On the last rise before descending into Alma, we passed the
spot where, on June 23, 1933, members of the Barrow Gang, Buck Barrow and W. D.
Jones, killed Alma City Marshall Henry D. Humphrey during a gunfight. Bonnie
and Clyde waited in a tourist court near Fort Smith and had sent the two gang
members to Fayetteville to rob a grocery store. Buck Barrow, on his deathbed,
admitted doing the actual killing.
We didn’t know all this at the time. Back then, our
immediate history consisted of weeks, not years.
The ride back found us in good spirits. She told me about adventures
she and Vernell had participated in while in college. I told her about the gang
I had shared a house with at 369 Gregg Street in Fayetteville in the 1960s. Mike
and I lived there with an odd assortment of characters, all with varying
degrees of aptitude. One achieved status as Ph.D. in zoology. Another became a
prominent surgeon in Little Rock, while yet another became a designer of stage
sets in New York City. A particularly funny little guy who went by the moniker "Eunuch Shoehorn" simply disappeared one day.
Two became veterans of a foreign war, much to the
discomfiture of their fellow Americans. Roads leading from college are strange
and unpredictable.
 |
| Former Green Beret Mike Dunkum, having laid down his sword and shield. |
She was pleased in finding a new friend in Mike. I was
pleased in what now appeared to be a new level in our relationship. As road
trips go, it had been a good one.
I slowed the Green Angel to a crawl as we entered Morrilton,
Arkansas from the West. Actually, it didn’t matter. The sheriff there, a
legendary man named Marlin Hawkins, cared neither for the niceties of "probable
cause" nor the protections of the Constitution. His deputies would arrest one
for DWY (Driving While Young) as quickly as for anything else. He was a major
member of a political cabal from that area that succeeded for decades in
dominating the state legislature and preventing most efforts to move it
forward.
It was rumored that he had a secret switch in a Main Street
building that allowed one deputy to make the town’s only traffic signal turn
red instantly if an out-of-state motorist, or an apparent college student, approached
it. A second deputy waited a block up, in an unmarked car, or so the story went.
I don’t know about this or why it was necessary. When I had been a passenger in
a victim’s car, the law simply stopped them, gave them a ticket, made them pay,
and dared them to complain.
At any rate, we approached slowly, making sure the “ticket trap”
wasn’t in operation. Brenda seemed impressed at the degree of my worldly knowledge.
We made it through town and I breathed a sigh of relief. Marvin didn’t charge a
lot for his tickets. He knew, somehow, just the amount a stranger or student could
fork over without causing too much of a ruckus. Still, I had no desire to
contribute to his treasury. He never received more than a nefarious reputation
for his perfidy. I’m told they even patterned a character on a TV show after
him.
Like Ulysses and his crew, we had safely passed the “Straits
of Conway County” and it would be clear sailing on to Little Rock, and a nice
evening of resting and cuddling on my living room couch. We shared more stories
and I kept her laughing, telling her about more of our Gregg Street capers.
I didn’t tell her everything. Hell, I figured we now had
plenty of time, and there was this “Statute of Limitations” thing.
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