by Ed Gorman
I went around back where against the left side of the small, enclosed back porch there was a latticework ensnarled with dead, spiky vines of some kind.
I was a good climber. At Scout camp I took merit badges in climbing—of course I also took merit badges, of the unofficial sort, in leading the most snipe hunts, using the most unique dirty words (a lot of which, to be honest, I more or less made up) and armpit farting, which is not necessarily something I'm proud of these days but I sure was at the time.
I went right up the latticework. I stood on the porch roof which was high enough so I could walk right over to the second-story window. I gave it a try. It was unlocked. I raised the bottom pane with no trouble at all.
One minute later, I stood in Cushing's bedroom.
It smelled of: gas heat, sleep, cigarette smoke, minty aftershave, Wildroot hair oil and the same kind of bunion medicine Clarence used.
What I saw was: a well-made double bed, a large crucifix hanging above the headboard, a five-drawer bureau, two framed photographs of Cushing 1) in his marine uniform 2) in his Somerton police uniform. There was a shaggy throw rug on the floor, a tightly packed closet that smelled of mothballs, and a box filled with magazines and paperbacks, the former mostly Cavalier and the latter running to Gold Medals by people like David Goodis and Peter Rabe. It was tough to admit but Cushing and I liked the same kind of reading material.
I saw all these things in the narrow beam of my flashlight.
I spent twenty minutes in the room and found nothing spectacular except an extra handgun he kept in one drawer of the bureau and a can of lighter fluid and some underwear and socks and things in another. I then proceeded to go through the rest of the house.
I was there about an hour and a half. I learned that Cushing a) kept a tidy house b) was the proud owner of six fifths of Old Grandad bourbon c) used Trojans.
What I didn't learn was where he kept the money he'd stolen from Roy. I looked in all the obvious places—cupboards, closets, the bottom of his clothes hamper—and then in all the not-so-obvious places . . . behind the couch . . . and under the three throw rugs on the living-room floor (in the Hardy Boys books, there were always lots of trapdoors sitting around).
And—nothing.
I stood in his dark living room, my beam off. I'd been going at it hard enough to work up a sweat. My heart pounded.
I still had the dream of taking the money to the chief and throwing it on his desk and—
The phone rang and scared the hell out of me.
I stood there trembling and feeling foolish for jumping up the way I had. It was loud and alien-sounding in the darkness of somebody else's house. . . .
It rang ten times and then was quiet. I decided now was the time to go. Maybe I hadn't found the money but I hadn't been caught, either.
I went back upstairs and out the window. Half a minute later, I stood on the porch roof looking at the barn out back. Talk about a perfect place to hide bank robbery loot.
Next time, I'd concentrate on the barn.
I climbed down the latticework and started around the side of the house and ran straight into Barney.
"What the hell're you doing here?" I said.
"I followed you."
"Followed me? For what?"
"I walk by your place just about every night after dinner but I'm always scared to come up to the door."
"I shouldn't have hit you that time, Barney. I'm sorry."
"No, you should've hit me. You should've beat the shit out of me. The way I let Roy down, I mean. I'm the one who should be sorry."
We didn't say anything then, just stood in shadow and moonlight and kind of slugged each other on the arm. Good old Barney. He was a pain in the ass sometimes but he was the only kid in town who knew who Ed Emsh the magazine cover artist was—so how could you turn your back on him?
I took out a cigarette and lit it and Barney looked at the lighter and said, "Roy's lighter, huh?"
He took it and held it up to the moonlight. "Pretty cool. Those little red jewels for eyes and all." He handed it back. "I spent my hundred bucks already. Did you?"
The governor had given us both one-hundred-dollar U.S. savings bonds last summer.
"Nah. I gave mine to Debbie. I didn't feel right about spending it—" I knew this would make Barney feel bad and I wanted it to—then I thought about how poor his family was and how Barney always wore pretty old clothes and how Clarence always called Barney's father "luckless" and I said, "But I don't blame you for spending yours, Barney."
"You really don't?"
"No, Barney, I really don't." I socked him on the arm a few more times, like it was some kind of Olympic event I was training for, good old all-American arm-socking, and then we left.
We took a back road home, one that ran along the tracks, one that wouldn't get us seen by any wandering cop cars, one that shone with frost.
"You didn't find the money, huh?" he said.
"Huh-uh."
"You going back?"
"Yeah. Tomorrow I'm gonna try the barn."
"You mind if I come?"
"I'll be pissed if you don't."
The next afternoon I got chewed out when the teacher found out that I had Halo for Satan by John Evans, which is a very good mystery, tucked down behind my history textbook.
Mrs. Morrissey, hoping to humiliate me, said, "And just what does Mr. Evans have to say about Napoleon?"
I just sat there and squirmed, the way she wanted me to. "Or what does Mr. Evans have to say about Mozart?"
More squirming.
"Or Woodrow Wilson?"
You get the point. She threw out several more historical names and asked me what Mr. Evans had to say about each one of them and all I could do was sit there and take it, all the while wanting to tell her that he was actually a good writer and that she should try reading him sometime but of course you don't talk to teachers that way.
