This Side of Jordan (15 page)

Holding up a fistful of bills, the dwarf grinned. “This is quite a fortune!”

Chester tapped ash off his cigarette into the dirt. “It'll make out all right.”

Rascal stuffed the cash back into the bag. “May I ask you a great favor?”

“What's that?”

“Well, I'd like to have a photograph taken of myself in bed with this money that I could mail to Auntie in Hadleyville.”

Chester shook his head. “Just bring the dough back over here.”

Alvin saw a small truck out on the county road coming from the east, lifting clouds of dust on the blue summer sky. Rascal closed the leather bag and lugged it over to the Packard where Chester stuck it into the rear seat once again. He told them, “Keep this under your hat. We need to beat it up to Des Moines without giving anyone the dope on how big we put it over. You get me?”

The dwarf nodded. “Of course.”

“You fellows stay out here. I need a drink.” Chester looked Alvin in the eye. “All right, kid?”

“Sure.”

Chester flicked his cigarette into the dirt and went inside by the front porch. After the door closed, Rascal walked down to the small barn where the farm tractor was parked.

Looking back out to the county road, Alvin noticed the small truck slow at the approach to the driveway. Butterflies churned in his belly. Every so often, he'd heard about trespassers getting shot in Illinois. He considered hurrying indoors to fetch Chester, but decided against it. Maybe he was expecting this fellow and just get sore that Alvin had come into the house when he had already been told not to. On the other hand, maybe this fellow wasn't expecting to find a pack of strangers at his door at all. Alvin had an idea.

He went over to the Packard and undid the radiator filler cap and raised the hood.

By then, the dwarf had noticed the truck, too, and gone to hide inside the barn. Alvin knelt behind the Packard until he heard a noisy truck motor drawing near and the crunching of tires on the dusty gravel. Chester still hadn't come out of the house. When the truck rolled to a stop half a dozen yards away, Alvin rose from his hiding place, hands apart. A cloud of dust stirred up from the driveway swept over him. He coughed harshly and waved it out of his face as a tall scrawny man in work overalls and an army-style hat climbed out of the driver's door. A small boy seated on the passenger side remained in the truck. The man said, “Who are you?”

Alvin shuffled his feet in the dirt, mute.

A wary frown on his brow, the man studied the farm boy up and down and gave the Packard a quick once-over, too. He asked, “You broke down?”

Alvin forced a nod.

“Radiator?”

He nodded again.

“There's water in the pump and a iron pail.” The man gestured toward the other side of the house, well shaded in hackberry. He added, “It'll pay you to use a spout. I got a can back over yonder in the barn by the feed cutter.”

Alvin mumbled a thank you, still scared enough to faint.

The man turned his attention to the boy seated quietly in the truck. “Arnie, get along into the house.”

The boy climbed out of the truck, holding a tiny jackknife. He was wearing a pair of denim trousers and a red-checkered shirt and black cowboy boots. His light hair was freshly combed with a well-oiled cowlick that resisted the wind. He stared at Alvin, eyes clear and curious.

“Go on now,” the man told him.

The boy walked past Alvin without a word, up the steps and into the house. Alvin guessed the kid was just as scared as he was. Then he remembered who was still indoors and his belly went cold. Why had Chester chosen this fellow's house? It didn't make sense.

“It's my son's birthday today,” the man told Alvin. “I just brought him into town for a haircut and a root beer.”

Urging himself to speak up, the farm boy said, “He's a swell kid.”

“What're you doing out here?”

His brain gone dead as wax, Alvin persisted with the same lie, “We're broke down.”

The man fixed him hard with a stare.

He's no dumbbell,
Alvin thought.
He knows I ain't being square with him. If he had a shotgun handy, he'd probably knock me out of my shoes.

The man walked over toward the porch and found a stick in the dirt and brought it back to the Packard. Keeping an eye on Alvin, he poked the stick down into the radiator, then drew it out again. Wet.

He said, “Where's the other fellow?”

Alvin didn't know how to answer that. He felt like a dirty crook and knew he wasn't smart enough to make up another lie. A warm gust of wind kicked up dust and left grit in his eyes. As he rubbed them clear with one hand, he heard the man hurry away toward the house where his boy was calling from indoors.

