Dillinger's Got Nothing on Us: The Short Life and Interesting Times of the Jay Gang (4/5)
J2 RPS AU
PG-13
Part 4 of 5
Master post
Art
Winter 1933-34
Texas, Kentucky
By December the boys are back in Texas, in Abilene, which feels a little too close for comfort to Jensen. They're far enough from both San Antonio and Dallas that it's unlikely anyone would recognize them, but a remote chance is still a chance.
And he won't admit it to anyone, but he's getting tired of this life. He wants to call his parents, he's afraid to call his parents, he wants to talk to Chris' sister, he's afraid to call her too, he's tired of driving hither and thither and trying to stay one step ahead of the law. Over the past six months they've lost or had to leave behind the guitar Chris bought in St Louis, a roll of film - shot but undeveloped - from Jensen's camera, three suitcases' worth of clothes, a loaded handgun, some books, a bunch of the detective magazines Chad keeps buying, the road atlas, countless odds and ends. They've stolen a number of cars and switched a lot of license plates. They don't think they've been in the newspapers but they don't stick around after a job, so there's no way to know what the paper in Decatur, Illinois, said about them after they walked into a bank, demanded money and the vault, and ran.
Jensen's not ready to stop altogether - the siren call of the unguarded bank is very strong - but perhaps they need a vacation.
There are still bright lights. They hang around Abilene five days, scoping out jobs, driving into the scrubland around the city, planning their next move. Jared befriends a middle-aged lady with a Scottie dog named Rodney, who she likes to dress in little plaid coats. Jensen thinks making your dog wear a coat robs him of what little dignity he might have, and Rodney does look disgruntled at all the plaid. Jared, of course, thinks the dog is adorable, and the dog seems to return the sentiment. Jensen has never learned how to read a canine face, but the barking and the tail-wagging and especially the licking seem to indicate a great deal of affection on Rodney's part.
And to be fair, Jensen can understand. Jared is the kind of person people generally like, and after a year of knowing him, Jensen has grown pretty fond.
They celebrate the repeal of the Volstead Act and the official end of Prohibition like any other bunch of good Texas boys - by finding somewhere to get acceptably and legally tanked.
"Tom's already got a case of Pearl open and ready," Chad tells Jared, as the four of them hoist glasses of genuine brewery-produced beer in a crowded bar. It's beer that was clearly produced in a hurry, but it's still better than the swill they've been drinking for years. "Alamo Foods never stopped brewing, you know." Jared nods in agreement, draining his glass and wiping foam off his lip.
"My grandma's going crazy," Jensen says. "She supported Prohibition with everything she had. Which is hypocritical, considering she likes an occasional glass as much as anyone else."
"Even my brother-in-law thought it was a stupid move," Chris says, "and he doesn't drink."
But they're not in Abilene just to drink and discuss government policy. The Farmers and Merchants National Bank doesn't look very secure, but appearances are deceiving and this is Texas, where law-abiding average citizens carry firearms to run such innocent errands as withdrawing money.
Rather than risk a shoot-out with the man in the suit who is apparently wearing a pair of six-shooters under his jacket, Jensen grabs a hostage - she's pretty and blonde and weighs next to nothing when he grabs her around the waist with one arm and picks her up. But she starts kicking, making him wish he'd just pushed her in front of him.
"It's ok, it's ok, stop kicking," he tells her. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
"What about him?" she demands, gesturing at the man in the suit, who is now insisting Jensen let the girl go.
"Too much risk." They're out the door by now. Chad is pointing his shotgun out the passenger-side window of the car. He looks surprised at Jensen's hostage. "Fifteen minutes, we'll let you go, I promise. What's your name?"
She's in the car, sandwiched between Jared and the door, before she answers him. "Alona," she says. "My name's Alona."
"Mayhem," Chad introduces himself, turning in his seat to offer his hand. She looks at it - and him - dubiously.
"Is that your name or your profession?"
"Both."
Fifteen minutes later, as promised, they drop her off in front of an apartment building and make tracks out of Abilene.
The boys don't realize it at the time, because how could they, but having to hold Alona hostage to insure Jensen's free passage out of this particular bank is where their luck begins to change.
Jared breaks into an old Plymouth sitting among a half-dozen other old cars in front of a barn a few miles outside town, and the boys are surprised, to say the least, when a woman comes tearing out of the building waving a shotgun and shouting. Jared stomps on the gas pedal and takes off down the road.
"She's following us!" Chad yells, twisted around in the back seat to watch the road behind them.
"It looked abandoned!" Jared yells back. He sounds a little panicked. Not counting Matthew and Kirsten, their Indiana hostages who were there when it happened, the boys have never had anyone catch them in the process of stealing a car, much less give chase.
They seem to have lost their pursuer - she couldn't gain on them - when a rabbit runs across the road and Jared, startled, hauls on the steering wheel, yanking the Plymouth sharply to the left and driving it straight across the road, off the road, and onto the dirt, where it crashes into a fence, breaks through the barbed wire, and keeps going. The car bounces and rolls to a stop at the edge of a clump of cactus, trailing barbed wire and a piece of fencepost, leaking smoke from under the hood.
"What the hell!" Chad demands from the back seat. Jensen and Jared both turn to make sure he and Chris are ok. They glare at Jared as they untangle themselves. "This is why I should be driving!"
"A rabbit ran onto the road," Jared explains sheepishly. "You would've hit it." And he was going too fast to stop, so fast they're probably lucky the car didn't flip over from the sudden change in direction.
"Someone's coming," Jensen says, as an old pickup appears down the road, heading towards them and thus into Abilene. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Chad reach for something in the back seat.
"Don't make me beat your ass," Chris warns.
