They keep asking what happened. “Tell us what you did, son,” says the bigger, older one. He’s the same one who, out in the field, as Roddy stared up at impassive dogs and into the stars, happy as hell, suddenly appeared at the edge of his field of vision, arms outstretched and rigid, in his hands a gun aimed right at Roddy.
“Don’t move, son,” he said. “Just stay perfectly still. You understand what I’m saying? Tell me you’re not going to move a muscle. Right now. Tell me.”
“Okay,” Roddy said.
“Hold,” said another voice, and the two dogs shifted away, out of view. They didn’t go far. He could still hear them breathing.
The other guy, younger, knelt carefully beside Roddy, eyed him warily. He passed his hands carefully, remotely, all over Roddy’s body. He nodded at the bigger guy, who said, “Okay now, stand up, real slow.”
It was like he was old. It was almost painful, rolling slightly and getting his hands and feet in position to push himself up. It didn’t help that while he was still sitting, the younger guy took his hands and pulled them behind him and fastened his wrists together. There was no click. The binding felt like plastic, not metal. Roddy guessed things were different than they were on TV. The cop took one arm and lifted it upwards. Roddy almost bounced when he hit his feet finally.
The other cop, the one who called him son, stepped back. He was still aiming his gun: a black hole. Roddy wanted to say nobody needed a gun, but he thought maybe he shouldn’t say anything. He couldn’t tell what they might do. He wasn’t scared, exactly, because this couldn’t be happening, it wasn’t real enough for fear. Just, it was so strange, out here in the field in the night, the young cop holding a flashlight on him like this was a stage, a spotlight, a play.
“Let’s move.”
Returning through the fields to the road, two flashlights now directing their steps, wasn’t easy. Especially with his arms behind him, it was hard to keep his balance, not stumble. In this small way the fields, their slight humps and hollows, their hidden pitfalls and stoninesses, became strange to him; unfriendly.
The two cops grunted now and then, one on each side of him and slightly behind. He could hear the hard breathing of the bigger, older one, and the dogs padding along. Nobody spoke. Nobody spoke when they got to the car, either. The younger cop put his hand on top of Roddy’s head as he eased him into the back seat, braceleted and alone.
The roads looked like new country, like nothing he’d ever travelled before. The outskirts of town, the rows of houses, the street lights, everything might as well have been in some other country, in Europe maybe, where he’d never been. Passing the corner of the street that led to the street where he lived right up till a few hours ago, he thought, “Grandma’s there, a block away, right this second, and my dad,” but it felt like where they really were was in a parallel universe.
Anyway, where they really were was at the police station: his fat, distressed, red-eyed grandmother, his pale burly father. They rose off their chairs the same way the same second, like they were tied together, like they were puppets. Except then his dad stood still, while his grandmother took a step towards Roddy. But the cops said, “No,” and guided Roddy right by, each of them holding one of his arms. He didn’t even try to look back. What was the point? They were here, but they must think he was nobody they knew.
Now he’s in a room with the two cops and some other guy his dad called in to be his lawyer. The guy told him, “You don’t have to say anything, I suggest you don’t say a word.” Roddy just shook his head.
When the cop says, “Tell us what you did, son, tell us what happened,” Roddy isn’t silent because he’s refusing to speak. He’s silent because he has no idea what to say. It was so clear before, when it was only a plan.
The woman. Her face. Mike’s voice, finally. Too late, the way everything was too late, like time got out of synch and for a few seconds things were happening backwards, or inside out.
Now he’s back in time, but it’s a whole different time.
“Where’d you get the shotgun?”
That’d be easy. It’s his dad’s. His dad takes a week every year and goes hunting with a bunch of guys from his work. He never shoots anything, though. He probably tries, but he never hits anything.
Not like Roddy. Suddenly he’s very cold again, and shivers.
“You got something to put around him?” his lawyer says. “A blanket? I don’t think he’s well.”
“No shit,” says the younger cop. “And no, we don’t.”
The lawyer shrugs. “If he’s sick, if he gets sick, it’s on your watch, you know. On your shoulders. In fact I’m not sure we shouldn’t be calling a doctor. He could be shocky. That could be dangerous.”
“Get him a blanket, Tom,” says the older cop.
Roddy’s attention swings from one man to another. It’s like watching a play. Mr. Siviletti, Roddy’s English teacher, just about the only teacher Roddy likes, says every word in a play is supposed to do something. Move things ahead somehow. It doesn’t seem to Roddy as if this talking among the cops, the lawyer, is getting anyone anywhere. On the other hand, he has nothing, himself, to add. It’s not like those moments out in the field, though. It’s not like he’s happy and wants everything to stop right now so he can keep on being happy. The lights are too bright, the chair too hard, the faces, even his lawyer’s, too harsh.
