Lights Out

26

Monday.

Jack dressed for the occasion. He came out of the bedroom wearing a black turtleneck, black Patagonia jacket, black jeans, black high-tops. He was carrying a black gym bag.

“What’s in there?” Eddie said.

Jack unzipped the bag, showed him the contents: two handguns, clips of ammunition. “One for you, one for me,” Jack said.

“You’re a gun owner?”

“Lots of gun owners on Wall Street,” Jack said. “You’d be surprised.”

Eddie shook his head. “No guns.”

“No guns?”

Eddie had heard hundreds of robbery stories, most of them robberies gone wrong. Guns didn’t help. They made people overconfident and careless. That was the opinion of Jonathan C. McBright, former cellmate and a pro. “It’s not that kind of thing,” Eddie said. “No one’s even going to see us.” The sign of a good job, Jonathan C. McBright liked to say, was when no one knew he was being jobbed.

Jack returned the gym bag to the bedroom, came out rubbing his hands together. “Jesus,” he said, “this is exciting.”

Eddie didn’t like that. Excitement was one of the common elements of robberies gone wrong. “Let’s go,” he said.

Jack’s car was waiting in front of the hotel. All the new equipment, paid for in cash, was in place. The two mountain bikes were locked onto the rear carrier, the large capacity, lightweight EMS backpacks lay on the backseat, the ax was in the trunk. Jack took the wheel. They drove out of the city. The rain stopped and the setting sun poked through a hole in the clouds, casting a coppery glow on the river, on the bridges, on every puddle, windshield, pane of glass.

“Sun at last,” Jack said. “I was giving up hope.”

A few minutes later it went down, sucking away the coppery glow and all other color. Jack turned up the heat.

“Nice car,” Eddie said.

“Never use it,” Jack replied. “It just sits in the garage.”

“What’s it worth?”

“It’s leased, Eddie. Not really mine, so I couldn’t get anything for it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He stopped at a toll booth, took a ticket from the dispenser, drove south on the turnpike. “There’s a bottle of something in the glove compartment,” he said.

Eddie shook his head. Alcohol was another factor in robberies gone wrong.

“You’ll never guess what I’m thinking,” Jack said.

“Plundering the Spanish Main,” Eddie replied.

Jack took his eyes off the road for a moment, looked at Eddie. He reached over, squeezed Eddie’s knee. “You know me, bro,” he said. “Don’t take offense. Just an expression. You’re my brother. It’s something special, right?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. It meant you had the same mother and father. After that, it was what you made it. He left the thought unspoken; this wasn’t the time for introducing complications.

“Know something?” Jack said. “You’re a smart guy. I deal with smart guys all the time and you’re a smart guy. In a little different way maybe, but you really could have been-” Jack stopped himself. A mile or two went by. “Still, everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?”

“In what way?”

“In what way. Shit. In a material way. What are you going to do with all that money?”

Eddie hadn’t thought about that, had no desire to. “Take the next exit,” he said.

Jack took the next exit, drove west on a two-lane state road. For a while they had it to themselves. Then taillights appeared in the distance. Jack was driving fast. The taillights grew bigger and brighter. Then Eddie saw a beer can rolling beside the road.

“Slow down,” he said.

“Slow down?”

“That’s them.”

Jack took his foot off the gas. The taillights dimmed and shrank, finally disappearing. Jack turned down the heat. He was sweating; Eddie could smell it.

There was a long silence. Then Jack said, “What are they like?”

“It doesn’t matter what they’re like,” Eddie said. “They’re not going to see us.”

“Right. That’s key, isn’t it?”

“If we want to live,” Eddie said.

Jack laughed, high and tight.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Eddie asked.

There was a buzzing sound.

“What’s that?” Eddie said.

“The phone.”

Jack reached into the console between them. “Hello?” he said. His voice was low, as if someone nearby might overhear.

“Jack?” It was Karen on the speaker phone. “I can hardly hear you.”

“I can’t talk right now,” Jack said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“That’s not good enough. I’m concerned about my account. Extremely. I spoke to my lawyer about it this afternoon. She’s extremely concerned too. I don’t want this to get messy, Jack, but I’m afraid-”

Jack’s voice rose. “Tomorrow. You’ll have it tomorrow.”

There was a pause. Then Karen said, “Where are you?”

“I’ll call you by noon,” Jack said, and clicked off.

He turned to Eddie. “And don’t you patronize me,” he said. Again Eddie was conscious of the shifting balance between them. “I may not have your experience in these matters, but I’m used to managing risk.” He drove on; in the glow of the instrument panel Eddie could see his hands tightening around the steering wheel.

“Then take the next right,” he said.

Jack turned onto the dirt road. “Besides,” he said. “What choice have I got?”

“Cut the lights.”

Jack slowed down, switched them off. A half moon hung just above the trees, lighting their way. Big clouds drifted across the sky like continents. “My night vision has gone to shit,” Jack said.

“We’re not in a hurry.”

Eddie checked the odometer. The road ran straight through the woods. The moonlight glistened on the wet branches, on a pond in the distance, on the eyes of a small animal that ran across the road. Good things happened under the light of the moon, at least in “The Mariner.”

The moving moon went up the sky,

And nowhere did abide;

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside.

Eddie looked up through the windshield for a star or two, saw none.

Three miles passed, three and a half, four. Eddie wanted to make their exit as fast as possible, but he didn’t want to take the chance of being heard from the gate.

“Stop the car,” he said.

Jack stopped the car.

“Turn it off.”

