“I think I’ve been shot, Ace,” he said.
We turned him on his side. There wasn’t much blood and only a little hole, the size a .22 might make. “You’ve been shot all right,” I said.
Clyde and I were crying. Gladys was whispering “Sweet boy” over and over, playing with his porcupine hair. Gus was at the window, screaming at the sheriff. “You’re supposed to shoot me, not my boys. Judas Priest, what is wrong with you Weebawauwauans?”
Will held up the bottle. “I got you some drops, Clyde.”
Gladys helped Will unscrew the lid. I helped Will with the dropper. Clyde turned his head sideways, tears dripping on the floor. Will filled his ear. “You’ll feel better in a second,” he assured his little brother. “Once the drops start working.”
Gus screamed a few final insults and slammed the window shut. He kneeled next to Will. “I bet that bullet hurts like hell.”
Gladys pounded Gus on the leg. “For Pete’s sake, Gus.”
“It ain’t my fault he got himself shot,” Gus said. He knew he was on shaky ground—it’s hard to make people feel sorry for you because you haven’t been shot, when somebody else has. He lowered his face to Will’s. “Don’t worry about dying, Will. This is my day to die, not yours. Once I’m riddled with holes, Ace can take you to the doctor. You’ll do that, right Ace?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “You’re gong to be fine, Will.”
“Hear that?” Gus said, smiling like a little kid with a candy bar. “You’re going to be fine.” He returned to the window, pressed his grinning face against the glass. “There’s dozens of them out there. Dozens of angry men who’ve never met me. Willing to get up early just to riddle me full of holes. Ain’t that something. I owe it all to you, Lloyd.”
Lloyd flashed his on-the-air smile. “Thanks, Gus.”
“No Lloyd, thank you.”
Gladys had been increasingly cold toward Gus as the week wore on and Will Randall wormed his way into her heart. Now she went to Gus and kissed him on the cheek. Maybe her affection was real, but I think she was acting, giving his ego a boost so he’d get himself killed just as soon as humanly possible. “It’s your big day,” she said, red lips on his sunburned hillbilly ear.
He turned and hugged her hard, burying his nose in her yellow hair. There were tears in his eyes. He told me to get his shotgun off Lloyd’s bed. I did as I was told, happy as a clam he was only a few minutes from that hail of bullets he wanted. I also brought him his hat from the bedpost. “A man can’t die without his hat,” I said.
He cradled the gun in his arms and fussed with his hat until the brim was angled just right. He pressed his nose against the window. Gladys dusted the dandruff off his lapels and pulled down the points of his collar. “You’re going to be famous, Gus. Just like Clyde Barrow.”
A stoic smirk froze on his face. “It’s gonna hurt like hell, ain’t it? All that lead all at once.”
“You’re not having second thoughts?” Gladys asked playfully.
It was just the right thing for her to say. “Second thoughts?” he crowed. “Heck no! I ain’t having second thoughts. I’m just trying to imagine what it’s gonna feel like, that’s all. You’ve got to be prepared for that sort of thing.”
“I bet you’ll end up more famous than Clyde Barrow,” she said. Her eyes were going back and forth between Will and Gus. She was fighting hard to keep the worry off her face, for both their sakes, I suppose.
“Bet I do, too,” he said. “And I bet you’ll end up even more famous than Bonnie Parker and that two-bit actress Daphne Darnell put together.”
Gladys blushed right through her face powder.
Gus bent over Will. “You make sure the newspapers get those pictures of me you took, OK? The ones where I look so lousy?”
Will told him he would.
Gus straightened and fixed his eyes on the door. “Well, this is it, boys. I’m sorry I ruined your trip to the World’s Fair. But another one will come along, I’m sure. And I’m sorry you got yourself shot, Will. And Clyde, I’m sorry I threw your medicine through that propeller. You ear’s gonna be fine. I had lots of damn earaches when I was your age. Keep them washed all the time, that’s my advice. And Ace, I hope there’s another war someday. You’re gonna make the best damn dogfighter in the U.S. Army Air Force.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
Gus nodded his assurance. “You bet you will. And you, Lloyd, you boil the best damn chicken I ever et. And I’ve et lots of chicken in my time.”
“Thanks, Gus.”
