“Seven a.m., same as here.”
“And close nine?”
“No, ten.”
“Gee, that’s bad.”
“No, you’ll like it. They split it up so the week you’re on early, you’re off before dinner, and when you’re on late, you don’t come in till after lunch.”
“Funny, though. There’s no business after nine.”
“The chief, he don’t bank in Nevada. So every night, after they close, the station managers turn our cash in there, at the flagship. It’s put away, and then in the morning it’s sent over to Barstow, California. Which is why the place closes one hour later. All guys expecting their wife to bring suit for divorce have a strange enthusiasm for keeping their funds in some other state.”
At the motel, I lay there in the dark and listened to people snore, and kept telling myself to forget what I’d heard. I kept telling myself to put it out of my mind I might ever try anything real with Buck, or Hosey, or anybody. I kept telling myself to get rid of any idea I could do it alone. And all the time I kept thinking of those station managers, driving in late with their little canvas sacks. I kept thinking about Mojave and the bullets, and wondering why, if I had to play shooting gallery, I didn’t do it for dough. I guess that was what got me, more than anything else. I began going over it, Hosey’s idea that stealing grub was O.K., something the judge would go easy on if we ever got caught. Who said he would? Who said he wouldn’t send us up for ten years, to show the law was meant to be obeyed? It came to me, we weren’t talking about any judge. We were talking about ourselves. What we really meant was: Everybody’s entitled to eat, and if they have to steal to do it, then O.K., so long as there’s no other way. But anything more than that, regular stealing, that we weren’t equal to, to figure the right and the wrong of it. But the way my head kept pounding, I knew I didn’t care.
In Buck’s room, next to mine, the door opened and footsteps went down the hall. Then the screen door squeaked. Pretty soon I caught the smell of a cigarette. I got up, put on some clothes, and went outside. Buck was squatting on the ground, in pants, coat, undershirt, and shoes, smoking, and staring at the lights of the town. I sat down too. “Kind of restless, boy?”
“Jack, what do we do it for? Tramp. Steal. Rat.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why, stead of catching the goddam freight, don’t we let the freight catch us? You know any good reason we should roll away from those wheels?”
“Tell me something, Buck. This guy with the gun—?”
“... Hosey’s friend?”
“Where does he keep it? If you know?”
“In his room. Different places. Mostly places he lets Hosey see, so Hosey don’t get any idea he might go in and begin feeling around. Anyhow, that’s how I dope it.”
“Could you find it?”
“Couldn’t you? What locks are there in this dump?”
“You sure he doesn’t carry the gun, Buck?”
“I think not. Why?”
I told him what I’d heard in the filling station. “I figured, for a while at least, we could take care of things by getting ourselves a little dough.”
“I’d call that a little risky.”
“O.K., but I’ve noticed something.”
“Which is?”
“It’s a wide-open town, same like Kansas City, only more so. On account of Boulder Dam the girls have flocked here.”
“Listen, Jack, I’m listening, but—”
“Yeah, but how long?”
“Then O.K.”
He stretched out and began to talk the gloomiest kind of way about women and how he’s no good any more and never will be, and I calmed him down a little by owning up I was in exactly the same shape. But, I said, what we needed was rest and grub and water on our skins once a day and maybe now and then a couple of jokes. He said to hell with this idea we were just going to steal a little bit, and I said: “Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” That was it, Buck said. After a while we heard something, and when we looked there was Hosey. “Couldn’t seem to sleep.”
“... Oh. Neither could we.”
“Hot.”
“Yeah, Hosey, sure is.”
“I heard what you guys was saying. I couldn’t help hearing. All I got to say is: You got the right idea.”
“You mean—?”
“Count me in.”
Next morning Buck slipped in, while I was shaving. “Well? Jack, what do we say on letting Hosey in?”
“I guess it’s off.”
“... I’m not so sure.”
“Him? I wouldn’t trust him— Listen, Buck, it’s not that I don’t think he likes us, or that he wouldn’t give all the right answers if we asked him how he felt about us, or whatever. It’s just that I don’t think he’s got anything left any more. Hell, I think they could break him with the smell of coffee. You don’t go to war with a bunch of goddam cripples.”
“And we, we have got something left, hey?”
“More than he’s got.”
“Jack, we can use him.”
“For what?”
“Watching, for one thing. He can smell a cop further than—”
“All right.”
“If either one of us had anything left, we wouldn’t be pulling something like this. We’re trying to get it back. Maybe he is, too. Maybe—”
What he really meant was that Hosey had it on us whether we liked it or not, and if we were going to pull this job instead of waiting to pull some other job we had to take him. He was more use than we expected. He went over there to this flagship later that morning, dropped dead in front of the door, and when they brought him to with ice water he came up with stuff about not having eaten for three days, and they let him make a buck cleaning the place off with a squeegee. He came away with a pretty good idea of where everything was, and said as far as he could see there wasn’t any safe, that the money was kept in a cash drawer out by the pumps, that they opened every time a customer paid. He drew up a plan of the station, with all streets marked, and distances in yards. He had the names of the station manager and the boss of the chain.
