The Best American Noir of the Century

1987 BRENDAN DUBOIS A TICKET OUT

Then there are the nights when I can’t sleep, when the blankets seem wrapped around me too tight, when the room is so stuffy that I imagine the air is full of dust and age, and when my wife Carols sighs and breathing are enough to make me tremble with tension. On these nights I slip out of bed and put on my heavy flannel bathrobe, and in bare feet I pad down the hallway —past the twins’ bedroom — and go downstairs to the kitchen. I’m smart enough to know that drinking at night will eventually ‘cause problems, but I ignore what my doctor tells me and I mix a ginger and Jameson’s in a tall glass and go to the living room and look out the large bay window at the stars and the woods and the hills. Remembering what we had planned, what we had stolen, the blood that had been spilled, the tears and the anguish, I sip at my drink and think, well, it wasn’t what we wanted to do. We weren’t stealing for drugs or clothes or to impress the chunky, giggly girls Brad and I went to high school with. We were stealing for a ticket, for a way out. In the end, only one of us got out. That thought doesn’t help me sleep at all.

It began on an August day in 1976, about a month before Brad Leary and I were going in as seniors to our high school. That summer we worked at one of the shoe mills in Boston Falls, keeping a tradition going in each of our families. Brad’s father worked in one of the stitching rooms at Devon Shoe, while my dad and two older brothers worked on the other side of the Squamscott River at Parker Shoe. My dad was an assistant bookkeeper, which meant he wore a shirt and tie and earned fifty cents more an hour than the “blue-collar boys” that worked among the grinding and dirty machinery.

Brad and I worked in the packing room, piling up cardboard boxes of shoes and dodging the kicks and punches from the older men who thought we were moving too slow or too sloppily. We usually got off at three, and after buying a couple of cans of 7-Up or Coke and a bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips we hiked away from the mills up Mast Road to the top of Cavalry Hill, which looked over the valley where Boston Falls was nestled. Well, maybe nestled’s too nice a word. It was more tumbled in than nestled in.

On that day, we both wore the standard uniform of the summer, dark green T-shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers. We were on an exposed part of the hill, past the town cemetery, looking down at the dirty red-brick mill buildings with the tiny windows that rose straight up from both sides of the Squamscott River. Steam and smoke fumes boiled away from tall brick stacks, and neither of us really had gotten used to the pungent, oily smell that seemed to stay right in the back of the throat. The old-timers never mind the smell. They sniff and say, “Aah,” and say, “Boys, that’s the smell of money.” We weren’t so dumb that we didn’t know if Devon Shoe and Parker Shoe and the lumberyard shut down, Boston Falls would crumple away like a fall leaf in November.

But Brad never liked the smell.

“God,” he said, popping open his can of soda. “It seems worse today.”

“Wind’s out of the south,” I replied. “Can’t be helped.”

Our bikes were on their sides in the tall grass. There was a low buzz of insects and Brad took a long swallow from his soda, water beading up on the side of the can. It was a hot day. Brad’s long hair was combed over to one side in a long swoop, and I was jealous of him because my dad made me keep my hair about two inches long, with no sideburns. But then again, Brad wore thick glasses and my vision was perfect.

“Brad,” I said, “we’re in trouble.”

He tossed his empty soda can over his shoulder. “How are you doing?”

“With the sixty from last week, I got four hundred and twelve.”

“Idiot. You should have four hundred and fifteen like me. Where’s the other three?”

“I had to buy a dress shirt for Aunt Sara’s funeral last week. I tore my last good one in June and Mom’s been bugging me.”

“Mothers.” Brad hunched forward and rested his chin on his knee.

“State says we need at least a thousand for the first year.”

“Yeah.”

“And we can’t get part-time jobs this winter, there won’t be any around.”

“Yeah.”

“So what do we do?”

“I’m thinking. Shut up, will you?”

I let it slide, knowing what he was thinking. We were both six hundred dollars’ short for the first-year tuition at the state college. My dad had made some brave noises about helping out when the time came, but six months ago my oldest brother Tom had wrapped his ‘68 Chevy around a telephone pole and now he was wired up to a bed in a hospital in Hanover and my parents’ bank account was shrinking every month. But at least my father had offered to help. Brad’s father usually came home drunk from the mill every night, sour-mad and spoiling for a light. I’d slept over Brad’s house only once, when we were both fourteen and had just become friends. It was a Friday night, and by midnight Brad’s father and mother were screaming and swinging at each other with kitchen knives. Brad and I snuck out to the backyard with our blankets and pillows and we never talked about it again. But one day Brad came to school with his face lumpy and swollen from bruises, and I knew he must have told his father he wanted to go to college.