"Everybody stay calm." Jensen realizes the idiocy of saying that, what with the fact that three of them are armed and in addition to what's left of the money they've taken from previous jobs, they've now got thousands of dollars of stolen Abilene cash. "Get out and look at the engine," he tells Jared. "You can yell across the road at the pickup if it stops so the driver doesn't have to get out and see all of us."
Jared does as asked, and indeed, when the pickup pulls over to the side of the road and the driver has to get out of his truck to call over and see if the boys are ok and need help, Jared can call back that no, they'll be fine, it looks worse than it really is. The driver of the pickup asks if they need a ride into town and Jared, apparently tired of yelling, picks his way across the dirt to talk to the man at closer proximity.
Jensen watches Jared, pretty sure that Chris is watching Chad.
Jared only talks to the pickup driver a couple of minutes, and when he comes back he leans into Jensen's open window and says "I told him we didn't need any help but I'm guessing he's going to send someone out to get us anyway. We gotta go."
"Go where?" Chris asks, waving out his window to indicate the flat land and the cactus and the scrubby trees not too far away. There isn't a lot out there, and while they could find cover from the road, there aren't many places to hide for long.
"Kansas is only a couple hours that way," Chad suggests, helpfully pointing north. He still hasn't gotten over Julie from Kansas City.
"We're not going to Kansas," Jensen says.
"Why not?"
"We're probably wanted in Kansas."
"You want to go to Missouri, anyway," Chris says.
"It's Kansas City," Chad insists.
"Which is in Missouri."
"You didn't know that?" Jared asks. Chad looks momentarily confused, because apparently he didn't. "We were there how long and you never figured it out?" Jared grins, and now Chad looks annoyed.
"Talk later, get out of the car now," Jensen tells Chris and Chad. "We have to move before someone finds us." He grabs the pistol he took into the bank and climbs out of the Plymouth. Chris and Chad follow, carrying guns and the money and, in Chad's case, trying to wrestle a suitcase out of the back.
"Leave it," Chris tells him.
"But...!" Chad protests.
"You're not gonna drag it all over half of creation."
"I got some nice clothes!"
"Chad," Jared says, pitching his voice low and grabbing Chad's arm. "It's just clothes. You wanna go to jail? If someone finds us out here, you will."
Jared takes a rifle from the car and now that all of them are armed, they leave the wrecked Plymouth and clamber around the cactus, trying to get away from anyone who might drive down the road and see them.
God must be smiling down on them, Jensen thinks, because they manage to avoid detection until past dusk, when they come to a small farmhouse with a small barn, not much more than a glorified shed, behind it. Jared tries the barn door, which opens, and cautiously pokes his head through. They don't want to find any more angry women with shotguns. But the place is empty, so they tiptoe inside.
"You think we could ask for a ride at the farmhouse?" Jared asks. "We could tell them our car broke down."
"And what if they want to take us back to Abilene?" Chris answers. "We'll sleep here, figure out what to do in the morning."
"We can steal another car," Chad suggests.
"Not with - " Chris starts to say, and stops.
"What?" Jensen whispers.
"Someone's coming."
The boys just stand there, unsure what to do but unable to immediately find a good place to hide. The barn door opens and a dog bounds in, barking.
"Bisou!" a man calls from outside.
Shit, Jensen thinks, because the dog finds them immediately and seems to think Jared and Chad are the most interesting things she's ever smelled. Jared bends down to rub her ears.
A man carrying a lantern walks into the barn, sees the boys with his dog, and comes over to them, holding the lantern up to peer at their faces.
"Who're you?" he demands. "What are you doing in my barn?"
"Our car broke down," Jared says, putting on his most trustworthy face.
The man seems to seriously consider that statement. The dog - Bisou - wanders around Chris and Jensen, sniffs their legs, sniffs the sacks of stolen money, and goes back to Jared. Jensen is very glad their coats more or less hide their guns.
"You're the boys robbed the Farmers and Merchants in Abilene," the man surprises them by saying, and before any of them can even open their mouths - to agree, to deny, to lie through their teeth - he continues, nodding at the bags Chris and Jensen are carrying, "You gonna tell me you got dirty clothes in those sacks? My sister called with the news. She and her husband lost their house to them sonsabitches. Had to move in with his folks, and that just ain't right." He scratches the stubble on his chin. "We been struggling around here. No one bears the banks any love. I won't turn ya in."
"Much obliged, Mr - ?" Jensen says.
"Morgan. Jeff Morgan. You can stay in the barn tonight if you want, but you oughta leave before sunrise. I can give you a ride to Brownwood where you can get a car, if you wanna get out of Texas. You maybe shouldn't take the bus." He clucks his tongue. "C'mon, Bisou." The dog stops sniffing around Jared and Chad and trots over to him.
There's dead silence in the barn until Jeff Morgan leaves, and then the boys sit down on the dirt floor and seriously discuss how they're going to get the hell out of Texas.
Chris says he has a friend in Kentucky, a guy named Steve who has a farm and can put them up for a few months. Just before dawn, Mr Morgan comes to get them to take them to Brownwood, as promised, and after two days of hard driving they're in the pinprick town of Bryantsville, Kentucky, settling into Steve's rambling farmhouse, preparing to lay low for a couple of months.
Steve raises, boards, and trains horses, he explains, and he can always use their help but the Depression hit him hard and there's not a lot for them to do.
"I'd like the company," he says, "and I missed this reprobate." He grabs Chris in a headlock and gives him a noogie. Jensen likes him on contact.
The boys have spent the better part of a year crisscrossing the midwest knocking over banks and stopping in big towns when they stop at all, and Steve's quiet farm feels like the middle of nowhere. At first it's relaxing, peaceful. Steve shows them around, introduces them to his one remaining stud, his few mares (one of which is pregnant), the three horses he's currently boarding. The boys learn how to feed, exercise, curry, and care for the animals, and when it comes out that Jared used to ride on his great-uncle's ranch, Steve lets them saddle up.
