Someone pulled a heavy object over the trapdoor, maybe the icebox, and we heard them go into the main room. Their voices came to us through the floorboards. A bottle clinked, then glasses, followed by the glug-glug of something being poured.
“Go easy on that corn,” Doc said. “You know how you get when you chug it too fast.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Curly said. “Now what’re we gonna do with these snoops? I say shoot ’em and haul ’em out in the woods for the brush wolves. Like we did with those fuckin’-tramps who poked their noses in here two years ago.”
“Isn’t that a bit crude?” Doc said. “Anyway, the Slater kid says they’ve got a pickup scheduled downriver aways. When they don’t show up, all hell will break loose. Next thing we know there’ll be state troopers in motorboats, buzzing all up and down the Firesteel. No, I’ve got a better idea. We’ll drown ’em nice and quiet, then you and Flo take their bodies downstream a few miles, below Kingfisher Rapids, say, and sink ’em in the Blue Hole. Bust up the canoe like it hit a rock. Just another river accident.”
“Do we have to kill them?” It was a woman’s voice, a surprisingly sweet one, the first words heard from Flo. “They’re such nice-looking boys. And polite, too.”
“That’s your pussy talking,” Curly said. “Don’t me and Doc prong you enough, you need more?” He uncorked the bottle and poured another drink. Three glugs this time. “Women,” he said.
“We could keep them down in the cellar a few hours, then say it was all just a joke, an object lesson. We hope they’ll spread the word around that our No Trespassing sign means business.”
“Too dangerous,” Doc said. “If they report us, the law will want full descriptions. And I’m sure there are plenty of wanted posters still hanging in every town hall and post office north of Neenah. Pour me another one, Curly. And stoke up the fire, please. I’m freezing.” He sighed. “I knew this would happen one day. Five years we’ve been safe and sound here, six, come next April. The perfect hideout. Ah, well, all good things must come to an end.”
“Not if I can help it,” Curly said. “When I finish this drink, I’m goin’ down to their canoe and see if there’s anything we can use. Then, come dark, I’ll take the boys for a swim.”
“Larry, Flo, and Curly,” I said. “Sound familiar?”
“The Three Stooges?” Harry answered from the darkness. Mister Cool. “Except the haircuts are wr-wrong, and in one instance the gender. Moe and Flo sound close enough, though . . . . I’ve got it. We’ve entered an alternative universe, and these are their evil twins?” He read a lot of science fiction.
“No, the Flambeau Boys. They used to operate in these parts during the depression and all through the war.” In those days I read a lot of crime stuff. “The leader was a tall, skinny, well-spoken gent name of Lawrence Haugenbusch. They called him Doc. Hailed from Lac du Flambeau. He used to run with Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, that crowd. When Dillinger was killed, Doc set up his own outfit. Pretty minor league. They stuck up taverns, IGAs, filling stations, but now and then a bank or two. Mainly they operated up here, all across the northern tier from Fargo and the Twin Cities clear over to the Soo. They had an Indian as their wheel man—nobody agrees on the name. Short, wide, and deadpanned is the best description. Whoever it was, he or she was a lead-footed son of a bitch sure enough. No one could stay on the road with them, not even the G-men. The muscle was an ex-Marine named Cobbett or Corbett, Frank Corbett, I think it was. He carried a drum-fed Tommy gun. Big mop of bushy black hair. They called him . . . .”
“Don’t tell me—Curly!”
“You got it. First time out of the box.”
“I thought the FBI nabbed them,” Harry said. “Down by Green Bay or Oshkosh or someplace like that.”
“Oshkosh, and it’s only a rumor. Wishful thinking. The Flambeau Boys were blowing the vault in a bank and one of them fucked up. They had three or four customers and a teller in the vault with them as hostages when the nitroglycerin blew prematurely. All the cops found when the smoke cleared was a mess of body parts. Nobody ever sorted them out. Cunts and cocks and teeth and assholes, all stuck to the ceiling.” Christ, I was starting to sound like Sergeant Stingley. “Anyway, Doc and his pals could have escaped in the turmoil.”
