by Stephen King
"Step on it, Homer!" Johnnie shouts at me. He was in the backseat, and in rare good humor from the sound of him. "Make it walk!"
I did, too, and we left the cattle truck in the dust, with those cops stuck behind it. So long, Mother, I'll write when I get work. Ha!
Once it seemed we had them buried for good, Jack says, "Slow down, you damned fool—no sense getting picked up for speeding."
So I slowed down to thirty-five and for a quarter of an hour everything was fine. We were talking about Little Bohemia, and whether or not Lester (the one they were always calling Baby Face) might have gotten away, when all at once there's the crackle of rifles and pistols, and the sound of bullets whining off the pavement. It was those hick cops from the bridge. They'd caught up, creeping easy the last ninety or a hundred yards, and were close enough now to be shooting for the tires—they probably weren't entirely sure, even then, that it was Dillinger.
They weren't in doubt for long. Johnnie broke out the back window of the Ford with the butt of his pistol and started shooting back. I mashed the gas pedal again and got that Ford all the way up to fifty, which was a tearing rush in those days. There wasn't much traffic, but what there was I passed any way I could—on the left, on the right, in the ditch. Twice I felt the driver's-side wheels go up, but we never tipped. Nothing like a Ford when it came to a getaway. Once Johnnie wrote to Henry Ford himself. "When I'm in a Ford, I can make any car take my dust," he told Mr. Ford, and we surely dusted them that day.
We paid a price, though. There were these spink! spink! spink! noises, and a crack ran up the windshield and a slug—I'm pretty sure it was a .45—fell dead on the dashboard. It looked like a big black elm beetle.
Jack Hamilton was in the passenger seat. He got his tommy gun off the floor and was checking the drum, ready to lean out the window, I imagine, when there came another of those spink! noises. Jack says, "Oh! Bastard! I'm hit!" That bullet had to have come in the busted back window and how it missed Johnnie to hit Jack I don't know.
"Are you all right?" I shouted. I was hung over the wheel like a monkey and driving like one, too, very likely. I passed a Coulee Dairy truck on the right, honking all the time, yelling for that white-coat-farmer-son-of-a-bitch to get out of my road. "Jack, are you all right?"
"I'm okay, I'm fine!" he says, and shoves himself and his sub gun out the window, almost to his waist. Only, at first the milk truck was in the way. I could see the driver in the mirror, gawking at us from under his little hat. And when I looked over at Jack as he leaned out I could see a hole, just as neat and round as something you'd draw with a pencil, in the middle of his overcoat. There was no blood, just that little black hole.
"Never mind Jack, just run the son of a bitch!" Johnnie shouted at me.
I ran it. We gained maybe half a mile on the milk truck, and the cops stuck behind it the whole while because there was a guardrail on one side and a line of slowpoke traffic coming the other way. We turned hard, around a sharp curve, and for a moment both the milk truck and the police car were out of sight. Suddenly, on the right, there was a gravel road all grown in with weeds.
"In there!" Jack gasps, falling back into the passenger seat, but I was already turning in.
It was an old driveway. I drove about seventy yards, over a little rise and down the other side, ending at a farmhouse that looked long empty. I killed the engine, and we all got out and stood behind the car.
"If they come, we'll give em a show," Jack says. "I ain't going to no electric chair like Harry Pierpont."
But no one came, and after ten minutes or so we got back in the car and drove out to the main road, all slow and careful. And that's when I saw something I didn't like much. "Jack," I says, "you're bleeding out your mouth. Look out or it'll be on your shirt."
Jack wiped his mouth with the big finger of his right hand, looked at the blood on it, and then gave me a smile that I still see in my dreams: big and broad and scared to death. "I just bit the inside of my cheek," says he. "I'm all right."
"You sure?" Johnnie asks. "You sound kind of funny."
"I can't catch all my breath just yet," Jack says. He wiped his big finger across his mouth again and there was less blood, and that seemed to satisfy him. "Let's get the fuck out of here."
"Turn back toward the Spiral Bridge, Homer," Johnnie says, and I did like he told me. Not all the stories about Johnnie Dillinger are true, but he could always find his way home, even after he didn't have no home no more, and I always trusted him.
We were once again doing a perfectly legal parson-go-to-meeting thirty miles per, when Johnnie saw a Texaco station and told me to turn off to the right. We were soon on country gravel roads, Johnnie calling lefts and rights, even though all the roads looked the same to me: just wheel ruts running between clapped-out cornfields. The roads were muddy, and there were still scraps of snow in some of the fields. Every now and then there'd be some hick kid watching us go by. Jack was getting quieter and quieter. I asked him how he was doing and he said, "I'm all right."
"Yes, well, we ought to get you looked at when we cool off a little," Johnnie said. "And we have to get your coat mended, too. With that hole in it, it looks like somebody shot you!" He laughed, and so did I. Even Jack laughed. Johnnie could always cheer you up.
"I don't think it went deep," Jack said, just as we came out on Route 43. "I'm not bleeding out of my mouth anymore—look." He turned to show Johnnie his finger, which now just had a maroon smear on it. But when he twisted back into his seat blood poured out of his mouth and nose.
