A NEW NOVEL: THE MAIL BANDITIn 1938 Roy Gardner is released from the infamous Alcatraz prison. He has spent most of his life behind bars with intermittent escapes during his stays. Now old and infirmed, he is living in a cheap hotel in San Francisco and decides he wants to write a memoir of his life as a train robber and escape artist. He contacts a young journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle to help him tell his story. Here a relationship develops between the writer and Gardner as the train robber recounts his life and deeds.
In this 40,000 word story, this writer mixes fictional characters and stories with the actual criminals and facts of Roy Gardner’s career as a thief and escape artist from the 1920’s making him one of America’s “Most Wanted” criminals. |
THE TRAIN BANDIT
Joseph L. Cacibauda
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. About a Meeting: Roy Gardner
2. Audrey, Lyle and Rita: Liberty Street
3. San Quentin: Roy Gardner
4. The Reverend Billy Promise: A Ferry Trip
5. Gun Smuggler: Roy Gardner
6. The Reverend Billy Promise: Healer
7. Dolly Gardner: Mare Island
8. Mail Bandit: Roy Gardner
9. The Reverend Billy Promise: The Grape
10. The Escape: Roy Gardner
11, The Reverend Billy Promise: A Night Ride
12, Lyle Simmons: The Sunday Chronicle Assignment
13. Les Monsley: The Sunday Chronicle Series Begins
14. Lyle and The Reverend Billy Promise: A Muscatel Run
15.Alcatraz: Roy Gardner and Alfonse Capone
16. Lyle: The Sunday Chronicle Series Continues
17. Lyle: The Investigation
18. Lyle and The Reverend Billy Promise: The Gangway on Larkin
19. The Sunday Chronicle Series: The End
20. Lyle and Rita: A Talk
21. The Reverend Billy Promise: Healer and Rescuer
22. Audrey and Lyle: The Reverend Billy Promise
23. An Exit Plan: Roy Gardner
24. A Note on the Door: Roy Gardner
25. Two Suitcases with Tips: Roy Gardner
AFTERWARDS
ABOUT A MEETING
ROY GARDNER
1
Roy’s heavy breathing drowned out the sounds of his feet hitting the ground and the notion of Larry and Everett running behind him. Bullets whizzed by in bumblebee-sounds following echoed rifle fire. The turf in front of him exploded as the shooters continued to miss their mark. Nearing the fence, he heard a yelp, and in the frenzy of escape, he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t him. He dared not stop. Heavier volleys pinged off the wire in firework sparks. Roy fell to the ground, a slug ricocheted above him. He rolled toward the fence where he expected the strands to be cut and desperately pushed on the section. It held fast. It seemed the con had stiffed him.
“It’s over that way,” yelled Larry frantically pointing to an area further along. “By the bush.” A shot found his raised hand and he rolled over screaming in pain.
Roy crawled to the spot and rolled through the opening.
“That’s pretty good, Lyle,” Roy said sitting on the edge of his bed. “It captures what happened alright. You got Larry being hit but you didn’t put the part about Everett.”
“I hinted at it with the yelp. That’ll do for now. We’ll explain more later,” said Lyle.
“Okay. You’re the boss,” said Roy and lit another cigarette.
The First Meeting
Lyle Simmons stared at his image in the control panel; tall, gangly, gradually losing his blond hair forever it seemed. A wispy patch fell over his rimless spectacles and he waved it away from his face, a serious face, unsmiling, a face that reminded him of those overburdened young men in Dickens novels. His finger traced his forehead lines, a new development. He brushed the back of his hands over a thin stubble, one that forecasted a growth of mangy patches resembling the shorelines of the continents. He wasn’t expecting much more. Lyle stood at the elevator door, his left arm plumbed to his side weighted by his briefcase, and waited for the landing. The door stuttered opened and he tentatively stepped out, looking left then right, as if expecting traffic. Turning left, down the third-floor hallway, he moved along smelling a heavy floral scent, unnaturally sweet, but not strong enough to overcome the staleness of cigarettes and musty carpets. Muffled conversations and radios seeped through doors as he walked toward Roy’s room. Standing at the door erect, he took a deep breath, and lightly knocked. There was a stirring of sounds, doors banging, objects slid to other spots, then he heard slow footsteps approach the door.
“Lyle. Right? Welcome to my humble place.” Roy moved aside to allow him to pass.
The room smelled damp, musty, like the wet ropes down on the wharfs. The closed windows held in the staleness. Scant light seeped passed half opened curtains carrying dust particles in their beams.
“It ain’t much to look at, but then the rate’s $3.00 a night,” Roy said. A genuinely wide grin narrowed his eyes and raised his ruddy cheeks as he quickly added, “I’m glad to get it at the price. You might say fortune’s winds has blown some spiteful gales[S1] into my backside ever since I left the rock,” a slow hand sweep showed the way, “old Hellcatraz, across the bay.” As he spoke, he walked slightly bent toward his unmade bed. The covers were hastily gathered to form a sculptured pile. He quick-poked his small round glasses back in place, stepped back to clear a path to a small desk, and pulled the chair from under the desk while motioning for Lyle to sit.
“Ain’t got much to offer to drink. You’re a drinking man?”
Lyle answered, “No. Thanks all the same.”
“Been thinking of writing a book about my life,” he said. He moved a stack of metal food trays. “You mind?” He nodded toward the door. Lyle jumped up and walked over to open it.
“I like the piece you wrote about me and the spirits and called to ask the paper if they would help me get in touch with you.”
“Well thank you. I didn’t write the whole piece. Nevertheless, I am curious to know whether you really believe evil spirits had hold of you to make you a criminal?”
“Yes I do. Normally I craved to be an honest man. I mean I come from a God-fearin’ family. Missouri. You know? Bible, Sunday church, the golden rule. All that. But it seems that one night ol’ Satan crept up on me and possessed me. It was like he wrapped his fiery arms around me and promised me the world. Don’t you ever believe anyone is immune to his embraces, my friend. No siree. Just when I thought that I made up my mind to live a straight life, the evil spirit set upon me and made me bend to his will. I had to do his bidding; I couldn’t help it. I had to find a place to rob. I mean you quoted it from the Bible; ‘and the Devil besought him,’ I mean you said it all there.”
“Well sir, some of that was my editor’s words, I mean the Bible passages, and comparing you to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; you know how you could demand people hand over money at gun point, but then be happy when they got the reward for capturing you. And your friendship with those lawmen. That’s so remarkable you would stay friends with the men who put you in prison.”
Roy smiled. “Yep. They were good honest people doing their job. I was just a common thief.”
“Well Mr. Gardner, to be honest, I wrote the factual parts about you getting hit in the head in that mine accident and how you and your wife claimed that incident caused you to rob trains and banks. The rest was written by a few others.”
“I still like the piece, no matter how much you wrote.”
“Thanks.
“Mr. Gardner, I’m sure you really have a lot to tell, no doubt about it.”
“I do sir. I do at that. I gotta write my book to set the record straight while I can. I ain’t the fittest ex-con these days and I can’t tell how much time I have left to show that I wan’t such a horrible public enemy. There’s been so many things in the newspapers and stories about what I did and was supposed to do, some true, but a lot pure baloney. Just the other day a story claimed on my train break out of Sacramento, I robbed one of the car thieves of $20.00. Why would I take money from a fellow con? Ridiculous. There were sometimes eyewitnesses claiming I was in two or three places at once. One time I was fingered as one of three people that robbed a circus of its day’s take. I always worked alone, Lyle. Who had time for circuses? It just so happened I was in Minneapolis buying a dolly for my little girl at the time. I had plenty of my own witnesses. I always tried to do clean heists without hurting anybody and when I was cornered, I surrendered honorably. It’s important to me that my daughter reads the good parts in her father’s life, not just the criminal stuff people told her all her life. In spite of her old man, the kid grew up all right. She’s married to a real good egg now, so I hear. Maybe she might forgive me for not being around for her and her mom all those years if she hears my side of the stories. Could you help me?”
“Well, I guess. I suppose. I mean— yes, I think I could, Mr. Gardner. I’d have to juggle my times with the paper a bit.”
“Oh, yes. I bet you’re busy. I’d pay you of course, although right now I don’t have a lot of money. All those robberies, $190,000 from this heist, $85,000 in another, and a hell of a lot more train robberies if you believe all the newspaper accounts; and yet, I got nothing left. Life’s just a big game my boy. You think you’re holding winning numbers, ready to cash in, but thems around you are all too happy to call out the fake numbers to you. It’s so true that crime really doesn’t pay; except you don’t really know that when you’re in the middle of the game.”
“I’m sure we can work something out with the time and the pay, Mr. Gardner.”
“Good my friend. Good.” Roy said, looking at Lyle with a slight grin. “Well, the first thing we need to work out is what we call each other. I ain’t ever felt like a Mr. Gardner, so you can call me Roy. And what would you like me to call you?”
“Lyle is fine.”
“Lyle it is,” said Roy. He took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips. He shook the pack at Lyle.
“No sir. Thank you.”
Roy lit the cigarette and blew out the match, “Could we get started today?”
Lyle scooted his chair nearer the small desk, opened his briefcase to retrieve a tablet, opened the flap, leaned over it at the ready and looked at Roy. “Now is as good a time as any.”
“I was born in a little old town in Missouri, Trenton, in 1886. We lived there ‘til I was eight, then we moved on out to Colorado Springs. My mother, Abbie, inherited some property there. It seemed to me my old man expected me to be a farmer, or work in the mines when I finished school, but I wasn’t haven’t any of that. My dad was George. He was a silent sort. Never had much to say to me that didn’t involve fixing my faults and directing chores. My mom was more involved with me and my growing up. She threw me a compliment every now and then, always saw that I had meals and clothes, and she made sure I went to school. She ran a boarding house that rented mostly to miners. Though you can’t tell lookin’ at me now, I was a good-lookin’ kid back then, curly hair, tall for my age. I know I was good-looking ‘cause I never had trouble attracting pretty little girls. Having this young’un running around, those miners loved joshing me ‘Hey Roy, come here,’ they’d say. They’d give a sideways look at my face and say, ‘Looks like you’re growin’ a mustache. You growin’ one?’ I’d say, ‘No sir,’ and wipe a finger over my lip. ‘Sure as hell looks like it to me,’ and one would call over another and say, ‘Don’t it look like young Roy’s growin’ a mustache?’ and the other would say, Reckon he is.’ Then the first one would say, ‘You ain’t never gonna grow a good mustache lesson you put a bit of fresh cow shit over that lip.’ The two would have a big belly laugh and either rub my head strong enough to give me a headache, or punch me hard in the arm. Some would tease me about havin’ plenty girlfriends, pretty or ugly, and give me crazy ways how to woe them. Some of the old drunks would take me aside and want to show me how to street fight. They were good hardworking men, Lyle, just trying to get through the day to get through the week ‘til payday. There was one old fellow, he wasn’t really old maybe 40, but old to me, skin tough, cracked like dried rawhide, big wide hands, a blob of a nose like the Maker forgot to give him one, reached down and grabbed a glob of pink something, slammed it in the middle of his face. His head was ever bent forward from crawling through shafts and working in low places. He’d sit out on the front porch of a night, rolling his own, looking in the distance and spinning stories of near deaths in the mines, bar fights, hopping freights, begging grub. He told me how one of his rooms was buried for four days by a cave-in and how he thought he might have to eat his shoes if they didn’t uncover him soon. Lucky for him they found him on the fifth day and he came out of the mine, a sort of hero, at least for a few days. Then it was back to the mine he said, same pay, same work. He says to me one day, ‘Take a good look at me son. This is what mining does to a man who’s spent his life underground.’ He held out his big hands, fingers crooked, thumbs bent in odd directions, his joints like cypress knots. ‘This ain’t a life you want to take on. A good-looking kid like you.’ I had sense enough to take his words to heart, Lyle. I packed up a few clothes and stuffed them into a cardboard suitcase somebody had given me who-knows-when, and told everybody I was going to Kansas City to work in the railroads.”
“Did you know for sure you could get a job on the railroads?” asked Lyle.
“I didn’t know I could get a job anywhere in Kansas City. I just said railroads like I knew something. Alls I knew was that I didn’t want to stick around little old Trenton to spend my life working on a farm or crawling through mines.
“So, I go to the train station, a few bucks in my pocket to buy a ticket. I’m standing at the window and I hear this man say he wants a one-way to Kansas City. I hear the cost and I realize I don’t have enough money to buy the ticket, so I get out of the line. I go sit on a bench to try to figure how I’m gonna get to KC when I see the man throw his coat over the back of the bench. The ticket was sticking out of the pocket. Like it was waving to me, signaling to come and get it. Now I ease up and as I go by, I swipe at it, and snap it out of his jacket. With the ticket tucked away in my pocket, I head on out to the platform and look back into the station to see the man looking every which way, trying to find his ticket. As the train came near, I look in to see him go the ticket counter and buy another one. No harm done. He had the money. I didn’t.”
“Was this your first illegal act?”
“Well, no. I filched candy from stores and stuff all the time. Took cigarettes and cigars from my old man’s dresser and things like that.”
“You ever have the sense that what you were doing was wrong?” asked Lyle.
“Jeeze I figured I was not doing right Lyle; but I wasn’t hurting nobody. I mean they all had it to give, you know what I mean?”
Lyle finished writing a note and looked up, “So you got to Kansas City.”
“Yep. I stepped off the train at Union Depot in Kansas City. The station towered over me. I looked back at a large clock to see the time, but it didn’t matter, ‘cause I forgot it as soon as I turned around. The smell of livestock from the nearby yards almost took my breath away. I walked toward this large building, the livestock exchange, like I knew where I was going. I’d never seen a place so big with so many people going in all directions. Thoughts of little ol’ Trenton began spinning in my brain, and I started to wonder whether I did the right thing coming to Kansas. I knew I couldn’t dwell on that now It was getting dark and people gradually disappeared from the streets. I was damned tired from the trip and from me wandering around the city, so I found a doorway in an alley and using my suitcase for a pillow, I went to sleep.
“It seemed to me that the next morning’s rush came too soon and I woke up to a loud bang down the street. I jumped up, brushed off my clothes and high tailed it in the opposite direction. I wandered around, weaving through the people, all of them really guided by a purpose, hurrying over street crossings, dodging garbage trucks, walking past delivery drivers and service workers, everyone trying to be settled somewhere by 8:30. By now my stomach was growling and my mouth feeling thick as peanut butter. I happened on a soup kitchen, men, ladies, little kids lined up half the block waiting for the doors of this old church to open. So we could get something to eat, alls we had to do was to move into a chapel to listen to this fellow, sometimes a lady, but either one, while they read a few Bible stories about King David’s sins and God’s forgiveness and Jesus forgiving prostitutes and such, these kinds of readings all to show that even we sinners could be forgiven. Then they offered us a cot, or sleeping bag, so we could set up our beds later in the Bible room. I took them up on that and began staying there. Most all of us kept our heads down and didn’t talk to anybody. Fact is the first person I said anything to was a scruffy, unshaven, feller by the name of Rence. He says to me, ‘Where you come from young fella,’ and proceeded to not let me answer. ‘Name’s Johnny. Rence, the last name. And who might you be?’ I told him my name and he says, ‘Why you standin’ in this line? You look like you’re healthy enough to work.’ I told him I just got to town and I was lookin’ for work. Then I told him, real smart like, ‘You don’t look too broke down to be in this line neither,’ and he came back with, ‘Well, you ain’t no doctor now, are you? You can’t look at a body to say it’s fit to work.’ I laughed and had to admit, ‘No sir, I guess I can’t.’ He told me that the drink wouldn’t let him continue to work. He’d gotten hurt in a shaft and was in constant pain. He says to me, ‘Doctors couldn’t stop the pain the way a bottle of Ol’ Overholt could.’ He admitted that even when his pain stopped, he couldn’t stop ‘kissing the rye’ is how he put it. And then he says, really pathetic Lyle, ‘Ain’t no mine wantin’ a drunk settin’ charges and such. They run me off.’
“I stayed at the shelter,” Roy continued, “Me and Johnny talked a lot. I learned the old boy had a wife who got fed up with his drinking, laying around, not bringing in any money, not taking care of the property, not even doing his husband’s duty. She ran off with an insurance man to parts unknown. I just listened. One day Johnny leaned over the table close, to get as private as he could. ‘Look kid,’ he whispered, ‘I was workin’ a bit with a buddy of mine who owns a blacksmith shop. They’s got to make shoes for the mules that work in the mines. I been havin’ a bit of eye problems lately and I ain’t been eble to work at that no more. I’ll put in a word for you.’”
Roy stopped to shuffle his way off the bed, holding his back. He hobbled toward a small closet. “Wait a second.” He rummaged through a coat, went to another one, found an empty pack, balled it up and held it in his fist; Then he went to a third coat, finding a couple of cigarettes in an almost spent pack.
“So where was I?” He struck a match. Oh yeah, the eye problems.
“I knew his eye problem had to do with his drinking. You know what I mean? Any ways, about the blacksmith: I helped the man out for a month or so, learned how to hammer out horse shoes, pound out the holes for the nails. But, shish. The man was a drunk too. He didn’t want to pay me half the time and when he did, it wasn’t enough to buy a beer and a brat. Mind you I just turned 15. One day, after I worked my butt off the whole week, burning my hand at least three different times, almost getting a hot piece of metal in my eye, I go to get paid and he tells me he didn’t have the money. Told me he had a bunch of bets that bottomed out and he couldn’t pay me. I kind of lost my temper, grabbed him and was ready to brand him with a hot poker when a couple of his buddies came in and proceeded to beat all hell out me. Not only did they rough me up good, but they called in the cops and claimed I was trying to rob the old bastard. Wasn’t any local cops going to take the word of some punk stranger-kid. They hauled me off and sent me to Missouri Reform School for men in Boonville.”
Lyle removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, put the glasses back.
“Gettin’ tired, Lyle?”
“I’m okay,” said Lyle. “Let’s keep going.”
“I got to the admitting room at Boonville. The admitting room was a large room with a bench against the wall and a regular chair in the middle. New inmates sat on the bench and waited for their turn while one of the attendants stood over me, scissors in hand, finishing me off with clippers. Everybody’s hair was cut to make sure we didn’t bring in lice, or have a big crop for them to come hide in. When they got done with me, someone threw a pair of overalls in my lap. ‘You change into them clothes after we’re finished with the rest. Then we gonna tell all of you the rules around here.’
“I took a spot on the bench, sitting next to a young boy. ‘How old are you?’ I asked. The young boy looked at me, wild eyed like, wondering whether he should answer. ‘Ten.’
‘Why you here?’ I ask.
‘Stole a couple of chickens,’ he says.
“An attendant shouted, ‘Hey no talking over there. You got it? Keep ya trap shut.’”
“They set me in a bunk next to a couple of kids who just weren’t all there, you know. Their eyes were all funny, they didn’t talk right, and they spent a lot of time watching their own hands do peculiar things, moving like they weren’t part of their body. It was a rough place I tell you Lyle. Fights all over and all the time. One night we’re all settled in this big room, bunk beds as far as you could see, and I see one of the older boys crawl into bed with the kid I sat next to when I was admitted. I can’t tell much in the dark, but I hear muffled grunting like somebody trying to call out, I figure through a hand or a pillow. Then all hell breaks loose. The lights come on and there are three officers pulling this older guy off this kid and they start into beating the hell out him with a couple of sticks, right across his bare ass and his back. They beat him bloody Lyle and drag him along the floor to get him out of the room. I don’t know whatever happened to him. I didn’t see him no more while I was there.
“Laying there in the dark, I made up my mind that I had to get out of that place; so, a few nights later, I rolled up some bedding and my pillow to look like a body under the covers and hid under my bunk to see if they’d take the con. When they passed my bunk, falling for it, I knew I could fool them. So, the next night I slipped out of the dorm while everybody else was asleep. I would have made it. Nobody was after me, but crouching along, ducking behind bushes and trees to every sound started to wear me out, not to mention the mosquitoes. With me shaking from the cold, scratching my bites, I realized I wasn’t going to get fed regular on the run. Besides when they did find me, I’d probably get the beating they gave that other fellow that night. So, I turned my self in. They smacked me around some for punishment and made me clean the toilets and such. A few months later they turned me out.”
Lyle reached for a pocket watch, looked at it, then at Roy, “Well we’ve got a good start here Mr. Gardner.”
“Roy. Remember. Call me Roy.”
“Yes. Roy, it’s getting late. Let me go back home and work on getting some of my notes written.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m getting sort of worn out myself,” Roy said, snuffing out his cigarette, adding it to the collection of white curled and rumpled butts. “See you next Tuesday then?”
“Yes. I think so. Same time, right?”
“Yeah. The time’s fine,” said Roy. “I’ll lead you to the door. Got everything?”
Lyle looked around, shook his head yes.
“Good,” said Roy.
AUDREY, LYLE, AND RITA
LIBERTY STREET
2
It was a 30-minute bus ride, an hour walk, from the Hotel Governor on Turk and Jones to Lyle’s row house on Liberty Street. The San Francisco rains were coming soon so Lyle decided he’d take advantage of the crisp, clear day and walk home. A gentle breeze lifted from the bay sweeping over and around him while he recollected the meeting with Roy. Considering the articles he co-wrote about the man, based on others’ sources and opinions, it seemed apropos that the two should meet and he hear the stories from Roy himself. He neared his apartment house, the dark one, the house that stood wedged between two similar buildings, high peaked gables jutting above a flat roof, three floors, a balustrade stairway leading to slender turned porch posts. He and Audrey never tired of the rows of Victorian architecture that freely mixed curved archways with square and triangular facades. To a boy from flat-land Texas, the hilltop streets created an illusion of houses that slanted to the opposite side of the slope. Even after his two years in San Francisco, Lyle still swore the houses leaned.
Audrey stood in the back room at the kitchen sink wiping the faucet, wiping the sink, wiping the stove, wiping the small refrigerator, apron covering her small frame, her blond hair bunched up in a ponytail. She didn’t hear Lyle walk through the front door.
“Aud,” Lyle wanted to call out, but he held it to a whisper. “Aud, you in here?”
Audrey came to the door way. “I’m cleaning the kitchen, Lyle. Oh honey, you forgot to take your shoes off.”
“Oh yes. I keep forgetting.” He quickly slipped out of his shoes, and clutched them in his arms. He went over to give her a kiss and she turned her cheek, puckering in sync to the kiss.
“Just for now,” she said. “Maybe later on when Mommy gets well, I’ll be able to kiss you back. I wouldn’t want to catch anything and pass it to her in her delicate state. Be patient sweets.”
“Right,” said Lyle. “How’s she been today?” he asked.
“It’s still touch and go L. She’s very weak.”
“When does she see the doctor next?”
“She won’t see a doctor L. She sees a faith healer who tells her he has a cure for her.”
“And you believe that he can heal her?”
“Not a matter what I believe, L. It’s what she believes. She won’t see a doctor. She just won’t.”
The floor creaked with heavy footfalls coming from the rear bedroom, then a figure emerged through the doorway. Mrs. Udall plodded across the parlor, her slippers shooshing over the hardwood floors, aimed at the nearest chair, and landed hard, breath rhythmically hissing through her nose and mouth. Her round face was flushed, jowls hung loosely like full mail pouches. The woman’s large frame engulfed the chair, her spindly legs jutted out from her robe, and she stared at Lyle in expectation of what? He wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to commend her for making it from the furthest bedroom, or compliment her for her willingness to attempt the trip. She just continued breathing hard, her mouth agape, her reddened eyes wearily drooping.
“It looks like you’re gaining a bit more strength,” said Lyle. “How are you feeling Rita?”
“How does it look like I’m feeling fella?” she said, her words coming from a gargle. She looked at Audrey. “Got some water?”
Audrey skittered toward the kitchen.
“Well, I think your color is better today,” said Lyle.
“You think so?” she said and bowed her head toward the floor.
“You okay Mommy?” Audrey called out just at the doorway. She moved quickly toward her.
“I’ll be fine when I have a drink of water,” Mrs. Udall said. “Reverend Billy call?”.
“I haven’t heard a word from him Mommy,” said Audrey handing her the glass of water.
“I want you to call him Audrey. He can lay hands on me.”
“Rita. You really need to see a regular doctor,” said Lyle.
“No. Don’t need to. Reverend Billy will cure me.”
“What’s he going to cure you of Rita? What is your medical problem?”
“Reverend Billy says I got bad spirits in me. Maybe from somebody I might ah done wrong before they died, and now they’re ruling my body.”
