A Simple Plan (4 page)

“You just don’t get away with something like that.” I sighed. “You end up doing something stupid, and you get caught.”

“Don’t you see, Hank?” Jacob asked, his voice rising with impatience. “It’s like this money doesn’t even exist. No one knows about it but us.”

“It’s three million dollars, Jacob. It’s missing from somewhere. You can’t tell me no one’s searching for it.”

“If people were searching for it, we would’ve heard by now. There would’ve been something on the news.”

“It’s drug money,” Lou said. “It’s all under the table. The government doesn’t know about any of it.”

“You don’t—” I started, but Lou cut me off.

“Jesus, Hank. All this money staring you right in the face. It’s the American dream, and you just want to walk away from it.”

“You work for the American dream, Lou. You don’t steal it.”

“Then this is even better than the American dream.”

“What reason would you have for turning it in?” Jacob asked. “No one’s going to get hurt by our taking it. No one’s going to know.”

“It’s stealing, Jacob. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s not stealing,” he said firmly. “It’s like lost treasure, like a chest full of gold.”

There was some sense in what he was saying, I could see that, yet at the same time it seemed like we were overlooking something. Mary Beth made a whimpering sound in the snow, and Jacob, without taking his eyes off my face, began to pet him. The crows sat quietly in the surrounding trees, hunch shouldered against the cold, like miniature vultures. Darkness was falling quickly all around us.

“Come on, Hank,” Lou said. “Don’t fuck this up.”

I still didn’t say anything—I was hesitating, wavering. As much as I delighted in my power over Lou and Jacob, I didn’t want to do something I’d later regret merely to contradict them. Without even realizing it, without even intending to do it, I began searching for a way to take the packets. And it was like magic, too, like a gift from the gods, the ease with which a solution came to me, a simple plan, a way to keep the money without fear of getting caught. I could just sit on it, hiding it away until the plane was discovered. If someone found the wreck and there was no mention of a missing three million dollars, I’d split it up with Lou and Jacob and we could go our separate ways. But if, on the other hand, it seemed like someone knew the money was missing, I’d burn it. The duffel bag and the packets themselves would be the only evidence that could be held against me. Up until the very instant I gave Lou and Jacob their shares, I’d be in complete control. I could erase my crime at a moment’s notice.

Looking back on it now, after all that’s happened, it seems insane with what little fear I picked this path. It took me perhaps twenty seconds, a third of a minute’s worth of debate. For a brief instant I was in complete control, not only of the money’s destiny but also of my own, and Jacob’s, and Lou’s, yet I was utterly unconscious of this, had no feel for the weight of my decision, could not sense how, within the next few seconds, I was going to set into motion a series of events that would radically transform each of our lives. In my ignorance, my choice seemed straightforward, unambiguous: if I were to give up the duffel bag now, it’d be an irrevocable step—I’d hand it over to the sheriff, and it’d be gone forever. My plan, on the other hand, would allow me to postpone a decision until we had more information. I’d be taking a step, but not one that I couldn’t undo.

“All right,” I said. “Put the money back.”

Neither of them moved.

“We’re keeping it?” Lou asked.

“I’m keeping it.”

“You’re keeping it?” Jacob said. “What do you mean, you’re keeping it?”

“This is what we’re doing. I keep it for six months. If no one comes looking for it during that period, then we’ll split it up.”

Jacob and Lou stared at me, taking this in.

“Why do you keep it?” Lou asked.

“I’m the safest. I have a family, a job. I’ve got the most to lose.”

“Why not split it up now?” he asked. “We each sit on our own shares?”

I shook my head. “This is how we’re doing it. If you don’t want it like this, we can turn it in now. That’s the choice I’m offering you.”

“You don’t trust us?” Jacob asked.

“No,” I said. “I guess I don’t.”

He nodded at that but didn’t say anything.

“They’ll discover the plane before six months is up,” Lou said. “Spring’ll come and somebody’ll find it.”

“Then we’ll see for sure if anyone knows there was money on it.”

“And if someone knows?” Jacob asked.

“Then I’ll burn it. The only way we’ll keep it is if there’s absolutely no chance of getting caught. As soon as it seems like we might be in trouble, I’ll get rid of the money.”

“You’ll burn it,” Lou said, disgusted.

“That’s right. Every last bill.”

Neither of them spoke. We all stared down at the duffel bag.

“We don’t tell anyone,” I said. I looked at Lou. “Not even Nancy.” Nancy was Lou’s live-in girlfriend. She worked in a beauty parlor over in Sylvania.