Gus tugged on his hat and blew a final kiss to Gladys. “Sweetie pie, if I ever loved anybody, it was you.”
Tears that looked pretty real to me wiggled down her cheeks. “I know it,” she said.
Gus made sure his shotgun was loaded. He rested it over his shoulder and pointed his toes toward the door. “Time to die,” he said.
I’ll never forget the look on Gus’s face as he walked to the door. We’d been watching his faces for several days now. We’d seen his confident criminal face. We’d seen his boyish hillbilly face. We’d seen his out-of-control crazy face. And we’d seen his low face, the one he’d made Will take pictures of for the newspapers. When you’re under someone’s thumb you pay close attention to their face, so you know what kind of look to keep on your face, to keep yourselves out of trouble, the way kids continually examine their parents’ faces, to know what will or won’t be tolerated at any given moment.
Gus’s walking-to-the-door face was something new. People who’ve had stomach pains for six months and finally find the courage to see a doctor wear that face when the nurse calls them into the examining room: They know the news will probably be bad; but they’re relieved the uncertainty that’s been eating them is over. I suppose Gus’s face that day looked a lot like Jesus’ face when he was forced to drag that cross up to Golgotha, relieved his miserable years on earth were almost over; not that any other comparisons between Jesus Christ and Gus Gillis come to mind.
As soon as Gus and his face were out the door Gladys and Lloyd scrambled to the window. I sat on the floor next to Will and held his hand. “I bet the doctor in Weebawauwau can dig that bullet out of you in five minutes once Gus is dead,” I said. “Couple of days in bed and we’re on our way to the World’s Fair.”
Clyde, curled up on a nearby chair waiting for his earwax to melt, kicked me in the shoulder. “That ain’t fair, Ace. I gotta go back to school and you two will be at the Fair, watching them make tires and watching that naked woman dance with her fans.”
I wanted to hug Clyde and break his nose at the same time. Didn’t he know Will and I weren’t really going to the Fair? Couldn’t he see that dream was finished? Maybe he did see it. Maybe he was acting, just like Gladys was acting, just like Will was acting, just like I was acting.
I didn’t want to leave Will’s side. And I shouldn’t have left it. But having read the newpspaper accounts of Bonnie and Clyde’s death, machine-gun bullets making their legs and arms flop like the wooden limbs of puppets, their clothes ripping away, smoke flying out their various orifices, I could not control my bloody curiosity. I patted Will’s hand and joined Gladys and Lloyd at the window.
In 1955 when the R&R Luncheonette went belly up and Lois Cobb divorced me, I drove downstate to Mingo Junction, on the banks of the Ohio River, just below Steubenville, to see if anybody knew where Gladys Bartholomew was. The first person I asked knew exactly where Gladys was. She was right there in Mingo Junction, living in a two-story house with brown tar-paper shingles, two doors down from her father’s store, not fifty yards from where I was standing.
Gladys was not particularly happy to see me. It had been twenty-one years. But she invited me inside, and we sat in her kitchen nervously playing with the handles of our coffee cups while barges went up and down the river. I asked her all sorts of questions about our week together in Indiana. I asked her if she was acting that morning in the radio station, when she told Gus how famous he was going to b
e after he was riddled. “Goodness no,” she told me. “I just wanted him dead so I could be free.”
I’m not so sure. I don’t think she liked Gus very much, but I think she bought into his dreams, hook, line, and sinker. He was going to die in a hail of bullets like Clyde Barrow and she was going to trade on his notoriety and become a famous radio actress like Daphne Darnell. Just because her dream didn’t come true, doesn’t mean it wasn’t real in 1934. My dream of becoming a famous flying ace like Eddie Rickenbacker and adding to the total of Gilbert kills was real enough in 1934. Will’s dream was real enough. The World’s Fair, all those thousands of wondrous exhibits, were going to transform him from a backwards Bennett’s Corners’ boy into a man of the world, a man ready for anything.
None of our dreams came true. Not mine. Not Will’s. Not Gladys’s. Not Gus’s. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t real that scorching summer of 1934.
“They class them as cold-blooded killers
They say they are hardened and mean
But I say this with pride, that once I knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.”
