Graves' Retreat (7 page)

    Well, that’s why Susan had sought solace with Les Graves.

    Standing here now, opening her eyes and trying to give shape to the sprawl of stars that were the Big Dipper, she thought fondly of Les and wondered if she’d been selfish.

    All she’d ever wanted from him was his friendship, but obviously, before she could do anything about it, Les made more of it than was there. One night, seeing the love in his eyes, she became frightened. She did not want to hurt him as she had been hurt all her life by her father and now by Byron, who was losing his integrity to her father…

    She was thinking this when she was interrupted by a thunderous voice (she always thought of him as an Old Testament patriarch), one that automatically caused her to begin shaking and twitching…

    Her father had stormed into the room and stood over her mother and shouted, “My best pen! It’s gone!”

    Her mother had already shriveled up in her rocking chair. “I didn’t take it, Clinton! I know better than to touch your things!”

    “No, you didn’t take it! But you’re so lax with that damn maid of ours that she can lose things without any fear of recrimination!”

    “But Clinton, I-”

    “You keep a terrible house, Arlene! A terrible house!”

    And with that, he stormed out again, leaving in his wake two broken women and a troubled air that would linger for the rest of the night now and cause twitching and shaking, fits and starts of tears and anger that were utterly, utterly useless.

    Susan hurried through the French doors now, to sit at her mother’s knees, to comfort the woman she loved so much. The woman who had been living with this tyrant for four decades.

    By the time she reached her mother, the gray-haired woman had lowered her head and was letting tears roll down her cheeks.

    Even across the room she could hear her mother’s whispered prayer and it was always the same prayer-one that asked not for any retribution against her husband, only that she be able to abide his rages and beratings with patience and charity.

    Susan knelt next to the woman and cradled her head against her shoulder.

    

    

    Neely said, “You’ve got a nice town here, Les. I hear there’s an overall company that pays women twenty-five cents a day for ten hours’ work.”

    T.Z. laughed. “I guess you probably remember that Neely here’s a socialist.”

    “Was a socialist,” Neely said with an edge. “Now I see that both sides are worthless.”

    The tavern was essentially a single long room with a long slab of pine for a bar and several kegs of beer hefted up into cradles behind the bar. There was sawdust on the floor. The only attempts at decoration were some faded posters depicting the “Wild, Wild West” as seen by everybody’s favorite liar, Buffalo Bill Cody. The clientele appeared to be more drifter than workingman-rail-riders mostly.

    “There’s a table over there. Why don’t we take it?” Neely said. “Talk about old times.”

    Les shook his head. “T.Z. told me why you’re here. We don’t have anything to talk about-old or new.”

    Neely smiled his shark smile and gazed ironically at T.Z. “See, he starts going out with a banker’s daughter and right away he gets uppity.”

    Les had forgotten how clever Neely was. “How did you know about Susan?”

    “Tonight, when you were at the river, you turned around and wondered if you hadn’t heard somebody in the bushes.” Neely laughed. “You did. It was me.”

    “You bastard.”

    “Your little brother sure doesn’t seem glad to see us, T.Z.”

    “He’ll calm down. Come on, Les. Let’s go over and sit down and have a beer.”

    Les looked at his brother. As always he had the sense that the man was a complete stranger: his smooth, handsome face, his gambler’s getup, and a certain constant anger in his dark eyes. They had been through so many years together, their mother dying when they were barely ten, and then their father going soon after, and Les struggling to get through high school while T.Z. (Thomas Zecariah) had drifted into one form of trouble after another, always coming back and asking his little brother to hide him out… and his little brother always accommodating him out of guilt and pity and fear. The night the old man died, Les had fallen asleep… it had been T.Z. who sat up with him and then first held the old man when he lay dying (“Don’t dose your eyes!” Les could remember T.Z. screaming, waking Les up) and then later it had been Les whom T.Z. had held, trying to comfort the sobbing and terrified boy… If only T.Z. could always have been the person he’d been at that moment.

