The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  Whether this final story will come true or not — whether the meteor metal from an unknown world will continue to have its mysterious effect — it is impossible to say. But it still seems to be working okay so far; at least, Miriam Deutsch is expecting.

  Good Housekeeping, November 1952, 135(5):58-59, 180, 182-186, 188-189

  5 Against the House, Part One

  I didn't want to go to my two-o'clock class, stay in my room, or go out either. I didn't want to stay sober, didn't want to get drunk; and I'd already seen both movies in town. I might have called up a girl, but I was broke. I walked out, and down the fraternity-house hall toward Brick's room; I was looking for something — trouble, maybe.

  I was nineteen, a junior at a small Illinois college; and even though it was early June, it might as well have been February. It was drizzling outside as it had been for days, and I'd been indoors too much for too long. I was in perfect health, weighed a hundred and sixty, with a kind of fair-haired average good looks; and I was stir crazy. I wanted to do something, I didn't know what; preferably something no one had ever done before.

  Guy Cruikshank was in Brick's room, slouched in one of the leather chairs, staring at the fireplace and the half-dead fire. Al, he said by way of greeting, glancing up at me; he's a short, stout, good-humored boy with a light-brown crew cut and round, childish-looking eyes.

  Hi, I answered; I could see he was as bored as I was. As usual Guy looked a little sloppy: white rumpled shirt, baggy old pants, and those worn-out slippers that somebody nailed to the ceiling once.

  You going to class? he said.

  I don't know. I walked over to the windows and stared out at the lifeless drizzle. No.

  What're you going to do?

  I shrugged. Kill myself.

  Move over, Guy murmured, then said disgustedly, What the devil is there to do?

  Swallow goldfish. Steal panties from the girls' dormitory. Hoax the nation. Write a book. Get married, killed, drunk, or all three.

  Slower; I'm making notes.

  I didn't even bother answering that feeble crack.

  Guy said, A kid told me about some school: The whole campus went nuts over a mythical country they invented. They were all citizens; they had a king, made laws, wrote a history, and published a newspaper. Even made up a language. Finally they actually printed money, and it was good — among themselves, that is. Had themselves a whale of a time.

  I nodded without turning around. I can understand it; probably happened just about this time of year.

  You suppose we could start something like that?

  I shrugged, and we were quiet for a minute or so.

  Then Jerry Weiner wandered in; he's a tall, slender kid, as dark as I'm fair, a bright, quick-witted boy. Always smart-looking, he was wearing tailored gray slacks and a matching wool shirt. Jerry took one look at our faces, then shrugged and walked over to the other big chair; he felt the same way.

  Think of something, Guy said desperately, or I'll have to go up and study.

  From Brick's windows you can see clear across the campus to Church Street, three blocks away. An armored truck was just starting up from a traffic light. There goes a Brink's truck, I said. Let's rob it; they're always good for a million or so. I was kidding Jerry, half-heartedly. He's a true-crime fan; owns a lot of books on famous murders and crimes of all kinds.

  Suits me, he said.

  I smiled for the first time that day. Jerry's eighteen; a sophomore, and his innocent expression makes him seem younger. He's a graceful kid, and his fine-boned face gives him intelligent, almost delicate, good looks; I could just see him sticking up one of Brink's trucks.

  He saw me smile. All right — he grinned — I didn't say I was going to. But I think I could; I'd be good at the planning

  Okay. Count me in.

  Me too. Guy rubbed his palms briskly. An excellent project, excellent. He got up and lay down on the floor, the back of his neck against the bricks of the fireplace, so I went over and took his chair. What's the first step, Jerry? Guy clasped his hands on his round little stomach. Casing the joint?

  Jerry smiled, drawing his feet up on his chair. You ever hear about the armored-truck robbery in Brooklyn, fifteen, twenty years ago? It's a classic. We shook our heads, and Jerry said, I've read several accounts of it, and it's the most beautifully planned thing I ever heard of. A work of art, no fooling.