“So you think this is them?”
“It all adds up. Doc, Curly, and an Indian. Haugenbusch, Hackbarth. Close enough. Now here they are, tucked away in the back of beyond and armed to the teeth. Doc’s eyes were probably blown out by that nitro explosion.”
“You’ve been reading too much Mickey Spillane.”
“Well, you tell me then. Why the fuck are they holding us prisoner? Why are they planning to kill us?”
By now our eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the cellar. Slivers of light filtered down through cracks in the floor. I got up from a lumpy burlap bag of potatoes to check the place out. It was walled with big riverbank boulders neatly laid, no cement to hold them together, with a dirt floor. Except for a space at the foot of the stairwell the cellar, about ten feet square, was jampacked with sacks of cabbages, spuds, turnips, and carrots. A low ceiling, not high enough for me to stand fully upright. In the northeast corner was an alcove. I crawled over the sacks for a closer look. It was a cellar access. For a moment I had hope. But when I wiggled up into the space and pushed upward, the sloping door wouldn’t budge. Locked from the outside. But the stones that lined it felt loose.
“Look for something to pry these stones with,” I whispered, “like an old broom handle. I’ve got my K-Bar, but it’s not long enough to give me any leverage. Maybe we can get out of here after all.”
I started pushing and pulling at the rocks, wiggling them from side to side, up and down, like worrying a loose tooth in its socket. Dirt and chunks of rotting cement sifted into my hair. Harry crawled over the potato sacks and handed me a stick. “Found this under the stairs,” he said.
I slid the stick into a crevice in the wall and began prying. “Stand by and take these rocks when I hand them to you. Put ’em down nice and easy on the bags. Don’t let ’em clack together. If we can hear them, they can hear us.” It took a few minutes but then the first rock came loose and I passed it back to Harry.
After that they came fast, like removing the first olive in the jar frees up the rest. In short order we had a hole that seemed big enough to squeeze through. I cleaned it out, on up to the roots of the buffalo grass that grew tall and thick around the bunkhouse.
“What are they doing upstairs?” I asked Harry. He slid back into the dark, but returned in a very long minute.
“I could only hear Doc and Flo,” he said. “Curly must still be outside, looting our canoe.”
“Then we’d better make a break for it now. Doc can’t see and the Indian woman might not blow the whistle even if she does spot us.” I pushed the stick up through the sod, followed it with my hand, and began pulling down big clots of dirt and grassroots. Harry pushed up beside me and bore me a hand. Damp dirt cascaded on our faces.
“Ugh,” he said.
“What?”
“Got a w-worm in my mouth.” He spat and shuddered.
“Swallow it. We haven’t had lunch yet.”
Then there was light. It hurt our eyes at first, but we wiggled on out of the hole, Harry first, and crouched low against the side of the building. We were on the meadow side of the bunkhouse, next to the woodpile. I pulled out the K-Bar and then looked around for another weapon. A splitting maul stood leaning against the far end of the stack. “Come on.”
We bellycrawled down the length of the woodpile, and I grabbed the maul and handed it to Harry. Then, motioning him to stay put, I snaked on over to the corner of the building. Peeked around. Curly was sitting in the sun beside our canoe, his back rested against it, raising a bottle to his lips. My pump-gun rested across his lap, an open box of shells beside it. Another canoe, an aluminum Grumman, was hauled up beside ours. The one he and Flo had arrived in. Curly glanced upriver, sat up straight, placed the bottle down next to him, nesting it carefully in the gravel. He mounted the gun as a knot of ducks swept past. I could hear the whistle of wind through their primaries. Blue-wing teal, judging by their dark bellies and the chalky patches on the leading edge of their wings. He swung with them, smooth and fast, and shot. One shell. Three birds splashed down near the shore.
“What’s that?” Doc’s voice came from inside the bunkhouse.
“Curly’s shooting hors d’oeuvres,” Flo said.
“Is he pie-eyed yet?”
“You couldn’t tell it from here.”
“That boy always could shoot, drunk or sober.”