    “Come on,” T.Z. said softly. He put a hand on Les’s shoulder. “Even if you don’t want to help us out, you can at least be nice to your brother, can’t you?”

    Les knew he was being manipulated. T.Z. was so good at that. His sad gaze. His gentle voice. His
need.
T.Z. could manipulate woman or man when he wanted to, and right now he wanted to.

    Les nodded to the bartender for a beer, waited for his mug, and then picked it up and went over and sat down.

    Neely said, “You like it here?”

    “Cedar Rapids?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Yes, I do.”

    “Actually, it looks like a nice-people little town.”

    “It is.” It was difficult with Neely to keep a defensive tone from your voice. Neely always made you feel you had to apologize for existing. He was smart-smarter than most people, that was for sure -and he never let you forget it.

    “Hey, Les, ease down. I’m not being sarcastic. I spent the day walking around. You didn’t see me-but I was there when you were pitching that scrimmage game and I-well, I was there when you went for a ride with Susan.”

    Before Les could get angry again, T.Z. said, “So you’re pitching again?”

    “Yes.”

    “Too bad that had to happen and all. In Chicago, I mean.”

    “I just got-scared.”

    For once T.Z.’s smile seemed genuine. “You were like that when you were a little kid. You’d want something and then just before you got it-you got scared. Like you didn’t deserve it or something.” T.Z.’s voice was not without a certain sadness. “Where me-I just took the things I wanted.”

    Neely said, “I’m really happy that you two want to talk about the old days. But we’re here on business, T.Z.” He looked at Les. "T.Z.’s wanted for murder.”

    T.Z. slammed his fist on the table. “God, Neely, you promised-”

    “The kid should know the truth.”

    Les just sat there, stunned. “Murder?”

    He had long ago accepted the reality of his brother being a thief. But T.Z. and Neely usually managed to keep their robberies to small-town banks and to cheating traveling businessmen out of their money and working vast scams on groups of greedy suckers.

    “What happened?”

    “Train,” Neely said.

    “You stuck up a train?”

    “Yes,” Neely said, and for the first time he sounded defensive.

    “God,” Les said.

    “You know all the trouble that goes with that.” Neely leaned forward. “Well, your brother let his mask slip. I thought I’d killed the only man who could identify him, but somebody else saw us as we escaped-” He pulled a folded-up sheet of paper from his pocket. Handed it to Les. It was a wanted poster. $5000 Cash was being offered by the railroad for the apprehension. Dead or Alive, of this man for whom the poster had no name. Fortunately for T.Z., at the time he was seen escaping the train, he’d been wearing a beard.

    “But you just said you killed him,” Les said to Neely.

    “I did. But it doesn’t matter which one of us actually killed him. We’ll both hang if they catch us.”

    “We need money,” T.Z. said. “We need to go to Mexico. Hide out there for a few years.”

    “What about the money from the train?”

    A cruel smile touched Neely’s lips. “T.Z. here seemed to be of the mind that a certain diamond shipment was being sent from Chicago to Sterling.” Neely shook his head. “Seems T.Z. was wrong.”

    “We didn’t get much of anything,” T.Z. said.

    “Then we heard from Oubbins-remember him? He happened to be riding the rails when he spotted you in Cedar Rapids. Working in a bank no less,” Neely said. “So-we came here to see you.” He leaned forward, half whispered, “We figured the way we covered for you the last time you worked in a bank, you’d be more than willing to help us out.”

    “I only took that money because we had to pay off that doctor.”

    T.Z. had been wounded in a failed attempt to rob a telegraph station. By the time they reached the small Nebraska town where Les had been working, T.Z. was nearly dead. There was a doc who’d fix him up and not report him to the law-for $500. None of them had the money, so Les was forced to pilfer it from the bank where he’d been working. Then he had to flee town with them before he was caught.

    Now they were here again, dragging him once more into their web of failure and violence.

    And now murder.

    “I can’t do it,” Les said.

