Enough Rope Read online

  The teller was Ruth Van Dine. Her ma wanted her to get braces when she was twelve, thirteen, but Ruth said she didn’t care to. I’d have to call that a big mistake on her part. “Say there, Royce,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  Now Royce shoved his savings passbook across the top of the counter. Don’t ask me why he brought the blame thing. I couldn’t tell you.

  “Deposit?”

  “Withdrawal.”

  “How much?”

  Every dang old cent you got in this here bank was what he was going to say. But what came out of his mouth was, “Every dang old cent.”

  “Three hundred twelve dollars and forty-five cents? Plus I guess you got some extra interest coming which I’ll figure out for you.”

  “Well—”

  “Better make out a slip, Royce. Just on behind you?”

  He turned to look for the withdrawal slips and there was Buford Washburn, also standing. “They off at the sawmill today, Royce? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “No, I guess they’re workin’, Mr. Washburn. I guess I took the day.”

  “Can’t blame you, beautiful day like this. What’d you do, go and get a little hunting in?”

  “Not in March, Mr. Washburn.”

  “I don’t guess nothing’s in season this time of year.”

  “Not a thing. I was just gone take this here across to Eddie Joe. Needs a little gunsmithin’.”

  “Well, they say Eddie Joe knows his stuff.”

  “I guess he does, Mr. Washburn.”

  “Now this about drawing out all your money,” Buford said. He fancied himself smoother than a bald tire at getting from small talk to business, Buford did. “I guess you got what they call an emergency.”

  “Somethin’ like.”

  “Well now, maybe you want to do what most folks do, and that’s leave a few dollars in to keep the account open. Just for convenience. Say ten dollars? Or just draw a round amount, say you draw your three hundred dollars. Or—” And he went through a whole routine about how Royce could take his old self a passbook loan and keep the account together and keep earning interest and all the rest of it, which I’m not going to spell out here for you.

  Upshot of it was Royce wound up drawing three hundred dollars. Ruth Van Dine gave it to him in tens and twenties because he just stood there stiffer than new rope when she asked him how did he want it. Three times she asked him, and she’s a girl no one ever had to tell to speak up, and each time it was like talking to a wall, so she counted out ten tens and ten twenties and gave it to him, along with his passbook. He thanked her and walked out with the passbook and money in one hand and the other holding the twelve gauge Worthington, which was still propped up on his shoulder.

  Before he got back in his panel truck he said, “Half my life, Lord, half my dang life.”

  Then he got in the truck.

  When he got back to his house he found Essie in the kitchen soaking the labels off some empty jam jars. She turned and saw him, then shut off the faucet and turned to look at him again. She said, “Why, Royce honey, what are you doing back here? Did you forget somethin’?”

  “I didn’t forget nothin’,” he said. What he forgot was to hold up the bank like he’d set out to do, but he didn’t mention that.

  “You didn’t get laid off,” she said mournfully. (I didn’t put in a question mark there because her voice didn’t turn up at the end. She said it sort of like it would be O.K. if Royce did get laid off from the sawmill, being that the both of them could always go out in the backyard and eat dirt. She was always a comfort, Essie was.)

  “Didn’t go to work,” Royce said. “Today’s my dang birthday,” Royce said.

  “ ‘Course it is! Now I never wished you a happy birthday but you left ‘fore I was out of bed. Well, happy birthday and many more. Thirty-nine years, land sakes.”

  “Thirty-eight!”

  “What did I say? Why, I said thirty-nine. Would you believe that. I know it’s thirty-eight, ‘course I know that. Why are you carrying that gun, I guess there’s rats in the garbage again.”

  “Half my life,” Royce said.

  “Is there?”

  “Is there what?”

  “Rats in the garbage again?”

  “Now how in blue hell would I know is there rats in the garbage?”

  “But you have that gun, Royce.”

  He discovered the gun, took it off his shoulder, and held it out in both hands, looking at it like it was the prettiest thing since a new calf.

