The Road to Del Rio IX: Only One Thing to Do When the Media Keeps Getting It All Wrong

For about as long as anyone can remember, bandits and other roving outlaws maintained a symbiotic relationship with the media. The outlaws enjoyed the recognition and having their exploits celebrated in dime novels and popular ballads of the day, while the balladeers and publishers liked having content that the public was willing to fork over money for. Also, being held up and robbed by someone you've already heard about is a far headier experience than getting robbed by total unknowns. With the former, you're actually getting something for your money.

So it was with the Barrow Gang. Bonnie and Clyde loved being in the spotlight. They loved having the public look up in awe at them even as they were being robbed. It almost didn't matter knowing it would just be a matter of time before their fate would catch up with them and they would go down in a hail of lead. Being objects of public adoration seemed to make it all worthwhile.


The problem with the media is they aren't always easy to control, expecially when you're out on the road and without any means of controlling the spin. Before Herbert T. Barrow fell into their clutches, Bonnie and Clyde's fortunes were fast fading. Bonnie had been badly wounded in an earlier shootout and even though she'd been convalescing for several weeks, it was obvious she wasn't actually getting any better. The time they'd spent hiding out was time away from the public eye, which also meant the public was now on the verge of completely losing interest in them in favor of someone newer and fresher. But once they got back on the road, this time with Herbert, on a multi-state crime spree, all that changed. They were immediately catapulted right back to the top and that was something they liked very much.

But as their star continued its ascent, Clyde began finally understanding the price that it was coming at. Having Herbert suddenly being seen as the outfit's new mastermind definitely put Clyde's nose a bit out of whack, especially since, as far as Clyde was concerned, his elder cousin was just some damn goody-goody malingering pacifist, who kept acting like he was too good for them. Worst of all were his bullshit reasons for refusing to carry a piece when they were sticking up a grocery store. All he would consent to doing was carry the crippled Bonnie in and out of stores when they were holding them up.

For several weeks the trio drive all over Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, knocking over gas stations and grocery markets. At first the take is pretty decent, but by the end it mostly dries up, most of the places they hit don't seem to have more than five or ten bucks in their cash drawers. That's digging into Clyde bad enough, but now there are all these reports on the radio of some bizarre incident in Arkansas a month earlier where Herbert spectacularly turned the table on Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer and his posse of G-Men. Clyde figures that as long as he's got Hamer's gun in his possession, there has to be some way he can get himself written into the story. He figures the most efficient way to do this is to kidnap a cop and tell him all about it himself.

Following is an excerpt from Friend of the Devil (available on Kindle here):


“Got something here I want to show you,” he says to the cop in a confidential voice. Taking out Hamer’s .45, he pops the magazine out of the butt and into his hand, and ceremoniously presents the pistol to the cop so he can examine it. "Now tell me if you recognize it.”

The cop examines the pistol for nearly a minute before exclaiming in surprise. “Why, this is Old Lucky! How did you get it?”

Clyde’s grin widens. “I, ah, shall we say, borrowed it from Mr. Hamer in that little deal last month in Arkansas. But did the papers even report it? No, sir, they did not. Now what I’d like you to do, my friend, is when you get back, let the world know everything you’ve seen here today. Tell them the truth. That’s all I ask.”

“Yessir, I’ll do that,” says the cop, relieved that he’s not going to be killed.

“Everything they’ve said about that incident is a complete lie,” continues Clyde.

“Yessir.”

“Good,” says Clyde. “Now, in a little while, we’ll be letting you go. Just remember what we agreed and your debt to us will be settled and everything will be jake.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that, sir.”

The cop pauses like he’s got something weighing heavily on him.

“Something on your mind, officer?”

“Well, yes, sir,” he says, “I don’t know if I should say this, but...”

“Come on! Out with it!” says Clyde. “I told you, you have nothing to fear from us.”

“Well, sir, it’s just that recently there’s been all kinds of talk within police circles about that whole Arkansas incident. They’re saying now all the initial reports that got into the papers were all hogwash.”

“Oh?”
“To begin with, they’re saying now they don’t think you and Miss Parker were there at all, that everything that happened there was all Mr. Herbert T. Barrow’s doing.”

