A Simple Plan Read online

  Now the money had arrived, and she could begin to dream again. She could draw up her wish lists, page through her magazines, plan her new life. It was a nice way to envision her -- full of hope and yearning, making promises to herself that she felt certain she could fulfill -- but there was also something terribly sad about it. We were trapped, I realized; we'd crossed a boundary, and we couldn't go back. The money, by giving us the chance to dream, had also allowed us to begin despising our present lives. My job at the feedstore, our aluminum-siding house, the town around us -- we were already looking upon all that as part of our past. It was what we were before we became millionaires; it was stunted, gray, unlivable. And so if, somehow, we were forced to relinquish the money now, we wouldn't merely be returning to our old lives, starting back up as if nothing of import had happened; we'd be returning having seen them from a distance, having judged them and deemed them unworthy. The damage would be irreparable.

  "Hank?" Sarah called from upstairs. "Honey?" She was off the phone.

  "Coming," I yelled. Then I flicked off the light and quietly slid the door shut behind me.

  SATURDAY afternoon, just as Sarah and I were finishing lunch, the doorbell rang. It was Jacob; I found him waiting on the front porch, dressed, to my surprise, in gray flannel slacks and a pair of leather shoes. It was the first time since our parents' funerals that I'd seen him in anything but jeans or khaki work pants, and it startled me a bit, set me off my guard, so that it took me another moment or so to notice the even more drastic change in his appearance -- his lack of hair. Jacob had gone to the barber and gotten a crew cut; his hair had been clipped back tight against his scalp, so that now his head seemed too large for his body, seemed to hover like an over-inflated balloon above his shoulders.

  He stood there, watching me, waiting for my reaction. I smiled at him. Despite the obvious tightness of his pants, despite the way his brown shoes clashed with his blue socks, he seemed pleased with himself, pleased with how he looked, and that wasn't something that happened very often. It gave me a warm feeling toward him, made me want to compliment him.

  "You got your hair cut," I said.

  He smiled shyly, touched his head with his hand. "Just this morning."

  "I like it," I said. "It looks good."

  He continued to smile, glancing away now, embarrassed. Across the street one of the neighbor's kids was smacking a tennis ball against his garage door with a hockey stick. The ball was wet, and every time it hit the door, it left a mark. Mary Beth was watching him from the truck.

  "You have time to talk?" Jacob asked.

  "Sure." I opened the door wide. "You eat lunch yet? I could fix you a sandwich."

  He glanced past me into the house. He was shy around Sarah -- shy around women in general -- and always tried to avoid coming inside when she was around. "I thought maybe we could go for a drive," he said.

  "We can't talk here?"

  "It's kind of about the money," he whispered.

  I stepped down onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind me. "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "Nothing's wrong."

  "Is it about Pederson?"

  He shook his head. "It's just something I want to show you. It's a surprise."

  "A surprise?"

  He nodded. "You'll like it. It's a good thing."

  I stared at my brother, debating for a moment, then pushed the door back open. "Let me get my jacket," I said.

  AS SOON as I got into the truck, I asked him what was going on, but he wouldn't tell me.

  "Just wait," he said. "I have to show you."

  We drove west out of Delphia, toward Ashenville. At first I thought we were going back to the nature preserve, but then we took a left onto Burnt Road rather than a right, and headed south. It was a cold, sunny day. The snow on the fields had an icy crust to it, and no matter where you looked it seemed to sparkle. It wasn't until we were almost there, turning off onto the dirt road that had once led to our driveway, that I realized Jacob was taking me to our father's farm.

  I stared through the window at the fields as the truck slowed to a stop. I hadn't been out to the farm in years, and I was startled to see it now, shocked by how little still remained to show me that it had once been my home. The house and barn and outbuildings had been dismantled and carted away, the basement filled in and seeded over. The huge circle of shade trees that had once marked the boundary of our front yard had been chopped down and sold for lumber. The only vestige of our family's presence on the land was our father's windmill, which still stood -- at a slight angle now -- about a quarter mile to the west.

  "Do you come by here a lot?" I asked Jacob.

  He shrugged. "Sometimes," he said. He was staring out toward where our house was supposed to be. You could see for more than a mile, and all of it was the same. With the flatness and the snow covering everything, it was hard to keep your eyes from wandering; there was nothing to pick out and focus on over anything else. It was like looking up into the sky.

