Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon (17 page)

“Snakes,” Andrew says. “We have one asset no other bank robbers ever had before. That is snakes.”

“I’m listening,” Jesse says.

Myrtle admonishes Jesse, calling him by his first, middle, and last name.

“Let the man speak,” Jesse tells her, and she relinquishes, so Andrew continues.

“It’s our job to deliver the snakes to Oregon, but nobody ever said we couldn’t use them to our advantage along the way. Besides, they been cooped up in that coffin since early yesterday. A little bank heist will be good. Let ’em stretch their snake legs.”

“So we rob a bank…with snakes,” Jesse says.

“Imagine you’re in line at the bank, ready to cash your big paycheck. Then suddenly some guys burst in and unleash snakes all throughout the bank. So now there’s snakes crawling around
everywhere
. The people will want to panic, but you’ve already told them, one move and your brains go bye-bye. If they move, they get shot. If they move, maybe a snake bites ’em. If they don’t move, well, maybe a snake bites ’em anyway. Point is, they’d all be so worried a snake was gonna crawl on ’em they wouldn’t even get a look at our faces or anything.”

This is all it takes to win Jesse over. “Sounds good to me,” he says. “I think we can do it.”

“Here’s the icing on the cake. We don’t get greedy. We already have the big payout coming to us when we get to Oregon. We just need enough to sustain us for the rest of the trip.”

Myrtle is still skeptical. “What about the police?”

“What about them?” Andrew says.

“Where will they be? Clearly you two dummies need to think this through.”

“Haha, please. Jesse and I have dogged many a small town like this. We’ll call in a bomb threat at the local high school. That’ll keep the whole task force occupied for at least a couple hours.”

Myrtle throws up her hands, giving in. “Sounds like you thought it all through. I guess we’re doing it then. We’re robbing a bank.” And suddenly there’s a newfound excitement in her voice. “Oh my god, I’ve never robbed a bank before.”

***

They pull up in front of the only bank in town. Andrew backs into a parking space that will allow them time to prepare inconspicuously but also permit a quick getaway. Andrew calls in a bomb threat to the high school on his car phone. Then they open the coffin, empty their suitcases, and load the suitcases full of snakes. What the snakes have done to the catfish makes Myrtle vomit. She sits at the wheel while Andrew and Jesse enter the bank, underwear fashioned into masks over their heads, armed with guns and carrying suitcases full of snakes. They dump the snakes on the floor, scattering them as much as possible.

Andrew, like a carnival barker, announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a bank robbery. Please get down on the ground.”

People scream as they fall to the floor.

“Except for you,” Andrew says, pointing to the lone teller. “And do not trigger the silent alarm. Is anyone else back there with you?”

The teller shakes her head no.

“Anyone who moves or disobeys our orders in any way will get shot in the fuckin’ face.”

“Or bit by a fuckin’ snake,” Jesse adds.

Andrew turns to Jesse. “Is that it? Did I cover all the bases?”

Jesse shouts, “And give us all your fucking money! Or at least a thousand bucks.”

“You want a thousand dollars?” the teller asks.

“Or two-thousand. It doesn’t matter.”

“A thousand is fine,” Andrew says. “We’re not greedy.”

“We only have ones,” the teller says.

Andrew looks at her. “A bank with only one dollar bills?”

“We only do small bill transactions on Saturday. The rest is locked in the vault, and I don’t have the key.”

“Well we’re not prejudiced, sweetheart. Just make it snappy.”

The teller feeds dollar bills into the bill counter while Andrew and Jesse monitor the crowd. The snakes are slithering amongst the people, doing everything they are supposed to do.

Jesse’s not so sure, though. He nudges Andrew. “You sure these are medicinal snakes? They look like regular old diamondbacks to me.”

“Medicinal as a can of whoop-ass if you don’t shut your trap,” Andrew warns.

An old man on the floor speaks up: “Sirs, please get this snake off me. I have a fear of them.”

Jesse steps toward the man. “You have a fear, do ya?”

“Yes.”

“Well let me help you with that.”

Jesse puts a bullet in the old man’s calf.

The man flails in agony, causing the snake on him to grow agitated and strike out, biting him.

“Now which hurt worse, the bullet or the snake?” Jesse turns to address the crowd. “If anyone else has a fear of snakes, guns, or anything else on God’s green earth, please let me know.”