Clyde looks dumbfounded. “They think Booger here did all that by himself? That’s nuts!”

“Yessir.”

“Dang it! Boy dudn’t even fucking know how to use a dang gun.”

“Yessir.”

“See,” says Clyde. “There’s your proof that Boog here didn’t do any of that stuff. I did. Tell him, Boog.”

I stare out the window at the empty countryside. Why is it that every time I leave Texas, I hope it’s going to be forever, but every time I come back I’m glad. How many days have we actually been gone? Then I see up ahead someone walking along the road, his back to the oncoming traffic, like he’s given up on hitchhiking and humanity in general. It’s that guy who ate my sandwiches. Once again he looks up at me as we pass him. “That’s right, officer,” I say gravely. “Everything Clyde says is exactly what happened.”

“Now that’s what I want to hear,” says Clyde, affably as a politician running for reelection.

I can tell the cop still has something important to unveil. He stares at me, his eyes bugging, like he’s more scared of me than of them.

“They’re saying something else about you, sir, to explain what happened there.”

“Yes?” I ask quietly.

The cop gulps nervously. “What they’re saying is,” he begins, “that you’re in league with...the devil.” Then he adds, “sir.”

“What?” asks Clyde.

“They’re saying that about us?” asks Bonnie, sounding horrified.

“No, ma’am, they’re only saying that about him,” he says, nodding in my direction.

Friend of the Devil: Dopers, Desperados, Mexican Border Radio and Goat Gonads

For as long as humans have existed, God and the Devil have walked among them, endlessly searching for a virtuous man. Whenever they’d find one, which actually wasn’t that often, they’d get together and place some nasty obstacles in front of him. Then they’d make bets, sit back and watch what happened.

It’s impossible to say when exactly the two got bored with the arrangement and began to add side bets to spice it up a little. If they hadn’t, they would probably never have bothered with Herbert T. Barrow in the first place.

It’s not that Herbert wasn’t, in his own way, a virtuous man; he just wasn’t anybody’s immediate choice on the matter. He tended to do things on impulse, whether it was jazz, women, or stealing cars. Nor was he, even by his own estimation, particularly kind or generous. But then it was hard to be in 1933, when the Great Depression was in its fifth year and anyone who still had two nickels to rub together only had them because they’d run out of sympathy for anyone who didn’t. Besides, Herbert T. Barrow was an avowed atheist and whatever moral compass he possessed was strictly his own. Perhaps this was something neither deity completely grasped, or perhaps they thought they did, but were wrong. It’s always hard to tell with gods. Either way, that was their big mistake.

The real subject of their wager was the legendary Texas Ranger, Captain Frank Hamer. If there was a single lawman in Texas whose honesty and incorruptibility was beyond reproach, it was Hamer. Renowned for his skills as a detective and a tracker with more than fifty kills to his credit, Frank Hamer was one exceedingly straight, tough hombre. His mistake was letting his pride get the best of him.

Herbert’s mistake was picking up a hitchhiker named Stevens, while running from the ‘laws’ in a stolen car. It was not the sort of thing he usually did, especially since Stevens appeared to be some kind of backwoods preacher. Herbert was fleeing back to Texas, Stevens was late for a midnight meeting with somebody at a crossroads near Tupelo, Mississippi. Getting him there almost on time put Stevens in Herbert’s debt, something Herbert wasn’t interested in collecting on, since Stevens didn’t have any money on him and all the things he was offering seemed like really bad ideas.

Like all good fugitives, Herbert was heading for the border, to a small city on the Rio Grande called Del Rio. While nearly everyone else was hungry and broke, Del Rio was rolling in dough, thanks to a quack doctor named J.R. Brinkley, who had set up a “goat gland” clinic, where his phony sexual rejuvenation cure brought in dozens of well-heeled suckers each day. To reach them, Brinkley built the world’s most powerful radio station across the river in Mexico, just outside the FCC’s reach. Beside him gather a freebooting assortment of preachers, clairvoyants, hillbilly quartets and snake-oil salesmen, all eager to catch some of the easy money that’s suddenly floating around. Herbert drives to Del Rio, hoping to join their ranks as a singing cowboy and even shill for products of questionable purpose.

