Rainbow’s End

22

Motioning with the gun, he marched us back to our seats, to our chairs, on the other side of the table, beside the TV set. Then with one hand he picked up the twenties. Folding them, he slipped them in his coat pocket. He picked up the wallet and slipped that in. Still with his eyes on my mother, he bent both knees and pawed around on the floor, for the tens, which had slipped down there. He got them, stood up, and walked over to my mother, dropping them in her lap. Then: “OK, you lying, thieving bitch,” he began, but I cut in: “Watch your language, Sid.”

He did a quarter turn with the gun, to point it at me. “I called her a lying, thieving bitch,” he said. “What do you call her?”

“I call her my mother,” I growled. “And you better.”

“I call her a lying, thieving bitch, and on top of that a filthy whore. And you don’t say any different, do you? Do you?”

His voice was pure bile, and I made no answer. I measured with my eye how far I was from him, and whether I could make it before he could shoot. But my eyes must have tipped him. He did another quarter turn, quick, so the gun was on me, to mean it. “Don’t move!” he snapped. “Stay right where you’re at, kid.”

He went back to the sofa, sat down, then suddenly ordered us: “Lock hands! Put them in front! On your knees, where I can see them! And lock them!”

We did as he said.

“OK, where is it?” he asked.

“Where is what?” asked my mother.

“The poke! What do you think?”

“You have it, Sid. You tell me, why don’t you?”

“You got the goddamn gall to sit there and tell me that? After you lined it out for me, word for word, after you all but owned up it was you who took that poke?”

“I all but owned up? Sid, I always thought you were crazy, but not that crazy, oh no! What do you mean, I all but owned up?”

“Last night, so you said, you were here and then you left. For God’s sake, Myra, who knew about that boat? Where it was and how to get to it? Who knew about the tree? Where it was and how to get to it? Who do you think you’re fooling?”

“OK, Sid, but the thing of it is, I’m not like you, thank God. I wouldn’t go back on my kin, on a girl who will be my kin. I couldn’t do that to her.”

“What do you mean, you’re not like me?”

“You know what I mean, Sid. If you don’t, drop the nose of that gun and I’ll tell you.”

He angled the gun at the floor, and she said: “I’m talking about those boys, those two cousins of yours, that you turned on year before last and left to die in that mine you’re caretaker of. They were your partners, weren’t they? In that business of yours? You brought them over, didn’t you? From Logan? To help out in that mine, share and share alike?”

Now his business, as I’ve said, was booze — moonshine, it used to be called, except the way they do it now, mixing corn and rye, and letting it color in charred kegs, it’s more like regular bourbon, and the bars in Ohio grab it on account of the low price. “And suppose I did, what then?” he snapped. “What’s that got to do with the bag?”

It was some time before she answered him. She sat staring at him, like trying to screw up her nerve to say whatever it was that was still on her mind. Outside a car drove up, then passed the three cars on the loop, my car, my mother’s car, and Sid’s car, then drove off again without stopping. I didn’t pay much attention, remembering what she had said about people that wouldn’t come in if they saw certain cars out front. Turned out that was the reason, but in a way different from what she had meant, and a lot more important.

“It’s got to do with a rat, leaving his kin to die, so he could keep their share of the bundle of money they’d made.”

She said it at last, and it was Sid’s turn to stare, as though figuring how much she knew. Then, kind of hoarse, he asked: “When did I do that?”

“The day the top fell down in that dead entry you used to get to the still you had, in the old Ajax number three — as everything started to shake, when the strip shovel started up on the other side of the mountain. With that top blocking passage, it meant those boys were trapped. But they could have been saved, couldn’t they? Could have been gotten out, if you’d put in a call about them, to Ajax, the police, or someone. But no! That would have tied you in to the still, and besides, there was the cash, the money that had piled up, that still hadn’t been split. So you didn’t call, did you? You just walked away from those boys, said they’d gone West in their car, let them stay in that mine — which is where they are now, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”

There was a long argument then, but what they said I don’t rightly recall, as I suddenly had the feeling, whether from something I heard, or from a hunch I had, that something was behind me, out there in the hall. And I must have made some motion or tipped it where my mind was, because instead of answering her, he whipped the gun around, so it pointed straight at my gut, and told me: “Stay where you’re at! Don’t move or you get it!”

I stayed where I was, I promise you, but I kept trying to think what was next on his schedule, as bringing someone in, someone to sneak up behind us, didn’t seem to make sense, unless he wanted help carrying bodies down to the river or something like that. However, all I actually did, with that gun looking at me, was sit there, without moving, as he said. In a moment he turned back to my mother, telling her: “I don’t have to answer you.” And then: “Do I?”

“I guess not,” she whispered.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all.”

“I thought it was.”

He patted the gun, said “Now” as though getting ready to talk, and let a grin spread over his face. But at that she really exploded: “It’s not all, it’s not all! I haven’t even started yet!”

“Oh yes you have — it’s all!”

“Mother,” I couldn’t help saying, “for God’s sake!”

“It’s not all. I’m going to say it and nothing can stop me! You said they’d left for the West, that they’d driven off in their car — but there their car was at your house. So you hid it in the woods and that night drove it here. And next day, when David had gone in to work, you let her show you where, and toppled it into the river. But that left the money, which if found on you could have got you 20 years in prison. And she put it away for you, with you rowing the johnboat, in that place where she hid that bag, in that very selfsame tree you knew she’d use, to hide something in a hurry. So you knew where the poke was, so you took it. Didn’t you?”