“Monroe,” he said, finally speaking up.

“Go ahead.”

“We’re special people, aren’t we?”

“Hunh?”

“I mean, compared to the rest of the kids at school, we’re special, right? Who’s at the top of the class? You and me, right?”

“Right.”

“So we’re special, we’re better than they are.”

“Oh, c’mon —”

“Face it, Monroe. Just sit there and face it, will you? That’s all I ask right now. Just face it.”

Well, he was somewhat right, but then you have to understand our regional high school, Squamscott High. Kids from Boston Falls, Machias, and Albion go there, and those other towns are no better off than ours. And in our state there’s little aid for schools, so the towns have to pay the salaries and supplies. Which means a school building with crumbling plaster ceilings. Which means history books that talk about the promise of the Kennedy administration and science books that predict man will go into space one day. Which means teachers like Mr. Hensely, who stumbles into his afternoon history classes, his breath reeking of mouthwash, and Miss Tierney, the English teacher, not long out of college, who also works Saturday and Sunday mornings as a waitress at Mona’s Diner on Front Street.

“All right, Brad,” I said. “I guess we’re special. We study hard and get good marks. We like books and we want to go places.”

“But we’re trapped here, Monroe,” he said. “All we got here is Boston Falls, the Mohawk Cinema, Main Street — and the Wentworth Shopping Plaza ten miles away. And a lot of brick and smoke and trees and hills. Here, straight As and straight Fs will get you the same thing.”

“I know. The lumberyard or Parker or Devon Shoe.”

“Or maybe a store or a gas station. We’re too smart for that, damn it.”

“And we’re too broke for college.”

“That we are,” he said, resting his head on his knees. “That we are.”

He remained silent for a while, a trait of Brad’s. We’d been friends since freshman year, when we were the only two students who were interested in joining the debate team — which lasted a week because no one else wanted to join. We shared a love of books and a desire to go to college, but no matter how many hours we spent together, there was always a dark bit of Brad I could never reach or understand. It wasn’t something dramatic or apparent, just small things. Like his bedroom. Mine had the usual posters of cars and rocket ships and warplanes, but his had only one picture — a framed photograph of Joseph Stalin. I was pretty sure no one else in Brad’s family recognized the picture — I got the feeling he told his father the man had been a famous scientist. When I asked Brad why Stalin of all people, he said, “The man had drive, Monroe. He grew up in a peasant society and grabbed his ticket. Look where it took him.”

Brad wanted to become a lawyer and I wanted to write history books.

“Feel it,” he said, his voice low, rocking back and forth. “Feel how it’s strangling us?”

I felt it. If we didn’t go to State, then next summer we’d be on that slippery slope where we couldn’t get off, a life at the mill, a life of praying and hoping for a nickel-an-hour wage increase, of waiting for the five o’clock whistle. A life where we would find our friends and amusement at the Legion Hall, Drakes Pub, or Pete’s Saloon, where we would sit comfortable on the barstools, swapping stories about who scored what winning touchdown at what state tournament, sipping our beers and feeling ourselves and our tongues getting thick with age and fear. Just getting along, getting older and slower, the old report cards with the perfect marks hidden away in some desk drawer, buried under old bills, a marriage certificate, and insurance policies.

“We gotta get out,” I said.

“We do. And I know how.” Brad had gotten to his feet, brushing potato-chip crumbs from his pants. “Monroe, we’re going to become thieves.”

The next day we were at Outland Rock, tossing pebble’s into the river. We were upstream from the mills, and the waters flowed fast and clean. About another mile south, after the river passed through town, the waters were slow and slate-gray, clogged with chemical foam and wood chips and scraps of leather. Outland Rock was a large boulder that hung over the riverbank. We were too lazy to swim, so we sat and tossed pebbles into the river, watching the wide arcs of the ripples rise up and fade away.

“What are we going to steal?” I asked. “Gold? Diamonds? The bank president’s Cadillac?”

Brad was on his stomach, his feet heading up to the bank, his head over the water. “Don’t screw with me, Monroe. I’m serious.”

I shook my head, tossing another rock in. “OK, so you’re serious. Answer the question.”

“Cash.” He had a stick in his hand, a broken piece of pine, and he stirred it in the water like he was casting for something. “Anything else can be traced. We steal cash and we’re set.”