But after letting Stevens off, things get strange. Herbert learns that he is being linked to the notorious Texas outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. According to the newspapers and radio news bulletins, he has joined them as a ‘criminal mastermind.’ This puts him into the path, first of Frank Hamer, who is hunting them down, and then of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who turns out to be his much younger cousin.

Without wanting to, Herbert travels with the Barrow Gang and though he does ultimately break free from them and escape to Del Rio, Hamer remains on his trail even after killing the others. Eventually he shows up there and a final bloody reckoning ensues, and always with God and the Devil nearby, arguing endlessly over perceived violations and interferences of their bets. Herbert, having no use for either, vows to stick it to them both, and bad. Luckily for him, he finds an unlikely ally in Rose Dawn, a pregnant, unhappily married radio prophetess.

Road to Del Rio 3: A Little Filling Station in Missouri

It is inside a little gas station and grocery store in rural Missouri that Herbert T. Barrow learns that, of all things, he is being touted by the media as the newest member of the Barrow Gang. Not only that, but they've also got him down as a "mad-dog killer" and the gang's criminal mastermind. He has no idea what to make of it, since the last time he'd seen his young cousin, Clyde was only about ten years old. 

Herbert admits to the reader that back then he had run around with Clyde's older brother Buck, breaking into warehouses and stores late at night, which, technically, makes him a charter member of the outfit. Of course that was twelve years earlier, long before the Barrow Gang was celebrated as America's favorite

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Public Enemies. Herbert wonders if any of this could have anything to do with Mr. Stevens, the hairy-faced country preacher he'd given a ride to earlier, who seemed to know everything about him. Stevens, is of course, the Devil himself, but no matter how much evidence points to that fact, Herbert would never connect the dots, since admitting to the Devil's existence, also means, by extension, admitting to the existence of God, which Herbert, being a fervent athiest, refuses to do.

On the other hand, this little corner of southern Missouri is, to anyone from the flatlands of Texas, a kind of heaven on Earth.

Here is a little quote from "Friend of the Devil:"


Suddenly I realize how ravenously hungry I am and that if I could, I’d take them right now and gobble them down on the spot. But I don’t, because I’m on the lam and best not to do anything quirky that’ll stick in their memories. No, I’m just a quiet, well-mannered city feller who came and went without giving them no never-mind. Instead I start a conversation.

“Man says you got the Barrow Gang coming through?”

“That’s what they saying on the radio.”

“What’d they say?”

“Only that they’s in the vicinity, going to effect a rendezvous with Clyde Barrow’s cousin.”

“Cousin? Didn’t know he had a cousin.”

“Yes, sir. They say his name’s Herbert T. Barrow and that he’s a bad one.”

“Oh?”

“Mad-dog killer he is, G-men been chasing him all the way from Knoxville."

Happy 2nd Anniversary to Friend of the Devil

On this date two years ago I first put out Friend of the Devil on Kindle.  I confess, we haven't sold thousands of copies yet, but we've sold some. And after having already gone through hell with New York publishing, I don't mind telling you that this is FAR preferable. This way you actually connect with readers and build communities and if any mistakes get made, at least they're your own.

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I've been a deadhead longer than I care to admit. American Beauty and Workingman's Dead were a big influence on my life, like a lot of other people. 

So once again I'm reaching out to all you readers out there in Radio-Land. Isn't this a perfect occasion to buy your very own ebook copy of Friend of the Devil or even Germania??

Don't wait, friends!  Get your copy today!

http://www.amazon.com/Friend-of-the-Devil-ebook/dp/B004VXK1LK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1365430453&sr=8-3&keywords=friend+of+the+devil

Hepcats, Vipers, Texas Outlaws, and Cheap, Cheap Marihuana

This rainstorm is a real East Texas gullywasher. I’ve been sitting here, stuck inside this car for two hours and it still doesn’t give any sign it’s going to ease up anytime soon. I think something is broken. I can get the engine to start, but the wheels won’t turn or anything. My stupid fault. Why did I have to drive off during a rainstorm? Why? The exact same reason I didn’t ditch the car and buy a train or bus ticket to Del Rio. In a word: marihuana.

