“Your mother,” the older man said, releasing the elastic band around the bills and counting off four of them, “your mother says that that’s too late. That you can’t get anything good by the time the kids’re grown, because you don’t know anything.”
The younger man got out of the booth and hitched up his pants. “Doesn’t matter what Mom thinks,” he said. “Doesn’t matter what she says, whether she’s right or wrong. Doesn’t matter what I think, either. Not to old Patricia. I want her to stay home and raise the damned kids. And she just flat won’t do it.” He left coins on the table. They went toward the register opposite the door.
“Well,” she said, “I wasn’t. In The Friary. I was long gone by then. I, when it dawned on me they were serious about Emmy, that they really were going to off her, that was when I said: ‘Hey, no, this is too much.’ I raised hell with Jimmy about that. I said: ‘Hey, all right? You guys, you guys can’t do this. I mean, the whole principle here, the reason we’re all together and living like this, it’s supposed to be because we’re against people doing this to people, no matter what they do.’ Because that was how I could justify it, you know? The robberies, I mean. That nobody was getting hurt. That we were going in and taking what we needed and not hurting anybody, even if the way we did it was to make them think we’re going to. With the guns and everything.
“And he wouldn’t listen to me,” she said. “He got mad at me, in fact. Jimmy was absolutely ripped, and I just couldn’t figure it out. And I said: ‘Jesus, Beau, what is this shit? I mean, first of all, the first thing you do when I come in, when I get involved with Sam, the first thing you do is try to keep me out.’ And he did, too. He was in my face all the time. And I thought, you know, it was because I’m his baby sister and the sex thing bothered him. I wasn’t even seventeen, and Sam was twenty-two, and even if Jimmy did think Sam was God and would do anything he said, he didn’t want his god fucking his baby sister. I thought that’s what it was.
“But it was also,” she said, “those guys, I think about it sometimes now, and it all seems so long ago and strange. Here it is, it’s over sixteen years ago that I met Sam, and I can relate to that all right, because it seems like a century. Something that happened to somebody else, I couldn’t possibly’ve done and Jimmy could not have done. Because none of it — you look back on it and none of it makes any sense. It didn’t make any sense then, either, when we were doing it, and yet if you’d asked us then, asked any of us, explain how what we did was something that was really good, we would’ve looked at you like you were nuts and said: ‘What’s the matter with you, right? We’re against fascist domination.’ And all that rally stuff. ‘And what we’re doing’s what we have to do to put an end to it.’ And that was enough for us.
“Sam,” she said, “well, you’ve met him. It all made perfect logic when Sam explained the reasons. Andrea was the cookie jar, the cash box for the Contingent. And that was perfectly all right. It was the way that things should be. When we needed money, well, Sam or Beau would say to her that we needed some. And she would get it for us. Let me tell you something: If I ever get any money, and it’s going to be for my kids, if I ever have any kids, I can tell you right this minute that those kids are not going to get their hands on a dime of it until they’re at least thirty. Because all that money Andrea had, all the dough she gave to Sam — all she was doing with it was hiring guys to fuck her. Make her think that she belonged.
“You’d’ve asked her, you know, why she was giving Sam and them, forty, fifty grand a year, she knew all the lyrics and you’d get such a bunch of propaganda your ears’d ring for a week. And she really thought she was, that that’s what she was doing — financing the revolution. Making amends for the way her grandfathers and her father and her poor dopey mother out there in Atherton’d been exploiting the lower classes and the powerless, all the years they’d been on earth.
“What a pathetic lot of shit,” Christina said. “Would’ve been bad enough if she hadn’t really, if she didn’t really believe it. If it was just something she pretended because she didn’t like the idea she was buying guys for sex and so they’d let her hang around. Feel like she was part of something. But she did believe it. At the time, she really did believe it. And as long as she kept on believing it, well, Sam let her stay around.