In the late afternoon I figured to get the gun. It’s when most guys want a drink, and while we didn’t have much money left, we did scrape together for some liquor and one or two things. I got a pint, with some fizz water, at a drugstore, and they gave me some ice in a container. There was a phone booth in there and I rang a picture theater and got the time of the feature, the newsreels, and all the rest of it, for Hosey. I checked on a bus he’d have to ride, to join up with us later. When I got back to the motel it was around five.
“Buck, you got a beer opener? ... Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought this was my friend’s room. I was thinking of throwing a drink together, but I’ve got nothing I can use to open my carbonated water. Well, have you got one?”
“No, I wish I could accommodate you, but—”
“I’ll find something.”
“Would—pliers do?”
“I bet they would work.”
“You’re welcome to try, if you think—”
“Well, say, why don’t you try?”
“Is that an invitation?”
He was a shriveled little guy, maybe forty, with wrinkles around his eyes, a little red mustache, and a jut-out chin that slewed over sidewise from his jaw, just about what you’d expect somebody to look like that had a .38 in his bureau drawer. How quick he found the pliers was funny, and we went in my room. They didn’t work, but by a funny coincidence, the screw driver on my jackknife did. I unscrewed the top of the whisky, that was so cheap it didn’t even have a cork, got out the glasses, poured drinks, and said: “Here’s how.” Right away he got friendly and began asking me if I wasn’t from Virginia. I said no, Tennessee, just outside Chattanooga, and he said he knew it was below the line somewhere. We talked along, I poured more drinks, said: “Here’s how” again. But about that time somebody outside began whistling Casey Jones and I started out. “Excuse me jus
t a second—be right back. Help yourself to the liquor.”
“Thanks.”
Outside, crossing the street, were Buck and Hosey. A block away, I caught up with them. We strolled along and I made Buck show me the gun, to make sure he had it. He spread his coat pocket and I looked in. It was an automatic. We went over it then with Hosey, what he was to do, and explained it to him once more, that it was all part of his alibi, in case he had to prove one. He was to buy a ticket at the theatre, and sit in a loge seat at the back. If no usher bothered him he was to stay there. If an usher did ask to see his ticket, he was to show it to her and put up an argument, but kind of a rube’s argument, without much steam in it, enough that she’d remember him, not enough he’d get thrown out. Then he’d move and stay in his new seat till the newsreel started, which would be a few minutes after nine o’clock. Then he was to leave, by one of the fire doors marked “Exit,” so nobody could say exactly when he left. Then he was to walk down to Highway 91 and take position about a half block away from the filling station. At anything that even looked like a cop he was to signal us. “O.K., now. Put your fingers in your mouth and try that screech whistle we’ve got to have if you’re going to be any good out there.”
“Listen, Jack, I’ve whistled that way ever since I was—”
“I said try it.”
“Here goes.”
“... Good.”
“How much is the theater ticket, boys?”
“Thirty-five cents. Here’s a buck. Better have yourself some java and beans first, and don’t go in much before eight o’clock. Take it easy. Act natural. Talk straight from the shoulder. Let both girls, or anybody you meet going in the theatre, see you. Smile, act friendly, so they really remember you.”
Buck and I had some beans at a dump near the station, and when we got done it was eight, and time to get ourselves a car. We walked on toward a residential section, then found a street with some cars parked out on it. At that time cars still had running boards, so in the middle of the block we sat down on one, facing across the street, pretty much out of sight, and watched. We figured that incoming cars, full of people coming home, would be no good to us. Those cars would be driven into garages, and to follow them in would be just staking ourselves out. We aimed to catch somebody visiting, that had left their car at the curb and would be going home around eight thirty or a little after. From the time it would take them to leave some house, get to their car, climb in, and find the key, to the time we’d get there, would be just a convenient interval. I suppose we’d been there a half hour, getting pretty nervous, when three people, a man, a woman, and a boy, came out of a house up the street. Buck reached for the gun. “No.”
“What’s the matter, Jack, you getting cold feet?”
“We can’t handle three.”
“We better be handling somebody.”
“Let them go.”
They went, and two more parties went, a two and a four. And then came a girl, from a place three doors down. She had more comical jokes, saying goodbye, about not doing anything she wouldn’t do, not taking any rubber nickels, and being good, than you could count. I could hear the cusswords rising in Buck, and chocked him hard, with my elbow, to keep him quiet. But at last she came skipping along, humming under her breath. She got in from the curb side, and we were at the left-hand window, watching her switch on the ignition, before she had any idea we were there. “Easy, easy, easy.”
“What?”
“Not so loud.”
“Who are—?”
Buck slipped his hand over her mouth in kind of a gentle, regretful way, opened the door, and pulled her out. I hopped in, found her bag, started the motor. Then I slid over, in the right-hand seat, so Buck could hop in from the left, where he was holding her. He let go of her and she started to scream. He got in, took the wheel, and started. I looked back. A couple of people were at their front doors, but nobody was running and nobody was shooting. “Look in her bag, Jack. We’ve got to have dough, to pay for the gas we order—”
“... A five and a one. And change.”
