The Driftless Area (13 page)

“Who was the house sitter?”

“Does it matter?”

“It must.”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Hell, I think I already know.”

Pierre got up and walked to the edge of the platform and stood with his back against the railing.

“You were the house sitter,” he said.

She picked up a book of matches and tore a match out and tossed it on the concrete. “Not as I am now,” she said. “I came here after the fire. You couldn’t have seen me then. I was only the spirit of the life I had lived. Do you see what I mean?”

“You weren’t Stella.”

“No, I became her. She was gone, Pierre. She was only on a machine in the hospital.”

“You know, I dreamed about you and a room with fire in it.”

“You have some of that in you.”

“Whose side is Tim Geer on?”

“Mine. And yours too, in a way. He makes things happen. So they go one way instead of the other.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure he knows. I’m sorry, Pierre.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “You saved my life. I haven’t forgot that. And I won’t let you down if I can figure out how not to.”

EIGHT

T
HE MEN
swung the red cones of flashlights as the cars bumped over the pasture of the farm and the headlights rose and fell.

The play about the bank robbers’ occupation of the farmhouse in 1933 would soon begin. The machine shed stood ready with lights and bleachers and a stage version of the interior of the old house.

Pierre parked and walked across the field. Clouds rolled across the sky, rimmed silver by the hidden moon. The shed was a large corrugated steel building with flat roof and sloping sides. The sliding doors stood open, revealing the lights and people inside.

He felt odd echoes of the excitement of going to parties as a teenager. He had always expected to find something brilliant and wonderful. Instead he would become drunk and foolish, pass out, burn his hand with a cigarette. Young as he was, he had wasted a lot of time.

People milled around a bar table set up near the front of the machine shed. Pierre looked around to see who was there. Minburn the teacher had brought his history students. State Rep Denise Blasco handed out small American flags. Carrie Miles stood alone in a lavender dress and white sweater.

“Don’t you look nice,” said Pierre.

“Well, we try, and that’s all we can do,” she said.

“Where’s the little miss? Stella for star?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. My poem didn’t win either, if it’s any consolation.”

“Too honest, probably.”

“Maybe. I never heard a word about it.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Pierre got them hard cider in paper cups, and as the lights went down they walked up beside the bleachers and found a place to sit on hay bales along the wall. Knowing well how the play began they looked not at the stage but at the open doors and the darkness beyond them.

In a little while a car pulled up and parked on the gravel outside. It was a round-fendered vintage sedan and moving very slowly, as according to the legend it was supposed to have a flat tire.

The three actors playing the robber brothers got out of the car and walked into the shed carrying shotguns
under their arms. The doors rolled shut behind them to create an ominous feel and also to conserve heat. The bleachers slanted down in two banks, making three aisles, and each actor took a separate way to the stage.

Meanwhile, the man and woman playing the farm couple stepped onto the stage and moved to their places in the kitchen.

The brothers gathered at the center of the stage and one of them made a knocking motion as if on a door, though there was none. The sound effects man produced three sharp raps, whose imperfect coordination with the gesture was considered part of the fun.

The woman looked up from the newspaper she was reading at the kitchen table.

“I wonder who that could be,” she said.

“This hour of night,” said the man.

“Open the door quickly. They’ll wake the children with that knocking.”

“I’ll open the door.”

“Hey, good idea,” said Pierre.

The woman folded her paper and pushed her hair back. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind having visitors. It does get awfully quiet out here.”

“We have card parties.”

“I wish there were more card parties.”

“Farming’s no easy life, I know that,” said the man.
“We get up in darkness and lay down in darkness, and many’s the time we don’t have much to show for it.”

“I always thought there should be a song here,” said Carrie.

“I know,” said Pierre.

Again came the knocking of the brothers.

“Someone is still at the door,” said the woman.

“The other night I seen you walking Romeo when he had colic,” said the man. “Round and round the yard, you and that old horse. I was moved by your dedication.”

But finally the man got up from his chair in the corner and went to the edge of the stage.

“Why, hello, boys,” he said.

“We got a flat tire,” said the actor playing the youngest brother, who was said to have been the mastermind of the outfit. “Wondering could we fix it here. Won’t take but four–five hours.”

