CHAPTER 25
REAPING
It feels like someone’s trying to yank my hands off of my arms. I’m awake again. My nose is bent crooked in Pa’s back. I’m hanging on him like a cape. My hands are tied together around his neck.
He’s walking me across the floor. My feet are dragging. I scan the room with my left eye. The floor is a crew-cut carpet, brown. People are sitting on the floor. There’s a sticker on the wall. I can’t read it, but I’ve seen it before. I know what it says: “Each depositor insured to at least $250,000. Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. FDIC.”
We are in the Keaton State Bank. This is significant. My right lid opens up to a slit.
The people on the floor, they’re looking at us. There’s Mr. Pridgon, my old music teacher. He’s lost most of his hair. His pants are too short. He’s rubbing his ankles. There’s Jimmy Young of the electric company. Red-faced, like he’s been sunburned from the inside out. Too many electrons. There’s Ezra Rogers, ninety-nine years old. Sitting with his legs straight out. He’s staring at the knobby end of his cane. I can hear the breath pushing in and out of his lungs. I can see these people. They don’t look at us.
Pa walks, drags me toward the teller window. Clarissa McPhail greets us. With my face behind Pa’s shoulder, I can’t see her, but I can hear her. “What’ll it be today, boys? Deposit or withdrawal?”
Dad says, “If I told you I’d have to shoot you!”
Clarissa laughs. Dad laughs.
Clarissa says, “What’s the matter with Shakes?”
Pa lifts my arms over his head and leans me against the teller window. My hands are still tied together. I’m able to stand, more or less. Clarissa is still pretty. She’s wearing a purple V-neck T-shirt. There are two plastic barrettes in her hair.
Pa looks at me, staring hard at the right side of my face. He says, “You been rode hard and put away.” He turns to Clarissa. “How’s that go?”
“Rode hard and put away wet,” she says. To me, she says, “You need some water?”
My head is a brick on a spring. I nod and it wobbles. My chin ends up on my sternum. I’m snake-bit. Can’t she tell I’m snake-bit?
Clarissa says, “Why don’t you fellas come this way?”
Dad grabs me by the left armpit and we follow.
She opens the wooden gate and leads us to the back, past the safe and the computers, to Neal Koenig’s office. Clarissa opens the door without knocking. Neal, my father’s classmate, master of the underhand free throw, bank manager, second in command under Mike Crutchfield, is sitting on the floor. His hands are duct-taped together and there’s an apple taped over his mouth. He looks at us with hopeful eyes. When he looks at my head his hope turns to confusion.
I’m seeing better now. My right eye is mostly open. The skin on my neck and face still feels like it’s ready to burst. A woman is sitting cross-legged on Neal’s desk. There’s a shotgun resting on her knees. It’s a big one. Twelve gauge, I assume. This woman, her eyes are yellow.
Clarissa says to the woman, “They just showed up.”
The woman with the shotgun points her elbow at me and says, “What’s the matter with that one?”
Pa says, “Hell if I know. I found him in a ditch.”
I gurgle.
Clarissa rolls a chair to me and helps me sit down. She fills a paper cup from the watercooler. I wonder why they need bottled water when they can get the same thing from a well, from the faucet. She pours some of it over my swollen lip and into my mouth. Most of it spills out. It doesn’t matter. The water running over my chin and spreading down my shirt, it’s a salve.
Clarissa says, “You want more?”
I lift up my hands, wave my fingers. My wrists are tied together with a bungee cord. With my eyes, I say, Please get this thing off me.
Clarissa shakes her head. She fills another cup of water and gives it to the woman.
Clarissa says, “Give him as much as he wants.” Then she puts her hand on Pa’s shoulder. “Emmett, I got a job for you.”
She leads Pa out of the office and closes the door behind them.
The yellow-eyed woman sets the gun on the desk and climbs off. She says, “Lean your head back.”
I do, and she pours water into my mouth. I swallow some. My tongue takes it in like a sponge. My throat opens enough so I can breathe. When I exhale, steam comes out. My body falls into focus. My hands are numb from the bungee cord. My ass hurts from the Rocket ride. The skin on my face and neck is fit to split wide open.
