Crumbtown

by Joe Connelly

  “Who threw the money in the air? That’s a great scene.”

  “Wait a second,” Tom leaned over the table, lifting one shot with his teeth, tossing it back. He wiped his mouth with his hat, “Let me remember.”

  8

  It was ten minutes to closing, but Rita was already done. She sat among the bottles next to the register, her hands holding another drink in front of her. Five men sitting at the bar, all raising their empty glasses, crying, Rita, Rita. She lifted hers and threw back her hair, smiling and swinging her shoeless legs in the air. “That’s my name.”

  “Why did Don do it?” Tom kept asking Rob. He was crying, with one elbow on the table, a cigarette over his head. “We’d hit that bank before. You never rob the same bank twice. I tried to save him. You saw me, Tim.”

  “I was too busy holding Happy in my arms, he died in my arms, man.”

  “Happy was a prick,” said Tom.

  “That’s true,” said Tim.

  Rob turned off the tape player and placed the cassette in his briefcase with the others, more than six hours of recordings he’d have to sift through, a lot of which he couldn’t use, the digressions about unfaithful women and loving children, the twins’ loving unfaithful father. And a lot of it didn’t ring true, Tom punching out the mob boss Maury Threetoes, Tim stealing the boss’s car, running over his wife Loretta with it in Atlantic City. He’d work those threads in later, once he sold the pilot, where all the best scenes had to go: the first robberies, the stories of Don Reedy, stories so real they asked to write themselves. Rob thought of all the months he’d wasted in his little room, scratching for every word. You had to go out and find your story, run someone over, get beat up, get drunk, and take a lot of notes. This pile of tapes in his case was already the best thing he’d ever written. Rob was sure of it.

  He needed to get some sleep, find a hotel, start putting the pieces together. For the first time in hours he looked up and around the bar, empty except for two men stranded on their stools, the Chinese guy snoring in the corner, and Rita by the register, singing with Al Green on the jukebox. To think that only this morning she was lying in the street, dressed in broken glass, this woman who’d saved his life. Now maybe Rob could save hers. He turned to Tim and Tom. “Don must have had a woman, right?’

  Tom giggled and pulled Tim’s elbow from under Tim’s head. “Oh, you bet, lots of ’em. All kinds. You name it.”

  “I mean one especially, one who was special.”

  Tim spoke out of his ear. “That was my problem. Loretta the Terror.”

  “Don loved everybody,” said Tom, “women and men. Not like a queer, though. But one woman.” He looked over to Tim. Tim shook his head. “Should there be?”

  Rob found his feet and stood on them, his hands still sitting on the table. “There has to be. And there will.” He took one step and fell to the floor, Tim and Tom helping him up, the three of them falling to the rail. “Rita,” he said, “I want to buy you a drink.”

  “We are closed,” she said, “and I have enough, and so are you.”

  Rob lifted one eye. “And I’d like to make you famous, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  The front door opened, everyone except Rob turning to see, a man who had to stoop to come in, walking behind the line of men. “How you doing,” Rob said, the other men studying their hands.

  “Shh,” said Tom. “That’s Arnold, the owner’s son.”

  Arnold went behind the bar, tearing the money out of the register, counting it while the others sat silently sniffing their fingers. He held up the bills, yelling something foreign to Rita. He pulled her off the counter, pushing her out of his way.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Rob said as the man passed behind, heading to the door. “Hey you.” The man stopped suddenly, checking his pockets like he was forgetting something. He turned around and walked up to Rob and pointed at the ceiling. When Rob looked up, the man stomped on Rob’s foot, breaking it. When Rob bent down to scream, the man stuck his knee into Rob’s face, breaking that, too.

  “Not wise,” Tom said when the man had left.

  “Very not wise,” said Tim, struggling to separate Rob from his fetal position. “I think Tim Barrow could play me. What do you think?”

  “Same first name,” Tom said. They laid a chair on the floor next to Rob and fit him to it, then slowly raised him up. They stepped back and watched Rob pitch himself to the floor. “We better call an ambulance,” Tom said.