“I don’t know what kind of tires you have on that car, but it generally don’t take that long,” said the man. “Nor does it require guns to do it.”

Bank Robbery Days drew business away from the lake and into town so the Jack of Diamonds had a skeleton crew that night.

Keith Lyon was scrubbing the kitchen with a power buffer and Charlotte Blonde stood behind the bar playing
Nim on napkins with the vacuum cleaner dealer, Larry Rudd.

“I have you again,” said Rudd. “You don’t see it, do you?”

Charlotte studied the napkin with a pencil in her hand. “I don’t,” she said.

Just then three men came in and stood at the corner of the bar.

“We’re not serving tables tonight,” said Charlotte. “But you can sit anywhere and order here, and if you’re hungry you can have something from the appetizer menu.”

“Well, that sounds pretty good but we’ll pass,” said one of the men. He had thick shoulders and a round face and wore a fishing coat with pockets and straps and a Newfoundland and Labrador salmon badge. “Is Pierre around?”

“No,” said Charlotte. “He’s off tonight.”

“That’s disappointing,” he said. “I’m his cousin Bobby. Maybe you might have heard him talk about me.”

“Not that I recall.”

“Do you know where I might find him? I’m just passing through this one night, and I’d feel bad if I didn’t stop and see him.”

“You ought to check over to the play,” said Rudd.

“No,” said Charlotte.

“What play is that?”

Charlotte jabbed Rudd in the hand with the pencil. “I’m afraid Pierre is out of town,” she said.

Larry Rudd rubbed his hand and looked at Charlotte uncertainly, but he loved knowing things and telling them too much to be silent. “Well, he used to go to it. I know he has gone.”

“Maybe we’ll take a swing by,” said the one who called himself Pierre’s cousin.

“Just go into town,” said Rudd, “which is south out of here, or take a right. Now, that’s not where it is, but you’ll see the signs directing you to it. It’s a big production.”

An older man with the first man nodded his head solemnly with red furrowed brows. “Yeah, we saw the signs,” he said.

“You’re wasting your time,” said Charlotte. “Pierre’s not around.”

“Well, who knows?” said the man in the fishing coat. “Maybe we’ll like the play.”

“What in hell you stab me for?” said Rudd when they had gone.

Charlotte went into the kitchen where the power buffer whined. Keith turned it off and pushed his safety goggles up on his forehead.

“Where’s Pierre?” Charlotte said. “Did he go to the play?”

“He might have. Why?”

“Well, some guys were just in here looking for him. One said he was his cousin.”

“His cousin. That sounds like a line, doesn’t it. You didn’t tell him anything, I hope.”

“No, I didn’t, but of course Larry Rudd had to be sitting there like their long-lost friend and he goes, ‘Try the play, Pierre always goes to the play.’ Is that true?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Keith took the goggles off and set them beside the buffer on the shining silver table. He went out the side door and Charlotte followed him, and they looked around the parking lot, but the men were gone and there were just the cars that had been there before.

“All right, let me think,” said Keith.

Meanwhile, the end of the play was drawing near. The farmer and the young bank robber played their fabled chess game in the living room of the stage.

“You’re going to lose your knight to a pawn in three moves,” said the robber. “I want you to know that. You folks don’t have an accordion, do you? I play an awful good accordion.”

“No,” said the farmer. “No accordion.”

The woman sat in a rocking chair reading
Wallace’s Farmer.
The second brother paced at the back of the stage and the third stood looking absently out at the audience as if through a window.

“I think I left my coat at the bank,” he said.

“Well, I tell you what,” said his chess-playing brother. “We get out of here, you can buy a coat like you’ve never seen.”

“There was tear gas on it. I threw it down and stepped on it.”

“You can buy a whole coat
store.
”

“I think my name was on it.”

“You what?”

“Written inside the collar.”

“Ohh, he does not like that,” said the farmer.

The young robber got up from the chessboard and cleared it with a violent sweep of his arm. Chessmen clattered every which way and bounced off the stage.

“My beautiful plan,” he said. “All cut to ribbons.”

“It’s only justice,” said the woman from her rocker. “It catches up with the least of us.”