He thinks all this started, in another, innocent lifetime, with Mike and him, at the start of summer, sitting around the pool at the park. They were making their plans, or dreaming their dreams, whatever. They were at the pool but not in the water. It was a cool day, so they were wearing sweatshirts and jeans, just hanging out, more than anything.
Mysteries and longings build up. Which means other things need to end. Mike said, “If we wanted to leave in September, how could we get enough money by then?” Roddy’s almost sure it was Mike who said that, although it could have been him. They talked about leaving a lot, back and forth.
They would have an apartment in the city where Roddy came from in the first place. They had a high-rise in mind, someplace that looked out over miles of bright lights. Roddy liked the idea of a high-rise. It seemed clean and glamorous to ride an elevator to get home, to go out. They would get jobs of some kind. The lights alone would keep them dazzled. There would be alleys and streets, bars and concerts, new people. Girls. That was one of the main things: the great sinuous, mysterious, welcoming variety of girls there would be.
But Roddy didn’t know how they would get there, either, two or three months down the road. He must have supposed something like magic. He had odd-job commitments for things like mowing lawns, weeding gardens, and imagined that could add up. Mike was working his second summer of shifts at Goldie’s. His mother was a friend of the woman who owned it. “The money’s shit, though. Even minimum wage practically kills her, like, when she hands over my money, it’s like I’ve been stealing it off her. Pisses me off. It’s not like I just stand around. If there’s no customers we’re supposed to clean the floors and the storeroom, even dust the shelves, and man, if you don’t get it all done, she’ll really light into you.”
“Yeah, well, at least you’ve got a job. You know what you’re making, anyway.”
“But you’re working for yourself. And, you know, if you’re getting paid by the hour, all you have to do is mow real slow, right?”
Mike was joking, sort of. Roddy said, “Yeah, right.”
“The thing is, either way, we’re neither of us making real money. Not enough, anyhow. We gotta figure out something better, or we’ll never get out of here.”
They fell into gloomy silence. They often did. The thought of never getting out of here was unbearable, although there wasn’t much that was actually bad they could point to. Just, being so restless was in its way actively, acutely painful. It hurt.
Mike’s never had to start over. He’s always lived here. His idea of a new life was that it would be totally new, almost like he didn’t expect to have memories. To Roddy it seemed that yes, everything about it would be new, but also a variation on how his life should have gone in the first place, if nobody’d had to move, if he’d got to stay where he started.
Everything would be different than it was here. They’d be free, mainly. Roddy thought he might even decide to look different, under those different circumstances. “Maybe I’ll grow a moustache,” and although Mike snorted, he also nodded, as if he knew what Roddy was talking about.
It wasn’t just that he was not looking ahead in any clear fashion, it also now seems to him he was not looking back very well. Sure it was irritating sometimes, living at home, and lately his grandmother’s been getting more impatient than she used to be, and he’s been more impatient back. Like, how often did he have to say, “It’s nobody’s business, just mine”? The it being anything from whether his homework was done to where he was going, or where he had been. “Out,” he said. “Nowhere.” And if his father spoke ten words a day to either of them any more, Roddy’d be surprised. Like he’d run totally out of words, and all he had left were those pats on Roddy’s shoulder as he passed by, the affectionate skidding of his hand over Roddy’s head.
But look: there was his grandmother bandaging his knees when he was a little kid falling down, there she was reading to him when he was home sick from school, there she was in the heat of the kitchen, baking up something sweet, there she was saying, “Feel like a round of cribbage, Roddy, before you go out?”
There were her eyes, looking wounded, and her lips getting tight when he wouldn’t talk, or when he snapped at her. Really, she hardly ever snapped back. She mostly made a habit of turning away. What he sees now are her shoulders, her back: bent a bit under his weight.
Feeling bad made him want to be someplace where he didn’t have to feel bad.
What a jerk. What a dumb asshole.
It is suddenly clear to him — and he sits up straighter on the chair, startled by this abrupt, certain knowledge — that he and Mike wouldn’t have left. They would have gone back to school in the fall, and kept on building their word-pictures of the future, and it would have stayed the future, on and on, until, maybe, the time really did come. He’d have graduated from high school. His grandmother and even his dad would have gone to his graduation. He’s never exactly at the top of the class, but he’s nowhere near the bottom, either. They would have taken pictures of him. He and Mike would have had double dates for the party afterwards. He would have worn a dark suit. His grandmother would have had tears in her eyes. She’s always getting tears in her eyes for one thing and another, even sometimes sentimental TV commercials. She says, “A bit of a weep makes me feel better, is all.”