Jensen has never been on a horse before, and even though the mare Steve puts him on is sweet and gentle and seems to like him, he feels awkward and weird and kind of far from the ground, and as soon as she breaks into a trot, he falls off. The mare noses at his shoulder and snorts in his face, but he can't tell whether that's concern, encouragement, or horsey laughter.
"You ok, man?" Steve asks, leaning on his saddle to look down at where Jensen's sprawled on the dirt. "Don't let it spook you."
"I'm not spooked," Jensen says.
"He's just embarrassed," Chris explains. He slides off his horse to give Jensen a hand up. He's grinning. "I'm not laughing at you."
"Sure you are." But Jensen grins as well. He's not hurt, not even that sore, and the mare waits patiently while he climbs back into the saddle. He doesn't encourage her to move any faster than a quick walk, though.
The five of them pass the nights playing cards and bullshitting and reading and listening to the radio, and Steve plays his guitar and tries with some success to teach the boys the old cowboy and Appalachian folk songs he knows. Chad has a pretty decent voice once he stops clowning around, but Jared can't carry a tune in a bucket. Chris mentions the guitar he bought in St Louis and taught himself to play (and then had to abandon), so Steve lets him play his for a while. Jensen automatically falls into singing harmony alongside Chris, and when Steve makes a point of complimenting him, Jensen admits he used to sing in his church choir.
Christmas comes and goes - they cut down a tree and bake a ham, and Jared tries and fails to recreate his mom's peach pie with apples instead - and then a whole bunch of people descend on the farm for Steve's annual New Year's party.
"This is new," Chris comments, sounding surprised when yet another car comes down the drive and parks next to the house. He and Jensen have been sitting on the front porch for over an hour, trying to stay out of the way as people arrive and start setting up their stuff in the kitchen and living room and bedrooms. A couple of tents have even sprouted in the side yard. The boys have had to consolidate themselves with Chad and Jared, the four of them now all in one room, in order to make space for Steve's friends.
"Third year," Steve says. "You weren't around the last two." He grins. "You remember Aldis? He's bringing a couple friends. You'll like them. We'll eat and drink and be merry and to hell with the crap going on in the rest of the country. Right?"
Jensen thinks about Chad's party a year ago, how he wore his one good suit and danced with a pretty girl and ate his body weight in party food and played cards and got drunk on illicit punch and black market beer and had the kind of good time that made him glad he'd left Dallas. He remembers Jared's tradition of spending New Year's Eve with the people you want to spend the next year with, and is grateful that he's with good friends.
"John Dillinger's got nothing on us," Chad says that night, as they get dressed in the guest room they've been forced to share. They've been to Lexington to buy new clothes, since they arrived at Steve's with practically nothing, and now the four of them look at each other, at their sharp suits and polished shoes and new hats. The papers sometimes present John Dillinger as a bit of a fashion plate, but he's clearly not the only gangster with style. "Go get Steve and make him take our picture," he tells Chris, who rolls his eyes but goes.
There isn't enough space in the room for a good photo so they end up standing in the hallway, the four of them in their party clothes and - at Chad's insistence - armed like the bank robbers they've had to be. They look serious, and then smile, and then someone yells "Something's burning!" from down the hall, and Steve dashes off to avert a potential catastrophe.
Over the past two days Jensen has met the people now filling Steve's house, but he still feels kind of shy and awkward around them. Because Chris actually knows some of these people, he drags Jensen around, getting him involved in conversations, making him talk, sharing stories. He meets Aldis, who fake-spars with Chris in the kitchen, laughing as he pushes his hand against Chris' face to keep Chris back. (Aldis is a little taller than Chris and, like Jared, has a very long reach.) Aldis' friend Beth teases him mercilessly and jokes around with Jensen and Chris, although they quickly lose her to Chad's peculiar charm.
Chris, perhaps unsurprisingly, gets sucked into a poker game and at midnight Jensen finds himself outside with Jared and Steve and most of the guests, all of them whooping and hollering "Happy new year!" at each other and firing their guns into the air. He empties his pistol at the sky, temporarily crazy and ridiculously happy.
"Happy New Year, Jen," Jared says, grabbing him in a crushing hug and then, to Jensen's great surprise, kissing him on the mouth.
What the hell, Jensen thinks, kissing him back. It's New Year's Eve, he's had a couple glasses of tremendously strong moonshine, he's having a good night with guys he really likes.
It's not a long kiss, and he says "We kept your tradition," after they pull away from each other. "Spent the past year with the people we spent New Year's Eve with. I think we should do it again. Except that's a lot of people...." He gestures vaguely at the crowd in Steve's yard.
"Yeah, it's a good one, isn't it. I don't care if we see most of these people next year, though."
Me either, Jensen thinks, but a burst of gunfire distracts both of them, and then someone is pushing glasses of something cold into their hands, and they're back among a small swarm of excited, friendly strangers.
Steve's party, like Chad's a year ago, fills the house and the yard and continues into the wee hours, until the sky lightens and people stagger off to bed or collapse on couches and chairs and even the floor. And just like last year, Jensen finds himself singing "Auld Lang Syne" with Chris, the same four lines over and over as the dawn breaks, drunk and happy and full of love for his friends and hope for his future.
He wakes up briefly a few hours after falling asleep, and realizes he must have passed out in Jared's bed or Jared passed out in his, because Jared is sprawled all over him, breathing on his neck and snoring in his ear. Jensen can't bring himself to care, much less move, and lets himself fall unconscious again.