Lyle looked at Audrey and Audrey averted her eyes, moving closer to her mother. “Want more water Mommy?”
Mrs. Udall held out the glass. Audrey took it and scampered back to the kitchen.
“I got another assignment today Aud,” said Lyle. “You remember the piece I wrote on Roy Gardner, the escape artist that ended up at Alcatraz? Well, he called me to help him write a book.”
“Wonderful L. Isn’t that great Mommy. Lyle getting more and more writing assignments. Isn’t that great?”
“Good for you Lyle. I think I’d like some ice water this time Audrey. Can you get that for me?”
Audrey stepped back into the kitchen.
It had been just after the first year Lyle and Audrey were married that Mrs. Udall moved in. Mr. Udall, a money man, Audrey never could say what he did with money, except it had to do with investing other people’s and finding ways to keep them from paying taxes by showing them how to avoid admitting any profits. Audrey claimed his business was legal as did her father up until the day he jumped out a fifth story window in downtown Houston. But, Rita, Mrs. Udall, his wife, was sickly even before the suicide. Some days she would stay in bed all day, drinking hot chocolate and eating mayonnaise sandwiches, circling in pencil, tearing with precision, newspaper articles of accidents, mayhem, crimes, and slowly combing the obituaries for names she recognized. When the federal government impounded everything around her, imminently the house, she was compelled to let her daughter know that she, the mom, was penniless and homeless. There was little else Audrey could do but send a ticket to come live with them in San Francisco.
A few weeks before her husband’s death, Rita convinced him to phone a man mentioned in one of her newspaper mayhem-and-death articles. She had read about a woman who claimed she was possessed by a demon, or a witch that had been burned in Salem. The woman claimed that this faith healer, Reverend Billy Promise, appeared out of thin air, circled her bed three times, and blew on her forehead thereby completely ridding her of the witch-demon. Rita recognized the demon-possessed symptoms to be akin to her own and continued tormenting her husband to call the healer and advance him the trust offering so he could begin. And now, she was insisting that her daughter, Audrey, bring Reverend Promise to San Francisco to continue to heal her.
Audrey returned from the kitchen with a glass of ice water. “There are very good doctors here in San Francisco, Mommy. Why don’t you let Lyle ask around the newspaper? I’m sure there are lots of people who can give names of doctors who will help you.”
“Reverend Billy is the only one who can cure me,” Rita faintly uttered, holding the cold glass to her right temple. These medicine doctors just take your money.”
“Mommy, I just don’t see how we can afford to send for this man, pay for his hotel, feed him, plus pay his fee for your healing sessions. We don’t have the money.”
The glass fell to the area rug, water and ice cubes flowed everywhere. Rita slumped over in a faint.
ROY GARDNER
SAN QUENTIN
3
Lyle’s movements were automatic, unconscious of purpose or destination as images of his mother-in-law formed, then the scene of his father-in-law sailing out the window of an office building in Houston. He was working to imagine a picture of Reverend Billy when the groaning elevator door drew him back to his temporal space. Stepping onto the third floor, he was assailed again by hotel smells, muffled chatter, radio music. He pictured women of the street, feet propped on the kitchen table, alternating sips of Old Crow on one side with dabs from a ruby red nail polish on the other. Or he envisioned failed business men, jilted boyfriends, maybe other ex-cons, in soiled baggy tank tops, peering from their windows regarding the distance and the time it would take to reach the ground.
“Hello there Lyle. Is it Tuesday already? This old brain of mine forgets a lot these days. Oh! See what I’m talking about? You’re standing at the door and I’m jabbering. Come on in.”
Lyle moved toward the little desk while Roy hastened ahead to clear off ash trays and newspapers. Lyle carefully placed his briefcase on the desk and began to open it.
“Had a good week?” Roy asked.
“Oh yes. A busy week, but overall. Good.”
“Why busy? You writing a lot for the paper?”
“Some. Most of the work is to get ready for a guest. Audrey, my wife, and I are moving things around the apartment. Setting up a room for him to stay.”
“I see,” said Roy. “A relative?” He was sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Hardly. Somebody my mother-in-law knows.
“So, what do we talk about today, Roy?” asked Lyle.
“Where did we stop last time?”
Lyle rifled through his tablet, slapping at pages until he found the end. “You just got released from the reformatory.”
“Yes. Right. The reformatory,” said Roy.
“I hitch hiked, hopped freights to Colorado, bummed around ‘til I met a guy who thought I looked big enough and strong enough to do some prize fighting. Turns out I was pretty good too. I won as many as I lost that’s for sure. For a little while, I was J.J. Jeffries’ sparring partner while he was training for the heavy weight championship of the world. That’s when I was rolling in the money and I ate at fancy restaurants, stayed at swanky hotels and courted the pretty women. But spending money the way I did, I ran out soon, and one day I reached in my pocket, pulled out two silver dollars. I had nothing else, especially an idea where to get more. I knocked around a bit hitting soup kitchens, doing some panhandling, and eventually getting a few odd jobs welding, selling tools, cleaning horse stalls, and the like, until I made my way back to California. Did a couple more fights, got beat up pretty good the last two, and figured that was not the way to make my fortune. With the money I had I could hold out a couple of weeks until I had to find something else to do. That’s when I found out about some construction jobs.
“The state was building a highway through the mountains and it was hiring men to set off dynamite charges. The money was good, but, come payday, I always could find a card game, dice table, or a sure-bet race that promised to double my money. ‘course that never happened. I went through money like paper napkins. It turns out that those roads we were building led to San Francisco and having enough of blowing up rocks, I wandered into the city. It was around Christmas and I just had put the last few dollars I had on a nag that ran great on a dry track, but couldn’t get out of its own way on a wet one. My luck—it had rained all day. There I was wandering around rustling my losing race slips in my pocket when I came upon a jewelry store on Market Street. I stood gawking through the big store-front window. All kinds of flashy stuff hung from Christmas trees, and scattered around make-believe snow scenes, was jewelry stuffed in fancy satin and felt cases, everything made all the brighter by Christmas lights above. Toward the back salesmen were with customers. I walked near and could hear them assuring the gentlemen the piece they were buying perfectly matched the loveliness of the women thy were with. Mr. Glindemann noticed me strolling around the cases looking like I was lost, and he approached with a huge smile.
‘Looks like you’re looking for a ring for a special gal, right?’ he said.
‘You got my number,’ I said.
‘You want a ring with a diamond, right?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know if I can afford a big one,’ I told him.
‘Well, here we have some that aren’t so big,’ and Glindemann reached into the case to retrieve a tray of rings.
I pretended to move aside and purposely bumped his hand causing him to spill everything. The other salesmen and a few of the customers gathered around to help gather the pieces and as they were preoccupied, I reached in another case and high-tailed it with a tray of rings and necklaces. A salesmen spotted me scampering toward the door and yelled out,
‘Stop, thief!’
“I ran out the door looking all the ways. The way to the left seemed to be more opened to escape. I didn’t dare run now, rather I took hurried steps toward the end of the block. Getting to Ellis Street, I went into a sprint toward Powell elbowing everybody out of my way. Directly in front of me stood a uniformed policeman, but he didn’t read what was happening immediately until he saw me being chased. That’s when he lunged at me, but I ducked on the other side of a gentleman and pushed the man into the officer’s arms. Now I was swerving in and out of the crowd with my chasers yelling, ‘Stop that man. Stop him. Thief. Stop him.’ I managed to put a lot of people between me and them and I thought I was free. There was a open alleyway in front of me. I dashed toward it taking one last glance behind me. Just in that instance, another officer stepped in my way and I plowed right into his billy club. I was knocked to the pavement and I dropped the tray. The scattered jewels added more chaos to the scene with people scampering to gather it. Looking up, flat on my back, I saw the salesmen and police standing over me. Then I saw Mr. Glindemann peering and pointing.
“It was Christmas Eve, Lyle; and from that caper I got a couple of gifts: a shiny pair of bracelets and an invitation for a five-years stay in San Quentin. That dumb heist led to the beginning of my prison stretches.”
“Tell me about San Quentin,” said Lyle.
“This would have been in 1911, January to be exact.
“San Quentin had 2000 men when I stepped through the gates. When a con gets to these places, these prison walls, he loses everything. His freedom. His identity. His dignity. I was no longer Roy, I was 24850. They didn’t just take our names, but they changed our looks. The gave us clothes two sizes too big so we looked like baggy-pants circus clowns. They shaved our heads and faces. No hair, mustache, or beard. They even eventually changed our body types. Some cons got skinny ‘cause they stopped eating, others got fat ‘cause that’s all they wanted to do. Every inmate had his picture taken to document how he looked coming in, probably so they could flaunt the awful comparison of his looks when he got out; but more likely to have a picture on hand for his obituary. They couldn’t physically take our prints from us. Instead, they took impressions to declare these ink blots were no longer ours alone, but theirs to track us for the rest of our lives.
We stayed over-night in a sort of infirmary to be tested for diseases and to be told prison routines. The next morning, after they assign us a cell, they led us to breakfast, in a single line, no talking, just move where and like they told us. For breakfast we got beans and coffee on the first day. Later, we got oatmeal with syrup poured over it for breakfast. Then after breakfast, all the men lined up to go to work. As the line got to the door, the guards would pull out men to form another line. That line would be headed to the jute mill. Every man had to work a certain amount of time there. Friend, that was a horrible job. Just awful. Jute is a plant that comes from Asia, I think. You take these plants and feed them into machines that shred them into fibers. Then they take the fibers and spin them into threads to make rope, sacks, baskets, all that sort of stuff. As we fed the machines, the air would fill with dust we breathed all day long. Pretty soon we’d come down with bronchial problems and we would have to be assigned some other job for a while. I made up my mind that I’d toe the mark. Keep my nose clean and follow the rules; and I did just that, most of the time. But then, one day I fell.
“Mickey Varney was a sparing buddy of mine from Colorado who eventually ended up in California. We met again by chance in San Francisco and got re-acquainted. Mickey promised he’d keep track of me when he heard I was going to prison and promised to visit when he could. At one of the visits, I mentioned that my good behavior allowed me to work outside the gate. Me and Mickey planned that he would stash packs of cigarettes in a certain spot. Cigarettes were government issued inside— roll-your-own, crude tobacco. The tailor-made cigarettes were the coins of the realm in San Quentin. Cons could buy a lot of favors with two or three Chesterfields. On a day that I got to work on the outside, I went to the agreed spot and found a couple packs of Lucky Strikes. I walked back to the gate to re-enter the yard, a guard walked up to me. ‘Nice out there eh Roy?’ he says. ‘Yeah. It is. Good to get some fresh air,’ I say. ‘Is that all you got out there, Roy? Just fresh air?’ The guard held out his hand and says, ‘Hand them over.’
“The next morning I got tapped on the shoulder. A guard motioned to follow him. When we cleared the dining hall, he told me to go back to the jute mill and work there until further notice, my punishment for trying to smuggle tobacco in. But that wasn’t the end of it. I figured nobody would think I’d try smuggling tobacco again so soon, and so I arranged for Mickey to stash a sack of tobacco and cigarette papers behind one of the drinking fountains in the visitors’ room. The guards let Mickey stash the stuff and waited to see who would come to pick it up. I had two strikes against me and now I was a marked man. To make matters worse, me and another con came to blows out in the yard. His comments on my looks rubbed me the wrong way, implying I looked too soft to protect myself. Inside those close quarters, fellows didn’t need much to go at it. But fighting was one of the most serious infractions in the joint and I was given three days and nights in solitary on half rations. After those incidents I kept on the level. I got assigned the garden around the warden’s house. A good job, out in the air, and working with flowers and vegetables. A great job. But then there was a riot.
“A fellow named Alvin Prosser was in the joint serving a 30-year stretch for taking part in a kidnapping. In the end, they all let the man go, a rich liquor owner from Canada, after the ransom was paid. But the numbers on the bills and the transfer were closely watched so the kidnappers were soon rounded up at the leisure of the G-men. In San Quentin, Prosser was a ring leader of a group that griped about the food, the living conditions, the prisoners’ treatment, the long and unhealthy conditions of the work, everything the joint offered. At meal times, he started sitting across me, sizing me up. He never said anything, only looked me up and down. I knew what he was doing. He knew I got wind of the riot, and his stares were meant to search out how I felt about the play. Whose side will you be on? is what he was trying to find out. I never looked back, just kept my head down as though fixing my mind on my plate. On the day of the riot the men entered the dining hall and stood at the tables. Like every day, the guards gave the signal to be seated. This was the call to begin. They upturned tables, threw plates, forks, and cups at the guards while they shouted demands mixed with the worse cussing you can imagine. Not all the cons agreed with the rioters, so when the peaceful ones started to get hit with objects and were roughed up, they began fighting back. All hell broke out with different groups yelling and throwing punches and tossing benches. I moved over to the side wanting to stay out of the action. The situation turned to heavier violence as officers were surrounded by prisoners and the inmates began chanting ‘kill them.’
Finally, an army of lawmen came streaming into the mess hall. I turned to move further to the back and I saw Prosser and another con pushing a guard I knew as Captain Randolph, using the officer’s own weapon as a prod. Captain Randolph was a real straight shooter. Most of us cons liked him because he was fair, never flaunting his control over us, and willing to hear our side to a story. Prosser forced the captain to move ahead, and as he passed me, I heard him say, ‘Let’s stand the bastard against the wall.’ I didn’t need to ask what they meant. It happened that there was an opening between the pistol muzzle and the captain’s back as the men walked by, and I took advantage of the slight distance to grab the gun. Completely surprised by my action, Prosser dropped the pistol, then turned to lunge at me. The captain turned on the other inmate and wrestled him to the ground, holding him until other officers came. Me and Prosser continued the tussle on the floor with dull thuds and slaps and curses until we got separated and hauled off in cuffs. Somehow in the excitement, and then being dragged off to his cell, I didn’t notice that I’d been cut.”
Roy lifted his left hand and traced a faint scar, “I gave a yell to the guards and when one of them saw this hand, he took me to the infirmary. I can’t tell you how it happened in the fight. Neither of us had a knife or anything. Anyway, I had to be stitched. When I was sent back to my cell, the captain came around. He thanked me for saving his life and he put in a good word for me so that I was granted a parole a little while later. ‘ Course, Prosser swore he’d get even with me. I’m still on the look-out for that.”
Lyle sat up, set his pencil down, and rubbed his neck while twisting it back and forth.
“I’m wearing you out Lyle?”
“Just need to take a little break. Got some water?”
“Sure. I finally got something harder than that if you want it.”
“Oh no just water, thanks.”
Roy stood up from the bed and grabbed his back. “Damned arthritis. All those times stooping low in wet hiding places hoping they wouldn’t find me.” He walked to the bathroom and rinsed out a glass. He shuffled back, the glass dripping, held it out.
“Thanks,” said Lyle.
“You’re kinda different today buddy. You’re worried about that visitor you got coming?”
“A bit. It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”
“I expect that, but for now you don’t seem fine.”
“It’s not only about the visitor. I just haven’t been sleeping that well for a while,” Lyle said and he finished the water.
“So?”
“It’s been a bit crowded and unsettling in my house since my mother-in-law moved in. She’s sick. Needs constant attention or at least she wants it,” Lyle looked down at the page of notes.
“Ahh yes, crowded. I know about crowding. Remember? I’ve been in plenty joints with a lot of fellas. Two thousand at San Quentin, 350 on the Rock, not counting the guards and personnel, and about 800 at McNeil Island. Hell Lyle, Leavenworth had about 1500 inmates when I was there. So, I can sympathize with you feeling crowded. Let me ask you this. Who thinks it’s crowded?
“I do,” said Lyle.
“Well, then how would it be if you started thinking it’s not crowded?”
“But it is crowded,” said Lyle,
“Does your wife and mother-in-law think it’s crowded?”
“I don’t know. It’s different with then,”
“What’s different?”
Lyle shrugged. “They don’t see the situation like I do, I guess,” said Lyle.
“Then change the way you see the situation.”
“How do I do that?” Lyle said with a tinge of exasperation.
“Train your mind. I spoke about the importance of mind control after I got let out. I described how difficult it was being in Alcatraz, locked in a cage as wide as you could stretch your arms? Three steps front and back, side to side. That’s it. The days were bearable on account of work. But the nights. Ahh, the nights were hell, Lyle. Holy hell. We would be locked in from 5:00 evening ‘til seven in the morning, brooding over our lives, blaming our conditions on everybody. Our minds played cruel games until we didn’t know whether something really happened, or was imagined. Our thoughts created vivid scenes of our girlfriends, our wives, bumming ‘round with sugar daddies, spilling their guts to the law about private things that would keep us in the joint longer, maybe send some of us to the chair. Our paranoid minds made images so sharp and real that we could see scenes of our unfaithful women projected on the walls like movie pictures. Wives and girlfriends visiting once a month often came in new clothes, a sign to the cons that their ladies were seeing an outside fat cat when in truth the ladies had to borrow the clothes with no monies coming from their jailbirds. When we weren’t thinking of our women, we were figuring out ways to get revenge on a rat or somebody else who did us wrong. We had a name for this. We called it, hell-nighting. After a man spent the night in hell, he wasn’t in shape or mood to take crap from anybody in the morning. That’s when fights broke out, and people got hurt bad. We had two choices: Go crazy like Luke did one night when he busted up his sink and toilet with his bed and set fire to the mattress, or find a way to deal with our predicament. Now Lyle, the warden or the guards weren’t creating those hell-nightings. We were. So we had to start making better movies. Instead of mind-projecting our women steppin’ out with other men on our cell walls, we pictured them in bed with us in some swank hotel room in the City. We saw us strolling with our ladies, and we buying fur coats and fancy outfits for them. Since neither of our movies were real we chose to project the ones we could deal with.”
Lyle looked at him questioningly.
Roy found a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray and lit it. “Don’t we all spend our time making up things and calling it real?” the question came hissing from his chest mixed with exhaled smoke. “Ain’t we creating our own realities?” Roy looked over the top of his glasses waiting for a reaction. “What’s that stanza say about stone walls?”
“‘Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage: Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage,’” said Lyle.
“There you go. And how do you think he made his mind innocent and quiet? He didn’t dwell on the bad imaginings, but only the good that could turn his cell from a cage to a hermitage.
“I had a real experience in this when I was busting out of McNeil. Maybe you want to get some of this down,” said Roy.
Lyle languidly opened his tablet to a new sheet, and waited,
“It’s a holiday, In fact Labor Day, and there’s a baseball game between the guards and the inmates. Me, Larry Bogart, and Everett Impyn are standing in a crowd of other inmates on the right field side of the yard. Larry and Everett are serving time for a bunch of robberies, kidnappings, and assaults. I’m serving time for that mail truck robbery in San Diego plus extra time for the train escape. We had it planned. There weren’t others that knew, except an inmate, a trustee who worked on the grounds that I gave a month of smokes to cut a couple strands in the bottom of the back fence. We’re waiting for the game to get exciting. Sure enough, a fly ball is hit out to left field and everybody is cheering and watching the left fielder run toward it. They’re watching the play and keeping their eyes on the ball that’s in the air. While this is happening, we three make a dash for the right field fence. I remember breathing so hard I couldn’t hear my feet hitting the ground. The three of us were high tailing it to the fence and of course the lookouts saw us heading across the field and started firing. I ran ahead of Bogart and Impyn and must have been a yard from the fence when I heard Impyn fall. He yelled out something, but I didn’t stop to know find out what he yelled. I hit the ground and rolled over toward the fence and just before I went through the cut, I heard Bogart scream, ‘I’m hit. They shot me.’
“Now here’s the thing, Lyle. I’m running like mad and I see myself running like mad like I’m in a movie, or in a dream. I don’t feel it’s me running, or that the shots are meant for me so I’m not afraid. I’m almost giddy like a little kid whose taken off all his clothes to run around naked. It’s somebody else running and escaping and I’m off to the side, or maybe floating above, rooting for him, me. Fact, I’m so busy rooting for me that without realizing it, I’m through the fence and running toward a big dairy barn among the cows. Onliest thing is the guards have to keep about 250 other cons from storming the fence, so that gives me some time to hide and distracts the guards and their dogs enough to think I’ve run off in the woods. I stay in the barn a few days, hiding under a haystack in the loft and coming down when I could to get milk to hold me until I can get to the water. I can see a couple of rowboats on the shore, but I know searchers are watching them, so after a few days I jump into the sound and begin swimming across.
It really wasn’t a problem. I just took my time using some side strokes and the Australian crawl. I had to swim underwater a ways because I saw a couple of boats launch from the other side and come rowing toward me. Here’s the part I been meaning to get to about the mind.
The whole time I was in the sound, the water didn’t feel cold, it felt nice and warm, I wasn’t afraid, or worried, or nothing, just like the yard break. I was watching me swim the same as I was watching me run toward the fence. I was remembering what I heard when I was hiding in the barn from those looking for me, they talking about Everett being shot dead and Bogart hit in the hand and leg and being re-captured. I was hearing them talking about how I was wounded too and would probably be found dead in the woods. All of this stuff I was observing while silently swimming underwater. Underwater I could hear nothing except a roaring sound of the water rushing past me. As I swam underwater, I seemed to lose the feeling in my body and I began to lose the distinction of what is the water and what is me. I kept moving. I know I kept moving because I eventually got to the shore; but I didn’t know how long it took me to get across, or what parts of my body to move as I crawled out since all of it felt like the water; and I didn’t realize that the whole time I was underwater, I wasn’t breathing, or how long it had been since I had taken a breath. I managed to make it onto Fox Island and find a stand of trees to hide in while I rested myself from the swim, not because I was tired, but because I was totally confused. Maybe I was hit. Maybe I was dead. I looked at my hands all shriveled from the water, and it was as though I was seeing them for the first time. The shape of the hand and the fingers seemed to be from some strange alien, they didn’t seem to belong to me. I hid in an apple orchard for a day or so until I didn’t see or hear any signs of people looking for me. Here’s the thing about the mind I want to tell you Lyle: My mind seemed to be just ahead of my body planning my next move for my escape. It was like I was seeing the end scenario and had to wait for my body to arrive. It choreographed my movements, and mapped out my escape routes. I finally understood that I was not dead ‘cause I was sitting under an apple tree munching on an apple. I always wondered, still do, whether if the thought of me being dead had come to me under water, would I have taken a big breath and drowned, to fulfill the thought?”
Lyle had not been able to write down the complete story as Roy told it. Instead, he had taken to unconsciously doodling. “I got the part about you guys running to the fence, but I’m not sure about the spooky part of your mind watching yourself escape. I’m not sure how I would write that so your readers would understand.”
“What I’m saying is we create our world with our thoughts.”
“You’re telling me my thoughts are creating my mother-in-law’s sickness? How can that be?”
“Would she be sick if there was no you?”
“Of course,” said Lyle.
“Who would know if there was no you?”
“My wife Audrey and everybody.”
“But if there were no you, would there be ‘your wife?’”
“She wouldn’t be my wife, but she’d be Rita’s daughter.”
“See you’re making all this up. If there is no you, who knows there is an Audrey, Rita’s daughter?”
“Others would know. Common sense would tell us that.”
“Common sense. Ahhh. Yes, Common sense. You mean the sense that is commonly held. You mean common ignorance. Without you, there is no me, or your wife, or your mother-in-law or this room or on and on and on. We only exist because of you. Your common sense tells you to believe I’m sitting here, rubbing my back, experiencing what you are experiencing. Not true. I don’t exist without you.”
“Roy, that’s plain nuts. You’re real because you just handed me a glass of water. You told me everything I’ve written on this tablet.”
“Hey Lyle, buddy, no offence, but the writing is all yours. You call it a transcription, but you put down the bunch of words and made them into sentences and paragraphs. You’re the one that lit up the pages. Who would I have brought water to, if there were no you?”
Lyle seemed confused and agitated. He stood up holding the glass and headed toward the bathroom. He stopped at the door. “Are you telling me Mr. Gardner that all of the train robberies, all of the bank robberies, and all of the jail breaks are things I created? If that were so, I’d have to be you.”
Roy grinned. “Maybe you got something there.”
“But Roy. We just met a few weeks back. I don’t know what you know and you don’t know what I know?”
Roy stood over a small trash can emptying rumpled tissues. “That’s only your conclusion.”
“I’m confused. We were talking about dealing with my mother-in-law.”
“And I was talking about how I dealt with being a con among hundreds of men. If you recognize that mind creates your circumstances and your thoughts are the way you handle them then you will work to experience your mother-in-law dilemma in a better way. You say you’re not sleeping well worrying about your living situation. I don’t imagine that your mother-in-law is standing over you with a broom stick, poking you to keep you awake. Then who is keeping you awake? You are. You’re the con who’s hell-nighting my friend.”
