Clark woke up Tuesday morning and was anxious with going to work. He couldn’t wait for his planned chat with Dudley this evening. How exciting!
This was the longest workday in Clark’s life. He kept watching the clock, and the more he stared at it, the more time slowed down. He just wanted to get home.
The workday ended, and Clark blew off Roger’s offer to hit the club that night stating he just stated that he wanted to stay home and watch some movies.
Clark left the dealership, and he roared his hot rod home.
He gulped down a microwave dinner then changed his clothes.
He ran over to Dudley’s home and tripped over his own two feet once falling face first into his grass.
After Dudley let Clark inside his living room, he sat on the couch. Clark was ready and anxious and looked at the two cups of coffee Dudley just placed on the coffee table.
Dudley left the living room in search of something else he wanted to show Clark.
A few seconds passed, and Dudley walked back into his living room with an old work photo album in hand that was three inches thick of family pictures.
Kristy walked into the living room and saw Dudley sitting down on the couch.
“I’m going back to the campus.
I have a night class to teach,” she told Dudley from the archway of the living room.
“Okay baby,” Dudley said while he picked up his coffee cup along with Clark.
Clark looked at Kristy and wished she would join them. “Where do you teach, Kristy?” he said and wanted to let her know he was interested in her life.
Kristy looked at Clark and thought he looked like a 1930s creep with that pencil-thin mustache, slicked back haircut, and his black shirt and black pants outfit. “University of Texas,” she said then headed off to the front door not wanting to waste her time chatting with him.
“I have an uncle that teaches physics there. You might know him, Doctor Wallace Burns?”
“Sorry, I don’t,” replied Kristy without thinking, as she just wanted to leave the house.
Clark’s eyes followed Kristy through the living room and watched while she left through the front door.
Dudley noticed Clark’s eyes. “Kristy has been too involved with her professor duties to get involved with men,” he said to let him know that if he had an itch to date his daughter, he did not stand a chance.
“That’s too bad,” said Clark then he looked at Dudley and was ready to hear some history.
“Let’s get started with the reason you’re here. You probably already know most of this since you’ve read my book. But I’ll repeat some of it and tell you some things I didn’t state in my book. So, to start off, daddy was born on March twenty-fifth in nineteen oh eight on a farm out in the western side of Austin. My granddaddy worked in a sawmill, and grandma worked the farm growing vegetables. They weren’t dirt poor but not rich, either. They were surviving and able to support five kids,” said Dudley, then he took a drink of his coffee.
Clark took a drink of his coffee and already knew this piece of history.
“Gus was the oldest brother, Sadie was next, Willy was after Sadie, Harold was after Willy and then along came Dirk,” said Clark while he placed his cup back on the coffee table.
“Very good, now, since daddy was the youngest child, my granddaddy and grandma were in their late forties and already exhausted from raising four other kids.
So by then, granddaddy became a heavy drinker as his boss at the sawmill was a total asshole and started treating his workers like shit. He made them work twelve hours, six days a week. So granddaddy’s favorite drink became Moonshine,” said Dudley and took a drink of coffee.
“How did you learn about that side of your family history?”
“From my Uncle Willy. He told me about his family before he died in nineteen eighty-seven.”
Clark took a drink of coffee, as this was something he never read in Dudley’s book.
“Uncle Willy told me that granddaddy would come home after drinking Moonshine after long hours at the sawmill and became meaner than a rattlesnake.
He would beat the boys with a belt for the slightest infraction. Uncle Gus ran away when he was sixteen and joined the Army in nineteen seventeen. He went off to the war in France to beat the Germans. Daddy loved Uncle Gus and missed him when he left. Then they got the news that Uncle Gus was killed in France and that profoundly affected daddy. So after that, those frequent belt beating started to make daddy mean and tough,” said Dudley then he took a drink of his coffee.
Clark took a drink of his coffee and started to feel sorry for Dirk’s younger life.
“So, when daddy was around twelve, he started hanging around with a kid named Butch Hanson during the summer of nineteen twenty. This kid was known to be a hooligan and also known by the cops as a petty thief. But Butch fascinated daddy, and they became inseparable. So they would break into homes in the middle of the night and steal food. Then they started stealing what little cash they could find in cookies jars or whatnot. Back then, people didn’t lock their doors at night, so it was easy to quietly slip into someone’s house.”