Finally the bell rang and when I went up to the door, she said, "Tom, come here, please, and bring that so-called book of yours."
That's what she always called paperbacks: so-called books.
I went over to her desk. Five years ago, I would have known what to do. Put my hands out, palms down, so she could beat them with a ruler. But we were both too old for that.
"This is the third time this semester I've caught you reading these so-called books in class. They're trash."
I knew I was getting red and hot, the way I do when I get mad and can't do anything about it.
She grabbed the book from my hands and tore it in two and then dropped the two halves in her wastebasket. "Just where it belongs."
Last year, she'd taught us George Orwell's 1984, and how the thought police worked. Mrs. Morrissey apparently didn't know that she'd become one of them.
I told Barney about this at lunch. Barney looked sort of depressed today, the way he usually does when something bad happened at home, usually meaning that George had quit going to his AA meetings and was drinking again.
On the way home, a gray and frozen afternoon, Barney said, "You scared?"
"About tonight?"
"Uh-huh."
"Huh-uh."
"Really?"
"Really. Just pissed."
"Because Cushing's getting away with it?"
"Uh-huh."
"You know those two days when he was taking me for rides and stuff?"
"Uh-huh."
"He wasn't that bad a guy."
"Yeah, he only killed Roy in cold blood and stole all that money."
"My mom says that's my problem."
"What is?"
"That I feel sorry for too many people."
"I feel sorry for a lot of people, too, Barney, but Cushing sure isn't one of them."
"When you watch him up close sometimes there's this kind of sadness about him. You know that book by Cain that I liked so much?"
Barney couldn't ever remember titles. "Double Indemnity?"
"Yeah. That's who Cushing reminds me of. Th
e guy in that. He's real angry and tough but he's kind of sad, too, in a strange way. You know, how George gets when he gets drunk and cries sometimes about World War Two and how his buddies died and all that stuff. You ever notice how there's something sad about real mean guys, even like Maynard? Like they get so pissed that they don't know what to do with themselves?"
And I had to admit that I had noticed that.
When we got to the corner where he went east and I went west, I said, "I'll meet you here right at six-fifteen."
"Okay." He looked at me then and said, "George went after Mom again last night."
"Beat her up?"
"Yeah."
"Bad?"
"Pretty bad. Black eye. Got a bruise on her cheek. Chipped tooth."
I could see he wanted to cry.
"I'm sorry, Barney."
"My little brother saw it and he really got scared."
"God, Barney."
"You know the worst thing?"
"What?"
"I feel sorry for him, too."
"For your old man?"
"Yeah."
I smiled bleakly and said, "Your mom's right, Barney, you feel sorry for too many people."
Barney called just as we were finishing dinner.
He was whispering and that usually meant only one thing. George was still drunk and on a rampage. I heard Barney's mom crying softly in the background. Barney sounded like he was crying, too. "I better not go out tonight, Tom. I better stay with my mom."
"She gonna be okay?"
"Long as I'm here to protect her," he said. Then, "I better go." I went up to my room and did my homework. A couple hours later I heard the phone ring and Mom called from downstairs and said it was for me.
Barney said, "Sorry I had to whisper when I called."
"Is everything all right?"
"He passed out. That's when everything gets back to normal. He sleeps it off for a day and then he's real sorry. You know how it goes."
"Did he hurt your mom?"
"He slapped her a couple of times is all."
That would sound funny to anybody who didn't know Barney and his family—how George had slapped her a couple of times "is all" but given the fact that he'd put her in the hospital a few times, "is all" was pretty modest.
"You up for tomorrow night?" Barney said.
"Yeah. Are you?"
"Can't wait. I need some excitement."
That was the only time Barney really liked to get into trouble, after a bout with George. It was like the only way Barney could forget it all was to lose it in doing something risky.
The next night, Barney was at the right corner at the right time. We took alleys and back roads out to Cushing's, not wanting anybody to see us, liking the idea that we were skulking even when we didn't necessarily have to.
We stood behind the oak tree across the street from Cushing's. All the windows were dark.
The wind in the chimney made a neat moaning sound.
"You ready?"
"Yeah," Barney said.
So we stepped out from behind the oak tree and started to cross the street and just then the car turned the corner several yards away, and shone its headlights on us.
"Just keep walking," I said.
And so we did. Across the street. Onto Cushing's lawn.
And then the car stopped even with us and somebody rolled down the passenger window—you could hear a radio play low and smell cigarette smoke—and then a voice said, "You boys up to anything in particular?"
I couldn't make out a face inside the car. "Who is it?"
"It's Michaelson, is who is it. And I'm curious what you boys are doing out here at this time of night."
And then he hit us right in the face with the spotlight he had mounted on his driver's door.
Michaelson was this fat slob who sold appliances during the day and was an auxiliary policeman on the side. Now everybody in Somerton knew that the most an auxiliary policeman ever did was direct traffic at the county fair and things like that. What they got was a uniform and a badge and a billy club. What they didn't get was a gun or a car or any respect. Michaelson had been on the steps of the police department the night Roy was killed—hanging around his supposed friend Cushing. Even Cushing didn't seem to like him all that much.
