Soon the little man, who had short brown hair and was about forty and handsome in an ordinary sort of way, was standing on the stage, near the microphone.
When the applause finally began to dwindle, one of the five men who’d already been on the stage—a pudgy, jolly-looking bald man with glasses—spoke into the mike. “It is with great pride and pleasure that the people of Wynning welcome to this, our 100th Founder’s Day Celebration, our esteemed and honorable...”
(And this was shouted into the microphone)
“... Governor of the State of Iowa!”
I thought I could hear Elam moaning, but it was hard to tell as the applause again began to swell.
As the ovation continued, Hopp leaned across me to ask Elam, “What now, smartass?”
“We just gotta stick it out,” Elam said, leaning across me to answer Hopp. “We’ll just stay here and listen to what this jerk has to say. He won’t stay all day.”
“I hope we don’t,” I said.
“We’re okay as long as that goofy buddy of yours stays put,” Elam told me. “He won’t panic, will he? He’ll just wait out there till we can join him, right? I mean, if he drives in here, man, the way they got roads blocked off and cars parked in the streets, we could get stuck here till the cows come home.”
I didn’t answer.
Because I had already spotted a tall, awkward-looking apparition walking along the perimeter of the park, looking confused, searching for a familiar face in the sea of standing, clapping bodies. And he was grinning like a rabbit, coming toward us now.
“Hey you guys,” he said, joining in with the continuing applause, “what’s goin’ on? Is that really the Governor? I bet my mom’d get a kick out of this.”
Chapter 24
One good thing about being stuck there in the first row with all those people behind us and the Governor up on stage in front of us was that otherwise Wheaty probably would be dead right now. Because there was a moment when Elam and/or Hopp would have killed him, I think, if there hadn’t been so many witnesses. And maybe I would have, too. If his mom wanted some of the action, she’d have to stand in line.
Wheat was oblivious to the danger, of course. He still thought the robbery was only a trial run, and had just gotten bored out there waiting for us. Not scared, you heard me right the first time: bored. According to Elam’s plan of action, we should have reported back to that farmhouse within twenty-five minutes of leaving it. When an hour had passed, Wheat drove in to find out what was happening.
“What about the car?” Elam whispered, over the applause for the Governor, which was just beginning to dwindle.
“It’s parked back here,” Wheat said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder, as he squeezed in between Hopp and me.
Back beyond the crowd we could see cars parked bumper to bumper in the street behind the park.
That was the moment when Elam and/or Hopp (and maybe me) almost killed Wheat.
But the only thing that died at that moment was the applause, and suddenly everybody was sitting down and we were all listening to the Governor.
Sort of.
I mean, I can’t tell you what the Governor of the state of Iowa said that morning. It was a short speech, probably a lot like all the other pleasant, meaningless speeches you hear governors make in public, whether it’s at a Fourth of July picnic or the opening of a new supermarket.
There were some reporters taking pictures. Three of them. They wore shiny plastic badges that said where they were from, and had camera equipment in leather packing, slung over their shoulders like purses. One of them was from the Des Moines Register, another from the Daily Iowan of Iowa City, and one from the Port City Journal. All of them were young and had longish hair and were casually dressed; tomorrow’s Pulitzer Prize winners, starting at the bottom. At one time or another during the Governor’s speech, each of the three reporters was crouched directly in front of us. When they took a picture, there was a whirring sound from the camera vaguely reminiscent of somebody cocking a gun.
The presence of the reporters, and the sound their cameras made, made me uneasy. I began to squirm. Elam gave me a sharp look to let me know my uneasiness was showing, and to cut it out. Both Elam and Hopp did terrific jobs of acting inconspicuous and unconcerned. Elam, especially. Hopp just sort of sat there like a stone, the way he did when he was playing cards; but Elam looked like he really felt at home, and even managed to chuckle when something was supposed to be funny.
Wheaty also seemed to be enjoying himself. That same capacity that made him able to enjoy his stay in jail was allowing him to find fascination in these cornball Founder’s Day proceedings.
And those proceedings did have a certain fascination to them I must admit.
For example, when the Governor’s speech was over, the Mayor presented him with the key to the city. It was a small key, like the trunk key to a Toyota. Considering the size of Wynning, that only seemed fitting.
Then after the Governor sat down, the Mayor gave a stirring recounting of the history of Wynning. It seems one hundred years ago a man named Wynning and his family settled here. A town grew up. Every year a Founder’s Day Celebration had been held. This was the 100th such celebration. Thank you.
Wild applause followed the Mayor’s oration. It was like the Gettysburg Address had been spoken for the first time. The reason for the enthusiasm was clearly the Governor. Never before had a Governor attended the yearly celebration. A new page was being written into the history of Wynning. I could hardly wait for next year’s speech.
The Mayor stayed on his feet for the duration of the program. There were two reasons for this. One reason was that the Mayor was the emcee. The other was that now that the Governor had sat down, there weren’t any chairs left.