The next couple of months pass in more or less the same way as December, except without another giant party. One day in February, Jared and Chad appear in Steve's driveway in an old rag-top Marmon, a ten-year-old car that someone very clearly loves, if the perfect blue paint job and purring engine are any indication. Jensen can't imagine that someone might have sold it to them, even with Jared's uncanny ability to make people like him and do what he asks, but Chad insists it isn't stolen and Jensen really, really wants to believe him.
The four of them are admiring it when Steve comes around the house from the barn, sees them, and angrily demands "Where the hell did you get that?"
"We borrowed it," Chad says. "Isn't it gorgeous? It drives like a dream." He strokes the hood.
"There's one of those in the whole county, and I know the guy you stole it from. If he comes here looking for it I'm gonna let him have you." They've told Steve what they've been up to the last year, and he knows what it means to threaten something that could end with an official complaint against the boys.
"We weren't going to keep it," Jared says.
"Damn straight, you're not. Return it or I'll call him. What the fuck is wrong with you?" Steve gestures pointedly at the car and Chad and Jared climb back in the front seat, chastised.
Steve has adopted the tone of voice Jensen associates with his mother or Chris' sister laying the smackdown on misbehaving children or little brothers, and under other circumstances he might find it funny that Chad and Jared are on the receiving end, especially since Chad is even pouting a little. But the whole point of them being in Kentucky in the first place is to stay out of trouble, and Chad stealing cars is a little counterproductive. It's not as if he needs to steal one - they still have the used Ford they bought in Texas after the debacle in Abilene, the used Ford that got them here.
"Jen, you gotta ride in this car," Jared says, twisting around in his seat to try and open the back door. "We'll take it back," he tells Steve. "Promise."
"You promise," Chad mutters, switching it on.
"Come on!" Jared pats the back of the front passenger seat encouragingly and Jensen reluctantly climbs in the car.
"Chris isn't busting you out of jail," Steve calls as Chad drives off.
As much as Jensen hates to admit it, this being an easily-recognizable stolen car instead of the interchangeable Fords and Chevrolets and Hudsons they usually take, the Marmon is a very nice ride. It's cold with the cloth top down and the wind in his face, but he thinks that someday, when they're done robbing banks and he has enough money to buy himself some land and take care of his family, he'll get a brand-new, top-of-the-line car like this one to tool around in.
They're getting antsy just hanging around Steve's place, and if he lets himself think about it too much, Jensen realizes they can't stay here much longer. Not just because Chad and Jared have already shown themselves incapable of behaving for more than two months, but because there are still banks out there hoarding good people's cash and taking good people's livelihoods. His folks still need him. Jennifer and her husband and her uncles still need Chris. If Jared's family and Chad's father and siblings are in dire straits, Jensen doesn't know for sure, but he'd bet they are, and they need their wayward boys as well.
So they can't stop, which means they can't stay here. They've rested up, they've ridden horses, they've had their quiet time. Soon they'll have to go.
Jensen wonders how long it will take until "We have to go" stops being a common phrase in his vocabulary. It feels like a very long time ago that he got to live a settled, straightforward life, and he hopes he'll remember how to do it when he's able to live that way again.
"Do you miss it?" he asks Jared one night. They're sitting on the front porch, on the stairs, looking out at the driveway and the yard. He gestures at Steve's land, letting it stand in for the quiet, normal life they left a year ago.
"Do I miss what?" Jared answers. "I never spent a lot of time on my great-uncle's ranch. I miss my dogs, though. My great-aunt said they made her feel safer so my parents gave them to her, so that's the only place I get to see them."
"I meant San Antonio. Your old life. Before we started robbing banks."
"I dunno," Jared shrugs. "Sometimes. I miss my family and my friends. I haven't talked to Sandy in forever. I really should - she knows what the FBI's up to."
"Sometimes I don't even remember how we did it. Do you like living like this?" It sounds like a loaded question to Jensen's ears, but Jared takes it seriously.
"I like being on Steve's farm." He scratches his nose, apparently thinking about his answer. "My mom teaches high school. She doesn't make a lot of money. Jeff's probably a dad by now - wow, I might be an uncle. Cool." He grins. "I bet he needs help, though, buying stuff and taking care of his wife and his kid. I mean, babies are expensive. So I'm helping them. We're doing something, you know?" He turns to look at Jensen. "What are you thinking, Jen? Do you want to quit?"
"We can't." Now Jensen shrugs. "You said it - we're doing something. We're helping out. I just kind of wish there was another way."
"But this is working. Think about it - it's been a year and we've never been caught. We haven't killed anyone. We haven't even hurt anyone. We're taking from the rich and fighting back on behalf of the poor. We've stolen a lot of money." Jared sounds impressed with their work. "I guess we'll have to stop eventually," he goes on, putting his hand on Jensen's shoulder. "But I don't want to yet. It's kind of fun."
So in March they pack up the Ford they legitimately bought in Texas, thank Steve for his hospitality and his patience, and say goodbye.
"Let me give you some names," Steve says, before offering the assistance of some of his friends in other states. "If you need help, give any of these guys a call. Tell them I sent you. They're good people."
"I can't thank you enough, man," Chris tells him, hugging Steve in gratitude. "You never saw us."
"So that weird stain on my kitchen wall just happened on its own, huh?" Steve grins. Jared looks sheepish. "Come back any time. I mean it. You're good company."
"Hopefully the next time will be under better circumstances," Jensen says.
"You guys take care of yourselves. Don't go looking for trouble."
"We already got mayhem," Chad says brightly, and Chris smacks him on the side of the head.
"Come on," Jared calls, "get in the car already." He's already settled into the driver's seat. "Thanks, Steve. It's been a while since I got to ride."
