A Simple Plan

by Scott Smith

  "Anything I do to you now," he said, his voice laced with a sudden malice, "will be in self-defense. That's how the police'll see it. You came in here with that knife, threatened me, tried to steal what's mine. You've put yourself outside the protection of the law."

  He came toward me slowly, grinning. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I continued to back away.

  "I gave you a chance to run because I knew it was the Christian thing to do. But you wouldn't leave. So now I'm going to make sure, no matter what happens to you once the police arrive, that you'll never do this again. I'm going to teach you some respect for other people's property."

  He was in the aisle now, stalking me. I was about ten feet away from him. I held the machete in my right hand and waved it again, but he didn't seem to notice. He was staring at the shelf to his right, as if searching for something. I watched as he reached up and pulled down a can of peas. He hefted it in his hand, and then, very calmly, without any hurry to the motion whatsoever, reared back and threw it at me. It hit me in the chest, hard, with a loud cracking sound, just below my left nipple. I stumbled backward, gasping. It felt like he'd broken one of my ribs.

  "This is a rare opportunity," he said. "There aren't many situations where you can hurt someone as bad as I'm going to hurt you and get away with it."

  I had no idea how to handle this. He was supposed to have just given me the money. Then I was going to make him lie down on the floor and count to a hundred while I ran off to my car.

  "I'll even be congratulated for this," he said. "Taking a bite out of crime. They'll call me a hero."

  I continued backing down the aisle. I assumed that the building had an exit in the rear, probably through the storeroom I'd noticed earlier. I thought that if I could just hold him off till I got there, I could make a break for it, could get outside and sprint for my car.

  He reached up again, pulled down a jar of olives from one of the shelves, and threw it at me. It hit me in the shoulder this time, then fell to the floor, shattering at my feet. A dull, tingling ache spread down my arm, and my fingers, as if of their own accord, opened, dropping the machete. It landed in the olives. I had to pick it up with my left hand.

  "That's enough," I said. "I'll go now. You can keep the money."

  He laughed, shaking his head. "You missed your chance. The door was open, and now it's shut."

  At the end of the aisle, something caught my arm. Without taking my eyes off the cashier, I tried to jerk it free. I looked back, quickly, and saw the display of red wine, the huge column of jugs. There was a large staple in the sheet of cardboard that divided the third tier of bottles from the fourth, and it was on this that my sweatshirt had become hooked.

  I glanced toward the cashier. He was six feet away. Another step and he would've been able to reach out and grab me. In a panic, I yanked my arm away from the staple, but instead of freeing myself, I simply pulled the sheet of cardboard out of the display. The bottles it had supported balanced there for an instant, like in a magic trick, trembling, and then began to fall. The whole display came apart before my eyes, the jugs hitting the floor one after the other in a loud, prolonged crash.

  There was a brief silence in the store, a pause through which the preacher's voice found its way toward us down the aisle. "And is there a difference," he asked, "between a sin of omission and a sin of commission? Is one punished with more vengeance in the fires of Hell than the other?"

  The tiles at my feet were red-black with wine. Shards of glass lay scattered about, like jagged islands. I stepped back from the mess, retreating all the way to the rear wall, watching as the puddle spread out across the floor.

  The cashier made a whistling sound, shaking his head. "Now who do you think's going to pay for that?" he asked.

  We both stared down at the shattered bottles. The sheet of cardboard hung from my arm, swaying. I tore it free and dropped it to the floor. My fingers were still tingling, and my chest ached each time I took a breath. I wanted to begin working my way toward the storeroom, but my legs wouldn't move. They held me there, pressed up against the icy door of the cooler, paralyzed.

  The cashier stepped forward, moving around the edge of the puddle. He paused at the far side, no more than three feet away, turned his back to me, and stooped down to retrieve a funnel-shaped hunk of glass from the wreckage. It was in the center of the puddle, and he had to lean forward on his toes to reach it.

  He was getting it to use as a weapon, I knew. When he stood up, he was going to cut me.

