Feast for Thieves

by Marcus Brotherton

  Crazy Ake fired the M1 at my feet. The bullet zinged into the dirt near the front tire and I jumped. “Not so fast, Rowdy. You both need to be legitimate about the swearing. You gotta know the depth of what’s at stake. All those months I spent in jail before I met you, Rowdy, I pored over books, you know. I ain’t the only one here who’s been to a university of sorts.” He glanced at Bobbie with a sneer. “Day after day I read everything in the prison library—even books I reckoned were foolish. Books of mathematics. Books of poetry. The writings of Tertullian of Carthage. Of Pliny the Younger. The term those idealists threw around was ‘baptism in blood,’ didn’t they, Miss Barker? Those ancient historians. Surely you must have studied that at your university in Dallas.”

  “Baptism of blood—” Bobbie scrunched her brow, a look that told me she was searching her mind for where she’d heard it before. Her eyes grew round with fright and she whispered, “That’s a martyr’s death.”

  “Yes sir, dying for the cause you believe in!” Crazy Ake bellowed. “James the Just—clubbed in the head. Perpetua and Felicitas—ripped apart by lions. Polycarp—burned at the stake for his beliefs. Applying hard pressure is the only way a fella can sort fact from fiction out of you idealists, or so I’ve studied. So here’s what I propose. To join my gang on the south side of the sand, just stay where you are and swear a firm and unbending lifetime of allegiance to lawlessness and the devil and me. If you stay put then you live, and you live with big cash. But step to the north side of the line and that means you’re holy rollers through and through and I can’t trust you, so you’ll get a bullet to the head from my rifle. What’s it going to be? I’ll give you thirty seconds to decide.” He looked at his watch.

  Bobbie looked at me. I looked at Bobbie. Neither of us made a move.

  “Time’s ticking,” Crazy Ake said. “Rowdy, you’re saying you’re a changed man. But I don’t believe that’s true. You’re just as incorrigible as you ever was. If you stay incorrigible, then you stay alive. We’ll swing by Texas from time to time. You’ll see your daughter again. You’ll pay off your debts. You’ll be rich. That’s everything you ever wanted. And you, pretty little Miss Barker—why, your whole life is stretching out before you. There’s so much you have yet to taste. Why …” He laughed heartily. “I bet you’re even still a virgin.”

  I heard a rustle at my side. Bobbie was walking. She was already across the line, standing on the side of her death. She turned around and squared her shoulders toward Crazy Ake.

  “Look, mister, I might have played along with your little charade back at the mayor’s house. But that was only because I believed Sunny would die if I didn’t. I’ll never swear my unbending allegiance to you, and I’ll never join your gang. In fact, I strongly recommend you reconsider your ways, Mr. Akan Fordmire—if that’s truly your name. Death comes to all men, and after that comes judgment. It’s not too late, even today, to save your soul.”

  Crazy Ake laughed, frothy and nonsensically. He wiped his eyes then looked at me and spoke with a chuckle, “Oh, that was precious. A real sermon for the damned. Time’s up, Rowdy, what’s it going to be?”

  I was thinking all this time. Thinking in that split second. Thinking back to that good meal of bacon and eggs and hot coffee I’d sought so earnestly at the mission. The man behind the pulpit was speaking straight to me. He was showing the way for any man to change, and he didn’t fiddle around with his words nor sugarcoat the facts. I’d been so hungry that morning. So hungry indeed. I walked across the line, and stood next to Bobbie.

  Crazy Ake pulled the trigger.

  I was watching his finger the whole time, and he was aiming to kill Bobbie ahead of me. I leaped in front of her, and the bullet meant for Bobbie drove into my body. Call me a coward, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her go with my own eyes.

  A second shot rang out.

  This one I heard with my ears but didn’t see. I was on the ground by then, gushing blood from my shoulder.

  The next thing I knew, Bobbie was kneeling by my side, her snake gun in her hand.

  “Oh, Rowdy,” she said. “You been hit bad.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  The body of Crazy Ake lay sprawled in the dirt near the tire of his truck.

  The man was killed clean with one shot through his forehead. Bobbie’s Daddy had taught her how to hit a bull’s-eye back when she was thirteen. The girl had no problem shooting a snake in the head.

