Graves' Retreat (20 page)

    

    

    Just as Susan’s mother finished telling her daughter what had happened at the bank this morning, there was a bold knock at the front door.

    Susan and her mother were in the kitchen with its smells of potato salad and chicken being prepared for dinner on the veranda tonight. Mid-aftemoon sunlight streamed through the mullioned windows. Jays and robins and wrens had collected on one of the bird feeders in the vast back yard. Their song imposed itself on the sudden silence in the kitchen as the two women waited to find out who was at the door.

    Moira, the maid, appeared moments after the knock. “It’s Mr. Fuller, miss.”

    Susan and her mother glanced at each other. “Is Father still upstairs?”

    Her mother, who had been crying for most of the past two hours, nodded and promptly began tearing up again. “He’s locked himself in his den. He won’t come out.”

    “Then I’d best see Byron outdoors, in case Father should come down.”

    “I don’t want him in my house, anyway.”

    Susan let Moira leave then. Despite her mother’s teariness, Susan let her anger show. “You’re not being fair to Byron, Mother. Father has treated him terribly all his life-just the way he’s treated us.”

    “You should not talk about your own father that way.”

    “When I’ve seen Byron, I plan to go up and see Father.”

    Mrs. Edmonds looked past the lacy handkerchief she had pressed to her fleshy cheeks. “He’s too hurt to let you in. In thirty-five years, I’ve never seen your father this way. So-despondent.”

    “He needed to be told.”

    Mrs. Edmonds flared. “Did he need to be told that harshly?” Her thin voice had risen to a scream.

    Susan stood up from her chair. “I’m going to see Byron now, Mother. I’ll be back soon.”

    She had turned to leave the kitchen, then paused and went over to her mother. She took the smaller woman in her arms and held her, rocking her gently, as if Susan were the mother.

    Then she went to see Byron.

    

    

    In the late afternoon, Neely still not back yet, T.Z. left the cabin, taking his pint bottle of rye with him, and went up in the bluffs that stretched to the north.

    After Neely had left this morning, T.Z. had slept off the remains of last night’s drunk.

    He’d awakened pretty sober, given all he’d had to drink, and faced the one thing he hadn’t wanted to face.

    What he was doing to his younger brother’s life.

    He hoped to lose in the beauty of nature the dread and guilt that had been with him on waking.

    He spent an hour in the bluffs, drinking all the time. At one point he came to the edge of a steep red-day cliff and looked down on a railroad trestle that stretched over a sparkling expanse of clear blue river. A train wound its way westward, smoke beautiful against the sky. T.Z. wanted to be on that train, headed out to California, a state he’d always meant to see but somehow had never gotten to.

    Would Les go to prison?

    That thought cut through his entire time in the bluffs, ensured that he would have no peace.

    He roamed a mile of sawtimber and wildflowers as various as bloodroot and wild ginger and ginseng; he saw pheasant and fox and squirrel.

    And still the thought was with him: Would the bank officials tie Les to the robbery and-would Les go to prison?

    He had more to drink and returned to the cabin.

    Neely, in new clothes, sat outside the cabin door smoking a cigarette. A bluish haze partially concealed his angry gaze.

    "Already, huh?” Neely said, nodding to the now empty pint bottle.

    T.Z. resented his tone. He smashed the bottle against a rock. “Maybe I goddamn needed it.”

    Neely said, “Seems you’re always needing it.”

    Then T.Z. surprised them both by saying, “I don’t want to go through with it, Neely.”

    For the first time he could ever recall, T.Z. saw something like shock register on Neely’s face.

    “You don’t want to go through with the robbery, you mean?”

    “That’s just what I mean. Just goddamn
exactly
what I mean.” T.Z. had these moods, a drunkard’s bravery and honor. It was as if through the long and endless days of his drinking he would see what he had become, then try suddenly to deny his worst suspicions by doing something right and honorable.

    “We’ve used the kid long enough. He shouldn't have to pay for what we did.”

    “Mexico’s a mean place without money, T.Z. A damn mean place.” Neely ground out his cigarette in the grass. “Anyway, I just got finished talking to Les and he wants to help us.”

    “Wants,” T.Z. snapped. “He no more ‘wants’ to help us than anything. What you mean is, he’s forced to help us because you showed him that wanted poster and because he’s afraid I’ll hang.”

    Neely smiled coldly. “You know who he saw last night?”

    “Who?”

    Neely was obviously enjoying this. He knew how T.Z. would react to the name. “Black Jake Early.”

    T.Z. felt some of his resolve lessen almost immediately. His mouth got dry. Without a word, he plunged back into the cabin for another pint bottle. He came back out a few minutes later, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He needed a shave and a bath. Now the bird song that had lulled him for a time this afternoon only irritated him. “I want a good hotel room,” he said. “I want a woman.” He was getting drunk, fast.

    Neely just watched him.

    T.Z. wandered around in little circles, taking small drinks from the bottle.

    He was thinking of his father now-of how his father had closed his eyes there at the last-and how that had been, at least, peaceful. But hanging would not be peaceful.

    No.

    There would be the sneer of the mob and the cut of the rope and the drop of the trapdoor.

    The panic was on him, then, and Neely seemed to be smiling contentedly now and T.Z. knew just what Neely was thinking-that T.Z. was always easiest to handle when the panic was on him.

    “He’s my own brother, and I’m ruining his life,” T.Z. said.

    Neely just kept looking at him.

    And smiling all the more as T.Z.’s resolve got drunk out and paced out and scared out of him.

    “He’s my own brother,” T.Z. said.

    But he spoke in a whisper and between drinks now.

    “My own brother,” T.Z. said.

    

    

    The afternoon was a fever of impatient customers wanting their money quickly.

