A Simple Plan

by Scott Smith

  Someone banged against the wall next door, and we both froze.

  After a moment, Jacob sat up in bed. He dropped his legs over the edge, leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees. I stared at his naked feet. I was always shocked by their size. They looked like two raw chickens.

  "You've got to relax, Hank. You're getting paranoid. Nobody knows but us and Nancy and Sarah."

  "Sarah doesn't know."

  He looked up at me, then shrugged. "Us and Nancy then. That's it."

  The dog climbed out of bed, stretched, then walked across the floor toward the bathroom. He disappeared inside and started to drink loudly from the toilet. We listened until he stopped.

  "I killed Pederson for you, Jacob," I said.

  He straightened up. "What?"

  "I killed him for you."

  "Why the fuck do you keep saying that? What does that mean?"

  "It means I put myself at risk for you, and you turn around and betray me."

  "Betray you?"

  "You told Lou where I hid the money."

  "Hank, what the fuck's going on with you today?"

  "He knew it was in the garage."

  Jacob was silent. The dog came walking back out of the bathroom, his nails clicking against the tiled floor.

  "You never said I shouldn't," Jacob mumbled.

  Very quietly, I said, "You told him about Pederson."

  "I didn't..."

  "You betrayed me, Jacob. You promised me you wouldn't tell."

  "I didn't tell him anything. He's just guessing. He did the same thing to me."

  "Why would he've guessed something like that?"

  "I told him how we went back to the plane that morning. He'd just seen about Pederson on the news, and he said, 'Did you kill him?'"

  "And you denied it?"

  He hesitated. "I didn't tell him."

  "Did you deny it?"

  "He guessed, Hank," Jacob said, his voice impatient, put upon. "He just knew."

  "Well that's great, Jacob. Because now he's using it to blackmail me."

  "Blackmail you?"

  "He says he'll tell if I don't give him his share."

  Jacob thought about that. "Are you going to do it?"

  "I can't. He'd start spending hundred-dollar bills all over town. He'd get us caught just as quick doing that as he would by telling Carl about Pederson."

  "You really think he'll tell?"

  "Do you?"

  Jacob frowned. "I don't know. Probably not. It's just that he's been gambling lately, so he's short on money."

  "Gambling?"

  He nodded.

  "Where's he been gambling?" For some reason the idea seemed absurd to me.

  "In Toledo. At the racetrack. He's lost some money."

  "A lot?"

  Jacob shrugged. "A bit. I'm not sure exactly."

  I rubbed my face with my hands. "Shit," I said. Then I turned to the window. There was a pigeon sitting outside on the ledge, puffed up against the cold. I tapped the glass with my knuckles, and it flew away. Its wings flashed in the sunlight.

  "Do you see what's happening, Jacob?" I asked.

  He didn't say anything.

  "Lou can send us both to jail now."

  "Lou's not going to--"

  "And we can't control him. Before, we could threaten to burn the money, but now we can't. He'll tell if we do."

  "You never would've burned it, Hank."

  I waved this aside. "You know what the problem is? The problem is, you think you can trust him. He's your best friend, so you think he won't betray you."

  "Come on. Lou's just--"

  I shook my head. "You don't have any distance on this. You're too close to see what he's really like."

  "What he's really like?" Jacob asked incredulously. "And you think you're going to tell me that?"

  "I can tell you--"

  He cut me off, his voice rising with anger as he spoke. "He's my best friend, Hank; you know nothing about him. You've seen him drunk a few times, so you think you know him, but you don't. You can't tell me anything."

  I turned to face him. "Can you guarantee that he won't turn us in?"

  "Guarantee?"

  "Will you write up a confession, saying you killed Dwight Pederson all by yourself, sign it, and give it to me to keep?"

  He threw me a frightened look. "A confession? Why would you want that?"

  "To show the police if Lou were to tell on us."

  Jacob was speechless. He seemed mortified by the idea, which was exactly what I'd hoped for. I didn't really want a confession; I was just trying to scare him, trying to shock him out of his complacency.