  She had removed her gun from its place of concealment just after she was on the ground and was stepping out of her chute. In the bustle of silk and wind, neither I nor Crazy Ake had noticed.

  “Rowdy!” she said and shook my mind alert. “Come on, we need to go!” She tugged at my shirtsleeve, trying to pull me into an upright position. “I don’t know if I can stop this blood before you bleed out and die.”

  “What—what time is it?”

  Bobbie glanced at her watch. “Just after eleven a.m. We got to get you to a hospital.”

  “No.” My mind was getting fuzzy. “Just cut a strip off Crazy Ake’s shirt and bind me up tight. We gotta get to the telegraph office first.”

  Bobbie was already on her feet, already ripping Crazy Ake’s shirt apart. “I was hoping we’d have time to do both,” she said. “How far to Pachuca?”

  “You’re the one who knows geography,” I said. “I don’t remember him saying so.” I was standing now, wobbling on my feet, trying to clear my head, the truck keys jangling in my hand. The lump on the back of my skull throbbed and I felt weak all over. My arm was covered in blood.

  “Sally Jo’s not actually a murderer, is she?” Bobbie said. “We’re talking about her taking the life of a child.”

  I lurched toward the truck. Bobbie met me halfway and began to bind a tourniquet around my upper torso. “Knowing Crazy Ake, he built some sort of incentive into the plan for Sally Jo to take Sunny’s life,” I said. “He might have been cheap, but he was serious in his plans. We can’t take any chances.”

  We were at the truck now. Bobbie piled in on the passenger’s side and I slid behind the wheel. She gave a little start and slapped the dashboard.

  “What was I thinking?” she said. “You’re almost dead. I’m driving.”

  “If you think you’re driving, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “Don’t argue with me, Rowdy. Time’s wasting. If I can drive a jeep, I can surely drive this. Slide on over. I’ll run around to the other side—quick.”

  I stared at the girl, then obeyed.

  Bobbie started the truck and put it in gear. We bounced down the dirt road. Sure enough, in about two miles we hit blacktop. Another mile passed and a sign read, Carretera Federal 85, which I gathered to be Mexican Federal Highway 85.

  Bobbie floored the truck. Sagebrush flew by us on either side. The road was flat and straight, the ground next to the highway chalky and white, and the Madres Mountains soon looked distant in the side mirror. Mile after mile passed and soon the sun began to rise directly overhead.

  “What time is it?” I asked. Blood dripped on my seat.

  Bobbie looked at her watch. “Quarter to noon.”

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

  The outskirts of Pachuca were nearly on us now. Traffic picked up and our truck slowed. The car ahead of us put on its brake lights and came to a stop. Bobbie drummed her hand on the steering wheel. “We gotta figure out where the nearest telegraph office is,” she said. “Do you speak any Spanish?”

  “Only a mite from talking with Gummer.”

  She leaned on the horn and squirmed in her seat. “Oh, this will never do.” She veered off to the shoulder and accelerated. We tore through the dirt. Cars honked at us. Someone yelled our direction through our open window. Bobbie steered the truck along the shoulder at full throttle until we came to a small store and screeched on the brakes.

  “Time?” I yelled.

  “Three minutes to noon.”

  She parked the truck and she flew inside
the store. I followed at a slower pace, wobbling and clutching the walls.

  “¿Cómo estás?” she was already shouting to the man behind the counter. “Where’s the nearest telegraph office? Quick!”

  He stared at us and shrugged his face blank.

  “Telegraph!” Bobbie said. “You know—telegraph-o.” She tried to mimic poles and wires.

  “Ah, telégrafo,” the man said. “Si. Al lado.”

  Bobbie glanced back at me. I hadn’t made it farther than the doorway. I stared back at her. “Al lado? Al lado—what does that mean?”

  “Al lado,” said the man. “Si … uh … ¿Cómo se dice … next door-oh?”

  “Next door?!” we both said.

  Bobbie flew out the door and around the corner to a laundry mat. The door banged against me a few seconds later and I shuffled inside to the counter. “Telégrafo!” Bobbie was saying to the proprietor. “Please! We need to send a telegraph immediately!”