Wheaty liked the next part a lot. The Wynning Founder’s Day Queen and her court were presented. Evidently the crowning of the Queen at the beauty pageant of some sort had been held the night before. It was hard to believe a town so small could have enough good-looking young girls to populate a beauty pageant. It was harder still to believe when the girls appeared.
There were five of them, five apparent girls in bright summery dresses that seemed to have been ordered from a ten-year-old Ward’s catalog. The girls climbed awkwardly onto the stage (there were not steps up to the bandshell from the ground) and displayed thighs of varying quality.
Three of the girls were, in fact, spectacularly homely. The sun bounced off braces on most of the female teeth on that stage. Two of the girls were sisters, it seemed safe to assume, as they shared the same stark red hair and freckles, although the freckles may have been acne, I never got close enough to check; each sister did, however, have her own individual, distinctive homeliness. The other homely girl who was not a redhead or a sister of the redheaded girls either, except perhaps in spirit, had apparently entered the beauty contest in hopes first prize was a nose job. The other two girls were not homely. One was skinny and plain, but a raving beauty in comparison to the sister act and the girl with the nose. The other girl was a lovely, shapely brunette, with a heart-shaped face, large, luminous brown eyes and a dainty nose; her cheeks were flushed with excitement (for, after all, she was the one who’d been crowned Queen of Wynning Founder’s Day) and her teeth were straight and white and braceless. She had three inescapable physical characteristics, which can best be described by the following approximate figures: 38 D, and six foot two.
I heard somebody breathing hard.
It was Wheat.
His eyes were popping and his mouth was open.
He was in love.
“Kitch,” he said. “I’m in love.”
“One of the redheads, right?” I whispered.
“No! The big one! The tall girl with the long hair and the long legs and the big boobies!”
Chapter 25
Elam said, “Shut up you two.”
After the applause trailed off, the girls began introducing themselves, giving brief personal histories that m
ust not have come as great surprise to the assembled residents of their Toyota trunk of a hometown.
Each girl was a recent high school graduate planning to attend one of the nearby community colleges or the University of Iowa. The two redheads were planning to major in home economics. The girl with the nose was going into pre-med. The skinny, plain girl was an English Lit major and wanted to be a poet. The Queen was a phys ed major.
The Mayor played Bert Parks and asked the Queen, who was dressed virginal white with a rhinestone tiara in her long brown hair, how she felt about her honor.
She said “I am thrilled from head to toe,” which in her case was quite a distance.
Then there was more applause and the Queen and her court climbed back down off the stage, showing thigh again, especially the Queen, who had quite a lot of it to show.
Wheat followed the Queen as she disappeared into the crowd. Followed her with his eyes, that is. Hopp was holding onto Wheat by the elbow, not about to let him get out of sight. Wheat was used to Hopp being somewhat irritable and thought nothing of it. I wondered if there was some way of keeping the truth away from Wheat. Telling him about the bank robbery (which was, technically, still in progress) was apt to set him off. A few minutes ago, before Wheat had showed up, Elam had asked if I thought Wheat capable of panic. I hadn’t had the chance to answer him, but soon Elam should find out first-hand just how foolish that question had been.
Chapter 26
Only the more I thought about it, the more it seemed a bad idea to tell Wheaty about the robbery. And as the program on the bandshell stage drew to a close, I whispered that opinion to Elam. “Listen, he’ll freak. He really will. Take my word for it. Let’s leave well enough alone.”
Elam whispered back, “What do you suggest we tell him, them?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing except we’re not happy he parked his car where he did, making us stuck here in the middle of the trial run.”
Elam nodded.
“And,” I continued, “he’ll understand that naturally we don’t want to attract much attention, since we’re in town getting ready for the real thing.”
Elam nodded some more. “You’re a smart kid,” he said, with his sinister smile. “Ha! Maybe I oughta cut you in on the take.”
I swallowed hard. “I’ll pass on that, thanks.”
“Hey you guys,” Wheat said. “Quiet. This is interesting.”
The Mayor was telling about the forthcoming events of the day. There was to be entertainment, much of it there on the bandshell stage: an amateur-hour type contest; a concert by a female glee club from West Liberty; and a reprise of the talent numbers the girls in the Wynning Founder’s Day Queen contest had performed the night before. The big tent was for a marathon bingo game, “only a 25-cent donation per card, and lots of big prizes.” The Grange Hall, which was on the side street Wheat’s car was parked in, was the scene of an antique show, a needlepoint and ceramics display, and a fine arts competition. Hot meals could be had, for a pittance, at the VFW Hall; and the local tavern had been transformed into a beer garden, for today only, with mugs of beer for a nickel and pitchers for fifty cents. In between the various entertainment presentations on the bandshell stage, there was also to be dancing in the streets. Or more specifically, dancing in the street, you guessed it, the street the stolen Mustang was parked along. There was to be square dancing, and then a country western band would play, after which there’d be a teen dance. It was beginning to look like a long day.
At this point the Mayor concluded his remarks, thanked the Governor for coming and everybody stood and clapped again, and the program was over. People rushed forward to meet the Governor, shake his hand, get his autograph, and we quietly rose from our front-row seats and gathered under a tree at the rear of the park, away from any Wynning citizens.