  “It’s always a good idea,” said Tim.

  Three

  SCENE 9

  It was the longest sentence Don had ever known, so long it kept him up late, imprisoned his sleep, woke him at four every morning, still going strong at dawn, Don beginning to think it couldn’t possibly go on, yet the closer he got to where the end should be, the more the end seemed to grow, and in the end, it was this that finally broke him, almost forty years old, dying in his cell, his life this everending sentence that was, after all, just two words.

  Fifteen years. He’d finished ten, but the two humbling parole hearings, and the waiting before each, had turned him into a model prisoner, begging to rehabilitate. His next parole board meeting was three months away, and Don was attending every counseling session and therapy group they gave.

  Career planners met each Monday, and dealt with problems the prisoners typically faced in getting and holding a minimum wage job. They asked the men to play out common workplace scenes, each one taking a different role: how to explain a murder conviction in a job interview; how to deal with coworkers who objected to being called “bitch”; how to resolve disputes without the use of choke holds.

  On Tuesdays the prisoners’ rights committee met with the warden. Don had just been reelected to represent his block, a reward for his role in getting the premium prison dramas included in their cable package. Wednesdays everyone made either coffee mugs or T-shirts, all with the Creosote Correctional logo on the front, a big seller in the Far East and the Midwest. Thursdays the men gathered in small groups to make up stories about their upbringing. Friday was prisoner relations day, in which the inmates were asked to imagine themselves as members of different minority groups.

  For the past two weeks Don had been running the Friday sessions for his block, after the regular therapist was hospitalized by Black Nationalists pretending to be Peruvian Marxists. In their last meeting, that afternoon, Don tried to focus the group on the one thing nearly everyone there shared—that each man had his own version of Crumbtown he called home, whether it was a white Crumbtown or a black one. Don had even heard of a Portuguese Crumbtown in Waterville. That’s what he wanted to get across to them, that it wasn’t a race thing; it wasn’t a religion thing; it was a crumb thing.

  He thought the last session had gone pretty well, but as soon as the lights went down the screaming started, everyone shouting over one another, at one another, and what they said was always the same, always about blame.

  Marion was in the cell to the right, still cursing at the wife he’d killed for kissing Marion’s brother the way she did. And Mohammed in the cell next to that, who never stopped talking, all night long how much he hated the Muslims, Allah’s secret societies in Ohio. And then there was Don’s cell mate, Poppy, shouting from the bunk below, every different way he was going to kill his own father, who was also in prison, the very first day they were both out together.

  Don tried not to dwell on what had gotten him into this position; he tried to think of what he’d do when he got out. During the day he looked through travel books of places he wanted to see, the great deserts, the Gobi, Sahara, and Texas. But in the evening, listening to the men and thinking about the long night waiting awake for him, he would wonder if there was anyplace he could go that wasn’t where he’d always been.

  Don once read that twenty-five percent of all men born in Crumbtown ended up doing time. He’d been to prison four times. Four times twenty-five equaled one hundred percent. He never had a chance. All he had
to do was follow the crumbs, from his cell back to the house he was born in, that was now twenty feet under the river. Was it just coincidence that after a heavy rain Crumbtown smelled just like a correctional facility?

  The minutes before lockdown were the worst, the yelling so loud Don punched his ears to make it stop. Then the guards started blowing the horn, adding to the madness. Men screaming like they were on fire, the guards hosing them down with gasoline. Don pulled his pillow over his face, talking into it so he wouldn’t hear what came next, the gunshots from below, one two three; every night for the last ten years. He rolled over in his bunk, knowing what he would see: his friend Happy Jones lying on the floor that wasn’t prison concrete anymore, but green marble, the lobby of a bank, the Dodgeport Savings and Loan. And there was nothing for Don to do but go through it again, the whole robbery right to the end. He was standing in the middle of the bank, waiting for Happy to get up, for the blood to stop coming out of Happy’s heart. The security guard turning, running for the door, stopping there to take three shots more before disappearing down the stairs. And Tim and Tom, the twins, his old friends, running out too, not a word to him. Don could have done it then, his gun pointed at their backs, and all he did was yell “Come back.” What a fool. He bent next to Happy, trying to lift him, then dragging him across the floor, through the sun coming down out of the high windows, the light almost more than he could remember, like it was the light that turned the bank customers against him, tackling him at the door, one of them an old woman, her perfume smelling like the river. Don saw himself fall, his head pressed against the floor, his arm pushed up over his back. He looked out onto the street, at the twins Tim and Tom driving his car. The security guard sitting in the backseat, waving at Don as they drove away.