The day was warm and maybe it was the lazy August mood I was in — the comfortable, hazy feeling that the day would last forever and school and September would never come — but I decided to go along with him.

“OK, cash. But you gotta realize what we’re working with.”

He looked up at me, his eyes unblinking behind the thick glasses. “Go ahead, Monroe.”

“Our parents still won’t let us drive by ourselves, so we’re stuck with our bikes. Unless you want to steal a car to get out of town — which doubles the danger. So whatever we go after has to be in Boston Falls.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“There’s another thing,” I said. “We can’t go into the National Bank or Trussen’s Jewelers in broad daylight and rob em. In an hour they’d be looking for two kids our age and they wouldn’t have a hard time tracking us down.” I lay back on the rock, the surface warm against my back, and closed my eyes, listening to some birds on the other side of the river and the swish-swish as Brad moved the stick back and forth in the water.

“Burglary,” he said. I sat up, shading my face with one hand. “Burglary?”

“Yeah. We find someone who’s got a lot of cash and break into their house. Do it when no one’s home and they’ll blame it on some drifters or something.”

Somewhere a dog barked. “Do you realize we’re actually talking about stealing, Brad? Not only is it a crime, but it’s wrong. Are you thinking about that?”

He turned to me and his face changed — I had the strange feeling I knew what he’d look like in ten years.

“Don’t get soft on me, Monroe. In another three weeks we’ll be back at school. If we don’t get more money this summer we’re done for. ‘Wrong.’ Isn’t it wrong that you and me have to grow up in a place like this? Isn’t it wrong that we have to live alongside people who haven’t read a book in years? Don’t you think it’s wrong that for lack of a few measly bucks we have to rot here?”

He bent over the rock and pointed. “Look.” In the shallow water I saw a nesting of mussels, their shells wide open. “There you have,” he continued, “the population of Boston Falls, New Hampshire. Sitting still, dumb and happy and open, letting everything go by them, ready to snap at anything that comes within reach.” He pushed his stick into one of the mussels and it snapped shut against the wood. He pulled the stick out, the mussel hanging onto the stick, dripping water. “See how they grab the first thing that comes their way?”

He slammed the end of the stick onto the rock and the mussel exploded into black shards.

“We’re not going to grab the first thing that comes our way, Monroe. We’re going to plan and get the hell out of here. That will take cash, and if that means stealing from the fat, dumb mussels in this town, that’s what we’ll do.”

On the ride home, Brad slowed and stopped and I pulled my rusty five-speed up next to him. A thick bank of rolling gray clouds over the hills promised a thunderstorm soon. Our T-shirts were off and tied around our waists. I was tanned from working in our garden all summer but Brad was thin and white, and his chest was a bit sunken, like he’d been punched hard there and never recovered.

“Look there,” he said. I did and my stomach tightened up.

A dead woodchuck was in the middle of the road, its legs stiff. Two large black grackles hopped around the swollen brown body, their sharp beaks at work.

“So it’s a burglary,” I said. “Whose house?”

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “I’ll find the right one. I’ll go roaming.”

Roaming. It was one of Brad’s favorite things to do. At night, after everyone at his house was asleep, he would sneak out and roam around the dark streets and empty backyards of Boston Falls. The one time I’d gone with him, I thought he was just being a Peeping Tom or something, but it wasn’t that simple. He just liked watching what people did, I think, and he moved silently from one lighted window to another. I didn’t like it at all. I wasn’t comfortable out on the streets or in the fields at night, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was trespassing.

Brad rolled his bike closer to the dead woodchuck. “Are you in, Monroe? We’re running out of time.”

Thunder boomed from the hills and I glanced up and saw a flash of lightning. “We better get going if we’re going to beat the storm.”

“I said, are you with me?”

The wind shifted, blowing the leaves on the trees in great gusts. “Brad, we gotta get moving.”

“You get moving,” he said, his lips tense. “You get moving wherever you’re going. I’m staying here for a bit.”

I pedaled away as fast as I could, pumping my legs up and down, thinking, I’ll save a bit here and there, maybe deliver some papers, maybe just work an extra summer — there’s got to be another way to get the money.

A week later. Suppertime at my house. My brothers Jim and Henry had eaten early and gone out, leaving me alone with my parents. My brother Tom was still in the hospital in Hanover. My parents visited him every Saturday and Sunday, bringing me along when I wasn’t smart enough to leave the house early. I guess you could say I loved my brother, but the curled-over, thin figure with wires and tubes in the noisy hospital ward didn’t seem to be him anymore.