“STORY OF SUICIDE SAL” BY BONNIE PARKER
Twenty-Four/Singing and Dancing
Gus’s plan was to charge down the lawn, shotgun blasting, straight into that hail of bullets he’d been dreaming about. Apparently his eagerness faltered once he was outside the door. Several very quiet, hour-long minutes went by. Gladys was not happy with the delay. “Where is that hillbilly?” she growled, face flat against the window glass.
“Probably leaning against the door,” Lloyd said. “Letting the cowardice sweat out of him.”
That’s exactly what Gus must have been doing because a few seconds later we heard a high-pitched Indian war whoop. A few seconds after that Gus was charging down the lawn, whooping and shooting straight up at God’s ceiling. There was no heavenly plaster and no hail of bullets. The men in the corn held their fire. Gus kept running, whooping, pulling shells from his suitcoat pockets, reloading and firing. Not a bullet in return. Despite that unexpected hiccup when the milkman shot Will—and the little German fellow stomped him silly—Sheriff Orville Barnes’s game was unfolding as planned.
Gus stopped twenty yards or so from the corn. Even from his backside you could tell he was in total disbelief. His outstretched arms were asking why? Sheriff Barnes rose and waded forward. He was bouncing a red rubber ball on a paddle. Blump blump blump blump. Pruitt followed the sheriff out. We opened the window so we could hear.
“How’s the boy?” the sheriff asked, red rubber ball not missing a beat. Blump blump blump blump.
“He ain’t singing and dancing, but he’s breathing,” said Gus.
Blump blump blump blump. “I’m through playing games with you, Gus,” the sheriff said, not through playing games at all. “I want you to lay down your peashooter, put your hands on top of that nice hat of yours, and walk over to my handcuffs real slow.”
Gus fired over the sheriff’s head. Pruitt and everybody hidden in the corn went flat. Sheriff Barnes stood tall. Blump blump blump blump.
Gus now made a counteroffer. “Start riddling me with lead before somebody gets hurt.”
“We’re not going to riddle you, Gus,” the sheriff said. “Not going to shoot you once.”
“The hell you ain’t.”
Gus and the sheriff glared at each other for ten minutes. Blump blump blump blump.
All my life, every time I heard somebody’s loud clock, or heard a faucet drip, or heard the bedsprings under me while I was making love, I thought of Gus Gillis and Sheriff Orville Barnes glaring at each other, Will on the hard floor, back bent like a banana, bullet in his back. Blump blump blump blump.
Sheriff Barnes won the glare. Gus swiveled like a tin soldier and marched back to the radio station. “There’s been a change of plans,” he told us. He had that low look on his face again. He made Lloyd shut the window. I could still see Sheriff Barnes bouncing his little ball at the edge of the cornfield. But mercifully the blumps were gone.
“You know what im-potent means, Ace?” Gus asked me.
“Absolutely. When a man can’t get his third leg to kick.”
“I’m afraid Sheriff Orville Barnes has that problem, Ace. I’m afraid every man in Weebawauwau County has that problem. Question now is, how we going to cure those bastards?”
“How we going to get a rise out them?” I said.
“That’s exactly what I mean, Ace. Exactly what I mean.”
We watched Gus think. He rubbed his eyes so hard I expected them to crack and run down his face like breakfast eggs. After a minute or two he had a plan. He told Lloyd to gather up Will. Told Gladys to get the suitcases. Didn’t give her enough time to put her Daphne Darnell scripts away, so she tucked them under her arm and we all headed for the door and the Gilbert SXIII.
Lloyd eased Will into the backseat. Gladys and Clyde crawled in next to him. Gus sent Lloyd to crank the engine. Sometimes when the Gilbert SXIII sat for several days it didn’t like to start. But it was as anxious as the rest of us. Purred right away. Gus climbed in next to me. “We going to run for it?” I foolishly asked.
“Ain’t you been listening? We’re going straight for the sheriff’s third leg.” He made me circle the radio station several times, to get everyone’s attention, I guess. Lloyd hurried back inside. He went straight to his microphone. Being only a little past dawn on a weekday, very few were listening to their radios. But little by little, those who were, yelled to those who weren’t. “My audience just swelled and swelled like a bowl of Grape-Nuts,” Lloyd told me in 1942. “Cows going unmilked, hogs unfed, tea kettles left whistling.”