“Which naturally was how I could stay around,” Christina said. “I used to sit around and think how pathetic Andrea was, because I could see what was going on. And I felt superior. I’d never do something like that. Not old Christina Walker, boy. Let anybody take advantage of me like that? Not this hip smart chick. But of course the only reason I could do that, feel that way about her and myself, was because she was doling out the money. Then, when she got so serious about Glenn, and Sam and Jimmy began to think they couldn’t trust them, either one of them, well you had a situation where something had to give. Because either way, it didn’t matter. Either they couldn’t trust Glenn because they had no respect for Andrea, and if he could fall for her then he must be a piece of shit that’d fink out on them some day, or else they couldn’t trust Glenn because Andrea wasn’t coming up with the cash the way she used to, and he must be the one talking her out of it. Telling her that Sam and Beau were playing her for a sucker.
“So it all came together,” she said. “They started, they planned the first one there, the Danvers job, and when I caught on what they’re doing, I said: ‘Hey,’ you know? I mean: ‘Protests and symbolic acts’re one thing, but this here, using guns? I thought that’s what we were against. People using guns.’ And they were furious. They said: ‘Hey, grow up, little girl. You’re a woman now. This’s the real world we’re in. Takes money to operate. People do this all the time, only with laws and stuff. They decide what they need to oppress the masses, and they pass the laws to do it. See what they need and take it. And that’s all we’re doing here.’
“And I went along,” she said. “I didn’t, I wasn’t at the actual jobs, but the only reason I wasn’t was because they needed someone to be in the catch car and switch the loot after the job. If they’d’ve decided, if Jimmy and Sam’d trusted me enough, or thought they had to have me at the actual hold-up, I would have been with them. I would’ve been scared to be, but more scared not to be. I could see them, I could see the two of them, and one is my own brother, I could see them working on each other, playing off each other, feeding off each other. And I knew, or I started to know, these guys were getting crazy.
“I really believe that now,” she said. “I really believe, I think when Jimmy started out with Sam, when he first came under Sam’s influence — which was long before I knew Sam, when they were out there on the Coast — I really think it’s possible Jimmy was just so caught up in the war and the whole thing that he really, and Sam too, probably, that they really believed what they were doing was right and noble and just. I do believe that. I don’t believe Sam, when he was starting out, I don’t believe he was out to manipulate people and just use them, any way he could. Not in the beginning. And I don’t think he was thinking that, well, maybe he’d become the new Jesse James as soon’s he found a way. I don’t think that at all.
“What I do think,” she said, “I think if you spend all your time thinking about ways to stop people from committing violence, nationally, I think what happens is it gets to you and fucks up your head. So it becomes okay, you do it, individually. And I think, I also think, if you’re out on the barricades all the time, with the bullhorns and all that stuff, and the hecklers’re yelling that the real reason you’re against the war’s that you’re afraid to fight, I think that also does it. Like they decided, Sam and my brother, they decided they had to do something that involved them using guns and maybe getting shot, just to show it wasn’t, that they weren’t afraid of it.
“And they weren’t,” she said. “They sure proved that. But it was like, once they had proved it, they sort of lost their grip. And they became paranoid.
“I remember,” she said, “it was when w
e were running out the money we got in Westgate Mall, and Sam said it was time, plan another job. And the way, the way we did them, you had to start getting ready quite a while before you went and did it. Because what they did, one the women’d get a job waitressing or something. In a doughnut shop or something where she could watch the banks and stores get their cash pick-ups and deliveries. Because nobody notices somebody like that, ever thinks a thing about them. And then when you know their schedule — that the truck drops off every Thursday night, or picks up Monday morning, there’s a big weekend sale — whatever it happens to be, and you’ve got it down what the guards do — how many there are in it, and do they all leave the truck or’s the driver stay in it? — when you got all that stuff down pat, then you can make your move.