  Don pulled himself out of his bunk and shoved his arms through the bars, squeezing his head between. “You set me up,” he said, the words echoing down the line, picked up by a man at the end. “You set me up,” the man said, the others carrying it back, louder each time, until it was Don’s turn again.

  One of the guards paused for a second in front of his cell, and put his stick into Don’s side, and walked on without waiting to see him fall. The guard had only worked there for six months, and it had taken more than a few times to learn how little pressure he needed with the stick, in the right spot, no more than tossing a ball underhand to his son.

  Don’s cell mate Poppy got up out of the bottom bunk. He lifted Don from the floor and turned and dropped him in the bed, shoving him against the wall before rolling in beside. He squeezed Don’s hair and slapped him twice in the head. “It’s okay,” Poppy said, “you’re gonna be okay.”

  10

  Brian Halo was around his desk in two steps, a look of athletic concern running across his face, “Oh Rob, so this is why you’ve been out for two months.” He took Rob’s cane, helping him to the seat. “Nobody can tell me anything here. What happened?”

  “Research,” Rob said. “It’s much better since the pins came out.”

  “You see where it gets you, like I always say. Think forward. Ahead. Ahead. Ahead. Enough.” Halo walked back to his chair, giving his suit a second to catch up. He didn’t wear the fabric so much as allow it to follow him around. “Let’s talk about this script you sent in,” lifting the pages from his desk. “You’ve written a crime show without cops.”

  Rob leaned into his cane. “Crumbtown is post law enforcement, post Bill of Rights. The people have no protection. That’s where Don and his gang come in.”

  “I don’t like that name.”

  “Don?”

  “The name of the show, Crumbtown, it’s so sad. I hear a title like that and I have to go straight to bed.”

  “It’s where they’re from.”

  “Well I’m from Teaneck. Call it Teaneck then. And to be honest with you, that first bank robbery, just great, but then afterward, when they end up in that bar again, you need a chase in there, send them off somewhere.”

  “Wait,” Rob said.

  “And those annoying twins you can’t tell apart. We have to do something with them.”

  “This is a real story.”

  “Of course it’s a real story. It’s Robin Hood. It’s Robin goes to the ‘hood.’ And we are currently taking care of the chase scenes, which takes me to my next problem, the romance, this Rita character. Here it is, scene twenty-four: she’s running away from the bad husband, the Maury guy with the toes, when Don comes along and hits her with his car, great, and let me say having Rita stuck on the hood like that while he’s driving away is so right for this, a chase with romance, but then where’s the romance. She hardly says a word the rest of the show. And what’s with the accent, she’s Polish?”

  “Russian.”

  “Please, Rob, make me like this woman.”

  “Well she’s kind of a hard person to know.”

  “Oh my God.” Brian Halo stood quickly and walked to the wall of glass behind his desk, forty stories over midtown. He hummed to himself briefly, and when he was finished he handed the script to Rob. “Here. I’m not selling this.” Halo laughed. His tie laughed.

  “You don’t like it.”

  “I don’t like . . . because . . . I . . . love.” He opened his arms to his sides, jogging in place behind the desk. “I’m producing it myself.”

  The pain in Rob’s foot returned suddenly and jumped to his jaw, down his left arm. Worse than not liking Crumbtown, Brian Halo liked it too much. His recent forays into producing— three flops in two years—Angelpaw, D.D.S., Minneapolis.