The woman looks at me, close. Yellow eyes. The blood vessels are little red rivers.
“You don’t remember me.”
I shake my head.
“I thought I made an impression.” She falls to her hands and knees. “This help?”
I shake my head. She turns to Neal Koenig and says, “Don’t look.” Then she lifts her shirt over her head. She’s not wearing anything underneath. She says, “How about this?” She bares her teeth, then bucks back and forth on the floor a few times so her tits hang and flop.
I’m not the smartest person in the world and I’m even dumber when I’ve got venom in my neck. But I recognize her. She’s the woman on the mattress in the house that Vaughn Atkins’s grandpa never lived in. The house with the tapioca pudding. I nod.
She laughs like a bully. “You can call me Miss Angie.”
My right eye is completely open now. She pulls her shirt back on and stands over Neal Koenig. She says, “You looked at me just then, didn’t you?”
Neal, with the apple stuck in his mouth, shakes his head. There’s snot coming out of his nose.
Miss Angie kicks him hard in the knee and then does it again. He leans forward and weeps.
She climbs back onto the desk, puts the gun across her knees. “I don’t mean to be rude, fella, but what the fuck is wrong with your face?”
I try to speak. “I been snake-bit.” It doesn’t come out clear.
Miss Angie leans toward me. I try again, forcing the muscles in my face against the swollen skin, “Rattlesnake.”
She starts laughing. Neal Koenig stops weeping. With that apple taped to his mouth and the snot on his lip, he’s a sorry-looking creature. And he’s looking at me with pity.
“You get a rattlesnake bite and your old man brings you to the bank? What’s he got, a snakebite kit in his safe-deposit box? Your old man is a dumb motherfucker.”
If I was a superhero, I’d draw strength from the rage I feel right now. I’d flex my arms and bust the bungee cord and then punch this woman in the neck and steal her gun and rescue everyone. I am not a superhero. I slouch in the chair.
Miss Angie lights a cigarette. We’re done talking. She smokes while Neal and I sit, helpless, dying probably.
Neal and I try not to look at each other. Miss Angie puts out her cigarette and plays with Neal’s die-cast model of a 1962 Delta 88.
I fall asleep.
When I wake up, my hands are no longer tied. Clarissa is standing over me, nudging me in the thigh with her foot. She says, “Emmett isn’t helping.”
She didn’t say “us.” She said, “Emmett isn’t helping.”
I say, “So?” The word comes out. I can talk. I wonder if I’m getting better. I say “So?” again. I want to be tough but I’m about to cry.
“You gotta help him help us.” Us. She’s part of it. They’re a gang. “Or bad things will happen.”
“Who’s us?”
“Who do you think?”
“D.J. Beckman?”
“Yep. And her.” She nods to Miss Angie. “And her boyfriend.”
My head wobbles.
Miss Angie says, “He’s snake-bit.”
Clarissa says, “No kidding.” To me, she says, “You aren’t gonna die. If you were going to die, you’d be dead.”
I want to not believe her. You can’t trust someone who robs a bank behind your back. Still, I think that she maybe is telling the truth. Maybe that snake didn’t want to kill me.
Clarissa tells Miss Angie to help me up. The two of them lift me by the armpits. Miss Angie holds the gun in her free hand. They take me out of Neal’s office, right up to the safe. It’s one of those tall ones that you can walk into. The door is dark green with a yellow pinstripe painted around the edge. On the right side of the door is a heavy brass handle. In the center of the door is a dial. In front of the safe, there’s a pile of tools all tangled in yellow extension cords. A drill, an angle grinder, a sledgehammer, a crowbar, and an oxyacetylene torch. The door is nicked, scuffed, dented, and blackened with smoke. And it is closed.
Clarissa sends Miss Angie back to keep track of Neal.
