Graves' Retreat

by Ed Gorman

  She said, “I’m scared.”

  “What?” He was genuinely surprised by her remark. They had been sitting here so peacefully-he had even managed to quit thinking about T.Z. for a time-and now she was talking about being scared.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “You. Me. Us.”

  “May, I-”

  “I’m just going to ask you one thing.”

  “What?”

  “This time don’t make me any promises.”

  “But, May, I-”

  “That’s all I want you to promise me. That you won’t promise me anything.”

  He was silent for a time, feeling how her thin body was tense against his. He sighed. “All right, May. I promise not to make any promises.”

  She stared straight ahead. “Thank you. We’ll just let whatever happens, happen.”

  “Is it all right if I tell you how nice it is to be with you again?” She turned and stared at him and then she smiled. “Yes, I guess that's all right.”

  And then a voice said, “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  Les followed May’s gaze to the right of the elm against which they sat.

  Neely stood there. He was dean-shaved and wore new clothes. Even so, you could smell the beer on his breath and see the crackling anger in his eyes.

  Neely doffed his hat. “I’m a friend of Les’s,” he said to May. May looked at Les. Obviously she sensed his tension.

  Neely said, “We need to talk, Les.”

  Finally, Les found his voice. “Maybe you’d better go, May.”

  “Are you sure?”

  His throat felt constricted. “Yes,” he said in barely a whisper.

  He helped her up. They paused a moment, their eyes meeting. He gave her arm a tiny squeeze. “Why don’t you come over to practice after work?”

  “All right,” she said.

  She watched Neely for a long moment, as if he were of a species she had never seen before, and then she went on her quiet way. “Pretty,” Neely said. “Very pretty.”

  Les said nothing.

  Neely pointed at Les's mouth. “Heard about the fight. That’s going to be some game tomorrow. Too bad I won’t be around to see it.” Les said, “I didn't get the combination.”

  Neely had a way of narrowing his eyes. You felt them like sharp little knives, cutting you.

  “I take it,” Neely said, “a man named Black Jake Early has contacted you.”

  Les stiffened, betraying the truth.

  “I also take it,” Neely went on, "that you know who he works for.”

  Les’s mouth stiffened.

  “I’ve heard that Judge Parker has a quota system he uses.” Neely’s voice was prickly with irony. “He can’t sleep unless he hangs at least one man a month.”

  “I can’t get it, Neely,” Les said.

  Some shopgirls went by and waved to Les. He waved back. They went on across the railroad tracks, seeming to float in their frilly summer dresses.

  “He’s going to get him, Les. Black Jake Early, I mean. He never misses.”

  Les put his head down, sighed.

  “He’s your brother.”

  Les, in a voice hoarse with grief, said, “I can’t help him any more.” Neely let the silence grow between them. Then he said, “You’re afraid of losing your life here, aren’t you?”

  Les looked up suddenly. “Yes-yes, I am, Neely, and I’m damn well not ashamed of it.”

  “Nobody would have to know.”

  “Of course they would know. I work in the bank.”

  “I’ve got that figured out.”

  Les shook his head. “I can’t help you, Neely.”

  “It isn’t me you’re not helping, Les. It’s your brother.”

  “You sonofabitch.”

  Neely laughed. “You never did like me, did you, Les, even when we were little kids?”

  “All you did was manipulate people, Neely, pretend you wanted to help them. But the only person you’ve ever helped is yourself.” For the first time today, Neely lost his considerable temper. “Do you think it’s been goddamn easy carrying your brother around all these years-he’s drunk half the time and the other half he’s running around with somebody else’s wife and nearly getting himself killed. I’m the one who has to get him out of his scrapes. Not you. I’m the one who’s taken care of him all these years.”

  Halfway through Neely’s harsh words, Les began watching the other man carefully. He had never realized until this moment Neely’s feelings for T.Z. Neely spoke with hard contempt. Neely hated T.Z. Then Les felt a strange guilt.

