“It’s over, dog. The cops are in the building. They’re right outside the door. Nothing else we can do. Let them go. Nobody else is going to die,” I pleaded with Sherm.
“Fuck that. It ain’t over till I say it’s over.”
“This is your last warning,” the cops shouted. “Throw down your weapons, place your hands on your heads, and come out of the vault slowly. We will not tell you again.”
“You gonna shoot me, Sherm? You gonna shoot the kid?”
“Life’s a bitch, then you die, Tommy. Remember?”
I was speechless.
“Come on, Tommy! Isn’t that what we said? Life’s a bitch, then we die, so why not grab it by the horns? You remember that shit? Well, I got to tell you, bro— this is definitely the most fun I’ve had since I left Portland. Today was a good day.”
“Sherm—”
“A good day to die.”
“Sherm— don’t!”
“Get ready, Tommy. Here comes the boom.”
He grinned that trademark grin, and for the first time in my life, I saw beyond the party guy with the hard-as-nails exterior, past the broken little boy that all the girls wanted to fix. It was like I’d been peeking at him through a window all this time, and at that moment, somebody opened the curtains, giving me a clearer view. Sherm’s grin was a glimpse inside his head, and there were monsters inside. There were lots of monsters.
And then the grin grew wider, stretching the skin on his face, turning into a leer. Broader still, and Sherm looked past me, his eyes widening in surprise. He stood immobile, except for that expanding grin, a smile that split his face in half. His trigger finger tightened.
I pulled my trigger first. Sherm squeezed his a second later.
Everything exploded.
The cops behind us shouted something, but it was lost beneath the roar of Sherm’s gun, and the answering volley of their own. Terrified, Benjy screamed, and Sheila reached toward us in horror. She shrieked without sound. Something punched me in the back, right in the kidney— a cop’s boot maybe, or a riot club. All of a sudden I was having trouble breathing again.
The guns roared again, and Sherm’s grin split impossibly wide, wider than his face. Teeth and flesh and strands of gristle flew as the smile ripped his head apart. It vanished in a cloud of fine, red mist, but I swear that for a second, I could see the grin superimposed over the spray. The cloud grinned. His body stood there, refusing to fall, still clutching the pistol, while the gunshots echoed around the vault. When his body finally toppled over, I was sure that I could see his grin plastered on the wall behind it.
Sherm was gone, but that was okay, because Benjy was fine. Benjy was safe. Benjy was quiet. He wasn’t crying anymore. I tried to tell Sheila to stop screaming, tried to tell her that he was okay, that he was underneath me, but I couldn’t breathe, let alone talk. Something sharp was poking me in the side, but I didn’t know what it was. The room was suddenly getting cold.
A shadow fell over us and a black boot stomped down on my hand. I screamed as the bones in my wrist and fingers shattered. The pistol slipped from my grasp. Roy shouted at somebody to be gentle with me, but his pleas were ignored. Sharon slumped over Dugan’s body, sobbing uncontrollably, her hands still duct-taped behind her back. Sheila had freed her hands and clawed at me, shrieking Benjy’s name over and over again. Once more I tried to soothe her, but several pairs of rough hands rolled me over. I gasped, as the sharp thing pressed into me again, and that was when I realized that I was bleeding. There was a lot of blood.
But not all of it was mine.
And then I saw why Benjy was so quiet and still and why Sheila was screaming.
Sherm’s grin smiled at me from the bloodstain on the wall.
I started to black out then. The room started spinning. I was dimly aware that I’d thrown up again. Sheila slapped and clawed at my face, and one of the cops pulled her back.
Faces stared down at me. Cop faces. They weren’t friendly.
Blood trickled from my mouth as I whispered to them.
“I’m going out to find myself . . .”
“Just lie still, you piece of shit. Paramedics are on their way, though I don’t know why we should save a scumbag like you.”
“If I should get here before I return,” I continued, “please hold me until I get back . . .”
“What did he say?”
I opened my mouth to repeat it and a scream tumbled out instead. I screamed for a long time and finally something inside my throat ripped.
Then I shut my eyes.
Let me have another cigarette.