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I’d fully intended to take a little cure from the weed and let my feet put down some roots into straight reality and having come to ground in a place like Nacogdoches, I figured that would be easy to do, since this town is not exactly renowned for its jazz clubs and viper scene. Therefore, imagine my surprise, that as I stroll back to my hotel after having breakfast in a local diner, I should catch a whiff of some exceedingly righteous bush being burned in the backdoor of a Mexican bakery. All I have to do is walk up and say “Mota, por favor?” and the next thing I know, I’m getting set up with a lid of stuff that’s way, way better than any of the shit ol’ Mezz was peddling back on Lexington Avenue. You can probably see where this is leading, right? For a while I’m goofing around the streets of this East Texas city, laughing and feeling fine, and then I sit down on a park bench and pick up a copy of the local rag that’s lying there and right there on the top of the front page is a big article about how the Barrow Gang, now being led by Clyde’s cousin, criminal mastermind Herbert T. Barrow, pulled off two daring filling station robberies in Southwest Arkansas within a half hour of each other, the first of which involved a shootout with the Barrow Gang and a posse consisting of two FBI agents and the celebrated Texas Ranger, Captain Frank Hamer, the three of whom were briefly captured by the desperados before successfully turning the tables on them and sending them on their way...

I put the newspaper down. On the park bench across from me, a couple of old ladies give me a hard look and before I know it, I’ve got me a first-class case of the heebie-jeebies. When I get to the train station, the idea of going up to the ticket agent and having to talk with him about tickets to different places seems just way too complicated and scary. So instead I go find a hole-in-the-wall speakeasy and spend the rest of the day getting myself plastered. Somehow I manage to stagger back to my hotel room and go to sleep.

(Excerpt from "Friend of the Devil," by Brendan McNally, available on Kindle. Get more "Friend of the Devil" quotes and trivia on our Facebook page)

A Godsend for Bonnie and Clyde

Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker both knew they were going to die. There was no doubt in their minds that they would meet their end in a hail of bullets. All they asked of God was that they'd go down together.

Dying was fine by them. What made it worthwhile was knowing that they were on the front page of the newspapers. They were celebrities. The public loved them. The public hated them. It really made no difference to Bonnie and Clyde, because at least the public knew who they were. And for a couple of kids from a nowhere place like West Dallas, that was quite an accomplishment.

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Herbert T Barrow, on the other hand, did not quite share their enthusiasm for celebrity. Having been a Marine in France during the Great War, he already knew more about killing and dying than either his young cousin Clyde or Bonnie ever would. All he really wanted in life was to play Jazz, smoke reefer and love him some women. Herbert didn't ask anything of God, because Herbert was an atheist and he had no doubt that the whole idea of God, the Devil and the Sweet Hereafter was a giant crock of shit. As for his bloodthirsty young cousin and his alleycat girlfriend, Herbert didn't see why he couldn't just keep out of their way as he high-tailed it from Knoxville Tennessee to the Mexican Border with the laws hot on his trail..


But fate and/or the collusion of the deities soon forces Herbert into their arms and before he knows it, he has unwillingly become the newest member of their criminal gang and also the focus of media attention. To Bonnie and Clyde, Herbert is a godsend.  Before he appeared, Bonnie was wounded, they were in hiding, and the public's interest in them seemed to be fading with each passing day.  It didn't matter that Herbert refused to carry a gun when he carried the crippled Bonnie in with him whenever they knocked over gas stations and grocery stores. Having Herbert there with them, sparked the public imagination and got them back on the front page of newspapers. Without them ever announcing it, folks already knew that the Barrow Gang's newest member was Clyde's older cousin and, technically speaking, its original founder, since, as the papers were now reporting, Herbert and Clyde's late older brother, Buck, had been breaking into stores and warehouses back when Clyde was still a kid.

Much as Clyde might like their big boost in media popularity, it rankles him no end that the people believe that Herbert is the outfit's new "criminal mastermind." Herbert, of course, wants none of it. He can't imagine how anybody could know anything about the anonymous midnight breakins that he and Buck Barrow had pulled off more than ten years earlier. The last thing he wants is fame. He's happy to be a faceless street musician. To him, his celebrated hosts are nothing but a couple of two-bit hoodlums, vain, vicious, and both mean as snakes.  He's already seen enough violence and killing in the war. He's made his peace and would personally rather die than carry a gun again. 