“I have heard that,” said the robber. “But it makes it sound like you’ll have a little time before it does. Not that you will hand justice a coat with your name on it on the way out the door.”

Carrie straightened curiously and looked at Pierre and reached into her pocket. It was her phone.

“Hello,” she said quietly. “Yeah. We’re in the middle of the play. . . . Okay. Just a minute.”

She handed the phone to Pierre. “It’s for you. It’s Keith Lyon.”

NINE

P
IERRE LEFT
the play to take the call. He walked down the aisle and out of the machine shed and stood in the driveway with the little phone held to his ear.

“Uh huh, uh huh,” he said. Then he went back into the shed and stood at the bar listening to Keith on the phone.

“Got it,” he said. “I will.”

He motioned for the man behind the table to pour some whiskey in a shot glass. He said goodbye, and folded the phone, and it snapped shut like the mouth of a small silver animal.

The whiskey was three dollars and he put the phone down and paid with a five. Pierre forgot about the phone and went outside and drank the whiskey, which tasted good.

Shane came walking up between the cars in the dark. He carried the sandy rock that had knocked him out.
Pierre knew what it was. They stood looking at each other for quite some time.

“You forgot this,” said Shane.

“Keep it,” said Pierre.

“That was by the way the stupidest possible thing you could have done.”

“Go away,” said Pierre. “Or later you’ll say, ‘I wish I had gone away.’”

“Do you have my money?”

“Not with me.”

“Where is it?”

“I buried it.”

“Then you will dig it up and give it back.”

“Why would I?”

“Because I’ll kill you. And if they come to help you I will kill them too. So everyone will know you had to drag some down with you. They won’t even like you when you’re dead.”

They walked away from the shed.

“You lost,” said Pierre. “You made the rules and you lost, and now you don’t think you like the rules so much.”

“Yeah, but by the same token, who the fuck asked you?” said Shane.

“When you stole my pack, you were saying that anything yours or mine would go to whoever could get away with it.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” Shane hit Pierre in the head with the rock. “How you like that, lawyer man? It hurts, doesn’t it?”

Pierre stumbled but he neither fell nor made a sound. There were two men smoking by the car.

“This the guy?” said the older one.

“Yeah,” said Shane. “Says he buried the money.”

“You believe him?”

“Well, it ain’t at his place. We know that.”

The man scratched his elbow and cleared his throat. “It doesn’t sound right to me,” he said. “People don’t bury money anymore.”

“Well, he says he did, Ned,” said Shane. “If he’s lying we’ll find out soon enough.”

“You went in my apartment,” said Pierre.

“Yeah, we did,” said Shane. “Those are some nice model boats, too, but I have to say you’re like a fucking child. And they didn’t hold up too well when we leaned on them.”

“Now that was wrong,” said Pierre.

“Shut up and get your dead ass in the car.”

Shane took a kick at Pierre but Pierre turned aside and caught his leg and threw him to the ground as he had learned to do.

“Well, this is going badly,” said Ned. He hit Pierre in the neck with his fist. Pierre worked his jaw, trying to untangle the cords.

Shane stood up and brushed himself off with one hand while holding a gun in the other and backing Pierre down with the gun hand.

“The big violin too,” he said. “Because Lyle thought the money might be in that. And I said how could it get in there. But then I thought why stand around arguing about it when we can just crush the motherfucker and we’ll know. Now tell me where my money is.”

“In an orchard,” said Pierre.

They went along the road from the farm and they could see a line of cop cars coming down from the ridge in a curve of blue light.

Shane drove and Lyle and Ned were in the back with Pierre between them. The clouds had moved off and the moon was three-quarters full and riding low above the hills.

The turn signal clicked with its long-suffering sound as Shane waited to go left and the police cars shuddered by with lights but no sirens.

“They called them at the bar, I bet,” said Shane.

“Police are never on time,” said Lyle. “You notice that? They always get somewhere after something has happened but never while it’s happening.”

“Well, sometimes they do,” said Ned. “Then it’s a standoff and they get down behind the cruisers and talk into bullhorns.”

“Rarely,” said Lyle. “Very rarely.”

“Did he tell you what this is about?” said Pierre. “He tried to steal my clothes and some paper plates and for that he lost seventy-seven thousand dollars.”