  "Do you want to get out?" Jacob asked.

  I didn't, but it seemed like he did, so I said, "Sure," and pushed open my door.

  We hiked straight into the field, along where we guessed our gravel driveway had once run. Mary Beth bounded ahead of us through the knee-deep snow, pausing now and then to sniff at things we couldn't see. We stopped about a hundred yards in from the road, when we reached the place where our house had once stood. We may've had the wrong spot; there were no clues to help us orient ourselves, no hearthstone or pump handle, not even a slight depression in the earth to mark the filled-in basement. It was just like everything else around it. The windmill stood off to the left in the distance, looking derelict and disused. There was a little breeze coming down out of the north, and when it gusted, it spun the windmill's sails. They creaked as they lurched into motion, like an old rocking chair, but the sound took a second to reach us, and by the time we turned to look, the sails had stopped.

  Jacob was trying to guess where things had stood -- the barn, the tractor shed, the grain bins, the metal hut our father had used to store seed. He rotated on his heels, pointing out the different spots. His leather shoes were wet from the snow.

  "Jacob," I said finally, interrupting him. "Why'd you bring me here?"

  He grinned at me. "I've decided what I'm going to do with my share of the money."

  "And what's that?"

  "I want to buy back the farm."

  "This farm?"

  He nodded. "I'm going to rebuild the house, the barn, everything just like it used to be."

  "You can't do that," I said, appalled. "We have to leave."

  The dog was digging in the snow at our feet, and Jacob watched him for a moment before answering. Then he looked up at me. "Where am I going to go, Hank?" he asked. "It's different for you guys. You've got Sarah, and Lou's got Nancy, but I don't have anyone. You want me to just drive off all alone?"

  "You can't buy the farm, Jacob. Where would you say you got your money?"

  "I thought we could tell people that Sarah had come into an inheritance. Nobody around here knows anything about her family. We'll say that you guys bought the farm before you left, and set me up to run it."

  I stared off around us at the empty fields, at our tracks running crookedly back through the snow to the road, and tried to imagine my brother staying here, rebuilding the house, putting up fences, planting crops. I couldn't believe that it would ever happen.

  "I thought you'd be happy," he said. "It's our farm. I'm going to bring it back."

  I frowned at him. He was wrong: I was anything but happy. The farm was something I'd been running away from all my life. For as long as I could remember, I'd seen it as a place where things broke down and fell apart, where nothing ever worked out as planned. Even now, looking out at the vacant space that had once held my home, I was filled with an overwhelming surge of hopelessness. Nothing good had ever happened here.

  "It's so hard, Jacob," I said. "Do you realize that? You don't just b
uy a farm, you have to work it. You have to know about machines and seed and fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides and drainage and irrigation and the weather and the government. You don't know about any of that. You'd end up just like Dad."

  As soon as I said it, I realized I'd been too harsh. I could tell just from the way my brother was standing that I'd hurt him. His jacket was hitched up, his shoulders hunched, his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his flannel pants. He wasn't looking at me.

  "I was supposed to get the farm," he said. "Dad had promised it to me."

  I nodded, still ashamed by what I'd said. Our father had wanted one of us to be a farmer, the other to be a lawyer. I'd done better in school, so I was the one they sent to college. We'd both failed him, though; neither of us had managed to live up to his dreams.

  "I'm asking for your help," Jacob said. "I've never done it before, but I'm doing it now. Help me get the farm back."

  I didn't say anything. I didn't want him to stay here after we split up the money -- I knew that only bad would come of it -- but I couldn't find a way to tell him this.

  "I'm not asking for any money," he said. "I just want you to tell people in town that Sarah's come into an inheritance."

  "You don't even know if Muller would sell it to you."

  "If I offer him enough money, he'll sell it."

  "Can't you buy a different farm? Something out west, where people don't know us?"

  Jacob shook his head. "I want this farm. I want to live here, where we grew up."

  "What happens if I refuse to help?"

  He considered that briefly, then shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I guess I'd try to think up another story."

  "But don't you see the danger, Jacob? How your remaining here would be a threat to all of us? The only way we'll really be safe is if everyone disappears."

  "I can't leave," he said. "I don't have any place to go."

  "You've got the whole world. You can settle anywhere you want."

  "This is where I want to go." He stamped his shoe in the snow. "Right here. Home."