  “That’s your shotgun,” Essie said.

  “Well, I guess I know that. Half my dang life.”

  “What about half your life?”

  “My life’s half gone,” he said, “and what did I ever do with it, would you tell me that? Far as I ever been from home is Franklin County and I never stayed there overnight, just went and come back. Half my life and I never left the dang old state.”

  “I was thinkin’ we might run out to Silver Dollar City this summer,” Essie said. “It’s like an old frontier city come to life or so they say. That’s across the state line, come to think on it.”

  “Never been anyplace, never done any dang thing. Never had no woman but you.”

  “Well now.”

  “I’m gone to Paris,” Royce said.

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m gone to Paris is what I said. I’m gone rob Buford Washburn’s bank and I’m not even gone call him Mr. Washburn this time. Gone to Paris France, gone buy a Cadillac big as a train, gone do every dang thing I never did. Half my life, Essie.”

  Well, she frowned. You blame her? “Royce,” she said, “you better lie down.”

  “Paris, France.”

  “What I’ll do,” she said, “I’ll just call on over at Dr. LeBeau’s. You lie down and put the fan on and I’ll just finish with these here jars and then call the doctor. You know something? Just two more cases and we’ll run out of your ma’s plum preserves. Two cases of twenty-four jars to the case is forty-eight jars and we’ll be out. Now I never thought we’d be out of them plums she put up but we’ll be plumb out, won’t we. Hear me talk, plumb out of plums, I did that without even thinking.”

  Essie wasn’t normally quite this scatterbrained. Almost, but not quite. Thing is, she was concerned about Royce, being as he wasn’t acting himself.

  “Problem is getting in a rut,” Royce said. He was talking to his own self now, not to Essie. “Problem is you leave yourself openings and you back down because it’s the easy thing to do. Like in the bank.”

  “Royce, ain’t you goin’ to lay down?”

  “Fillin’ out a dang slip,” Royce said.

  “Royce? You know somethin’? You did the funniest thing this mornin’, honey. You know what you did? You went and you only shaved the half of your face. You shaved the one half and you didn’t shave the other half.”

  (Now this is something that both Ruth Van Dine and Buford Washburn had already observed, and truth to tell they had both called it to Royce’s attention—in a friendly way, of course. I’d have mentioned it but I figured if I kept sliding in the same little piece of conversation over and over it’d be about as interesting for you as watching paint dry. But I had to mention when Essie said it out of respect, see, because it was the last words that woman ever got to speak, because right after she said it Royce stuck the shotgun right in her face and fired off one of the barrels. Don’t ask me which one.)

  “Now the only way to go is forward,” Royce said. “Fix things so you got no bolt hole and you got to do what you got to do.” He went to the cupboard, got a shotgun shell, broke open the gun, dug out the empty casing, popped in the new shell, and closed the gun up again.

  On the way out of the door he looked at Essie and said, “You weren’t so bad, I don’t guess.”

  Well, Royce drove on back to the bank and parked directly in front of it, even though there’s a sign says plainly not to, and he stepped on into that bank with the twelve-gauge clenched i
n his hand. It wasn’t over his shoulder this time. He had his right hand wrapped around the barrel at the center of gravity or close to it. (It’s not the worst way to carry a gun, though you’ll never see it advocated during a gun safety drive.)

  He was asked later if he felt remorse at that time about Essie. It was the sort of dumb question they ask you, and it was especially dumb in light of the fact that Royce probably didn’t know what the hell remorse meant, but in plain truth he didn’t. What he felt was in motion.

  And in that sense he felt pretty fine. Because he’d been standing plumb still for thirty-eight years and never even knew it, and now he was in motion, and it hardly mattered where exactly he was going.