  Maybe Neely had earned the right to hate T.Z. Could Les have put up with his brother all these years? Could Les have endured his drunkenness and his nightmares and his dangerous womanizing?

  T.Z., Les realized, was probably alive today only because hard, sober Neely had taken care of him.

  Les sighed.

  Neely, obviously sensing some shift in the other man, said, “Mexico will be good for T.Z. There’s a clinic down there. This priest who’s supposed to be good at sobering people up. That’s where I’m going to take him.”

  “They’ll find out,” Les said.

  “I’ll make sure they never connect you with it, Les, I promise.” Les’s eyes raised to fix on downtown Cedar Rapids. In the past two years this place had become his home. He liked standing on the comer of Third Street, right in front of the Guaranty Bank Building, and watching people stroll from the sunlight into the shade beneath the bright-striped awnings on the shops, then stroll out into the light again. There was the clang of the trolley and the sweet smell of heat on the oiled, sandy roadway.

  Neely said, “Les, they’ll hang him otherwise. They really will.” And all Les could do was shift his gaze to Neely and nod sadly in agreement.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Just as Susan’s mother finished telling her daughter what had happened at the bank this morning, there was a bold knock at the front door.

  Susan and her mother were in the kitchen with its smells of potato salad and chicken being prepared for dinner on the veranda tonight. Mid-aftemoon sunlight streamed through the mullioned windows. Jays and robins and wrens had collected on one of the bird feeders in the vast back yard. Their song imposed itself on the sudden silence in the kitchen as the two women waited to find out who was at the door.

  Moira, the maid, appeared moments after the knock. “It’s Mr. Fuller, miss.”

  Susan and her mother glanced at each other. “Is Father still upstairs?”

  Her mother, who had been crying for most of the past two hours, nodded and promptly began tearing up again. “He’s locked himself in his den. He won’t come out.”

  “Then I’d best see Byron outdoors, in case Father should come down.”

  “I don’t want him in my house, anyway.”

  Susan let Moira leave then. Despite her mother’s teariness, Susan let her anger show. “You’re not being fair to Byron, Mother. Father has treated him terribly all his life-just the way he’s treated us.”

  “You should not talk about your own father that way.”

  “When I’ve seen Byron, I plan to go up and see Father.”

  Mrs. Edmonds looked past the lacy handkerchief she had pressed to her fleshy cheeks. “He’s too hurt to let you in. In thirty-five years, I’ve never seen your father this way. So-despondent.”

  “He needed to be told.”

  Mrs. Edmonds flared. “Did he need to be told that harshly?” Her thin voice had risen to a scream.

  Susan stood up from her chair. “I’m going to see Byron now, Mother. I’ll be back soon.”

  She had turned to leave the kitchen, then paused and went over to her mother. She took the smaller woman in her arms and held her, rocking her gently, as if Susan were the mother.

  Then she went to see Byron.

  ***

  In the late afternoon, Neely still not back yet, T.Z. left the cabin, taking his pint bottle of rye with him, and went up
in the bluffs that stretched to the north.

  After Neely had left this morning, T.Z. had slept off the remains of last night’s drunk.

  He’d awakened pretty sober, given all he’d had to drink, and faced the one thing he hadn’t wanted to face.

  What he was doing to his younger brother’s life.

  He hoped to lose in the beauty of nature the dread and guilt that had been with him on waking.

  He spent an hour in the bluffs, drinking all the time. At one point he came to the edge of a steep red-day cliff and looked down on a railroad trestle that stretched over a sparkling expanse of clear blue river. A train wound its way westward, smoke beautiful against the sky. T.Z. wanted to be on that train, headed out to California, a state he’d always meant to see but somehow had never gotten to.

  Would Les go to prison?

  That thought cut through his entire time in the bluffs, ensured that he would have no peace.