Thanks. Contrary to what you might have heard, these things aren’t like gold in here. This is a nonsmoking facility. Even the guards aren’t allowed to smoke. So no, cigarettes aren’t gold. They’re the fucking Holy Grail.
When it was all over, the cops found Lucas in the bathroom and Keith in his office. Sherm had wracked up quite the body count: Keith, Lucas, Mac Davis, Kelvin, Martha, and Dugan. Six counts of murder. But it didn’t stop there.
So what else do you want to know? I’ve pretty much told you everything. I said it before and I’ll say it again. Life’s a bitch, then you die. That’s my philosophy in a nutshell, and one that’s been reinforced over and over since that day.
Except that you don’t die. Life’s still a bitch, the biggest bitch of all, in fact. But you don’t die. It’s the others around you that die. The ones you love. The innocent. The ones who didn’t deserve it. And that is the biggest bitch of all.
Jesus didn’t get me, and neither did the monster people, and I have no doubt that the voices I heard belonged to them. The cancer didn’t kill me either. Benjy saw to that. I still don’t know how he did it or what that strange power of his actually was. It could have been God or Satan or something that would have given Fox Mulder from The X-Files a hard-on. Maybe it was magic. Maybe not. All I know is that it was real. I’m living proof. The cancer didn’t kill me because Benjy cured the cancer.
The bullet from the SWAT team’s rifle didn’t kill me either. I lost a kidney and a lot of blood, and now I’ve got a scar on my side that looks like a shark bite, but I didn’t die. On the emergency room table, when they removed the shrapnel and what was left of my kidney, they found no evidence of the cancer. After Michelle called the cops, my name and face were flashed on the news, my doctor and Casey the pharmacist and even Mr. Anthony Myers, the funeral home director, contacted the authorities and told them what they knew. While I recovered in the hospital (they wanted to make sure I was healthy enough for arraignment), the doctors conferred with my doctor, and checked and double-checked the diagnosis. Final analysis— no traces of the cancer remained in my system. If it hadn’t been for my doctor standing by his initial analysis, they’d have probably all thought I made the whole thing up. I think most of them did anyway.
The bullet that took my kidney also took Benjy’s life. It passed right through me and hit him. The police commando who fired the shot couldn’t see him beneath me in the confusion. All he saw was my gun. There was a hearing, and a panel determined that the shooting was justified and the officer acted correctly. The media had a field day with it, and the officer ended up quitting the force anyway.
I saw on the news that Sheila was going to sue the police department over it, but before that ever happened, she was dead. She committed suicide one month after the robbery. Witnesses said she walked in front of a bus during rush hour. Just stepped right off the curb. The bus driver couldn’t stop in time. According to the papers, she’d been distraught over the death of her son.
Distraught? Yeah, I fucking damn well guess she was. When I think back to what Benjy had looked like . . . His chest was— it was open, and . . .
I don’t want to talk about that anymore.
Maybe Martha was right all along. Crazy old Bible-thumping “Oh my . . .” Martha. Maybe a blood sacrifice was the only thing that could wash away the sins we committed, the innocent blood of a lamb. Maybe Benjy was the expiation that she said the Lord required. I was a sinner and I asked to be saved. The Lord granted my wish but took Benjy’s life in return. That’s the only way I see it. I’ve tried and tried to wrap my brain around it. Why was he given such a unique gift, only to have it taken away— to have his life taken away? Expiation makes sense to me— and at first, I hated Him even more for it. Hated Him, and feared Him too.
They tried John and me separately. We both had public defenders. Neither knew what the fuck they were doing, or didn’t care, or both. John got ten to fifteen years and is eligible for parole in eight. I was sentenced to a term of not less than fifty years and not to exceed my natural life. Natural life— what the fuck is that? I’m up for parole in fifty years, maybe. John and I both testified that Sherm masterminded the whole thing in response to my cancer, and that we were just a couple of duped accomplices, and the bank security cameras documented much of it, but all that defense did was save me from getting a death sentence.