  “I’ve already got the lead to play Don.”

  “Who?”

  “Little Eddy.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “He’s ready to go.”

  “He’s seven years old.”

  “Twenty-two, Rob, and I think it’s time we all grew up.” Brian Halo took a TV remote out of his desk and pointed it at the big-screen television in the corner. He pushed a few buttons and a boy appeared, standing in a sitcom living room. The boy, about ten, holds out his hand to a man in a cop uniform, and shouts, “Gimme gimme gimme,” pausing for the long laugh track.

  “Little Eddy? From The Two of Us?”

  “One of the most popular TV series in history.”

  “The white orphan who’s adopted by the black cop. Six years on one joke.”

  “Gimme gimme gimme,” Brian sang. He pushed up the volume on the TV, Little Eddy breaking into the Gimme Shuffle, which was how every episode of The Two of Us ended, the credits rolling over Eddy dancing, that ridiculous James Brown imitation that Rob conceded he might actually have laughed at the first couple of times he saw it, but that now repulsed him. Brian Halo raised the volume some more and began his own Little Eddy dance, moving around the desk to reach for Rob’s arms, “SAY IT ROB.”

  “No.” Rob grabbed his cane and stood, “He can’t play Don. He can’t play anything. He’s Little Eddy. I won’t let you do this.” Rob limped to the door, reaching for the knob, realizing there was no knob.

  “I want you to direct.”

  Rob returned to his chair, the door opening behind, one of Halo’s actresses wheeling in a bucket of champagne. Brian handed him a glass, raising his own. “To The Real Adventures of Robin Crumb.”

  Rob drank. He kind of liked the title.

  “Just one thing,” Halo said, “Little Eddy wants to meet this Don character, to help him get into the role.”

  “Don’s up in Creosote, a fifteen-year sentence.”

  Brian Halo walked behind the desk. “I’ll call the governor.”

  In the elevator Rob raised his glass to the mirror. “Gimme,” he said, and closed his eyes and saw Rita’s face again, as he had that first day, pressed against the windshield. He watched her fly away, and in her place, a thousand bills floating. “Gimme,” Rob said, a little louder. He’d use three cameras for that shot of Don throwing the money, and he’d use real money too, and real poor people waiting on the bank line, get an actual
riot going on the bank floor. “Gimme,” he said, as loud as he could, feeling his bones give with it, the writer disappearing and the director taking his place. Brian Halo would have his romance, Little Eddy and Rita. It didn’t make a difference. He was directing again, that’s what counted. He finished his glass and twisted his lips, pushing out his tongue, the champagne doing its work, even though it wasn’t real champagne, just seltzer with a little white wine coloring.

  Four

  SCENE 11

  It was one of those days when the earth was so perfectly pitched that the sun came into the bar at a slower speed than usual, and slowed further as it crossed the line of men, to the point where Tim could see its approach the last six feet, to alight upon his bottle, to bless the beer inside. He’d just heard from his lawyer, his lawsuit about to be settled. The man who’d parked his car on Tim’s leg two years ago, while Tim had been napping by the curb, was finally paying up, twelve thousand dollars. If only the man had parked more on Tim’s head, the lawyer said, they might have gotten the two million they asked.

  The injury itself had actually healed within weeks of the accident, but while limping for so long in support of his case, favoring the ankle run over, he’d ruined what was once a fine knee, the pain requiring ever more alcohol to contain. This day, however, this Monday or Tuesday, he’d stood without ache, almost forgot the cane by the chair that had been his bed, and the first quart he usually gave to his knee, was spent on the lawyer’s news instead.

  He wouldn’t see a cent from the settlement. What the lawyer didn’t steal, Loretta got the judge to get under lien, for child support and mortgage payments, designer panty hose and an Eltra convertible. Let her have it all, Tim reasoned, striking the bar with his cane. Let her rent the entire city to the Russians and Chinese. The money didn’t matter anyway. Not anymore. Was it Wednesday?