  “Two minutes to noon!” I shouted, glancing at a clock on the wall.

  “Si,” said the proprietor. He shuffled around behind the counter. “I speek a bit of Engleesh. Who to send to?”

  “To Sally Jo Chicory in Rancho Springs, Texas. Please! We’re in a terrible hurry.”

  “Si.” The man didn’t appear to hurry at all. Neither did he seem fazed by the amount of blood I was dripping on his floor. “And who is thee telegraph from?”

  “From Akan Fordmire,” I called out. “No—wait. From Daniel Q. Farnsworth of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.”

  “What ees message?” The proprietor had a pencil now. He wrote down all the information.

  “‘All okay. Stop.’ That’s it.”

  “That ees all?”

  “Yes, that’s all! Please send it. It’s an emergency.”

  “Your identee-fication, please, Meester Farnsworth.” The proprietor looked at me.

  I drew a blank.

  “We don’t have any identification,” I said. “We lost it—we were robbed.”

  The proprietor sighed. “El Señor Farnsworth. I am so sorry, but you are forbeedden by law anywhere in this city to send a telegraph weethout identification.”

  “Please!” Bobbie said. “I’ll vouch for this man. He might look like raw hamburger, but he’s telling the truth. We need to send this telegraph immediately. If we don’t, a child will die.”

  The proprietor gave us a confused look.

  “Ten seconds!” Bobbie shouted.

  “Surely you have a passport, Señor Farnsworth,” the proprie-tor said. “Something weeth your name on it. A driver’s license. A birth certificate. Even a printed business card will do.”

  Bobbie slapped my good shoulder. “The business card!” she cried. “Your jacket pocket!”

  I thrust my good hand into my pocket and slapped the card down on the table. The proprietor flipped some knobs and dialed some dials. He clicked in Morse code on the receiver.

  “Your message has gone through,” he said. “That is one peso. Will you be waiting for a reply?”

  Bobbie and I looked at each other. “We don’t know,” I said.

  “Never mind,” he said. “A message has just returned.” Carefully he wrote down the message as he listened to the electric clicks. Slowly he turned from his table. Gravely he looked at us. “I am sorry, Señor and Señorita. The news does not look in your favor.”

  “What does it say?!”

  The proprietor cleared his throat. “All plans canceled. Stop. Sally Jo.”

  THIRTY

  They kept me in a Mexican hospital for two weeks until I healed enough to be shipped home by train. Bobbie spent the first night pacing the halls in the hospital, all the while checking in on me while trying to reach her father by phone. Around midnight she finally got through, and he and the sheriff from Rancho Springs soon had Sunny safe and sound and took Sally Jo Chicory in for questioning. The sheriff called the hospital in the morning and then drove down to Pachuca, stayed the night in a hotel, and took Bobbie back to Texas with him the next day. She didn’t want to leave me in my aggravated state, but I said go, just go.

  U. S. federal agents soon came to interrogate me in the hospital as did members of the Policía Federal, who were wondering about a dead body and a crashed plane and why I’d shown up with a bullet wound and a lump on my head. All the money in the duffel bag, I turned over immediately. They were already working with Sheriff Barker and had Bobbie’s story, just like they soon had mine. Fortunately they soon had Sally Jo’s story too, for she spilled the truth and confirmed our stories in exchange for a plea bargain. They reduced her charge from attempted murder to extortion and kidnapping. She’d be going away for a long time to come, and I heard the rest of the girls in her home for up-and-coming prostitutes were soon placed with sound-minded adoptive families around the state. So that was that.

  Oris Floyd got his fifty grand back and was able to disburse the funds among his poker friends, yet he grumbled and complained to any and all who’d listen that he’d been roughed up in his own home, that was true. But in the end the story all got sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction. Bobbie and I were quickly cleared of all charges for our part in the night’s events, and Bobbie said she never doubted it would happen that way. Not for a moment, she didn’t.

  I kept a low profile around Cut Eye right up until the morning of my trial as March 1947 dawned clear and bright. Mostly I just healed up from my bullet wound, kept preaching and visiting folks, and doing what I’d come to consider my calling.