    At one point George Buss leaned from his station over to Les and said, “You ever notice how some folks get downright unpleasant before a holiday?”

    Les smiled. “Yes, I have noticed that, George.”

    But George was one of the few people Les favored with his whole attention this afternoon.

    Most of the time he spent down the hallway where Byron Fuller’s office stood.

    Many times, when Clinton Edmonds left early for the day, Les had noticed Byron Fuller take from somewhere in his desk a piece of paper, which he always then carried over to the safe at closing time.

    Byron Fuller, following his odd behavior this morning, had yet to return to the bank.

    Which meant that Les might be safe in going into his office and-

    “I still have five dollars coming,” the blond man in the celluloid collar said. He spoke in the tone you take with a disobedient animal.

    Les, whose mind had been wandering back to Byron Fuller’s office, said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” He could not quite bring himself, given the man’s arrogance, to say, “Sir.”

    “You may be a wonderful pitcher,” the man said, “but you’re a hell of a bad bank clerk.”

    He said it loudly enough so that everybody around them would be sure to hear.

    The frail woman with the gray hair and tiny eyeglasses standing in line at George Buss’ window said, “And you’re a bad sport, whoever you are.” She, too, spoke loudly enough for everybody to hear.

    “Don’t you think he’s got more on his mind than your stupid money?”

    Several people laughed out loud.

    The blond man, flushing, stalked out of the bank.

    “You don’t pay any attention to him,” the frail woman said.

    Les laughed. “Thanks for defending me.”

    She smiled. “Anytime, young man. Anytime.”

    This was followed by a round of everybody’s praise for his pitching in general and wishing him good luck tomorrow in particular.

    

    

    Around three, his lower lip still puffy and his front tooth still loose, Les had to go to the bathroom.

    On the way he passed Byron Fuller’s office. His heart ached with fear.

    He was about to duck in there when he heard from behind him George Buss say, “I’m out of banking slips. You need some?”

    Les just shook his head.

    He saw that George looked at him carefully. “You all right, Les?”

    “Fine.”

    “You look a little-chalky.”

    “All the excitement at the depot this afternoon, I guess.”

    “Maybe you’d better sit down awhile.”

    “Thanks, George, but I’ll be fine.”

    After finishing up, he stood in the bathroom a few minutes, getting himself ready.

    He would have to pretend to be walking past Byron Fuller’s office, then duck in there very quickly and close the door so that nobody could see him.

    Then he’d have to sneak back out without anybody seeing him. He thought of Neely’s reassurance that nobody would know he was involved. Neely said that he’d be sure to make great scraping marks on the face of the safe so that it would appear the robbers had had great difficulty in getting the safe open. “Nobody will suspect I had the combination,” Neely had said.

    But Neely didn’t give a damn if Les went to prison.

    Didn’t give a damn at all.

    He put a thumb to his loose tooth, wondering if it was actually going to drop out, and then he left the bathroom and started back down the hall.

    He passed the accounting department, nodding to the women who worked there. They each wished him luck on the game.

    Then he was in front of Byron Fuller’s office.

    Looking left, right, in back of him, in front of him.

    He sweated, shook, sensed that with this act the life he’d built so carefully for himself here was about to come to an end.

    But he couldn’t let T.Z. die. He couldn’t.

    He bolted into the office, easing the door almost fully closed so that nobody could see him.

    Behind his desk, Byron Fuller had a large landscape of Iowa farmland in autumn. The artist had touched silver for hoarfrost over some of the fiery-colored leaves and grasses. It was so beautiful and vivid you almost expected your breath to start pluming out and to feel the exhilarating shock of cold air in your lungs.

    The rest of the office was routine, a bookcase plump with leather-bound tomes on banking and financial law; a desk that aspired to presidential dimensions (such as the vast one claimed by Clinton Edmonds) but did not quite succeed; and an oil portrait of Susan Edmonds so fetching Les was momentarily captivated by it.

    But as he looked, a peculiar feeling came over him. Though he liked Susan and felt a warmth for her still, he realized in staring at the portrait that he was glad to be seeing May Tolan again. He was more comfortable with May than he’d been with Susan and not until this moment had he realized that.

    Then he began his frantic search through the drawers.

    At one point, he could not stop himself from smiling.

    In the course of searching Byron Fuller’s desk, he had found, among many other items, several sticks of licorice, a pencil drawing that depicted Clinton Edmonds as a Hydra-headed monster, and at least three different Beadle novels portraying derring-do on the frontier.

    So this was how the modem executive passed his time, Les thought. But he felt no malice; indeed the frivolous nature of these things only made him like Byron more. They were similar people.

    He went through all the drawers on the left, then all the drawers on the right.

    Nothing.

    Then he went through the center drawer.

    Still nothing.

    Then he heard the two women from the accounting department stop to talk right outside the door.

    Would one of them notice that he had pushed the door shut?

    Had one of them heard the squeak the floor had made just now as he’d eased back on his heels?

    He was suspended in a terrible floating moment of dread.

    He saw himself in prison-recalled all the stories friends of T.Z. and Neely had always told of what prison life was like-and saw the face of May Tolan receding, receding, lost finally in a mist, as if in a forlorn dream.

    Then the two women, laughing about something, moved on and Les resumed his search.

    He went through the drawers on the left again and then the drawers on the right, assuming that his nervousness had caused him to miss it first time through.

    But still he had no luck.

    His fingers worked through the middle drawer.

    Nothing.

    Then, almost instinctively, he felt on the drawer’s bottom and there it was.

    Taped to the rough surface of the unvarnished back side of the wood-what he’d been looking for.

    He removed the tape carefully, then set about copying the formula on the paper.