What Herbert doesn't understand is that God and the Devil have their own plans, none of which involve him refusing to pick up a gun when the time came.


Following is an excerpt from Friend of the Devil:

"Clyde creeps back and forth from window to doorway, checking on the disposition of the enemy. Then he crawls into the kitchen to see how I’m doing.


“That was some good shooting, Boog,” he says.

I don’t say anything.

“Is that what you did in the war? Shoot like that?”

I don’t say anything to that either. In my mind, I’m a Marine, back in France again with the trenches and the mud and the barbed wire and all the dead lying out there, day in and day out, and remembering how they were the first things I taught myself to stop seeing. And I think about all the other things I had to get good at doing so’s I wouldn’t end up one of them corpses myself; things like knowing exactly when to duck, keeping low and crawling through the mud like a rat; killing without mercy and loving the feeling of grabbing someone and holding them close enough to feel their breath when you put a knife into them. And I learned about switching off all my human feelings so that I wouldn’t be howling and crying with grief every time one of my buddies got killed. I did all that because that’s what you had to do if you were going to survive. Most couldn’t and most didn’t, but I did and survived only because I’d let myself become as ugly and horrible as a man can be. Then one day I couldn’t do it anymore. I made a promise I wouldn’t do no more killing no matter what. And I told that to the sergeant and the sergeant told the captain and the captain threatened to shoot me for cowardice and I told him to go right ahead because I’d rather that than have to kill any more German boys. And maybe they would have shot me, except next thing was the Armistice and instead of shooting me, they slapped me on the back and gave me a medal.

“Boog,” says Clyde, “Now, you know I’m a proud man, but dang it, when I’m wrong, Imo stand up and let the world know. Now, all this time I thought you was a coward, but you showed that you’re a real man. So for that I apologize to you. Do you hear me, Sis?”

I hear a loud sniff from the parlor. “Oh, Daddy,” she says. “I’m just so...” and her voice chokes with emotion.

Clyde looks at me jovially. “So what do you say, Boog?”

I don’t know that I’m going to say anything, but it just comes out. “Clyde,” I say, “you and Bonnie think that just because they write about you in drugstore picture magazines, you all are something special, but you’re really just a couple of lousy, two-bit punks.”

I watch Clyde’s jaw drop. His surprise turns to fury and suddenly he and I are staring bloody knives at each other. I guess I must be smiling at him from the way the corners of my mouth feel bunched up, and I got my finger on the BAR’s trigger and I know he’s got his on the Thompson’s. Come on Clyde, I’m thinking. We can do it. Just make your move. I’ll kill you, no problem at all.

“Hey, you two, what’s going on in there?” demands Bonnie sharply.

Clyde and I continue to stare at each other. But then he takes his finger off the trigger and very deliberately lets his hand rest on the drum magazine. My hand stays right where it is. Clyde looks at my like he’s not sure what he could have done to make me angry. “Well, then, in that case, I’m very sorry you feel this way, cousin,” he says quietly, and starts crawling back into the parlor and Bonnie’s waiting arms. I can hear them going into their tearful, oh Daddy/aw Sis, bill-and-cooing. A minute later, the shooting starts up again, but this time it all seems listless, like dinnertime ain’t for another two hours and this is the only thing they know how to do.

But then Hamer’s men start shooting again and Clyde’s got the Thompson back in his hands and he’s back at the window firing at them, cursing them, calling them sons a bitches and taunting them to come on out and attack him fair and square. I run to the front door and empty the rest of the clip at them, put in a new one and use most of that up, too. They shoot, we shoot and it goes on like this for a few more minutes and then it stops and the three of us are left in silence.