"Go on, you criminals, get going!" Steve waves them off, and they cruise out to the road and out of Kentucky.
Part Five
PG-13
Part 4 of 5
Master post
Art
Winter 1933-34
Texas, Kentucky
By December the boys are back in Texas, in Abilene, which feels a little too close for comfort to Jensen. They're far enough from both San Antonio and Dallas that it's unlikely anyone would recognize them, but a remote chance is still a chance.
And he won't admit it to anyone, but he's getting tired of this life. He wants to call his parents, he's afraid to call his parents, he wants to talk to Chris' sister, he's afraid to call her too, he's tired of driving hither and thither and trying to stay one step ahead of the law. Over the past six months they've lost or had to leave behind the guitar Chris bought in St Louis, a roll of film - shot but undeveloped - from Jensen's camera, three suitcases' worth of clothes, a loaded handgun, some books, a bunch of the detective magazines Chad keeps buying, the road atlas, countless odds and ends. They've stolen a number of cars and switched a lot of license plates. They don't think they've been in the newspapers but they don't stick around after a job, so there's no way to know what the paper in Decatur, Illinois, said about them after they walked into a bank, demanded money and the vault, and ran.
Jensen's not ready to stop altogether - the siren call of the unguarded bank is very strong - but perhaps they need a vacation.
There are still bright lights. They hang around Abilene five days, scoping out jobs, driving into the scrubland around the city, planning their next move. Jared befriends a middle-aged lady with a Scottie dog named Rodney, who she likes to dress in little plaid coats. Jensen thinks making your dog wear a coat robs him of what little dignity he might have, and Rodney does look disgruntled at all the plaid. Jared, of course, thinks the dog is adorable, and the dog seems to return the sentiment. Jensen has never learned how to read a canine face, but the barking and the tail-wagging and especially the licking seem to indicate a great deal of affection on Rodney's part.
And to be fair, Jensen can understand. Jared is the kind of person people generally like, and after a year of knowing him, Jensen has grown pretty fond.
They celebrate the repeal of the Volstead Act and the official end of Prohibition like any other bunch of good Texas boys - by finding somewhere to get acceptably and legally tanked.
"Tom's already got a case of Pearl open and ready," Chad tells Jared, as the four of them hoist glasses of genuine brewery-produced beer in a crowded bar. It's beer that was clearly produced in a hurry, but it's still better than the swill they've been drinking for years. "Alamo Foods never stopped brewing, you know." Jared nods in agreement, draining his glass and wiping foam off his lip.
"My grandma's going crazy," Jensen says. "She supported Prohibition with everything she had. Which is hypocritical, considering she likes an occasional glass as much as anyone else."
"Even my brother-in-law thought it was a stupid move," Chris says, "and he doesn't drink."
But they're not in Abilene just to drink and discuss government policy. The Farmers and Merchants National Bank doesn't look very secure, but appearances are deceiving and this is Texas, where law-abiding average citizens carry firearms to run such innocent errands as withdrawing money.
Rather than risk a shoot-out with the man in the suit who is apparently wearing a pair of six-shooters under his jacket, Jensen grabs a hostage - she's pretty and blonde and weighs next to nothing when he grabs her around the waist with one arm and picks her up. But she starts kicking, making him wish he'd just pushed her in front of him.
"It's ok, it's ok, stop kicking," he tells her. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
"What about him?" she demands, gesturing at the man in the suit, who is now insisting Jensen let the girl go.
"Too much risk." They're out the door by now. Chad is pointing his shotgun out the passenger-side window of the car. He looks surprised at Jensen's hostage. "Fifteen minutes, we'll let you go, I promise. What's your name?"
She's in the car, sandwiched between Jared and the door, before she answers him. "Alona," she says. "My name's Alona."
"Mayhem," Chad introduces himself, turning in his seat to offer his hand. She looks at it - and him - dubiously.
"Is that your name or your profession?"
"Both."
Fifteen minutes later, as promised, they drop her off in front of an apartment building and make tracks out of Abilene.
The boys don't realize it at the time, because how could they, but having to hold Alona hostage to insure Jensen's free passage out of this particular bank is where their luck begins to change.
Jared breaks into an old Plymouth sitting among a half-dozen other old cars in front of a barn a few miles outside town, and the boys are surprised, to say the least, when a woman comes tearing out of the building waving a shotgun and shouting. Jared stomps on the gas pedal and takes off down the road.
"She's following us!" Chad yells, twisted around in the back seat to watch the road behind them.
"It looked abandoned!" Jared yells back. He sounds a little panicked. Not counting Matthew and Kirsten, their Indiana hostages who were there when it happened, the boys have never had anyone catch them in the process of stealing a car, much less give chase.
They seem to have lost their pursuer - she couldn't gain on them - when a rabbit runs across the road and Jared, startled, hauls on the steering wheel, yanking the Plymouth sharply to the left and driving it straight across the road, off the road, and onto the dirt, where it crashes into a fence, breaks through the barbed wire, and keeps going. The car bounces and rolls to a stop at the edge of a clump of cactus, trailing barbed wire and a piece of fencepost, leaking smoke from under the hood.
"What the hell!" Chad demands from the back seat. Jensen and Jared both turn to make sure he and Chris are ok. They glare at Jared as they untangle themselves. "This is why I should be driving!"
"A rabbit ran onto the road," Jared explains sheepishly. "You would've hit it." And he was going too fast to stop, so fast they're probably lucky the car didn't flip over from the sudden change in direction.
"Someone's coming," Jensen says, as an old pickup appears down the road, heading towards them and thus into Abilene. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Chad reach for something in the back seat.
"Don't make me beat your ass," Chris warns.
