Kid's Story
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It's funny, but Heyes and me have names for different times in our lives. There's the farm boy years and the orphan years for the years we was growing up. Then there's the in-between years, the outlaw years, years. the amnesty years. After that, it's just the respectable years, and now we're in what we call the quiet years.
I can't honestly say I remember much about the farm boy years. Heyes says he knows it's all stored away in my head somewhere and I just had to locked up so tight for safe keeping that it can't find its way out. But he says he knows it's there because every once in a blue moon I'll say or do something that lets him know I remember more than I let on. Like every time I quote Grandpa Curry, it tells him I remember them farm boy years. I do admit that It does, even today, bother me that I can't recall my mother's smile, or pull an image of her face to mind. Sometimes Heyes will say something about her that somehow brings a comfort to me. He told me once that she could spit a watermelon seed farther than anyone he'd ever seen, and that made me smile. But he also told me once that she was a crook, and I just didn't have the courage to ask him what he meant by that. I like to think that maybe she had a trace of outlaw blood in her. It would explain where I got it from.
I do remember the orphan years, or at least the nights, cause they was fraught with nightmares. I'd wake up in a cold sweat and shaking with fear or anger. Heyes was in the bed next to me, and he'd give me a dry nightshirt and slip into my bed and talk half the night about the two of us running away from there someday. Sure enough, he kept that promise cause when he was fifteen, we stole away from there one night and never looked back.
The in-between years were hard, maybe the hardest years of all because we had no direction, no money, no real plans. We drifted around for two years but we learned some important things that served us well in the years to come. We learned things like how to steal a ride in a boxcar without breaking our necks, and how to pilfer food from a store and eggs from a chickencoop, and even a hot pie cooling on the sill of an open kitchen window. That's when Heyes learned how to pick a lock, and how to scam a bartender out of a couple of dollars by standing an egg on end.
Them in-between years is when we met up with some interesting con men like Soapy and Silky, and Artie Gorman. Each one of them took us under their wings for a spell and taught us a lot about navigating the world and taking advantage of folks without them ever realizing it until it was too late to do something about it.
But them in-between years was also when Heyes and me split up for almost a year. That was hard on the both of us. Heyes got caught up with Jim Plummer and I, well I got myself into a tight squeeze with a girl and managed to escape town by the skin of my teeth. I decided then and there it was best to pay for those pleasures, but being as I was always broke, I lived a priestly life for a lot longer than a man should hafta go without.
I guess I don't need to dwell on the outlaw years. The wanted posters and the newspaper reports of our train and bank robberies while leading the Devil's Hole Gang make those escapades common knowledge. But I will say, the men in the Devil's Hole Gang were some of the finest, most loyal people I've ever known. Even after Heyes and me left the gang, Wheat and Kyle, and Preacher managed to save Heyes and me from some tight scrapes more than once.
The amnesty years were even worse than the orphan years, and not just cause the governors all dragged it out so long. Heyes and me were accused of robberies we didn't commit. Bounty hunters and posses were always in hot pursuit. At least when we was with the Devil's Hole gang we had a home base, a place that was safe and you weren't always looking over your shoulder to see if someone was following you. In those amnesty years, we couldn't stay in one place more than two days, three if there was no sheriff in town. The governors were always wanting favors and dangling that amnesty in front of our noses like a rabbit in a hound chase. Even Lom played that card more than once, and he was supposed to be a friend. Heyes and me both look back on those years and wonder why we didn't just go to South America like we talked about. I think if we had it to do over, and knew then what we know now, we wouldda just said no thank you and skipped the country. We might have even done one last big robbery, just to laugh in their faces as we waved goodbye.
But once we got the amnesty we had a bit of a transition before we was able to settle into the respectable years. People just didn't want to forget the past, and they didn't want us to forget it either. A lot of towns just weren't too keen on two former outlaws settling down there. That's when we decided there was still a level of safety in an alias. We thought about Smith and Jones and decided against using names someone else gave us. So, we went with Hotchkiss and Rembacker cause we decided that being as both them names was a mouthful, no one would suspect they weren't our real names. But we'd grown accustomed to using Thaddeus and Joshua to address each other and they are both respectable names, so we decided to keep them. And those names worked for us and we was able to settle down outside of Cody almost twenty years ago now. A few years back we even made a trip to Porterville and had our names changed legally so Kid Curry and Hannibal Heyes could finally find some peace in life.
And all that has now brought us to the quiet years. Neither one of us ever married, but we've both found a permanent female companion. Heyes moved in with Harry (short for Harriett), and my Lana runs the local bordello, but spends most of her nights at my place. I own a gun shop and Heyes is part owner in a saloon where I spend most of my evenings waiting for Lana to get off work.
I can't say Heyes and me have ever had an easy life, at least not until now. But I can say it's been a hell of a ride and, except for those farm boy years, I wouldn't change a thing.
Well, I suppose I would change one thing…. I would like to be able to close my eyes and see my ma's smile…and maybe watch her spit a watermelon seed.