Alvin saw the dwarf emerge from the corner of the small barn and walk up as far as the tractor.

The front screen door swung shut with a bang.

He had no idea what to do now. He felt rotten as hell. He thought if he wasn't such a coward, he'd probably run off down to the county road and hike back to Illinois. He heard voices briefly inside the house. Alvin closed the hood of the Packard and put the radiator filler cap back on.

Then he waited.

Several minutes went by. The dwarf left the farm tractor and crossed the yard to the side of the house near the plum tree. Dust swirled about. Then the screen door swung open and Chester walked out onto the porch carrying a box of glass canning jars. He paused at the top of the steps and called down to Alvin, “Do you like peach preserves? I just found these down in the cellar.”

Alvin shrugged. “I ain't all that fond of 'em.”

“No?”

“Nope.”

Chester smiled. “Me neither.”

Then he threw the box off the porch upside down.

The din of glass shattering brought Rascal from around the side of the house.

Chester was already down the steps by then, striding toward the Packard. He motioned Alvin to get into the automobile, and slid in behind the wheel. When he started the engine, the dwarf rushed over and climbed into the backseat. Then Chester put the Packard into gear and quickly steered the motorcar around in a circle, aiming it back down the gravel drive. Just before mashing his foot on the gas pedal, he said, “Let me tell you, boys. Hospitality's not what it used to be.”

 

Then they were hurtling down the road toward Stantonsburg, a great hot cloud of dust trailing in their wake. Part of Chester's morning newspaper billowed up and out of the backseat of the Packard. It alighted once in the middle of the road, and flew off like a kite into the fields. Along the roadside, switchgrass stood taller than the Packard and swayed in the draft as the automobile sped by. Alvin saw dozens of sparrows perched on telegraph wires, crowding one another for room, hardly paying notice to the roaring motor. Only a few people were about anywhere he looked: a man on a tractor off in a cornfield to the east; three women standing under the porch eaves of a tall white farmhouse to the west; and outside a small house next to the road, a little girl with pigtails chasing a black Labrador through billowing laundry in a windy yard.

After driving about three miles, Chester spoke up again. “Listen up, kid, here's how I've doped this out. I arranged a four o'clock appointment at the Union Bank over in Stantonsburg. We'll be meeting a fellow there named Jerome. When I telephoned this morning, I told him about a young pal of mine whose uncle just kicked off and left him a load of dough and that he'd like to start up a bank account.”

“Who's that?” Alvin said, somewhat desultorily. He felt thoroughly demoralized over what had just happened back at the farmhouse, and thought if he weren't such a yellow-bellied coward, he'd jump out of the auto right now and kill himself. That'd cure his cough for good and all, and who'd miss him, anyhow? Nobody, that's who.

“You.”

“Huh?”

“Your name's Buddy McCoy and you just inherited a bag of money from your dear old Uncle Homer. You're rich now, see, you're getting up in the world, and you want your dough in a safe place, so you asked me to set you up with a bank downtown. You heard they're a fine lot at Union, and you're sure they'll give you a square deal, but you want it to be confidential. That's why you came up with the big idea of running in after hours. If they want to take charge of your money, it'll have to be at your convenience. When I had him on the wire, Jerome told me he'd be delighted to have you call today at four if that'd make you happy. He seems like a swell fellow. Of course, once he lets us in, we'll clean 'em out. Swell gag, isn't it?”

“It's a wonderful plan,” the dwarf acknowledged from behind a Texaco road map he was studying. Alvin glared at him. Chester drove faster, bouncing across the dips in the road, swerving here and there to avoid sinkholes. A quarter mile farther on, he ran the Packard straight over a dead fox.

The whole idea scared the hell out of Alvin. He didn't want to go inside another bank at all. If he were lucky, he'd get shot and it'd be over and done with. Hanging his arm out the window into the hot draft, he said, “Maybe I ain't made for this sort of thing. I hate lying and I ain't very good at it, neither.”

“Nobody lies better than I do,” the dwarf remarked.

The farm boy agreed. “You're a bag of wind, all right.”

