Everything's Eventual

   I nodded as if that name meant something to me. I found out later that Volney was another member of Ma Barker's gang. He was a pretty nice fella. So was Dock Barker. And Volney's girlfriend, the one they called Rabbits. They called her Rabbits because she dug herself out of prison a few times. She was the best of the lot. Aces. Rabbits, at least, tried to help poor old troublesome Jack. None of the others would—not the pill-rollers, the scrapers, the face artists, and certainly not Dr. Joseph (Crybaby) Moran.

   The Barkers were on the run after a botched kidnapping; Dock's Ma had already left—gone all the way to Florida. The hideout in Aurora wasn't much—four rooms, no electricity, a privy out back—but it was better than Murphy's saloon. And, like I say, Volney's girlfriend at least tried to do something. That was on our second night there.

   She set up kerosene lamps all around the bed, then sterilized a paring knife in a pot of boiling water. "If you boys feel pukey," she said, "you just choke it back until I'm done."

   "We'll be okay," Johnnie said. "Won't we, Homer?"

   I nodded, but I was queasy even before she got going. Jack was laying on his stomach, head turned to the side, muttering. It seemed he never stopped. Whatever room he happened to be in was filled with people only he could see.

   "I hope so," she says, "because once I start in, there's no going back." She looked up and seen Dock standing in the doorway. Volney Davis, too. "Go on, baldy," she says to Dock, "and take-um heap big chief with you." Volney Davis was no more a Indian than I was, but they used to rib him because he was born in the Cherokee Nation. Some judge had given him three years for stealing a pair of shoes, which was how he got into a life of crime.

   Volney and Dock went out. When they were gone, Rabbits turned Jack over and then cut him open in a X, bearing down in a way I could barely stand to look at. I held Jack's feet. Johnnie sat beside his head, trying to soothe him, but it didn't do no good. When Jack started to scream, Johnnie put a dishtowel over his head and nodded for Rabbits to go on, all the time stroking Jack's head and telling him not to worry, everything would be just fine.

   That Rabbits. They call them frails, but there was nothing frail about her. Her hands never even shook. Blood, some of it black and clotted, come pouring out of the sunken place when she cut it. She cut deeper and then out came the pus. Some was white, but there was big green chunks which looked like boogers. That was bad. But when she got to the lung the smell was a thousand times worse. It couldn't have been worse in France during the gas attacks.

   Jack was gasping in these big whistling breaths. You could hear it in his throat, and from the hole in his back, too.

   "You better hurry up," Johnnie says. "He's sprung a leak in his air hose."

   "You're telling me," she says. "The bullet's in his lung. You just hold him down, handsome."

   In fact, Jack wasn't thrashing much. He was too weak. The sound of the air shrieking in and out of him kept getting thinner and thinner. It was hotter than hell with those lamps set up all around the bed, and the stink of the hot oil was almost as strong as the gangrene. I wish we'd thought to open a window before we got started, but it was too late by then.

   Rabbits had a set of tongs, but she couldn't get them in the hole. "Fuck this!" she cried, and tossed them to one side, and then stuck her fingers into the bloody hole, reached around until she found the slug that was in there, pulled it out, and threw it to the floor. Johnnie started to bend over for it and she said, "You can get your souvenir later, handsome. For now just hold him."

   She went to work packing gauze into the mess she'd made.

   Johnnie lifted up the dishtowel and peeked underneath it. "Not a minute too soon," he told her with a grin. "Old Red Hamilton has turned a wee bit blue."

   Outside, a car pulled into the driveway. It could have been the cops, for all we knew, but there wasn't nothing we could do about it then.

   "Pinch this shut," she told me, and pointed at the hole with the gauze in it. "I ain't much of a seamstress, but I guess I can put in half a dozen."

   I didn't want to get my hands anywhere near that hole, but I wasn't going to tell her no. I pinched it shut, and more watery pus ran out when I did. My midsection clenched up and I started making this gurk-gurk noise. I couldn't help it.

   "Come on," she says, kind of smiling. "If you're man enough to pull the trigger, you're man enough to deal with a hole." Then she sewed him up with these big, looping overhand strokes—really punching the needle in. After the first two, I couldn't look.

   "Thank you," Johnnie told her when it was done. "I want you to know I'm going to take care of you for this."

   "Don't go getting your hopes up," she says. "I wouldn't give him one chance in twenty."

   "He'll pull through now," Johnnie says.