  I glanced toward the storeroom. I was fairly confident that I could make it there if I sprinted. The cashier was off balance, in a crouch; I'd catch him by surprise. And when I pushed away from the cooler, that's what I thought I was going to do -- I thought I was going to run. But I didn't. Instead, without planning to, I found myself stepping toward him. My hands grasped the machete like a baseball bat. I lifted it over my head, my eyes locked on the back of his neck. Then I brought it down with all my strength.

  It was only as I did it, only as I heard the blade hiss through the air above me, that I realized it was what I'd yearned to do all along.

  He seemed to sense the blow coming. He started to rise, twisting his body to the right. This was the side I hit him on, the machete coming down at an angle, striking him just below the chin, its blade burying itself into his throat. It cut deep, but not nearly as deep as I'd hoped. Brutal as it sounds, I'd wanted to chop off his head in a single stroke, ending it in an instant. I didn't have the strength, though, or the blade wasn't sharp enough, because it sank about two inches in, then stopped. I had to jerk it free as he collapsed to the floor.

  There was another silence, another pause.

  The radio echoed through the store: "And Christ said, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' That is to say, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'"

  The cashier was lying on his stomach, with his hands tucked in at the sides of his chest, as if he were about to do a push-up. There was a tremendous amount of blood, much more than I would've expected, more even than I would've thought his body could contain. It came out of his neck in thick cords, rhythmically, mixing with the pool of wine.

  I'd severed his carotid artery.

  "And so if our Savior in the moment of his passing was brought to the point of questioning God, what is to keep us, mere mortals, flawed individuals that we are, from questioning Him likewise?"

  I stood there, watching him bleed. I held the machete away from my body, to keep it from dripping on my pants. I could see that it was simply a matter of waiting now, and I was relieved by this. I felt too drained, too sluggish, to hit him again.

  "Something goes wrong in your life. You get sick, you lose your job, and you say, 'Where is the Lord's hand in this?'"

  I stepped forward, into the puddle, switching the machete from my right to my left hand. Blood continued to surge from the man's wound, but his body was very still. Although I didn't think he was dead yet, I was sure that he was close to it, approaching the boundary, slipping beyond its edge. I thought to myself, quite clearly, You're watching him die.

  But then a surprising thing happened. Very slowly, as if he were being pulled from above by a set of strings, he climbed to his hands and knees.

  I was too shocked to step back. I stayed right beside him, watching in astonishment, my body bent forward at the waist, my head tilted to the side.

  Somehow, in an awkward, disjointed series of movements, he struggled onto his feet. He stood there, stooped over, his hands on his thighs, a thick stream of blood still pulsing from the gash in his neck. His T-shirt was soaked a deep red with it, and it clung to his body. I could see the shape of his nipples through the fabric. His face was perfectly white.

  "You say, 'Either the Lord has forsaken me or He is purposefully sending hardship my way.' And you see no reason why you might deserve this. You're righteous, you're faithful, you're loving, you're steadfast, you're gentle, and yet the Lord chooses..."

  I took a step back from him
, toward the cooler, and he raised his head. He stared at me, his eyes blinking very rapidly. His breathing made a watery sound in his chest; his lungs were filling with blood. He put his hands on his throat.

  I took another step backward. I knew that I should hit him again, kill him, knew that this would be the humane thing to do, but I didn't feel like I had the strength to raise the machete. I felt spent, finished.

  He tried to speak: his mouth opened and closed. There was no sound, though, simply the gurgling in his chest. And then, very slowly, as if he were moving underwater, he pulled his left hand away from his throat and extended it to the shelf at his side. He wrapped his fingers around the neck of a ketchup bottle sitting there, and, more shoving it than throwing it, propelled it toward me through the air.

  It hit me in the leg. It didn't hurt; it bounced off, cracking into three nearly equal pieces on the floor. I stared down at it, another tint of red.