“She’s got to know eventually,” he said. “She’s gonna wonder where all my money’s coming from.”

“She can know when we decide that it’s safe to keep it. Not a moment sooner.”

“Then the same thing holds for Sarah,” he said.

I nodded, as if this went without saying. “We’ll continue to live like normal. I’m just asking you to hold off for six months. It’ll be there, waiting for you. You’ll know it’s there.”

They were both silent, thinking.

“All right?” I asked. I looked first at Lou, then at Jacob. Lou was scowling at me, as if he were angry. He didn’t say anything. Jacob shrugged, hesitated a second, then nodded. He dropped his packet back into the bag.

“Lou?” I said.

Lou didn’t move. Jacob and I stared at him, waiting. Finally, with a grimace, as if it pained him to do it, he pulled the wad of money from his jacket, stared at it for a moment, and then, very slowly, slid it into the bag.

“We count it before you take it,” he said, his voice low, almost a growl.

I smiled at him, even grinned. It seemed funny that he didn’t trust me.

“All right,” I said. “That’s probably a good idea.”

2

I
T WAS
getting dark now, so we decided to return to the truck and count the money there. As we hiked back toward the road, Jacob and Lou started talking about what they were going to do with their newfound wealth. Jacob wanted a snowmobile, a wide-screen TV, a big fishing boat that he’d name
Hidden Treasure.
Lou said he was going to invest half his share in the stock market and spend the rest on a beach house in Florida with a deck, a hot tub, and a wet bar. I just listened, wanting all the time to warn them not to make plans, that we might not be able to keep it, but for some reason remaining silent.

Lou and I carried the duffel bag together, walking sideways, each of us holding an end, and it slowed us down enough for Jacob to keep up. Jacob talked the whole way, chattering like a child. You could feel his excitement—it was something palpable; he exuded it like a scent.

The temperature began to drop as soon as the sun went down, glazing the surface of the snow into an icy skin, which we broke through each time we took a step. There was very little light beneath the trees. Branches seemed to jump out at us as we walked, appearing suddenly from the darkness directly before our faces, making us duck and weave as we moved forward, like a trio of boxers.

It took us nearly thirty minutes to reach the road. When we got there, Jacob put his rifle back behind the truck’s front seat and started searching for his flashlight, while Lou and I emptied the money onto the tailgate. We were both a little stunned, I think, at the number of packets that spilled from the bag, mesmerized by the sight of so much wealth, and that’s probably why we didn’t notice the sheriff’s truck until it was almost upon us. Perhaps if we’d seen it earlier, if we’d made out its headlights when they were still hovering on the edge of the horizon, two yellow pinpricks moving slowly toward us, I would’ve acted differently. I would’ve had time to think things through, to consider my options with a little more care, so that when the truck finally got close enough for me to make out the bubble light on its roof, I might’ve decided to tell Sheriff Jenkins about the plane. I could’ve shown him the money, explained how we were just about to call him up on the CB, and, by doing that, I would’ve ended the whole thing right then and there, would’ve handed it to the sheriff in a nice, tidy bundle, disposing of it before it had a chance to unravel and entangle us all.

But it didn’t happen like that: the truck was no more than two hundred yards away when we noticed it. We heard it first, heard its engine, the crunch of its tires against the frozen road. Lou and I looked up at the same time. A half second later Jacob pulled his head from behind the seat.

“Shit,” I heard him say.

Without thinking, acting purely on instinct, like an animal burying its store of food, I slammed shut the tailgate. The money tumbled out across the truck bed, the packets making a soft thumping sound against the metal floor. We’d dropped the duffel bag to the ground after we’d emptied it, and I bent to pick it up now. I draped it across the money, covering it as best I could.

“Go up front with Jacob,” I whispered to Lou. “Let me do the talking.”

Lou shuffled quickly away, his head bowed. Then the sheriff was there, his brakes squeaking as he came to a stop on the opposite side of the road. He leaned across the seat to roll down the window, and I stepped out to greet him.

Technically Carl Jenkins wasn’t really a sheriff, though that’s what everyone called him. Sheriff was a county position, and Carl worked for the town. He was Ashenville’s only policeman, a position he’d held for nearly forty years. People called him Sheriff simply from a lack of any other possible title of respect.

“Hank Mitchell!” he said as I came toward him, his whole face smiling, as if he’d been driving along just now hoping he’d run into me. I didn’t know him that well; we were no more than nodding acquaintances, but I always felt like he was sincerely pleased to see me. I think he made everyone feel that way, even strangers; he had that quality about him, a disarmingly unguarded avuncularity, a smile that caught you by surprise.

