You know her better than that. I just come by to see what you were doing.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was intending to work on my car, but it’s turned off too cold.”
“I thought we might take off and go someplace,” I said. “Maybe to Fort Worth. It might be a good night to drink beer.”
“I believe it might,” he said. “Only trouble, I got to be back by six in the morning. Bus leaves at six forty-five.”
“Aw go get your coat,” I said. “We can make that in a walk.”
“All right. You might as well get in that pickup and keep warm.”
I did, and started the motor. The heater sure felt good. Ever once in awhile the wind would rock the pickup, it was blowing so hard. Some dust was coming with it, too. It wasn’t three minutes till Bud came running out. He was a notch smarter than me – he had on his football jacket.
“Wanta go in mine?” he asked. “Might as well get some good out of it.”
“Naw, this one’s warm and I got a full tank of gas. You might want to sleep on the way back and I’d be afraid to drive yours.”
“No reason for you to,” he said. “Only trouble, this one’s got such a cold back seat. If we was to scare up something we couldn’t take advantage of it.”
“We could take advantage of it in a motel,” I said. I saw Bud was in a good humor and I drove on off. I was glad he felt good – I never intended to fight with Bud nohow. We was best friends all through high school.
“You be over there eighteen months?” I said.
“I reckon.” Bud yawned and scratched his cheek. “If I don’t get killed first.”
We never talked much on the way down. The pickup cab got warm and cozy and Bud had to crack his window to keep from going to sleep. I figured he was thinking about Laveta and all that, but if he was he never brought it up. We had the road to ourselves and the norther for a tail wind besides – I made nearly as good a time as we would have in Bud’s Mercury. A cop stopped us outside of Azle, but we didn’t offer him any talk and he let us go without a ticket.
“He wasn’t so bad,” Bud said. “ You ought to see them goddam army cops. Meanest bastards on earth.”
Pretty soon we crossed Lake Worth and gunned up the hill above the big Convair plant. We topped it, and all the city lights were spread out below us. I always liked to come over that hill. You never get to see that many lights nowhere around Thalia.
“Let’s have a beer,
” I said.
“Let’s have about a case.”
I pulled off at the first little honky-tonk I came to and we went in and drank a couple of bottles of Pearl. There were some pretty rough-looking old boys working the shuffleboard, so it was probably a good thing Bud didn’t wear his army clothes.
“This end of town ain’t changed,” Bud said. “Could get in a fight awful easy out here.”
“Or anywhere else,” I said. I wished I hadn’t. But took it wrong and thought I was talking about us.
“Yeah, you can,” he said, and stood up.
We went on up the road and hit two or three more beer joints before we decided to head into town. Bud got blue and really swigged down the Pearl.
“Let’s hit the south-end,” he said. “Then if we don’t scare up nothing we can make the Old Jackson.”
We went on down to South Main and parked the pickup in front of the Mountaineer Tavern. The wind was blowing right down Main Street about sixty miles an hour, and I mean cold – cold and dusty too, blowing off them old brick streets. There weren’t many people moving around. The winos were all in the Mission staying warm. We saw a few country boys standing in front of the Old Jackson with their coat collars turned up. It looked like they just had enough money for one piece of pussy and were flipping to see which one got it. We went into a bar but there didn’t no stag women come our way so we just drank a beer and moved on. We went into the Penny Arcade and shot ducks awhile and Bud outshot me eight to five. The man that ran the guns never noticed my eye.
“I ain’t been practicing ever day, like you have,” I said.
“You ain’t gonna have to shoot no goddam Japs, either,” he said.
Then we went in a place called the Cozy Inn, where they had a three-piece hillbilly band. It wasn’t much of a band and we never paid no attention to the music till the intermission. Then the musicians went off to pee and get themselves a beer and they made the old lady who was working tables go up to the stand and play the guitar while they were gone. I don’t know why they made her, because there wasn’t but Bud and me and one couple and a few tired-looking old boys at the bar, but when the woman went to singing she sure took a hold of everbody. She was just an ordinary looking old worn-out woman, I guess she musta been fifty years old and Bud said fifty-five, but she could outsing those musicians three to one. She sang “Faded Love” and “Jambalaya,” and “Walking the Floor over You,” and a couple more I don’t remember. She sang like she really meant the words. We all clapped when she quit, and Bud liked her so much he made me go up to the bandstand with him to talk to her. I guess she thought she had sung enough – she was tying her apron on.
