That Good Night (7 page)

Ms. Keats-Emory led me to box 1443 in a tidy vault located in the basement. She inserted the bank key and turned the lock. Then I inserted my key and the box was in my hand. Leaving the vault, we entered a small ante-room where Ms. Keats-Emory left me behind a locked door. I set the box on a small mahogany table and sat down in a comfortable upholstered arm chair. Offering a peaceful respite from the turbulent escape, the softly lit room was elegantly decorated with flocked light green wallpaper, dark woods and soft brown carpeting. My stomach was fluttering with a flock of butterflies. No, make that dragonflies. I mean, I was really shaking. My life was in that dark green metal box. Gingerly, I lifted the lid. Inside was a note that I wrote to myself. It read,
You son-of-a bitch. I hope life's good
. Signed,
Your loving self
. I smiled. “It sure is,” I chuckled.

Under the note was a stack of bills: One-hundred-six-thousand-dollars in denominations of hundreds, fifties, and twenties. I reverently placed the tidy stacks on the small table. I closed my eyes. This was my secret. Lori knew nothing of it. My kids would never get it. The people who had given it to me were either dead or too old to care. At the bottom of the box was an envelope containing four labeled keys: Binghamton, Scranton, York, and Annapolis. I folded the envelope and put it in my pocket and closed the empty box.

A stack of bills amounting to over a hundred thousand dollars was larger than my pockets could hold. I didn't bring a briefcase or a gym bag, or anything to put it in. I couldn't leave the self-locking door and I sure as hell didn't want to use the intercom to ask for help. Even with my pockets stuffed full, I still had a lot of bills to deal with. With no other apparent
solution of how to deal with them, I took off my pants, slid off my boxer shorts, tied them into a makeshift bag, and stuffed them with the remaining money. I had a bit of a time scrunching it all together, but in the end I was able to jam it under my arm and exit the bank without a wisp of impropriety. I had to rap on the car window to get Bob's attention—he could fall asleep at the blink of an eye. He hit the unlock button. I slipped into the car seat, underwear dangling from my left hand. “Have an accident?” Bob asked, eying the bulging boxer shorts.

I spread the elastic. “Does this look an accident?”

“Holy shit!” Bob exclaimed. “Did you rob the place?”

“I thought we already talked about that,” I answered. “Of course I didn't.”

“But Charlie, there's a lot of money there, that is if it's not all ones or fives.”

“One-hundred-sixty-thousand.”

“I'm glad I'm carrying.”

“Carrying what?”

“A 38 special. Under the seat.”

I shook my head. “I should have guessed, Bob. But, I don't think we'll need it.”

“Never know.”

“Okaaaay,” I said, “let's leave that subject for later. Next stop, Binghamton, sixty miles, south.”

“Negative,” Bob declared, taking on CB radio lingo. “Utica, to get my truck.”

I had forgotten about his truck.

Bob's F150 made the nondescript Camry look like a Bentley. Think rust. Dents just about everywhere. A faded green bed-cap with a ladder rack bolted askew to the truck body, a rear
bumper fashioned from a hand-hewn log. Some wire dangling underneath. Complete with a coat-hanger radio aerial. I knew this truck when it was new. That was over twenty years ago. Picking out the one positive thing, I said, “New tires.”

“No sense running down here on the bald ones,” Bob said proudly.

Rent-A-Wreck paid, we hopped into the truck. Though worn, the cab was clean and orderly, the one exception being strands of dog hair clinging to the grey velveteen covered seat. He explained that the hair was to remind him of Faithful, his dead German Shepherd. Bob inserted a worn key into the ignition. Expecting a coughing rumbling roar, I was relieved to hear instead the quiet power of mechanical perfection. My recollection of Bob's engineering prowess assured, I fastened the seat belt, set the underwear bag of money between us, and asked, “Can we take the path less traveled by?”

“No interstate! That'll be a pleasure.” From under the seat, Bob retrieved his Garmin. Expertly fiddling with a few buttons he programmed our route to Binghamton—two-lane back roads except for a few miles of interstate as we neared the city. After clicking the GPS into a bracket that was suction cupped to the windshield, Bob slid the shifter into Drive.
Turn left in 300 feet
,” a monotone electronic female commanded as we pulled out of the parking lot.

FROM RIBS TO WRANGLERS
, announced the roadside billboard,
JUST SOUTH OF DOG HOLLOW
. We were about midway between Syracuse and Binghamton. “Time to get you some underwear,” Bob suggested.