  “I want every dang cent in this bank!” he sang out, and Buford Washburn just about popped a blood vessel in his right eye, and Ruth Van Dine stared, and old Miz Cristendahl who had made a trip to town just to get the interest credited to her account just stood there and closed her eyes so nothing bad would happen to her. (I guess it worked pretty good. That woman’s still alive, and she was seventy-six years old when Calvin Coolidge didn’t choose to run. All those Cristendahls live pretty close to forever. Good thing they’re not much for breeding or the planet would be armpit deep in Cristendahls.)

  “Now you give me every bit of that money,” he said to Ruth. And he kept saying it, and she got rattled.

  “I can’t,” she said finally, “because anyway it’s not mine to give and I got no authority and besides there’s another customer ahead of you. What you got to do is you got to speak to Mr. Buford Washburn.”

  And what Buford said was, “Now, Royce, say, Royce, you want to put down that gun.”

  “I’m gone to Paris, France, Mr. Washburn.” You notice he forgot and went and called him Mr. Washburn. Old habits die hard.

  “Royce, you still didn’t finish your morning shave. What’s got into you, boy?”

  “I killed my wife, Mr. Washburn.”

  “Royce, why don’t you just have a seat and I’ll get you a cold glass of Royal Crown. Take my chair.”

  So Royce pointed the gun at him. “You better give me that money,” he said, “or I could go and blow your dang head off your dumb shoulders.”

  “Boy, does your pappy have the slightest idea what you’re up to?”

  “I don’t see what my pa’s got to do with this.”

  “Because your pappy, he wouldn’t take kindly to you carrying on this way, Royce. Now just sit down in my chair, you hear?”

  At this point Royce was getting riled, plus he was feeling the frustration of it. Here he went and burned his britches by shooting Essie and where was he? Still trying to hold up a bank that wouldn’t take him seriously. So what he did, he swung the gun around and shot out the plate-glass window. You wouldn’t think the world would make that much noise in the course of coming to an end.

  “Well, now you went and did it,” Buford told him. “You got the slightest idea what a plate-glass window costs? Royce, boy, you went and bought yourself a peck of trouble.”

  So what Royce did, he shot Ruth Van Dine.

  Now that doesn’t sound like it makes a whole vast amount of sense, but Royce had his reasons, if you want to go and call them by that name. He couldn’t kill Buford, according to his thinking, because Buford was the only one who could authorize giving him the money. And he didn’t think to shoot Miz Cristendahl because he didn’t notice her. (Maybe because she closed her eyes. Maybe those ostriches know what they’re about. I’m not going to say they don’t.)

  On top of which Ruth was screaming a good bit and it was getting on Royce’s nerves.

  He wasn’t any Dead-Eye Dick, as I may have pointed out before, and although he was standing right close to Ruth he didn’t get a very good shot at her. A twelve gauge casts a pretty tight pattern as close as he was to her, with most of the charge going right over her head. There was enough left to do the job, but it was close for a while. Didn’t kill her right off, left them plenty of time to rush her to Schuyler County Memorial and pop her into the operating room. It was six hours after that before she died, and there’s some say better doctors could have saved her. That’s a question I’ll stay away from myself. It’s said she’d of been a vegetable even if she lived, so maybe it’s all for the best.

  Well, that was about the size of it. Buford fainted, which was plain sensible on his part, and Miz Cristendahl stood around with her eyes shut and her fingers in her ears, and Royce Arnstetter went behind the counter and opened the cash drawer and started pulling out stacks of money. He got all the money on top of the counter. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of it. He was looking for a bag to put it in when a couple of citizens rushed in to see what was going on.

  He picked up the gun and then just threw it down in disgust because it was full of nothing but two spent shells. And he couldn’t have reloaded if he’d thought of it because he never did bring along any extra shells when he left the house. Just the two that were loaded into the gun, and one of those took out the window and the other took out poor Ruth. He just threw the gun down and said a couple bad words and thought what a mess he’d made of everything, letting the first half of his life just dribble out and then screwing up the second half on the very first day of it.