Miss Angie’s ratty boyfriend is holding Pa facedown on the ground. The boyfriend’s hands are wrapped around Pa’s biceps. Pa’s breathing hard but he isn’t struggling. Clarissa says, in a sympathetic tone, “He got agitated. He started talking like your mom was here.”
Miss Angie’s boyfriend says, “I had to take him down.”
I want to kill these rats. Robbing a bank, messing with an innocent old man. I glare at Clarissa. I’m sure, with my swollen face, she can’t tell how angry I am. She says, “They aren’t going to hurt anyone. Not if you can get Emmett to open that safe.”
I say, “Where’s D.J.?”
“Who?”
“Beckman? Where is he?”
“We sent him out front to keep an eye on the customers.”
“I didn’t see him when we came in.”
“He was hiding behind the counter.”
I say, “Seems like he’d rather be back here. In the middle of the action.”
“He’s not very popular right now.”
“How’s that?”
Clarissa points at the safe. “Neal told us he didn’t have the combination, which I know is bullshit because I’ve seen him open that thing a million times. Angie and Kelly”—she nods toward Angie’s boyfriend—“they figured they’d just make old Neal uncomfortable for a while and he’d fess up. They promised not to hurt him. But then, while we’re taping Neal’s hands together, D.J. sneaks out to his car and brings in all his tools and starts whaling away on the door. Before we can stop him, he’s completely fucked up the safe so now the lock thingy won’t even turn.” She grabs the knob and tries to twist it. It certainly is stuck. “Like I said, he’s not very popular.”
I start to say something, but then I get dizzy. My legs bend and I’m on the floor.
Angie’s boyfriend lets go of one of Pa’s arms, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a ball of aluminum foil, which he hands to Clarissa. “Give your buddy one of these.”
Clarissa opens the foil. It’s full of orange pills. She pushes one toward my mouth. “Kelly says to have one.”
I allow Clarissa to put the pill on my tongue. I swallow. It pushes itself down my dried-up throat. I nod my head for another. She puts another pill on my tongue. It fizzes some. I spit it at her face. It sticks to her cheek.
Miss Angie’s boyfriend, Kelly, jumps up from where he’s holding Pa to the ground and slaps my face. A handprint of pain thrums thru my head. My breaths come faster and shallow. I can’t take in any air. Clarissa holds me upright. She whispers into my ear, “I didn’t want you to be here.” I’m not sure if she’s sorry or if she’s irritated.
Out loud she says, “Get your dad to open the safe and this’ll be done.”
Kelly has returned to his spot, holding Pa on the ground. He says, “We’re trying to be nice, buddy. Help him help us. Maybe you’ll get something out of it.”
I shake my head. No, I think. Eat shit, you dirt-fucking scumhole.
Kelly pulls a revolver out of the back of his jeans. It’s nickel-plated and shiny. He points it at me, right at my forehead. His hands aren’t shaking like my hands would shake in that situation. What a prick. I can be a prick, too. I shake my head again. He points the gun at the back of Pa’s neck.
I nod.
I’ve never seen Dad so confused in my whole life. They’ve allowed him to sit up. He looks so sad. He isn’t wearing any socks inside his tennis shoes. His face isn’t shaved right. He has long grey hairs under his nose and on his Adam’s apple. I wish I’d shaved him this morning. I couldn’t have shaved him if I had wanted to; we didn’t have any electricity. I never learned to shave the old-fashioned way, with a razor and shaving cream. Electricity only. I try to recall if Pa ever shaved with a razor. I wonder if that makes us inferior to other men. I say, “Hey, Pa.”
He says, “What’s going?” He motions along his face, indicating the swelling on my cheek and neck.
I say, “Nothing much.”
“Somebody hit you?”
“Naw. Just a snake.”
He says, “You’re a. Inflatable.”
I say, “It’s not the end of the world.”
He nods. “I know. I been there plenty of times.”
I say to Clarissa, “We have to leave him alone. That’s the only way he’ll do it. You know as well as I do.” I’m feeling jittery. From the pill.