Gus ordered me to fly straight for the sheriff. I pushed the lever into high speed and throttled all the way. Gus stood on the seat and somehow managed to stay standing. He fired both barrels. Sheriff Barnes kept bouncing his red rubber ball. Pruitt and everybody else scattered. At the time I didn’t know Will’s Uncle Fritz was out there, but I could see the milkman hobbling. “Run ’em down, Ace,” Gus ordered, “run ’em diddly-damn down.”
Sheriff Barnes didn’t jump out of the way until I was on top of him. His red rubber ball, deserted in midbounce, cracked against my windshield. I smashed into the corn. It hadn’t rained in days, maybe weeks, and the Indiana soil was as hard as concrete. Stalks fell like dominoes. “What now?” I yelled up to Gus.
“Mingle!” he yelled down.
I guess I knew what he meant by mingle. I looped and cut the retreating Weebawauwauans off. None of Oswald Boelcke’s ten rules covered this kind of dogfighting. I made figure eights and zeroes, figure fives and figure sixes. Those Weebawauwauans were hopping every which-a-way, like scared rabbits. Scared impotent rabbits. Gus kept reloading and firing. Always in the air, of course. Falling pellets rattled the dry corn and stung the rabbits like bees. When I could, I looked to see how Will was faring in the backseat. He was sitting stiff as a board but he was smiling. Gladys was hugging him. Clyde was having the time of his life, waving at the rabbits, head sideways on his shoulder.
Little by little they made their way to their cars and trucks. I stayed right with them, weaving in and out. Then somebody finally got his third leg to kick. Stood dead in my path and fired his rifle. My windshield shattered. Others started shooting. “Now you’re cooking with gas,” Gus shouted. He stood taller on the seat so they could hit him. But I wasn’t having any of that. I rolled out and headed for the road.
Gus sat down, angry. “Where you think you’re going?”
“We’re killing this place,” I said. “Before somebody gets killed.”
“Judas Priest! That’s the whole idea!”
“Not anymore it’s not,” I said. The ditch was deep and steep and I nearly went airborne for real. I hit the gravel and took off. High speed. Full throttle.
The Weebawauwauans piled into their cars and trucks and followed, Sheriff Orville Barnes in the lead, full sun exploding off the big gold star on his do
or. Siren full warble.
Gus’s anger didn’t last long. “You know,” he said, “this may not turn out too bad. Some of the most famous criminals alive get killed in car chases. Bonnie and Clyde died in their Ford, you know.”
“Don’t count on finally getting lucky,” I said. “I can outrun anything they’re driving.”
Actually I couldn’t. They couldn’t catch me, but neither could I get away. They stayed right with me, three hundred yards away or so. The gravel flew, white dust billowing, painting the corn. The wind was under my stubby wings, my tires tickling the road. But it didn’t feel like flying anymore. I’d flown a real airplane, Bud Hemphill’s Jenny, and now it just felt like very dangerous driving.
“How fast you going?” Gus asked me.
I checked the speedometer needle. It was teetering just shy of forty, the fastest I’d ever dared. “Forty.”
“They won’t catch us at that speed. Slow down a bit.”
“One thing I’m not going to do is slow down.”
Gus not only pointed his shotgun in my general direction, he pressed the barrels against my jaw. “Thirty-five ought to do it,” he said.
I eased back on the throttle and watched the speedometer needle retreat. “Thirty-five,” I said.
Gus was happy, but only for a minute. The sheriff’s caravan didn’t get an inch closer. They’d apparently cut their speed, too. “Trim ‘er another five,” Gus ordered. I didn’t need his gun barrel to coax me this time. I throttled back to thirty.
So did the sheriff.
When I returned to Weebawauwau in 1942, Albert Finley told me it was his cousin’s plan to drive us out of the county right from the start. “Orville never liked arresting criminals,” he told me. “He’d have to put them in the county jail and then feed them breakfast, lunch, and supper until their trials came up. None of them ever had the money to hire their own lawyers, so the county had to spring for their defense as well as their prosecution, which always seemed odd to Orville. Once convicted they had to be driven all the way to the penitentiary in Indianapolis, in a gas-sucking bus with two guards and a driver. It was cheaper just to chase them into a richer county.”
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