"I think it went deep enough," Johnnie said. "We'll take care of you—if you can still talk, you're likely fine."
"Sure," Jack said. "I'm fine." His voice was smaller than ever.
"Fine as a fiddler's fuck," I said.
"Aw, shut up, you dummocks," he said, and we all had a laugh. They laughed at me a lot. It was all in fun.
About five minutes after we got back on the main road, Jack passed out. He slumped against the window, and a thread of blood trickled from one corner of his mouth and smeared on the glass. It reminded me of swatting a mosquito that's had its dinner—the claret everywhere. Jack still had the rag on his head, but it had gone crooked. Johnny took it off and cleaned the blood from Jack's face with it. Jack muttered and raised his hands as if to push Johnnie away, but they dropped back into his lap.
"Those cops will have radioed ahead," Johnnie says. "If we go to St. Paul, we're finished. That's what I think. How about you, Homer?"
"The same," I says. "What does that leave? Chicago?"
"Yep," he says. "Only first we have to ditch this motor. They'll have the plates by now. Even if they didn't, it's bad luck. It's a damn hoodoo."
"What about Jack?" I says.
"Jack will be all right," he says, and I knew to say no more on the subject.
We stopped about a mile down the road, and Johnnie shot out the front tire of the hoodoo Ford while Jack leaned against the hood, looking pale and sick.
When we needed a car, it was always my job to flag one down. "People who wouldn't stop for any of the rest of us will stop for you," Johnnie said once. "Why is that, I wonder?"
Harry Pierpont answered him. This was back in the days when it was still the Pierpont Gang instead of the Dillinger Gang. "Because he looks like a Homer," he said. "Wasn't ever anyone looked so much like a Homer as Homer Van Meter does."
We all laughed at that, and now here I was again, and this time it was really important. You'd have to say life or death.
Three or four cars went by and I pretended to be fiddling with the tire. A farm truck was next, but it was too slow and waddly. Also, there were some fellas in the back. Driver slows down and says, "You need any help, amigo?"
"I'm fine," I says. "Workin' up a appetite for lunch. You go right on."
He gives me a laugh and on he went. The fellas in the back also waved.
Next up was another Ford, all by its lonesome. I waved my arms for them to stop, standing where they cou
ldn't help but see that flat shoe. Also, I was giving them a grin. That big one that says I'm just a harmless Homer by the side of the road.
It worked. The Ford stopped. There was three folks inside, a man and a young woman and a fat baby. A family.
"Looks like you got a flat there, partner," the man says. He was wearing a suit and a topcoat, both clean but not what you'd call Grade A.
"Well, I don't know how bad it can be," I says, "when it's only flat on the bottom."
We was still laughing over that just like it was new when Johnnie and Jack come out of the trees with their guns drawn.
"Just hold still, sir," Jack says. "No one is going to get hurt."
The man looked at Jack, looked at Johnnie, looked at Jack again. Then his eyes went back to Johnnie and his mouth dropped open. I seen it a thousand times, but it always tickled me.
"You're Dillinger!" he gasps, and then shoots his hands up.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," Johnnie says, and grabs one of the man's hands out of the air. "Get those mitts down, would you?"
Just as he did, another two or three cars came along—country-goto-town types, sitting up straight as sticks in their old muddy sedans. We didn't look like nothing but a bunch of folks at the side of the road getting ready for a tire-changing party.
Jack, meanwhile, went to the driver's side of the new Ford, turned off the switch, and took the keys. The sky was white that day, as if with rain or snow, but Jack's face was whiter.
"What's your name, Ma'am?" Jack asks the woman. She was wearing a long gray coat and a cute sailor's cap.
"Deelie Francis," she says. Her eyes were as big and dark as plums. "That's Roy. He's my husband. Are you going to kill us?"
Johnnie give her a stern look and says, "We are the Dillinger Gang, Mrs. Francis, and we have never killed anyone." Johnnie always made this point. Harry Pierpont used to laugh at him and ask him why he wasted his breath, but I think Johnnie was right to do that. It's one of the reasons he'll be remembered long after the straw-hat-wearing little pansy is forgot.
"That's right," Jack says. "We just rob banks, and not half as many as they say. And who is this fine little man?" He chucked the kiddo under the chin. He was fat, all right; looked like W. C. Fields.
"That's Buster," Deelie Francis says.
"Well, he's a regular little bouncer, ain't he?" Jack smiled. There was blood on his teeth. "How old is he? Three or so?"
"Just barely two and a half," Mrs. Francis says proudly.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, but he's big for his age. Mister, are you all right? You're awful pale. And there's blood on your—"
Johnnie speaks up then. "Jack, can you drive this one into the trees?" He pointed at the carpenter's old Ford.
"Sure," Jack says.
"Flat tire and all?"
"You just try me. It's just that . . . I'm awful thirsty. Ma'am— Missus Francis—do you have anything to drink?"
She turned around and bent over—not easy with that horse of a baby in her arms—and got a thermos from the back.