  "It's your fault, Jacob, our being in this mess. You're the one who told him."

  Jacob didn't say anything. I waited a moment, then turned back toward the window.

  "Now Lou's asking me for something I can't give him," I said. "And when I refuse to do it, he's going to tell. He's going to send us to jail."

  "Come on, Hank. You're the one that's going to end up getting us caught. You're getting all worked up over--"

  "I came here this morning," I said, not turning from the window, "to find out whose side you're on."

  "Side?"

  "You have to choose."

  "I'm not on any side. You both keep talking about sides..."

  "Lou talks about sides?"

  He ignored my question. "I'm on both your sides. We're all together. That was the plan."

  "If you had to pick a side--"

  "I'm not going to pick a side."

  "I want you to pick one, Jacob. I want to know: Lou, or me?"

  Behind me I could sense his confusion, his panic. The mattress creaked as he shifted his weight.

  "I'm..."

  "Pick one."

  There were perhaps ten full seconds of silence. I waited through them, holding my breath.

  "I'd pick you, Hank," he said then. "You're my brother."

  I rested my forehead against the windowpane. The glass was cold; it made my skin ache. Out on the street, right below me, an old man dropped his newspaper, and it flung apart in the wind. A passing couple helped him gather it back together, and they talked for a bit, the old man nodding vigorously. "Thank you," I saw him say as they parted. "Thank you."

  Mary Beth made a yawning sound, and I heard my brother start to pet him.

  "Don't forget it, Jacob," I said, my breath steaming the glass in front of me. "Whatever else happens, don't forget it."

  TUESDAY afternoon there was a knock on my office door. Before I could say anything, it creaked open, and Lou stuck his head through. He smiled at me, showing his teeth. They looked like a rodent's, sharp, yellow.

  "Hey, Mr. Accountant," he said. Then he stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. He came all the way up to my desk but didn't sit down. He had on his white jacket, a pair of work boots. His face was pink from the cold.

  This was the moment I'd been dreading for the past three days, but now that it had finally arrived, I experienced no fear, no anger. I simply felt tired.

  "What do you want, Lou?" I sighed. I knew that whatever it was, it probably wasn't something I could give him.

  "I need some money, Hank."

  That was all he said. He didn't issue any threats, didn't mention Pederson or Jacob, but I could feel it hanging in the air between us, like a scent.

  "I already told you--" I started, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand.

  "I'm not asking for that," he said. "I'm just asking for a loan."

  "A loan?"

  "I'll pay you back as soon as we split up the money."

  I frowned. "How much?"

  "I need two thousand," he said. He tried smiling at me but seemed immediately to sense that it was a bad idea and gave it up.

  "Two thousand dollars?" I asked.

  He nodded somberly.

  "Why would you need that much money?"

  "I've got debts."

  "A two-thousand-dollar debt? To who?"
/>   He didn't answer me. "I need the money, Hank. It's real important."

  "Gambling debts?"

  He seemed to flinch a little, surprised perhaps that I knew about the gambling, but then he managed a smile. "Lots of debts."

  "You've lost two thousand dollars?"

  He shook his head. "A bit more than that." He winked. "This is just good-faith money, to hold people off till I get my split."

  "How much did you lose?"

  "All I need is two thousand, Hank."

  "I want to know how much you lost."

  He shook his head again. "That's not really your business, Mr. Accountant, is it now?" He stood there in front of me, patient, immovable, his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  "It's not like I carry that much money around with me," I said. "I can't just reach into my desk and hand you two thousand dollars."

  "There's a bank across the street."

  "I need time," I said. "You'll have to come back at the end of the day."

  AFTER he left, I went over to the bank and withdrew two thousand dollars from Sarah's and my account. I brought it back to my office, sealed it in an envelope, and dropped it into my top desk drawer.

  I tried to do some work, but the day was shot; I couldn't concentrate on anything. I doodled in the margins of letters. I read a hunting magazine someone had left in my office.

