“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.