I go back to my post in the kitchen and, for a long time, I sit motionless watching the golden reflection of the evening sun fading upon the kitchen wall. Okay, so maybe my life hasn’t exactly been exemplary. Yeah, I’ve boosted things here and there and robbed a couple stores. I vowed never to kill again, never vowed nothing about sticking to the straight-and-narrow. But, of course, none of that’s got anything to do with why I ended up in this situation. If there is a flaw in my character what got me in this situation, it ain’t that I pulled a couple stickup jobs, it’s that I gave a ride to an old hairy-face country preacher, when my better judgment told me to just keep-a-going right past his sorry self."

Written by Brendan McNally

Captain Frank Hamer and The Last Standing Member of the Barrow Gang

For as long as humans have existed, God and the Devil have walked among them, endlessly searching for a virtuous man. Whenever they’d find one, which actually wasn’t that often, they’d get together and place some nasty obstacles in front of him. Then they’d make bets, sit back and watch what happened.

It’s impossible to say when exactly the two got bored with the arrangement and began to add side bets to spice it up a little. If they hadn’t, they would probably never have bothered with Herbert T. Barrow in the first place.

It’s not that Herbert wasn’t, in his own way, a virtuous man; he just wasn’t anybody’s immediate choice on the matter. He tended to do things on impulse, whether it was jazz, women, or stealing cars. Nor was he, even by his own estimation, particularly kind or generous. But then it was hard to be in 1933, when the Great Depression was in its fifth year and anyone who still had two nickels to rub together only had them because they’d run out of sympathy for anyone who didn’t. Besides, Herbert T. Barrow was an avowed atheist and whatever moral compass he possessed was strictly his own. Perhaps this was something neither deity completely grasped, or perhaps they thought they did, but were wrong. It’s always hard to tell with gods. Either way, that was their big mistake.

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The real subject of their wager was the legendary Texas Ranger, Captain Frank Hamer. If there was a single lawman in Texas whose honesty and incorruptibility was beyond reproach, it was Hamer. Renowned for his skills as a detective and a tracker with more than fifty kills to his credit, Frank Hamer was one exceedingly straight, tough hombre. His mistake was letting his pride get the best of him.

Herbert’s mistake was picking up a hitchhiker named Stevens, while running from the ‘laws’ in a stolen car. It was not the sort of thing he usually did, especially since Stevens appeared to be some kind of backwoods preacher. Herbert was fleeing back to Texas, Stevens was late for a midnight meeting with somebody at a crossroads near Tupelo, Mississippi. Getting him there almost on time put Stevens in Herbert’s debt, something Herbert wasn’t interested in collecting on, since Stevens didn’t have any money on him and all the things he was offering seemed like really bad ideas.

Like all good fugitives, Herbert was heading for the border, to a small city on the Rio Grande called Del Rio. While nearly everyone else was hungry and broke, Del Rio was rolling in dough, thanks to a quack doctor named J.R. Brinkley, who had set up a goat gland clinic, where his phony sexual rejuvenation cure brought in dozens of well-heeled suckers each day. To reach them, Brinkley built the world’s most powerful radio station across the river in Mexico, just outside the FCC’s reach. Beside him gather a freebooting assortment of preachers, clairvoyants, hillbilly quartets and snake-oil salesmen, all eager to catch some of the easy money that’s suddenly floating around. Herbert drives to Del Rio, hoping to join their ranks as a singing cowboy and even shill for products of questionable purpose.

But after letting Stevens off, things get strange. Herbert learns that he is being linked to the notorious Texas outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. According to the newspapers and radio news bulletins, he has joined them as a ‘criminal mastermind.’ This puts him into the path, first of Frank Hamer, who is hunting them down, and then of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who turns out to be his much younger cousin.

Without wanting to, Herbert travels with the Barrow Gang and though he does ultimately break free from them and escape to Del Rio, Hamer remains on his trail even after killing the others. Eventually he shows up there and a final bloody reckoning ensues, and always with God and the Devil nearby, arguing endlessly over perceived violations and interferences of their bets. Herbert, having no use for either, vows to stick it to them both, and bad. Luckily for him, he finds an unlikely ally in Rose Dawn, a pregnant, unhappily married radio prophetess.

FRIEND OF THE DEVIL is a darkly comic, historical thriller with touches of the paranormal, following in the tradition of my debut novel, GERMANIA, published in 2009 by Simon and Schuster.