Lyle wilted in the chair. “Sorry Mr. Garner, but I think I’ve had enough for the day.”
“Why Mr. Garner now? What happened to just Roy? Did this conversation change the nature of our relationship?” Roy grinned and began to rearrange his bed covers.
Lyle gathered his pen and tablets, stuffed them into his briefcase. In lieu of their mystifying conversation he decided to walk home.
It was only after he was two blocks from the Governor Hotel that he realized he hadn’t noticed the hotel smells and people sounds that had earlier aroused his disdain and harsh judgement. Point taken, he mused: His inattention caused them not to exist. Did he forget to think about them, to make them up as he passed through the hall? is what he had to ask himself.
THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
A FERRY TRIP
4
Lyle stood stationed at the San Francisco Ferry Terminal waiting for the Oakland Pier ferry to bring Reverend Billy Promise over from the train station across the bay. He mulled over his mother-in-law’s glowing account of this faith healer from Houston, how she swore that she had personally seen The Reverend lay hands on the sick and cure them right there on the spot. She recounted how once hopeless cripples approaching on wheel chairs, hobbling on crutches, people that lost their sight, were bereft of speech, deprived of hearing, all were miraculously healed, dancing away, spotting pennies across the room, speaking again and in Biblical tongues, all due to Reverend Promises’ touch. Her condition, she assured her daughter, would be child’s play for the reverend. Lyle considered their living quarters. The apartment was on the first floor, initially spacious enough for him and Audrey. A large parlor was just inside the front door, widows looking out to Liberty Street, the dining room and kitchen were approached from the parlor to the right. To the left of the apartment was a hallway, a bedroom on the left, Lyle and Audrey’s, a bathroom followed, then to the rear were two more bedrooms, the furthest back used for storage. When Rita arrived, the couple arranged one of the back bedrooms to suit her, a double bed, a highboy chest of drawers, a dressing table and mirror. The room had a small closet in which she could hang some of the clothes brought from Texas. It was necessary to pile the rest of her belongings in a corner of the third bedroom. The only way Lyle and Audrey could afford to send for Reverend Promise was to have him stay with them. That meant he would need to go into Rita’s room. They would need to bed and board him until. . .when? They were hopeful it would be for a short time relying on Rita’s belief in his healing powers. For the time being, Lyle and Audrey had to give their bedroom to Rita. This left the third bedroom, the storeroom for Lyle and Audrey. Having no beds left, they would sleep on the floor among the stored cardboard boxes and Rita’s things. Lyle’s deliberations were broken with the sounds of footsteps and conversation, the anxious energy of passengers arriving. Behind the determined paces of the incoming passengers, a slender figure, tall, erect, seemed to glide along the great marble hall, his every step joining the echoing sounds. He wore a yellow suit, white necktie against a black shirt, brown mirror-buffed wing tip shoes. His dark hair, a healthy crop, was combed high. A sculptured wave bounced Jell-O-like as he jauntily moved toward the benches. Swaying side to side like a clock pendulum, a large cross caught the light on each cycle giving the appearance of a brakeman’s lantern signaling caution ahead. His pink white hands were bedecked with garish rings, one on each of his little fingers and larger bejeweled rings on his index fingers. He quickly stopped to set down his leather suitcase, jiggled the wide belts that held it shut, adjusted his tie, and checked his coiffure in the glass case covering the train schedules. Lyle stood off to the side, observing. He wasn’t ready to engage. The Reverend Billy Promise was here and Lyle wasn’t sure now that he was here, what he would do with him. What encumbrances might lurk ahead housing and feeding him? What amenities would he need to provide to keep the reverend occupied in those times that he wasn’t healing Rita. He stood back and watched a while longer. The reverend readily held doors for women awkwardly managing heavy suit cases, slightly bowing, broadly smiling as he signaled them to move on by while he untangled their bags from the doorway. Lyle snapped a handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his forehead, his mouth, brushed his nose, and in the same moment that he replaced it, he took in a deep breath. He walked up to the reverend.
“Reverend Promise, I am Lyle Simmons, Rita Udall’s son-in-law,” he held out his hand.
“Well Lyle, I’m mighty glad to meet you,” his voice, hushed, the words, mellifluous, like the last words to a hymn. He stood very close; his large blue eyes sparkled as he looked directly into Lyle’s. Lyle blinked twice to check his impression that they were twirling.
“How was the ferry ride?” asked Lyle.
“A bit rough, but the sea air was wonderful Lyle. So, how is Sister Rita doing?”
“She’s got her good days and bad days sir. I know she’ll be glad to see you. She’s been worrying us to death with her poor health and her insisting we send for you.”
Reverend Promise made no comment, but continued to stare at Lyle, slightly smiling; but silent.
“I do hope you’ll encourage her to continue taking her medications. She’s convinced that only you can heal her, so she’s not taking her medicine.”
The Reverend continued smiling.
This made Lyle uncomfortable, thinking what to do next; he made a quick lunge for the reverend’s suit case. “So shall we go?”
“Why I suppose we should, Lyle.”
GUN SMUGGLER
ROY GARDNER
5
Roy grinned as he let Lyle in the room. “How was your week? I hope you’ve been able to get some rest.”
“Well, I haven’t had much since I met Reverend Promise at the ferry. We’re still trying to get him settled in. Our whole life routine is a mess. Audrey and I are now sleeping on the floor of what use to be our storage room ‘til we can either afford a bed, or get rid of the reverend.
“You gonna be okay to write today?”
“Of course. Gives me a chance to get out of the house.”
Lyle scanned his tablet. “We kinda got off track with your story about escaping from McNeil. That comes later, correct?” asked Lyle.
“Oh yeah. Much later. Seems I recall telling you that story to help with your imagining. Seems to me,” said Roy.
“Yeah. Okay. I’d like to get back to the chronology of your story. That’s the Army, right? Tell me about the Army.
“About this time, I’d been in so much trouble, I was told I had to either join the Army or spend my next years on a work farm somewhere. Well, I had left Missouri in the first place to keep from working on a farm, so I went ahead and joined. I gotta tell you Lyle, Army life didn’t agree with me at all. The discipline reminded me of my old man, and the reformatory. The government sent me to the Philippines where the U.S. had been fighting a war since the end of the 1800’s. It ended in 1902 and we put a bunch of Filipinos in concentration camps to control the troublemakers. We didn’t get ‘em all though, so they needed troops over there to root out the revolutionaries and to patrol villages to make sure the civilians obeyed curfews. Since we didn’t know the good Filipinos from the revolutionaries, we were ordered to shoot anyone on sight if they were wandering around after curfew. Lucky for me, the village I was assigned to was a quiet little place and I didn’t have to hurt anybody. That was a good thing, but the bad thing was the Philippines became boring as all hell. That’s when I started to drink a lot. Got drunk one night and ended getting this eagle tattoo that’s been used to identify me too many times to talk about. Other than that, the whole army ordeal was a waste of my life. We finally got orders to come back to the states. That was in 1906. That date sound familiar, Lyle?”
“Yeah. The earthquake.”
“Yep. Got back to San Francisco in January and couple months later, the earthquake hit.”
“So you experienced the quake then?”
“No. My number wasn’t up yet. Like I told you, me and the army weren’t meant for each other, so one day I left the barracks and never went back. I went to New Mexico. That’s where I was, Gallup, when the quake hit. I’d gotten a job in a little mine just to earn some money, but I wasn’t gonna stay long. Didn’t know what I was gonna do, but I knew I had to satisfy this wanderlust. I eventually headed over the border into Mexico, and ended up in Chihuahua. I wandered around Chihuahua with the little bit of money I had and picked up a few winnings here and there and lost a few here and there. There was a little cantina kind of on the outskirts, away from the busier places. It wasn’t a building as much as it was a lean-to over a dirt floor. The owner, Jaime, opened around 11:00 in the morning, about the time I was starting to need a drink. He would randomly set up small barrels, vegetable crates and rickety chairs around old oak tables, and wait for the drinkers to find him. The knife scarred tables of initials, crude drawings, other hieroglyphs etched a picture of the kinds of characters that visited the place. Of an afternoon, just past noon or so, I sat in Jaime’s cantina, sampling a tequila with a beer back, and in walked two fellows, Americans. It didn’t take much talking before we knew we were barking up the same trees. Adventure and money.
“‘Mexico is the land of opportunity these days,’ said the taller fellow, Bryce, the name he gave. ‘Got a revolution going on between this guy Carranza and Huerta.’
“‘Bryce and me heard things in Puerta del Sol,’ the other one, Dan, said. ‘Carranza’s army is outgunned by Huerta’s. We was drinking with some Mexicans and after we had downed a bunch of mezcal, they got real serious like, and talked in our faces. They was asking us if we knew where they could lay hands on some guns and ammo.’
“‘If a body wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty and risking his neck, I think he might be able to make a killing selling guns to Carranza. The Mexicans are willing to pay four or five times the price,’ this guy Bryce said.
“I sat up and said, ‘I’m interest my friends. Where do I sign up?” I held up my tequila glass to theirs and we clinked.
“‘We got a contact in Arizona. A big muckety-muck. He’ll front us the money and set up a way to get guns. He’s expecting us to smuggle them to the Carrancistas, collect in gold and silver, and make it back to Arizona. We pocket half the profit,’ said Bryce.
‘What’s to keep us from keeping all the money?’ I leaned in to them.
“The guys looked at each other and smiled.”
“‘We said this man is powerful. You wouldn’t get to spend the first dollar before he found you,’ said Bryce.
“The men wrote an address on a cardboard lid from a beer carton. They didn’t give me a time frame, only that they’d be at the address sometime soon. They disappeared. I never ran into them again at Jaime’s place. I stayed put in Chihuahua, getting involved in some of the betting schemes, visiting the cantinas, and engaging the working women around town. I got to admit, Lyle, I stayed drunk most of the time. I ain’t proud of that, but that’s just what I did. When money ran out, I hitched a ride on a truck hauling oil to Nogales.
“I knocked around the Mexican side of Nogales with the cardboard lid always turning up, as if it was reminding me to look up the man. I crossed back into Arizona and hitchhiked toward Phoenix finally getting in the area of the address. It seemed to be well known since everybody told me exactly where it was. It was a large ranch on the outskirts of Phoenix surrounded by a high fence and a gate with sentries. All I could do was show the gatekeepers the cardboard lid with the address on it. They weren’t about to let me in, until I mentioned the two fellows I met in Mexico. Mexico seemed to be the pass word because they made a phone call and had me stay put. I had to wait a half hour I’d say before a Jeep came speeding up. A tall young man walked up to me, asked to see the cardboard lid, looked it over and pointed to the Jeep. ‘Get in,’ he said. He drove to a big log cabin type house and had me wait in a foyer. I must have waited for another half hour before he showed up again to take me into an office, more like a library with walls of books floor to ceiling. A distinguished movie-star looking gentleman met me at the door.
“‘Welcome. Have a seat.’ he said.
“I sat.
“‘I was told you might show up. Good thing you kept the address on the cardboard lid. Indeed, here you are,’” he said. “I’m a business man. Mr.?’ He waited for me to say my name. ‘Yes, Mr. Gardner.” He resumed, “I am a business man who must and will remain anonymous at all costs. In short, I have set up a transaction with a gun dealer south of Tombstone, in Bisbee. You are to pick up a wagon of hay, sacks of beans, corn, flour, and seeds. The wagon has a false bottom and underneath will be three dozen rifles. You are to meet a Mexican store keeper on the main street in Cananea, Sonoma. He will be a Carranza man and will accept everything you have. He will exchange empty bushels, pottery, blankets, sacks, and other things and give you another wagon to use to take back to the States. It will also have a false floor that will have gold bullions and silver ingots. You get those back to me. I give you half of the take after I meet my expenses and, if you wish. a new wagon to deliver back to Sonoma.
“‘Do you have any questions?’”
“‘Am I all alone on this delivery? What happened to the fellows I met in Chihuahua?’”
“Well, I’m sure you must realize 36 rifles are not a lot of firearms. I have other men making other deliveries all around Mexico. The men you talked with are making their own deliveries. You won’t be running into them anytime soon.”
“And your name is . . .?”
“My name doesn’t matter. This is a sensitive undertaking, so I want to let you know that you are on your own, like the other fellows you met. I never heard of you if something should go wrong. You stand to make a lot of money or stand to be thrown into prison if you are careless enough to get caught.”
Lyle continued taking notes from Roy’s telling and eventually wrote his narrative.
Roy’s journeyed over 60 miles to Cananea, in Sonoma, camping among the ferns, palms, and magnolias along the way, drinking from creeks as he found them, and eating hard bread and dried beef. Cananea was friendly to Carranaza and he was assured there would be Carrancistas expecting his wagon. For the exchange, he was to find a small grocery, una tiendita, identified by a Don Quijote Cerveza poster hanging next to the front door. Everything else would be explained by the grocer. The main street was eerily quiet, he and his horse-team the only travelers, with only a few people moving around. On the corner ahead were bins of brightly colored fruits and vegetables displayed along the curb, una tiendita. He drew up the wagon and climbed down, expecting to find the grocer. He slapped the dust off the rump of one of the horses and moved to the back, to make sure nothing had moved to expose his hidden cargo. He jiggled the backboard and rearranged a few sacks. A short plump man appeared in the doorway to the little store and wiggled the cerveza poster. Both he and the grocer were distracted by a dust storm brewing in the distance. Now that Roy focused on it, he could see the dust cloud was filled with Mexican riders rushing in his direction at daredevil speed, wildly shouting Mexican somethings. He looked toward the tiendita. The grocer had disappeared. He had no choice but to stand still and hope the riders pass. The bunch did no such thing. They encircled Roy, rifles trained, and dismounted to approach. It was a ragged group; some still wore field clothes, only a few wore a uniform. One of the uniformed soldiers strode forward barking and spraying Spanish in Roy’s face. Without comprehending every word, he fully understood the physicalness of being arrested as two dust covered Huertistas latched onto his arms. The rest of the troop remounted, some grabbed the reins and led away the horses and wagon. The two soldiers herded him toward the brig at the end of the street. Midway to the jail as the three passed what appeared to be an empty shop, a huge mastiff bounded from the doorway aimed at the leg of one of the soldiers. While the soldiers fought to keep the dog from getting the upper hand, Roy bolted into the empty building. The grocer was hiding behind a counter and gave an anemic whistle for him to go out the back door. The grocer stayed put. Roy found himself in a narrow alley with a 50/50 chance that he would pick the correct direction to run. He started in one direction only to see the parade of soldiers leading his wagon away from town. He ran the opposite way, spotting a figure waving him forward.
“Vamos, vamos,” a bean pole of a man motioned.
Roy looked in all directions and followed him to a livery stable sitting alone and away from the town.
Settled in a stall, resting in a clump of hay, Roy worked to catch his breath. The small fellow poked his head in and smiled through missing teeth.
“Dinero. Dinero. Cuanto tienes?” He took out pesos and showed Roy. “Dinero.”
Roy fished into his pocket and drew out a hundred pesos in bills folded around a few coins. “Es todos.”
The man took the money, hands shaking so much he could barely stuff the money into his shirt pocket. He smiled; but there was something in his smile that bothered Roy. It was a guilty, uncomfortable smile. It was a smile that told Roy he needed to get out and get out quickly. He shoved the little man to the side and ran for the door.
The next thing he remembered was falling off a plank stretched across two barrels onto a dirt floor. He was in one of the Mexican cells. His face and head hurt terribly and he climbed back on the board and went back to sleep.
In the morning, half awake, he was snatched off the board. Two soldiers wouldn’t wait for him to stand, they dragged him out and hoisted him onto a wagon, heaving him toward the back like a sack of potatoes. Other soldiers piled onto the rig headed toward the train station where they joined hundreds of others boarding. Among the noisy throng were also shackled prisoners, mostly Mexicans, being hustle into train cars. Roy was part of the captured shoved into a stable car among horses. The closed doors shook and thundered, holding in the day’s heat and animal smells as the train moved on toward Hermosillo. Roy was able to stay on his feet as the freight car violently swayed back and forth over uneven tracks, but some prisoners passed out from lack of water or the heat, or weakness by being in Mexican jails, landing among the horse manure; or a few were crushed between an animal and wall when a horse was spooked by a sound or sudden jolt, they falling to the floor in pain. All and all, the trip took all night to arrive in Hermosillo. In the morning the soldiers disembarked, prisoners in tow. They moved them to a large plaza, three sides of jail cells, the fourth side a tall red brick wall with a gate in the middle, the gate through which the soldiers and prisoners entered. The men were led down a bank of small cubicles, past cracked and weathered doors, each with a small barred window toward the top, in the middle, the only way light might get in. All the doors opened to the plaza. Two prisoners were assigned a cell, or so it appeared to Roy. When he was shoved toward a door, his guard unlocked it, walked halfway through, then turned and grabbed at Roy’s belt and yanked him in. Roy stumbled toward the back wall, landing in a corner. The room was dark and he sat a spell, trying to adjust to the darkness.
“Welcome Jack,” came a voice.
Roy blinked a few times and soon was able to see a figure standing between him and the door. With the faint light spilling through the window, he could make out a tall, thin, bearded man.
“Name’s Hughes.” He walked toward Roy and held out his hand to help him get to his feet. “How’d they get you?” he asked.
“Caught me with some guns for Carranza,” answered Roy. “You?”
The man moved closer in view, his malodorous body and breath caused Roy to recoil somewhat. “Was on my way to buy some Tequila and Mescal. Trouble is I was trying to buy too much of the stuff. Asking a lot of questions that made small-town officials suspicious, claiming I was spying and passing secret messages in my booze dealings.”
“How would they have come to that conclusion?”
“’cause I was. They found some maps and things on me,” said Hughes.
“How long you think we’ll be kept here?” asked Roy.
“Hmm. Not long. Til morning. At least for me. I ‘spect the same for you too.”
“Then where do we go?”
“We go against that wall, my friend.”
“Firing squad!!?”
“There’s gonna be quite a party. Got fellas in the next cell, two of em that’ll be joining us. I don’t know what they did or who else might be joining us.”
That night Roy hardly slept as every tiny noise could mean someone coming to take him to the wall. Eventually he fell asleep. In the early morning, startled by the sunlight, he jumped up to see Hughes sitting on the floor, back to a wall, watching Roy waking.
“Don’t appear someone is coming for us today,” whispered Hughes.
Indeed, there were no executions that day, nor the next, or the next. The men were in limbo when the day would be. Hughes mentioned to Roy that the delay might have something to do with the Huertistas’ tendency to put offenders on trial before executing them. And this happened to be the case for Roy. One afternoon a guard arrived, swung opened the door and grunted at Roy to follow him. He was led to a room where three officers sat behind a table. He stood, hands shackled behind his back while the men continued talking among themselves. The middle gentleman spoke to a short bespectacled man in a rumpled suit and the man interpreted the words to Roy.
“He to say you. You to bring gun a Mexico. For to do that, you no friend a Mexico.”
The gentleman in the middle turned talked to each man next to him, using his hands in spirited expression, he waited for them to respond. Both shook their heads affirmatively. The man in the middle looked at the interpreter and shook his head yes.
“El comandante to tell a me that to say a you that ellos, los hombres to say you to be guilty and you to be shot en un dia pronto. Soon.”
The interpreter went to the door and called in a guard.
A short fat Huertista took Roy’s arm like he was trying to stop the blood-flow and delivered him back to his cell. With the cell door opened, the soldier gave Roy a violent shove with his boot. Roy had time to catch on to the door jamb to keep from falling face down, and as he held on to it, he felt a piece of hardware jiggle under his hand. He withdrew his hand quickly to avoid having the door slam on it, but when the door was closed, he inspected the moving piece.
“Hughes. Take a look at this,” said Roy as he wriggled the striker plate between the door and the door frame.
Hughes looked in closer
“See this piece here. We can carve away the wood underneath it and pop open the door. Looka here.” Roy again wriggled the piece around the locking mechanism and it loosened more.
“Grab that spoon,” said Roy.
Roy immediately began whittling at the door frame with it. The wood was aged and easily broke away. Hughes gathered up the chips from the floor and threw them in a corner, then spread them with his foot. It didn’t take long before Roy had completely cut almost through the wood holding the lock plate, except for a small section which would give way at the slightest touch.
“Now what?” Hughes asked.
“I’m not sure. But we got to overpower Poncho and his friends to get out of here, or least die trying. You got any ideas?” asked Roy.
“For sure we’re gonna die in front of the firing squad, so we just rush the guards and see what happens.”
“We get out everybody. The other two next door. We have a better chance with four of us rushing the guards,” said Roy.
As the men were talking, the door flew opened and the guard they named Poncho looked in at the two, then moved aside to allow another guard to come in with a bucket of rice with some sort of meat sitting atop. It could have been goat, rabbit, squirrel, or a mule repurposed. Roy looked at the lock plate and it dangled in place. He knew one more opening would cause it to fall on the floor exposing the lock’s weakness. He held his breath as Poncho took one more look around, made a low growl sound, and slammed the door shut. Fortunately, the door locked, but the plate was now only held in place because the door was closed. They would have to carry out their plan soon.
Roy had studied the routines of the prison, especially the guards’ habits during the early hours of the morning. By this time, soldiers had gone to their quarters, leaving one or two to stand watch; but even those on duty cat-napped during these hours. Roy and Hughes decided two in the morning would be the time to move. They reasoned that surely all the guards would be taking a nap and would easily be caught off guard. The men tested the door and saw that a heavy shoulder would burst it open. However, as they waited for the time to bust out, they heard footsteps outside. It appeared that the night sentry had not taken a seat, or fallen asleep as they had hoped. He was making the rounds, jiggling door handles, peering through the small cell windows. They were able to gage his alertness from the sounds of his boots sweeping across the wood planks and the time he took from door to door, then there was a long yawn. He had one door to check before getting to their door. A pull would certainly cause the lock to give way. Roy and Hughes, ears against the door, looked at each other. There was faint light through the window but each could see the fear in the other’s eyes. There was no verbal agreement, only a magnetic current of self-preservation. Now the guard stood at the door and they could see his shadow advance closer to position himself to look in. His feet made one last slide before he stopped and the men knew his next move would be toward the handle. Hughes gave the nod and the two stormed the door, busting it opened. The swinging door caught the guard in the face and he fell back, dropping his rifle. Hughes stood over him as the soldier tried to sit up and kicked him hard in the face. The sentry fell back groaning as Roy took his rifle. While Roy stripped the guard of his shirt, wrapping some of it around his bleeding face to cover his mouth, then tying his hands behind his back with his belt, Hughes let the other men out and handed them the guard’s ammo belt. As luck would have it, there was no other guard at the big gate, only a rifle and an ammo belt. Hughes snatched up the ammo belt as they raced out of the gate. The other men grabbed the rifle. Hughes and Gardner headed into the woods and the other men took off in other directions.
For two days Roy and Hughes wandered around through the scrub bushes, jacarandas, yuccas and cacti, Hughes shooting rabbits, Roy roasting them over small campfires. They never saw the other men again. One day after shooting a wild chicken Hughes began to reload. As he tried to load the chamber, he discovered that the ammo did not fit. Hughes let out a round of curses and foul oaths with shouts that Roy could hear across the landscape. As Roy ran toward him, Hughes met him in the middle holding the rifle in one hand and the ammunition belt in other.
“Appears we picked up the wrong ammo belt Gardner,” he said.
When Roy tried to load and also failed, he joined in Hughes’s outcries with his own set of curses.
“This means the other fellas don’t have ammo either, they picked up the wrong belt too,” Hughes said.
The two trekked through the Mexican wilderness a few more days. Hughes wanted to find the coast and Roy wanted to get back over the border, so they went their separate ways. Roy moved on through mesquite and cactus, and with no rifle, he constantly ducked behind the foliage at the slightest sound. He ate nopales and tetechas, using his shirt to carefully harvest them from the cacti. Beginning to tire of walking through the terrain, he was becoming concerned about water when he came upon a small stream. Drinking his fill, he followed it until he saw a stone casita sitting beside it. A couple lines of clothes swayed in the slight breeze and the faint smell of cooking drifted over. Roy crouched and began scheming how he might get to the food, examining the scene, marking hiding places to land when he made his break, and escape routes once he snatched his haul. He had his route mentally mapped out and was silently counting down his dash when he felt something poke him between his shoulder blades. He’d been in this situation before and knew better than to move around too quickly, raising his hands, he carefully turned to see the mussel of a 30-30, and followed the barrel up to see a masked soldier, cap pulled down to cover his eyes. The soldier spoke in short rapid sentences and motioned with the rifle that he needed to stand and move ahead.