She says, “He’s right, Kelly. I’ve seen it. Emmett won’t do a damned thing if we’re watching him. I saw him do it in Vaughn Atkins’s basement. You just gotta forget about him. Next thing you know, he’ll have the vault open. It’s like getting rid of the hiccups. The more you try, the less it works.”
Kelly points the gun at my chest. He says, “Your old man better not pull any shit.”
I say, “He can’t pull any shit.”
Clarissa says, “Kelly, you go out front and wait with D.J. I’ll take care of these guys.”
Kelly scowls. “They better not pull any shit.” Then he’s thru the hallway and gone.
Clarissa says, “I’ll give you one minute alone with him. Then you come directly back to Neal’s office.”
She walks away, into the office, and Pa and I are alone. I’d like to hug him and then climb on his shoulders, push aside one of the ceiling tiles, crawl thru the ductwork, and escape onto the roof. Instead I point him to the vault. He has tools. Dad can do this.
“Pa, we gotta get something out of that safe.”
“What’s in the safe?”
“A toilet. There’s a toilet in the safe. And I gotta take a shit.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. I’m probably crazy. So far today, I’ve been snake-bit and I’ve taken an orange pill.
I say, “Do you want me to take a dump right here on this carpet?”
He says, “Hell no.”
“Then you need to open that safe.” I slap him on the back and shuffle toward Neal’s office.
He follows, puts him arm around my waist. “You can’t even walk right.”
“Then help me.”
He brings me to Neal’s door. I knock. Clarissa opens it. I work my way out of Dad’s arm and slither thru the door, which Clarissa shuts before Pa can enter. He knocks a few times. I hear him say, “Shakes?” Then there’s no noise.
I lean against the wall and slide to the ground. I try to put my head in my hands but it hurts too much. Pa’s out there, wandering. He doesn’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what’s happening. This is out of control. This is off the reservation. Whatever this is, it’s conclusive. We burned everything.
I cry. It hurts to cry. The tears are stones birthing out of my eyes. I curl up on the floor and shiver. Sorry, Dad, this is your reward. You’re the third generation of pioneers, people who built a farm, survived in a semi-arid landscape for a hundred and twenty years. And you end up wandering around a bank while your son’s lying on the floor with a snakebite on his neck. Four generations. Lying on a floor. Wandering in the hall. I wish I would die.
Clarissa puts her hand on my back. Miss Angie is still in this room somewhere.
Clarissa winks at me. “I told you Crutchfield would get his.” She seems proud.
I say, “It seems like you’re doing all the getting.”
“I’m sorry, Shakes, but D.J. had a better plan. A lot of people have asked me to help them rob this place. You wouldn’t believe it. Kids, old-timers, everybody. If it makes a difference, you were the first person I said yes to.”
“Out of pity.” My head hurts.
“Partly. And also because it sounded fun. But it couldn’t have worked. You need guns, Shakes. You can’t rob a bank with collectible coins. D.J. was willing to use guns.”
Miss Angie coughs a fake cough.
Clarissa says, “I mean, it wasn’t entirely his idea. Miss Angie and Kelly, they started it. They’re from Denver. They didn’t bring me in on it until a couple weeks ago. After you and I had given up on the job.”
I start to speak, but my throat’s too scratchy.
Clarissa says to Miss Angie, “Can you get Shakes some water, please?”
“No.”
Without replying, Clarissa fills up a paper cup and brings it to me. It helps.
She says, “You were saying something?”
I shake my head.
She continues, “I had started eating again and I was starting to feel good about myself. Like it didn’t matter what people think. I felt like doing something bold. But I knew you weren’t the person to do it with. You’re not action-oriented. D.J. and Angie and Kelly, they’ve got it all figured out. And they promised no one would be hurt. And look, no one has been hurt. We’ll get the money and then we’ll go away.”
“You have a getaway plan?”
“D.J. is in charge of that part.”
She misinterprets my look of dismay.
“Don’t worry, Shakes. You’ll be right here. You’ll be fine. You’re not going to die.” She sighs dramatically. “I never dreamed you’d show up in the middle of all this. I thought you’d be moping around the farm with Emmett. Of course it’s good luck that you did. We’d be completely screwed without Emmett right now.”
