“What’s that?” Jack said.
“ ‘The Ancient Mariner,’ ” Eddie replied. “Ever read it?”
“Haven’t had much time for reading,” Jack said. “Heard of it, naturally.” He checked his watch. “It doesn’t sound like much from that bit.”
“No?”
“Moon-June stuff—no edge.”
Eddie replaced the leather cover on the blade. He looked at his brother. Jack was studying him, a complex expression in his eyes. Then the clouds finally closed over the moon, and Eddie couldn’t see Jack’s eyes at all, couldn’t see anything until his own pupils widened in the darkness. “What’s the time?” he said.
“Four forty-two, a minute ago.”
Eddie nodded. “I’d better get started.”
“I’m all set.”
“Any questions?”
“Just one—how come you know poetry by heart?”
“I had the time.”
Eddie waited for Jack to say something. When he didn’t, Eddie said, “Stay out of sight,” climbed up the bank and began walking back the way they had come with the ax on his shoulder, leaving his brother under the bridge with the bikes and the backpacks. He should have said good luck, or shaken hands, or something, he couldn’t think what.
Something cold landed on his nose and melted there.
“It’s snowing,” Jack called after him in a stage whisper. “Is that going to make a difference?”
“They don’t follow FAA regulations,” Eddie called back.
He counted his paces, three hundred. Enough? He counted fifty more. He studied the trees that grew near the track. Snow was falling steadily now, brightening the night. Eddie chopped a thick branch off a hardwood tree—a beech, he thought, from the smoothness of the bark; there had been a lot
of beech in the woods behind New Town—and dragged it into the track. He laid the branch at an angle, as though the wind had brought it down, making sure that the biggest clump of sub-branches covered the track, then walked a few steps away to check his work. He returned, dropped wet leaves on the scar the ax had made in the wood, and moved out of sight.
Eddie clipped the leather cover back on the blade, stuck the ax in the back of his belt, sat on a log. Snow fell silently through the trees. He waited.
Jonathan C. McBright, professional robber specializing in banks, had said: “It’s like any challenging work—details, details, details. You’ve got to picture everything before it happens. Even then, there’s always the unforeseen.” Eddie tried to picture everything: a white plane with green trim, somewhere above the clouds; an alarm ringing in the farmhouse, a few miles away; Jack waiting under the bridge, three hundred and fifty steps up the track. He could summon up those images, but no feeling of reassurance accompanied them. Had he forgotten something? He tried to figure out what it might be, and was still trying when he heard an engine sound, distant and muffled by falling snow but growing louder. He crouched behind the log.
Headlights appeared on the track, two yellow cones filled with snowflakes that blackened in their glow. Eddie recognized the outline of the poultry truck. It was going fast, maybe fast enough to plow right through the branch or sweep it aside. Details, details, details. There was nothing he could do but watch.
The headlight beams reached the branch, snow-covered now, blending with the track. It wasn’t going to work, Eddie thought. But then the horn honked and the wheels locked. The truck went into a skid, sliding along the track, the rear end swinging around. It struck the branch sideways and came to a stop.
The passenger door opened and Julio stepped out, wearing a ski jacket and a tuque with a tassel dangling from the top.
“What the fuck?” he said, walking into the headlight glare. “It’s a goddamn tree.”
“Move it,” called the driver from the cab.
“Sure,” said Julio, switching to Spanish, “move it.” He approached the branch, grabbed a small stem, tugged. His feet slipped out from under him and he fell hard on his back. Eddie heard the driver laugh.
“Fuck you,” said Julio.
“Watch your language,” the driver told him.
Julio got up, muttering to himself in Spanish. Eddie caught only one word: “chiropractor.”
Julio reached into the tangle again, pulled. The branch shifted a few inches. The driver came down from the cab to help him. Someone else got out too. A much smaller figure, who hopped down, landed lightly: Gaucho. He wore a cowboy hat, vest, chaps, a gun belt.
“Are we going to be late?” he asked.
“Don’t worry,” the driver answered.
Gaucho stood in front of the truck, watched Julio and the driver drag the branch to the side. The cleaved end passed right by his feet. Eddie could see the marks of the blade, straight, gleaming, unnatural. Gaucho stared at them. Then he bent down, picked up a handful of snow, tried to make a snowball, failed.