“But didn’t some of those folks back then shoot first then ask questions if you managed to stay alive?”
“You bet, and daddy and Butch came close a few times to have their young lives ended. But they were lucky for some reason,” Dudley said then he drank his coffee, and his cup was now empty. “Want some more?” he asked, holding up his cup.
Clark looked at his cup and noticed was almost empty. He picked it up and swallowed the rest. “Sure,” he said while he handed Dudley the cup.
Dudley got up with the coffee cups in hand and headed off into the kitchen.
While Dudley was in the kitchen, Clark’s curiosity started to nag at him, and he couldn’t resist that photo album.
He opened up the old photo album on the coffee table. The first black and white picture he saw was of a young boy in overalls standing on the front porch of a small wooden farmhouse.
“That’s daddy when he was around eight years old,” said Dudley when he walked up to the couch with the two coffee cups in hand.
Clark continued to look at the picture and thought that that young boy seemed so innocent and not like a future outlaw. He flipped through the album and found a picture of Kristy when she was seven years old. He smiled at her picture, thinking she was adorable as a young girl. He closed the album and diverted his attention back to Dudley.
“So, by the time daddy turned fifteen, his and Butch’s luck ran out. They robbed a grocery store, and Butch beat the crap out of the owner. The police caught Butch, but daddy was able to slip away. Butch was sent to Eastham prison and never squealed that daddy was with him. Apparently, the owner never saw daddy in his store,” Dudley said while he sat back down on the couch.
“What happened to him after he got out of prison?”
“Uncle Willy said after Butch got released he joined the Marines swearing he never wanted to return to jail. He apparently changed his ways and loved the disciplined life the Marines offered and made it a career. Uncle Willy heard that Butch died in forty-three in the South Pacific.”
Clark took another drink of coffee along with Dudley.
“You know that daddy’s first arrest came in twenty-six?”
“Yes. He robbed a gas station and beat the attendant when he refused to give him the money out of the cash register on July thirteenth. He was sent to Eastham prison,” said Clark then he took a drink of coffee.
“Yep.”
“Did you know that daddy knew Clyde Barrow when he was inside Eastham?”
Clark’s eyes widen with extreme interest. “No, I never heard that.”
“I heard daddy thought Clyde was too small and didn’t respect for him in the least.”
“Too bad, they could have hooked up together after they got out of Eastham.”
“Never would have worked. You can’t have two bosses running a gang of outlaws. Besides, daddy always thought Clyde was stupid for chopping off a toe to get out of prison at the same time Bonnie and Clyde’s momma worked on getting Clyde released. Stupid!” said Dudley, then he took a drink of coffee.
Clark also took a drink of his coffee at the same time Dudley drank so he wouldn’t miss anything. “I never knew Dirk met Clyde Barrow,” he said, putting his cup down on the coffee table.
“Yeah, he did run into Bonnie once while the Barrow gang was on the run. I heard they met in the woods and spent the night. He actually thought Bonnie was a sexy dame and thought about stealing her away from Clyde,” Dudley added.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, but decided against that for some reason. Anyway, then you know that daddy got out of Eastham in the summer of nineteen thirty-one.”
Clark nodded that he knew that piece of history. “June twenty-third.”
“He got a job at the sawmill where my granddaddy worked. He hated manual labor but tolerated it since he didn’t want to go back to prison.”
“I can read that the prisons back then here in Texas were brutal.”
“You got that right. Not like today, where prisoners have rights.”
“Anyway, the money daddy made working at the sawmill was not going to give him the rich lifestyle he felt he deserved. So in May of thirty-two, he started hanging around at night with some of the local hoods.”
“Peter Harrison, Carl Sommers, and Jerome Falk.”
“Yep,” said Dudley, then he took another drink of his coffee.
Clark took a drink of his coffee.
Dudley coughed a little and looked to be in a bit of pain.
Clark noticed and got concerned. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, now, so they started doing small jobs in the middle of the night where they felt they wouldn’t get caught. It created a little extra income but not very much.”
“I thought I read somewhere in a book or on the Internet that Peter’s grandfather made Moonshine?”