Now she’s been weeping for real. He must have been insane for a couple of months, in a dark, cool, closed sort of way. Like he could only feel his own skin and pictures; like he was hunched in a chilly, rough box all by himself, inside his own head. Like there was nothing outside it.
Now, in the light, he has blood on his hands. He looks down at his unshackled hands. There are actually tracings of blood, although it looks like his own, from the scratchings and stumblings of his wild pell-mell run.
His hands have hardly ever done anything, really. A few times they’ve touched a girl’s breasts, that’s about it, a few tense, nervous dates that have gone more or less well, but promised much more, with freedom. His fingers have wrapped themselves around lawnmower handles and rakes, turned pages, done dishes. He has nice fingers, long. They’ve hardly been used.
One of them curled tight on a trigger, though. He’d cut it off, if he could, if it would unmake what happened.
“I’m a kid,” he would like to tell these men. “It doesn’t count. I didn’t mean it. Doesn’t it matter that it was just stupid and I didn’t mean it?” He can see from the spareness of this small room, from the bright light, from their faces, that it counts, all right.
Right about now he was supposed to be in his room, in bed, the money safely tucked away underneath. He was supposed to take it straight home, and after everything calmed down in a couple of days, Mike was supposed to come over and they’d say they were going to watch videos in Roddy’s room and then they’d finally pull out the money from under his bed and count it and figure out how long it would last them in their new life. “We won’t be able to take off right away,” Mike said wisely. “That’d look suspicious. All we have to do is keep on doing what we usually do for another few weeks and we’re free.”
They made solemn promises not to betray each other, and not even to hint their intentions to anyone else. They pledged not to do anything dumb, like get tempted to spend even a dollar, and to split the money right down the middle, although Mike wouldn’t have any of it till they left. It would be dangerous, obviously, for him to be anywhere near it.
Those were easy promises. They wouldn’t dream of screwing up for some stupid reason like using any of the money for a movie, something like that. Neither of them would be tempted to take more than his share. That was the sort of thing they were sure of, just because neither of them could imagine it any other way. They’ve done a lot of stuff together, they know a lot of things about each other.
They were also sure there’d be a fair amount of money around, because this was the last day of a four-day trip by Doreen, who owns Goldie’s, to visit her sister. “Everything just gets put in a cash box under the counter till she gets back,” Mike reported. “That’s what happened last summer when she went away for a few days, because she said she likes checking it herself before she deposits it.” He shrugged. “Stupid. Tough luck.”
Roddy supposes Mike thought of the money as fair payment, since he considered his wages unfair. What did Roddy himself think? Not that he was owed it, exactly, of course not. But that Doreen hadn’t earned it herself, hadn’t even earned Goldie’s since she bought it with insurance money when old Jack keeled over, so in a way money just sometimes fell into people’s lives, and gave them something they wanted, that made them happy, and it could fall into his, too.
He guesses he saw it as some kind of evening up, although now can’t think what imbalance he was setting out to correct.
Their plan, so honed, so fine, was simple.
Mike would go to work for his usual three o’clock shift. Everything would be normal. Customers would drift in and out. At five the day clerk would take off and Mike would be on his own. He would begin biding his time.
About the same time Mike was showing up for work, Roddy would be quietly moving his dad’s shotgun from the basement cabinet where it was kept, and the ammunition from his dad’s bedroom bureau drawer. At that hour, his dad was at work and his grandmother would either be out shopping and visiting, or in her own room having a nap. Roddy would take the shotgun and the ammunition to his room. A couple of hours later, Mike well into his shift, the whole town heading indoors to supper, Roddy would be leaning out his bedroom window, out over the low roof overhang, dropping the gun into the petunias below. His grandmother and dad would still be at the kitchen table, finishing their dessert. Roddy, eating fast, would have excused himself before they were done.
The ammunition would be in the back pocket of his jeans. He would go downstairs, out the front door, calling out, “See you later, I won’t be long.”
Outside, he would go around back, retrieve the shotgun, and shove it down one leg of his jeans. He would walk, with whatever ungainly, stiff-legged but not especially noticeable gait was required, the three blocks to Goldie’s.
The back door would be open. In the storeroom he would haul out the shotgun. He would load it. He would listen for voices. If he heard any, he would wait silently. If he didn’t, he would give a little whistle: the first notes of the theme of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, an old flick he and Mike like to rent. If everything was ready to roll, Mike would whistle the next few notes back. Roddy would step into the main part of Goldie’s. Mike would be behind the counter, like normal.
All this worked exactly as foreseen. Smooth as a dance. Even walking the three blocks to Goldie’s with the shotgun under his jeans didn’t feel too awkward or remarkable.