  There are worse ways than a bull session of killing time on a bad afternoon, so I leaned down, took a log from the wood basket, and laid it on the smoldering fire, hoping it would catch.

  Every afternoon this armored truck unloaded in a paved courtyard beside their Brooklyn office; they had a regular routine. The guard up in the cab would open his door, pistol in hand; slide out, slamming the door; then stand at one side guarding the truck. That took three seconds at most. Then the driver'd get out; the two of them would walk to the back door, rap on it, then stand off, pistols ready, on guard. The man inside the truck would open up and carry the money sacks into the building.

  One day a fellow showed up at the public tennis courts across the street and lay on the grass watching the players all afternoon. Next day he was back, just lying there, chewing a blade of grass, now and then lighting a cigarette. For weeks he did that, day after day. The guards would see him when they came in with the truck; sometimes he'd glance at them casually, sometimes he didn't seem to notice them. Just a guy with time on his hands.

  I swung my legs sideways over the arm of the chair, staring down at my old brown pants and sweater, my everyday going-to-class outfit.

  A man began coming around with one of those little white pushcarts, Jerry said, selling ice-cream bars. He had a perfectly legitimate ice-cream cart with a bona fide city vendor's license, and he did a fair business among neighborhood kids. He'd be around half an hour or so, usually, and the guards got used to him too.

  I love this, Guy said from the floor. I want to be the guy who lies on the grass.

  Jerry smiled, and wrapped his arms around his long legs, his chin on his knees. Next door to this courtyard was a little ice company; people'd come around to buy a chunk of ice; and pretty soon a new man got a job there. Between customers, sometimes, it was perfectly natural that he'd jump down off his platform and stroll around the little courtyard, smoking a cigarette. Sometimes he'd be there when the armored truck turned in, and he'd nod casually, and the guards would nod back. At first he was reasonably interested in the business of unloading the truck; then apparently he got used to it. They got used to him too.

  There's a handful of moments scattered through your life that stick in your mind forever. This moment, Jerry quietly talking, is one of them for me. A windowpane rattled, rain slashing against it, and then, on cue, like a radio drama, the log in the fireplace caught with the little snap and crackle of new flame. The room was warm and felt good, the long rainy-day leisure stretching ahead. Then the door opened and Brick walked in, and now our circle was complete. “Fraternity” means “brotherhood,” the framed charter down in the living room said, but we had our share of jerks and phonies, and Brick, Guy, and Jerry were the guys I really cared about.

  Brick said, Hi, smiling in the way he had that made you feel he'd been hoping you might be there. We answered, and taking off his leather jacket, Brick said, What's the topic for today?

  We're going to rob Brink's, I said. If it ever stops raining.

  Fine. He nodded toward the windows and the rain outside. It's a good silly-season project. He turned toward the fire, and Jerry got up, gave him his chair, and sat down on the other side of the fire from Guy.

  The atmosphere of the room had subtly changed. Guy said, Bring him up to date, Jerr. Then, lifting his head, he nodded vigorously at Brick. It's a good story; you'll like it.

  Jerry resumed talking, repeating the beginning of his story, but I noticed he was selecting his phrases more carefully, a little extra-anxious to interest Brick.

  And I found myself too watching Brick instead of Je
rry, to see if I could tell whether this interested him.

  Brick was older than us — twenty-two. He'd dropped out of school for two years, then came back, was a senior now and a sort of living legend on the campus. He'd been part of the school's greatest football team, the only member of it still in school, though he no longer played. Now he sat unfastening his cuffs and listening, a big, muscular, very hairy man, who made the rest of us still seem like boys. He was no taller than Jerry, but he weighed two hundred and five; and now, as he began rolling up his sleeves, you couldn't see his forearms for the copper-wire hair that covered them. It was the shade of his hair and his rough pinkish skin that gave him his nickname, of course. In five more years he'd be fat, I suspected; already he had a half-dollar bald spot showing.

