Comeback

4

Zack sat behind the wheel of the maroon Honda Accord, Woody beside him, Ralph in back. In the parking lot at the Seven Oaks Professional Building—three law firms, three dentists, one interior decorator, one office for rent—diagonally across from the Midway Motel, they remained in the positions they'd held since they'd driven away from Memphis. There was nothing to do now but wait.

Ralph leaned his forearms on top of the front seat, so he could be part of the conversation. If you could call it a conversation; Zack said almost nothing, and Woody kept babbling on and on about nothing at all, as though silence were something to be feared, like a fatal disease. As he babbled, they all kept looking at the station wagon parked across the way at the motel, in front of room 16. The woman and one of the men were in that room, George Liss and the other man next door. They were tough-looking, all of them, even the woman.

Mary had pointed out George Liss to Ralph a couple of weeks ago, as the crook her friend Tom Carmody was mixed up with, that she was so worried about. (So worried, in fact, that she'd made the mistake of talking it over with her stupid kid brother.) The hardness of Liss's face had been daunting, but nevertheless, the instant he'd heard Mary's story Ralph had known what he had to do. And while he and Woody weren't real tough guys, Zack was, wasn't he? Zack could front for them in the toughness department. And Ralph, the way he saw it, was the brains.

Nothing happened for a long time, except that Woody just kept on talking, never saying anything at all interesting but never letting up. After a while, Ralph took his forearms off the seat and sat back to relax, not needing to follow every word. And when he looked out the left rear window, he could still see that station wagon over there, just as well.

The chatter was getting to Zack, too. He started saying things like, "You already told us that, Woody. Shut up." Or, "Who gives a fuck, Woody?" Finally, he turned around in exasperation and said to Ralph, "Remember that pizza place? Back a couple blocks."

"Yeah?"

"Go get us something. Maybe if we put a lotta food in this asshole's mouth he'll shut up a while."

Woody said, "I'm just filling the time, Zack. Jeez, what's wrong with just—"

"Shut your face"

Ralph said, "What if they go before I come back?" Gesturing at the station wagon across the street.

"They won't," Zack said, and looked at his watch. "It's an hour before the fucking crusade even starts. They won't go before the money's in."

"Boy, am I gonna spend that money," Woody said, grinning like Bozo the clown at the two of them. "I dunno, do I get a Jap bike, or a Harley?"

Woody had already thrown this question out to general consideration twice before. Zack leveled a furious glare at Ralph: "Go. "

"Okay, okay," Ralph said, and got out of the car.

Zack watched in the rearview mirror as Ralph went sloping away in the sunlight, goofing along like some stumblebum on his way to the soup line. Woody continued to yak away. When Ralph passed out of sight, Zack took the spring knife out of his pants pocket, opened the four-inch blade, turned sideways, and slipped the knife point past Woody's arm and into his side, maybe a quarter-inch deep, just above the lowest rib.

Stunned, scared, Woody recoiled against the door to his right, and Zack pursued him, pressing the blade against his flesh, maintaining that slight and dangerous penetration, his expression grim and intent.

"Jesus, Zack! Jesus! What are you doing?"

Quiet, but very serious, Zack said, "If Ralph tumbles, what happened to his sister, I'm putting this in there to the hilt."

"What'd I say? Jeez, all I—"

"You been too jumpy," Zack told him, holding the knife in place. "Too jumpy just for what we're doing here. You're running off like an idiot. When Ralph comes back, you shut up."

"Come on, Zack—"

Zack pressed the knifepoint into Woody's side just a little deeper. "Wake up, you fucking asshole."

"Don't, man! That hurts!"

In the rearview mirror, Ralph was coming, a six-pack of soda on top of a pizza box. So soon. Zack frowned at the mirror, then at Woody. "You will shut up now, asshole, or I start cutting. You got me?" He gave the knife a quarter turn.

"Aaaaa!That hurts!"

"And, he figures out what happened back home, you're dead meat. You got it, Woody?"

"Yes!"

Walking back toward the parking lot in the sunlight, carrying the pizza box in front of himself in both hands like a page boy carrying the queen mother's crown, Ralph saw Zack leaning way over to talk at Woody, and from the menacing shape of Zack's posture Ralph knew Woody was being told to shut up. Scaring the shit out of him, Ralph thought, and grinned at the idea. Yeah, Zack would be their tough guy, against those other people.

As Ralph opened the right rear door of the Honda, Zack moved leftward, wiping both sides of the knife blade against Woody's thigh, leaving a small faint streak of bloodstain. Woody, grimacing in pain, put his right hand over the wound like a compress and pressed it there with his left elbow. Zack, in better humor, said, "So what'd you get? Pepperoni?"

"They could do halfies," Ralph told him, sliding into the car, pushing the box ahead of himself across the seat. "Half plain, half pepperoni."

Zack held up the knife, showing it. "I got my knife out, to slice."

"The guy did it at the place. Eight slices."

"I'll just leave it here," Zack said, putting the open knife on top of the dashboard, "in case we need it."

Woody looked at the knife open on the dashboard, and blinked, and didn't say a word.

They ate the pizza, and drank three cans of the soda, and then across the way the doors of 16 and 17 opened, and the four people came out. The woman got behind the wheel of the station wagon. Two of the men were carrying duffel bags that they put in back, then all got into the car.

"She's the driver," Ralph said, surprised. "I didn't think she'd be part of it."

"Some women are," Zack said. "Why not."

"I'll have to tell Mary when I get back," Ralph said. "How good things could go, if you had a woman along you could trust to be on your side, and not be nagging you and putting you down all the time."

Woody put his right fist up to his mouth and gnawed gently on the knuckles. His left arm was pressed to his side. He wasn't talking, he was just staring at the glove compartment door. His left side ached, as though he'd been hit there by a baseball bat or something, not the sharper pain he would have expected from being stabbed. I've been stabbed, he thought, with dulled surprise. How did I get to be here, in this place, stabbed? Jesus, what did I do that I'm here in this place?

Zack started the Honda engine, and they followed the station wagon, keeping well back, and it did what they'd expected it to do, it went straight to the stadium. There, the wagon stopped, and the three men got out. They collected their duffel bags and strode away across the full parking lot, and the station wagon moved on, and Zack followed.

Back to the motel. The woman went indoors, and Zack found their old parking spot beside the Seven Oaks Professional Building still waiting for them. "This is nice," he said, as he pulled to a stop in the same old space. "They pull the job, and if it works out she goes and picks them up, and gets them out safe, away from the law. And then we go in and take it away."

Nobody said anything. Zack gave Woody a hard smile. "Pretty good, huh, Woody?"

I don't want to be here, Woody thought. I don't want to know these people any more, or be in this place, or anything. I don't even want that pizza, it feels like shit in my stomach, I don't know if I'm gonna throw up or cry.

He didn't do either. Zack reached out with his middle finger and tapped the bloodstain on Woody's thigh and repeated his question: "Pretty good, huh?"

"Yes," Woody said.