“Well,” she said, “Emmy was the one that did that, that got the job and watched and all of that shit, or she had been, anyway. Andrea was the first one that tried it, but she almost screwed up the Danvers one, and after that Emmy was the one. And this time she didn’t want to do it. She said: ‘No, it’s too risky. They, they’ve got to know by this time, that somebody gets a job like this and then she doesn’t show up for work and the robbery goes down, and that’s how we’re doing this. And they’re going to be watching for me, and they’re going to nail me the minute I go in for the job. And what am I going to say? What if they check on what I tell them, on where I went to school and do I really live where I’m telling them I’m living? What if they do that? Then they’ll call the pigs, and they’ll arrest me, and all you other guys’ll just take off and split — you will disappear, and I’ll be going to jail. And I don’t think, I don’t think I should always be the one who has to take the chances. I think either Jill or Kathie should be the ones to do it.’
“And Sam went into orbit,” Christina said. “He was just totally out of his mind. We had, we were all living in this dumpy apartment out in Northampton, me and Sam and Jimmy and this girl named Paula he was seeing that was a sophomore at Mount Holyoke, and Kathie and Jill, and Sam just went berserk. Paula, I don’t think Paula was there that day. This happened in the morning and I think she had a class. She went to summer school. She was sort of a nice kid. I don’t think she really knew what was going on. Just that it was exciting, but they didn’t tell her much. And Sam just exploded. Did you ever see a picture of Emmy?”
“No,” Gleason said. “Not alive at least. I saw them of her body, where they found her, but I couldn’t really tell from that what she looked like, she was alive.”
“No,” Christina said, “no, you couldn’t. Well, Emmy was really pretty when she wanted to be. Most of the time, see, she didn’t make the effort, because that was another thing we all did; we all looked like we slept outdoors and never washed our hair, and never had any clean clothes to put on. Just go around in old shirts and pants and stuff like that. Showed we were sincere. Committed to the struggle. But when Emmy was going out, when she was looking for one of those jobs, she’d get cleaned up. And she really looked nice. She’d use bleach and streak her hair, and put some makeup on, and wear a bra which she should’ve done all the time because she had big boobs, and naturally she didn’t have any trouble finding a job. Because all she had to do was find someplace that had a man running it — which almost all of them do, managers — and he’d get a look at her and start thinking if he played his cards right he’d be in her by midnight. And they did, too. That was part of her mission: anything she had to do to get the job and learn the schedule, that was what she had to do.
“And she said, when Sam blew up, she said: ‘I don’t care. I don’t care if Jill and Kathie, if they don’t want guys putting their hands on them, and that’s why they won’t do it. This’s supposed to be a unit here. Everybody works together. And I don’t think I should always have to be the one that gets down on her knees and sucks some married guy’s cock because he says to work in his doughnut shop you got to like his cruller. I’m sick of putting out for these jerks. Find a place that some other dyke runs and let Jill or Kathie put out.’
“Well,” Christina said, “Sam was livid, and when Sam got worked up, so’d Jimmy. Jimmy got his cues from Sam. And Emmy wasn’t very big. So Sam just said to Jimmy: ‘Grab her.’ And she’s hollering and yelling, ‘No, no, no,’ and Jimmy’s grabbing her by the arms and he’s behind her, holding her, and Jill and Kathie’re just sitting there cross-legged on the floor, taking it all in and enjoying it. Like two cats watching a birdbath and thinking about how they can catch what’s in it. See, they didn’t get along too good with Emmy, ’cause she wasn’t one of them. And, well, they didn’t like me all that much either, because of the same thing. But I was with Sam, and Jimmy was my brother, so they were sort of afraid of me and they didn’t say anything about what they thought of me.
“And Sam says: ‘Jill, drop trou. Kathie, drop trou.’ And they both stood up, nobody ever questioned what Sam said, and very slowly they take their jeans off and they haven’t got anything on under them, and Emmy’s like, crying and struggling, you know? And he has Jill get down on her hands and knees, or her elbows, really, and he said to Jimmy: ‘Kneel her down.’ And Jimmy did. And Sam said: ‘Emmy, lick Jill’s asshole.’
