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 on 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.