“O.K.”
“And something else.”
“What?”
“A watch.”
“Are you kidding?”
We’d spotted a drugstore with a clock on it, and we’d expected to check by it, so we’d come to the filling station exactly when we wanted. But the watch meant we could take a drive, relax, and get our nerve.
Out of town a few miles, toward the California border, he began to talk: “Jack, how many guys went on the road, do you think, about the same time we did?”
“How many eggs in a shad?”
“Millions, you think?”
“I saw at least that many.”
“What happened to their sisters?”
“... How do you mean, Buck?”
“You ever see any girls on the road?”
“Well, I heard stories.”
“Yeah, we know about those two bums in a boxcar, come one, come all everybody welcome. But I’m talking about those other girls, in homes that were just as hard put to it to feed them as they were to feed their brothers. What happened to them?”
“Well, I’ll bite. What?”
“How would I know? Except what I think.”
“Which is?”
“They stayed home.”
“Well?”
“I’ve cussed out the goddam country, tonight I stole a car, and I’m getting ready to do more. But a country that lets a million good-for-nothing tomatoes sit around home till things get better, just because they’re girls—well, somebody thought something of them.”
“You couldn’t mean the country’s O.K., could you?”
“Somebody took care of them.”
Around nine forty we slipped back to town, and the radios and juke boxes and orchestras were beginning to hit it up, though not loud like they would later. We checked on Hosey, and there he was, exactly where he was supposed to be, by the sycamore tree, in the shadow of a little real-estate office near the sidewalk. We drove past and waved, so he’d know we were there. We turned the corner, went past the station, checked the manager was at his desk, inside, doing paper work. Nobody else was around. We went down the street two blocks, cut our lights, turned around. Then we rolled back toward the station and parked facing it, maybe a hundred feet away. He didn’t look up. A car drove up and a guy got out, in the white pants and peaked cap all the managers wore, and a black sweater. The man inside went out and they seemed to be counting money. Then they opened the drawer Hosey had spotted, and put something inside. The guy in the black sweater drove off. The other one went back to his desk. “O.K., Buck, get out your matches.”
“There’s no matches in this.”
“I said get them out. We draw for it.”
“Every job we’ve pulled, you’ve done the dangerous part. This job, I’m doing it. I’ve got the gun, right here in my pocket, so we don’t have to do any shifting, and—”
“Cut the argument!”
“Then cut it yourself.”
He started the motor, snapped on the lights, and pulled out from the curb. In two seconds we were rolling into the station, beside a pump. The manager came out and spoke to Buck: “Yes sir? What can I do for you?”
“If I’m not too late for some gas—”
“We’re open. Fill her up?”
“That’ll be fine.”
The car was almost empty, so he’d be some little time. Buck and I got out and went in the men’s room, Buck leading the way. I kind of relaxed on one hip and walked with a limp, so I could fudge three or four inches on my height. Inside, I passed over the money he’d need when the time came to pay. He went out. A wild idea flashed through my head. From somewhere I could remember those descriptions of wanted persons, saying they were “light” or “dark” or whatever. I lit a match, charred it, and blacked my eyebrows. Then I took a piece of paper, wadded it up, and jammed it in my mouth, between the front teeth and the gum, the way Denny and
I had done with cotton, for the pro football pictures. In the mirror I didn’t know myself. Instead of being light I was dark, and I had a buck-tooth look that was somebody else, not me. I slouched out again and the manager barely looked at me. Buck had his back to me. I climbed in, took the wheel, and started the motor. Buck said: “O.K., what do I owe you?”
“Two fifty-five.”
Buck passed over the five, the manager went to his cash drawer, and opened it. Inside, from where I sat, I could see thick piles of bills, in their compartments, bulged up high. He picked up two bills and some change, turned and was looking into the .38. “Step back... Put your hands on your chest and keep them there. Not high, we don’t want a gallery. That’s it. Now take it easy, don’t get excited, and—”
When it started I don’t know, but it seemed I’d been hearing it for years in some kind of a dream, this whistle of Hosey’s. Then, off in the night, a shot sounded. Buck twitched, went three feet in the air, then came down like he had turned into a sack of meal. I went out of there like a bat out of hell. Somewhere I saw Hosey, his face white, running toward me to jump in. I didn’t even slow down. Next thing I knew I was out of town, whether two miles or ten I couldn’t tell you, waiting at a grade crossing while a freight went by. All of a sudden I cut the motor, left the key in the ignition, and jumped out. That freight, brother, wasn’t meant to be boarded by anything on two feet. I mean, it was going fast. But it was headed west, that was all I wanted to know. I raced beside it, grabbed a handhold, hit the side of the car. I waved my foot around, found a step, pulled myself up. I was on a boxcar. I felt something funny in my mouth. The paper was still there. I hooked it out with my finger. Then I rubbed my eyebrows off. All I could think of was the miles that were clicking by, between me and what was lying there in a Las Vegas filling station, that had once been my pal, and the other one, that was still my pal, or wanted to be, but that knew something to tell on me.