Roy stood and used wide slow hand gestures with loud over pronounced English to relay the idea that he was a lost traveler, wandering through the woods, with no intention of harming anyone. His explanation was ignored, the soldier poked him to move on toward the casita. Nearing the little house, glancing through the opened side door, Roy saw a picture on the wall and underneath it he read “Presidente Carranza.” He frantically pointed to the picture calling out, “Viva Carranza! Viva Carranza!” Rapidly pointed to the picture, then to himself adding, “Mi amigo. Mi amigo.”
The soldier was mollified by Roy’s enthusiasm and lowered the barrel of his carbine but continued to urge him into the casita. Soon an old man and woman came out of hiding and they looked to the soldier to explain. The soldier leaned the rife in a corner and motioned for Roy to sit, and in a scant few words, asked the old folks to bring food and drink to the stranger. The old woman, humbly set a large stew of hominy, pork floating among onion and vegetables before him, then a small stack of tortillas. With his nose almost touching the stew, Roy gorged himself, pausing only longer enough to find the glass of Horchata set in the middle of the table. During a glance toward the drink, Roy looked up to see that the soldier had removed the mask and hat. He gulped down a piece of tortilla, almost choking when he saw that the person across the table was not a man, but a young woman. Her long black hair, freed from her cap, fell past her shoulders, and seeing her face, he saw that her lips were colored all along. Her dark eyes appeared gentler in the open, less menacing behind a mask. It was clear to Roy that the young woman knew how to handle weaponry and that she was probably una soldadera. In his travels through Mexico and his talks with Hughes, he learned that Mexican troops had many women following soldiers into battles. Some of them were fighters, but most of them traveled to cook and take care of the men the way women can take care of them. Some became spies to seduce the other side’s soldiers and gather secrets. He resisted showing any reaction to the gender surprise, rather signing in large hand movements and slow English ravings about the food and his gratitude for their hospitality. It had been a long time since Roy was in the company of a woman, and sitting in such a close space stirred a longing. A quick scenario flashed in his mind, however there was nothing in her demeanor that suggested she might have the slightest interest toward him. In fact, her disposition behind the mask and in uniform indicated to Roy that she would have been a soldier’s side-by-side fighter, not his or anyone’s, female companion. She and her parents watched and waited patiently as he finished eating, but having given a stranger all the help they could give, they were anxious that he should leave, and Roy could read that. In their final act of kindness, the old couple gathered dried food, bread, cured meat, raw vegetables wrapped in a thick cloth and offered these along with cautions and directions on the best and safest way he might find the border.
“I like it Lyle.”
“Roy you’re some lucky so and so to get out of that one,” said Lyle.
“Damned right, I was lucky,” Roy lit a cigarette and was shaking out the match.
“But luck doesn’t always figure into these situations. When your freedom and your life are at risk, you take notice of everything. A blind friend wouldn’t use a seeing eye dog, or use a cane. He used his hearing and his feeling and his intuition. I once told him how people believe blind people are given acuter senses than the sighted. He got all upset and strongly disagreed. The blind are more compelled to pay attention to everything than others, so they develop keener senses. That means remembering where everything is placed in a room, recognizing sounds and where they come from, being aware of the feel of certain surfaces on your feet, against your hand. Determining from what direction smells are coming and what they represent. Is something burning, or cooking, or heating; or is there a scent of a friend or a foe? That’s what made me a good escape artist. I practiced how to be aware of everything around me. I counted the steps from the prison yard’s exercise area to the fence. I remembered which way a guard faced when he came in or left a room, and the sequences of his locking, unlocking, closing, opening the cell door. I remembered what certain doors sounded like when they closed, when they were locked. I memorized schedules of certain guards, what days they were on duty, the days they were taking vacations. I knew which way they faced the most in the tower. I noticed and memorized all of that. I’m not gonna tell you luck played no part in my escapes, shots that missed me, guns that didn’t fire, at McNeil they tried to smoke me out with a fire that actually gave me a great cover to move to the sound, lawmen walking right next to me hiding, stuff like that, but over-all, I was good at my craft, Lyle. Jails had a rough time holding me.
THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
HEALER
6
Reverend Promise had settled his things in his bedroom. He immediately prayed over Rita even before he unpacked his luggage. Lyle and Audrey stood back, arms around one another as they watched the reverend light a tightly wrapped clump of leaves, the odor resembling a garbage fire, and saw him wave the burning plants in loops as he circled Rita. He hummed something low and guttural as he seemed to waltz around her. She stood, eyes closed, rather unsteady, but managing to keep standing. Once or twice the smoke was too much for her and she coughed and tried to fan it away.
“Try not to wave away the smoke Sister. It’s doing you good. It’s chasing away Satan’s demons that have latched on to you.” He continued encircling her and making large loopty-loops with his burning herbs filling the room with smoke. “And Brother Lyle and Sister Audrey, this sage will remove the demons who have lived in this apartment for many years. They won’t bother you anymore.”
Audrey coughed, fanned at the smoke, “I wasn’t aware of anything like that in our apartment. It’s always been very comfortable for us.”
“Got some water, Sister?”
“Yes,” said Audrey.
“A glass will do,” said Promise.
Audrey tunneled through the smoke toward the kitchen, coming back with a full glass of water.
The reverend dipped his herbs in the glass. It hissed and sent up new smoke.
“When you wash the glass, take out the sage and save it,” said Promise. “We’ll use it again.” He handed the glass to Audrey as if handing her a trophy.
“I feel better already Reverend Billy,” said Rita. “Lyle, I need a chair.”
Lyle dragged a chair to her and she sat plopped down hard.
Reverend Promise sat too. His mood slowly began to change so that he fidgeted with the seam on his pants over his right thigh, slowly running his thumb and forefinger along it. Now he began to waver forward and backward, a rhythmic motion, as though he was keeping time to some inner music; and he started to sweat. He abruptly stopped, looked at Lyle and smiled. “It’s kinda a special thing to have a little wine, like Christ you know, after we do one of these cleansings. Would you happen to have some in the cupboard?”
“Audrey, we got any wine somewhere?” Kyle asked.
“Wine? Let me think. I don’t think we do. Wine gives me a headache, so I don’t drink it,” said Audrey.
“I don’t guess we do,” said Kyle.
“Never mind for now then,” said the reverend, “but maybe on your way home tomorrow you could pick up a couple of bottles. Muscatel is good.
“Come on Sister, I’ll walk you back to your room,” said the reverend. He moved toward Rita and gently helped her stand. “Tomorrow we will do some heavy praying.”
DOLLY GARDNER
MARE ISLAND
7
“Tell me about Dolly,” said Lyle to Roy.
“Ahh yes. Dolly. That’s probably the best thing I ever did. Meet Dolly. The best choice I ever made to marry that gal, Lyle. Yes. Dolly.”
Roy paused, looking at a corner of the room as if choosing the right words before he began.
“There was a job opening I heard about. It was in the navy yard at Mare Island. Government was lookin’ for welders. I learned some of that welding when I worked for the blacksmith, but mostly I learned it in other jobs. Fact is, the time I was on the peninsula, the Navy was doing some historic things. We were assembling experimental crafts called divers. They’re called submarines now. I also worked on Navy destroyers and one of the first ever aircraft landing decks put on a ship. I didn’t look like I do today, Lyle. I was a good-looking guy back then. Stocky built, a lot of reddish, bushy hair. I weighed about 200 pounds, all muscle. I was in good shape because I had done some boxing. Dolly worked over in the infirmary helping take care of workers who got hurt or came in sick. I guess she liked my blueish grey eyes and my freckles. Everyday me and a buddy Elroy would sit out on the building scaffolding eating lunch and everyday this pretty blond would walk by heading in the same direction. We’d give her the eye and sometimes she would look up and she would blush and move on. One day I asked Elroy if he knew where she was disappearing to for lunch and he didn’t bat an eye, like he knew exactly where she went. ‘There’s a little garden over there.’ I knew where he was talking about because there was a small chapel there too. ‘That’s the one,’ he said.
“By the end of the week, I stopped balancing on a scaffold to eat my lunch and started sitting in a corner of St. Peter’s Chapel Garden casing the area to find where she took her lunch break. When I found the bench, I went to lunch early one day, took my thermos from my lunch box and rolled it under. Sure enough she came walking around the chapel, heading for her bench. She sat to unpack her lunch sack and I waited until she was done. I opened my lunchbox and set it on my bench and walked over to her, my head down, me looking real puzzled like, and I keep looking around.
“‘Oh, I beg your pardon, miss,’ I say, ‘I think that’s my thermos bottle is under your bench.’”
“‘Oh, dear. I didn’t notice anything under there,” she said standing and moving back to get a look under her bench.
“I moved in to pick it up saying, ‘Yep. That’s mine all right. Can’t imagine how it got there.’
“‘Aren’t you one of the scaffold eaters?’ she asked.
“‘Yeah. There’s a bunch of us. Kind of tired eating with all those Palookas all the time and so thought I’d try a new place. This is very nice. You come here often?’ I asked.
“I kind of went too far with that question because she looked at me real hard like she was getting ready to ask me if that was a serious question, or was it a line I always ask dames. She must have seen I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one so she answered, ‘Everyday. You probably seen me pass by you fellows on some days.’
“Oh yeah. I seen you once or twice, maybe,’ I told her, kind of crossing my fingers for the fib. ‘Didn’t occur to me that you might be coming here.’
Then, so feminine lady-like, she reached out her hand, ‘Dolly Nelson’s my name,’ she says.
I took her hand, remembering to be gentle with it and said, ‘Roy Gardner. Please to make your acquaintance.’
“I worked my way in to eat the rest of my lunch with her that day.
“She told me she worked in the infirmary taking care of the galoots that got hurt, usually because they weren’t pay attention to what they were doing. She knew I was a welder but I wanted to brag a little bit on what kind of welder and what we were working on and I made sure she knew I was working on the diver project. She asked me, ‘You think that’ll ever work?’ I told her, ‘Of course it will. If we weld them shut, there ain’t going to be a way of water getting into them when they go under. Those Navy guys will be safe. You can bet on that.’
“After that day I made sure to have lunch the same time and on the same bench as she did. I got the feeling she enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed hers and so it wasn’t too much longer that I asked her out on a date to the movies. We liked the Fox Orpheum and Fatty Arbuckle movies. I remember how sad Dolly was when he got into all that trouble over some girl’s death. We would go swimming a lot, go to dinner then dance at Topsy’s Roost dance hall on the beach front. As our relationship became more involved and we fell in love, I asked her to marry; but she wasn’t too sure about me. She wasn’t keen on my drinking too much, or my fascination with wagering. She came from a straight-as-an-arrow stock from the northwest and I was probably a bit too wild for her. But eventually, she must have seen that I could hold down a steady job and maybe heard my fellow workers say I was a good-enough Joe because she ended up saying yes. I told my buddy Elroy. He congratulated me. Then he says, ‘Does she know you’ve done a stretch in San Quintin?’ I told him she did, but I wasn’t telling the truth. I never mention that to her. I was afraid she’d tell me to take a powder if she knew I had a criminal record.
“We got married in June. A year later we had our baby girl, Jean. That’s about all that I want to say about Jean. She just married a good egg and I wouldn’t want his family to know about her old man’s life of crime. Let’s just leave it at that. I don’t want much about her in the book. As for Dolly, she’s my one true love you know Lyle. She stuck with me for 17 years, moving from place to place to be near the joints I was in. Even though she had to divorce me and marry this other guy, I still love her. You know what I mean? I mean, I understand there wasn’t no future for her and our child. I was serving 50. What kind of future was that for her?
“We were real happy for a while. I had started my own shop, then I got a better job with a big company making gas tanks for cars and trucks. I made a lot of money. I kinda think that making all that money might have been the thing that started my slide. I wanted Dolly to have some kind of reward for stickin’ with me during our rough days. She was so patient and supportive those times we didn’t have money. With all this cash, I told Dolly that I wanted to quit my job and take her and the baby to San Diego on a holiday, then go over to Tijuana. She didn’t want that. She wanted to go north to visit her family so she could show them the baby. We agreed that she would take some of the money to go north and I would take the rest and head into Tijuana, Mexico.”
THE MAIL BANDIT
ROY GARDNER
8
Lyle’s narrative read…
Tijuana sizzled with action. Street venders, party girls, gringos, lovers, children, panhandlers, crisscrossed crude pathways called ‘calles’ with never-ending resolves to be someplace else. The area was ablaze in bright colored lights outlining façades of brightly colored cantinas and large dance halls. Roy knew he could find casinos for gambling action, but he was more interested in the horses. He spent this his first night meeting Americans, fishing for tips on the race track and horses, and while he was asking, getting briefs on the best rooms to find card games. In the night’s action, he won a few, and lost a few. All totaled, he went to bed with less money. At the racetrack. true to his style, he stood aside to study the betting, study the favorites and the longshots, asking about the jockeys, their experience, their win percentages, how they finished at this track, and the horses, how well they ran on the dirt track he was looking at, and in what position would they be at the gate. But Roy’s study was not meant to pick the favorites, but to search out the longshots. Placing money on favorites was for the timid, the return, to Roy, hardly worth the effort. He was drawn to the uncertainty of the longshots. The lost risks were high, but the large wins would cover, the smaller losses, or so he reasoned. He continued to bet the longshots, surely the law of averages would kick in, he thought, never realizing that longshots are longshots because they have a low probability of winning, not a moderate one. He didn’t have the money to continue betting long enough for the averages to be viable. He left the race track with a few dollars, dropping those at a cockfight when his rooster bolted from the ring and escaped through an opening in the tent.
He managed to get back to San Diego, completely penniless, but was able to get a couple dollars from man who stopped him to ask directions. He would have to write Dolly explaining his predicament. Wandering around in search of a post office, he remembered Kansas City and the feelings of being alone and lost. The remembrance revived his fear. Meandering and retracing steps to be certain he hadn’t passed the place, Roy found it. There was a line as the clerk waited on a customer. The man in front of Roy held a large canvas pouch to his chest, worn and faded, covered in markings. When the gentleman approached the counter, the clerk greeted him like an old friend.
“What you got there Larry?”
“Thirty thousand for L.A.,” the man answered.
“It’ll go out tomorrow on the ten thirty,” said the clerk.
“Good enough. You got that paperwork to fill?”
Roy observed the clerk throw the pouch in a large bin, concentrated on what it looked like, where it landed, continued to silently recite the amount. He was immobile in thought until the clerk called, ‘Sir. You there. Next. Can I help you?”
At the hotel, Roy stood at the registration desk explaining how he would be getting money in the mail the next day to pay the room balance. His pleasant demeanor and good looks were enough to convince the clerk that he was on the up and up. The Front Street Hotel was what Roy would call a “flea bag.” His room sat just to the right of the stairs on the second floor, a small cubicle with a twin bed, small desk, and an open space to hang clothes. He would have to go to the end of the hall for the bathroom. Roy leaned over the bed to lightly pull back the tattered curtains between two fingers. His view was the side of a brick building far enough from his window to form an alley below. He reached into his small valise to pull out a .32 caliber Smith and Wesson. He had gotten it in a crap game on the border when the fellow he beat claimed he needed some of the cash back to get back to an ailing child in Bonita. Roy had not handled weapons much and he felt shaky when he broke it opened and checked the chambers. For all he knew, it was functioning and ready.
In the morning, standing across from the post office, Roy watched two men load mail pouches into a small truck. The clerk and the driver parted and the driver closed the tailgate. The truck driver was ready to drive away when the clerk called him back into the post office. This was Roy’s chance to jump onto the truck bed. Laying there among the mail pouches, he checked his pistol again and waited for the driver to leave. Along the road toward the train station, Roy waited until the driver was further away from town before he poked him between his shoulders with the pistol.
“Pull over,” said Roy.
The driver was almost nonchalant about the situation, gearing down and guiding the truck carefully to the side of the road.
Roy pointed to the back of the truck with the pistol. “Get me the bags with the money in them,” he demanded.
“Fella, I just deliver what they give me. I don’t know what’s in any of the mail.”
“Then start opening some of these pouches, and don’t try anything cute,” warned Roy.
The driver started opening the bags, some with money, others holding letters, advertisements, bill notices, etc. When he found money, Roy frantically stuffed it into his shirt, into his pockets, into his pants. He couldn’t risk taking the mail pouches, they were too easily recognized and hard to hide.
“Is this all you got? You don’t have more of these in the cab?” Roy’s voice was menacing.
“You went through it all sir,” said the driver.
“Okay then.” Roy pulled a hand full of tens from his pocket and offered them to the driver.
The man shook his head with quick ‘no’s.’
“Ain’t no one on earth would ever know, except me and you,” Roy said with a grin,
“I expect that sooner or later you’ll be caught. I wouldn’t want you mentioning I took money too. No sir, I got a family to support.”
“You’re a good man, fellow,” Roy said as he motioned him to go back to the cab, “Drive away, but don’t drive to town. Drive toward the train station first.”
Roy went back to his hotel and locked the door. He emptied his pockets, shirt, pants of the money throwing all of it on the bed. Counting his take, he realized that he had done much better than $30,000. With checks and other negotiable securities, he had hauled in $130,000. He was almost giddy stacking the money in neat piles that would be easier to stuff into pockets. He realized he was hungry, so he took a clump of bills and ventured to the nearest diner.
The first people he saw were two deputies sitting at the counter, smoking and drinking coffee.
“Just heard from Edna on dispatch,” said one of them, “Johnny Wollen was held up this morning.”
Roy ran his hands over his pockets to be certain the money was still there and none of it was poking out. The deputies continued talking about the bad state of the community and the terrible conditions of the country.
The waitress was cute, thought Roy, and flirty. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” she said. The deputies, hearing these words, examined Roy.
“Passing through,” said Roy, watching the two lawmen from the corners of his eyes.
He began to feel uncomfortable, them sitting at the other end of the counter, so he finished his meal, gave the waitress a wink and a good tip, and went back to his hotel.
“Sound about right?” asked Lyle. Roy had been quietly listening, either reliving the story as Lyle had written it, or thinking about something else.
“That’s the story I told you,” said Roy.
“Would you have shot the driver if he didn’t do what you said, Roy?”
“I don’t think so Lyle. I wasn’t even sure of how to fire that pistol. But I’m awfully glad he didn’t test me. Awfully glad.
“What did me in on that caper was I changed hotels. I had money now, so I paid the fellow at Front Street and moved to a fancier place, the Reading. When I hit the bed, I went out like a light. Slept all the rest of the day, got up at 10 that night, took a bath and went back to sleep. In the morning, sitting down to eat breakfast, I looked at a newspaper and there was the headlines about the mail robbery. I read the story and came to a sentence that caused me to choke on my bacon. I had to go over it three times to be sure I was reading it right. It said they knew the identity of the robber. I couldn’t panic. I had to stay calm as I left the restaurant and went back to my room. I figured it was time to gather all the money and leave. I piled it on the bed and reached under it for my valise, but didn’t find it. I got down to look under the bed and didn’t see it. Then I realized. I had put my valise under the bed in the Front Street hotel, and in the routine of changing hotels and concentrating on keeping track of the money, I left it there.
“I tell you Lyle, one of the things I regretted the most of the whole ordeal is having to call Dolly and tell her not only that I’d been arrested for robbery, but admitting to her that I had done a stretch in San Quentin before we were married.”
“So how much time did you get?”
“I used a firearm, so I got 25 years tacked on to a 10-year sentence. I was real honest with the judge and told him how sorry I was, and I even apologized to Stock, the guy I robbed, for the foul and hard words I used on him. I told him I was just trying to scare him into not doing anything heroic. I think the court appreciated my words, because they only gave me 25 at McNeil Island.
“I was all right with that until I heard my little girl’s voice over the phone. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to serve the time not seeing her or my wife again, so I immediately started planning my escape.”
“Is this the escape you talked about earlier. The one while the baseball game was going on?”
Roy became moody. He hadn’t heard the question. He scratched the back of his neck, looked at Lyle with a moronic smile, an affect that Lyle hadn’t seen before, then regained his presence. “I think that’s enough for the day,” he said.
Lyle put away his writing and stood up to leave.
THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
THE GRAPE
9
Audrey was tip-toeing up to Reverend Promise with a bottle of Inglenook Muscatel and ceremoniously offering it to him with both hands like an altar boy might hand the priest sacramental wine.
“Well now Sister Audrey, on behalf of the Lord, I thank you for this libation. You know Jesus himself partook of the grape at the last supper, and I’m positive at other feasts. I mean he didn’t need to create the wine at that wedding. He could have told them to go on and drink the water, that’ll do. So I’m sure, praise the Lord, he knew how just a smidgen of ferment can do a body good. Praise the Lord. You have a glass handy and something to open this?”
Rita shuffled into the room, pain-faced, holding her back, still in a robe.
“Sister Rita, look what your daughter has gone and got for us. I do think that what ails you will be somewhat helped with a taste of this,” the reverend held up the bottle.
Audrey returned from the kitchen with a drinking glass and a cork screw.
“Get your momma a glass too will you Sister Audrey.”
Audrey went back to the kitchen while the reverend worked to uncork the bottle.
“Here you go,” he said as he gingerly poured a small amount down the side of the glass.
By this time Audrey had returned with another glass and the reverend poured it half full for himself. “Care to join us Sister Audrey?”
“Oh no thanks. Lyle should be on his way home, so I better get dinner going.”
“Well Sister Rita. You and me need to go to your room to do some praying. We’ll take the bottle with us. Never know if one’s mouth will get dry in our praising Him,” he said as he held the bottle in one hand, took a drink from the glass while gently nudging Rita toward her room with bottle hand.
When Lyle entered the door, he took two steps and remembered he needed to remove his shoes. He backed up and took them off.
Audrey met him at the kitchen doorway, “How was your day?”
“Good. Good. Kinda strange, but good. Roy’s just telling me of his first big robbery and his first big jail sentence. He went off on a tangent about our senses and what is real and not real. I’m kind of wondering whether he might be getting senile or something. It was really strange. But I finally got him back on track and we covered a lot of ground.”
Audrey got close to Lyle. “They’re back in Mommy’s bedroom with a bottle of Muscatel,” she whispered. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Aud. I think everything about your mom and this Promise guy is strange,” he began in a full voice, but ended in a whisper. “Strange,” he said in a full voice.
“Shush. They’ll hear you.”
“Did you notice the reverend going out more often than usual lately,” asked Lyle.
“He goes on his walks,” said Audrey.
“Oh no. Not the times I’ve seen him go out. I saw him hail a cab.”
“Really. A cab? I haven’t seen that.”
“A couple of times, he’s gotten into a cab.”
“I just thought he was taking longer walks,” said Audrey.
“I think I’m gonna follow him the next time.”
“How you gonna do that Lyle? Hide in the trunk of the cab?” She headed into the kitchen to begin the meal.
Lyle eased his way up to Rita’s door and held his ear to it.
“This should help that pain, Sister Audrey. Does that help?”
“A little,” she said.
“Suppose I rub here? Is that better?”
“Ohh that kinda tickles there. But that’s not quite where the pain has been.”
“Well Sister Audrey sometimes when you rub some areas near the pain, the actual area is helped. Like if I rub right here in this area.”
“Ohh Reverend I haven’t had that part rubbed in a long time.”
“Well Sister, I think this might be part of your problem. Now here. Wait.”
Lyle could hear liquid pouring; wine he assumed.
“Well take a bit of this to relax you more and let me just keep rubbing this part here.”
There was silence. He waited a while longer.
“Now Sister suppose you put your hand right here so we make a healing connection. Just put it right here and gently rub me like I’m rubbing you. Now doesn’t that feel better to you?”
Lyle heard no reply. He gently walked away from the door.
Should he tell Audrey what he heard? He wasn’t sure what he heard. Maybe it was his own suspicious mind that heard the conversation as something sordid. After all didn’t Roy just say how unreliable our senses were. He needed to see and hear to be sure what he thought was happening was indeed happening.
Once Audrey placed the food on the table and all had helped themselves to servings, the four sat quietly with only the sounds of utensils hitting the plates, quiet sips from water glasses, and faint sounds of chewing. Each kept eyes on their own place settings, until finally Audrey broke the silence.
“How are you feeling Mommy? Did your session with Reverend Promise help?”