  He roamed a mile of sawtimber and wildflowers as various as bloodroot and wild ginger and ginseng; he saw pheasant and fox and squirrel.

  And still the thought was with him: Would the bank officials tie Les to the robbery and-would Les go to prison?

  He had more to drink and returned to the cabin.

  Neely, in new clothes, sat outside the cabin door smoking a cigarette. A bluish haze partially concealed his angry gaze.

  "Already, huh?” Neely said, nodding to the now empty pint bottle.

  T.Z. resented his tone. He smashed the bottle against a rock. “Maybe I goddamn needed it.”

  Neely said, “Seems you’re always needing it.”

  Then T.Z. surprised them both by saying, “I don’t want to go through with it, Neely.”

  For the first time he could ever recall, T.Z. saw something like shock register on Neely’s face.

  “You don’t want to go through with the robbery, you mean?”

  “That’s just what I mean. Just goddamn exactly what I mean.” T.Z. had these moods, a drunkard’s bravery and honor. It was as if through the long and endless days of his drinking he would see what he had become, then try suddenly to deny his worst suspicions by doing something right and honorable.

  “We’ve used the kid long enough. He shouldn't have to pay for what we did.”

  “Mexico’s a mean place without money, T.Z. A damn mean place.” Neely ground out his cigarette in the grass. “Anyway, I just got finished talking to Les and he wants to help us.”

  “Wants,” T.Z. snapped. “He no more ‘wants’ to help us than anything. What you mean is, he’s forced to help us because you showed him that wanted poster and because he’s afraid I’ll hang.”

  Neely smiled coldly. “You know who he saw last night?”

  “Who?”

  Neely was obviously enjoying this. He knew how T.Z. would react to the name. “Black Jake Early.”

  T.Z. felt some of his resolve lessen almost immediately. His mouth got dry. Without a word, he plunged back into the cabin for another pint bottle. He came back out a few minutes later, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He needed a shave and a bath. Now the bird song that had lulled him for a time this afternoon only irritated him. “I want a good hotel room,” he said. “I want a woman.” He was getting drunk, fast.

  Neely just watched him.

  T.Z. wandered around in little circles, taking small drinks from the bottle.

  He was thinking of his father now-of how his father had closed his eyes there at the last-and how that had been, at least, peaceful. But hanging would not be peaceful.

  No.

  There would be the sneer of the mob and the cut of the rope and the drop of the trapdoor.

  The panic was on him, then, and Neely seemed to be smiling contentedly now and T.Z. knew just what Neely was thinking-that T.Z. was always easiest to handle when the panic was on him.

  “He’s my own brother, and I’m ruining his life,” T.Z. said.

  Neely just kept looking at him.

  And smiling all the more as T.Z.’s resolve got drunk out and paced out and scared out of him.

  “He’s my own brother,” T.Z. said.

  But he spoke in a whisper and between drinks now.

  “My own brother,” T.Z. said.

  ***

  The afternoon was a fever of impatient customers wanting their money quickly.

  At one point George Buss leaned from his station over to Les and said, “You ever notice how some folks get downright unpleasant before a holiday?”

  Les smiled. “Yes, I have noticed that, George.”

  But George was one of the few people Les favored with his whole attention this afternoon.

  Most of the time he spent down the hallway where Byron Fuller’s office stood.

  Many times, when Clinton Edmonds left early for the day, Les had noticed Byron Fuller take from somewhere in his desk a piece of paper, which he always then carried over to the safe at closing time.

  Byron Fuller, following his odd behavior this morning, had yet to return to the bank.

  Which meant that Les might be safe in going into his office and-

  “I still have five dollars coming,” the blond man in the celluloid collar said. He spoke in the tone you take with a disobedient animal.

  Les, whose mind had been wandering back to Byron Fuller’s office, said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” He could not quite bring himself, given the man’s arrogance, to say, “Sir.”

  “You may be a wonderful pitcher,” the man said, “but you’re a hell of a bad bank clerk.”