Jack switched off the engine. Eddie got out, listened. He heard nothing but the wind rising in the trees. A cold wind: he looked up at the sky and saw that more cloud continents had appeared. Those near the moon had white trim, like beaches. Eddie got back in the car.

“Next place you can pull off to the side, do it.”

Jack drove on. There was a small clearing a few hundred feet ahead, an opening in the shadows.

“Back in,” Eddie said.

Jack backed in, parked behind a screen of trees. Eddie walked into the road. A ray of moonlight caught the antenna; otherwise the car was invisible. Good enough. Eddie glanced up at the gathering clouds: there wasn’t going to be moonlight much longer.

They took the bikes off the rack, the ax from the trunk. Eddie put it in one of the backpacks and strapped it on. Jack strapped on the other, locked the car, pocketed the keys.

“Is there another set?”

“Why would we need another set?”

Eddie didn’t want to let his imagination go on that one. “Someone I knew did six years because his keys fell through a grate at the worst possible moment.”

Jack smiled; that old smile, flashing in the moonlight. “There’s another set under the floor mat in back.”

Eddie smiled too.

They got on the bikes.

“I feel kind of silly,” Jack said.

But bikes were perfect for what Eddie had in mind, faster than a man could run, and silent. They pedaled off on the dirt road, side by side.

The wind whistled in Eddie’s ears, cold, exhilarating. Wind, like the moon, was a good omen. Eddie felt excitement rising inside him and stilled it. Omens, exhilaration, excitement: these were the stuff of ballads, and of robberies gone wrong.

“I haven’t been on a bike since we were kids,” Jack said.

“Sh.”

Ahead, Eddie saw a metallic gleam. He braked, at the same time reaching across the space between them and touching Jack’s arm.

“What?” said Jack.

“Sh.”

Jack halted a few yards ahead, came back, walking his bike. “What is it?” he said in a low voice.

Eddie pointed. In the distance he could see moonlight on a steel gate, and beyond it a shadow that might have been a man.

“I don’t see anything,” Jack said.

Eddie didn’t explain. He turned and started walking his bike the way they had come. Jack followed. After a few hundred yards, Eddie cut into the woods at a right angle.

The treetops filtered out the moonlight. Eddie couldn’t see the branches that reached out to snag the backpack, or the rocks the tires bumped against. He bumped against a few things himself. The ax in his backpack shifted into an uncomfortable position. Behind him, he heard a soft crash.

“Shit,” Jack said.

“Quiet.”

Eddie listened, heard only the wind.

They went on for a while, made another right-angle turn. Five or ten minutes later, Eddie caught another gleam through the trees. A few more steps and they were at the fence: four horizontal strands of barbed wire extending into darkness in both directions. A rural fence, meant for marking boundaries and containing livestock, not for keeping out determined people or attracting the curiosity of law-abiding neighbors. Eddie raised the lowest strand. Jack crawled through, dragging his bike behind. Then he held the wire up for Eddie.

“It’s like that old punch line,” Jack said. “So far so good.”

Eddie didn’t know the joke that went with it.

They moved into the woods on the far side of the fence, turned right, and came to the dirt road sooner than Eddie had expected. They must have gone through the fence much closer to the gate than he’d intended. He’d have to remember that on the way back.

They remounted their bikes, rode on, over the rise and past the turning to the farm. The wind blew harder now, and colder. Above, the clouds thickened, crowding the half moon on all sides. Eddie pedaled faster; without moonlight there might be trouble spotting the track that led to the airstrip. Jack was quiet except for his breathing, which grew heavier. He began to fall behind.

Eddie was almost past the track before he saw it: a narrow opening in the darkness. He halted, waited for Jack. He heard the crunching of a fat tire on pebbled earth, Jack’s breathing, and then Jack was beside him.

“How much farther?” he asked.

“Not far,” Eddie replied. “And keep your voice down.”

“When this is over, I’m going to get in shape,” Jack said, more quietly. “Maybe you and me’ll do some swimming.”

“At Galleon Beach,” Eddie said.

Pause. “Why there?”

“It’s a nice place.”

“There’s lots of nice places.”

They rode up the track. Eddie wasn’t sure of the distance. It seemed like a long time before he heard water gurgling, came to the wooden bridge.

“Here?” Jack said.

Eddie nodded. He examined the bridge. It was about two car lengths long, surfaced with worn planks that weren’t laid flush to each other. The downstream side sagged slightly. Not a sturdy structure: that was good.

Eddie walked his bike down the bank of the stream, laid it on the dry earth under the bridge supports. There were four of them, two on each side of the stream, wooden posts almost twice the diameter of telephone poles. He took off his backpack, removed the ax, unclipped the leather blade-cover.

Jack, laying his bike beside Eddie’s, said, “What about the noise?”

“That’s why I didn’t bring a chain saw,” Eddie said, and swung at the downstream support. High to low on the first cut; the blade sank into the wood with a thunk that didn’t sound especially loud to Eddie but made Jack suck in his breath. Low to high on the second cut. Again the blade bit deep; the wood was half rotten. This time Jack made no sound.

Eddie cut a deep notch, then stepped around the support and cut a second notch on the other side, leaving a core of wood about six inches in diameter. It didn’t take long; he had chopped lots of firewood as a kid, and the occasional tree in the forest, just for fun.

A beautiful night. Moonlight shone on his breath and Jack’s, rising above them, on the flowing water, on the silver blade of the ax. The stream bubbled at their feet. Everything was going to be all right.

Eddie spoke:

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night

Singeth a quiet tune.

“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 Senor 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.