Rita looked at Reverend Promise quickly and he looked back as quickly and smiled. “I think I do feel a lot better dear. You know I’m not a drinking person, but a little bit of the wine seemed to relax me so I could receive the good reverend’s healing touch.” She took a big gulp of water.
Reverend Promise seemed to relax into a sigh, “You’re a good patient Sister Rita.”
Lyle looked across the table at Audrey who looked back at him with don’t-you- dare- say-a-thing in her eyes.
After the meal, Rita felt well enough to help Audrey with the dishes. Lyle picked up the plates and glasses from the table and Reverend Promise carried in a couple of pieces himself.
“You know it’s such a nice night, I believe I’ll take a long walk. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t help with the rest of the clean-up,” he said. Then he quietly took hold of Lyle’s shirt, just around the ribs and gently pulled him into the dining room away from the kitchen. “You think you might give me an advance of your love offering?”
“How much you need?” asked Lyle.
“I’m thinking three bucks’ll do it.”
“You gonna need money to take your walk Reverend?”
“Well I might decide to go into the city. That’ll be 60 cents at least both ways. I’d hate to not have any money on me.”
Lyle reached for his wallet as the reverend pulled harder on his shirt to steer him away from the kitchen door. Eventually, when the two were out of sight, Lyle was able to find two singles and a couple of quarters, the last cash he had on him.
“Will that do?”
The reverend looked at the money, then at Lyle. He took it and shoved it into his pocket.
“I’ll return some if I don’t need it.” He quickly headed for the door and quietly left the apartment.
“Did Reverend Billy go on his walk?” asked Rita.
“Yeah. He left,” answered Lyle.
“Didn’t say bye?” asked Audrey.
“He told me bye,” said Lyle.
“Hmmm,” said Rita.
THE ESCAPE
ROY GARDNER
10
“Roy, you ever get out of this room. Get some air. Take a walk. You ever leave?”
“Oh yeah. I go to around the corner to the drugstore to get cigarettes and some medicine. Me and the druggist always talk. We talk baseball some, the Giants, the Yankees. I mentioned one of my mind games to him once. The one where everyone in the world disappeared, except you. Would you know anything, including you, exist? He didn’t have time to consider the premise, he had to get to his counter. Fact is I met with an old pal of mine the other day. Would you believe it Lyle, he’s one of the lawmen that sent me up, Louie Sonney.
“There was a five-thousand-dollar reward for my capture in 1920 and Louie was the one that captured me. I was on the lam, my picture plastered everywhere, so I had to cover my face when I went out. I told everybody I was in an explosion as the reason for me wearing a whole face of bandages. The day he got me, I was coming toward him making his rounds and as we passed each other he just looked hard, but kept on walking. I made the mistake of turning around to see where he was going when he caught me looking. Being a lawman, he was suspicious enough to wonder how someone with bad burns could move his head around so well. He secretly followed me to where I was staying and knocked on my door. He asked me point blank, ‘You Roy Gardner?’ I denied it, but he didn’t believe me and asked me to remove my bandages. I thought about fighting him off, but by then he had the drop on me. He collected the reward money and was able to quit the police business and open his own detective company. When I didn’t give him any trouble with the arrest, he appreciated it. Fact is his company did so well with the reward money that he sent me five dollars the whole time I was in the joint. He bought me a lot of cigarettes over the years, Lyle. A lot. We been talking about maybe some kind of salesman work I might do. What do you think, Lyle. Me a salesman?”
“Roy, I think you did a lot of selling in your day. The stuff I read about you tells me that you were a damned good salesman.”
“I had the knack for gaining peoples’ trust in those days, Lyle. I guess it was my smile and good old boy look that made people take me at my word.”
“You remind me of that Reverend Promise I’ve got camped at my house. He seems like a good old holy boy people take at his word. But I’m not so sure of what he’s up to.”
“You don’t trust him, Lyle?”
“Not as far as I could throw him, his yellow suit, and his Bible. I think I overheard him mauling my mother-in-law the other night. Sounded like it to me.”
“Did you see anything, or just hear something?”
“Just heard them.”
“Senses can be tricky, Lyle. You sure of your conclusion?”
“Pretty sure.?
“That’s a rough one.”
“Another thing is now he’s going into the city more often, saying he’s going out for a walk, but I’ve watched him catch cabs. He tells us he’s out for long walks, but I know better. He’s going into the city. I’d love to be able to trail him, but I’m not sure how I’d go about doing that.”
“Hmm,” Roy stood up and walked to the door and returned holding his back, sort of grimacing. “I get real stiff sitting too long.
“You know the guy I just told you about, Louie. He knows a lot of people in the investigation business. I’m supposed to see him sometimes next week. I’ll tell him about your friend and see whether he might find out what he’s up to. Would that help?”
“What’d it cost me, Roy?”
“We’ll see. I’ll ask,” said Roy.
“Thanks,” said Lyle. He looked at his notes. “We were at the point of your escape on the train. Tell me about that escape.”
“Like we talked about the last time, that job I pulled in San Diego got me 25 at McNeil Island. They were sending me and a couple of car thieves, Chinese, to Washington State. They put us in the stateroom of a Pullman car, the last car on the line. We had it all to ourselves. Two deputies were escorting us, swell guys, good officers, Haig and Cavanaugh, I still remember their names. The car thieves and me were handcuffed and had leg irons on. Our arms were free to move, just our wrists were cuffed. Cavanaugh sat with me and Haig sat with the Chinamen. The image of my baby girl floated through my mind and I could hear the sadness in Dolly’s voice telling me goodbye. As I watched the scenery go by, I saw it as symbol of watching my life go by. I was on my way to spend 25 years separated from my family. That reality caused me to feel as though I swallowed a bowling ball and it dropped to the bottom of my stomach. The guys must have seen it in my face, I could feel me sweating and beginning to be sick. Haig asked if I felt okay. I told him I’d be fine and swallowed hard a bunch of times. I started looking out the window again and thought I saw a moose in the trees. Closer look it wasn’t anything like that, but it gave me an idea. A little bit later, I cried out, ‘Is that a moose out there in the trees?’ Cavanaugh, next to me, stands up and his holstered pistol is even with my nose. It was like he was inviting me to take it; so that’s what I did.
As I recall I said something like, ‘Now you can both put your hands up.’ I pointed at the other deputy, Haig, ‘Kindly hand over your pistol to that fellow,’ meaning Tom Wing, one of the Chinamen. Wing took his pistol and we had Cavanaugh unlock me and then the Chinese. We cuffed the deputies to each other and to the seats. Now we had both of their pistols, the train was steaming ahead to Washington, and the car thieves and I began planning what we needed to do before Washington.
‘We’re going to need your money fellows,’ I told the deputies.
Haig said, ‘Roy. We don’t carry much money on these trips. You can see for yourself.’ He pointed to his coat pocket with a nod. There were a few singles, five’s and tens. Cavanaugh was a bit better with a fives and tens. We got $200 dollars and divided it.
‘We can get some money for these pistols,’ Wing said.
I agreed looking at the pistol I took from Cavanaugh. ‘A nice piece you were packing,’ I told him.
‘It belonged to my grandfather. He was a Texas Ranger. It means a lot to me Roy. I would sure hate to lose it.’
‘Too bad you don’t have more money,’ said one of the car guys, ‘You could buy it back,’ and he gave out a laugh, which I didn’t think was funny.
‘What’s about those watches?’ I said, ‘Hand them over and I’ll give back the pistol.’
I emptied the pistol, stuck it back in his holster and took the watches. I figured I could get as much for the two. He thanked me and I felt glad I could do that for him.
“We locked up the Pullman and strolled through the train while we waited for it to slow down to come into a yard in Portland. We opened the back door and when the train slowed, we bailed out. I landed on my ass, real hard and to make matters worse, one of the car thief guys landed on top of me. We didn’t spend time checking ourselves for injuries; we bounced up and started running to get out of Portland.
“On my way to Canada, I stole a boat, a motorcycle, even a Ford. I ditched the car before the border, walked across to take a train to Vancouver. I worked my way back to the states, ending up in Minneapolis. I used the name Nelson, that’s Dolly’s maiden name, to get a job selling welding equipment. I made good money and sold a lot of equipment, but I really was missing Dolly and my little girl, and I knew I’d have to see them soon. They were living in Sacramento with her sister, so I took a train there to meet her. I called her, a quick conversation in case the law was listening in, and we made a plan to meet at a park outside of Sacramento. The meeting was short. I got to kiss my baby and tell Dolly I loved her, then I had to run again.
“All the money I had I gave Dolly. I hid out in a clump of trees next to the rail yard, ready to jump a train out of Sacramento. My thoughts constantly were that the law was a few steps away. Always the suspicion arose that the next person was one of them. I had to keep moving. From my tree stand, I watched trains coming and going, noticed they slowed down on a long, curved section, then built speed on the straight run toward Rocklin. I would jump onto one of these and find the mail car.
“The way trains deliver mail is the post office collects the mail, packs it in canvas sacks and wraps the sacks in a heavy leather bag with large straps and buckles so the pouches won’t slip out. The baggage car and the mail room are connected and sit behind the engine. When the mail arrives at the station, the mailman throws the mail bags onto the railway car. The mail bags sit on the floor with the other baggage until the train leaves the station. While the train is moving along, mail clerks dump the mail sacks on a counter in the mail room to start separating it. There could be as many as a dozen clerks sorting on long hauls, but on the shorter runs there might just be one or two. These guys are very trusted because they handle packages and registered mail with large amounts of cash, gold, sometimes even jewelry. Of course, they have to be armed with .38’s and they are trained to use them.
“I knew all of this while I was running along Number 20, finding the stirrup, and a grab bar on the side of the mail car. The train had made it out of the wide curve so it began to get more momentum. I held on tight starting to be battered by the wind as the train reached its running speed. At the side of the mail car was an opening where the mail grabber was installed. The grabber would pick up sacks of mail on the run and a mail clerk would haul it in through the side opening. Mail clerks kept that door opened even if they weren’t going to pick up mail. I had a good grip on the grab bars on both sides of the opening and waited to step in. There was only one clerk sorting, his back to me, he unable to hear much with the train noises. I gently approached him and drew my pistol, the one I took from Haig. When I got close, he spun around and there I stood with the drop on him.
“I asked him to show me his .38, which he did and I took it and threw it out the side.
“‘Where’s the registered stuff?’ I growled. He pointed in a general direction and I asked him to turn around. I tied his hands with mail sack ropes. The poor man was scared on account I could see his hands shaking. After I was done, I apologized for frightening him and started to tear into the sacks, throwing mail over my shoulder, to the side, past the shaking clerk. At last, I found some registered pouches and a few other packages I thought I could turn into cash. I put them aside, again told the clerk I was sorry, and pulled the emergency chord. When the train slowed down, I threw the mail stuff out, and a few seconds later, I jumped. You don’t just jump out the side of a train in the night without knowing what’s out there. I got out the same way I got in, holding on until I saw a safe place to land.
“It was dark, and I hadn’t figured how a moving train covers a lot of distance in a few seconds. When I walked back, the loot was nowhere to be found,” Roy said. “I wandered all around, but it was so dark I couldn’t see a thing. Maybe the bags bounced under the train and were carried away, or ripped to shreds and scattered all over the area.
“I hid out for the night between some boulders, and in the morning, I walked the three or four miles to Roseville, found a hotel, took a room, and slept all day and night.
“When I woke up, I figured I needed to make some money, so I went looking for work. There was an ice house I passed coming through, and I went back to see about a job. I told them I could weld, and they said for me to come back the next day. Came across a card game in a cigar store on my way back to the hotel and I asked to sit in. They were dealing them good for me and I was seeing some promise in the hands I was getting. Others started to gather round the game and watch the play. I didn’t pay any mind, just concentrated on the game. I took a pot and was raking it in when I felt something poke my back. ‘You’re a dead man if you try to move,’ a voice whispers in my ear, I could feel his hot breath on my neck. Everybody scattered to high heaven, except the two other officers that help arrest me.”
Roy started a low chuckle that grew to a full-blown outburst of laughter. He stood up, coughed slightly, and continued laughing while shaking his head side to side. Lyle was perplexed. Roy’s words turned into coughs that led back into the laughter. He was able to say, “They arrested me for a train robbery somebody else pulled. They searched my hotel room and of course they found nothing. They were looking for $100,000 this fellow stole. A hundred grand, Lyle. And I got nothing but a ride to the city jail and another trip back to Washington.”
THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
A NIGHT RIDE
11
There was a figure sitting in his car, just across the street from Kyle’s apartment popping salted peanuts to stay alert. His eyes were trained on the stairs leading out of the building. It was near eight p.m. and the fog had rolled in from the bay chilling the air, frosting the windows so that the man had to roll down his driver’s side window to get a clearer view of what it was he was surveilling. He had been briefed that this Billy Promise character dressed flashy, had a dark pile of hair, and usually came out of the apartment building between seven and nine of a night. He was to follow him, that’s what Mr. Sonney instructed him to do, and that was how he’d would spend his time this evening. Donnie Sparks judged the time by how many peanuts he had left in the paper bag. He held the oily bag up to the window to catch the street lamp, shaking it to get a better idea how many were in there. He judged he had been waiting a half-hour, closer to 45 minutes, he adjusted his estimate, as he counted but four peanuts left. He finished off what was left and leaned over to get a rag to wipe his hands from his clove compartment. That’s when he saw a yellow cab approach slowly, cruising, looking for an address Donnie figured. It passed by and Donnie once again sat in darkness. He dusted off his lips and hands with the rag when the glare of headlights bounced off his rearview mirror into his eyes. He looked back and saw that it was the cab returning. This time a figure appeared along the street and waved down the driver.
The person matched the description given him, Donnie was sure it was Billy Promise. He let the driver move on and started his engine to follow.
LYLE
THE SUNDAY CHRONICLE ASSIGNMENT
12
Norm Howell was a nervous man. His job demanded he be tense. He was the managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Employees close to him called him “Howie” while those not so close sneered “Howwwwie.” Lyle was apt to be the latter. Howell vaguely knew him, but then he vaguely knew any part-time reporters. The editor never sat behind his desk for long without bouncing off his chair as thought propelled by a spring. He would begin a remark, then move toward the chair to settle in, then bounce back up to say his next bit. His desk was stacked with bales of print, published and rejected pieces from who-knew how long ago. As Lyle stood at-attention across from him, Howell paced back and forth; a movie’s arch type editor, no coat, opened vest, tie loosened at the neck, grey hair, cigar-chewing, he didn’t offer a chair. None was available without first clearing away magazines and manuscripts. He was looking down at the mass of papers, rubbing his head as though trying to remember why he was standing over his desk, maybe to find a match to light his cigar, nervously rolling the stogie side to side within a frown. He at last stopped his search and acknowledged Lyle.
“I hear from Doug that you’re writing a piece on Roy Gardner.” He plopped down in his chair, but sprang back up again to move a stack of papers to the other side of his desk.
“Yes sir. But it’s not a piece for the paper, I’ve been hired to write Mr. Gardner’s autobiography,” said Lyle.
“Yeah, yeah, his autobiography. I see. His life story. Yes. I see. I know a lot about Gardner, you know. A lot of stories about him have come across my desk. Maybe you should read up on some of these articles too to get others’ opinions of him. I’m sure he’s telling you the good parts of his life. He’s hoodwinked a lot of people with his nice guy train robber and escape artist persona. But, with all of his faked humility and feigned penitence, he’s still a criminal. Once called the country’s most dangerous criminal. And those words came from some wardens. Did he tell you that?”
Lyle didn’t respond. He thought it best not to remind Howell that he, Lyle, had indeed written some of those articles for the paper. “He admits he’s done wrong. But I never read, or he’s never mentioned that he had ever hurt anybody in any of his crimes.”
“Depends on what you mean by “hurt.” That’s the issue here,” Howell managed to alight on his chair. He quickly removed his cigar and pointed it at Lyle. “The stuff he’s telling you is bullshit. You’re hearing what a good and benevolent train robber he was, and how even the police that arrested him loved him. But the truth is he stole money, a lot of it, off trains that were carrying pay checks meant for hard working people. He put a bunch of people’s lives in danger pulling guns on them, having police officers risk their lives and the lives of innocent bystanders. He probably didn’t tell you how he’d gotten people killed, ‘specially those he talked into running with him on his escapes. His stories don’t mention how he deprived farmers, factory workers, civil servants, hardworking people of their rightfully earned and very much needed money. What do you think happened to the money he stole even after he was caught? How long do you think these people had to go without their pay until either the money was recovered, or the matter of the trial was over? Months my friend, months and months. And what about the mail he threw along the tracks. Mail that included letters from businesses and loved ones, correspondences that held vital information or intimate messages. So, there are other ways to hurt people besides physically assaulting them. A lot of these victims had to move out of their houses and live with relatives because they couldn’t pay bills on account of this bozo. My father and uncle lost their business because of him. Their money was part of his haul. And when they didn’t get it on time, their mortgages and bills didn’t get paid on time. Luckily, I had a job and could help them pay some bills ‘til they got back some of the money he stole, but not enough for them keep their business. I don’t see him as the Robin Hood the papers like to paint him. No sir. I see him as a common criminal, either too lazy or too dumb to hold a decent job.”
Lyle stood silent.
“Since you’re already getting a lot of information from him, I want to have a piece written for our Sunday magazine about Gardner; but I want facts, not the fancy version he likes to promote. I’d like for you to debunk the stories he tells and write the facts. The ones that show him for what he is, a criminal who put people’s lives in danger, destroyed others by depriving them of their rightful earnings, ruined the reputations of the lawmen he humiliated because they fell for his smiling bandit, good old boy act; and a free-loader who the public paid to room and board for 20 or so years. I want you to show everyone how he deserted his wife and child to pursue his life of crime. I bet he doesn’t tell you much about that does he?”
Lyle didn’t answer.
“Well I bet he doesn’t.” Howell’s replaced the cigar and rolled it side to side a few times.
“Sir, I’m not so sure how I might manage writing for him while I’m doing research to debunk my own narrative. I doubt whether that is even ethical.”
“You think he was ethical holding lawmen and bank clerks at pistol point. Stealing cars, boats, motorcycles, money, and lying to his family and friends about his life and prison time?
“I’m thinking you can do a six-week series on him,” Howell continued, “ I’d make it worth your while. I believe you mentioned to Doug that you’ve got a visitor that you need to keep comfortable. The money would help you with this I would think.” Howell removed the cigar, looked at the wet end, now soggy, unraveled tobacco, and moved to the trash can to spit out flecks of tobacco. He looked at Lyle. “Get on it. It’ll help you get more assignments here and expose your name to wider readers. Get on it.”
“Sir, I can’t see how I would be able to do this piece and still work for Mr. Gardner.”
“How about this Simmons. You write it under a different name. I don’t expect you to use any of the information and sources he gives you to write this series. I wouldn’t trust them anyway. No. You use our sources. Just think of yourself as writing two separate assignments.”
“Sir, that still would be unethical for me to take his money in one hand and then take your money in the other hand.” Lyle nervously scratched his upper arm.
“Look here Mr. Simmons. You take his money and write what he tells you. You take our money and write what we tell you. What’s unethical about that?” He stared. Lyle likened Howell’s sardonic glower to his father’s expression when telling him how life was not always fair.
“The base line is this,” went on Howell, “I want this criminal exposed for what he is. I want the Chronicle to do it. You need work. I want you to write the series so I can keep you on my staff. Now if you think this two-bit outlaw is worth losing your job, and you think that what he pays you will make up for what you won’t be making here, then fine.”
Lyle rubbed the other upper arm. He took out his handkerchief to run it across his forehead. “Let me think about it.”
“Do that. Let Doug know your choice. He’s got a huge file on this guy. He’ll help you get started. Give us the first installment week after next.” Howell walked to the door and opened it. Lyle replaced his handkerchief in his back pocket and stood still for a moment. Howell walked past him to get back to his desk and fiddled with some papers never looking up to see Lyle leave.
Doug Hilman was the entertainment editor. He hired Lyle to write the last article on Roy Gardner getting out of prison. Doug’s file on Roy was a collection of pieces from other newspapers around the country whose sources were usually the Associated Press. Lyle stuffed the thick folder into his briefcase and decided to take a bus home instead of walking.
Riding the bus, his mind tumbled pen-names. First and last names exchanged places like ice cubes in a glass. He had to make sure his nome de plume wouldn’t be one that Audrey might relate to and immediately become suspicious. He also had to be able to write in a more private place. One where he would be able to leave articles and his writing laying around and not have Audrey question him.
“I got a new assignment, Aud so I’m going to be working late, and I have to work at the newspaper. I sent a message to Roy that I would be on assignment for a couple of weeks, so I won’t be going over to the Governor to see him.”
“What’s the new project,” she asked as she briskly cleaned a silver platter with tarnish remover.
“It’s an article on a couple of guys who worked on the Golden Gate Bridge,” Lyle said.
“Oh, how wonderful. I hear some of the men working on the bridge fell off while they building it. Is that true?”
“Oh yeah. I’m not sure how many, but yes, some men gave their lives to build that thing.”
“I can’t wait to read it L.”
LES MONSLEY
THE SUNDAY CHRONICLE SERIES BEGINS
13
The series was titled:
The Real Roy Gardner: Train Robber, Escape Artist, Con Man. An Exposé written by Les Monsly
An excerpt read:
After a life of crime, the criminal Roy Gardner was released from prison and now resides in San Francisco. Readers of his escapades are fed a diet of lore that presents Mr. Gardner as a gentleman’s criminal, a nice guy who robbed trains to feed his family in hard times, particularly during the Depression. He was fraternally called the Smiling Bandit by writers who perhaps prolonged his career of thievery with their glowing accounts. The facts, however, do not bear out broadcasted rationales for his misbehavior. Mr. Gardner was an experienced workman, an expert welder who worked on secret government projects, and he was a master blacksmith who could have worked wherever and whenever he wished. Let us not forget there was a bridge being built during his reign of thief hiring hundreds of men with his abilities. Then there is the notion he still promotes in interviews that he never harmed anyone. He claims no victims ever admitted he assaulted them during a robbery. One might well ask, “What about the two men he talked into escaping with him at McNeil Island?” The two inmates he used as human shields to protect his own skin. They were victims of the worse sort, one man losing his life, and the other wounded and maimed for life. But then, there is neither time nor space here to present a discourse on the natures, types, and levels of assaults and harm that may be perpetrated on an individual apart from physical assault and harm, which are the two crimes Mr. Gardner would have readers give him credit for not committing. One only needs to see how he harmed the lives of the agents in terms of their unknown terror in being overpowered, robbed at the delivery end of a pistol, and then his escaping, leaving the lawmen to suffer the embarrassment and consequences of being conned by and allowing a prisoner in their custody to escape. What harm might have come to the lawmen as they were demoted in rank and pay and how did Mr. Gardener’s actions affect their families in terms of less income and the prospect of the lawmen losing their jobs? But even less considered are the people whose monies Mr. Gardener stole and the mail deliveries he sabotaged by his greed. People were deprived of the financial means to pay workers, bankers, mortgagers, all of whom had their own list of people to pay. Correspondences were never received from loved ones and important notices of critical information were willfully discarded along desolate railroad tracks, all to satiate Mr. Gardener’s appetite for easy money.
It may be argued that Mr. Gardner has paid his debt to society and so he should be left alone to live his remaining years in peace. We at the Chronicle agree and wish this to
happen. On the other hand, there are whispers in the air that Mr. Gardner is at work creating a rewrite of his criminal history. There is word in the air that he plans to make a motion picture of his life; or at the very least, begin and new nation-wide tour perhaps featuring his wife and daughter. Judging by his past conduct, he undoubtedly has designs to glorify a life of crime and minimize the harm done to society, to law enforcement, to his mother and father, his wife and daughter. We at the San Francisco Chronicle feel a responsibility to report factually about the life and crimes of this train robber, not as a punitive project, but as our charge to preserve history. Any and all judgements about the criminal Roy Gardner are solely the responsibility of the reader. Let the facts speak for themselves.
Lyle’s briefcase was heavier than normal on this visit to Roy’s hotel room. It pulled on his arm like an anchor containing much of the ponderous Sunday Series’ sources and the weight of his guilt. He dreaded the visit. How would he act? What would he say when Roy shoved the Sundays’ Series in his face? This new development would test his will to continue working with Roy.
Following a couple of gentle knocks, faint, like the belief that Roy wouldn’t answer, came a reply, “Come in Lyle.” La comedia comincia is what he thought. He took a deep breath and opened the door.