  He said it loudly enough so that everybody around them would be sure to hear.

  The frail woman with the gray hair and tiny eyeglasses standing in line at George Buss’ window said, “And you’re a bad sport, whoever you are.” She, too, spoke loudly enough for everybody to hear.

  “Don’t you think he’s got more on his mind than your stupid money?”

  Several people laughed out loud.

  The blond man, flushing, stalked out of the bank.

  “You don’t pay any attention to him,” the frail woman said.

  Les laughed. “Thanks for defending me.”

  She smiled. “Anytime, young man. Anytime.”

  This was followed by a round of everybody’s praise for his pitching in general and wishing him good luck tomorrow in particular.

  ***

  Around three, his lower lip still puffy and his front tooth still loose, Les had to go to the bathroom.

  On the way he passed Byron Fuller’s office. His heart ached with fear.

  He was about to duck in there when he heard from behind him George Buss say, “I’m out of banking slips. You need some?”

  Les just shook his head.

  He saw that George looked at him carefully. “You all right, Les?”

  “Fine.”

  “You look a little-chalky.”

  “All the excitement at the depot this afternoon, I guess.”

  “Maybe you’d better sit down awhile.”

  “Thanks, George, but I’ll be fine.”

  After finishing up, he stood in the bathroom a few minutes, getting himself ready.

  He would have to pretend to be walking past Byron Fuller’s office, then duck in there very quickly and close the door so that nobody could see him.

  Then he’d have to sneak back out without anybody seeing him. He thought of Neely’s reassurance that nobody would know he was involved. Neely said that he’d be sure to make great scraping marks on the face of the safe so that it would appear the robbers had had great difficulty in getting the safe open. “Nobody will suspect I had the combination,” Neely had said.

  But Neely didn’t give a damn if Les went to prison.

  Didn’t give a damn at all.

  He put a thumb to his loose tooth, wondering if it was actually going to drop out, and then he left the bathroom and started back down the hall.

  He passed the accounting department, nodding to the women who worked there. They each wished him luck on the game
.

  Then he was in front of Byron Fuller’s office.

  Looking left, right, in back of him, in front of him.

  He sweated, shook, sensed that with this act the life he’d built so carefully for himself here was about to come to an end.

  But he couldn’t let T.Z. die. He couldn’t.

  He bolted into the office, easing the door almost fully closed so that nobody could see him.

  Behind his desk, Byron Fuller had a large landscape of Iowa farmland in autumn. The artist had touched silver for hoarfrost over some of the fiery-colored leaves and grasses. It was so beautiful and vivid you almost expected your breath to start pluming out and to feel the exhilarating shock of cold air in your lungs.

  The rest of the office was routine, a bookcase plump with leather-bound tomes on banking and financial law; a desk that aspired to presidential dimensions (such as the vast one claimed by Clinton Edmonds) but did not quite succeed; and an oil portrait of Susan Edmonds so fetching Les was momentarily captivated by it.

  But as he looked, a peculiar feeling came over him. Though he liked Susan and felt a warmth for her still, he realized in staring at the portrait that he was glad to be seeing May Tolan again. He was more comfortable with May than he’d been with Susan and not until this moment had he realized that.

  Then he began his frantic search through the drawers.

  At one point, he could not stop himself from smiling.

  In the course of searching Byron Fuller’s desk, he had found, among many other items, several sticks of licorice, a pencil drawing that depicted Clinton Edmonds as a Hydra-headed monster, and at least three different Beadle novels portraying derring-do on the frontier.

  So this was how the modem executive passed his time, Les thought. But he felt no malice; indeed the frivolous nature of these things only made him like Byron more. They were similar people.

  He went through all the drawers on the left, then all the drawers on the right.

  Nothing.

  Then he went through the center drawer.

  Still nothing.

  Then he heard the two women from the accounting department stop to talk right outside the door.