Bootleg Barnyard Animals

"Step on it, Joey," I admonished. "I want to get back to Chicago before the seasons change."

"You got it, boss. The barn where he's been hiding is about a half a mile down this road."

"Good. Let's just finish this up. I'm getting hungry."

Joey wheeled the sedan down the dirt trail and parked under a tree, not far from the old red bar. Well, I say red, because it used to be. It was disheveled and badly in need of some work and a paint job.

“Nitti’s gonna shit when he finds out how we found this guy. Anyway, let’s get our guns.”

We walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk, revealing 2 pump shotguns, each taking one. I also grabbed a bandolier of extra shells just in case this job went tits up and we got into a firefight.

The barn was a faded red on the outside, but completely colorless on the inside. Didn’t look like anybody had taken an interest in the contents in years. It was 1931, so the whole farm had probably been foreclosed on and abandoned.

We slowly slid open the huge barn door and crept in, shotguns first.

Hay was all over the floor of the building, and the two stables on the sides looked abandoned. We looked for Al Merrick in both of them and didn’t find him. He’d been one of our drivers, hauling booze down from Canada into the heartland, but he was also skimming profits, charging our distributors more than the agreed upon price and pocketing the difference. The boss found out and told Frank Nitti to make him disappear. Nitti passed the job off to Joey and me.

As we were slowly stalking out way through the front entrance of the barn, I heard snoring coming from up in the loft. I silently signaled to Joey that he was above us, and we looked for the ladder, which we quickly found. The ladder with the pitchfork leaning against it.

When Joey was close enough, he pointed his shotgun up into the hole, and I slung mine and started climbing. As soon as I got to the top, I clawed my way onto the floor and readied my shotgun while I waited for Joey to climb up.

Upstairs, I suddenly realized why they called it a hay loft. There must have been 50 bails of hay up there, and the snoring was coming from behind one of them in the far corner.

Joey took his time climbing up the ladder. He kind of had to. He was 5’9” and weighed close to 200 pounds. Calling him ‘portly’ would have been kind. Eventually, he did get upstairs with his shotgun at the ready.

In the corner where the snoring came from, a crashing sound made itself known. I had no idea what that was. I was a city boy. I didn’t know about this hillbilly shit. Joey had grown up in rural Indiana, so he knew what it was right away. “That sounded like a lantern hitting the floor.’

All of a sudden, the snoring stopped, and the air was punctuated by a scream of “AAAAH!” and the sound of somebody scrambling to their feet. Al’s head popped up from behind a stack of hay bales, and he smacked his body furiously, trying to put out his flaming clothes. He was successful on that note, but the floor was quickly becoming a raging inferno.

When he had smacked his clothes free of fire, he finally glanced up in our direction, only to be looking at the barrels of two pump shotguns. “What the hell?” he exclaimed.

Below, the barn door creaked to life. Someone had opened it. Despite the fact that the two of us were trained on Al with our shotguns, we all froze in fear. This could be anybody, backup for us, backup for him, some stupid looky-loo, anything.

A loud creaking sound followed, and I felt the floor shift beneath me. I would guess that everybody else felt it, too. Then, the floor gave way. All three of us dropped the 20 feet to the ground below.

I silently hoped the boy, whoever he was, had gotten out before then. I’d hate to think of a kid getting crushed.

The ground was a disheveled mess of hay bales, broken wood, sawdust, and tools. Oh, and it was on fire, too. Bonus.

Everything hurt. I looked myself over, and when I looked to the right, my hurt doubled suddenly, and I wanted to howl in pain. There was a pair of shears that had managed to open themselves up in the drop and stabbed me in the back of my right arm.

In what felt like an eternity of blood and pain, I pulled the offending shears free. After that, I just laid there for a second, catching my breath. “Joey, you alive under there?”

The fire was growing bigger now. Thick black smoke was starting to fill our little barn. Incredibly, the wood of the barn made a crackling noise as it burned.

I heard a moan that confirmed that he was, indeed, alive. Once I scrambled to my feet, I looked around for where the moaning had come from. When I found a pile of rubble and hay, I started digging. Joey emerged after just a minute.

The wayward boy that I had heard downstairs suddenly reappeared through the barn door. He grabbed a horse blanket and began swatting at the fire in a vain attempt to put it out. It was too late, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

Joey and I looked around for our shotguns after we were sure we were alright. After another minute of searching, we found them.

The boy was as surprised to see us as we were him. “Hi,” he said timidly. “You guys better get out of here.”

“Kid, what’s your name?”

“Perry.”

“Listen, Perry,” Joey spoke up. “There were 3 of us in here. Did you see where the other one went?”

Perry pulled out a handkerchief and put it over his mouth. The barn had turned into a raging inferno of burning hay and wood. He uncovered his mouth and screamed no and covered back up.

At this point, we were all yelling to be heard over the burning barn. Through the smoke and flames, I saw Al get upright. He was hobbling on one leg, and a bloody bone was sticking out of his torn pant leg of the other.

He tried to hop away, and we gave chase. Well, as fast as Fat Joey could run.

I took off in a dead run after him. On the way out of the barn, I grabbed little Perry with my right arm. I winced in pain as I did that. I had almost forgotten about my wounded arm.

Perry didn’t protest the way I thought he might…until we got outside, that is. Once we were out of the burning barn, he yelled and screamed to be put down. I did as he wished.

Al just stood there outside the barn. Stood on one leg and let the other just hang there. I ran past him and turned around and pointed my shotgun at him. He glanced back toward the barn, as if he wanted to run, but Joey was standing there with his own shotgun. Once somebody racks that pump, you never forget that sound.

“What are you guys here for?” Al wondered aloud.

“Nitti says you been skimming off the top on deliveries,” Joey said.

“He told us to clip you.” I racked my own shotgun just to drive the point home.

A look of shock and horror washed over Al’s face as he quickly assessed his situation. “Look, just say you never found me. I’ll disappear and you’ll never hear from me again. I’ve got money, I can pay you. Please!”

Joey and I looked at each other. Stupid as it sounded, we were considering his offer. We stood there for a long minute while the barn burned behind us. A woman with black hair and an apron ran along a well-worn path toward the burning barn. She caught Perry up in her arms, and nearly tackled the little fella. “Oh, Perry, baby! I’m so glad you’re out of that barn. You had your Pa and me scared to death!”

I can’t imagine the scene she must’ve been looking at…two battered and bloody city boys in suits pointing shotguns at a third bloody lump with no jacket or tie. All this while her barn burned behind her.

More silence. It seems that I had thought about Al’s offer long enough. “Nah,” I said, and we both fired out shotguns multiple times into Al’s chest. After that, I dropped my shotgun on the ground and turned toward the mother and son that stood before me.

“Listen, uh, I’m not sure what to say. I’m sorry that you had to see that. You’re not going to say anything to anybody, are you?” I really didn’t want to whack this family if I didn’t have to. They had nothing to do with our business.

“You guys are murderers! What kind of animal shoots a defenseless man with one good leg?” The mother was in a rage. She had just watched us murder somebody on her land.

“I really don’t want to hurt you, we mean you no harm, but trust me…that guy had it coming. I reached in my front pocket for my money clip, which was full. When I unrolled it, I had $500 there. “This should help you out a little bit. Don’t worry, we’ll take the body with us. Sorry about your barn.

The woman threw the cash back in my face. “This is blood money. I don’t want this from you. I don’t want anything from you. Just get out of here!”

“Sure,” said Joey, then added, “We’ll take Al here with us. You should pick those bills up. The money doesn’t know where it came from.”

We turned around and headed back to the car, grabbing Al’s corpse on our way.