Another couple of cars went puttering by. The folks inside waved, and we waved back. I was still grinning fit to split, trying to look just as Homer as a Homer could be. I was worried about Jack and didn't know how he could stay on his feet, let alone tip up that thermos and swig what was inside. Iced tea, she told him, but he seemed not to hear. When he handed it back to her, there were tears rolling down his cheeks. He thanked her, and she asked him again if he was all right.
"I am now," Jack says. He got into the hoodoo Ford and drove it into the bushes, the car jouncing up and down on the tire Johnnie had shot out.
"Why couldn't you have shot out a back one, you goddam fool?" Jack sounded angry and out of breath. Then he wrestled the car into the trees and out of sight, and came back, walking slow and looking at his feet, like an old man on ice.
"All right," Johnnie says. He'd discovered a rabbit's foot on Mr. Francis's key ring, and was working it in a way that made me know that Mr. Francis wasn't ever going to see that Ford again. "Now, we're all friends here, and we're going to take a little ride."
Johnnie drove. Jack sat in the passenger seat. I squeezed in back with the Francises and tried to get the piglet to shoot me a grin.
"When we get to the next little town," Johnnie says to the Francis family in the backseat, "we're going to drop you off with enough for bus fare to get you where you were going. We'll take the car. We won't hurt it a bit, and if no one shoots any bullet holes in it you'll get it back good as new. One of us'll phone you where it is."
"We haven't got a phone yet," Deelie says. It was really a whine. She sounded like the kind of woman who needs a smack every second week or so to keep her tits up. "We're on the list, but those telephone people are slower than cold molasses."
"Well, then," Johnnie says, good-humored and not at all perplexed, "we'll give the cops a call, and they'll get in touch. But if you squawk, you won't ever get it back in running shape."
Mr. Francis nodded as if he believed every word. Probably he did. This was the Dillinger Gang, after all.
Johnnie pulled in at a Texaco, gassed up, and bought soda pops all around. Jack drank a bottle of grape like a man dying of thirst in the desert, but the woman wouldn't let Master Piglet have his. Not so much as a swallow. The kid was holding his hands out for it and bawling.
"He can't have pop before his lunch," she says to Johnnie, "what's wrong with you?"
Jack was leaning his head against the glass of the passenger window with his eyes shut. I thought he'd passed out again, but he says, "Shut that brat up, missus, or I will."
"I think you've forgotten whose car you're in," she says, all haughty.
"Give him his pop, you bitch," Johnnie says. He was still smiling, but now it was his other smile. She looked at him and the color in her cheeks disappeared. And that's how Master Piglet got his Nehi, lunch or no lunch. Twenty miles farther on, we dropped them off in some little town and went on our way toward Chicago.
"A man who marries a woman like that deserves all he gets," Johnnie remarked, "and he'll get plenty."
"She'll call the law," Jack says, still without opening his eyes.
"Never will," Johnnie says, as confident as ever. "Wouldn't spare
the nickel." And he was right. We saw only two blue beetles before we got into Chi, both going the other way, and neither one of them so much as slowed down to look at us. It was Johnnie's luck. As for Jack, you had only to look at him to know that his supply of luck was running out fast. By the time we got to the Loop, he was delirious and talking to his mother.
"Homer!" Johnnie says, in that wide-eyed way that always used to tickle me. Like a girl doing a flirt.
"What!" I says, giving him the glad eye right back.
"We got no place to go. This is worse than St. Paul."
"Go to Murphy's," Jack says without opening his eyes. "I want a cold beer. I'm thirsty."
"Murphy's," Johnnie says. "You know, that's not a bad idea."
Murphy's was an Irish saloon on the South Side. Sawdust, a steam table, two bartenders, three bouncers, friendly girls at the bar, and a room upstairs where you could take them. More rooms in the back, where people sometimes met, or cooled off for a day or two. We knew four places like it in St. Paul, but only a couple in Chi. I parked the Francises' Ford up in the alley. Johnnie was in the backseat with our delirious friend—we weren't yet ready to call him our dying friend— and he was holding Jack's head against the shoulder of his coat.
"Go in and get Brian Mooney off the bar," Johnnie says.
"What if he isn't there?"
"Then I don't know," Johnnie says.
"Harry!" Jack shouts, presumably calling for Harry Pierpont. "That whore you set me up with has given me the goddam clap!"
"Go on," Johnnie says to me, soothing his hand through Jack's hair just like a mother.
Well, Brian Mooney was there—Johnnie's luck again—and we got a room for the night, although it cost
two hundred dollars, which was pretty dear, considering the view was an alley and the toilet was at the far end of the hall.
"You boys are hotter than hell," Brian says. "Mickey McClure would have sent you right back into the street. There's nothing in the papers and on the radio but Little Bohemia."
Jack sat down on a cot in the corner, and got himself a cigarette and a cold draft beer. The beer brought him back wonderful; he was almost himself again. "Did Lester get away?" he asked Mooney. I looked over at him when he spoke up and saw a terrible thing. When he took a drag off his Lucky and inhaled, a little puff come out of the hole in the back of his overcoat like a smoke signal.