Roy stood over his bed, back toward Lyle, looking down at the opened Sunday Series section spread over it. He held a hand to his lips, like holding a cigarette in place, the other held his back. He didn’t turn, but rather changed his position slightly as if to get a different angle to see the pages. Lyle stood halfway in the room, silent, as if waiting to be invited all the way.
“Come in Lyle, come in,” said Roy, finally turning. “You know about this?’ he grabbed a fistful in one thrust, shy of crumpling all of it with one more move.
“Yes sir. I heard my paper was doing a series on you.”
“You know this guy. . .” he dropped the pages and stretched out one, “This Les Monsly?”
“No sir. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen that name in print before.”
Roy took a long look at Lyle. He moved closer, and without averting his gaze, he found a half-smoked butt among the dead ones in the ashtray. “Why this ‘No sir, yes sir’ all of a sudden Lyle? I thought we got through that formality stuff in our first meetings.”
“Oh yes, of course. The break in our weeks, my being away, I forgot our pact. Actually, I do feel peculiar that my own newspaper is writing an expose on you. I hope you know I don’t control anything that goes on at the paper. I’m just a hired hand and do what they tell me. I hope you know that.”
Roy lit his cigarette, exhaled heavily. “Yes of course. I get it. That’s why we got to get my story out soon to counteract this article. To correct some of the crap like it says here,” he gathered up a page, “This is going to be a six-week series. That’s a lot of material on me. I know they going to have to make up more crap like this. Look here what they say about my parents.” He went to the bed and rifled through the pages, bringing the last one close up to his nose, “Says here my mother went insane and died in a crazy house. They want people to believe it was because of me and my criminal life. And here: Says my father claimed I never was no good and he and my mother disowned me when I left home. Says my old man told the papers that I was lying about a head injury and that he hadn’t heard from me in years so he never knew where I was or what I was doing except when he read about me in the papers. That’s news to me Lyle. These are bullshit lies.”
“I hope you understand Roy that I’m not excusing that writer, but in my research on you, I did run across records that say you claimed to be insane a few times from being hit on the head. I was going to include that information in a part of your book myself.”
Roy smiled, scratched his head and turned toward the window. “Yes, well your research is right. Put it in the book. Any log when you’re adrift in a sea, you understand. I thought claiming to be insane might help me beat the rap.” He turned back toward Lyle. “Okay. Okay. Let’s get going on our book.”
Lyle opened his briefcase and took out his tablet and pencil, pushing aside the Sunday Series sources, and then quickly closing the briefcase, nudging it under the desk with his foot.
“Oh yeah. Since I haven’t seen you in a while let me ask how your house guest is doing Lyle? Is he settling in? You settling in?”
Lyle shrugged his shoulder in a gesture meaning he couldn’t say.
“I did get a report from my friend Detective Sonney. He had one of his men check up on your reverend, as a favor to me. No cost to you.”
“He claims he goes for a walk, but I know he’s hailed cabs quite a few times.” said Lyle.
“Yeah. Well Sonney’s man followed a cab one night and he followed it to the Ferry Dock. That’s where your friend, the reverend got out.”
“The dock?”
“The San Francisco Ferry Terminal, Lyle. Sonney’s guy hung around to see if your preacher was waiting for a passenger to arrive. He sat on one of the benches and waited. Your preacher didn’t meet anybody getting off a boat, but he did meet up with another guy. A young handsome guy according to Sonney’s man. They seemed to be . . ., well Sonney’s man said, ‘chummy.’ You see Lyle, the terminal is where the queers meet up. Now I can’t say that this is where your friend goes all the time, but this is where he went the time Sonney’s guy followed him; and, he did go off arm and arm with another man.”
Lyle sat stunned. “You mean Reverend Promise is queer?”
Roy smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “The terminal is a meet-up place for them sorts.”
Lyle stood up and half turned around and then sat back down. “Roy. I think I’d like to try one of your cigarettes if you don’t mind.”
Roy grinned. “Of course, pal. Here you go.”
Lyle leaned into Roy’s match, took a big drag, and still holding the smoke in said, “Now where were we?”
LYLE AND THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
A MUSCATEL RUN
14
Lyle didn’t have much to say at the dinner table the night he learned about Reverend Promise’s visits to the ferry terminal. He chewed his beef chunks thoughtfully, reached for his water glass trancelike, and did not dare look at anyone at the table.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” said Audrey. “You feel all right?”
“You talking to me?” Lyle responded, snapped out of his reverie.
“Who else would I be asking, Lyle. You haven’t added one word to our conversation. Are you feeling okay?”
“Fine. Fine. I’m just thinking of my writing assignments that’s all.” He looked up with a pasted smile. Raised his water glass to everyone. “Sorry. What were we talking about?”
“Well, I was praising Sister Rita for how well she’s coming along with our praying and healing. Don’t you think you’re feeling better Sister?” the reverend said brushing her hand on the table.
“Much better, praise the Lord and you Brother Promise,” she said, cheerfully enough, but then, in a self-conscious moment of over zealousness, she quickly rescinded her mood and affected one of pain and hopelessness.
“I think the reverend has done miracles with you Mommy. Don’t you think Mommy has improved immensely since Brother Promise has arrived, Lyle?”
“Immensely,” said Lyle reforming a smile.
“I think we should have a little wine to toast our success, don’t you Brother Lyle. You got any more of that good Muscatel left?”
“I’ll check the cupboard,” said Audrey. “I remember putting a half- finished bottle back.”
“Nothing like the Lord’s grapes to put a nice shine on a happy event, wouldn’t you say so Brother Lyle.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” said Lyle.
“That’s strange,” said Audrey, returning from the kitchen. “I could have sworn I put away a half bottle of wine, but I don’t see it. Lyle did you finish off the bottle. Of course, you didn’t. I’m sorry L. You don’t even drink.”
“Could be I might have had something to do with your missing wine, Sister Audrey. I guess I kissed the bottle with a few nips. I threw the dead solder in the waste basket. I should have remembered that and saved you a trip to kitchen. You don’t have some other kind of wine put away do you Sister?”
“No. But, I could have Lyle get some.
“Lyle. You mind walking down the block to grab a bottle of Muscatel for us.”
Lyle was silent for a moment, then, after taking a drink from his glass, sure. I guess I could go.”
“Why not a couple,” said Rita. “I’ll pay for one of ‘em.”
“I’ll take a walk with you Brother Lyle. You will excuse us sisters.”
“Good idea, Brother Promise. Yes go along with Lyle,” Audrey said.
Their chairs noisily croaked on the wood floors as they withdrew from the table.
There was the beginning of fog outside as the two men, side-by-side, silently ambled toward the liquor store, Lyle looking down as if attending to each section in the sidewalk.
“I’m sensing something’s troubling you Brother Lyle. You care to talk about it?”
“I’m okay,” is all he answered.
“No. I don’t think you are okay brother. I expect my visit is a botheration. Me leavin’ you with a sleepin’ place that ain’t big enough to turn around and cuss a cat and eatin’ your food while chargin’ you for helping Sister Rita. I expect all that is a might too much for you to handle.”
Lyle stopped, but the reverend didn’t notice and walked on, then looking up he realized he was walking alone. He looked back at Lyle.
“Where are you going on your little nightly walks?” asked Lyle.
“Is that’s what’s ailing you. My little nightly strolls.”
“Reverend Billy: You know that many of your nightly walks are not ‘strolls.’”
“Well, okay. I get your point. I do occasionally saunter by taxi into town just to get away for a bit.”
“And where do you go to get away?”
The reverend stood still. He looked into Lyle’s eyes, a hard stare. “Why is it I get the feeling you already know the answer to that.”
“Reverend: Where do you go to get away?”
“Well depends. Sometimes I go to the piers. Sometimes to a little pub on Market Street. Just around.”
“You ever go to the ferry terminal?” Now Lyle stared straight at Promise.
“I do. Brother Lyle. I do go down to the terminal.”
“And you meet up with men down there, am I correct?”
“I do meet men. A lot of them Brother. You see most of these men lead lives of depravity. They’re sinning every day and night. I meet with them to try to lead them away from these lives of Sodom. I can try to cure them of their lustful ways. I can help them like I’ve help Sister Rita. So yes, I do visit the terminal.”
“Have your cured anybody?”
“Well Brother Lyle. I haven’t been around long enough to cure anybody; but I have met a couple of boys that I’ve been working with to rescue them from the demon clutches of debauchery.”
The two continued their walk trailing a weighty silence.
Reverend Promise broke the silence. “Do you feel better now Brother Lyle? Now that we’ve had our talk and I’ve told you about my nightly journeys?”
The men had reached the store. Lyle opened the door and allowed the reverend to go in first. “What kind of wine did you say we should get?” he asked Promise.
Reverend Promise looked at him, perhaps expecting Lyle to answer whether he was feeling better about having the talk. Hearing no response, he walked ahead to look at the bottles of wine.
ALCATRAZ
ROY GARDNER AND ALFONSE CAPONE
15
Lyle’s narrative
“The word’s out that your boy Capone is being dressed in,” Johnny Cole said to Roy in the yard on a cigarette break.
“He ain’t my boy,” said Roy blowing his exhale out over Johnny,
“I know that. I know that. Didn’t he have something to do with icing your buddy Dion O’Bannion?”
“That’s the skinny I got. I don’t know for sure.”
“You gonna ask him about it?” asked Johnny.
“Maybe. We’ll see. He’s such a big shot, Johnston won’t let him mix with us cons.”
“Ya think?”
“Sssh. He had his own fancy cell in Atlanta. Wore his own threads. He ain’t gonna let that gangster get within island’s width from us, you can bet you ass on that one,” said Roy.
As it turned out Capone was jailed with the rest of the population. Warden Johnston wasn’t going to allow his reputation and the prison’s to be sullied by any claims of favoritism.
Capone was assigned to the laundry, he wore rough grey prison garb like everyone, he wore the heavy prisoners’ shoes, and he followed the daily routine. He had difficulty getting accustomed to the silence at first, but the consequences of breaking the rules soon brought about his compliance.
One day the fog had set in. When the fog came on a work day, the men did not go to their work assignments, the guards did a count in the yard, and the men stayed put until it cleared. The inmates were allowed to smoke and talk some. It happened that Roy’s and Al’s paths crossed under the fog, and Roy thought about his friend and the way he was hit.
“Al. Roy Gardner. Wanted to introduce myself.”
“Hi ya. I ain’t gonna shake, I don’t know if that is allowed. I read about you and your escapes. Good stuff. I think you stayed out of Chicago though.”
“Oh yes. Stayed out here mostly. But I did know a few people in Chicago. Ever run across a guy called Dion O’Bannion?”
Capone was expressionless. He kept his gaze on Roy as though reading him to see how he should answer. “I heard of him,” said Al.
“He was involved in a few capers in the city. I’m thinking he might have done some work for you or your outfit,” Roy said.
“Had a lot of fellows working for me. Does he say he worked for me?”
“He doesn’t say anything now, he’s dead. Part of a hit. Capped in his car while he was eating a sandwich. Hell of a mess cause one of his kids found him.”
“And you think my boys had a hand in it?”
“Did they? Did you?”
Capone threw down his cigarette and heavily ground it into the tarmac, turned and walked away.
Capone began spending a lot of time in the infirmary. He had been diagnosed with syphilis, but because he distrusted the medical examiners, he refused treatment. With the advance of the disease came the onset of a behavioral change. His speech started to change, his words stuttering, his pronunciation thick. He started forgetting what outfits to dress; and one day he stood waiting to enter the wrong cell. Along with everything else, he became belligerent. The word filtered out through the grape vine that the syphilis was starting to take its toll.
Roy had a rough night as he stood in the breakfast line. He knew Al was ailing, but still the thought of him being responsible for Art’s death aroused his bad mood. His Hell-nighting didn’t help his disposition so when he looked up at Capone who stood with eyes red, head drooping, hair disheveled, across in the chow line, he commented, “What’s the matter Al. The Rock got to you? You can’t take it?”
Capone looked up, he leaped at Roy, leading with a swing that dusted Roy’s chin. The lines formed into a ring, and in the middle were the two cons swinging and slapping, snorting and cursing, changing grip-holds to where sometimes Al had the advantage, then Roy seemed to prevail. Al had managed to get Roy on his back and Roy struggled to throw Al off when he looked up to see the guard in the cage just above them take aim. The fear of being fired on gave Roy a burst of strength and he was able to get free. They both remained within the guard’s sight when Roy shoved Al back under the cage, following him just when the guard got off a round. The shot ricocheted off the cement floor and scattered the inmates in every direction.
By this time other cell guards charged in to break up the fight
“Sounds about right to you, Roy?” asked Lyle.
“You got a few extra things that didn’t quite happen that way, but I like it.”
“The rest of that story is after I managed to get the dago off of me and pushed him under the cage the word got out that I had pushed him under there to save his life. The truth of it is that I just wanted to get us under the guard cage so we could duke it out some more without worrying about being shot.
“I got five days in solitary, a dungeon under the prison where they used to store ammunition. It was a cold damp playpen for wharf rats. I shared my bread and water with them in the dark. I guess Capone talked himself out of it, or else they sent him to mental health ward in a straightjacket I never found out. We woke up one morning and found he was secretly taken off the Rock and sent to Los Angeles. The word was that he had served his ten years at Alcatraz and had one more year to serve at some country club prison before they were going to deport him to Italy.”
“Talk to me about Alcatraz Roy,” said Lyle.
“Before Alcatraz I was in Kansas. I gave them holy hell in Leavenworth where I was sent after the attempted robbery in Arizona. I was there for three years before I was shipped off to Atlanta Penitentiary. All totaled, I was due to spend 70 years there. There was no way I’d serve that time in any joint, so I planned an escape by tunneling from my cell to the shoe shop. I had filched a blade from a shop, hid it real well, and figured once I got in the shop, I could work sawing away at a set of window bars during the night. They caught me and sent me to the hole for a few weeks. You’d think I had learned my lesson, but I didn’t. A year later I got the drop on two guards and held them hostage, thinking they’d open the gate for me. I didn’t figure how badly this play affected everybody but mostly the inmates. They were locked down, missed meals, missed rec, and because I had a weapon the warden took no chances that others had weapons, so the whole population was searched. That’s a big deal. Everybody had to strip naked, strip their bed, throw out the bedding in front of the cell, stand up mattresses for a search, prove there is nothing hidden in their clothes, books, you name it. The end of the matter was both the inmates and the officials were intent on taking me down, which is what happened. I got solitary for two months. Solitary is no picnic. None at all. It’s dark, a small room, no toilet, just a hole in the corner, no cot. They take your clothes and you have to work out how you keep warm. They give you bread and water. Since I was put through this ordeal, I thought I would use it to my advantage. A normal man might get broken by this treatment, so when I saw the light of day, I started acting strange. My wife petitioned the warden to have me examined and they sent me to D.C. to a nut ward. The doctors refused to say I was a case and they sent me back to Leavenworth. Next, I went on a food strike claiming the food was uneatable. In these prisons, cons could go without eating until their health started deteriorating, then they were force-fed. A funnel, a tube, a liquid like eggnog, or cold broth. A straight jacket, guards, maybe the physician, pushed the tube through the nose to the stomach and poured in the concoction. If the con threw up, the team would recapture it and pour it back through until he held it down. It didn’t take me too long to give up that strike foolishness.
“One day I was in the yard and I got the news I was transferred to Alcatraz. Along about this time, I was tired of fighting everybody and everything. I became resigned to serve my time honorably and agreeably; and, I knew that the Rock would help me stay on the up and up. Before I knew it, I was on a train to Richmond, California.
“We have all kinds of names for Alcatraz: ‘the Rock,’ America’s Devil Island,’ the Mausoleum of the Walking Dead,’ ‘Hellcatraz.’ It was renovated from a fort to a prison because of its location. One that would lock up the worst of the worst in the middle of the bay to prevent any chances of escape. From its beginnings it seemed that those fellows out there welcomed us bad men and looked forward to breaking us down with their strict rules, strict policy of secrecy, and an attitude underneath every rule they wrote and carried out that dared us try an escape.
“In 1933, I was on a train, leg to leg shackles to some guy I never saw before and don’t remember seeing again, seated in a prisoner car, windows blacked out, screened, and barred. We cons catnapped sitting up. A porter delivered baloney sandwiches and water. If we had to go to the toilet, our shackle-mate had to go along. Luckily our wrists weren’t cuffed to each other, so at least we could take care of business without help. A bunch of marshals sat toward the front behind a screened partition, armed with shotguns. After two days, we got to the dock, the guards helped us get onto a boat. We were chained together like mules, a marshal led us and a marshal followed us holding on to the chain. Getting aboard with our legs shackled was a tricky affair and some of the landlubbers started to experience hell then and there on the boat. The waves were choppy and high, it rocked side to side, we considered what would happen should we be thrown into the bay shackled as we were. I don’t imagine a lot of men thought about the scenery as we looked over the bay toward the beginnings of the Golden Gate Bridge and Treasure Island; but then when we made a wide turn, the island popped up, giving me chills at the sight of its desolation, like one of those haunted houses in the movies. Guards in black uniforms looked like Father Death coming to gather us off the boat. They herded us into a small school bus that hauled us up top to the prison.
“We cons marched into a huge room of shower heads, they removed the cuffs, made us strip and pile up our clothes, and searched through them, like they might find something they missed the other 100 times they searched us. Before they turned on the showers, doctors did a body search and looked over us. We showered, dried off, and they gave us underwear, pants, shirts, and slippers, bedding stuff for our cots. When we were dressed in, they took our mug shots and gave us a number. On the way to our cells, we got a booklet with the prison rules.
“One of the first rules in the book was the rule of silence in the cell house and in the cafeteria, and anywhere else they told us not to talk. Now you ask, how did they police and enforce that rule with that many tough guys? Well, let me tell you Lyle, they did. If you got caught talking, a guard would give you a citation, like a parking ticket, we called it ‘getting shot.’ If you got ‘shot’ too many times you’d lose privileges, like letter writing, getting a tobacco supply, movie privileges, visitors, or you might serve time in the hole. Of course, there were some we called ventriloquist who would look right at a guard standing in front of him and insult him without moving his lips and throwing his voice to the next cell.
“As we served our stretches, we became ever aware of the place’s unique, what’s the word, morose. atmosphere, always defined by the fog. During the night after lights out. the joint was mostly silent. It was a peculiar sort of quiet. No talking, cells of snoring men hinting of other humans around. But there was always the sound of the fog horn, the sound of waves lapping the shores, guards’ boots echoing along the blocks. Every so often something might hit a cell bar and the sound would bounce off everything through the block. If you were one of the cons that couldn’t sleep, you’d begin thinking a lot. I told you about the Hell-nightings. And if you let your thoughts take you to dark places, the prison air became filled with spooks, your cell became a torture chamber. Men lost their wits, claiming voices and people visited their cells. Cons pounded their heads on the floors, the walls, trying to remove the demons. Some ran for the fences and began climbing so the guards would shoot them. One guy chopped off his fingers thinking he might get off the island. And coming through the silence was another sound that we never got used to. The sound of the prison guards machine gun practicing in the back of the work yard. There were inmates like me serving 75, 50 years, life, that knew they would die in there. With no hope, men’s minds turned to mush and they became raving crazies. The guy that cut off his own fingers strolled around the yard claiming he was a preacher who would save us all. He claimed he was delivered from the dead, hanged in 1313, but arisen to be at Alcatraz as the prisoners’ savior. Once in the middle of the night when he was recovering from his hand wound, he ripped an electric cord from a lamp and made a noose. He crept up on another psychotic who was in a straightjacket and proceeded to strangle him yelling how he was delivering the man from hell. A guard heard the ruckus and untied the cord. He saved the man from death, but not from hell. That’s how we viewed the Rock anyway, as a mausoleum of the living dead, zombies going through the motions of moving, talking, eating, working, with the heavy reality that few of us would board the ferry back to San Francisco erect and free, most would be carried onto the ferry, feet leading, wrapped in canvas.
“Screws used straightjackets a lot to manage troublemakers. Besides spending months in the hole, the jacket was the most dreaded form of restraint. That on its own would cause men to go bonkers. It was impossible to tell whether a con really did blow his top or was faking to get out of doing work, or refuse to leave their cells and hoping to get sent to Missouri where the hospital for the criminally insane is.
“What about days? What did you do?” asked Lyle.
“We thought of getting out. How to escape. That occupied all our thoughts. There were men with very active, let me say, creative, imaginations, who could design all kinds of clever escape plans. They usually kept them close to their chest, they didn’t share. But we did have jobs. Routines. The routines were the killers. Always the same routine so you didn’t know what day, what week, what year had passed. We had wall calendars, but they didn’t mean a thing, since everything, every day was much the same. The day ran from 6:30 in the morning when the gong rang to get up. We dressed, picked up the cell, stood by the door for a count, then marched to the mess hall for breakfast. After breakfast, we had time to have a smoke. Then we lined up according to our work assignment. Every time we changed locations, we had to stand for a count. The count was always sent out to the guard house, only after the count was finished could we move to the next activity. I worked in the mat shop. We used old tires to make rubber mats for the Navy and other businesses that wanted them. There was a wood work shop, a laundry, prison repair shop, clothes making and repairing, a shoe shop, and others. We got an eight-minute smoke break in the morning. In the middle of the day we had lunch, then to our cells for a short 45 minute nap, then back to work until 4:30. Back to our cells, dinner at 5:00, our cells at 5:30.
From 5:30 to lights out at 9:30 we had to figure out how to spend that time. Men took up hobbies like sewing, writing, tattooing, and the like. We called these hobbies ‘bird killers.’ One of mine was creating mind games that questioned the nature of reality. What was real when different witnesses gave different accounts. You know? You have the criminal, victim, eyewitnesses. Most of the time they all have different descriptions of what happened. What’s real? Anyway I’m getting off the subject. Some time later maybe we can go through one of my mind games.
Lyle didn’t react. “What about weekends? Did you get those off?”
“Sundays were the days we got changes of clothes, shaved, you had to shave every week, got haircuts, and Saturdays we had some recreation where we could play baseball, horseshoes, cards, dominoes, those sorts of games. Holidays, we usually had off, to spend a bit more time in the yard and had special meals. Movies were shown on holidays following the noon meal. No romantic, or gangster, only musicals, cartoons, or comedy. We all loved to laugh during the movie because we knew there wouldn’t be too much to be joyful about when it was over.
“Were you able to have visitors?”
“We were not allowed to see any visitors our first three months. If we screwed up, we weren’t allowed visitors at all; but if we stayed on the up and up we could have a visit once a month for thirty minutes. By this time, Dolly had divorced me so I never got any visitors except maybe a newspaper guy, or a lawyer. I think Detective Sonney visited me once or twice. It wasn’t much of a visit anyway. The con had a guard standing over him and the visitor had a guard standing over. They just about had to yell through the six by 18 bullet proof glass so they could hear one another. Everybody in the room could hear what everybody else was saying because visitors were only separated by a metal panel. When the visit was over, the visitor was allowed to watch their inmate being led back to his cell block, then visitors were ushered out. I was thankful Dolly didn’t visit on account I know I would have blown my top seeing her for the last time through one of those small ass windows. I know I would have tried to be part of the Anglins’ escape. Maybe we would have made it, maybe not. ‘course I’m still kicking, but me and nobody else knows for sure whether they are.”
LYLE
THE SUNDAY CHRONICLE SERIES
16
Every week Lyle suffered Roy’s rants over the latest Sunday Series.
“Says here how I lied about getting wounded in the McNeil escape. I didn’t lie to nobody. It was the papers that played up me getting wounded and healing my wounds with cow shit and hay. I didn’t ever say I was wounded. Says that I used Larry and Everett as shields to protect my own skin. I never told them I paid off a guard in the tower. Then here, looka here, Lyle.”, he snapped the page with the back of his hand, “They write how I abandoned my wife and little girl. Left them to the poor house. How I gambled away the money I stole instead of making sure my little child and wife had food and clothes. That’s a load of crap Lyle. A load of crap. I always got money to them. Even when I was hunted, I was able to sneak a doll to Jean just to let her know her dad loved her.”
Lyle sat at the small desk as if attached to electrodes, each word an electric current that titillated up and down his spine. He would rather write.
Roy continued turning pages of the newspapers. Listen to this Lyle. “’Gardner was regarded as the most dangerous criminal in the Atlanta prisons. His record shows he was aggressive, hated rules, antagonistic against prison officials, and trouble.’ Imagine that. Me dangerous. I never hurt anybody, Lyle.”