There are clanking noises coming from outside the door. Metal taps metal. Not aggressive. Exploratory. Pa is doing something out there. Clarissa’s eyes brighten. Then she looks hard at me and the brightness goes away. “Remember the last time we talked on the phone? When I said I wanted to come visit? I was going to tell you about everything. I was going to tell you all about this and make you promise not to tell anyone. Then, afterward, I was going to give you some money so you could get back on your feet after the foreclosure.”
I stare at her.
“But you hung up on me. So screw you.”
I don’t want to explain about the telephone being shut off. It doesn’t seem important. I say, “D.J. is a jackass.”
“Yep. And he’s mean. But he has a heart, sometimes. He’s been taking care of Angie and Kelly. He keeps them fed.”
On the other side of the room, Angie slaps her belly. “He doesn’t keep us fed enough.”
I say, “What about Vaughn?”
Clarissa says, “What about Vaughn?”
“Is he even actually dead?”
“Of course he’s actually dead.”
“We didn’t go to the funeral. I didn’t see the body. All I know is that you said he’s dead. Maybe you’ve kidnapped him and stuck him in that safe and this is all going to be a big joke on me.”
Clarissa looks hurt. “Vaughn’s dead.”
I say, “You never intended to rob the bank with us. You gave him hope. You’re always trying to give people hope.”
“That’s not true. You gave him hope when you suggested we rob this place. Not me.”
“It’s your fault he’s dead. You lied to us. You lied to him.”
Clarissa says, “Vaughn Atkins killed himself.”
“He killed himself with D.J. Beckman’s pills and now you’re robbing the bank with D.J.”
Neal Koenig groans. I had forgotten he was even there. Miss Angie kicks him in the knee. Clarissa clams up. She won’t look at me. She’s just as much of a weakling as I am, but being like me doesn’t make me respect her.
We hear more clanking. This time, it’s aggressive, purposeful clanking. Pounding. A grunt. Then the groan of iron being dragged across iron.
There’s a commotion outside the door. People are hollering. Something heavy slams against the wall.
Clarissa runs out to see what’s going on. She opens and closes the door too quick for me to see anything.
I hope Dad’s killing them all.
Neal is wheezing. I know they aren’t going to let us go. They never let you go. Assholes from Denver. I knew it, the second I saw them banging each other on that dirty mattress in that abandoned house. They were dirty, meth-eating assholes. They’re the kind of people who would murder a cat for no good reason. I bet they killed my cat. They killed my cat and I drove my cat to the farm and I found dad living in squalor with a dead woman in the bathroom, and now we’re all here except the cat and Unabelle.
I say to Miss Angie, “I expect you’ll kill me.”
She’s playing with Neal’s toy car again. She looks directly at Neal. “I don’t know why a grown man has toys on his desk. It’s immature.” She pronounces the “t” in “immature.”
Outside the door, there’s an angry, whispered discussion. I hear voices but not words.
Neal’s breath sputters around the apple in his mouth.
Miss Angie hops off the desk and squats in front of him. She rolls the toy car over Neal’s face. She presses it against his nose so he can’t breathe. The shotgun is lying on the desk.
The voices outside have grown calm.
I say, “Take the apple out of his mouth.” I’m feeling hungry. It’s been quite some time since I ate an apple.
Miss Angie removes the car from Neal’s nose and says, “After I get out of here, I’m going to buy me a car just like this one.” She giggles like a teenager. I suspect she’s in her mid-thirties. Her meth face makes her look like she’s a thousand years old. She continues, “Except when I buy my car, it’ll be a real car. Not a Chinese toy. Always buy American. That’s what I say. It’s practical. We need to bring back tariffs on foreign goods. They need to stop manipulating the currency.”
More sounds of iron. Another burst of whispers. Someone says, “Fuck!” I can’t tell if it’s an exclamation joy or anger.