  A warm breeze wafted through the open window of the parsonage that morning. My one-year anniversary of being the reverend at the Cut Eye Community Church was all but a week away. One year and I’d survived just fine. One year and I was still a reverend of sorts—as reverend as a man like me was ever going to be.

  Sheriff Barker was set to escort me to the trial, which would be held over in the courthouse in Brewster County on account of them having better facilities. I’d decided earlier to spill the beans to the prosecutor about all my misdeeds—I wanted to wipe the slate of my conscience clean when it came to the law, so among the long list of charges to be read against me later in the morning were robbing the banks of Rancho Springs and Cut Eye, participation in the assault of a uniformed federal employee (seeing that Crazy Ake had walloped the bank guard in Cut Eye), fleeing the scene of a crime, damaging federal property, violating parole, disorderly conduct, general recklessness, speeding, endangering citizens, and doing it all with weapons in hand.

  While waiting for the sheriff to arrive, I cranked out five sets of twenty-five push-ups, then went to the woodpile and did another five sets of twenty-five overhand pull-ups, chopped wood for a while, then went back inside.

  Despite this undoubtedly being a difficult day ahead for me, I couldn’t help but look around my surroundings and grin. By then the parsonage had grown into a domicile worth living in, I do declare. The church’s building program had finished in February. As part of the program, the walls of the parsonage were insulated and re-sided. A fresh coat of paint stood out on both the exterior and interior walls. They’d even built a bathroom with a shower to the side. After my exercising, I grabbed a towel, went inside and closed the door, and turned on a cascade of hot water. The water poured out lavishly and I soaked and scrubbed under the faucet, then climbed out, dried myself off, and lathered and shaved.

  The suit waiting for me was freshly cleaned and my shirt was well ironed. I dressed, tied my tie, and put on socks and my church-going shoes. The clock over the mantel chimed at 8 a.m. Right on time. I walked over to the church building and paused before going inside.

  Everything within the church’s grounds sparkled fresh and new. The walls of the main building had been redone both inside and out. A fresh coat of paint everywhere announced all was well. The foundation was re-poured, solid, and set. The septic field was in, and there was real running water and flush toilets in a new wide lean-to at the back of the building.

  Before the sheriff arri
ved, I had one last task to do as reverend. I realized it might be the last chance I got to do this for a long while, and so I walked over to the bell tower, took the rope with both hands, and pulled with all my might.

  The church bell resounded clear and inviting, as it had been doing each morning ever since it had been oiled and re-roped. I’d gotten in the habit of ringing that bell and purely enjoyed the strong sound of it, I did. The melody rang out all over the county. Folks told me they heard it from miles around—and they liked it fine.

  Emma Hackathorn heard it in the mercantile. Her engagement to Gummer Lopez was in place, and their knot-tying ceremony was set for early June. Her children were excited to receive their new daddy into their home, and so was Sunny. My daughter was back living with the Hackathorns, back where she belonged—at least for now. It wasn’t as hard as we all thought for me to regain full and legal custody from Sally Jo Chicory, which I’d done as soon as possible.

  Cisco and Augusta Wayman heard the bell sounding at the Pine Oak Café. They were both back in the place they loved so much, both cooking up a storm. Cisco had his bad spells on occasion, but whenever he did he went upstairs to his bedroom and lay down, and the spells passed within an hour or two. He was still a sad man in many ways—and I didn’t try to stop him none for feeling the depth of what he felt. The man would undoubtedly grieve for his lost son for the rest of his days, and that was doubtless the way things should be. The grief had become part of Cisco Wayman, it had. He felt it in a strong and powerful way, a different way, yes, than what his wife felt, but remindful of a different time and place, of a better world where young men grew up strong and proud and were never called to fight the world’s wars of horror.

  They heard the bell over at the Sugar House Tavern. Ava-Louise heard it upstairs in the brothel, and Luna-Mae heard it behind the bar where she worked. Every Sunday I saw them sitting in church. They were both making strides, they were. Still working their old businesses, but coming along nonetheless in their spiritual journeys. Both gals were learning more about the ways of a fisherman from Nazareth, a man born as a babe in a straw ox manger, a man who could change their lives if they let him. A man who’d changed mine.