Everything's Eventual

   Then Dock and Volney rushed back in. Behind them was another member of the gang—Buster Daggs or Draggs, I can't remember which. Anyway, he'd been down to the phone they used at the Cities Service station in town, and he said the Gees had been busy back in Chicago, arresting anyone and everyone they thought might be connected to the Bremer kidnapping, which had been the Barker Gang's last big job. One of the fellas they took was John J. (Boss) McLaughlin, a high mucky-muck in the Chicago political machine. Another was Dr. Joseph Moran, also known as the Crybaby.

   "Moran'll give this place up, just as sure as shit sticks to a blanket," Volney says.

   "Maybe it's not even true," Johnnie says. Jack was unconscious now. His red hair lay on the pillow like little pieces of wire. "Maybe it's just a rumor."

   "You better not believe that," Buster says. "I got it from Timmy O'Shea."

   "Who's Timmy O'Shea? The Pope's butt-wiper?" Johnnie says.

   "He's Moran's nephew," Dock says, and that kind of sealed the deal.

   "I know what you're thinking, handsome," Rabbits says to Johnnie, "and you can stop thinking it right now. You put this fella in a car and go bumping him over those back roads between here and St. Paul, he'll be dead by morning."

   "You could leave him," Volney says. "The cops show up, they'll have to take care of him."

   Johnnie sat there, sweat running down his face in streams. He looked tired, but he was smiling. Johnnie was always able to find a smile. "They'd take care of him, all right," he says, "but they wouldn't take him to any hospital. Stick a pillow over his face and sit down on it, most likely." Which gave me a start, as I'm sure you'll understand.

   "Well, you better decide," Buster says, "because they'll have this joint surrounded by dawn. I'm getting the hell out."

   "You all go," Johnnie says. "You, too, Homer. I'll stay here with Jack."

   "Well, what the hell," Dock says. "I'll stay, too."

   "Why not?" Volney Davis says.

   Buster Daggs or Draggs looked at them like they was crazy, but you know what? I wasn't surprised a bit. That's just the effect Johnnie had on people.

   "I'll stay, too," I says.

   "Well, I'm getting out," Buster says.

   "Fine," Dock says. "Take Rabbits with you."

   "The hell you say," Rabbits pipes up. "I feel like cooking."

   "Have you gone cuckoo?" Dock asks her. "It's one o'clock in the morning, and you're in blood right up to the elbows."

   "I don't care what time it is, and blood washes off," she says. "I'm making you boys the biggest breakfast you ever ate—eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, hash browns."

   "I love you, marry me," Johnnie says, and we all laughed.

   "Oh, hell," Buster says. "If there's breakfast, I'll hang around."

   Which is how we all wound up staying put in that Aurora farmhouse, ready to die for a man who was already—whether Johnnie liked it or not—on his way out. We barricaded the front door with a sofa and some chairs, and the back door with the gas stove, which didn't work anyway. Only the woodstove worked. Me and Johnnie got our tommy guns from the Ford, and Dock got some more from the attic. Also a crate of grenades, a mortar, and a crate of mortar shells. I bet the Army didn't have as much stuff in those parts as we did. Ha-ha!

   "Well, I don't care how many of them we get, as long as that son of a bitch Melvin Purvis is one of them," Dock says. By the time Rabbits actually got the grub on the table, it was almost the time farmers eat. We took it in shifts, two men always watching the long driveway. Buster raised the alarm once and we all rushed to our places, but it was only a milk truck on the main road. The Gees never came. You could call that bad info; I called it more of John Dillinger's luck.

   Jack, meanwhile, was on his not-so-merry way from bad to worse. By midafternoon of the next day, even Johnnie must have seen he couldn't go on much longer, although he wouldn't come right out and say so. It was the woman I felt bad for. Rabbits seen new pus oozing out between those big black stitches of hers, and she started crying. She just cried and cried. It was like she'd known Jack Hamilton her whole life.

   "Never mind," Johnnie said. "Chin up, beautiful. You did the best you could. Besides, he might still come around."

   "It's cause I took the bullet out with my fingers," she says. "I never should have done that. I knew better."

   "No," I says, "it wasn't that. It was the gangrene. The gangrene was already in there."

   "Bullshit," Johnnie said, and looked at me hard. "An infection, maybe, but no gangrene. There isn't any gangrene now."

   You could smell it in the pus. There wasn't nothing to say.

   Johnnie was still looking at me. "Remember what Harry used to call you when we were in Pendleton?"