He was a small man, shorter than I. His face was perfectly round, with a wide, shiny forehead and a small, thin-lipped mouth. There was an air of properness about him, an elegance: his khaki uniform was invariably perfectly pressed, his nails clipped, his thick white hair combed and carefully parted. He smiled often and always had a clean, freshly scrubbed smell about him, a sweetish mixture of talcum powder and shoe polish.

I stopped a few feet short of his truck.

“Engine trouble?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Dog trouble.” I felt remarkably calm. The money was just a small thought in the very back of my head. I could tell he wasn’t going to get out of his truck, so I knew we wouldn’t have a problem. I told him about the fox.

“He treed it?” Carl asked.

“We thought so, but we didn’t get more than a hundred yards into the park before he came running back.”

Carl peered at me over the rim of his half-raised window, a look of concern on his face. “What happened to your head?”

I touched the bump with my hand, then waved out toward the woods. “Walked into a branch,” I said. It was the first thing I thought of.

He continued to stare at me for another second or so, then glanced off toward Jacob and Lou. They’d both given him a wave when he pulled up, but now they’d climbed inside Jacob’s truck. Their faces were close together, practically touching, and they were talking in what I could only call a conspiratorial manner. Lou was speaking, gesturing excitedly with his hands, and Jacob was nodding at what he said. Mary Beth was sitting on Jacob’s lap, staring out the window at us.

“They been drinking?” Carl asked quietly.

“Not yet,” I said. “Jacob and I were at the cemetery this afternoon.”

“The cemetery?”

I nodded. “Visiting my parents’ graves. This is the day we always do it.”

“New Year’s Eve?” His face lit up. He seemed to enjoy the idea of this.

“I took the day off,” I said.

Carl reached forward and flicked a switch on the dashboard, turning the truck’s heater to high. There was a warm, rushing sound inside the cab. “Is Jacob still out of work?” he asked.

“He’s looking,” I lied, feeling the usual flood of embarrassment I experienced whenever my brother’s joblessness became a topic of conversation.

“Lou working?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Carl shook his head sadly, staring across the road at them. “That’s a shame, isn’t it? Two grown men, both eager for work. This country…” He trailed off, seemingly lost in thought.

“Well,” I started, “we should probably—”

“Lou used to coach baseball,” Carl said, cutting me off. “At a boy’s camp up in Michigan. Used to be one hell of a shortstop. You know that?”

“No,” I said. “I’d never heard that before.”

“You wouldn’t guess it looking at him now. But there was a time…”

Jacob’s truck made a creaking sound as he pushed open his door. Carl fell silent, and we both watched my brother squeeze himself out onto the road and lumber toward us.

“Hello, Jacob,” Carl said. “I was beginning to think maybe you were trying to avoid me.”

Jacob smiled sheepishly. It was his usual expression when approaching figures of authority. As soon as I saw it, I remembered it from our childhood. It was how he’d looked when a teacher called on him in school.

“I was just cold,” he said. “I wanted to get in the truck and warm up a bit.”

“Hank tells me you two were visiting your parents’ graves today.”

Jacob glanced at me, then gave Carl a hesitant nod.

“That’s a good thing,” Carl said, “a real good thing. I hope my kids do the same for me when I’m gone.”

“My dad made us,” Jacob said. “It was in his will.”

Carl didn’t seem to hear him. “I remember your father,” he started, but then seemed immediately to think better of it, as if suddenly unsure that it was actually our father he remembered and not some other deceased native of Ashenville. He shook his head. “A good man,” he said. “An exceptionally good man.”

Neither Jacob nor I could come up with a way to respond to that. There was a moment’s silence, which Jacob ended finally by saying, “You tell him about the plane?”

I looked at him in shock. He had a big grin on his face, his fat cheeks ridged with dimples, his lips pulling back to show his teeth. He glanced toward me, and, for a second, I was afraid he might even wink.

“What’s this?” Carl asked. He looked from Jacob to me.

“Hank and I were driving by here on Tuesday, this exact same stretch of road, and we thought we heard a plane going down.”

“A plane?”

Jacob nodded. “It was snowing pretty hard, and we couldn’t be sure, but it sounded exactly like a plane having engine trouble.”

Carl stared at him, eyebrows raised, waiting. I tried to think of something to say, some way to change the subject, but nothing came. I stood there, angrily willing Jacob to shut his mouth.

“There haven’t been any reports of a missing plane?” he asked.