“And a few other things,” I agreed.

Fat Joe, the clerk's preferred moniker, led me from shoes to pants to shirts to socks to underwear. Choice of Hanes and Carhart and of course, Wranglers. I traded geezer wardrobe for farmer/construction worker/truck driver. Bob picked up an army surplus duffle bag. “For the money,” he whispered. A rack of succulent ribs completed the deal. I handed Fat Joe two one-hundred dollar bills, my first contribution to small business, courtesy of the graft and corruption associated with our deep-pocketed defense industry.

Let me tell you what the taste of freedom is really like: Chewing on a smoky rib after months of nursing home food, that's what it is. With Bob driving, I tore into those ribs like a hungry hyena. My hands and face were covered with BBQ sauce. Bob said I looked like a high-chaired kid eating a bowl of spaghetti. And I suppose I did. I sure felt like one sitting there belted into that pick-up's seat, a stack of napkins to my left, a tub of ribs on my lap and a smile a half-a-mile wide. Eyeing the accumulating mess, Bob suggested that we pull off the road to eat. I informed Bob that if we were to make the banks in Binghamton and Scranton, we had to hustle. He agreed, although to Bob that meant going the speed limit instead of five miles slower.

Unlike my clear recollection of HSBC's location in Syracuse, my geographical memory of the Key Bank of Binghamton's location was nonexistent. Bob wasn't one to ask for directions. The Garmin was no help. So we cruised downtown Binghamton. Granite blocked fortress-like bank buildings anchored corners like stentorian guardians of bygone prosperity. They weren't banks anymore. They were restaurants, discos, clothing stores and in some cases, just empty shells. We found a Key Bank in
a ranch-style building that looked more like a drive-in restaurant than a secure place to keep money. Jeremy Gettinger, the appropriately necktied and suited bank-manager spent a few minutes on the phone before directing us to a branch office just south of downtown. With the exception of the olive-drab duffle bag replacing the polka-dot boxer shorts, the procedure for getting my money mirrored Syracuse: this time two hundred fourteen thousand dollars, again in denominations of hundreds, fifties, and twenties.

Retrieving the money from Scranton was easy once we found the bank. Thank God for extended banking hours. In my day they closed at three. The Scranton First National had morphed into The Bank of America. We hit the bank just before closing where I added another one-hundred-eighty-six-thousand dollars to my kitty. Buying a good boat was looking better and better. We stayed overnight in a dingy motel near Wilkes-Barre. Dinner was a Big Mac. If they served these fat-laden things at Sunset, clientele turnover would triple. On the other hand, why not? Why the need to regulate every damn morsel of food? To keep us alive? How many weeks or months would any one of us give to have tasty food?

The motel mattress was thin and lumpy, the linen clean but threadbare. My first night out of Sunset and I actually missed the bed. But by damn, I didn't miss anything else.

Unusual for Bob, he was sound asleep when I awoke at six. Bob was embarrassed that I had to wake him, as if sleeping in was a mortal sin. His MO would have him traipsing all over the place by 4 AM making enough racket to wake the dead. At least that's how it happened when we sailed together. Over breakfast, Bob apologized for
not getting up in time
whatever that meant. “Been a bit tired these days,” he explained as if any explanation was necessary. I simply responded by telling him that older people are allowed to sleep as long as they liked. He seemed to accept that.

On the road by seven, we headed for York, this time via all interstate. Let's just say that Bob's driving was by the rules. If the speed limit was 65 MPH, then we went 65 MPH, no matter that cars passed us like we were standing still. If a car pulled in front of us that Bob thought was too close, he braked hard and called the guy a bastard. Then, slowly, he'd get back up to speed. We spent half the time reading lettering on the back of semis. Between playing road hazard and stopping at nearly every rest stop, we arrived in York just before noon.

After getting my money out of York Savings and Loan, I had a nest egg of eight-hundred-thirty-thousand dollars. With that much money, I could buy a solid boat and live out my days enjoying the good life of a sailor. And there was still one bank to
go. On our way out of York, we stopped in a Wal-Mart where I bought a disposable cell phone. I never had nor needed a cell phone so I was entirely captivated by the device. When I was a kid, we'd use two Campbell soup cans connected by a taut string. Jerry Pearsall, my next door neighbor, and I talked between our adjacent bedroom windows like we were spies behind German lines. Damn, with this cell phone anything was possible. It was like having a Dick Tracy two-way radio watch. I called Cat.