I guess he could. So Curly, armed and accurate, stood between us and freedom. Then I remembered the Thompson and the BAR in the bunkhouse. I crawled back to Harry.
“Listen,” I whispered, “I need a diversion. Something to get Flo out of the place for a minute while I duck in and grab those automatic weapons.” I pointed to the splitting maul. “Take this and go down to the far end. Keep low so she can’t see you through the windows. When I give you the signal, start banging it against the wall, not so loud that Curly can hear it and come running, but enough to bring her out in a hurry.” He nodded. “We’ve got to move fast when the shit hits the fan. Curly can’t hurt us with the shotgun, not at this range, but once I’ve got that BAR in my hands I can waste him at leisure.”
“Okay, S-Sarge.” He grinned. “Gosh, it feels just like a war movie.” Like I said, Mister Cool. But he swallowed hard just the same.
Harry scuttled in a stoop down to the far corner and looked up. I nodded. He started tapping on the bottom log.
“Now what?” Doc said from inside. “Sounds like those kids are up to some mischief. Trying to bust loose I guess. Go out there and cool ’em, Flo. Take that hogleg with you. Put a couple shots through the wall if you have to.”
I heard Flo’s footsteps clumping out the door. Waited a couple of seconds for her to get clear, then sprinted around the back corner, the front corner, and piled into the bunkhouse through the open doorway. Doc sat on one of the bunks, with the Thompson and a cleaning rag in his lap. He looked up with his wasted face. “Back so soon?”
I was on him in an instant, wrenched the tommy gun loose, then grabbed up the BAR.
“What the fuck . . . ”
I ran for the door. From their weight, I could tell both pieces were loaded. Around the far corner came Flo, followed by Harry. He was carrying her pistol. He grinned. “It’s okay,” he yelled, gesturing with it. “She’s on our side. She wants to come with us.”
Blam! A load of spent bird-shot rattled against the wall of the bunkhouse and kicked up dust around my feet. Curly had spotted us. He was running up from the river, a hundred yards away, red-faced and firing as he came. His Brillo-pad hairdo bounced as he ran. I tossed Harry the Thompson—“Hold on to this!”—and raised the BAR to my shoulder. The piece weighs twenty pounds, but it’s accurate out to 600 yards. I flicked off the safety, laid the leaf-sight square on Curly’s chest, then dropped it a tad and tripped off a four-round burst at his feet. I couldn’t bring myself to kill the fucker. I wasn’t enough of a Marine yet. He skidded to a halt and let the pumpgun fall.
“Doc’s still inside,” I told Harry. “See what he’s up to.”
At that moment Doc came groping his way out the door, a big, blocky Colt automatic in his hand. He winced in the sunlight, his face screwed up even tighter and uglier than usual. He pointed the .45 in our general direction and blasted away. Harry raised the Thompson, but he hadn’t racked a round into the chamber yet. He damn near snapped off the trigger trying to squeeze it. Flo grabbed her Dragoon from where he’d stuck it through his belt, walked up to Doc straight through the gunfire, jabbed two fingers deep into his eyeholes, then reversed the hogleg to hold it by the barrel and bopped him square on the bean. Thwock! He dropped like a sack of cement.
Harry laughed. “Just like in the movies,” he said again.
I turned back to Curly, but during the fracas he’d turned again and was sprinting for cover, a thicket of bankside aspens a hundred yards upstream. He reached it before I could raise the BAR.
“Point-blank range and none of us even got nicked,” Harry said, prodding Doc’s inert body with his toe. “He wasn’t much of a marksman.”
Doc groaned and stirred, his fingers twitching. I picked up the pistol.
“Plenty good for a blind man, though,” I said. “He didn’t have to hit us. He bought enough time for Curly to give us the slip.” My mind was racing. We had to clear out of here, but first I wanted to check for more ammo—both the Colt and the Thompson took .45 pistol rounds; the BAR fired full-length .30-06s—and find out what had brought about Flo’s change of allegiance. She was already inside the kitchen, packing food and personal gear into a wooden crate. I gave Harry the BAR, showed him how it operated, and told him to keep watch on the aspen grove. Also on Doc. Shoot or at least shout if he saw Curly. I set the selector switch on single-fire—I didn’t want him emptying the rest of the 20-round magazine on a single frantic burst—and went into the kitchen.