"Everybody stay calm." Jensen realizes the idiocy of saying that, what with the fact that three of them are armed and in addition to what's left of the money they've taken from previous jobs, they've now got thousands of dollars of stolen Abilene cash. "Get out and look at the engine," he tells Jared. "You can yell across the road at the pickup if it stops so the driver doesn't have to get out and see all of us."
Jared does as asked, and indeed, when the pickup pulls over to the side of the road and the driver has to get out of his truck to call over and see if the boys are ok and need help, Jared can call back that no, they'll be fine, it looks worse than it really is. The driver of the pickup asks if they need a ride into town and Jared, apparently tired of yelling, picks his way across the dirt to talk to the man at closer proximity.
Jensen watches Jared, pretty sure that Chris is watching Chad.
Jared only talks to the pickup driver a couple of minutes, and when he comes back he leans into Jensen's open window and says "I told him we didn't need any help but I'm guessing he's going to send someone out to get us anyway. We gotta go."
"Go where?" Chris asks, waving out his window to indicate the flat land and the cactus and the scrubby trees not too far away. There isn't a lot out there, and while they could find cover from the road, there aren't many places to hide for long.
"Kansas is only a couple hours that way," Chad suggests, helpfully pointing north. He still hasn't gotten over Julie from Kansas City.
"We're not going to Kansas," Jensen says.
"Why not?"
"We're probably wanted in Kansas."
"You want to go to Missouri, anyway," Chris says.
"It's Kansas City," Chad insists.
"Which is in Missouri."
"You didn't know that?" Jared asks. Chad looks momentarily confused, because apparently he didn't. "We were there how long and you never figured it out?" Jared grins, and now Chad looks annoyed.
"Talk later, get out of the car now," Jensen tells Chris and Chad. "We have to move before someone finds us." He grabs the pistol he took into the bank and climbs out of the Plymouth. Chris and Chad follow, carrying guns and the money and, in Chad's case, trying to wrestle a suitcase out of the back.
"Leave it," Chris tells him.
"But...!" Chad protests.
"You're not gonna drag it all over half of creation."
"I got some nice clothes!"
"Chad," Jared says, pitching his voice low and grabbing Chad's arm. "It's just clothes. You wanna go to jail? If someone finds us out here, you will."
Jared takes a rifle from the car and now that all of them are armed, they leave the wrecked Plymouth and clamber around the cactus, trying to get away from anyone who might drive down the road and see them.
God must be smiling down on them, Jensen thinks, because they manage to avoid detection until past dusk, when they come to a small farmhouse with a small barn, not much more than a glorified shed, behind it. Jared tries the barn door, which opens, and cautiously pokes his head through. They don't want to find any more angry women with shotguns. But the place is empty, so they tiptoe inside.
"You think we could ask for a ride at the farmhouse?" Jared asks. "We could tell them our car broke down."
"And what if they want to take us back to Abilene?" Chris answers. "We'll sleep here, figure out what to do in the morning."
"We can steal another car," Chad suggests.
"Not with - " Chris starts to say, and stops.
"What?" Jensen whispers.
"Someone's coming."
The boys just stand there, unsure what to do but unable to immediately find a good place to hide. The barn door opens and a dog bounds in, barking.
"Bisou!" a man calls from outside.
Shit, Jensen thinks, because the dog finds them immediately and seems to think Jared and Chad are the most interesting things she's ever smelled. Jared bends down to rub her ears.
A man carrying a lantern walks into the barn, sees the boys with his dog, and comes over to them, holding the lantern up to peer at their faces.
"Who're you?" he demands. "What are you doing in my barn?"
"Our car broke down," Jared says, putting on his most trustworthy face.
The man seems to seriously consider that statement. The dog - Bisou - wanders around Chris and Jensen, sniffs their legs, sniffs the sacks of stolen money, and goes back to Jared. Jensen is very glad their coats more or less hide their guns.
"You're the boys robbed the Farmers and Merchants in Abilene," the man surprises them by saying, and before any of them can even open their mouths - to agree, to deny, to lie through their teeth - he continues, nodding at the bags Chris and Jensen are carrying, "You gonna tell me you got dirty clothes in those sacks? My sister called with the news. She and her husband lost their house to them sonsabitches. Had to move in with his folks, and that just ain't right." He scratches the stubble on his chin. "We been struggling around here. No one bears the banks any love. I won't turn ya in."
"Much obliged, Mr - ?" Jensen says.
"Morgan. Jeff Morgan. You can stay in the barn tonight if you want, but you oughta leave before sunrise. I can give you a ride to Brownwood where you can get a car, if you wanna get out of Texas. You maybe shouldn't take the bus." He clucks his tongue. "C'mon, Bisou." The dog stops sniffing around Jared and Chad and trots over to him.
There's dead silence in the barn until Jeff Morgan leaves, and then the boys sit down on the dirt floor and seriously discuss how they're going to get the hell out of Texas.
Chris says he has a friend in Kentucky, a guy named Steve who has a farm and can put them up for a few months. Just before dawn, Mr Morgan comes to get them to take them to Brownwood, as promised, and after two days of hard driving they're in the pinprick town of Bryantsville, Kentucky, settling into Steve's rambling farmhouse, preparing to lay low for a couple of months.
Steve raises, boards, and trains horses, he explains, and he can always use their help but the Depression hit him hard and there's not a lot for them to do.
"I'd like the company," he says, "and I missed this reprobate." He grabs Chris in a headlock and gives him a noogie. Jensen likes him on contact.
The boys have spent the better part of a year crisscrossing the midwest knocking over banks and stopping in big towns when they stop at all, and Steve's quiet farm feels like the middle of nowhere. At first it's relaxing, peaceful. Steve shows them around, introduces them to his one remaining stud, his few mares (one of which is pregnant), the three horses he's currently boarding. The boys learn how to feed, exercise, curry, and care for the animals, and when it comes out that Jared used to ride on his great-uncle's ranch, Steve lets them saddle up.