Lyle readjusted himself on the chair and cleared his throat.
Roy stood, looking toward the window, a page held crumpled in his right hand, and began a quiet soliloquy as though Lyle wasn’t there. “Dolly, oh Dolly. My sweetheart. You came to see me after I was locked up in Arizona. You stayed with me all these years. Now that I think of it, I’m lucky that burly mail clerk wouldn’t take my directions and ended up stopping me before I really did hurt somebody. I need to thank that brave man.”
“I had a gun in his back, and yet he got the better of me and hog-tied me,” Roy turned toward Lyle. “I was glad to be the one who caused him to get the reward for my capture and didn’t harm him in the deal.
“Dolly came to see me after they caught me in Arizona. She walked in, her head down, teary eyed, I felt I had to sound cheery, so I say, ‘Well, well, well. I had hoped you wouldn’t come here. Didn’t you get my wire?’ She nodded yes and looked up at me tearing up even more. The only thing we could do was shake hands because they kept me in my cell and them cells didn’t allow kissing. Then she sat on a cot outside. She looked so fragile.
“‘You mustn’t try to escape Roy. Please stay put.’ Then she added, ‘You’re looking poorly.’”
“I told her, ‘Yes. I feel that way.’
“She shot back, ‘How do you think I feel?’ But then she smiled just a bit and asked, ‘Since when you’ve become a blond?’
“‘You think it becomes me?’ I said.’
“‘You wrote that letter to President Harding asking for a pardon. You promised to go straight.’
“‘I didn’t have a chance. Once a con always a con. I just can’t seem to help myself.’
“‘And the last charge? That little Mexican girl?’
“‘Nothing to it at all. You know I wouldn’t do that sort of thing.’
“‘Roy, I don’t know anymore what sort of thing you might do.’
“‘I don’t expect you to stick with we, Dolly,’ I told her.
“‘In the five years we’ve been married, you’ve always been good to me Roy and I know if was me in that cell, you’d be sticking up for me.’
“Then she asked me, ‘Will you promise me you will go straight?’
“And I said, ‘Sure.’
“‘Will you raise your right hand to God and promise me?’
“I told her, sure, but I didn’t.”
“‘I read in the paper you use my name for one of your aliases.’
“‘Well you took my last name so isn’t it right that I use your Nelson name? Didn’t help though Molly. This tattoo gave me away. They knew what to look for to find me.’
“‘I’m going to have to earn extra money now to go visit you. I hear they going to send you to Leavenworth.’
“I told her, ‘Maybe not. I don’t plan to be there long.’
“‘Stop it!’ she shouted, ‘You need to stay where they send you. I don’t approve of your life. Don’t mistake my loving you and coming to see you as a sign that I favor any of the things you do.’
“I was silent. And she was silent too. Then she said, ‘And please, Roy, don’t send notes smuggled out giving me instructions to do a certain thing and meet you at a certain place. I won’t jeopardize getting put in jail and getting snatched away from our little girl by getting involved in your crimes. The time you escaped from the island, I didn’t hear from you for almost a year. I had hoped you’d taken off for Mexico. Everywhere I turned I saw lawmen following me, reading my mail, listening in on my conversations. I can’t have you putting little Jean in harm’s way no more like you did the time the sheriff cornered you in Gordon Valley,’
“Sure enough that’s the time they sent me to Leavenworth and finally to the Rock. While I was at Alcatraz Dolly divorced me. Can you blame her? I was given another 25 to serve. I don’t hold her any grudge for doing that. She had to look out for our little girl’s sake.”
Roy released the page to let it drift down to the bed. “I don’t feel like doing anything today, Lyle. I ain’t in the mood. What’s the use? Once a con has served time, he is branded forever. People ain’t got an interest in reading about a down and out bum, unlessen it’s the kind of crap that the Chronicle keeps printing every Sunday. I’m worn-out Lyle. Worn out. See you next week.”
LYLE
THE INVESTIGATION
17
Lyle’s work at the newspaper gave him access to people and sources that might be used to investigate Reverend Billy in Texas. The newspaper hired reporters from all over the country to contribute stories on a regular basis. He was ready to tell his editor that he would not do any more Sunday Series stories on Roy, then thought of the loss of money, and perhaps his job if he did. In a brief moment of problem-solving he thought of asking Roy for more money; but, as quickly as the thought came the knowing that Roy was barely able to pay the money owed. So, he resumed writing the series.
A long and plump brown envelop arrived one day addressed to Lyle Simmons. It had not fared well through the rigors of the post office even though the sender took determined measures to keep its contents from coming out. Some of the enclosed material seeped out of torn corners, and the extra tapings didn’t prevent ripped holes in its sides.
Audrey handed Lyle the envelope questioningly with no comment. She stood waiting for him to open it in front of her.
“It’s some information I sent for. It’s for a piece I’m working on,” he said. “I’ll open it at the office.”
The package was from a Mr. Dolph Evans, return address the Galveston Daily News. Atop all the other papers was a hastily written note that read: “Regarding your enquiry of a Reverend William Billy Promise find some information on him. How’s things in San Francisco? Yours, DE.’
Lyle rifled through carbon copies of pages written about a Clifford Hollingsworth with hand written notes on the pages that suggested to him the material was used to submit articles to the Galveston paper. Then he flipped through actual newspaper clippings seeing one with the title, Miraculous Healer Develops Large Followers. He read:
It’s been over a year since Navasota welcomed a new pastor to its First Church of the Nazarene. In this short time, the Reverend Billy Promise has developed a huge following not just in Navasota, but in Bryan and even in Houston. The Reverend Promise is what is known as a faith healer and he cures people a technique called “laying on hands.” Mrs Irene Hennings of Hearne attested to his healing powers …
Lyle fingered through an article headlined: Oklahoma Youth Found, and read:
An Altus youth was found alive and unhurt Thursday morning says the Jackson County Sheriff’s office, after a week-long search. The 10-year-old youth, Clifford Donald Hollingsworth, was found in an abandoned fishing camp along Lake Altus. The boy went missing Wednesday and is believed to have gone into hiding after he witnessed his mother’s death at the hands of his step-father. Bufford Renards is charged with shooting his wife, Earlene Renards after a family quarrel. Alcohol is believed to be involved in the homicide as deputies reported they found a number of empty containers scattered around the scene of the murder. The young Clifford Hollingsworth frantically flagged down a patrol car and hysterically recounted what he saw at his home the night of the 14th. He quickly disappeared before the officers could have him accompany them to his home. Aside from many mosquito bites and hunger, young Hollingsworth seemed to be in good condition. He was taken to a hospital near Altus for examination. The child will probably be released to the care of his maternal aunt, Bessie Johnston of Altus.
There was no explanation why this particular clipping was among the other writing on Reverend Promise. Then he found a small one paragraph article, the size of a business card. It read:
Clifford Hollingsworth returned to Altus on Sunday, May 5. He was only a child when he witnessed his mother’s death. Mr. Hollingsworth is now Reverend Hollingsworth, more widely known as Reverend Billy Promise, having studied at God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio. Reverend Promise/Hollingsworth is in town to attend the funeral of his Aunt Bess Johnston who died recently. Mrs. Johnston was 90 years old and had been suffering from multiple health problems. The new reverend will not officiate at the service.
Then there was another clipping that read:
Tragedy has once more visited Cliff Hollingsworth, also known as Reverend Billy Promise, as he visited Cincinnati to speak at his Bible school alma mater. While crossing a street in the city’s downtown, his wife was struck by a motorcycle. She was immediately taken to Dunham Hospital in west Cincinnati, but did not survive the emergency operation. The man charged with
her death was said to be riding under the influence of alcohol and was immediately arrested. The reverend Billy Promise told reporters that he bore no ill will toward the motorcyclists and forgave him even before his wife was put into the ambulance. There are no details about funeral services for Mrs. Hollingsworth.
Lyle impatiently slapped at handwritten notes, not finding what he was looking for, went to the next piece of paper, quickly scanning the article and setting it aside to search for another. In all of the material, he could find no incriminating or salacious information that would allow him to confront the reverend and ask him to go back to Texas. In fact, many of the other articles painted a rather upright picture of Promise, one in particular showed him standing behind a troop of cub scouts, wide smile, with the caption: Reverend Billy Promise with his cub scout troop on their way to visit the Alamo. Lyle was genuinely disappointed, and inwardly angry at himself for asking for the material in the first place. He would have rather stayed suspiciously uniformed.
LYLE AND THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
THE GANGWAY ON LARKIN
18
Lyle sat at his desk wedged into a small closet space working on the next installment of the Gardner piece when an office boy abruptly reached through the doorway and flipped a folded note onto his desk. Lyle looked up quickly, but the office boy had as abruptly disappeared. He leaned back in his chair and opened the note. It read, “Your preacher boy is at Gangway on Larkin.” Lyle poked his head outside his door to see the wall clock show 4:55. It was time for him to go home anyway, so, he gathered his papers and squeezed by his desk to leave.
The early evening air began to carry a damp chill, but its freshness and his being outside the newspaper building were welcomed changes. Lyle hailed a cab and was set to tell the driver his home address, when he reached into his coat pocket and retrieved the note. Flipping the edges with his fingers he said, “Take me to Larkin. I’m looking for a place called the Gangway. The cabbie turned around to take a good long look at Lyle and turned back to his steering wheel, “The Gangway it is,” he said, giving another look at his passenger through the rearview mirror.
The Gangway bar sat on the street level floor of a large tenement building of five stories, surrounded by fruit stands, neighborhood shops, and small groceries in San Francisco’s Tenderloin section. When Lyle paid the cabbie, the driver checked his money, then keeping his head down toward his hands, he gave Lyle a final look through his eyebrows before driving off.
Opening the door, Lyle was bombarded with the drone of conversation, and he cautiously walked through the dimly lit saloon of smoke-haze and beer smells. There were but a few that paid him any attention as he moved toward the back. The bar was in front of him and ran almost the distance of the room’s back wall. It was lined with men sitting and standing, holding drinks, smoking pipes, cigars, and cigarettes. Across from the bar was another long bar that ran against the wall with stools set under it where men were lined, some sitting, others standing over them in conversation. Lyle took indecisive steps, leading each foot as though it was a mine sweeper, studying men as he inched forward. Some stared back, others ignored him. Nearing the very rear of the bar, there on the last two bar stools, was Reverend Promise seated next to a young man who had his arm over the reverend’s shoulder. Lyle walked up to the two and stood. The young man noticed him first and stood up. “You see something you’re interested in fellow?” the young man asked. Lyle didn’t answer. Then Reverend Promise looked up and quickly stood.
“Brother Lyle! What a surprise. I didn’t know you’d know about this place,” the reverend said.
“I didn’t,” Lyle said. “Got this note telling me I could find you here and thought I’d see if it was real. Turns out it is”
“Who’s this mug, Will?” asked the young man.
“It’s okay Alton. He’s a friend. I think he’s a friend. Are you a friend?” asked Promise.
“Friendship’s got nothing to do with it Reverend. I think you owe me an explanation.”
“And why is that?” asked Promise.
“You want I should sock this chump, Will?”
“No Alton. No. He’s okay. It’ll be fine. How about you get a cab and go home. Here, take this. I’ll see you later,” said Promise.
“You sure?”
“Yep. This here is Mr. Lyle Simmons. He’s my benefactor of sorts while I’m in San Francisco. So, before you go, will you tell Mr. Simmons how we know each other?”
Alton looked at Promise questioningly with his mouth partially opened. Then he turned to Lyle. “This here is my cousin Will.”
“Thanks Alton. See you later, okay?”
Alton paused to scan Lyle up and down, then turned to walk away.
The two men stood as statues amid the barroom noises. Then the reverend spoke.
“Want a beer?”
“I’ll have a wine,” said Lyle.
“I’ll get us a drink,” said the reverend.
When Promise returned, he handed Lyle the glass, and held his up to him in a toast.
“To understanding,” said Promise.
“I’m all for understanding. So, suppose you let me know what the hell is happening.”
The reverend took a sip of his wine and began. “My cousin Alton is the son of my first cousin Elton, the only son of my Auntie Bess.”
“The aunt you lived with …” Lyle swallowed the next word.
“So, you’ve been checking up on me Brother Lyle, haven’t you?”
Lyle remained silent.
“Then you probably know that Alton’s grandmother, my Aunt Bessie raised me after my parents died. Her son, Elton, was a drifter and one day he showed up to Auntie’s house with a six-month-old baby, Alton. Then he disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. She was in her seventies at the time. I’d already left her to go to Bible school. I talked to her shortly before she died and she told me that Alton had set off to the west and she was worried sick about him. I knew she didn’t have much longer to live so I promised I’d look after him. She died believing I’d keep my word. Well time got away from me and then… But, I’m sure you already know this. But then my wife was killed in a tragic accident and the years flew by. But I always felt guilty about not honoring my word to my dear aunt. In fact, I took the name Promise to always keep in mind the promise I had to fulfill. So, when I heard her grandson was living in San Francisco, and then I got a letter from Sister Rita, from all places, San Francisco, I knew the Lord was moving in wonderous and mysterious ways. The mysterious way was that Sister Rita reached out to me to come out west. And of course, I must admit to you Brother Lyle, the wonderous way was that you would be paying me to come out here,” he raised his glass to Lyle and finished it off.
“You see Brother Lyle; Alton has been seized by the devil. He’s been out here living Sodom’s wicked life style. Brother Lyle, he’s marketed his sinful ways to others on the street. I’ve been meeting with him to purge him of this hell’s own life.”
“And you think meeting him in a queer bar like this is going to change him?” asked Lyle.
“Brother Lyle. We got to meet the sinners where they are to do God’s own work,” said Promise.
“And what about my mother-in-law Reverend?”
“What about her?”
“Are you really doing her any good. I don’t know how much longer I can afford to keep paying you to hang around. Is she getting better or not?”
“Well now Brother Lyle. Sister Rita won’t get better I have to admit. She’s kind of like Cousin Alton here. She’s addicted to drama and negative pleasures. She gets her attention by never feeling well just as Cousin Alton gets his money by selling his body to strangers.”
“Then Mr. Promise. Sorry. Reverend Promise, why am I paying you to stick around and why are you taking advantage of me if you know this?”
“I got to be here a little longer to save Alton. I got to at least tell myself that I’ve tried to help him like I promised my Auntie.”
“And in the meantime, you’ll be eating my food, drinking my wine, and diddling my mother-in-law,” said Lyle as he quickly downed the rest of his wine.
“Diddling? Diddling? I’m not certain what that means, but it seems to me that it means having improper relations with Rita. Is that the meaning Brother?”
“Reverend. Let’s be honest here. I stood at the door a few times, especially when you first showed up. I stood at the door and heard heavy breathing. I heard Rita tell you she hadn’t been touched in that place in a long time. Then I heard you tell her to hold your penis and stroke it . . .”
“Wait, wait, wait, hold it, Brother Lyle. Hold on,” shouted Promise.
“I’m guessing you didn’t peep through the key hole when you heard these conversations did you? I’m guessing you didn’t. So let me explain what you didn’t see but only heard.
“My healing hands touch all parts of the body, but they never venture onto the dirty parts of the body. These women’s parts are Satan’s own web used to ensnare men and lead them into temptation and then to perdition. Even when I was married, I’d didn’t venture to touch my wife in those wicked parts. We both were going to wait before we engaged in such sinful acts until we were ready to conceive a child. She died before we were able to begin, the Lord bless her soul. When you heard Sister Rita say I never been touched there, I believe you said, ‘in a long time’ I believe that was the phrase you used. Where I was touching her was behind her ears, on her neck, right behind her ear lobes. There are certain nerves there that can be massaged to stop headaches and also cause one to relax. It’s better when I’m using my healing hands for her to touch the tops of them while I am stroking her neck to help make a healing connection between my hand and hers. The heavy breathing is an eastern yoga technique we faith healers use to go along with the stroking. It releases the tension and pain too.”
“All of that sounds like applesauce to me,” said Lyle.
“I guess it could, Brother Lyle, but sorry to say, you’ve got no other choice but to learn to swallow the applesauce.”
“We’ll have to see. Reverend. We will have to see.”
Lyle stood up, and headed for the door. “See you at home.”
THE SUNDAY CHRONICLE SERIES
THE END
19
The last installment of the Sunday series on Roy was on the stands and Lyle was relieved to be done with this project. He always felt uneasy visiting Roy after the article had come out principally because he didn’t know whether he could continue to conceal his guilt throughout the session. He knew how the day would go and he dreaded it. He would walk into Roy’s room. The bedspread would be hastily gathered in a wrinkled pile, and upon it, spread out there would be the article, at which Roy would snatch a page and crumple it up, his shaking hand at the level of his reddened face. If there was any consolation forthcoming it would be that this last session would be the last of such rantings. Lyle would stand attentively and stoically to bear Roy’s wrath, feeling the guilt of it all and silently telling himself it was rightfully placed. He would let the invectives settle among the pages on the bed and then tactfully direct the meeting toward work on their project.
It seemed Roy telepathically perceived Lyle’s standing at the door because as Lyle held up his hand to knock, Roy appeared in the doorway.
“Come on in,” he said.
Lyle followed. True to what he had anticipated, the bed looked exactly as it did every week after the article was published.
Roy stood with his back to Lyle. “I believe you got a little note the other day. Didn’t you?”
Lyle swallowed. “How did you know that?”
“My detective friend told me he sent you one. He’s a good detective Lyle. He’s also a good friend.”
“Should I offer to pay him for his work?”
“Nawww,” growled Roy. “I told you he’s a friend. Our friendship is more important than money. You know what I mean Lyle? When you befriend someone. The money between you should be meaningless. You getting what I’m saying?” Roy remained standing there with his back to Lyle, as if he were deciding what part of the opened pages to snatch first.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Do you really understand what I’m saying here Lyle? I don’t think you do. Even in the joints, we jailbirds had some kind of code of honor. A bunch of thieves, swindlers, even murders, we had a code. Can you believe that? I told you Sonney is my friend and he is the best. You know he tried to get me a pardon from the president? That’s a friend. He’s so good at what he does that he found out the name of the person who’s been writing this filth about me and my family. I mean this last bit of crap, the part that says I abandoned my little girl because I loved money, gambling, and robbing trains more. And here’s a part that says I caused my wife to sell herself so she could take care of herself and the baby, suggesting she had to become a whore, when the selling she did was tickets to her appearances at the Pantages. It’s a bunch of bullshit, Lyle. Bullshit,” he yelled, then grabbed a handful of the papers, “Your bullshit,” he yelled as he turned to throw them at Lyle
Lyle was stunned.
“You’re supposed to be working for me and you write this shit. Why? You’re a Judas sir. A Judas. How much more did you get paid for writing this bull?”
“I needed the money, Roy. I had to write it to keep my job at the paper. Half that stuff, I didn’t write, my editor and a few others wrote it. I didn’t write that last part about how you abandoned your family. That’s not my writing there Roy.” Lyle was shaking, breathing heavily, his face was burning, he could feel and actually hear his heart pumping overtime.
“You haven’t been honest with me. I thought you would be somebody I could trust,” said Roy. “I’ve been pouring out my stories believing you honestly wanted to help me write a true account about myself. Instead you write these lies. You’re worse than any con I’ve ever known.”
“And what about you Roy? Have you been totally honest with me?” Lyle heard himself saying these words, and the surprise sent a chill through his spine to the top of his head. “How much of what you’ve been telling me is true? You hire me to set the record straight. To tell the truth and ask me to have my name as part of your book. My reputation as a writer and journalist is jeopardized if what I write is more lies. And while we’re discussing honesty and trust, let’s be honest about whether you will ever pay me for my work.”
“What are you getting at. I told you I’d pay you.”
“Like you paid that reporter in Portland? The one who had to sue you get paid for her stories about you?”
“She expected me to pay her $750.00 for a few stories. She’s the thief, not me.”
“But the rest of what you’ve been telling me is all true?”
“All of it,” said Roy.
“All of it? Roy you must know newspaper reporters have access to all kinds of information. For example, you claimed on your speaking tours that you never used a firearm; you admitted to me a while back that you held a gun, a .32 caliber Smith and Wesson up to this guy driving a mail truck in San Diego. And in this write up by Herman Inderlied, the mail clerk on the Phoenix run, the clerk that helped capture you, he testified that you told him ‘The next time a guy sticks a gun in your ribs and tells you to stick them up, you should stick them up because he might not be Roy Gardner,’ and what about the guards you held hostage at the Atlanta Penitentiary? Didn’t you tell me you used two revolvers?”
“Well Lyle, we got to spruce it up a bit to sell books, don’t we?”
“Roy. Your story is spicy enough. You know as well as I do all the newspaper accounts say you did use revolvers and threatened your victims. That is one of the reasons you were called one of the most dangerous criminals in America.
“What about the part in your escape from McNeil? Your version to me was that you never ever mentioned being shot, the newspapers wrote that to attract readers. But then, in later newspaper interviews and in your lectures, you claim you were shot in the leg twice. The story you told me seems more plausible. The later one not so much. What do we write in your book, you were shot or you weren’t shot? And if we write you were shot, how do we explain how you could have lain bleeding for a couple of days and then get to the bay to swim two miles under water? Freezing water at that. I just would like to know how that’s possible?”
“I had help. I told you that didn’t I?”
“But in your later stories you said you had help after you swam across the sound. By then it would seem in the time line you gave that an ordinary man would have bled to death.”
“Well, I ain’t no ordinary man, Lyle.”
“I agree Roy.
“So the 19 day food strike at Leavenworth, or was it Atlanta, you had me write about, the warden totally debunked your claim in a newspaper article and writes that your friends were sneaking you food throughout your so-called strike.”
“I fasted for 19 days because the food was slop,” said Roy as he opened a new pack of Luckies.
“And the story of the young girl that accused you of attacking her.”
“She lied,” said Roy.
“You said the words ‘Fair enough.’ when they arrested you. That sounds like you were saying, ‘Ya got me.’ What did you mean by that remark?”
“She was a hooker, Lyle. I didn’t know she was 15. It was a hold up plot. That’s all. When the marshals put the iron on my wrists and said they heard I’d be trouble when they tried to arrest me. I said, ‘Fair enough.’ meaning the use of irons was justified if they thought I’d be trouble. That’s all.
“Some of my research on your transfer to Alcatraz shows that you petitioned to be sent there. Did you request to be sent to Alcatraz to be near family?”
“That is the most ridiculous question I ever heard. You believe for a minute that the Bureau of Prisons took prisoners’ requests for where they wanted to do their time? And how close would I be to any family on an island across the bay that allows only one visitor a month for 30 minutes. You really think that? That’s just part of the bullshit you wrote here in this rag.”
“Well Roy can you see what it’s come to? You tell me we’ll write a book to set the record straight and give the truthful facts to correct the lies written about you; yet, you would have me write a new set of lies. So, it appears that you really want to use me to help you spread a new set of falsehoods.”
“Well Mr. Simmons, with you writing two versions of my life’s story, and now neither one of us trusting the other, I don’t see how we can possibly continue. I’m not going to allow you to write the book you want to write. You’ve proven to me that your Sunday articles are the stories you’d rather write. That’s the crap people want to believe about us jailbirds and the bull that sells newspapers. The hell with it all. I’m tired. I got a bum heart they can’t fix, and if they could, I don’t have money enough to fix it. My days in all those joints, all my fights, all the terrible conditions, especially in Hellcatraz, have taken their toll on this right eye. My smoking ain’t helped my health either, I guess; but, if it wasn’t cigarettes, it would be something else that ends up killing me.
There was a morose pall that flooded the quietness in the little room. Kyle was finding it difficult to get his breath.
“Come on back in a few weeks and I’ll have the money to give you. I got a piece of land in Marin that is supposed to sell. I’ll pay you what I owe you then.” Roy reached in his pocket and pulled it inside out. He pulled out three silver dollars and counted out thirty-six cents on the small desk. “There you see. That’s all I got on me now. You’re going to have to take my word for it,” he said.
“Roy, I had to ask…”
“Never mind. I’ll take what we’ve written together and finish the book myself. I don’t know, maybe I’ll never finish it. I don’t care. So just leave now, Lyle.”
Lyle wanted to say something, but only a hissing sound came out.
Roy walked to the door and opened it. He nodded toward it. As Lyle went past him, he avoided looking, his gaze on the floor, then he closed the door gently.
LYLE AND RITA
A TALK
20
When Audrey met Lyle at the door, she didn’t need to ask questions. She knew there was a whole lot of things that had gone wrong. She took his brief case without words and carried it to the kitchen leaving him to go where ever he wanted in the apartment. He chose the parlor and slumped down on the couch. She brought him a glass of water. He looked up at her, then the water.
