EIGHT

THE 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.”