Jensen has never been on a horse before, and even though the mare Steve puts him on is sweet and gentle and seems to like him, he feels awkward and weird and kind of far from the ground, and as soon as she breaks into a trot, he falls off. The mare noses at his shoulder and snorts in his face, but he can't tell whether that's concern, encouragement, or horsey laughter.
"You ok, man?" Steve asks, leaning on his saddle to look down at where Jensen's sprawled on the dirt. "Don't let it spook you."
"I'm not spooked," Jensen says.
"He's just embarrassed," Chris explains. He slides off his horse to give Jensen a hand up. He's grinning. "I'm not laughing at you."
"Sure you are." But Jensen grins as well. He's not hurt, not even that sore, and the mare waits patiently while he climbs back into the saddle. He doesn't encourage her to move any faster than a quick walk, though.
The five of them pass the nights playing cards and bullshitting and reading and listening to the radio, and Steve plays his guitar and tries with some success to teach the boys the old cowboy and Appalachian folk songs he knows. Chad has a pretty decent voice once he stops clowning around, but Jared can't carry a tune in a bucket. Chris mentions the guitar he bought in St Louis and taught himself to play (and then had to abandon), so Steve lets him play his for a while. Jensen automatically falls into singing harmony alongside Chris, and when Steve makes a point of complimenting him, Jensen admits he used to sing in his church choir.
Christmas comes and goes - they cut down a tree and bake a ham, and Jared tries and fails to recreate his mom's peach pie with apples instead - and then a whole bunch of people descend on the farm for Steve's annual New Year's party.
"This is new," Chris comments, sounding surprised when yet another car comes down the drive and parks next to the house. He and Jensen have been sitting on the front porch for over an hour, trying to stay out of the way as people arrive and start setting up their stuff in the kitchen and living room and bedrooms. A couple of tents have even sprouted in the side yard. The boys have had to consolidate themselves with Chad and Jared, the four of them now all in one room, in order to make space for Steve's friends.
"Third year," Steve says. "You weren't around the last two." He grins. "You remember Aldis? He's bringing a couple friends. You'll like them. We'll eat and drink and be merry and to hell with the crap going on in the rest of the country. Right?"
Jensen thinks about Chad's party a year ago, how he wore his one good suit and danced with a pretty girl and ate his body weight in party food and played cards and got drunk on illicit punch and black market beer and had the kind of good time that made him glad he'd left Dallas. He remembers Jared's tradition of spending New Year's Eve with the people you want to spend the next year with, and is grateful that he's with good friends.
"John Dillinger's got nothing on us," Chad says that night, as they get dressed in the guest room they've been forced to share. They've been to Lexington to buy new clothes, since they arrived at Steve's with practically nothing, and now the four of them look at each other, at their sharp suits and polished shoes and new hats. The papers sometimes present John Dillinger as a bit of a fashion plate, but he's clearly not the only gangster with style. "Go get Steve and make him take our picture," he tells Chris, who rolls his eyes but goes.
There isn't enough space in the room for a good photo so they end up standing in the hallway, the four of them in their party clothes and - at Chad's insistence - armed like the bank robbers they've had to be. They look serious, and then smile, and then someone yells "Something's burning!" from down the hall, and Steve dashes off to avert a potential catastrophe.
Over the past two days Jensen has met the people now filling Steve's house, but he still feels kind of shy and awkward around them. Because Chris actually knows some of these people, he drags Jensen around, getting him involved in conversations, making him talk, sharing stories. He meets Aldis, who fake-spars with Chris in the kitchen, laughing as he pushes his hand against Chris' face to keep Chris back. (Aldis is a little taller than Chris and, like Jared, has a very long reach.) Aldis' friend Beth teases him mercilessly and jokes around with Jensen and Chris, although they quickly lose her to Chad's peculiar charm.
Chris, perhaps unsurprisingly, gets sucked into a poker game and at midnight Jensen finds himself outside with Jared and Steve and most of the guests, all of them whooping and hollering "Happy new year!" at each other and firing their guns into the air. He empties his pistol at the sky, temporarily crazy and ridiculously happy.
"Happy New Year, Jen," Jared says, grabbing him in a crushing hug and then, to Jensen's great surprise, kissing him on the mouth.
What the hell, Jensen thinks, kissing him back. It's New Year's Eve, he's had a couple glasses of tremendously strong moonshine, he's having a good night with guys he really likes.
It's not a long kiss, and he says "We kept your tradition," after they pull away from each other. "Spent the past year with the people we spent New Year's Eve with. I think we should do it again. Except that's a lot of people...." He gestures vaguely at the crowd in Steve's yard.
"Yeah, it's a good one, isn't it. I don't care if we see most of these people next year, though."
Me either, Jensen thinks, but a burst of gunfire distracts both of them, and then someone is pushing glasses of something cold into their hands, and they're back among a small swarm of excited, friendly strangers.
Steve's party, like Chad's a year ago, fills the house and the yard and continues into the wee hours, until the sky lightens and people stagger off to bed or collapse on couches and chairs and even the floor. And just like last year, Jensen finds himself singing "Auld Lang Syne" with Chris, the same four lines over and over as the dawn breaks, drunk and happy and full of love for his friends and hope for his future.
He wakes up briefly a few hours after falling asleep, and realizes he must have passed out in Jared's bed or Jared passed out in his, because Jared is sprawled all over him, breathing on his neck and snoring in his ear. Jensen can't bring himself to care, much less move, and lets himself fall unconscious again.