“How much?” said Ned.

“Well, the amount doesn’t matter,” said Shane. “It’s the idea that counts.”

“You didn’t say it was that much,” said Lyle.

“You believe this thief over me?” said Shane. “I don’t know what to say.”

“We’ll count it again once we have it,” said Ned.

“Why?”

“Our fee is based on a percentage.”

“Who said so?”

“You.”

“That is what you said, Shane,” said Lyle.

Shane was quiet driving along the road. Then he said, “You want to count it, be my guest.”

“Good.”

“You can count it, and
you
can recount it, and then you can count it together like smart young ladies in a bank.”

“Yeah, we might do that.”

“I don’t care. It’s my money. I can afford to be generous.

But you’re curious. I get that.”

They stayed on the back roads. Ned didn’t like relying on Pierre’s directions, but in truth Pierre had no intention of leading them anywhere but the orchard. They
could see the lights of Shale off to the south. Pierre tried to imagine that he would never see the town again but he couldn’t really believe it.

They entered the orchard road at the place where Charlotte and Pierre had come out of the forest when Tim Geer was lost, or said to be anyway.

The headlights slid over the channeled bark of the trees and the front bumper bent the bleached grass that filled the roadbed. Pierre had driven the road several times so the tire tracks were easy to follow. The grass pressed against the chassis, seeming to float the car with a soft whispering sound like water.

Whenever Shane got up any speed at all he would have to slow and turn the wheel as the road wound its way up into the hills. It was a pretty quiet ride. Nobody had much to say in the presence of the creepy woods. Ned crossed and recrossed his arms as big men do and Lyle kept turning and looking out the back window to make sure no one was following.

“Of all the fucking places to put money,” said Ned. “Did you ever hear of a safe deposit box?”

“No, I never did.”

“How’d you bring it up here?”

“In a car.”

“And dug a hole.”

“Yeah, what else.”

“How’d you know somebody wouldn’t find it?”

“Or an animal,” said Lyle. “If it smelled the scent of humans.”

Pierre was thinking it should have happened by now. He was trying to remember where exactly it had been and he wished they would be quiet and allow him to concentrate.

“I don’t know they wouldn’t,” he said.

“I want you to understand something,” said Ned. “I think you’re a liar. If that money isn’t here, and I don’t care why, you’re going to be a very sorry son of a bitch. If the hole is empty, or you can’t find the spot, or it was here yesterday, or possums rose up and ate the money, I don’t care, because in that case I myself will—”

Then the car hit the chain across the road. Shane was going no more than twenty miles an hour, but that is too fast a speed at which to hit a chain. Maybe it would have been enough if the car had simply slammed to a halt, but what happened was more destructive. The chain came shrieking and bladelike up the hood, shattering the windshield and pushing in the corner posts of the roof so that rather than simply stopping the car the chain seemed to act as a giant hand that was grinding it into the road.

Then there were simultaneous detonations as the chain broke and the airbags went off. All of this happened in an instant, during which the car’s interior
filled with smoke and a blizzard of safety glass, and it was not difficult for Pierre, who was the only one who had any idea what was happening, to crawl across Lyle, open the door, and fall on the ground.

Tim Geer and Stella were walking among mannequins in an empty dress store in Rainville. The store had gone out of business and Tim had a key for reasons he did not explain.

“See anything you like?”

Stella felt the fabric of a wine red dress with white roses. “This one isn’t bad,” she said.

Tim unzipped the dress and tried to lift it from the mannequin but the mannequin fell over and one of the arms came off.

“I’m having a hell of a time,” he said.

“Just leave it, Tim.”

“Say, about this business with Pierre.”

“Yeah?”

“It is tonight.”

“It is.”

He nodded and set the mannequin back on its stand. “I kind of lied on that one.”

“Why?”

“So you would stay out of it.”

“I said I would.”

“It is what it is.”

“Does he live?”

“I don’t know. I can see it going either way. But remember how you met him.”

Tim Geer went behind the counter and turned off the lights in the store.

“This has all been extra time for him,” he said.

Pierre ran down the road to the orchard where the night sky spread over the low trees, and the stars and moon were out, and he felt like he had arrived in his place. He turned to look back. The car moved very slowly and one headlight was still working, though pointing at the ground.