Nobody has a fear of anything.

Andrew leans over the counter, asks the teller what the hell’s taking so long.

The teller panics. She tells Andrew that the bill counter has jammed up.

“Then fuck the counter and put it all in a bag.”

The teller stuffs several stacks of bills into a bag and places it on the counter. Andrew snatches it up, says to her, “Now come around here and lie down with the rest.”

The teller starts to weep, but she comes around the counter and lies down on the floor, as far from any snakes as possible, which is not very far away, because they’re everywhere.

Andrew bows to the crowd. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your cooperation. Please count to five-hundred before moving from your current position. If we come back to check on you and a single one’a you has moved so much as a finger, I swear to god we’ll kill you all.”

“Come on!” Jesse urges.

Andrew and Jesse flee the bank, run to where the ice cream truck is parked. They hop in and take the underwear masks off their heads.

“Did you get the cash?” Myrtle asks, on the verge of panic herself.

“We got the cash!” Jesse says.

Myrtle sits there, hand on the key but not quite turning it.

“Somethin’s missing,” she says.

“You drivin’ is what’s missin’. Now go, before the pigs come.”

“The snakes!” Myrtle shrieks.

Andrew and Jesse look dumbfounded.

“You idiots forgot the snakes in the bank.”

“Aw, fuck.”

“Horseshit.”

“Those snakes are the only reason we’re doing all this,” Myrtle says. “Don’t throw away our riches, Jesse.”

Andrew slides open the back door of the truck and hops out. “Come on, both of you. They should still be counting in there. Let’s collect the snakes and get the fuck away from this bumfuck no-good stinkin’ town.”

Myrtle’s still in the sea-foam green dress, filthy now, and Jesse’s in his gray Sears suit.

Inside the bank, the folks on the floor have just counted off two-hundred.

Andrew screams at them, “You’re counting too fast. Go back to zero.”

The people start counting over as the three of them gather up snakes, which is a difficult task, considering they’ve got to stuff them all in suitcases and not get bitten or allow others to get out, but they manage pretty well and they’ve almost collected all the snakes when—

Myrtle, dropping a suitcase full of snakes with a clatter, cries out, “Ow! The sumbitch bit me!”

At her feet, a rattlesnake coils for another strike.

“Myrtle!” It’s Jesse.

The snake strikes out, bites her again. She falls down as Jesse gets to her, stomping the snake’s head into pulp.

Around them, the people on the floor continue counting.

“Stop counting!” Jesse says.

Andrew, realizing the situation is unraveling, clasps Myrtle’s fallen suitcase as well as his own and makes for the door. “Grab her, man, and let’s go,” he says.

Jesse scoops Myrtle into his arms, whispering words of comfort to her. Andrew holds the door for them, then he tells the people to resume their counting. “Okay, you can start your counting again. Remember to go slow. It isn’t a footrace. And if we realize we left any snakes behind, we’ll be back, so don’t you fucking dare move. Have a nice day, folks.”

***

The ice cream truck whips out of the bank parking lot, driven by Andrew. Jesse’s in the back of the truck, sucking poison out of Myrtle. Andrew turns on the ice cream truck music, thinking it’ll make them seem less conspicuous, just a regular old ice cream truck passing through town. He’s sweating and the sweat stings his eyes but then they’re on the highway again and they’re flying.

Thirty miles down the road—

“Myrtle, stay with me honey,” Jesse says. Then to Andrew he says, “She’s not doing so good.”

Andrew keeps his eyes on the road. “What do you want us to do? We can’t take her to a hospital.”

“I don’t know, man. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”

“Shit, nothing’s ever supposed to happen, Jesse. Nothing ever happens unless you make it happen. Sometimes it just happens to go wrong.”

“Don’t philosophize me. This is your fault.”

“Fuckin’ whatever. I invited you to join me in something special. This is how you choose to repay me because your fiancée can’t bag a goddamn snake?”

“Stop the truck,” Jesse says.

“What?”

“Stop the truck. We’re done.”

“Who’s done what?”

“Myrtle and I are done with this. With you. We want out.”

Andrew says quietly, “If you want out, you can jump.”

Jesse sucker punches him in the side of the head, causing Andrew to jerk hard on the wheel. The truck swerves, hits a pothole in the road at a bad angle, destroying a tire. Andrew regains control but the tire is fucked and the wheel too.

