Alive and Dead in Indiana Read online

  It was to have been all set. But the judge didn’t care. I heard he died falling asleep across some railroad tracks, a knife in his pocket because I was coming to get him.

  Since the operation, it’s been like I had on thimbles. Patty wonders what’s happened to my fingers. She’s got them spread out in front of her eyes, tired of my fortune. She says, Well, hell. How do you pick up something like a dime?

  I start thinking about all the things I’ve touched. Chairs and guns and the counter I hopped over in Daleville. The glasses. The sinks. The steering wheels. The money. It’s like those things remember how I felt. But me, I forgot it as soon as I let go.

  Touched Terry all over. Must have left a print on her everywhere. Some cop dusting her rear, blowing it off, saying, We got the son of a bitch. And they’re all looking at her, looking for me. All the other women too. Shaking hands with men and having them look into their palms.

  You think twice about punching a light switch.

  Red rushing in saying that he killed a cop at the garage. Lost the Auburn, and they got his girl. He quieted down, started in telling us all over again what had happened and that the girl could be trusted. We looked at each other’s faces, knowing that we didn’t look like anybody else no more. Mac looked like a banker. Pete like some college kid, he’s going without a hat and wearing that floppy collar. He walked into Racine and put a big Red Cross poster on the window without anybody taking a second look. And I’m looking like a sissy bookkeeper. Putting on weight.

  We got the girls to dye our hair. Thought it was funny, us sitting with sheets around our necks. I said red and let my mustache grow. Terry sitting on my lap, drawing the eyebrows in. Didn’t like your face to begin with, she’s saying. Pete telling me later about the two toes he’s got grown together. And Red holding up his hand, saying, What am I going to do with these. I never thought about them before, the fingers he left on the railroad track in the Soo.

  They’re going to fry you, boy.

  I could hear Pete calling from the next cell. Leach was taking me back to Indiana. I fought them off awhile and they put cuffs on too hard for it. Some vacation. There was the cop from East Chicago who ran away. He tried to stop me, I tell them. Where is Wisconsin’s Lightning Justice now? I could hear Pete screaming from his cell about going to Wisconsin and staying together and Mac calling from someplace else, See you, John!

  I’ll never see them again. I can’t remember their faces. They went from Tucson to Ohio when Indiana waived the bust-out from Michigan City. They’ll get it for getting me out of Lima.

  The last thing is voices.

  So long, John. Sioux Falls, Mason City. South Bend wasn’t enough. I met their Mouth on the fair grounds to pass them the money. The parachutes dropping from the tower. Tell them I’ll get more.

  Indiana flew me to Crown Point. The pilot said that over there is Mexico.

  Blackie has won the boat on a bet. They sit together on the deck with the lights of the city behind them. He asks her what she wants to name the boat. She talks about having a house and family. It’s old-fashioned, she says but that is what she wants. Then Blackie kisses her, and she stops talking about leaving the city, sailing away.

  We called her Mack Truck. She made breakfast Christmas morning. The fight I had with Terry was all left over from that race driver. I told her to go back to the reservation. Take my car. She’s packing and crying.

  Pete’s girl said, A girl’s got a right to choose who she wants to be with.

  But it was like I didn’t know Terry no more, and she stopped being pretty.

  Christmas in Florida.

  Even the joint had snow.

  I told her to go where it was snowing, with the race driver. And she left after Red told her how to work the spark on the Ford. I can buy another car! I shouted at her.

  It was so hot. I sat around in pieces of suits, and the girls giggled about thinking the tide was a flood. They had never seen an ocean in Indiana.

  It got hotter the week after Christmas. The papers said we were still raising hell in Chicago. They blame everything on us. On New Year’s Eve, people were shooting off firecrackers to see the light on the water. Pete’s girl got out a tommy gun, and it rode right up when she shot it. I took it from her and fired it out over the waves, a long rip. But it wasn’t any good firing at nothing. The tracers looked just so pitiful. Everybody else had girls and was heading for Tucson. I said I was going north and look for Terry. Red said he’d come along. We’d fence some bonds in Chicago.

  If I make it to Mexico, I’ll never see any of them again. Terry lost in the jails, Pete and Mac in Ohio. We can’t pull off the magic trick again. We broke out of too many places. Even if I could walk in with this new face, there’d be no way to walk them out. The farmers they got to sit with them are taking shots at airplanes flying by. South Bend wasn’t enough.

  I’ll never see Sally Rand at the Fair again. Have the woman I’m with tugging at my sleeve to get the hell out of there. But only half pulling, looking up at the stage too, at the feathers and the shiny pieces of paper. A thing like that. You can’t stop watching the fans and balloons—because they are moving and changing and her face is floating, floating above whatever it is she’s using to cover herself where she has to. The cops making such a big deal of it, standing off to the side, looking just like the rest of us looking up at the parts of her. Hiding like that. She didn’t have to hide!

  The alarm is ringing on the building. Red is jumpy, getting the money when a cop walks in. He thinks it’s some kind of mistake. His blue overcoat is buttoned over his gun. Just what I was looking for, but it’s trouble. There are more outside. They’re lining up behind cars. Grab somebody and go! I yell to Red.

