Free The Altonevers by Frederic Merbe Page A

no.
I was, am a vault knocker, a robber of all things really. So sort
of in the same way a vampire needs blood, I need a piece of
whatever’s not nailed down. The gambling, does somethin’ but it
ain’t quite the feeling, I’m looking for.”
    “ Why is that your dream to
live?” she asks. The searchlights and sirens, foot pursuits and
gunfights at street level simmer. The pitter patter of the rain
rises as background static to the story of his life, his prior
life.
    “ I was born in Illinois,
1917, on a dusty farm far down a muddy back road. In something like
your Alto Anna, maybe even the same, but who knows. That's why I
went when I heard what would happen to it, I just had to see it, to
feel it” he says. She says nothing, only nodding and staring in
wait for more, “I came to be a young man during the
depression.”
    “ The great depression,”
Anna asks.
    “ Yeah I guess, and I got in
with a clique of bank robbers, just like I seen in the newspapers
back then. I was selling sacks of apples on the side of the road,
half of them were rotten, but those were the ones I could eat.
Hungry, stuck in a rut, and starving to feel alive. They were
passing through and asked me to guide them through the back roads
and around the fields. I squeezed in the front seat with another
guy, the first time I’d ever been in a auto. Good guys, they even
took me to the job with ‘em. Just gave me a handle, and told me I
can ride with them as long as I earn my place to sleep.
    It went well, and was different than
anything I've ever done before. Exciting in a way I can’t explain.
A feeling I’ve spent my lifetime trying to get back to. We weren’t
murderers, more like Robin hoods, but mostly to ourselves of
course,” he laughs, “I was free for the first time in my life, from
my life of dirt and bare feet, of the farm and the fields, of
poverty and hunger. Just free, alive and flush with cash as
millions were starving, and we helped them, we threw bags of money
out windows as we fled. It was bliss, my own youthfully ignorant
bliss. It became the only feeling I ever wanted to know,” he
says.
    “ What happened?” she
asks.
    “ It went sour, real bad.
Things like that, Anna, living that way never stays good forever,
but I didn’t know that then. It was two men, a woman, one of the
guy's moll, and me, the kid. Apples they called me,”
    “ You don't remember their
names?” she asks.
    “ I thought I’d never forget
them, but since then I've been alive for I don't know how many
days, maybe forever, however long you think that is,” he says, then
sucking from his smoke. “We were on a roll for six years,
untouchable. The feds and locals, the papers, everybody knew us,
folk heroes to the poor and parasites to the robber Baron pariah.
We got away every time but once, it only takes once. We were
carrying the a celebration of the night before as we coasted into
this little lumber town. Thinking in our arrogance that we'll be
able to be in and out with the cash, and on our way. We didn’t
prepare, we just hit the bank at seven in the morning, the yellow
light hour we called it. The feds ambushed us as we rolled up to
it. It turned into a war zone, we had Thompson's, but so did the
pencil pusher's, and they couldn't handle them, spraying wildly,
worse than any of the gangsters I knew. A guy was hit, the brash
leader if you want, and his moll captured.
    Me and the old timer made for the
timber at the edge of town. We ran all day and by nightfall we made
it deep into the bog, where the brush was densest. We thought we
were in the clear so we slowed our pace. We were making our way up
a steep hill when we seen the torches marching toward us through
the night blackened tree branches. The rabid barking of their
hounds lead their gunfire to shred the bark from the trees around
us. The old timer got hit in the leg, in falling he broke his ribs
on a rock I tried to drag him the rest of the way up, but he pushed
me away. He gave me his