He went into the orchard shack and took his shotgun down from the rafters. The shells were in a box in the drawer of the table. He turned the gun over in his hands and loaded it with five shells and put a dozen into his pockets and he thought that if this were not enough it wouldn’t matter how many more he had.

Pierre thought they might be close to giving it up. Shane might resist but his friends had little stake in the money and in fact would probably pay at this point just to go back to wherever they came from. And Shane himself would have got the worst of it when the car hit the chain. Twice now Pierre had got him to run his vehicle into something. Not one of the three seemed the picture of competence.

Pierre went to the window of the shed and cleaned the pane with the sleeve of his coat. The car waited with the one headlamp on and they were out of it and walking up the road. They had a flashlight and were shining it in the trees, making the shadows of branches lengthen and wheel.

Now Pierre wanted to do something before they got any closer. He wanted to fire the gun so they would know he had it. Maybe this would be the thing that would send them off. Of course he himself could run. Probably he could get down the way he and Charlotte Blonde had come up. There wasn’t really a path but he could skid through the trees where they would never follow.

But then what?

No, he thought. He liked it up here. He’d got to this ground he knew and did not want to go back into the woods.

So he stepped out of the shed and aimed the gun at nothing and pulled the trigger.

He had never fired a gun in the dark and was surprised by the yellow flame. Then he kicked out the shell and moved off into the apple trees before they or he would have time to consider what they would do in response.

Shane and Ned and Lyle walked toward the shed shooting like gunfighters in the Old West. Glass broke
and boards splintered. This was something to do but ineffectual because after the gun fired they had seen Pierre run off.

They stood on the boards outside the shed. Lyle looked around with the flashlight.

“You know, I’ve seen this movie,” said Ned. “The outnumbered guy kills everybody.”

“Lyle, go around.”

“Around what?”

“The building.”

“What do you mean?”

Shane grabbed him by the face. “Goddamn it. Go down one side, across the back, and come up the other side.”

Lyle pushed Shane’s hand away. “Why would I do that?”

“To see if he’s there.”

“He ran. I saw him.”

“Just do what I ask.”

“I don’t want to. This is no good, Shane. I feel completely misled. And not just on the money.”

“So he happens to have a gun. Does this make you afraid?”

“It isn’t a question of fear,” said Lyle. “It’s a question of being told one thing and finding that, once you get out there, it’s actually something else.”

“I’m not going to stand here and compare notes with
you,” said Shane. “If you’re unable to walk around a simple goddamned shack in the dark, I will.”

“No, I’ll do it,” said Lyle. “But I just want you to know that this whole operation is a lot of shit.”

“Good. Give me the flashlight.”

“No.”

“Think. What is a flashlight but a big bright target. Think, Lyle.”

Lyle gave Shane the light and left and Shane and Ned went inside the shed, walking on the broken glass.

Shane shone the flashlight in the cobwebbed corners of the little building. “This guy is fucking pissing me off,” he said.

“You think the money’s here?”

“Unlikely. Seems like he had it pretty well thought out.”

“So let’s leave.”

“The car’s all mangled.”

“It’s insured. We’ll ditch it and get another one.”

“You go. I won’t be able to hold my head up in a crowd if I go back now.”

They heard footsteps on the boards and then Lyle looked in the door. “He ain’t around,” he said.

Shane walked to the doorway. “Of course he ain’t,” he said. “You know why?”

“Because he took off.”

“And who let him?”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked that,” said Shane. “First, a guy walks all over you getting out of a car you’re trying to keep him
in,
and you have a gun, you stop him. That’s one big item that should be on your checklist. Here, let me show you. You take the gun in this hand. Just like this here. And then you say, you know, whatever comes to mind. Don’t move. Hold it right there. Stop or I’ll shoot. And if he doesn’t, then you make sure he does.”

Lyle laughed. “Jesus Christ, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “I thought you were pretty low but I had no idea of this. You ran your car into a chain. You did that. And now you’re trying to put it on me? That’s why he got away. Because he told you to drive into a chain and you like a dumb fuck did it. Do you believe this, Ned? Do you believe this lowlife?”