“Hey dude, how's it goin'?”

I filled Cat in on our adventure, sans the stops at various banks. I asked about what happened after our escape.

“I hate to tell you, man, like nobody wanted to call in the cops or anything. Everything was hushed up, like the other inmates don't even know it. Maybe they think you're dead or something. I guess they called one of your kids, because like some lawyer guy came to Sunset this morning raising all kinds of hell. Talked about closing the place down.”

That didn't surprise me one bit. I could see my junior namesake turning the loss of his dad into financial gain. Suing Sunset was right up his alley because my disappearing would tie up my estate. No body, no pay. So my guess is that he'd try to get me declared dead. That'd take a while. Maybe years. In the meanwhile, he had my money to play with, especially since he'd be relieved from paying the nursing home eight-thousand a month.

“What about the implant?” I asked.

“Dude, you're going to love this. I took Kingdom home and like gave him some Ex-Lax. I mean that poor dog. He like crapped like you wouldn't believe. The implant showed up in a turd, like it was packaged. Kingdom left it next to Uncle Dan's back porch. They fingered me, but I'm not cooperating. I think
my uncle just wants to forget all about it.”

Laughing harder than I had in years, I exclaimed, “You've got to be kidding!”

“No man. I'm telling it like it is. Anyway, Kingdom is fine. Like, it's not like you made America's Most Wanted. Anyway, tell the Maine Man I said peace. I'm off to a skateboarding rally. Happy day. And good luck.” Cat clicked off. After telling Bob about Cat's phone call, I sat in gloom. Why in the world would my firstborn's first reaction to my missing be to sue the nursing home? Why not mount a campaign to find me? Both Lori and I grew up with extended families where grandmas and grandpas and uncles and cousins were within an easy Sunday's drive. Back then extended families were the norm. You were born, raised by a tribe of relatives, nurtured into old age by loved ones and buried in the family plot. I remember my grandparents dying: first Grandma, then Grandpa. No nursing home for them. They died at home, both in their late seventies. We were all there. Grandkids, aunts, uncles, cousins. Right there when they died. My parents got the same treatment, though there were far fewer family members around. Then our generation came along. As we got old, extended families were pretty much a thing of the past. The new way is to hire out, let somebody else deal with the old.

Bob's sudden braking of the truck kicked me out of my dark thoughts.

“Squirreled,” Bob said. “Better than a moose, wouldn't you say?” Bob laughed. “So where have you been for the last half-hour?”

“Your kids,” I said. “Do you ever see them?”

“All the time. They come out to the island near the end of
every month. When their bills are due.” He continued, “Maybe that's not fair. They try. My youngest boy works two jobs. He works his ass off. But with three kids and a wife with MS, he's strapped. Writing a check to him is an investment. The other kids don't need the money, but by God, giving it to one seems to empower the others to demand the same. But, I don't give it to them. The louder they holler, the less I listen. What about yours?”

Sparing Bob the details, I just told him that my kids are ingrates and I've pretty much written them off.

Nearing Baltimore, Bob's driving became more and more defensive. His white knuckled fingers gripped the steering wheel like he was just waiting for screeching tires and the crunching sound of metal. Seldom did he exceed fifty miles an hour. Traffic blew by, horns blaring, middle fingers stabbing the air. This was no place for a Maine Islander. As we neared Annapolis, Bob gave me the word: “I have to get back,” he said quietly.

“How about we make the last pick-up, find a place to stay, and you can be on your way tomorrow morning,” I offered. Bob nodded his assent. Visiting The United Bank of Maryland completed my pick-ups. I was surprised at how much I had hidden away. I guess it was time to get it back into the economy. I can tell you, I was damned nervous about having all this cash with no safe place to put it.

Bob and I had talked earlier about my plans to buy a sailboat and head off into the unknown. He wasn't convinced that at eighty-four I would be strong enough to single-hand a boat. I wasn't so sure myself. Whatever stress and strain might be in the offing though, sailing into the sunset was far better than dying in Sunset. We discussed hiring crew—there were a lot of young people wanting sea time. I wasn't averse to the idea. It might be
fun; having some young people around is always a good thing for an old man. But, then again, it scared me to think of myself as an observer. I'd go to bed early, lie in the stateroom, and listen to youth out in the cabin having a good time. I feared being on the outside looking in, peering under the tent rather than being ringside. I didn't want that. I'd rather go it alone.