“That’s correct. So daddy and his pals also started selling that stuff to make some extra cash. But it wasn’t enough for the immediate high score. So they went off one day and robbed a bank in Dallas on September fifteenth, thirty-two. They netted one thousand dollars and thought they were rich.”
“My family story has it that my great granddaddy made and sold Moonshine back during those times in Arkansas. My family from my daddy’s side comes from the Hainesville area. Great granddaddy had a still up in the Ozarks,” said Clark then he took a drink of his coffee. “He was apparently killed by someone in May of thirty-five, and that killer was never caught or identified. Apparently, my grandfather witnessed the shooting but couldn’t identify the killer. He was just a young boy. I was handed down a photo of my great grandfather and grandfather standing by his Moonshine still a month before he was killed.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that,” said Dudley, then he took another drink of coffee. “So they headed up to Memphis to hide and party. That’s when daddy was introduced to my mom, Margret “Marge” Levitt.”
“That Saturday night on September seventeenth, thirty-two at a club called Jazzy Land,” said Clark.
“That’s correct. That place was torn down back in sixty-three for the progress of an apartment complex.”
“I didn’t know that. Anyway, Daddy fell instantly in love with her,” said Dudley then he opened his photo album and turned to the next page.
Clark saw a picture of Dirk with his right arm around Marge’s shoulder.
It was taken in that nightclub.
“I’ve never seen this photo before.”
“It was taken that night daddy met mom at that club in Memphis,” said Dudley while he glanced at the photo. “She was a cocktail waitress and hated her job with a passion. Especially when she was forced to work as a prostitute for influential friends of the manager.
The manager was also a jerk and always groped her and often forced his sexual desires on mom. So she took up daddy’s offer to run away with him.
She left with him right after daddy beat the crap out of the manager for groping her backside.”
“She didn’t know he just robbed a bank?”
“No, but she apparently found out after daddy and his pals successfully pulled off their second job on the way back to Austin.”
“I’m surprised she stayed with him.”
“She was dirt poor and didn’t want to work as a cocktail waitress for the rest of her life. Plus daddy promised her that she wouldn’t be with them during their heists.”
“She always stayed at the hideout.”
“Correct.”
“So daddy and his gang were successful with robbing banks, gas stations, and stores and started to make lots of money. So he wanted to give mom the rich life and went out and had her buy a thirty-three Cadillac from his earnings. They would.”
“Drive-in that beautiful car while on the run to look like rich people as a cover,” said Clark interrupting Dudley.
“That’s correct. Daddy figured that would help them escape and hide.”
“He bought a Cadillac just like the one you have. Is that why you bought one?”
“I didn’t buy one just like daddy’s,” he said, then paused for a few seconds.
“That’s my daddy’s real car.
Uncle Willy bought the car when mom was in prison. She didn’t want it, so he kept it in his barn for years. I had it restored six years ago.”
Clark’s mouth dropped to the floor when it suddenly dawned on him that he tuned up Dirk Beaumont’s actual Cadillac. The exact car Dirk and his gang used in the thirties. “Wow!”
Dudley turned to the back page of the photo album, and Clark’s eyes widened when he saw the original sales receipt for that Cadillac made out to Margret Levitt dated February twenty-first, 1933. The price was $6,175.83.
“That was a ton of money for a car back then.”
“That’s about the time when the Bureau of Investigation became aware of daddy’s gang. They had their first kill during a bank robbery in Tulsa.”
“March ninth, thirty-three, a cop who walked in on the heist.”
“Uncle Willy claimed that daddy didn’t kill that cop, but Peter Harrison did, but both of them shot at the cop so who knows.”
“The bullet.”
Dudley lightly chuckled. “Yep. So many people would be in deep yogurt if bullets could talk,” he added with another light chuckle. “Anyway,” he said then coughed a little. “As you read in my book, they had more robberies and more killings during the next couple of years. They were one of the many criminals that were added to Hoover’s most-wanted lists. And of course, became headline news and romanced by Hollywood years later.”
“I have that movie they made about your daddy and his gang.”
“I saw it.”
“Not accurate like your book that I’ve read numerous times.”
“Why are you so fascinated with my daddy’s life?”
“I can’t explain why I’m fascinated by it and that era. I am for some strange reason.”
“Interesting, so, that life of easy money went on for the next two years.