“No,” Carl said slowly, drawing it out, as if to show that he was thinking while he talked, taking what Jacob had told him seriously. “Can’t say I’ve heard anything like that.” He glanced at me again. “You just heard an engine? No crash?”

I forced myself to nod.

“Could’ve been anything then. A motorcycle, a snowmobile, a chain saw.” He waved across the fields toward the southeast. “Maybe it was something Dwight Pederson was tinkering with.”

We all turned and stared at the Pederson place. There were lights on in the downstairs windows, but the barn and outbuildings were lost in the darkness.

“If you do hear anything,” Jacob said, still wearing his clownish smile, “you should give us a call. We could show you where we were.”

“I’m sure it would’ve been reported by now,” Carl said. “Planes don’t just drop out of the sky without people noticing them missing.”

I looked at my watch, trying to cut things off before Jacob had a chance to say anything more. “You’re probably eager to get home, Carl. It’s after five.”

He shook his head, sighing. “I’ve got a late one tonight, New Year’s Eve and all. Apt to be some drinkers out driving.” He looked at Jacob. “I trust you won’t be one of them.”

Jacob’s smile faded from his face. “No. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Carl stared at him for a second, as if expecting him to say something more. Then he turned toward me. “How’s Sarah getting along? She must be about due, if I’m not mistaken.”

“End of January,” I said. My wife was eight months pregnant with our first child.

“You’ll have to wish her a happy new year from me,” Carl said. He began to roll up his window. “And tell Lou not to be so shy next time. I won’t bite.”

C
ARL
drove off while we were climbing into the truck. He continued westward, away from Ashenville.

“Just drive for a bit, Jacob,” I said. “Don’t follow him. Head back toward town.”

Jacob started the engine. It took him a while to turn around on the narrow road.

“Go slowly,” I said. I was afraid that some of the packets might blow out of the truck bed if we went too fast.

Nobody spoke until we were on our way. Then, as we were crossing the bridge over Anders Creek, I said, “Whose idea was that? To ask him about the plane?” I leaned forward so I could see both of them. Lou was sitting in the center, with the dog in his lap. He had his arms around him, hugging him to his chest. Neither of them answered me.

“Was it yours, Lou?” I’d meant to question them calmly, to rationally show them the danger of what they’d done, but my voice betrayed me, coming out tight and full of anger.

Lou shrugged. “We thought it up together.”

“Why?” I asked.

“So we could find out if anyone was looking for the plane,” Jacob said. His voice sounded triumphant, as if he felt he’d outwitted me. “And not only that, but now if someone does come looking for it, Carl’ll call us first. That way we won’t be surprised.”

“You’ve just decided to steal three million dollars, and the first thing you do is interrogate the sheriff about it. Doesn’t that seem even the slightest bit foolish to you?”

“We found out that no one’s looking for it,” Jacob said. “We never would’ve known that if we hadn’t asked.”

“It was stupid, Jacob. If they find the plane now, and they realize that the money’s missing, he’s going to know right off who took it.”

“But that’s the beauty of it. There’s no way we’d have mentioned it to him if we were the ones who took the money.”

“Promise me you won’t do anything like this again.”

He smiled at me. “Don’t you see how sneaky it is? Our asking him about the plane puts us on his side.”

“It was a risk,” I said. “It was stupid.”

“But it paid off. We found out—”

“This isn’t a game, Jacob. We’ve committed a crime. We could go to jail for what we’ve done tonight.”

“Come on, Hank,” Lou said. “No one’s going to send us to jail for this. None of us has records, we aren’t criminals. Anyone would’ve done what we did.”

“You’re saying we didn’t commit a crime?”

“I’m saying they wouldn’t send us to jail for it. Even if they convicted us, we’d get a suspended sentence.”

“Especially if we hadn’t spent any of the money yet,” Jacob said. “I think—”

“I don’t care what you think,” I said, my voice rising toward a shout. “If I feel like you’re taking unnecessary risks, I’ll burn the money.” I looked from Jacob to Lou. “Do you understand?”

Neither of them said anything.

“I’m not going to jail because of something stupid you two idiots have done.”

They both stared at me, shocked by my outburst. Mary Beth made a whimpering sound in Lou’s arms. I looked out the window. We were on Burnt Road, moving south, surrounded by fields.

I took a deep breath, tried to calm myself down. “I just want you to be careful,” I said.

“We’ll be careful, Hank,” Jacob said quickly. “Of course we’ll be careful.”

Lou didn’t say anything, but I could sense him, even with my head turned toward the window, grinning at Jacob.