What was supposed to happen next was that Roddy would go almost right up to the counter and — this was the dicey part — let off one shot, into the shelves behind. Inevitably this would be loud. The thing was, Mike said, “There has to be a threat, some reason I’d hand over the money and let myself be tied up.” Because that was the other step. While Roddy was doing his thing with the gun, Mike, having already put the cash box into a plain shopping bag, would be binding his own mouth with a handkerchief and taping his own ankles together. He would be on the floor, all ready for Roddy to tape up his wrists.
They rehearsed and rehearsed this. They got it down, from shot to wrists, to twelve seconds.
Racing back to the storeroom, Roddy would stash the shotgun back down his jeans and take off home, with the grocery bag. In a matter of minutes, he’d have dodged his grandmother in the kitchen, his dad in the living room, and be in his own room. The money would go, uncounted and untouched and still in its box in the bag, under his bed. The shotgun also. Tomorrow, once his dad was at work and when his grandmother went out, Roddy would return it to its cabinet in the basement. Nobody would know. Nobody would even know to look. Who would dream?
Meanwhile, behind Goldie’s counter, Mike would wait. When, eventually, somebody came through the door, making the buzzer go, he would scuffle his bound limbs and moan. He would be found and unbound. The cops would be called. Mike would be upset and dazed. He would say the robber wore a ski mask, and work boots, jeans, black T-shirt. He would describe him as being about six feet, big-shouldered, a paunch. “Maybe he should have a tattoo, or moles,” Roddy suggested. Not only to make the man more interesting and unique — there were times, discussing him, when this assailant grew real and almost visible to them — but also to keep somebody innocent, who roughly fit the description, from getting nailed.
“Good idea.” They gave him a dark green snake on his right forearm, and a black mole on the back of his left hand. His eyes, through the plain navy mask, would be dark blue, they decided.
Mike would be questioned over and over. He would tell the same story over and over. “Don’t add details,” Roddy warned. “Keep it simple.” His folks would probably want to take him to the doctor, or even the hospital, to be checked over.
They each had interesting parts to play, Roddy beforehand and during, Mike during and afterwards. It was like two separate acts, as they rehearsed. Roddy took the roles of discovering customer, cops, parents, doctor, questioning Mike. There were different directions those conversations could conceivably go. They practised every one they could think of. They were smooth, and prepared. They saw it all perfectly.
Even at the first step, going down to the basement to get the gun, Roddy was struck by the difference between the words and the action. It’s not that he thought of backing out. If nothing else, he couldn’t back out on Mike, they had a commitment, and everything was inevitable now because of that. But still, it was a weird feeling, going down those stairs, going back up. Then all the rest, getting through the remaining afternoon hours, through supper like nothing was different, and finishing fast, and all the way to the storeroom.
Exactly how they had planned.
He got as far as the counter. He could see that Mike had the cash box in the bag, ready to go, the handkerchief to bind his own mouth in his hand, a roll of masking tape waiting to be whipped around his ankles and wrists. In Mike’s eyes he saw the same scared, thrilled look of being in the middle of something big that Roddy imagined showed in his own eyes.
They didn’t speak. Mike jerked his head towards the shelves behind him and off to one side, and Roddy began raising the gun. This was the trickiest part: having to move very fast afterwards because of the sound of the shot.
He saw Mike’s eyes widen and grow bleak, looking over his shoulder, at the same time he heard the door shifting inwards, the buzzer. Mike’s mouth started to open. Perhaps his own did as well. He was turning as he was still raising the gun. The woman in the tight wrinkled blue suit was turning, too, but not before he saw her eyes. Perfectly blank eyes. Whatever expression they might have had as she opened the door to Goldie’s was wiped out and replaced by nothing at all. The sound of the buzzer was still in the air.
Why hadn’t they thought: Lock the door?
His own body was rising onto its toes and then slightly crouching. He could feel every muscle: calves, thighs, stomach, shoulders. Finger, too, tightening. This took forever, and no time at all. There was no stopping it.
She whirled and whirled and then she was on the floor like the air had gone out of her. Something began turning red. There was a man in the doorway. This was too much, too much vision, too much to see. He heard Mike’s voice, familiar and strange at the same time. “Shit, Roddy, what’ve you done?” He saw Mike’s eyes. He felt Mike’s hand removing the shotgun from his. He realized it was the gun that had been weighing him down, and without it, there was nothing to hold him. He leaned over and lost his early, fast supper all over the worn Goldie’s floor. Then he was light and could fly. So he did. He flew, and flew, out the back door, through streets, over fences, across fields. He was the wind, he was a bird, he swept, for a little while, over the earth. For a little while he was frantic. Then finally he had those few happy moments that could have lasted forever, but didn’t. This is not what he meant. It’s not who he is. It’s a long time since he’s cried, but he could weep, just weep, for everything lost; so he does.