“How come I can’t make a snowball?”
“Too dry,” said the driver. “Let’s go.”
“Snow,” said Julio, as they got back in the cab. “This country. I wish I was going with the kid.”
“Stop whining,” said the driver. “You’re making more money in a month than your father made in his life.”
“My father was an idiot.”
The doors slammed shut. The driver straightened the wheels, inched forward, the tires spinning in the snow. Squealing conveniently, Eddie thought, as he came out of the woods, got his hands on the edge of the cargo floor that protruded beyond the slatted sides, and pulled himself up. As the truck picked up speed, he climbed over and down into the cargo space.
He got on his hands and knees, crawled along the floor. The chicken cages were gone. There was no cargo but the canvas bags, about a dozen, piled against the rear of the cab,
and a small suitcase nearby. In the light reflected off the falling snow, Eddie could see the Mickey Mouse decal glued to its side.
He rose, picking up one of the canvas bags. Over the top of the cab he saw the bridge, snow-covered and deserted. He dropped the canvas bag over the side, picked up another, dropped it out too, and then the rest. He counted them: eleven.
The truck slowed as it came to the bridge. Eddie crawled to the back, climbed over, jumped down. He lost his balance, fell, rolled to the side of the track, the covered blade of the ax digging into his back. Other than that, everything was perfect. So far so good—punch line to a joke he didn’t know. Jack could tell him on the way back.
The truck kept going. It rolled across the bridge, making a loud creaking sound, then went around a bend. For a few moments its taillights blinked through the trees; then they vanished. Eddie rose, ran to the stream, down the bank, under the bridge.
He heard a footstep behind him, felt something hard prod his back. “Don’t move,” Jack said.
“For Christ’s sake.”
“Sorry. I thought they’d got you. That honking.”
“They’re not going to honk us to death. And I said no guns.”
“That didn’t seem prudent,” Jack replied. “How many?”
There was no point arguing. “Eleven,” Eddie said. “We don’t have room for them all.”
“I’m a good packer,” Jack said, strapping on one of the backpacks. Taking the other, he wheeled one of the bikes up the bank.
Eddie unhooked the ax from his belt, unclipped the blade cover. He felt for the notch in the downstream bridge support, then stood back and chopped at the remaining core. In six swings he was through. The bridge made a creaking sound.
Eddie wheeled the other bike up the bank, onto the track. Jack was kneeling there, transferring banded wads of cash from a canvas bag into one of the backpacks.
“Just throw the whole bag in,” Eddie said, taking the other backpack and sticking the ax inside.
“Can’t fit as much in that way, bro,” Jack said. “Should have brought bigger packs.”
“How many have you done?”
“This is the first.”
Eddie looked down the track, saw the dark forms of the bags lying here and there like boulders. “Hurry,” he said.
“How much time have we got?”
Eddie glanced up, saw no lightening of the sky, heard no engine from above. At the airstrip, they would sit in the shelter of the cab until they heard the plane. That was when Julio would climb into the back and see the Mickey Mouse suitcase lying there all by itself. “Just hurry,” Eddie said.
He walked the bike down the track, counting bags and stopping at the last one, planning to work his way back. He removed the backpack, put the canvas bag inside, went on to the next one. The second bag fit comfortably, but he had to take out the ax to jam in the third. Enough.
He looked toward the bridge. Jack was kneeling in the snow, stuffing money into his backpack, a handful at a time.
“Jack. Let’s go.”
“Almost done,” Jack called. He rose, buckled the flap of the backpack, swung it on. He moved toward his bike, noticed another canvas bag, paused over it.
“Jack.”
Jack bent down, opened the bag, grabbed a handful of cash, stuffed it in the pocket of his jacket. Then he filled the other pocket and was shoving more money down the front of his shirt when a light shone on him. He froze in it.
“Jack! Move!”
The truck came barreling around the bend in the track, straight at the bridge.
Eddie swung a leg over his bike. “The bike, Jack.”
Jack took a step toward his bike, then another. He bent, righted it with one hand. The other still clutched a wad of bills. Eddie started toward him.