“So you changed sides,” I said to Flo.
“Five years with these bimbos,” she said, not looking up, “and still they treat me like the help. A housemaid is all I am to them. I cook for them, clean for them, make their beds, lug water, gut game, muck out the privy, haul firewood, even do windows, and every month or two they’re gracious enough to throw me a ten-second fuck. Like it or not, I have no say in the matter. Somehow I’ve lost my enthusiasm for the job.”
“Didn’t you used to drive their getaway car?”
“No, that was my son, Morton. His Chippewa name was Moonbeam. He loved engines from little on, raced motorcycles on the dirt tracks up here, a Flying Merkel he rebuilt himself. He dreamed of becoming the first Indian to run at Indy, but the only driving job he ever landed was with these galoots. Then he caught a slug on a stickup in St. Cloud, Minnesota—that was the winter of forty-four. A thirty-eight in the belly. They brought him to me on the Bad River rez up here. I’m a medicine woman—not the black magic kind, the herbal and sweat lodge variety. But it was no use. Septicemia, and penicillin in short supply because of the war. The black market price was sky high. We needed more money and a real sawbones, one who wouldn’t rat them out to the cops. That’s why they pulled the bank job in Oshkosh where Doc got his eyes blown out. I only drove for them that once. I had to. Morton died anyway. Just a month short of his twenty-first birthday . . . .” Here she sighed and closed her eyes. She looked up again. “So we all moved up here,” she continued, deadpan, “to the late, lamented headquarters camp of the Firesteel Logging Company.”
Could I—should I believe her? It could all be a setup. What’s Doc up to? Or maybe Curly? She looked up at me, inscrutable, then kept on packing.
“You’ll want more rounds for the Thompson and Doc’s Colt,” she said, “and aught sixes for the Browning. There’s a full bandolier for the BAR under that bunk where the guns were, and a carton or two of forty-fives in the chiffonier by my bed. Then we’d better make tracks. Doc we can leave here. But Curly, he’s dangerous.”
The sun was a hand’s breadth above the horizon when we loaded the canoe. Harry was still covering the aspen grove. With the Thompson, I stitched five quick holes through the bottom of the Grumman. Curly could always patch them, of course, but it would take him awhile, and we needed all the river room we could get. Flo took the paddles from the aluminum canoe and stowed them under our thwarts. We waded out and boarded the Old Town. Flo took the stern thwart, I sat amidships, facing backwards with the BAR, and Harry shoved us off, then swung aboard and paddled bow. We left Doc hogtied on one of the bunks. He was conscious, silent, staring bottomless black deathrays at us as we backed out of the cabin. Then in his high, squeaky voice he said, “I’ll see you later, boys. You can count on it.”
I realize that we should have shot him then and there, but we were good boys in those days. The Ten Commandments still meant something to us. I learned better up on the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea, then later on the MLR. But I’m getting ahead of myself . . . .
As we swept around the first bend below the logging camp, I saw Curly emerge from the aspens. He looked at us disappearing downriver and sprinted up toward the bunkhouse, hell-bent for leather—to find out what had happened to Doc, or just for his rifle? I’d pulled the bolt from his Springfield, smashed the stock with the splitting maul, and taken all his bullets—’06s like those the BAR ate—but I was sure he had more bullets stashed away someplace, Flo had indicated as much, and maybe even a spare bolt or two. He’d mend the busted stock one way or another. Old Marines are like that with their weapons. As Stingley said, “Treat her right and your rifle will be truer to you than any cunt in Christendom.” Curly and Doc would be after us soon enough.
I swung around facing forward, grabbed one of the extra paddles and dug into the water. It resisted, sullen and dark and deep but flowing the way we wanted to go. Then it was swept away, behind us. “Pick it up, pogues,” I said in my best Sergeant Stingley voice. “We gotta make holes in the water. Big fuckin’ whirly ones, and plenty of ’em.”