    “He’s gone too respectable, T.Z.,” Neely said coolly. “You see, that’s what’s wrong with the capitalist system. You take Les here. Sure, he loves his brother. Sure, he’s grateful his brother helped raise him after the old man died. But now he’s got this comfortable job making comfortable money and seeing the banker’s daughter on the side-so he has to weigh one thing against the other-the things capitalism has given him against his love for his brother. And capitalism wins every time.”

    By the time he’d finished speaking, there was real ire in his voice and his burly body shook with anger.

    “You can go to Mexico,” Les said to T.Z. “I’ll start sending you a part of my paycheck.”

    “Won’t that be nice, now,” Neely said. "Two or three dollars a month, I’d bet.”

    “I’d send you everything I could,” Les said to T.Z., disregarding Neely. “I promise.”

    Neely sighed. For the first time his battered face looked dusty and old. He seemed weary. “You always were a little naive, Les. You don’t understand this. The federal boys are dogging our tracks day and night. It’s just a matter of time. We need the money in the next couple of days. And we need to head for Mexico right away.”

    “He’s not exaggerating, Les. He’s really not.”

    “I just can’t do it.”

    Neely waved for another round. “I’ll tell you what, Les. Before you say yes or no, just listen to our plan. That’s all we’re asking you to do. Just listen. Because I think you’ll see that you can help us without anybody ever knowing. All right?”

    T.Z. said, softly, “All right, Les? Just listen. All right?”

    So the next round of beers came.

    And Les, of course, listened.

    

    

    In the summer streets you could hear the sound of great and earnest hammering, as if some colossal monument were being built.

    Actually, it was many monuments-floats for the Fourth of July parade three days hence.

    On his way to work, Les went down an alley to an open area behind the Empire Hotel. In the morning sunlight, on a field of deep green grass, young people laughed and chattered but kept working diligently at their tasks-making from paper and papier-mache tributes to the the Civil War, to the rich Iowa farmland and to dozens of local merchants-there was a banner for Turechek’s grocery store; a big shoe inside of which would stand a waving girl for Lyoran Brothers shoe store; a large depiction of several kinds of baked goods for the C. K. Kosek bakery; and there were at least fifteen more.

    As he watched them, Les felt an unlikely envy. He wished he were one of these kids-an eighteen-year-old boy flirting with a cute city girl as they worked side by side toward the lazy summer’s biggest event. Looking forward to stolen kisses in the prairie moonlight…

    But he had a slight hangover and was still tired as he recalled last night talking to T.Z. and Neely…

    And his innocent images of innocent romance faded as he recalled how he’d stolen to save his brother’s life… and how they were using his stealing against him now-

    So he could help them take the money from Clinton Edmonds’ bank.

    He stood a few more minutes watching the sunlight dry the dew on the grass, watching glue being slopped on papier-mache, watching two-feet-tall letters being measured out so they could be painted in-

    And then he turned away.

    He was too old and had been too many things to appreciate this sort of innocence anymore.

    Even baseball, which had once been his favorite pastime, had become a burden. When he thought of the headaches he’d developed during the spring training camp in Detroit…

    He hurried on to work.

    Byron Fuller said, “Morning, Les.” He was passing on his way to his office, but then he stopped and came back. “Are you all right?” Les nodded.

    “You look-sick, or something.”

    “I guess I’ve got a headache, sir.”

    Byron smiled. “Nobody’s around, Les. Remember, you don’t have to call me sir.”

    He stared at Byron, thinking again how good it would be to dislike -even hate-the man whom Susan Edmonds loved. But he couldn’t…

    Byron said, “Why don’t you go in the washroom and throw cold water on your face.”

    “I’m all right. Really-”

    “I know. But you want to look as wide awake as possible for when Clinton sees you. Otherwise he’ll get afraid that you won’t be all right for the game.”

    “Well-”

    Byron sighed and then sort of whispered. “You know how he is, Les. He can sort of-well, beat you down.”

    
Just as he’s beaten you down,
Les thought.
And Susan. And me.
Les smiled briefly. “It’s kind of strange how people get so powerful, isn’t it?”