  Brick sat back, hooking his thumbs into his belt, and I could see Jerry's story had caught him. People who didn't like Brick said he looked like an ape, and I had to admit there was truth in that. Intent on Jerry, his face had a kind of ugly handsomeness and strength: thick pink brows on a bony ridge, jaw massive and absolutely square. But his deep-brown eyes were extra-large and alive now, as they so often were, with a friendly-mocking intelligence. I'd often noticed that women were attracted to Brick, but sort of resentfully; he was nobody's notion of a good-looking man, yet in an odd way that's just what he was.

  Jerry said, Now all this time these three guys were doing something else. When the tennis-court man would leave each day, he'd stroll across the street and on past the courtyard entrance. Looking bored, he was mentally timing himself, getting the exact feeling of precisely how long it took him to reach that entrance. The iceman, jumping off his platform and wandering over to where the truck always stopped, was doing the same.

  Until one day, when the truck turned in, the tennis-court man was wandering absently across the street, a blade of grass in his teeth; the ice-cream man was standing with his cart beside the courtyard entrance, as he sometimes did; and the iceman, a cigarette in his mouth, just happened to be hopping down into the courtyard.

  Jerry grinned delightedly. The iceman nodded, and the guard nodded back, but the guard wasn't paying much attention to him. Gun in hand, the guard was ready instead for the stranger who'd never yet showed up. He opened the door, swinging his legs around to slide out, his eyes searching the courtyard on past the iceman. And in just that moment, the two or three seconds when that door was open, the iceman was beside him, shoving a pistol, hard, into his stomach.

  Hugging his knees, Jerry actually rocked back and forth a little with pleasure. The iceman took the guard's pistol; then there stood the tennis-court man, his pistol aimed at the driver. There was nothing the guard and driver could do but climb down, their hands clasped on their heads. They all walked around to the back of the truck, and the iceman rapped on the door, as he'd so often seen the driver do. The ice-cream vendor had lifted a submachine gun from the bottom of his cart, ready for anyone else who might come along.

  The back door opened, and the man inside found a pistol aimed at his nose; he raised his hands without anyone having to explain things. The bandits made him open the vault in the truck. The ice-cream vendor covered all three guards while his partners climbed into the truck and shoved half a million dollars' worth of baled-up currency down into the ice-cream cart. The two wheeled the cart to the street and lifted the whole works into a parked car. They honked the horn; the ice-cream man backed out of the yard, then turned, ran to the car; and away they went.

  Good planning, Jerry said solemnly, like an economics professor, applies not only to the actual crime but to the escape. Within sixty seconds an alarm was out, with half the patrol cars in Brooklyn heading for the district. And the district was on a point of land; there were only two bridges and a few streets the bandits could get away on, and police were guarding those, checking every car that could possibly be the getaway car. But the bandits didn't use those bridges or streets. A few blocks away they piled into a powerboat and were off into a mist they'd been waiting for nearly ten days. They got across to Manhattan, into a car, and were lost in traffic, with no description of the car out, before it occurred to anyone that they might have escaped by water. And they'd planned not to spend a dime of the money for a year, if necessary, so they couldn't be traced through a dollar of it; and they were all guys with the kind of patience to have done just that.

  Jerry frowned. But they had bad luck. They had a shotgun in the boat; somebody tripped over it, and it went off and nearly tore the leg off one of them. Even at that they got safely into hiding. But getting medical help, and later trying to get rid of the body when the wounded man died, as I recall, provided the clues that eventually caught them. Except for that one bad break, there's not much doubt that they'd have gotten away with it.

  We all sat there for a dozen seconds or so; I could hear my wrist watch ticking. Then I smiled at Jerry and nodded; I thought it was a wonderful story. Brick murmured, Good story; darn good.

  Then Guy sat up suddenly and said, I love it; I'm nuts about it. Hand me down my gun and slide rule, boys; let's get to work on the crime of the century! And that did it.