“So,” Christina said, “Emmy’s crying and saying she won’t do it, and Kathie’s getting all excited, fingering herself, and Emmy won’t do it, and Sam just walks over to her and smashes her in the face. Right across the mouth. With his fist. And he did it about, I don’t know, four or five times, cut her lip on her teeth so there’s blood and everything, shoved her face down into the crack in Jill’s ass every time he did it, and all this time, every time he does it he says: ‘Do it, Emmy, I’ll kill you, you know. I’m perfectly capable of doing that if you don’t. And you know I am.’ And I, here was this guy that was my lover, you know? And I was terrified of him, of what I saw him doing. And I said: ‘Sam, Sam,’ trying to stop him, you know? And he just turned to me and he said: ‘You stay out of this, Tina. You just stay out of this or we’ll do it to you next.’
“And I looked at Jimmy, you know, like I thought he would protect me? And I could tell just by looking at his face he wouldn’t, just by looking at him. He didn’t need to say a thing. Not a goddamned thing. Sam owned him, heart and soul. And that was, that was the beginning of the end for me, when I realized that. That as long as I stayed with the unit, Sam could do absolutely anything he wanted with me. And my brother wouldn’t help me. My brother would help Sam. So that was when I started to decide that I would go back to school, and just sort of gradually disengage myself from them, you know? Because it had to be like that. Nothing sudden. I did it too fast, Sam might decide I was a security risk and torture me like that.” She paused. “He is the strangest man,” she said. “He’s got all these principles and stuff — no drugs, by then, like mescaline — except amphetamines if he decided to fly, which he did a lot more’n he admitted, even at the trial — and no booze or like that stuff. And, and yet this guy will hurt people, hurt them all the time. If he thinks it is right.
“So,” she said, “Emmy did it. And after she got finished with Jill, blood all over Jill’s ass, she had to do Kathie. And then Sam says to her: ‘Okay, that’s your punishment for that insubordination. Now I’m going to tell you again what you’re going to do on this job, and if you tell me again that you’re not going to do it, we’ll punish you some more. I don’t care what you think, what you like or what you feel. We’re gonna have discipline in this group, no matter what anybody thinks, because discipline, absolute discipline’s the only way we can survive.’
“And Emmy just nodded. I don’t think she could talk. And about a week later, when her face’d healed — I don’t think she came out of her room that whole week except to get some water or go to the bathroom, and she didn’t talk at all, even if you spoke to her — she went down to Quincy there, all by herself, and rented a room and got the job, the Braintree plaza, just like Sam ordered her. Cashier in the clothing store. And then we did the job. Just like Sam said w
e would.
“And then,” she said, “then about three weeks later, we’re all scattered all over the place, and Jimmy and Sam were staying with a guy they knew in Deerfield, and they’re going to get the house. Sam’s teaching math in Brattleboro. That was his cover then. Emmy was still in Northampton. I, I was in school again down here, so I wasn’t with them during the week, and I’m gradually cutting myself loose, but I went up on the bus one weekend and Jimmy picked me up. And I don’t know exactly what’d gone on, but Sam’d evidently gone out of control again about something Emmy said or did, and Jimmy was warning me. And I made him stop the car. And I said: ‘Let me get this straight here. Are you saying, are you telling me you’re going to kill that kid?’ And he wouldn’t admit it. He would not come out and say it. But I knew that’s what he meant. That Sam was thinking about having Jimmy kill her. And that was why that was. And I knew if Sam told Jimmy, ‘Kill her,’ Jimmy would kill her. So I said: ‘Well, that’s it, then. No more for me.’ And I got out of the car and thumbed a ride back to Northampton and got on the bus for home.”
“You didn’t,” Gleason said, “you didn’t make any effort to warn Emmy?”
“I was afraid to,” she said. “I was going to — that was my first impulse. Go and say to Emmy: ‘Run. My brother’s going to kill you.’ But then I thought: ‘Wait. What if this’s one of Sam’s crazy tests? What if they’re not going to do that, and I tell her and she runs? Then they’ll know I told. They’ll probably kill me. And besides, maybe even if they’re thinking about it, they’ll end up not doing it.’ All kinds of rationalizations. So I didn’t, didn’t tell her, and within the next couple weeks they tricked her into getting into a car with them, and brought her down here and killed her. Close to where she grew up. So, probably, people’d figure it was someone she grew up with around here.
Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Page 29