  He would of pleaded at the trial but he had this young court-appointed lawyer who wanted to do some showboating, and the upshot of it was he wound up drawing ninety-nine-to-life, which sounds backwards to me, as the average life runs out way in front of the ninety-nine mark, especially when you’re thirty-eight to start with.

  He’s in the state prison now over to Millersport. It’s not quite as far from his home as Franklin County where he went once, but he didn’t get to stay overnight that time. He sure gets to stay overnight now.

  Well, there’s people to talk to and he’s learning things. His pa’s been to visit a few times. They don’t have much to say to each other but when did they ever? They’ll reminisce about times they went fishing. It’s not so bad.

  He thinks about Essie now and then. I don’t know as you’d call it remorse though.

  “Be here until the day I die,” he said one day. And a fellow inmate sat him down and told him about parole and time off for good behavior and a host of other things, and this fellow worked it out with pencil and paper and told Royce he’d likely be breathing free air in something like thirty-three years.

  “Means I’ll have five left to myself,” Royce said.

  The fellow gave him this look.

  “I’m fixin’ to live until I’m seventy-six,” Royce explained. “Thirty-eight now and thirty-three more in here is what? Seventy-one, isn’t it? Seventy-six take away seventy-one and you get five, don’t you? Five years left when I’m out of here.” And he scratched his head and said, “Now what am I gone do with them five years?”

  Well, I just guess he’ll have to think of something.

  Cleveland in My Dreams

  “So,” Loebner said. “You continue to have the dream.”

  “Every night.”

  “And it is always without variation yet? Perhaps you will tell me the dream again.”

  “Oh, God,” said Hackett. “It’s the same dream, all right? I get a phone call, I have to go to Cleveland, I drive there, I drive back. End of dream. What’s the point of going through it every time we have a session? Unless you just can’t remember the dream from one week to the next.”

  “That is interesting,” Loebner said. “Why do you suppose I would forget your dream?”

  Hackett groaned. You couldn’t beat the bastards. If you landed a telling shot, they simply asked you what you meant by it. It was probably the first thing they taught them in shrink school, and possibly the only thing.

  “Of course I remember your dream,” Loebner went on smoothly. “But what is important is not my recollection of it but what it means to you, and if you recount it once more, in the fullest detail, perhaps you will find something new in it.”

  What was to be found in it? It was
the ultimate boring dream, and it had been boring months ago when he dreamed it the first time. Nightly repetition had done nothing to enliven it. Still, it might give him the illusion that he was getting something out of the session. If he just sprawled on the couch for what was left of his fifty minutes, he ran the risk of falling asleep.

  Perchance to dream.

  “It’s always the same dream,” he said, “and it always starts the same way. I’m in bed and the phone rings. I answer it. A voice tells me I have to go to Cleveland right away.”

  “You recognize this voice?”

  “I recognize it from other dreams. It’s always the same voice. But it’s not the voice of anyone I know, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Interesting,” Loebner said.

  To you perhaps, thought Hackett. “I get up,” he said. “I throw on some clothes. I don’t bother to shave, I’m in too much of a hurry. It’s very urgent that I go to Cleveland right away. I go down to the garage and unlock my car, and there’s a briefcase on the front passenger seat. I have to deliver it to somebody in Cleveland.

  “I get in the car and start driving. I take I-71 all the way. That’s the best route, but even so it’s just about two hundred fifty miles door to door. I push it a little and there’s no traffic to speak of at that hour, but it’s still close to four hours to get there.”

  “The voice on the phone has given you an address?”

  “No, I just somehow know where I’m supposed to take the briefcase. Hell, I ought to know, I’ve been there every night for months. Maybe the first time I was given an address, it’s hard to remember, but by now I know the route and I know the destination. I park in the driveway, I ring the bell, the door opens, a woman accepts the briefcase and thanks me—”

  “A woman takes the briefcase from you?” Loebner said.