  "And you say, 'The Lord moves in mysterious ways? What does that mean to me?' You say, 'Isn't that some sort of cop-out? Some sort of escape clause for when things go bad and you preachers have no explanation?' You say, 'Where is Responsibility? Where is Justice?' You're angry and you feel you deserve an answer..."

  He put his hand back up to his throat. The blood pumped out between his fingers, but more weakly now.

  When he fell, he did so in stages, hesitating for an instant between each one, like an actor overplaying his part. He dropped to his knees first, landing on a shard of glass from one of the jugs, crushing it with a horrible grinding sound beneath his weight. He paused, settled back on his rear end, paused again, then sank sideways to the floor. His head banged into the base of the shelf, bouncing off it at an awkward angle, his hands falling away from his throat.

  All of this happened in slow motion.

  "Let's say that someone tells you, 'The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away.' What does that mean to you?"

  I stared down at him, counting in my head as I had with Pederson on the edge of the nature preserve. I counted to fifty, breathing once between each number. As I watched, the blood slowly stopped pulsing from his neck.

  I stuck the machete through my belt, like a pirate. Then I pulled off the ski mask. The air felt cool against my face, soothing, but the smell of Jacob's body remained stuck in my nostrils. It seemed to cling to my cheeks, like grease. I took off the sweatshirt, dragging it over my head. My back was drenched with perspiration. I could feel it running down in little rivulets along my spine, soaking into the waistband of my underpants.

  "Or they say, 'A man's mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps...'"

  I wanted to check the cashier's pulse, but the thought of touching his wrist gave me a loose, sick feeling in my stomach, so I let it go. He was dead. I could tell that just from the amount of blood on the floor -- it was a huge puddle, spreading out along the rear of the store and seeping down the center aisle. Mixed with the wine and ketchup and shattered glass, it looked surreal, ghoulish, like something from a nightmare.

  "Or they say, 'The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble...'"

  I stood there, listening to the preacher's voice. He was in a studio somewhere, and it sounded like there were people with him, offering up an occasional "Amen!" or "Glory!" or "Hallelujah!" And then there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people all across the region -- Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania -- sitting in their homes, driving in their cars, listening. Each of them was connected to the others, and all of them were connected to me, simply by the sound of this man's voice.

  And they don't know, I thought. They don't know about any of this.

  Very slowly, I felt myself begin to calm down. My pulse slackened; my hands stopped shaking. I'd almost ruined everything by coming here, but now I'd saved it. We were going to be all right.

  I lifted my shirt to look at my chest. It was already starting to bruise, a deep purple flower blossoming across my rib cage.

  "Let me talk to you about fate, Brothers and Sisters. What does that word mean to you? If I say to you that you are fated to die someday, is there one among you who would question me? Of course not. And yet if I were to say to you that you are fated to die on one particular day, at one particular hour, and in one particular way, you would shake your head and say that I was a fool. And yet that is what I do say to you, I say..."

  I shook myself, as if from a stupor, walked quickly down the center aisle to the front of the building, leaned over the counter, and clicked off the radio. There was a SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED sign hanging from the front door, and I flipped it so that it was facing out. I wanted to turn off the lights, too, and spent nearly a minute searching for the switch before finally giving up on the idea and returning to the back of the store.

  Without the preacher's voice, the building had an ominous silence to it. Every noise I made echoed back at me from the shelves of food, sounding furtive, rodentlike.

  I took the cashier by his feet and started to drag him toward the darkened storeroom. He was lighter than I would've thought, drained of blood, but it was still a difficult task. His body was cumbersome, awkward, and the floor was treacherous with blood.

  My chest throbbed every time I moved.

  The storeroom was tiny, a narrow rectangle. There was a mop in it, a bucket, some cleaning supplies on a shelf. In its very rear were a sink and a dirty-looking toilet. The smell of disinfectant was heavy in the air. There was no exit. If I'd run there, I would've been trapped.