The truck hit the bridge, moving fast. It was halfway across
when Eddie heard the crack, a loud crack, like the sound just before the boom in thunder, and the bridge gave, planks flying through the air like loose piano keys. The truck flew too, but not high enough. The right side of its front bumper caught the top of the bank. The truck flipped, skidded on its side, knocked down a small pine, and came to rest at the edge of the woods, one headlight out, the other shining at a low angle on Jack and the bridge.
Jack gazed at it, raising a handful of money to shade his eyes from the glare. Except for popping-metal sounds, it was quiet in the woods, as though nothing had happened. Things started slowly, slowly enough for Eddie, standing outside the pool of light, to record all the details, details, none of them foreseen.
First Gaucho stepped out of the woods, no longer wearing his cowboy hat but otherwise unharmed. He glanced at the remains of the bridge, at the empty money bags on the road, at Jack. His hand dropped down to his holster.
Eddie shouted, “Shoot him, Jack.”
“Huh?”
“Your gun.”
“He’s just a kid,” Jack said, “playing cowboy.”
Then Gaucho had his pistol out, pointing at Jack. “Pow pow,” he said.
Jack started to smile his smile. Gaucho pulled the trigger. Jack spun around, coughed, coughed again, this time a bloody one, fell and lay still.
Things speeded up. Gaucho turned in Eddie’s direction, fired into the darkness. Something roared from the other side, and a single headlight came into view. The gateman: he’d heard the bridge collapse, heard the crash, heard something. Eddie slipped back into the edge of the woods. Gaucho fired another shot. The bullet smacked into a trunk, not far away. Gaucho on one side, the gateman on the other. Then Julio came limping out of the shadows, carrying a shotgun and changing the geometry.
“He’s dead,” he said in Spanish, thumbing back at the cab.
“So’s this guy,” said Gaucho. “And there’s another—”
The rest was drowned out by the motorcycle, flying toward them. At the last moment, Eddie stepped out of the woods and swung the ax, butt first, into the visor of the driver’s helmet. The impact tore the ax from his hand and knocked him down. He caught a glimpse of the gateman spinning in the air, his machine gun strapped to his back, and the motorcycle somersaulting down into the stream.
Gaucho fired another shot into the darkness.
Then came a blast from the shotgun.
Eddie, the pack on his back all but forgotten, jumped on the bike and pedaled away as fast as he could.
The tires squeaked in the snow. That was the only sound Eddie heard. He concentrated on it all the way to the end of the track and onto the dirt road that led to the steel gate, listening to that squeaking in the snow, shutting out everything else, every sickening image and second thought that tried to force its way into his mind. He almost didn’t see headlights rounding the turn that led to the farm, almost didn’t get off the road and into the trees before a car sped by, with Señor Paz behind the wheel, his round face almost touching the glass. And then, pedaling on, he didn’t immediately notice the milky tones in the sky, or hear the airplane flying in from the south.
He reached the steel gate, tossed over the bike, the backpack, then climbed over himself, strapped on the pack, rode on. The sound of the plane grew louder.
A few minutes later, just as the airplane sound ceased abruptly, Eddie came to Jack’s car. It was easy to see now in the gathering light, backed in between some skinny pines. He got off the bike, threw it in the woods.
Is there another set?
Why would we need another set?
Eddie kicked in one of the rear side windows, opened the door, yanked up the floor mat, found the keys. He unlocked the trunk, dropped the backpack inside, closed it. Then he got behind the wheel, started the car, drove out, onto the dirt road.
He drove. That was all he did. Dirt road to paved two-laner, paved two-laner to the turnpike; where he lost himself in the traffic, flowing slowly in the falling snow. Once or twice he
glanced in the rearview mirror, saw only the sights of normal commuting life.
Cold air blew in through the smashed window. Jack’s car had a good heater, and Eddie cranked it up to the max, but there was nothing he could do about that icy feeling on the back of his neck.
Outside: Day 8
27
T
he clouds disappeared, just like that. The sun came out. The skies were blue. The snow melted. It was spring.
Eddie was too busy to notice. He lit a fire in Jack’s fireplace and burned every scrap of paper in the suite. When the fire was at its hottest, he added all the computer disks. Not knowing how to erase the computer’s internal memory, he unplugged it, unscrewed the back panel, tore out everything that would tear out, and tossed it in the fire too.