  We wanted to do it! It burst in our brains! We were suddenly red-hot to plan some spectacular crime in every beautiful detail, just like the guys in Jerry's story! I don't mean actually do it. But the planning, the working it out, sounded like wonderful fun; something new, fresh, and exciting to do; and we were all up on our feet, wandering around the room in excitement. Brick stood staring out the windows, fiddling with the cord on the shade. Guy walked around touching things, face squinted in thought, absently running a finger over a table, jiggling a lamp shade. I stood, arms folded on the mantel, staring down between them at the tip of my shoe, scuffing at a log. And Jerry simply watched us, his eyes alive with excitement.

  I think all of us, lost in thought, had a set of pictures in our minds, like a handful of snapshots. We could each see ourselves standing casually on a street corner, secretly studying the arrival and departure of an armored truck; or following a guard down a street, walking into a banklike building and unobtrusively memorizing the floor plan, then assigning tasks and duties to each of us.

  It was simply glorified cops and robbers, if we'd stopped to think about it. But it sounded like fun; it answered some kind of bottled-up need in us. Maybe you don't understand how it could catch our imaginations, there in the restlessness of a dreary spring. But remember that one minute college boys, college men (neither term is quite right) are full-fledged adults with adult minds and capabilities, but in the snap of a finger they can revert to the children they were only a short time before. And for us the very pointlessness of our notion was what gave it a point, like the college Guy had talked about, with its mythical kingdom. Or it was a rebellion, maybe, against adult authority. It was something to do.

  So when Guy turned from Brick's desk, where he'd been fiddling with some pencils, and said, What, do you say? we all knew what he meant, and looked at each other, grinning, our eyes bright with excitement, even Brick's.

  And now the room wasn't big enough. We wanted action, wanted to get out and move, and Jerry said, Where's the Brink's office? Anybody know?

  Guy and I spoke together — Out on Fleckman Street — grinning at the coincidence; then Guy added, Across from the old horse-auction barns.

  Slowly, and smiling like an adult who finds himself in a kid's game, enjoying it more than he'd have thought, Brick said, We can take my car.

  And then, within minutes, we were all downstairs and in Brick's car, a green '51 convertible, parked in front of the house. Brick had his leather jacket on; Jerry had a raspberry-colored cashmere sweater pulled over his wool shirt; I'd put on my Navy-surplus jacket; and Guy came along last, managing, as usual, to look ridiculous, in a long yellow slicker, plaid cap, and a wide grin.

  We drove out Main, the windshield wipers clacking away, on past the main business district and into Fleckman Street, forking off to the left; it took us ten minutes, maybe, to reach the Brin
k's office. We were all exuberant; Jerry and Brick, in the front seat, quietly so, not saying anything, but turning to glance back every now and then with a grin. In the back seat with me, Guy had that silly plaid cap pulled over his eyes. The perfect disguise, he said, because who'd ever wear a fool outfit like this? Nobody, obviously, so I can never be identified. Then he turned the cap around on his head, the peak at the back. Call me Robin Hood, he said. I'm giving my share, except for a few hundred thousand, to the deserving and pitiful poor. Bless you, Guy! hungry widows and orphans will cry. Bless you, and your old plaid cap, symbol of mercy and courage! Poor but beautiful young girls will fling themselves at me. Take me, Guy! they'll beg. Please! It's an honor, for you are our benefactor!

  All the way out he kept up that chatter, the rest of us smiling, delighted with him and ourselves. We'll impregnate a bunch of one-dollar bills with a chemical I read about, he said. After a certain length of time they'll burst into flames. We deposit them in the bank in the morning; later on Brink's picks up the day's take and fire breaks out in the truck. The guard is strangling from the smoke, has to open the back door. We're following along, disguised as volunteer firemen. So, naturally —

  We parked maybe thirty feet south of the Brink's office, across the street. It was a one-story concrete building with a little strip of grass on each side. The building just south of it was a dental-supply place with a dentist's chair in the window. On the other side was some kind of little factory, because we could hear the sound of machinery and there was a bunch of brown cartons stacked in the window. There were no windows in Brink's; it was a squat little concrete fortress. But just below roof level a double row of glass blocks ran around the building, admitting the daylight. The door was wood with a heavy-looking glass pane; just below the glass, fastened to the door, was a big bronze shield that said, “Brink's.”