  I dragged the cashier in, feet first, but had to stop midway to untangle his arms from the narrow doorway. I laid them across his chest, like a corpse in a coffin, then pulled him the rest of the way in, propping his legs up against the toilet so that there'd be enough space to shut the door. I took his wallet, his watch, and his key ring and put them in my pocket.

  Once the body was safely hidden, I walked back through the puddle to the front of the building. I went behind the counter and rang open the cash register. The hundred-dollar bill was in the bottom of the drawer, beneath the till. It was the only one there. I folded it in half and slipped it into the front pocket of my jeans.

  There was a stack of paper bags on the counter. I grabbed one, shook it open, and emptied the rest of the register into it -- bills, change, everything.

  As I was shutting the drawer, my eyes searching the surrounding shelves for other items a drifter might steal, a car pulled into the lot. The sight of it literally paralyzed me, froze me in place, my hand hanging in midair above the register. I watched as it rolled up to the edge of the building, its headlights shining through the front windows.

  The sweatshirt and ski mask were sitting before me on the counter. I picked up the sweatshirt and started to put it on, but the arms were all tangled, and I couldn't get it over my head. Finally I just gave up and held it out in front of my chest, as if hoping to hide behind it.

  The headlights went out, and the engine shut off. A woman climbed from the car.

  I took the machete from my belt and set it on the counter, covering it with the cashier's newspaper.

  You could see the puddle of blood and wine from the front door, could stare right down the center aisle to the rear of the store. I'd tracked it forward on my boots, too: my footprints trailed across the floor to the counter, looking painted on the tiles, like the kind they have at dance schools, a bright, shiny red, perfect and precise, their edges still glistening with wetness. I stared at them from the counter, a queasy flutter seizing hold of my chest. I realized that I wasn't thinking, that I was being careless. I was leaving clues behind.

  As the woman approached the front door, another plane flew overhead, roaring in on its descent to the airport, its engines making the building tremble. She turned to stare at it, ducking a little, instinctively, at the sound. She was old, probably in her late sixties, and elegantly dressed -- a dark fur coat, pearl earrings, black high-heeled shoes, a tiny black purse. Her face, despite a thi
ck layer of rouge, had a definite paleness to it, as if she'd been sick recently. Her expression was tight, firm, like she was late for something and rushing to make up time.

  She tried the door, found it locked, held her black-gloved hand up to the glass to peer inside. Her eyes fell immediately on me, standing frozen behind the counter. She made an elaborate show of checking her watch. Then she held up two fingers. I watched her mouth form the words "Two...minutes...till...six!"

  I shook my head at her. "Closed," I yelled.

  A voice was whispering madly in my skull, high-pitched, frantic: Let her go, it said. She'll remember nothing. It looks as if you're closing up, as if you're ready to leave. Let her go.

  I rested my hands on the counter and shook my head again, willing her to climb back into her car.

  She rattled the door.

  "I just need a bottle of wine," she yelled through the glass. I heard her, but from a distance. Her voice reminded me of someone I knew, though I couldn't decide exactly who.

  "We're closed," I yelled.

  She rapped at the glass with her fist. "Please."

  I looked down at my hands, checking them very slowly, finger by finger, to make sure that they were free of blood. When I looked back up, she was still there. She was going to make me do it, I realized; she wasn't going to leave.

  She rattled the door again. "Young man!"

  I knew what I was going to do, saw how it would end. The past three months had conditioned me for it, trained me, and now the weight of all that had come before seemed to eliminate any other possibility, render it impotent, a mere half measure where nothing but the most extreme would suffice. I'd just spent three hours talking with the police. If she were able to describe what I was wearing, they'd know right away who it was. And then I'd be caught; I'd be sent to jail. I recognized the horror of it, realized that it would be the worst thing I'd ever done -- worse even than killing my brother -- that it would be something I'd regret for the rest of my life, and yet, of my own free will, I chose to do it. I was scared, nervous, trapped. I'd just killed a man with a machete. There was blood on my pants and boots, and every time I took a breath it smelled of Jacob.