  I knew that giving him the envelope would commit me to splitting up the money. It was the only way he'd ever be able to repay me. I understood this but tried to pretend that it was irrelevant. What I told myself I was doing was buying time. I knew there had to be a way out, and I was sure that I could find it, if I only had a little space in which to concentrate. I needed to think; I needed to work things through.

  Lou came back just before five, knocked on my door, and entered again without my calling him in.

  "You get it?" he asked. He seemed to be in a great hurry. It made me move very slowly.

  I reached over, slid open the desk drawer, and took out the envelope. I set it on the edge of my desk.

  He stepped forward to take it. He ripped open the flap and counted the bills, his lips moving over the numbers. Then he smiled at me. "I really appreciate this, Hank," he said, as if I'd done it voluntarily.

  "I'm not going to give you any more," I said.

  He counted the bills again, seemed to do some sort of computation in his head. "When's Sarah due?"

  "The twenty-fourth."

  "Next week?" His face brightened.

  "Next Sunday."

  "And then we'll get the money?"

  I shrugged. "I'll need a few days, for things to settle down. And we'll have to do it on a weekend. I can't take off from work."

  Lou started backing toward the door. "You'll call me?" he asked.

  "Yes." I sighed. "I'll call you."

  I didn't tell Sarah about any of it.

  THE DAYS passed one after the other. The twenty-fourth came and went. During all that time I neither saw nor spoke with either Jacob or Lou. Sarah talked incessantly about the coming birth. She didn't mention Lou or Nancy at all.

  At night I would lie in bed and count off the people who knew. I'd test them in my head for weakness, picture each of them turning me in, trying to double-cross me, rob me, hurt me. I started to dream about it -- Lou beating me with a rolling pin; Jacob coming at me with a fork and knife, wanting to eat me alive; Nancy kissing Sarah, then whispering in her ear, "Poison him. Poison him. Poison him."

  I'd wake in the middle of the night and picture Lou's beer can lying in the snow at the edge of the orchard, imagine someone from the FBI picking it up with a pair of rubber gloves, dropping it into a plastic bag, sending it off to the lab. Or I'd think of Carl, sitting in his office in Ashenville, waiting, when the wreck was finally discovered, to tie together Jacob's report of a downed plane with the appearance the next day of Dwight Pederson's lifeless body.

  They'd exhume the corpse, they'd dig it up, they'd study it and pick it apart, and then they'd know.

  But, strangely, nothing happened. The money sat undisturbed in its bag beneath the bed. No one seemed to suspect me of anything. No one seemed to be plotting against me. Lou left me alone. And, gradually, I began to resign myself to what my life had become. I could live with my anxieties, I realized. They were finite. Any day now the baby would be born. I'd call Lou's bluff, brave it out. In the spring the plane would be discovered. A few months after that we'd split up the money and move away.

  Then it would all be over.

  Early in the morning on Thursday, January 28, just as I was preparing to leave for work, Sarah went into labor. I rushed her to the hospital, fifteen minutes away on the other side of Delphia, and there, at 6:14 that evening, she gave birth to a baby girl.

  5

  I BROUGHT Sarah and the baby home four days later. The baby was healthy, pink. She weighed nine pounds even, had rolls of fat beneath her chin and pudgy little hands attached to her arms.

  Driving home, we decided to name her Amanda, after Sarah's paternal grandmother.

  I was stunned at how dirty the house had become in Sarah's brief absence. It embarrassed me that I hadn't been able to keep it clean on my own. There were dirty dishes piled in the sink, newspapers scattered about the rooms, a thick clot of hair in the bathtub drain.

  I ushered them straight upstairs, to the bedroom. I put Amanda in her crib, which I'd set up beneath the window. Sarah watched me from the bed. The crib was the same one my father had dropped off at our house the week before his accident. It had been Jacob's and mine when we were infants; our father had built it himself.

