The Toothpick Kid
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
They still talked about the Toothpick Kid in all the hobo
camps, the railroad jungles and skid row flophouses and soup lines of the West,
long years after he passed away, long after his exploits had entered in entered
into hobo, tramp, bum legend. By the way nobody ever called him by his real
name, or maybe even knew his real name, but only his tramp moniker derived from
his addiction to chewing toothpicks, a habit he picked up when he faced really
hard times to stave off hungry, whisky thirst, or cigarette craving and so it
stuck. Stuck like lots of half-thought out monikers from childhood on, like
lots of guys want so that they can hide, hide from their past, their kin, their
own horrors.
Later, after the Kid ran the rack, after his number came up,
someone, Benson Billy maybe, found out that his real name was George Nelson a
son of a small trading post owner out in the high California desert near
Barstow but in respect every skid row, railroad jungle, and camp denizen stayed
with the Toothpick Kid when they mentioned his name. It was like such a straight
arrow name could not fit in the Boston Blackie, Benson Billy, Blue River Benny,
Be-Bop Kid world and that was that. And maybe they were right to whisper among
themselves his road name if only to make themselves feel better that one of
their own tweaked the noses of the cops, the railroad bulls, and the
respectable citizenry of the towns out there in the high desert, places like
Yucca Falls, Cheyenne Flats, Victorville and Barstow.
The hoboes, bums, and tramps of the world mainly sit around
their camps, warmed by the fire, and their flops, warmed by rotgut whiskey (paying
more than a dollar for a pint was some kind of sacrilege and thus no Johnny
Walker blended, or such high shelf stuff passed through the camp. More likely
Willie’s Premium mixed from all the highway and parks found bottles into a suitable
elixir). Sterno if times were tough, and
speaking of all the heroic exploits they were capable of. Talk, all talk when
it came right down to it since the only heroic things most of them were capable
of was to con some respectable out of a few bucks on a hard luck story, maybe
do a little back alley jack-rolling, or some other two bit cheapjack scam. The
Kid put them all to shame, the Kid went for the big score, the one all the
other guys just talked about in the light of some moonless night’s campfire.
Yes, for a while, a short while as far as human existence goes, the Toothpick
Kid had them all on their toes.
See the Toothpick Kid went for the big score, the big score
that every guy in the skid row community dreamed of, dreamed that he was
capable of, capable of doing more than dream about. He took out the Southern
Pacific-delivered payroll for the Delmo
Company that was supposed to be taken to Hightower out near Needles on a late
Friday afternoon by one of its agents. The Toothpick Kid got wind of that fact,
the fact that this payroll was delivered weekly on late Friday afternoons and
make his plans accordingly. The routine was that Bill Hayes, the railroad agent,
would deliver the dough, roughly $50,000, to the guardhouse at the entrance to
the Delmo works and the guard, usually only a single guard, would take it from
there to the paymaster’s office a couple of miles up the road.
Simple routine, no heavy security, a piece of cake thought
the Toothpick Kid. All he saw was easy street ahead, and maybe he was right and
maybe he was wrong on that score, but he saw his chance, saw that his young
life was going nowhere without some big score to tide him over, saw he was
going to wind up some old time geezer bindle stiff buried in some potter’s
field graveyard if he didn’t make his move and he was ready to stake his life
on success. Life on the road, the hard camps road was, in short, nasty and
brutish unlike the romance of the road stuff you read in books by guys who were
on the road for a week or two, got their fill of romance and headed back just
as quickly as possible to their Mayfair swell digs. So he leaped into his
future and let he deal go down.
The robbery itself actually was a piece of cake. Simplicity
itself. First the Kid came upon the guard standing alone in his guardhouse to
ask the way to Hightower and as the guard was prepared to tell him the
directions he quickly beat him over the head, beat him to a pulp, with a pipe
he had acquired along the way. A few minutes later, after removing the guard’s
body to his small office, taking his clothes off and then putting them on, Bill
Hayes came up in his Southern Pacific company car. Before Bill could even ask
where Hank the regular guard was the Kid shot him point-blank with Hank’s gun.
The Kid pulled Bill out of the car, placed him alongside Hank in the guardhouse
office, and went back to Bill’s car and checked to see that the payroll satchel
was there. It was, and he was gone. Beautiful, and many a lonely hobo jungle
camp night, many a tramp roadside hungry day, and many a skid row rotgut whisky
barroom turned electric to the thrill of some guy telling the details of the
Kid’s saga. Jesus, fifty grand, and like taking candy from a baby.
Of course what the Kid didn’t count on, or maybe even
figured on in his figuring was the Southern Pacific blowback. The hard fact of
life that even in the square’s world a couple of murders and a major robbery when
the railroads were going down in that time required some attention. To speak
nothing of the Delmo Company’s position that something, something big and right
now had to be done about the thing. As so the railroad, the company, Sagamore County,
and the state police went at the case tooth and nail. Offered rewards, ran
roughshot over the camps, jungles, and skid row flops from the Mexican border
to Eureka up in Redwood country, and plastered the particulars of the case (not
much) on walls, telephone poles and wherever the hobo world congregated. A
massive effort.
Funny though
they probably never would have
caught the Kid if it hadn’t been for a woman, well, a woman, and a bum (let me
tell you sometime the differences, the social, political and economic
differences between bums, hoboes, and tramps and there are and recognized in the
community as such but it doesn’t affect this story so later okay). The Kid had
hightailed it to Reno up on the border and was laying low, well not really
laying low, but spending his dough of dope, booze, women and whatever else
caught his fancy in a very private suite
in a very private hotel. After about a year of that though easy street ran out
of steam, he ran out of dough.
That is where the woman comes in, the woman, Heidi, whom he
spent most of his dough on. When fund got low he put her out on the streets to
do a few tricks to keep them in clover. She agreed to it so there was nothing
wrong there. What was wrong was that she tried to hustle a guy she had known,
and old flame going under the moniker Black River Sid, from way back, who had
fallen on hard times, had been roughhoused in one of the cop raids looking for
the Kid down in Lancaster and so knew the Kid legend, and asked what she had
been up to but more importantly why was she doing cheapjack tricks on the
streets. So she told him the story, the Kid dough story, except she did not
know how the Kid had gotten his dough (or think to ask as long as the dope,
booze, casino chips and occasional off-hand piece of jewelry was around). And
that was that.
Black River Sid when he put two and two together came up
with reward, reward and his own getting well again (he has a serious cocaine
habit that needed some attention) and so he snitched, snitched as hard and fast
as a man could snitch. So one early morning, before sunrise, the combined
forces of law and order in California and Nevada, combined railroads of the
West, and the combined mineral resources organizations and Black River Sid
gathered in front of a certain private hotel in Reno and attempted a forced
assault on one Toothpick Kid and his honey. Yes, the Kid went down, went down
in a hail of bullets after a several hours gunfight (as did Heidi who stood by
her man until the end) as he probably knew he must, or maybe should have known
he must it is hard to tell the difference in such cases.
But before the Kid left this good green earth he took down
two railroad bulls, a couple of deputy sheriffs and one Black River Sid
(directed to him by Heidi). So to the Kid (George Nelson), RIP. And you wonder why fifty years or more later
they speak of him in hushed whispers wherever guys are down on their luck, down
on their dreams, and down in the fellahin ditches out in the American West
night.
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