  Someone says, Can I get my coat?

  Out the door with the cop ahead of me and someone is calling the cop’s name and the cop is running off down the street. I feel the bullet hit the vest. It knocks me back. I shoot at where the smoke is, and get hit twice more. I hear glass crashing and the alarm. I shoot some more at the smoke, see Red go down to the right, grab him, grab the money. My back is to the guns.

  We get away in the car.

  East Chicago still has Christmas stuff up.

  Red took the bullet under his arm. My chest hurts. Red says from the backseat that being shot ain’t nothing like being shot.

  The ramps are crowded with people. He runs into Jim, and they shake hands, leaning forward and grabbing each other’s arms with their other hands. Jim tells Blackie that he is running for DA and that Blackie’s crowd better watch out. Blackie tells Jim that he’s all for him and that Blackie’s going straight. There is a roar from the crowd and Blackie says, Dempsey. They talk about the fight and say that they will have to get together. There is another roar, and Blackie says, Firpo.

  Patty wants to hold hands in the dark. Puts my hand on her knee. She’s got no stockings on. It’s warm between her legs. We’re both looking straight ahead. Watching the movie. I’m slumped down and my hat’s on my lap. I’d say the man next to me is crowding me. His arm takes up the arm rest.

  Her dress is nice. I think about what it’s made of, stitch by stitch. What if the parts fell apart? In the shop I made double task, triple sometimes—yoking sleeves, setting collars with a Tomcat. The white thread in the blue work shirts. Thinking of pulling one thread and having the whole thing fall apart. It just feels good now, the cloth and what’s underneath. She is moving.

  The new DA is tired. Election night and all that. A woman breaks through the crowd and hops into the limousine after him. She says that Blackie sent her. They settle back in the seat and pull a blanket over their legs.

  In Tucson, they took us one at a time, and me and Terry just getting back from looking for Indians. She stood there with her fingers crossed and her hands on top of her head. They cuffed me.

  I do some shouting. Hey, I tell you, I’m Sullivan! You got the wrong man!

  Some vacation, says Terry.

  They had the prints o
n Pete and Mac by the time I made it to the station.

  I don’t know them. That’s what I say. The place is lousy with reporters. The cops take me into a room where they start going through papers. They snatch my hand, turn over my wrist.

  Well, what do we have here?

  One bent down and undid a shoe.

  The other foot, Charlie, says a guy.

  They look at my heel a long time. I remember Pendleton and the foundry and pouring metal on it to get out of the heat. And then Charlie, he takes my face in his hands, and I say, Hey. He holds my head still while his thumbs feel through my mustache, pressing my lip on my teeth, my head down. This is the guy, he says.

  They open the door and the reporters come in.

  Guess who we got, they say.

  Where’s Indiana? I ask a farmer who’s standing in his field. He points to the road crossing just ahead. Terry says, You can’t tell them apart. Illinois looks just the same. It’d be something if they were the colors on the map.

  I stop to change the plates and put the chains on. The roads are thawing and it’ll just get worse as it gets warm. My dad won’t know me now with these new clothes and hat. I want him to see Terry and the car. Hubert’ll be there and the sisters. We’ll hide in the barn if anybody comes. The hay will all be gone, and we can shoot baskets in the loft.

  It wasn’t warm enough for a picnic. But they filled the house with everyone bringing a covered dish and their own service.

  I told them all about Crown Point. Once in the front room. Once in the kitchen. The kids on the porch. The men around back. Hubert took my picture with Terry. Then with me alone with the gun. Says he’ll not have it developed till they catch me.

  The people on the floor kicked the gas candle back and forth. Homer went in to get Red out of the vault. I’d been shot already. Green bent over where the gas shell hit him. We’re all crying. I’m holding a girl when we go through the revolving door. It’s my right shoulder so it’s her I push against the glass.

  She gives a little grunt.

  Homer’s behind me.

  We’ve got people lined up all over. It’s like a picket fence.

  Red comes out and gets hit. It’s coming from up above us and behind. We all get our guns going. The people got their hands up. Lester sets them out on the Buick. Two on the fenders like deer. They’re on the back bumper, the running board, between us in the car. There must be twenty.

  Slow! I yell.

  Homer’s reading off the directions when someone on the running board says, Here, right here is where I live. We stop and she gets off. Cars go by honking, thinking it’s a shivaree. My arm hurts, all crowded in like that. Lester’s leaning out the back with a rifle. We stop to let some more off, and he gets out to spread some tacks. I’m thinking that he’s getting them under our car.

  Some law you got! he’s yelling at the locals.

  The new DA and Blackie’s girl are sitting at a table in a nightclub. A woman is on the stage, singing. After the song, everyone pounds on the tables with little wooden hammers. Then we see Blackie asleep in a room. He wakes up, and magazines fall to the floor. The phone rings, and he answers it. A woman, in bed, is on the other end of the line. She asks him to guess who she saw that night at the nightclub. Blackie hangs up and looks at the magazines.

  Tellers always telling you to use the next window. Not believing you unless you have a mask. Walking in the door and wasting a whole clip above their heads. Less chance of shooting maybe, but you never know when somebody will get a wise idea, think they’re in a movie.