A death sentence . . . I think about that a lot, especially at night. Of being strapped into the electric chair and what it would feel like as all that electricity surged through my body. Of being tied to a gurney and feeling the cool wetness of an alcoholic swab on my arm (to prevent infection), followed by that final sting as the needle delivered a lethal injection.
I think a lot about death.
Michelle. Well, she hung in there during the trial. She showed up every day, looking as pretty and beautiful as the day I’d met her. Sometimes she brought T. J. and other times she came alone, while her mom babysat. The trial was hard on her, but it was harder on him. She sat behind me and she held my hand when the verdict was read, and she didn’t cry. She stayed strong.
Roy, Oscar, Kim, and Sharon testified at the trial. None of them brought up Benjy’s abilities. Oscar tried to, just the once, but the prosecutor objected and his statement was stricken from the record. I don’t know what happened to any of them after that. Except for Roy.
Here’s a weird thing. The bank security cameras captured the heist, but when it came to Benjy’s healing acts, all the footage became snow. An electronic glitch I was told. My lawyer tried to use that in our defense, but it didn’t work.
During the trial, I was a guest of the York County prison. After sentencing, they moved me to the D block of the Cresson State Prison Facility. It’s not so bad here. Definitely better than county jail. Nobody has tried to rape me or make me his bitch. We’ve got cable TV in the cells, and monitored Internet access once a week. I watch a lot of Howard Stern and Comedy Central, and anything with girls in bikinis. They’ve got me working in the library, which beats the hell out of slaving in the kitchen. I lift weights in the gym, something I never had time to do before on the outside, and I read a lot. Elmore Leonard. Richard Laymon. Western novels by Ed Gorman. The Bible. Like I said earlier, I guess you could say that John’s vision and Benjy’s powers made me a believer. In fact, I’m scared not to believe. I asked God for some proof and He sent me some, Old Testament style.
In addition to the books, I read the newspaper too. I get the Hanover Evening Sun, though I have to wait an extra day for it to be delivered. It’s weird to read about my old hometown, and to know that it continues to go on, that the people I knew survive and get on with their lives, even though I’m not there anymore.
I only have one cellmate, a guy named Edgar, who’s in here for killing his girlfriend while driving drunk. She went through the windshield, flew about fifty feet, and smashed her head open on a retaining wall. Died on impact. Edgar was charged with vehicular manslaughter, except that Edgar insists he wasn’t driving. He just can’t prove it.
Same situation as me, if you think about it. I didn’t kill anybody in that bank. I just can’t prove it.
Inside this place, we’re all innocent. Except for in our hearts. Our hearts convict us, and in my heart, I’m guilty as sin. I killed those people. Their blood is on my hands. Innocent blood. Blood of the lamb. Expiation.
Michelle only came to visit once a month, since it was a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Hanover. She brought T. J. to the prison once, on the first visit, and that just about broke all three of us. He couldn’t understand why he had to talk to Daddy through a telephone, and why I couldn’t come around to the other side of the thick glass window and give him a hug. I’ve never seen him cry so hard.
I didn’t sleep that night, and a few days later, Michelle and I agreed it would probably be better not to bring him. I don’t call them, because you can only call collect from prison and we don’t have the money for that.
Her last visit was two months ago, and the last letter I got from her was yesterday. It wasn’t even from Michelle. It was from her attorney, letting me know that she was initiating divorce proceedings. I didn’t expect that, but I guess I can’t blame her. I’d love to know where she got the fucking money to do that, though. Maybe another guy. I can’t picture her and T. J. with someone else. Can’t imagine her making love to another man or T. J. calling someone else Daddy. It makes my stomach hurt in ways the cancer never did. It’s a hollow, wrenching kind of pain.
That’s all. There’s nothing else to tell.
Okay, well there is one other thing.
I said that except for Roy, I didn’t know what had happened to any of the hostages. But I know what happened to Roy after the trial. And I know what happened to Sandy, Sheila and Benjy’s dog. And to John. Especially John.