We sat in the kitchen, a plastic tablecloth on the table, my mother, looking worn and tired, still wearing her apron. My dad wore his shirt and tie. His crewcut looked sweaty and he smelled of the mill. On his right shirt pocket was a plastic penholder that said parker does it right with four pens. Supper was fried baloney, leftover mashed potatoes, and canned yellow string beans. I tried to talk about what went on at the mill that day—a pile of boxes stuffed full of leather hiking boots had fallen and almost hit me — but my parents nodded and said nothing and I finally concentrated on quietly cleaning my plate. The fried baloney left a puddle of grease that flowed into the lumpy white potatoes.

My father looked over at Mom and she hung her head, and he seemed to shrug his shoulders before he said, “Monroe?”

“Yes?”

He put his knife and fork down and folded his hands, as if we were suddenly in church.

“At work today they announced a cutback.” He looked at me and then looked away, as if someone had walked past the kitchen window. “Some people are being laid off and the rest of us are having a pay cut.”

“Oh.” The baloney and potatoes were now very cold.

“Tom is still very sick, and until he — gets better, we still have to pay the bills. With the cutback — well, Monroe, we need the money you’ve saved.”

I looked at my mother, but she didn’t look up. “Oh,” I said, feeling dumb, feeling blank.

“I know you’ve got your heart set on college, but this is a family emergency—that has to come first, a family has to stick together. Jim and Henry have agreed to help —”

“With what?” I said, clenching my knife and fork tight. “They don’t save anything at all.”

“No, but they’re giving up part of their paychecks. All we ask is that you do your part.”

Then Mom spoke up. “There’s always next year,” she said. “Not all of your friends are going to college, are they? You’ll be with them next summer.”

Dad gave me a weak smile. “Besides, I never went to college, and I’m doing all right. Monroe, it’s just temporary, until things improve with Tom.”

Until he gets better or until he dies, I thought. I didn’t know what to say next, so I finished eating and went down the hallway to my bedroom and got the dark brown passbook from First Merchants of Boston Falls and brought it back and gave it to my father.

Back in my bedroom, I lay on the bed, staring up at the models of airplanes and rocket ships hanging from thin black threads attached to the ceiling. I looked at my textbooks and other books on the bookshelves I made myself. I curled up and didn’t think of much at all, and after a while I fell asleep.

There was a tapping at my window and I threw the top sheet off and went over, lifting up the window screen. I stood there in my shorts, looking at Brad on the back lawn. My glow-in-the-dark clock said it was two in the morning.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“I found it,” he whispered back, leaning forward so his head was almost through the open window. “I found the place.”

“Whose house is it?”

“Mike Willard’s.”

“Mike? The ex-Marine?”

“That’s right,” Brad said. “I’ve watched him two nights in a row. He goes into his bedroom and underneath his bed he’s got this little strongbox—before shutting off the light and going to bed he opens it up and goes through it. Monroe, he’s got tons of money in there. Wads as big as your fist.”

“You saw it?”

“Of course I did. I was in a tree in his yard. He must’ve been saving up all his life. You never saw so much money.”

The night air was warm but goose bumps traveled up and down my arms. “How do we do it?”

“Easy. He lives out on Tanner Avenue. We can get to it by cutting through the woods. His house has hedges all around. It’ll be a cinch.”

I chewed on my lip. “When?” I asked.

Brad grinned at me. I could almost smell the sense of excitement. “Tomorrow. It’s Saturday — your parents will be in Hanover and Mike goes to the Legion Hall every afternoon. We’ll do it while he’s there.”

I didn’t argue. “Fine,” I said.

The next afternoon we were in a stand of trees facing a well-mowed backyard. Tall green hedges flanked both sides of the yard, and the two-story white house with the tall gables was quiet. Beside me, Brad was hunched over, peering around a tree trunk. We heard a door slam and saw Mike Willard walk down his drive and down the street. His posture was straight as a pine, his white hair cut in a crewcut.

“Let’s give him a few minutes,” Brad said. “Make sure he didn’t forget anything.”

I nodded. My heart was pounding so hard I wondered if Brad could hear it. I knew what we were doing was wrong, I knew it wouldn’t be right to steal Mike Willard’s money, but money was all I could think of. Wads as big as my fist, Brad had said.