“Roy fired me, Aud,” he said before taking a sip from the glass.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.” He took another drink from the glass. “I need to talk to you and your mother about Billy Promise.”
“How is Reverend Promise connected to Roy?”
“Only a little. Roy hired a detective for me to follow Billy downtown, but that’s all. Roy fired me because he found out I was the one writing the Sunday series on him.”
Audrey looked puzzled. She slowly sat down next to Lyle. “You were writing that Sunday stuff about Roy while you were taking his money to write a positive book about him? How could you do that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you how I could do that. That’s why I need to talk to you and your mother about the Reverend. I needed the extra money to pay for his room and board and his carousing around the saloons in the city. I got a tip he was in a bar In the Tenderloin district. I went to the bar and there he was sitting with a young boy he claims is his cousin.”
“A cousin? Here in San Francisco? And you don’t believe him, L?”
“I don’t know what to believe Aud. I asked him if he is helping your mother and he tells me he can’t help her. That she’s addicted to being sick. If he can’t help her Aud, then why in the hell are we paying him to stay in San Francisco?”
Audrey was quiet.
“He was straight with me Aud. He said he came out here to deliver that young man he says is a cousin, from the grips of Lucifer. We are paying for him to minister to the queers on the wharf and in the homosexual bars of San Francisco. This is why I took the writing job. I had to do the assignment to keep my job at the ‘Chronicle. The same detective Roy hired to follow Promise found out I was the chief writer on the Sunday series. Roy flipped his wig.”
“What are you going to tell Mommy? It’ll break her heart if she finds out the reverend didn’t come out here for her.”
“I’m just going to come out with it Aud. I need to be on the level with her and hope she will get over it.”
“And that means what L? You’re going to tell her that her healer is a fake?”
“He’s not a fake Aud. Maybe he can steer this young boy from his homosexual life, but she needs to know she is not the reason he has come to San Francisco and not the reason he’s staying?”
“I think you should hold off saying anything to her?”
There was the familiar shuffle coming from the back bed room. Audrey’s look to Lyle was one of panic. Her eyes were wide opened and she held her finger to her lip while shaking her head back and forth.
“Saying anything to who?” they heard half the hall away.
The two sat frozen on the couch and waited for Rita to clear the corner.
“You know different parts of my body are giving out, but my ears don’t seem among them. I can still hear very well. I had my door opened and sensed there was some kind of problem.”
“Mommy, it’s nothing you should concern yourself with now. We can talk about it later. Can’t we Lyle?” Her eyes pleaded.
“I don’t think we can Aud. Since Rita is here and since she seems to be in good spirits, I think we need to have a talk between us. Are you okay with that Rita?”
“Get me a chair Audrey.” She stood a bit unsteady and looked at Kyle. “Now what do you have to tell me?”
THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
HEALER AND RESCUER
21
Reverend Promise stepped out of the cab on Leavenworth in front of the Cadillac Hotel. Looking across the top of the cab, the hotel resembled three boxcars on stilts he thought as he mindlessly paid the cab driver. He was on a mission to save a young man who he was told was in room 245 with a person that was widely known as a degenerate. One who took advantage of young men and then coerced them into working the streets for him. The reverend didn’t know the boy’s name only that others, the boy’s friends, knew he’d be in danger by getting involved with such a person. The reverend had dressed in his yellow suit, brown tie, white shirt, and tan shoes. His “preaching-the-good-book” outfit he called it. He held the Bible against his chest with his right hand and began taking the stairs to the second floor. On the landing, he stopped to adjust his tie. He opened his Bible to the prophet Micah, verse 2, paragraph 1: “Woe to those who scheme iniquity, Who work out evil on their beds!” and then he bookmarked Psalm 7:9, “O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, but establish the righteous; For the righteous God tries the hearts and minds.” He took a breath, tapped the Bible lightly against his forehead, and walked to room 245.
Approaching the door slowly, he held his ear to it. He could hear nothing. He gently knocked and stood back. Nothing. He knocked a bit harder and stepped back. He detected a movement and assumed it was toward the door. He waited. No one answered, so he hammered more aggressively. With this last effort he didn’t have time to step back before the door flew opened to the words,’ What the hell are you selling fellow?”
Promise didn’t have time to answer before the man spoke again, “And why the hell did they let you up here in the first place?”
The man at the door was the image of a Hollywood B-movie bit player; the main character’s boss, the bank president, the newspaper editor. He wore a gray suit, a darker gray four-in-hand tie, his clipped and coiffed hair whitened around the temples. Steel blue eyes emitted scorn and impatience through his rimless classes.
“Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Reverend . . “
“I’m not interested in what you’re peddling Rev,” barked the gentleman.
Promise opened his Bible and the man slammed the door.
Promise stood at the door and with the side of his fist he pounded on it rattling the nearby fire extinguisher’s glass case. When the man opened the door again, the reverend shouted out, “I understand you have a young man in here that might not want to be in your company.”
The man took a step toward Promise, withdrew his right hand from behind his back, and smashed a phonebook across the reverend’s face. Promise reeled backward and fell to the floor. He recovered enough to get to all fours on the hallway floor and just before he passed out, he saw Alton standing behind the gentleman in a silk robe. The sheen from the robe seemed to send him into unconsciousness.
Lyle had been practicing his talk with Rita. He determined to insist the reverend leave and find another place to live, or go back to Texas. He would insist that any money he might spend toward Rita’s healthcare in the future be paid to licensed doctors offering accepted modes of treatments for her condition. Lisa sat attentively waiting for Lyle to say his peace as Audrey moved uncomfortably about, doting over her mother with water, Kleenexes, and constant questions as to what else she might need at the moment. As Lyle commenced, the doorbell rang. He looked at Audrey and she looked at him just as questioningly.
“I’ll get it,” Audrey offered.
“No, I’ll get it. Make sure your mom has everything she needs before we begin.”
Lyle turned the knob and opened the door. Reverend Promise spilled into the apartment, clothes disheveled and face bruised. Audrey came running up. Rita swooned, but stayed in her chair.
“My heavens. My goodness. What has happened? Did you get mugged?” asked Audrey.
The reverend said nothing. Standing at the door was a cab driver patiently waiting. “I picked him up at the Cadillac. The bellhop helped me get him in the cab and even paid me to haul him away. This is the address he told me, so here he is.”
Lyle took hold of Promise to keep the reverend from falling over.
“Aud. You got some money for tip?” asked Lyle.
“No need Mac, Mam. The bellboy give me a good tip to boot. Hope the fella feels better. Well good night.”
AUDREY AND LYLE
THE REVEREND BILLY PROMISE
22
The afternoon Reverend Promise was carried home in a taxi, he was led back to his room and he slept far into the night and late the following morning. Audrey attended to his swollen eye with cold damp towels and he blessed her profusely with each treatment.
“Brother Lyle will probably have some things to say to me when he gets back won’t he Sister?” said the reverend.
“Yes. He wants you to find another place to stay and some other means of earning a living. We can’t afford you Reverend,” Audrey’s head drooped. She avoided the reverend’s glance.
“I told him I didn’t see your mother getting any better, Sister. I’m sure he told you that. The truth is, she needs a lot of attention. I don’t mean medical attention. She rallies when I give her all of my attention, but when I’m not around, she slinks back into her sickness. And Sister. Her sickness is not in her body, but in her mind. Unless a patient realizes that God helps them that help themselves, they going to be sick.”
“But Reverend, I pray really hard for her every day. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Sister, how’s that supposed to work? I mean how is your praying supposed to heal your mom? Are you asking the Lord to change the molecules in her body so that they generate new heathy cells? Or are you praying that she suddenly becomes happy and satisfied with her life to the extent she wants to get well? And, Sister. What are your prayers but whispered utterances you expect will float up to the Creator and he will do the rest. You realize that the air in the balloon makes it beautiful only if it stays in the balloon. Burst the balloon and it just becomes part of the common air and the balloon shrivels up to ugliness.”
“I don’t understand that Reverend.”
“Well Sister, if you send up prayer balloons to the Lord, you must fill your balloons with the strong breaths of intention or the prayers will go only so high before shriveling up and falling flat.”
“Don’t you teach praying? Don’t you say that the Lord answers all our prayers? Didn’t you pray with my mom when you arrived and haven’t you been praying with her all this time?”
“Yes. But I’ve been doing all the praying. She’s been parroting my words while quietly affirming that she’s sick and needs everyone’s attention. And you, in your praying have been saying the words, while quietly thinking she is ruining your life and putting a strain on your finances and your marriage, and inwardly harboring suspicions about her role in your father’s death Do you think your beautiful balloon prayers will rise high enough without the full air of your intent?”
“I am really confused Reverend. Are you saying Mommy won’t be getting better?”
The reverend looked at Audrey squarely, eye to eye and shook his head slowly. “She doesn’t want to get well Sister Audrey. And if your sincere prayers did ever get through to Him,” His eyes looked up, “and he changed her molecules so that they formed healthy cells, she would not recognize or accept the change, but rather go find another part of her body where the Lord didn’t have time to make well. Everything is in the mind, my dear sister, and when the mind says ‘I’m sick’ or ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m miserable’ the body makes sure it becomes all of that. The person becomes all that.”
“Then why have you been leading us on?”
“Oh, my being here has helped keep Sister Rita well and helped her have some almost good days. I’ve been able to determine for sure that Sister doesn’t want to get better. I have seen her become joyful and then, realizing she is joyful, I watched her crawl back into her misery. So, I don’t feel as though I’ve been leading you on. But,” and the reverend paused, and sighed heavily, “But, I do think Brother Lyle is right. I need to move on. San Francisco is too much for this country preacher. Too many souls need saving. Too much for me.”
“And what about your cousin? Lyle says you came here as much for him as for my mom.”
“I’ll try to find him, but he’ll probably disappear into his chosen life in this city. I will pray for him, but like your mom, he’s going to want to change. Even were I to bind him up in rope and take him back to Texas, he’d still have the cravings of a sinner. Only time will tell whether he corrects his sway from the Almighty. Right now, I don’t think he’ll be paying much attention to any prayers coming his way, Lord forgive ‘em.”
“I just don’t know what I will tell Mommy. What should I tell her? She’ll be heartbroken.”
“I will tell her Sister. I will tell her I’ve done all I can, now the rest is up to her. I will also recommend that she go to a doctor to get treatments. She’ll listen to me I’m sure of it.”
“Oh Reverend, I’d be so grateful if you did that,” Audrey said and gave the reverend a hug. She let go of the hug, but the reverend held on. The encounter surprised and frightened her and she forcefully broke the embrace to quickly move away. Neither said anything more to the other.
AN EXIT PLAN
ROY GARDNER
23
Roy walked along Turk Street heading toward the corner at Jones. His few outings included a newspaper from the paper boy on the corner. The boy reminded him of his own youth and so he always left the youngster with a word of praise and advice. He was thankful that the Chronicle’s Sunday series had ended their feature on his life. He no longer felt the tightness in his stomach as he approached the corner to buy a paper.
“What’s the news today, Johnny?” Roy smiled and handed the boy a quarter.
“Your change Mister Roy,” said the boy.
“You keep it. Save it for school. Maybe you’ll become a doctor, or lawyer, or a teacher. You got to think of those things Johnny my boy. Always be straight with everybody. Never be dishonest. Crimes don’t pay, only the criminals have to pay. I hope you remember that, Johnny.”
“Yes sir,” the boy said pocketing his quarter.
Roy walked back to the hotel coming to the drug store where he picked up cigarettes and medicine, and a special package he had Harry, the druggist ordered for him.
“How your Dodgers looking next year?” asked Roy. “Hamlin coming back to play in New York?”
“He better,” answered Harry. “Cookie, too. These are the few guys who can handle Hubble and the Giants.
“Didn’t you tell me you were going to visit your daughter?” Harry asked.
“Yes. That’s why I ordered that cleaner from you. She’s 20 years old now and just got married. I got some silver pieces I want to brighten up to give to her as a wedding present. I hear she’s married a real straight shooter.”
“That’s swell Roy, real swell. Well, hang on so I can get your cleaner.” Harry disappeared briefly and came back and pulled a small round can from a paper bag. “Now Roy, you got to be careful with this stuff, it contains cyanide, so use it in the open, and wash up real good. Just a little of this will do the job. Make sure the cap is sealed tight when you’re done.”
“Oh yes. I used this stuff a lot when I was doing metal work. I’ll be careful.”
“Well, I better get back in the store.” said Harry. “See you ‘round.”
“Yep. See you around,” said Roy.
Roy walked past the Hotel Governor on toward Sutter Street. He looked up at the sky and felt a chilly breeze pass over his face and breathed in the sea air from the bay. He walked to Halsted and Company’s funeral parlor and stood at the door unconsciously pulling out his cigarette pack, but he thought not to light one before entering the parlor. Instead, he pocketed the paper bag with the round can.
An attendant immediately walked up to him, “May I be of service, sir?” he said.
“I think so,” said Roy. “I am Roy Gardner and I need to arrange a funeral.”
“I see,” said the attendant. “Let’s go into my office.”
As they sat down at the man’s desk, he introduced himself to Roy. “Now who is the deceased one?”
“Me,” said Roy flashing a wide grin. “My doctors tell me I have a few months to live, so I want to arrange this while I can. Not leave it to others.”
“I see,” said the man as he reached into his desk’s drawers to pull out several forms. “We need to fill out these, and establish how much you wish to pay.”
Roy shook his head and smiled. “I understand.”
When they finished, Roy had directed the mortician to cremate his body after a protestant ceremony. He told the gentleman that he would return the next day to pay for the services.
A NOTE ON THE DOOR
ROY GARDNER
24
It was the next day, the day after the night that Audrey relayed Reverend Promise’s words and plans to Lyle. She asked that he stick around until after the reverend had had his conversation with Rita and after the reverend had left. For all she knew and certainly expected, Promise was all packed and ready to say his good-byes. Lyle was agreeable to this. He too wanted to be sure the reverend honored his promise to leave and to leave Rita in a state of accepting his recommendation she see medical doctors from now on.
Reverend Promise was the first person to clear the hallway door with his suitcase held close to the floor. “Seems heavier now than when I first arrived. I don’t recall buying that many new things.”
Lyle said nothing, but only smiled. He took a sip of coffee. “Coffee?”
“Yes. Perhaps I would.”
Audrey came through the kitchen door and seemed surprised that Promise was standing there.
“Coffee for the reverend, Aud,” said Lyle.
She immediately changed her direction to go back into the kitchen.
“I think I hear Sister coming. Let me do the talking please.”
Audrey delivered the coffee and the reverend took a sip just as Rita shuffled around the hall’s doorway. “What’s the luggage. Who’s going somewhere?”
“Good morning, Sister,” the reverend raised his cup in a salute. “I am dear.”
Rita looked at Audrey. Then she looked at Promise. “But why? Where? For how long?”
“Oh Sister Rita, your questions are asked with such vigor and quickness. Such energy in your words. You must conjure up this energy in everything you do. Do you notice how resolved you are to get answers? Do you notice the charge you create waiting for someone to explain? That energy can only be aroused by you.
“It is time I must leave you and your family Sister. My work with you is done. I can do no more. It is up to you to get better on your own.”
“But how am I to get better without your healings and prayers? What am I to do?” Rita said.
“My dear Sister Rita. If I did anything for you it was to give you some time to realize that I can only be a cheerleader of sorts to cheer you on with your own self work. My healings were only techniques to charge you into using your will to arouse the healing energies in your own body. You think you need someone like me to heal you, but I only try to keep reminding you that you are the healer. You are a child learning to ride a bike. As long as I run alongside you will expect me to hold you upright.”
There was someone at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Lyle.
Rita started to get shaky. She started looking around for some place to sit.
“Stop that Sister! You stop that right now,” yelled the reverend. “That sort of nonsense will not do from now on. You will not resort to this kind reaction to things and situations you don’t like. My last healing charge to you is that you cease being a victim and that you use the rest of your time on this earth to make your life pleasurable and bearable and happy. Not just for your sake, but for the sake of these two wonderful youngun’s.”
Rita broke into tears and shuffled off to her bedroom.
“Then this is our goodbye Sister. I’ll write you later to make sure you are following my advice.”
Rita halted to look back at the reverend, then she turned, and walked away.
“Was that a cabbie?” Audrey asked Lyle.
“No. Did we call a cab?”
“I arranged for a cab to pick me up this morning. It should be here soon,” said Reverend Promise.
“Who was that at the door Lyle?” asked Audrey.
“That was an errand boy from the paper telling me to get over to the Governor Hotel.
It looks like Roy might be over his anger with me and he’s ready to resume his book. Or maybe he wants me to come over to get paid for my work with him,” said Lyle.
The doorbell rang. Audrey opened the door to see a cabbie.
“You order a cab Miss?” the driver said.
Audrey looked at the Reverend. “Your cab is here.”
“Right,” said Promise. “Well goodbye to you both. Thank you for all you’ve done to allow me to stay in San Francisco. May the Lord bless you.”
Promise shook Lyle’s hand, and stopped short of hugging Audrey, shaking her hand instead. “Goodbye,” he said. The cabbie met him at the door, willingly taking hold of his bag to carry it down the stairs.
After watching the reverend get into the cab and seeing the driver take off, Audrey closed the door. She looked at Lyle with a smile of relief. “I’ll take a kiss right here,” she said pointing to her lips.
Kyle stepped off the bus on Turk Street, just in front of the Governor Hotel. The area was buzzing with policemen, firemen. There were a couple of ambulances, emergency beacons full on. He walked past two policemen talking to hotel workers and quickly flashed his press credentials. They regarded him apathetically keeping to their conversations. There were small conclaves all around the lobby usually with one person dominating the conversation. Other workers, housekeepers, bellboys, desk clerks, scurried past each other, each seemingly on a mission that did not concern others, they all like caravans of leaf cutter ants coming and going to the nest. The elevator door was locked opened. It was obvious that it was not available, so Lyle started up the stairs to the third floor. As he opened the doorway into the third-floor hallway, he saw firemen in full gear wearing gas masks moving about. Never taking the stairs before, Lyle was unsure which way led to Roy’s room and he had to look at a couple of doors to get his bearing. Turning toward Roy’s room, it became apparent that all the excitement was happening around his door. Lyle walked up to see a handwritten note taped to the door. “Do not enter. Call the police.”
“Okay Fornette. Go on in,” barked one of the firemen through his mask.
Fornette unlocked the door and went in, followed by two or three other firemen.
“Better stay back fellow. We don’t know what to expect here,” said another fireman.
Fornette quickly stepped from the doorway. “Cyanide, Chief. He’s gassed himself with cyanide.”
Two medical attendants offered the firemen a stretcher. The firemen quickly took hold of it and went back into the room.
“You gotta leave fella,” said the chief. It’s too dangerous here without a mask.
As Lyle started for the stairs a fireman yelled out, “Hey Chief. He left a note here.”
The fireman walked toward the chief, with the note held out in front of him.
“I’m Lyle Simmons from the Chronicle and a personal friend of Roy. I was helping him write a book. Could I just see that note before you give it to the police?” Lyle accompanied the question with his press badge.
“Should be all right. Don’t you disappear with that. It’s evidence.”
Lyle unfolded it. The note read:
To the press:
Please do not mention my daughter’s married name. Her in-laws do not know she is related to me and any mention of her name would wreck her happiness.
Please let me down as lightly as possible boys. I’ve always played ball with you so now please pitch me a slow one so I can hit it. I am checking out simply because I’m old and tired and don’t care to continue the struggle. There are no love affairs or disappointments of any kind connected with this. I’m just tired that’s all. I hold no malice toward any human being and I hope those whom I have wronged will forgive me for it. If I had known what the future held for me I would have checked out in 1920 and saved my loved ones the disgrace and the shame that they have had to endure these many years. Also I would have dodged plenty of grief I have endured unnecessarily.
All men who have to serve more than five years in prison are doomed, but they don’t realize it. They kid themselves in the belief that they can come back, but they can’t. There is a barrier between ex-convicts and society that cannot be leveled.
Every man on Alcatraz today would be better off if they would jump into the bay and start swimming to China. I didn’t decide to check out on the spur of the moment. I had planned this a few months ago. Good by and good luck boys and please grant my last request to keep my daughter’s name out of this.
Sincerely yours,
Roy Gardner.
“Hey fella I need that note,” called out the chief.
Lyle refolded it and gave it back to the fireman. In moving toward the stairwell door, he looked back to see the firemen hand over the stretcher to the ambulance attendants. They stood at the elevator and soon disappeared into it.
TWO SUITCASES WITH TIPS
ROY GARDNER
25
“Hey, Simmons," Norm Howell called out. “In here,” he pointed.
In his office, the editor walked to his chair and once his butt touched the seat, he bounced off to stand at the side of his desk. Lyle stood to the front of the desk.
“You should write the last word about your friend Gardner. I mean you know what frame of mind he was in during his last days. You write the last piece about him.”
Lyle shook his head, yes.
“Good. Get to it then,” said Howell finally resting on his chair. “Yes. Good. Good,” he said and started fiddling with the pile of papers he had before him.
Lyle took this to mean he was excused, and he turned around and left.
His article was titled, “Goodbye to Roy Gardner”
On Wednesday, January 10, a California man methodically stuffed bath towels under his hotel room door and his bathroom door to make sure the poison he would breathe in would not seep out to harm the health and lives of others outside his room. To further ensure their safety, he wrote notes and taped them to his doors telling innocent bystanders not to open them but rather call the police. Before going into his self-made gas chamber, the man carefully packed two suit cases with what remained of his worldly belongings and neatly placed them side by side with notes directing what relative got which bag along with 50 cents placed on each to tip the bellman. The man was the famous train robber, Roy Gardner, a 56-year-old man who was able to hide away a source of cyanide to drop into his bathtub as deftly as he had hidden away knives and pistols to effectuate his escapes. In Roy’s 20 or so years of crime, it is said that he never hurt a single victim and, in fact, in a case where he could have used a weapon to get away, he chose not to, which led to his capture and to an extended prison sentence. Sick, partially blind, and literally on his last dollar, Gardner had determined that he had had enough of this life. He leaves behind a daughter and an ex-wife and many lawmen and everyday people, druggists, newspaper boys, cafeteria workers, and the likes who still viewed him as a Robin Hood-type character. As was the case for all of his famous escapes, Roy Gardner studied all the routes, planned all the moves, chose all the times that would best work for his exits, It should be no surprise then that in this sad event of his passing, Roy would characteristically determine the time and the means for this his final escape. Rest in peace to the Smiling Bandit. Rest in peace Mr. Gardner.
Finishing the article, the woman shoved the paper in front of a couple that sat across from her on the train. “My son-in-law wrote that for the Chronicle. He knew Roy Gardner personally. In fact, he’s writing a book about him.”
The couple dutifully read the byline and smiled at the woman.
“You heading to Texas too?” asked the man, gently pushing the paper back to her.
“Houston,” said the woman.
“That’s us too. You live there?” asked the lady.
“I used to until my husband passed away. Been living in San Francisco with my daughter and her husband. He’s the one that wrote this article.” She almost shoved the paper back onto the man’s lap, but restrained herself.
“A visit then,” said the lady.
“Kinda of. and kinda doctor’s visit. I’m off to see my spiritual healer. Name is Billy Promise. Ever hear of him?”
“Promise,” the man repeated and looked at his wife, then he looked up at the ceiling trying to search his memory. “Can’t say as I did.”
“No. Me neither,” said the lady.
“My daughter was all against my trip. Wondered where I would stay. How would I get along without her. All them sort of things.”
“And so will you stay with this Mr. Promise?”
“Oh heavens no. He doesn’t know I’m coming. I’ll stay with a sister I haven’t talked to in years. I just started to speak to her lately. She’s old and needs help and said I could come live with her for a while.”
“Oh that’s nice,” said the lady. “That’s real nice.”
“It’s important family help family wouldn’t you say?” said the man.
Rita smiled and neatly folded the paper.
AFTERWARDS
This book is based on Roy Gardner’s own account of his escapades as written and self-published book called Roy Gardner:My Story/Hellcatraz later edited by Tom Ryan, and published by Douglas/Ryan Publications in 2000. It is also based on the many newspaper articles from around the country about Gardner and his escapes. Most prisoners’ names are fictitious. The names and people affiliated with the San Francisco Chronicle are all made-up as are the people and the concurrently running story of Lyle Simmons and Reverend Billy Promise.
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