Sandy was the first, just a brief end-of-the-broadcast item on the news. “A tragic ending to this brave dog’s story.” They recounted how Benjy was killed in the bank by a stray bullet, and how Sheila had committed suicide by stepping in front of a bus one month later. Apparently, Sandy was taken to one of these no-kill animal shelters after Sheila’s death, and got adopted by a new family. She’d been with her new owners for a week when she was hit by a car. They found her in the yard, dead. There were no witnesses. In fact, nobody heard brakes or tires, or even the sound of Sandy yelping. One minute she was playing in the yard. The next minute, she was roadkill.
That was two weeks ago. Roy’s obituary appeared in the paper last week. He died of a sudden massive heart attack. The newspaper mentioned that he was a retired sales representative for the foundry, and that he was survived by several nieces and nephews, just like he’d told us in the vault. A sidebar article mentioned that he’d been a hostage during the robbery.
John died last night.
Even though we’re both in the same prison, I’ve never seen him. I haven’t seen him since the robbery. I wanted to, but he was in A block and I was in D. We had no contact with each other, and inmates aren’t allowed to send each other mail, even if they’re in the same prison. He was here. My best friend was here with me the whole time, imprisoned inside this fucking building, and I couldn’t see him because we were on different blocks. Each block takes meals and goes out into the yard at different times. I kept hoping that I’d run into him in the library one day, but I never did. John never was the type to read.
One of the correctional officers told me about it at breakfast this morning. They found him in his cell around midnight. He was dead. The coroner hadn’t released an official report yet, of course, but the cause of death appeared to be a gunshot wound to the stomach. That was impossible, since none of the inmates, the guards, or even his cellmate had heard a shot. It was unlikely that a pistol could have been smuggled into the prison in any case. They’d tested his cellmate for powder residue, since the two of them were locked in their cell at the time. There was no trace. Now A block is locked down and everybody is being questioned. They want to talk to me later today too. Routine questioning, they said. But there’s nothing routine about it. What am I supposed to tell them? That the hole in John’s belly is the one that Kelvin put there? That Benjy healed it and now that he’s dead it’s come back? That Benjy could perform miracles and the miracles died with him?
At least I tried to save him. At least there’s that. Look, I don’t know what the final outcome is. I don’t care if you believe in what Benjy could do or not. All I know is that I believe. I wanted proof and I got that proof. But I never meant for Benjy to get harmed. That’s not what I wanted.
Life handed me a crap hand. But I played the cards I was dealt. I still don’t know what happens to us when we die, but I know this— I tried to do the right thing. In the end, when everything turned to shit because of my stupid, fucked-up mistake, I tried to do the right thing. And in my heart, I believed.
I still do. I don’t know if that gives me redemption or absolution, but I know that, wherever he is, Benjy has forgiven me. He knows I tried to save him, and he knows that I’ve found belief.
Maybe that’s enough.
Edgar has six more months till he’s out. On the wall, he’s got a short-timers’ calendar. Every morning when he wakes up, he marks off the days until his release by putting a big, black X through them.
I started a short-timers’ calendar too. Started it right after I got back from breakfast, in fact, as soon as I heard about John. I haven’t cried yet for my friend, because I think I’ll probably be seeing him soon. It won’t be Jesus coming for me. I think it will be the voices, the voices that John said he heard. The ones that I heard too. The sharp, cruel little voices.
I remember Sherm, right after he’d killed Dugan. He was shouting at something to shut up and get out of his head. I think Sherm knew the voices well. I think they’d been whispering to him for a long time before we even met him.
I just crossed off a day on my short-timers’ calendar. I don’t feel good at all. I’m weak, and I’ve started losing weight again. My throat hurts and the headaches are back, along with the nausea. Last night, I got a nosebleed while I slept. My pillow was crusted with dried blood this morning.
I have cancer. At a very advanced stage. It’s growing, growing at an alarming rate.
It’s terminal.
The court sentenced John to ten to fifteen years in prison. He was eligible for parole in eight years, but he got out much earlier than that. I was sentenced to a term of not less than fifty years and not to exceed my natural life. That’s not much time. Not much time at all. It’s a death sentence.
There’s only one thing left for me to do. In a little while, I am going out to find myself. If I should get here before I return, please hold me until I get back.
Please hold me until I get back.
Please— hold me.