“Go time,” Brad said, and he set off across the yard. I followed. There were no toys or picnic tables or barbecue sets in Mike Willard’s backyard, just a fine lawn, as if he mowed it every other day. Up on the back porch I had the strange feeling we should knock or something. I was scared Mike would come back and yell, “Boys, what the hell do you want?” or that a mailman would walk up the drive and ask if Mike was home. I almost hoped a mailman would come, but Brad picked up a rock and went to the door and it was too late. He smashed a pane of glass — the sound was so loud it seemed like every police cruiser within miles would be sent around — then he reached in and unlocked the door, motioning me to follow him inside. A small voice told me to stay outside and let him go in alone, but I followed him into the kitchen, my sneakers crunching on the glass.

The kitchen smelled clean and everything was shiny and still. There weren’t even any dishes in the sink.

“God, look how clean it is,” I said.

“Tell me about it. My mom should keep our house so clean.”

The kitchen table was small and square, with only two chairs. There was one placemat out, a blue woven thing with stars and anchors, and I thought of Mike Willard coming home every night to this empty house, opening a can of spaghetti maybe and eating alone at his table. I looked at Brad and wanted to say, “Come on, let’s not do it,” because I got a bad feeling at the thought of Mike coming home and finding he’d been robbed, that someone had been in his house, but Brad looked at me hard and I followed him down the hallway.

The bedroom was small and cramped, with neatly labeled cardboard boxes piled on one side of the room and a long bureau on the other, on the other side of the bed. The labels on the boxes read china 34, IWO 45, OCC, and things like that. Brad pointed at the walls, where pictures and other items were hanging. “Look, there’s Mike there, I think. I wonder where it was taken. Guadalcanal, maybe?”

The faded black-and-white picture showed a group of young men standing in a jungle clearing, tired-looking, in uniforms and beards, holding rifles and automatic weapons. There was no name on the picture but I recognized a younger Mike Willard, hair short and ears sticking out, standing off to one side.

I heard a board creak. “Shh!” I said. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. This is an old house, Monroe.”

“Well, let’s get going,” I said, rubbing my palms against my jeans. They were very sweaty.

“What’s the rush?” Brad said, his eyes laughing at me from behind his glasses. “Old Mike’s down at the Legion, telling the boys how he won the big one back in ‘45. Look here.”

Below an American flag and a furled Japanese flag was a sheathed curved sword resting on two wooden pegs. Brad took it down and slid it out of its scabbard. He ran a thumb across the blade and took a few swings through the air. “I wonder if Mike bought it or got it off some dead Jap.”

By now I was glancing out the window, wondering if anyone could see us. Brad put the sword down and climbed onto the bed. “Hold on a sec,” he said.

The bed was a brown four-poster. Brad reached under the pillows and pulled out a handgun, large and oily-looking. “A .45. Can you believe it? Old Mike sleeps with a .45 under his pillow.”

“Brad, stop fooling around,” I said. “Let’s get the box and go.” But I could tell he was enjoying himself too much.

“Hold it, I just want to see if it works.” He moved his hand across the top of the gun and part of it slid back and forth with a loud click-clack. “There,” he said. “Just call me John Wayne. This sucker’s ready to fire. I might take it with me when we leave.”

He took the gun and stuck it in his waistband, then reached over and pulled a dull gray strongbox with a simple clasp lock from under the bed. My mouth felt dry and suddenly I was no longer nervous. I was thinking of all the money.

Brad rubbed his hands across the box. “Look, partner. In here’s our ticket out.”

Then Mike Willard was at the bedroom door, his face red, and I could smell the beer from where I was standing, almost five feet away. “You!” he roared. “What the hell are you doing in here? I’m gonna beat the crap out of you boys!”

I back-stepped quickly, tripping over the cardboard boxes and falling flat on my butt, wondering what to do next, wondering what I could say. Brad scampered across the other side of the bed, pulling out the gun and saying in a squeaky voice, “Hold it.” Mike Willard swore and took two large steps, grabbing the sword and swinging it at Brad. I closed my eyes and there was a loud boom that jarred my teeth. There was a crash and an awful grunt, and another crash, then a sharp scent of smoke that seemed to cut right through me.

When I opened my eyes, Brad was sitting across from me, the gun in his lap, both of his hands pressed against his neck. He was very pale and his glasses had been knocked off—without them he looked five years younger.

“It hurts,” he said. And then I saw the bright redness seep through his fingers and trickle down his bare arms.

“God,” I breathed.

“I can’t see,” he said. “Where’s Mike?”