It ended on that day when daddy’s gang robbed that bank in the Texas side of Texarkana.”
“There was a shootout in the street on May twenty-second, nineteen thirty-five.
Peter and Jerome were killed.
Carl was shot in the arm while they got in their stolen Ford coupe and drove away. Then the Ford they used for the heist broke down, and Carl unsuccessfully tried to get it running. He was a lousy mechanic and always had the cars breaking down on them. So anyway, the Texarkana cops raced up in their Fords, and they got arrested,” said Clark interrupting Dudley.
“That’s correct. If Carl was a better mechanic and didn’t screw up the car again, they might have gotten away. Then the Texas Rangers arrested mom for being an accessory while she hid at an abandoned farm a few miles away. Apparently, they got tipped off that she was there with Dirk Beaumont.”
“I read that some kids saw Dirk and the guys leaving for the robbery and told their parents,” said Clark.
“That’s correct. If it weren’t for that, they probably never would have arrested mom.
They had reports of a female being with daddy, but could never identify her. Daddy was good about keeping her out of the news. So then after she was in prison for her first two months, she learned she was pregnant with me. She spent a year in jail, and that’s where I was born.
They released her, and she moved me to live with her mother in Oklahoma City in the fall of thirty-six.”
Clark read that piece of history and was in awe he was sitting with that baby all grown up and now old.
“So Uncle Willy told me that momma took me and visited Dirk in Eastham two months before he was scheduled to be electrocuted in the electric chair in thirty-seven. I was barely one year old and don’t recall that day. But she wanted him to see his son. Then three weeks after that, daddy managed to escape from Eastham.”
“Did your mom give Dirk information to help him escape?”
“I believe she did.”
Clark took a drink of coffee while Dudley took a drink of coffee.
“I read he beat the crap out of a guard, took his gun and then that mystery man helped him get out of Texas. It’s strange how they never learned who this mystery man was,” said Clark and Dudley nodded in agreement.
“Uncle Willy told me it was him that helped daddy get out of Texas. He was surprised that the law didn’t learn about that. He said that daddy told him that he didn’t kill anybody and that the law was framing him for murders he didn’t commit. Uncle Willy believed him. That’s why he helped his brother escape the electric chair.”
“But didn’t they immediately stake out your families homes for sightings of Dirk?”
“The law came and questioned momma and staked out grandma’s house for months. And they also staked out the homes of Uncle Willy, Uncle Harold, and Aunt Sadie. But Dirk never showed up, so they figured he was hiding somewhere else. But they were clueless as to where.”
“I guess it was easier to live under another name back in those days with forged papers. Not like today with the Internet, cell phones and social media helping the law,” said Clark.
Dudley nodded in agreement. “Yeah, daddy was smart enough to know he had to leave the area, so he headed out to Los Angeles.”
“I guess he figured that living way over there would distance him from this area to increase his chances of staying out of the electric chair.”
“Like my book stated, the Bureau thought that Roscoe Thomas in Dallas had given Dirk forged papers for a new identity. But Roscoe could take any beating the cops dished out and not squeal. He had a profitable secret business to protect and punches to the face, and his stomach was worth the pain.”
“Tough guy.”
“Yeah, then momma married Kurt Cooper, a traveling salesman in the winter of nineteen thirty-eight, and he became the only father figure I had. He was really nice to me. She figured that if she remarried, then the cops wouldn’t come looking for daddy in Oklahoma City.”
“What about those meetings in the woods with Dirk when you were a kid?”
“The first one I recalled was when I was three years old in the summer of thirty-eight. Momma drove me to Wichita, Kansas. We met in a field and had a picnic. It was wonderful, and at that time, I didn’t know he was a famous criminal,” said Dirk with a smile recalling that fond memory.
“How did Marge keep these secret meetings from her husband?”
“She waited until he went away on one of his sales trips across the country.”
“Then Roscoe died in February of thirty-nine from brain cancer.
That’s when the cops in Dallas found his hidden ledger under the floor of his bed. That book had the names of fugitives with their new identities. They had daddy’s new name of Wilbur Jenson. I then realized that that man we’ve been meeting in the woods all those times was my daddy Dirk Beaumont. I saw his picture on the cover of one of those Detective magazines at the local drug store.”