I want to know what they’re doing to Pa out there. I don’t want to know. I want Miss Angie to shoot me in the eye. The shotgun is sitting right there on the desk. Dirty cat-killing meth vampire.
Miss Angie says, “I’ll drive my new car all the way to Cincinnati. I’m gonna go to Kings Island and ride every single ride ’til I puke ten times. I’m never gonna work again. I’ll buy a Harley and take it to Mexico. I’ll run with the bulls. I’ll grow delicious apples in my own orchard.”
She isn’t watching me. My hands aren’t tied. Why don’t I just die? Pa’s still out there. Something’s happening. While Miss Angie rants her idiotic fantasies at Neal, I stand up slow. I make my hands into fists. I’m going to grab that gun and swing the butt into the back of her neck. It’ll knock her out and then I’ll untie Neal and then we’ll take the gun and liberate everybody. And me and Dad will steal all the fucking money. It’s our money. The banker owes us. Mike Crutchfield. Hadn’t thought of him in a while. It makes me even angrier.
“. . . I’m gonna buy one of those sea monkey aquariums. I’m going to buy X-ray specs and fake dog shit and everything. I’m going to become a magician. I’ll be the magician and my assistants will be sexy faggots in Speedos . . .”
I reach my hand toward the gun.
“. . . I’ll start a restaurant that serves only my favorite foods. Peanut butter sandwiches, peppermint schnapps, um, rye bread. And tapioca pudding. I love tapioca pudding more than anything in the whole world . . .”
I close my hand over the barrel.
She spins around and shoots me in the stomach with a pistol.
I recall a conversation I had with Vaughn Atkins when we were kids, probably around seventh grade. We were talking about things we wanted to do before we died. At first it was stuff like screwing Christie Brinkley or doing a tomahawk slam dunk in the closing seconds of game seven of the NBA finals. But then we moved deeper. I clearly remember my top three things I wanted to do before I died:
1) Get bit by a shark.
2) Get shot.
3) Rob a bank.
When I lifted my hand off my stomach and saw the circle of blood on my palm, I thought, I gotta find me a shark, pronto.
This made me chuckle.
Miss Angie was still yapping. “. . . thirty-two kinds of ice cream, monkey brains, even though they’re grody . . .” She was pointing the pistol at Neal’s knee. Neal’s eyes were squinted shut, waiting for her to pull the trigger.
I didn’t feel that bad. Really, once you’ve been bit by a rattler, a gut shot is nothing. And this wasn’t Dirty Harry. Judging by the look of that pistol and the fact that my ears weren’t ringing, I’d been shot by a .22. Nothing. Barely a step up from a BB gun. I could take a few more of those before I dropped dead. Gimme some more orange pills and you could shoot me with a cannonball.
Still yapping, Miss Angie stepped over me, picked up the shotgun from the desk, and returned to her place next to Neal.
I slid to the floor. I said, “Would you mind removing that apple out of Neal’s mouth?”
Miss Angie stopped talking. She pressed the barrel of the shotgun against the apple. If she pulled the trigger, the shot would send the apple thru the back of Neal’s head. She said, “I would not mind.”
There was a crash in the hallway. I heard Clarissa shout, “Leave him alone!”
Miss Angie’s finger caressed the trigger of the shotgun.
Something happened. The room was filled with a terrible roar. It wasn’t a gunshot. It was bigger. The gun was still in Miss Angie’s hands and it wasn’t smoking and Neal wasn’t bleeding.
Miss Angie and Neal heard the roar, too. A mighty, apocalyptic sound. Neal didn’t seem to care. Like he was used to thundering, rumbling, vicious noises. Miss Angie, though, she was startled. Her eyes opened up wide, her chest heaved like a frightened deer.
This was something bigger than snakebites and bank robberies and gunshot wounds and forgetful old men. The earth was peeling apart. Miss Angie and I looked at each other as if the world was going to end and we were both sorry it had to be this way.
Then we recognized the sound, both of us at the same time. It was an airplane. It was the sound of my dad’s Cessna.