I got up, weaving slightly, and saw Mike’s feet sticking out from the other side of the bed. I crawled across the bed and peered over. Mike was on his back, his arms splayed out, his mouth open like he was still trying to yell, but his eyes were closed and there was a blossom of red spreading across his green work shirt. I stared at him for what seemed hours but his chest didn’t move. When I looked up, Brad was resting his back against the bed. Both of his arms were soaked red and I gazed at him, almost fascinated by the flow of blood down his thin wrists. His face was now the color of chalk.

“Wait, I’ll get a towel,” I said.

“No, you idiot. If I take my hands away, I’m dead. An artery’s gone. Listen. Take the box and call an ambulance.”

“I think Mike’s dead, Brad.”

“Shut up,” he said, his teeth clenched. “Just grab the box, hide it, and get help! We’re juveniles — nothing’s going to happen to us! Get going!” I grabbed the box and was out of the house, running through the woods, the strongbox tight against my chest. The air was fresh and smelled wonderful, and I ran all the way home.

Three days later Mike Willard was buried with full military honors and a Marine Corps honor guard at Cavalry Hill Cemetery. I learned from his front-page obituary that his wife died five years earlier and he had a daughter who lived in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. I also learned that Mike had been in the Marines since he was seventeen, stationed in China in the 1930s and in the Pacific in the 1940s, island-hopping, fighting the Japanese. Then after occupation duty and a year in Korea, he pulled embassy duty until he retired. His nickname had been Golden Mike, for in all his years on active duty he’d never been wounded, never been shot or scratched by shrapnel. The newspaper said he’d come home early that day to dig out a magazine clipping to show some friends at the Legion Hall. To settle a bet.

I kept the strongbox hidden in the attic. Despite the temptation and the worries and the urging, I didn’t open it until that day in May after my college acceptance letter came, followed by a bill for the first year’s tuition. Then I went up with a chisel and hammer and broke open the lock. The wads of money were in there, just as Brad had said, thick as my fist. They were buried under piles of fragile, yellowed letters, some newspaper and magazine clippings, and a few medals. The money was banded together by string, and in the dim light of the attic I wasn’t sure of what I had. I bicycled over to Machias, to a coin shop, and the owner peered over his half-glasses and looked up at me, the money spread over his display case.

“Interesting samples,” he said. He wore a dark green sweater and his hair was white. “Where did you get them?”

“From my uncle,” I lied. “Can you tell me what they’re worth?”

“Hmm,” he said, lifting the bills up to the light. “Nineteen thirties, it looks like. What you have here is Chinese money from that time, what old soldiers and sailors called LC, or local currency. It varied from province to province, and I’d say this is some of it.”

He put the bills back on the counter. “Practically worthless,” he said. I thanked him and rode back to Boston Falls. That afternoon I burned some of the paper money along with my acceptance letter and tuition bill. I didn’t go to college that fall and ended up never going at all.

My ginger and Jameson is gone and I continue looking out at the stars, watching the moon rise over the hill, Cavalry Hill. And even though it’s miles away, I imagine I can see the white stone markers up there, marking so many graves.

In the end I stayed in Boston Falls and took a job at a bank. I worked a little and now I’m an assistant branch manager. Some years ago I married Carol, a teller I helped train, and now we’re out of Boston Falls, in Machias. It’s just over the line, but I get some satisfaction from getting that far.

Upstairs I still have the old strongbox with some of the money, and though I don’t look at it all that often I feel like I have to have something, something I can tell myself I got from that day we broke into Mike Willard’s house. I have to have something to justify what we did, and what I did. Especially what I did.

After running all that distance home, I stashed the strongbox in the attic, and as I came downstairs my parents came home. Dad patted me on the back and Mom started supper and I thought of the strongbox upstairs and the blood and the acrid smoke and Mike Willard on his back and Brad holding on to his neck like that. I knew no one had seen me. Mom offered me some lemonade and I took it and went to the living room and watched television with my dad, cheering on the Red Sox as they beat the Yankees — all the while waiting and waiting, until finally the sirens went by.

Brad was buried about a hundred feet from Mike Willard a day later. On the day of his funeral, I said I was sick and stayed home, curled up in a ball on my bed, not thinking, not doing anything, just knowing that I had the box and the money.

I put down my empty glass and open the back door, hoping the fresh air will clear my head so I can go back upstairs and try to sleep. Outside there’s a slight breeze blowing in from Boston Falls, and like so many other nights I go down the porch steps and stand with my bare feet cool on the grass, the breeze on my face bringing with it the stench of the mills from Boston Falls. The smell always seems to stick in the back of my throat, and no matter how hard I try I can never get the taste of it out.