“Pull over!”

“I can’t! The cops will be out looking for us. If we try walking along the highway, we’ll be sitting ducks.”

So they drive minus a tire, waiting for the whole thing to give out and the truck to wreck, killing them all, but it doesn’t, and they manage to pull over at the next rest stop and park safely.

At the rest stop, they situate their possessions—snakes and cash and catfish. The snakes stay locked up. The cash goes into Andrew’s duffel bag. The catfish find a new home in the dumpster. Andrew and Jesse take turns in the bathroom washing the blood and fish guts off them and changing clothes. When they are each wearing a clean Sears suit, they begin approaching truckers for a ride. Myrtle remains in the back of the ice cream truck, only semiconscious, but even without her presence, it isn’t long before a kind trucker sympathizes with their story of this poor man’s pretty young fiancée, bitten by a rattlesnake on a camping trip gone awry.

The trucker’s name is Harold Payton. He claims to be Walter Payton’s uncle. He says he owns a whole fleet of trucks and isn’t required to go out and drive himself, but sometimes he gets an itch to travel, so he takes on a route.

They finally escape the Lone Star State. Harold mostly talks while they listen. Myrtle starts recovering at some point along the drive and she asks about his wife, but he says he never married and never had children of his own. He moved to California when he was young to evade an unmentioned bad situation. If he could do anything different, he says, he’d become a youth guidance counselor, that in Sacramento he sees a lot of troubled young people who are into drugs and whatnot and just falling apart, and he feels he could offer them a certain perspective, be someone who would care and see that they implement change into their lives. “But alas, I run a trucking business. It’s a good living. I just wish I had someone to share it with. I ain’t religious so it’s not like I donate part of my living to a church.”

“Maybe you could donate to a charity,” Myrtle suggests.

Harold dismisses this idea. “They’re all crooks. I donated to what’s that sponsor a baby in Africa program. I donated to them for years. Then I found out rich white people pocket most of the money and almost none of it goes over to Africa.”

“I’m sure there’s an honest organization out there somewhere,” Myrtle says.

“I’m sure there is too,” Harold says. “I just haven’t found it yet.”

And then, while Jesse and Andrew crash in Harold’s sleeping quarters, Myrtle sits up front in the passenger seat and has a long conversation with Harold. She opens up about her vision for the future, the home she and Jesse will own, their future family full of babies, the clothes that she will wear and the clothes that she will dress her children in. She can smell the green lawn and the chocolate chip cookies and the leather seats of the good car in the driveway. Myrtle has a dream of safety and cleanliness, where nightmares are merely a thing you wake up from in your comfortable bed next to a husband who will comfort you.

“Do you believe in immortality?” Harold asks her.

Myrtle isn’t religious either, but she thinks about it, and she nods her head. She says, “Yeah, I think I do.”

When they stop in the darkness at a twenty-four hour roadside diner, Myrtle orders blueberry pancakes.

Andrew orders a whole steak and eggs breakfast with a side of bacon and when his food comes, he takes it with him into the bathroom along with both snake-filled suitcases. “Don’t wanna keep us any longer than I have to, so I’m just gonna eat while I freshen up,” he says, and he makes a beeline toward the bathroom, where he locks the door and sets the suitcases on the floor, and he breathes deeply to ease the heavy beating of his heart.

At the table, Jesse smiles like Andrew’s so amusing. “Some people like to eat in privacy, I guess. Haha.”

Harold focuses on his biscuits and gravy, shoveling food into his mouth in a slow, deliberate fashion. He looks up from his food, wipes his mouth with his napkin, and says, “Who am I to say what’s right?” Then he lowers his head again.

In the bathroom, Andrew scrapes steak and eggs into the two suitcases, sparing only the hash browns for himself.

The snakes are dying. Some have already passed and the ones that are still alive look limp. None even act pissed off that they’ve been cooped up in a suitcase. The snakes will not make it all the way to Boring.

***

They arrive in Sacramento.

Harold says to Andrew and Jesse, “You two are nice boys. If you plan on settling down in Sacramento and need work, let me know. Trucking ain’t easy, and it’s lonely for a lot of people, but you can provide a decent living for your family. I offer full benefits too. Medical, dental, you name it.”