“Myra, for the second and I hope the last time, I don’t have to answer on every crazy thing you dream up.”

“I didn’t dream about your money in that tree. Myra told me.”

“Goddamn it, shut up!”

“Sid, where’s the poke?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“How? Find out?”

“We’re searching your car, that’s how.”

He got up, motioning at us, with the gun, to head for the front door. I edged toward it, but she didn’t. She got up, turned her back on him, and picked the mink coat up, where it was spread on a chair at the far end of the room. She was slipping it on with a little go-to-hell smile, when suddenly he burst out: “Being a rat to my kin, hey? — and look, just look who’s talking! Myra, you got a gall, you got a nerve, to say what you did, the trick you played on her — on Little Myra, my sister, your cousin, your kin. Having this goddamn bastard, right there in Marietta, and then putting it on her! Saying she was the one, and making her raise him for you! Oh yes you did, and she had to — she couldn’t turn down the money, that clinker she was going to marry, little as he made or ever would make in his life. So, looking you in the eye and meaning every word, I say you’re a whore.”

“I say you’re a thief.”

“Come on!”

It was around 6:30, still daylight, when we went out front, and I looked around for the other car that had driven up in the hope I could yell for help and have them go call the officers. But it wasn’t anywhere in sight. Sid chunked my ribs with the gun and told me to open my car. I did and he looked inside, finding nothing, of course. Then he told Mother to open her car. She did and he looked again. Two dresses were hanging up, in front of the back seat. He used the gun to flip them, but of course saw nothing behind them. Then he said: “OK, kid, I’m going to open my car, and you’re going to search it, see?”

He handed me his keys, and when I hesitated, chunked the gun into my ribs once more. I did as he said, opening the doors. It was a buzzard’s roost inside, full of all kinds of stuff, a case of empty bottles, magazines, a hacksaw, coils of rubber tubing, a bra, anything you could think of — but no bag. He had me open the trunk, and no bag was there, either. He snapped the trunk lid down, locked it, and snarled: “Get in the house, you two! Get in and close the door! Get in there and stay there, or I’m letting you have it!”

“Letting us have it!” she half whispered, “that’s what he thinks! I’m letting him have it, now — if it’s the last thing I do on this earth!” She went out in the hall and back to the kitchen, then at once came whirling back. “What did you do with it?” she half screamed at me. “In God’s name, Dave, where is it?”

“What?”

“That rifle!”

“What the hell? I didn’t do anything with it!”

“It’s not there!”

She went to the front door to look out. A shot came from outside, splintering the lintel over her head. She dropped to the floor while I went to the window to look. By then he was circling the loop, and it suddenly was made clear why he’d parked as he had, ahead of the other cars. He wanted to have a clear track if he had to get out quick. He rolled on, then came to the lane and turned into it. That’s when she grabbed my arm.

Because there from the side of the house, in the gathering dark, came a shadow I didn’t recognize. Then I could see it was Jill, carrying the Springfield. She took a few steps, then stopped. Then she planted herself and raised the rifle. For a long second she didn’t move. Then fire cut the twilight, and there came that sharp little crack a rifle makes when fired outdoors. Then the left rear tire of Sid’s car coughed, wobbled, and went flat. He kept on going, turning from the loop into the lane. He opened up to gain speed, but the car started to buck. Then it yawed, as the front wheels cut left. Then it started to slide, down the gully beside the lane. Then suddenly it toppled, with all four wheels in the air, the front two spinning around. The top of the car had been mashed as flat as the hood and trunk. By that time, my mother and I had run out, and Jill was there in the lane, screaming and weeping, and pointing, at what was under the car — or on top of it, actually, as it stuck there, upside down. “There it is!” she yelped at the top of her lungs. “Oh please! Help me! Before it catches fire and burns up!”

And sure enough, there was the zipper bag, tied by its strap to the intake pipe of the tank and safe from all ordinary search. She began clawing at it, but it was knotted hard, and she kept breaking her fingernails and shaking them and sucking them. I took out my knife and started to open it, to cut the strap loose for her. But I changed my mind as I happened just then to remember what she’d accused me of. I stood there and watched her claw. At last she got the strap loose, grabbed the bag to her chest, and cuddled it as though it was a newborn child or something. She broke down in my mother’s arms, letting go of the rifle. I caught it as it fell, and my mother said: “Dave, stand by while I take her inside and get her calmed down. I’ll call the sheriff’s office. They’ll have to take charge of this. But Sid’s still in that car and he still has that gun. Watch him — watch him every minute.”

She took Jill in the house but not till she’d held her close and whispered in her ear: “I’m proud of you, Jill. You did it just right, our way, the mountain way, the way I wanted to.” And then, to me: “She’s one of us now, Dave.”

“Who is us?” I heard myself growl. “If you’re talking about me, leave me out.”

“You bet I’m leaving you out!” snapped Jill. “Why didn’t you lend me that knife? I saw you take it out. You had it right in your hand! Why didn’t you pass it to me?”

“Why should I lend you a knife? It’s your money, it’s what you care about — far be it for me to sully it up with my hands or my well-sullied knife.”

“Dave!” screamed my mother.

“Take her inside!” I bellowed, “or you got a job on your hands, getting me calmed down!”