  That boy in South Bend, looking at his hand where the bullet went through.

  The sheriff in Lima saying, I’m going to have to leave you, Mother.

  The bullet that killed him on the floor next to him.

  Margaret so surprised when the gun went off on the beach in Florida.

  All the things we didn’t do too. And did.

  They’d draw my face all wrong. I don’t smoke. Finding out later, after Pete and Mac got shipped to Ohio, that Leach told the papers to give me all the play.

  Didn’t matter to Pete.

  Blackie closes the door, leaving the body inside. He catches up with his bodyguard, who is waiting by the elevator. It is New Year’s Eve. The bodyguard is wearing a derby.

  Cops are at the door, Terry says. And I’m a Lawrence something, something Lawrence. Get dressed, I tell her, fitting in a drum.

  I am always waking up to these things. I can’t remember my name. I’d been leaving every morning, heading downtown to make it look like I had a job.

  Terry’s put her blouse on backwards. She’s remembering what happened at Dr. Eye’s.

  Shots from the hall.

  That’ll be Homer coming over for breakfast.

  Hurry up, I tell her, and spray the door.

  Think about the cake the neighbor lady from across the hall brought over the first day, her husband with the pipe, saying he has a crystal set.

  Down the back stairs, back out the back door.

  Terry dents a fender backing out the car. I’m waiting, watching the door. The birds are noisy in the vines on the side of the building.

  The DA is in his office trying on an overcoat. He tugs on the lapels. He bends forward, clutching the coat together to see where it falls on his legs. He checks to see if there is a label. He turns around in it and asks his assistant for his comments. He looks over his shoulder and down the back of a sleeve. It could be yours, says the assistant. Yes, says the DA, standing there, thinking. He’s in the middle of the room, bundled up. They bring him another coat, and the DA tries it on. The DA reaches into the pocket and finds a small wooden hammer.

  I heard they let her finish her drink. Then they took her out of the bar.

  She’ll be out before you know it, Homer was saying.

  We were on the Lincoln Highway, heading to his folks. All the little towns had banks to rob. They’re taking away parts of me, I’m saying to Homer, who’s humming. We’d been stumbling through jobs. Losing guns and money. Not even planning anything anymore. Just going in shooting. Trusting the vests.

  I’m lost, I say.

  Men are pushing carts of big steamer trunks through the crowd. A band is playing somewhere. There’s a ship whistle blowing. The DA looks at his watch and out over the people. Everyone is waving and shouting. There is a siren and the crowd gives way. An ambulance pulls up to the dock. Blackie gets out.

  The shooting started when three guys left the bar to head home. The cops must have thought they were us. Lester opened up right away.

  He sleeps with that gun.

  I took off up the stairs with Homer and Red. We fired some out the windows, then covered each other to get out the back, down the bank to the lake. Walking on the far side, we could hear the shots over the water. Flashes every now and then.

  They kept shooting at the house.

  We tied up Red’s head and caught our breath. No-body even knew we were gone. They’d upped the reward that week.

  The lake was very smooth, and we could see because of the moon and stars. They had all different sizes of guns shooting at the lodge.

  The DA is running for governor. Blackie is at the racetrack. He looks through binoculars. He sees her in another part of the grandstand. He goes over and sits down. She says she’s worried about Jim’s chances to become governor. Someone is trying to ruin him, and he won’t do anything about it. Blackie tells her not to worry, that he’ll take care of it. He looks at her, tilts his head, says she mustn’t tell Jim they talked.

  Crossing the Mississippi on the spiral bridge below St. Paul. Pretty tricky since we’re coming from the north. We pick up a tail. They start shooting. I knock out some glass and shoot back. Homer guns it. Red gets it. Never lucky, Red. His head already tied up from the night before at the lodge.

  We shake them on a farm road and leave the car. I hold on to Red in the ditch while Homer goes to flag down a Ford. A family out for a drive, it looks like. Homer goes in the back wi
th them. Red says he needs something to drink. The car could use gas. I stop at a place. The bottles are cold. My hands leave marks on the glass.

  A lady opens the bottles for me. I go back to the car and give one to Red and try to give one to the kid in the back.

  He’s had his lunch already. I don’t want him to have it, says the mother.

  Down on one lip of the gravel pit, a locomotive is pushing some empty cars around. Piles of snow left over from the winter. It’s been easy to dig in the loose gravel and sand. They’re pumping water down below. Homer slides the body down through the bushes, and we put him in the hole. We’re taking off all the clothes.

  You weren’t there, I say to Homer, pointing out the scar under Red’s arm.

  It’s how he missed Tucson.

  I tie up his clothes. Homer has the lye, but I want to do it. Feel kind of bad pouring it on his face. Turn his hands over and pour it on his fingers.

  It smells real bad.

  A hockey game is going on. Lots of people hollering. But there’s a man in a men’s room, two men. You can see them both in the mirrors. One of them says, You wanted to see me? The other man pulls some paper towels from the rack. He turns to answer the question. It’s Blackie. He has a gun wrapped up in the paper towels. When he shoots, you see the flashes coming from the towels.