Elam took immediate command. He had apparently whispered to Hopp the game plan about leaving Wheat in the dark, and merely said, calmly, “Okay. So we’re stuck here for the day, looks like. Unless you can move that car of yours, Wheat, without making a thousand other people move their cars too. No? Okay. Then we got to blend in. Be part of Flounder’s Day, hey hey. Enjoy ourselves.”
“How?” I asked.
Wheaty said, “Let’s all go drink nickel beer.”
Elam said, “No. Getting crocked ain’t exactly a good way of stayin’ on top of things. No, much as I’d like it, the beer garden is out. Besides, we should split up. Bein’ strangers in town on a day like this is bad to begin with. Bein’ a group of strangers stickin’ to each other like fly paper’s worse yet. So we each go a separate way. Now. Who wants to do what?”
Hopp said, “I’ll play bingo.”
“Hopp’s got bingo,” Elam said. He turned to Wheat. “What about you?”
“I’ll drink nickel beer,” Wheat said.
Elam said, with incredible patience, “You’ll go to the antiques show and that other junk at the, what is it?”
“Grange Hall,” I said.
“Grange Hall,” Elam said. “Understand?” And he prodded Wheat’s chest, gently, with a stiff finger.
Wheat said he understood. Then he said, “My mom collects antiques.”
Everybody looked at him for a moment, trying to figure out what that had to do with anything, and when nobody could, Elam finally went on, turning to me and saying, “You. You plop your butt on one of them benches over there and just watch the entertainment. And watch everything else, too. Keep an eye on what’s goin’ on, and if the situation changes at all, come tell us, each of us. For example, if those cops move their car for some reason, givin’ us a berth to get out. Or if, uh, the situation should change in any other way, if you know what I mean, kid.”
I knew what he meant. He meant watch the bank.
“Now,” Elam said, thoughtfully, “all I got to do is figure out something for myself.”
“Excuse me,” the Mayor said.
He was on the stage. Talking in the mike.
“Excuse me” he said again, “but we seem to be missing someone. Has anyone seen Jack Wynning?”
There was no particular response from the audience. (And in case you’re wondering, a lot of people in Wynning were named Wynning. I didn’t find that out till later, but I don’t see any reason not to tell you now.)
The Mayor repeated his question and then added, jokingly, “I hope our local banker hasn’t run off with all our money.” Some of the crowd laughed.
Elam, Hopp and I were not among the amused.
“Hey,” Elam said. “He’s talking about that damn banker.”
Wheaty didn’t catch the full significance of that, of course, not realizing that the banker in question was bound and gagged in the bank across the street.
Someone from down in the audience was handing a note up to the Mayor.
“Oh,” he said, “Jack’s daughter says her father was called out of town on business, at the last minute.”
Elam grinned.
So did Hopp.
So did I.
Wheat said, “What are you guys grinning about?”
“I’m afraid,” the Mayor was saying, “that Jack’s absence presents a problem. We’re now one cook short over at the VFW Hall. Anyone who’d like to volunteer, please come forward. Is there a short order cook in the house?”
“See ya later,” Elam said, and went forward.
Chapter 27
After Hopp headed off for the bingo tent, I took Wheat by the arm and said, “Don’t screw around.”
“What do you mean, Kitch?”
“This is a serious thing. These guys have us involved in a serious thing.”
“Who says they don’t?”
“Wheat, did you like jail?”
“It wasn’t a bad place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
“Well keep that in mind, because if you take this too lightly, we just might be living there for a while.”
“I understand tha
t, Kitch.”
“Good. Now run along and be inconspicuous.”
“No problem,” he said, and wandered off.
I myself went and found a bench (not in the front row, this time!) and sat, entertaining not just a few doubts about Wheat’s ability to be inconspicuous.
No entertainment was as yet under way on the bandshell stage. The Governor was still standing down in front of the bandshell, chatting with his constituents, granting autographs, while Highway Patrolmen lurked in the backgorund. This went on for another fifteen minutes or so, and finally the Governor departed, waving as he walked back to his black Cadillac. Soon the Cadillac and the two accompanying Highway Patrol vehicles had managed U-turns in the relatively narrow Wynning main street and were headed out of town.
This left the street temporarily clear, though the Mustang was still banked (you should pardon the expression) by the remaining Highway Patrol car and the Tacomobile. Still, the departure of the other Patrol cars was good news indeed. I considered asking the Chinese lady in the Tacomobile if she could back up just a hair, so we could get our car out. Those other two Highway Patrolmen were apparently here for the day, but presently they seemed to be swallowed up in the crowd, and the crowd itself’s attention was hardly drawn toward the bank, so perhaps the money could be moved from the bank to the car without anyone noticing. It was still risky, to say the least, but I began to wonder if we’d been hasty in settling down for the Founder’s Day duration. Maybe we would be able to get out of Wynning, yet. In one piece, even.
I was just getting up off the bench, to go tell everybody about the Governor and the Highway Patrol cars leaving, and about my idea for us leaving too, when the trucks rolled in.
Shoot The Moon (and more) Page 9