“Perhaps I ought to play the role of the wealthy nephew,” Rascal argued, ignoring the jibe. “All you'd need to do is give me my lines. I'm a whiz at memorization, and I can be utterly convincing.”

Chester shook his head. “Not on your life. We couldn't put that over in a bughouse. Who'd leave his fortune to a midget?”

The Packard struck a sharp dip in the dusty road, jolting the dwarf off-balance, bouncing him backward into the seat.

“I'd rather stay with the car,” Alvin persisted, worried like the devil now. “I ain't cut out for selling this stuff. It gives me a big bellyache and I ain't ashamed to tell you.”

“I don't need you in the car,” Chester barked. “I need you in the bank acting like a lucky plowboy whose rich uncle just fell down a well. So stop squawking. You can put it over, all right. Just don't act nervous. Remember, they got to listen when they know who you are.”

 

Stantonsburg was shady and quiet in the afternoon, sidewalks mostly empty, shops all closing up in the four o'clock hour, both roads leading out of town clear of traffic.

“They're having a rutabaga festival today over at a fairgrounds across town,” Chester said, as they rolled through the center of Stantonsburg. “What the hell's a rutabaga?”

“The rutabaga is a large turnip with an edible yellow root,” the dwarf explained. “Auntie and I once grew them in our garden. One year, we even won a blue ribbon at the Hadleyville Fair for best of show. Rutabagas are quite tasty if you know how to prepare them.”

“Momma used to cook them on Sundays after church whenever Reverend Tyler'd come for dinner,” Alvin added.

“Aren't they swell?” said the dwarf, smiling.

“No,” Alvin replied. “They taste like boiled shoes.”

“Cut the chatter,” Chester interrupted. “Fact is, thanks to the festival, downtown's closing early today, so we'll be the last customers doing business at the bank. They'll lock the doors behind us and we'll have all the time we need. You just keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking, we won't have any trouble.”

Chester steered over to the curb between Rexall Drugs and Foote's hardware, a block and a half from the Union Bank. He stopped the car and turned off the motor. The air was dry and smelled of cornfields. Chester climbed out of the Packard, stretched and yawned. Alvin got out, too, then jerked his thumb in the dwarf's direction. “What about him? What's his job?”

Without looking at Rascal, Chester replied, “He's staying in the car, and keeping his mug out of sight. I doubt they have a lot of midgets around here and if they see him with us, you can be sure they'll remember.”

“I could disguise myself,” said the dwarf, still sitting low with his Texaco map in the backseat. “I was in a play once.”

“Well, that won't go around here. You're sticking with the car, see?” Chester added, “We'll be back in about twenty minutes, so I'm telling you straight: no monkey business. After this, we're pulling out.”

He reached back into the Packard and grabbed the black leather bag. He handed it to Alvin. “All right, kid, let's go.”

They headed up the sidewalk toward the Union Bank. Most of the blinds in the upper windows on Omaha Street were shut. Birds perched on the rooftops surveyed the empty sidewalks below. Already, the hair on the back of Alvin's neck bristled. He searched the elm trees for black crows, a sure omen of death. Probably he ought to have borrowed Granny Chamberlain's corncob Cross of Jesus out of Momma's chifforobe and brought it west with him. That old crucifix, his momma had maintained, held sway against all manner of jinxes and evil. Granny Chamberlain lived to be eighty-nine so far just by hanging it on a nail over her bed and whispering the Lord's Prayer before sleeping every night. She prayed for Alvin when he was in the sanitarium and he came home cured, so everybody knew its power was genuine. Of course, he had also gotten sick again, which just proved nothing was on the level anymore.

As they came up to the Union Bank, Alvin saw a fellow in a blue pinstriped suit with a white carnation on his lapel waiting behind the glass at the front door. He dangled a set of keys on a large iron ring in his left hand and cracked a big smile as he stepped outside to greet his new customers.

Chester tipped his hat to the guy. “Afternoon, sir. Are you Jerome?”

“Indeed, I am. And you're Mr. Wells, I assume?”

“Yes, sir.”

They shook hands.

“Well, did y'all have a nice lunch?”

“We sure did.”