Of course, Michaelson pretended he was a pretty big deal strutting around the fair city of Somerton. He had a whip antenna on his '53 Ford fastback and he wore his uniform just to go buy a loaf of bread and the way he walked around with his gut hanging over his hand-tooled western belt, he gave the impression that he was one tough guy.
"You boys hear me?"
"Huh?" Barney said.
"I asked you what you was doing out here?"
I dug in my pocket and took out my Lucky pack and held it up in the beam of the spotlight.
"This is what we're doing out here. Smoking. We don't want our folks to find out."
"Oh," he said. Then, "You're too young to smoke."
"That's why we're sneaking around."
"I could run you two in."
Michaelson always said that. About running people in.
Then he did just what you'd expect somebody like Michaelson to do. He killed the spotlight, rolled up the passenger window, and then took off—laying a strip of rubber that must have run thirty feet.
"What a clink," I said.
We were in the dark again.
"I don't think we'd better go down to the barn tonight."
"Neither do I," I said.
"He's gonna tell Cushing he saw us out here sure as hell."
I agreed.
We walked back home.
On the way, he said, "Mom said she's gonna get a divorce."
"She always says that after something happens."
"He knocked her down and kicked her this time. Then I jumped him. This was the other night."
He sounded confused, and like he wanted to cry again. "I wish I was like Mitch. I wouldn't take shit from anybody. Not from anybody."
When we reached the corner where we always said good-bye, I said, "You're a good guy, Barney, you know that?"
"If I was a good guy, I'd help my mom better."
"You're doing all you can."
"Yeah but when I see her down there on the floor with blood all over her face—"
And this time he took off running, vanished in the darkness outside the small circle of streetlight, loping slapping footsteps in the winter gloom.
Because of Michaelson telling Cushing about us, we decided to wait for another week before going back out to the barn.
The night was somewhere in the low teens. Barney was in a better mood, anyway. George was deep into his penitent role now, begging his wife to forgive him and not toss him out. This was the only time the family really had any peace, when George was like this.
We got to Cushing's about 7:30. There was a frosty half moon and a sky low and bright with Midwestern stars. No lights shone in the house. No car was parked in the driveway. We checked the corner. We didn't see Michaelson parked there waiting for us to make our move.
"Ready?"
"Yeah," Barney said.
We ran across the street and along the walk that paralleled the house and then Barney stopped.
"I'm freezing my ass off."
"You'll be fine. You got the whistle?"
"Yeah."
We'd agreed that Barney would scout—if he saw anything strange, he'd take this basketball whistle that belonged to my older brother, the right honorable Corporal Gerald, and blow the hell out of it.
"Hurry up," he said.
He was starting to irritate me, the way only somebody you really like can irritate you.
I took off running. The ground was winter-hard between house and barn.
I pushed the big sliding barn door back only far enough so I could slip in. The place smelled of hay and kerosene and sweet horseshit and winter. I got my flashlight on and moved the beam around the place.
It was pretty well e
mpty, actually. From the ancient horsecollars on the walls and the hay rakes and manure shovels stuck in the corners, you could see that somebody had probably kept animals here at one time. Probably had farmed it, too. But that was long ago. Everything was now dusty and stiff and faded.
I'll skip over the next half hour. It was a bitch but it was also pretty boring. I must have covered every single inch of that barn, as well as the haymow. I had no idea what I was looking for, just something that looked like it would be a good hiding place. I remembered the tarpaulin sack Roy had had the money in. A guy could hide that without too much trouble.
I went up and down the haymow ladder twice, making sure that I hadn't overlooked anything up there. I went into each stall with the rake and cleared the floor of hay and looked for any kind of trapdoor. A lot of the older barns in this area had them. About halfway through all this, my flashlight started flickering on and off, which reminded me of a pretty neat way the Hardy Boys had sent signals in one of their books. At least it had seemed pretty neat to me when I was a little kid.
I found a lot of dead stuff, too: a cat, two rats, a sparrow and this really obese possum. Poor bastard probably ate himself to death.
And then I was walking straight down the center of the barn and I turned my ankle and I acted real mature about it—I stood right there, pain traveling up my ankle and calf and thigh like thunderbolts—and I must have strung somewhere between fifty and sixty swearwords together. I didn't know who to be pissed off at, but I was sure pissed off at somebody.
And then I tried to put pressure on my foot and ankle again and I realized that the reason I tripped was that below all the hay, there was a slight indentation in the ground.
I dropped to my knees and started digging up the hay like a dog searching for a lost bone.
I dug up hay and then I dug up earth with the help of the rake tines and then I felt a piece of cold unyielding wood below the level of dirt.
Among all the long-deserted gardening tools, I found a shovel and I went right to work. I was so excited I forgot all about my ankle.
I dug for about ten minutes. The hole grew wide, wide enough that I could reach down and feel the shape of a wooden box.