The next couple of months pass in more or less the same way as December, except without another giant party. One day in February, Jared and Chad appear in Steve's driveway in an old rag-top Marmon, a ten-year-old car that someone very clearly loves, if the perfect blue paint job and purring engine are any indication. Jensen can't imagine that someone might have sold it to them, even with Jared's uncanny ability to make people like him and do what he asks, but Chad insists it isn't stolen and Jensen really, really wants to believe him.
The four of them are admiring it when Steve comes around the house from the barn, sees them, and angrily demands "Where the hell did you get that?"
"We borrowed it," Chad says. "Isn't it gorgeous? It drives like a dream." He strokes the hood.
"There's one of those in the whole county, and I know the guy you stole it from. If he comes here looking for it I'm gonna let him have you." They've told Steve what they've been up to the last year, and he knows what it means to threaten something that could end with an official complaint against the boys.
"We weren't going to keep it," Jared says.
"Damn straight, you're not. Return it or I'll call him. What the fuck is wrong with you?" Steve gestures pointedly at the car and Chad and Jared climb back in the front seat, chastised.
Steve has adopted the tone of voice Jensen associates with his mother or Chris' sister laying the smackdown on misbehaving children or little brothers, and under other circumstances he might find it funny that Chad and Jared are on the receiving end, especially since Chad is even pouting a little. But the whole point of them being in Kentucky in the first place is to stay out of trouble, and Chad stealing cars is a little counterproductive. It's not as if he needs to steal one - they still have the used Ford they bought in Texas after the debacle in Abilene, the used Ford that got them here.
"Jen, you gotta ride in this car," Jared says, twisting around in his seat to try and open the back door. "We'll take it back," he tells Steve. "Promise."
"You promise," Chad mutters, switching it on.
"Come on!" Jared pats the back of the front passenger seat encouragingly and Jensen reluctantly climbs in the car.
"Chris isn't busting you out of jail," Steve calls as Chad drives off.
As much as Jensen hates to admit it, this being an easily-recognizable stolen car instead of the interchangeable Fords and Chevrolets and Hudsons they usually take, the Marmon is a very nice ride. It's cold with the cloth top down and the wind in his face, but he thinks that someday, when they're done robbing banks and he has enough money to buy himself some land and take care of his family, he'll get a brand-new, top-of-the-line car like this one to tool around in.
They're getting antsy just hanging around Steve's place, and if he lets himself think about it too much, Jensen realizes they can't stay here much longer. Not just because Chad and Jared have already shown themselves incapable of behaving for more than two months, but because there are still banks out there hoarding good people's cash and taking good people's livelihoods. His folks still need him. Jennifer and her husband and her uncles still need Chris. If Jared's family and Chad's father and siblings are in dire straits, Jensen doesn't know for sure, but he'd bet they are, and they need their wayward boys as well.
So they can't stop, which means they can't stay here. They've rested up, they've ridden horses, they've had their quiet time. Soon they'll have to go.
Jensen wonders how long it will take until "We have to go" stops being a common phrase in his vocabulary. It feels like a very long time ago that he got to live a settled, straightforward life, and he hopes he'll remember how to do it when he's able to live that way again.
"Do you miss it?" he asks Jared one night. They're sitting on the front porch, on the stairs, looking out at the driveway and the yard. He gestures at Steve's land, letting it stand in for the quiet, normal life they left a year ago.
"Do I miss what?" Jared answers. "I never spent a lot of time on my great-uncle's ranch. I miss my dogs, though. My great-aunt said they made her feel safer so my parents gave them to her, so that's the only place I get to see them."
"I meant San Antonio. Your old life. Before we started robbing banks."
"I dunno," Jared shrugs. "Sometimes. I miss my family and my friends. I haven't talked to Sandy in forever. I really should - she knows what the FBI's up to."
"Sometimes I don't even remember how we did it. Do you like living like this?" It sounds like a loaded question to Jensen's ears, but Jared takes it seriously.
"I like being on Steve's farm." He scratches his nose, apparently thinking about his answer. "My mom teaches high school. She doesn't make a lot of money. Jeff's probably a dad by now - wow, I might be an uncle. Cool." He grins. "I bet he needs help, though, buying stuff and taking care of his wife and his kid. I mean, babies are expensive. So I'm helping them. We're doing something, you know?" He turns to look at Jensen. "What are you thinking, Jen? Do you want to quit?"
"We can't." Now Jensen shrugs. "You said it - we're doing something. We're helping out. I just kind of wish there was another way."
"But this is working. Think about it - it's been a year and we've never been caught. We haven't killed anyone. We haven't even hurt anyone. We're taking from the rich and fighting back on behalf of the poor. We've stolen a lot of money." Jared sounds impressed with their work. "I guess we'll have to stop eventually," he goes on, putting his hand on Jensen's shoulder. "But I don't want to yet. It's kind of fun."
So in March they pack up the Ford they legitimately bought in Texas, thank Steve for his hospitality and his patience, and say goodbye.
"Let me give you some names," Steve says, before offering the assistance of some of his friends in other states. "If you need help, give any of these guys a call. Tell them I sent you. They're good people."
"I can't thank you enough, man," Chris tells him, hugging Steve in gratitude. "You never saw us."
"So that weird stain on my kitchen wall just happened on its own, huh?" Steve grins. Jared looks sheepish. "Come back any time. I mean it. You're good company."
"Hopefully the next time will be under better circumstances," Jensen says.
"You guys take care of yourselves. Don't go looking for trouble."
"We already got mayhem," Chad says brightly, and Chris smacks him on the side of the head.
"Come on," Jared calls, "get in the car already." He's already settled into the driver's seat. "Thanks, Steve. It's been a while since I got to ride."
"Go on, you criminals, get going!" Steve waves them off, and they cruise out to the road and out of Kentucky.
Part Five