  I went downstairs and fixed Sarah some tea and toast. I brought it to her on a tray, and we talked while she ate. We talked about Amanda, of course -- about the sound she made when she was hungry, the way she jerked her leg if you touched the sole of her foot, the pale, limpid blue of her eyes. We talked about the hospital -- about the mean night nurse whose shoes had squeaked like they were full of water as she made her rounds through the darkened hallways; the nice morning nurse who'd spoken with a lisp and so tried to avoid saying Sarah's name; the doctor with the gap between his teeth who kept referring to Amanda as a he.

  I stood over the crib through all of this, watching the baby sleep. She was on her back, her head turned toward the window, her eyes tightly shut, as if she were squinting at the sky. She held her hands in loose fists up beside her shoulders. She was very still. I kept wanting to touch her and make sure that she was alive.

  Sarah finished her tea and toast. She talked and talked, as though she'd spent the past four days storing up things to tell me. I smiled and nodded, urging her along until she suddenly interrupted herself.

  "Is that Jacob?" she asked, and I looked out the window.

  My brother's truck was rattling into the driveway.

  I GREETED him at the door and invited him in, but he said he didn't have time. He'd brought a gift for the baby, something wrapped in pink tissue paper, and he handed it over to me quickly, as if carrying it embarrassed him.

  "It's a teddy bear," he said. He'd left his truck running. The dog was sitting in the passenger seat, watching us. He barked once, at me, and his nose banged against the window, leaving a wet smear along the glass.

  "Come see her," I said. "Just quickly. She's upstairs."

  Jacob shook his head, took a step back, as if he were afraid I might pull him in. He was on the very edge of the porch. "No," he said. "I will later. I don't want to bother Sarah."

  "It's no bother," I said. I shifted the teddy bear from one arm to the other.

  Jacob shook his head again, and there was an awkward silence while he searched for something to say before he left.

  "You decide on a name yet?" he asked.

  I nodded. "Amanda."

  "That's nice."

  "It's after Sarah's grandmother. It's Latin. It means worthy of being loved."

  "That's real nice," Jacob said. "I like it."

  I nodded again. "You sure y
ou won't come up?"

  He shook his head. He stepped off the porch, but then he stopped. "Hank," he said. "I wanted to..." He faded off, glanced toward the truck.

  "What?"

  "Can I borrow some money?"

  I frowned, shifting the teddy bear back to my other arm. "How much?"

  He put his hands into his coat pockets, stared down at his boots. "Hundred and fifty?"

  "A hundred and fifty dollars?"

  He nodded.

  "Why do you need that much money, Jacob?"

  "I got to pay my rent. I'll get my unemployment check next week, but I can't wait that long."

  "When would you pay me back?"

  He shrugged. "I was sort of hoping you could just take it out of my share of the money."

  "Are you even trying to find a job?"

  He seemed surprised by the question. "No."

  I tried unsuccessfully to keep my voice free from judgment. "You're not even looking?"

  "Why should I look for a job?" He lowered his voice into a whisper. "Lou told me you agreed to split up the money."

  I stared down at his chest, considering this. I saw fairly clearly that I couldn't tell him I wasn't going to give them their shares until the summer -- he'd tell Lou, and I wasn't ready for that. But if I wanted to pretend otherwise, then I had no reason not to loan him the money. Behind him his truck rumbled and coughed in the driveway, spitting out clouds of bluish smoke. All up and down the street my neighbors' houses were absolutely quiet, as if abandoned, their windows blank. It was trash day, and plastic garbage cans lined the curb.

  "Wait here," I said. "I've got to go upstairs and get my checkbook."

  SARAH unwrapped the teddy bear while I stood at my dresser and wrote out Jacob's check. The baby was sound asleep in her crib.

  "It's used," Sarah whispered, a note of disgust running through her voice.

  I went over to look at the bear. There was nothing obviously wrong with it -- no stains or holes, no missing eyes or protruding hunks of stuffing -- but it had an undeniably rumpled look. It was old, used. It had dark brown fur, almost black, and a brass key inserted in its back.

  Sarah wound the key. When she let it go, music came out of the bear's chest, a man's voice singing: "Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques/Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?" As soon as I heard it, I realized why the bear looked so old.