  Neither of us spoke for nearly a minute after that. Another breeze came up, and we stared out toward the windmill, but it didn't move. I was working up my confidence to say no to Jacob, to tell him that it would never work, when -- perhaps sensing what I was about to do -- he allowed me a way out.

  "You don't have to decide now," he said. "I just want you to promise me you'll consider it."

  "All right," I said, grateful for the reprieve. "I'll think it through."

  IT WASN'T until after he'd dropped me off, as I was opening my front door, that I realized why he'd dressed up and gotten his hair cut before he came to see me. He'd done it to impress me, to make himself look mature and responsible, to show me that -- if he were only given the chance -- he could play the part of an adult just as well as I. The thought of this, of him shining those shoes in his grungy apartment, of him squeezing his legs into those uncomfortable pants, tightening his belt, pulling up his socks, and then standing for a few moments before the bathroom mirror to appraise the result, filled me with a horrible feeling of wretchedness for myself and Jacob and the way we were to each other. It made me want to give him the farm.

  I knew that this would never happen, though, even as I yearned for it, and when I talked it over with Sarah later that afternoon, she agreed.

  "He's got to leave, Hank," she said. "There's no way he can stay." We were in the living room, sitting in front of the fire. Sarah was knitting again, and her needles clicked away while she talked, as if they were translating what she said into Morse code. "You have to make him understand that."

  "I know," I said. "I just couldn't do it while we were out there. I'll tell him on Monday."

  She shook her head. "Don't tell him until you have to."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The more time we let pass, the less important it'll seem to him."

  I could see what she was saying; she was scared of antagonizing him, of forcing him into Lou's arms. I thought for a moment of arguing with her, telling her that we had no reason to fear Jacob, that he was my brother and we could trust him, but I realized that I had no means to convince her of this, no solid, objective evidence to demonstrate his allegiance. So all I said was, "I wish we could give it to him."

  The needles stopped clicking, and I felt Sarah glance at me across the hearth. "He can't stay here, Hank. It'd be like leaving a giant clue behind."

  "I know. I'm just saying I wish I could help him somehow."

  "Make him promise to leave, then. That's how you'll help him."

  "But what will he do, Sarah? Have you thought about that? He's got nowhere to go."

  "He'll have a million dollars. He'll be able to go wherever he wants."

  "Except here."

  "That's right." She nodded. "Except here."

  The needles started up again.

  "I've always felt bad toward Jacob," I said, "even when we were little. I've always felt like I was letting him down."

  "It's not like he's done all that much for you over the years."

  I waved this aside. She didn't understand what I was talking about. "I used to look up to him," I said. "Until I went off to school and saw him teased by the other kids for his weight. Then I was embarrassed, ashamed that he was my brother. I started to look down on him, and he knew it. He could sense the change."

  Sarah's needles went click, click, click. "That's natural," she said. "You were just a child."

  I shook my head. "He was this shy, anxious kid."

  "And now he's a shy, anxious adult."

  I frowned at her. I was trying to express how I felt toward my brother, trying to give her some hint of the despair that had washed over me earlier that afternoon, after he'd dropped me off.

  "Did you know that he was a bed wetter?" I asked.

  "Jacob?" Sarah smirked at the idea.

  "In seventh grade he began losing control of his bladder every night. It lasted all through the winter and into the spring. My mom used to set her alarm clock so that she could wake him in the middle of the night, get him up, and take him to the bathroom, but it didn't work."

  Sarah continued her knitting. She seemed like she wasn't really paying attention.

  "Toward the end, I told one of my friends about it, and pretty soon everyone knew. Everyone in the whole school."

  "Was Jacob mad?"

  "No. He was just ashamed, but that made it worse. He didn't even tell our parents about it, so I never got in trouble." I paused, thinking about this. "It was the cruelest thing I've ever done."

  "That was ages ago, Hank," Sarah said. "I bet he doesn't even remember anymore."

  I shook my head. I shouldn't have tried to speak about it, I realized: it hadn't come out right, I hadn't said what I meant. What I meant was that I wanted to help my brother, to do something good for him, to make his life better than it was. But I couldn't find a way to say this.

  "It doesn't matter what he remembers," I said.

  LATE that night I woke to the sound of a car's engine idling in our driveway. Sarah was on her back beside me, breathing deep and slow. The only light in the room came from the digital alarm clock, a pale green glow floating out across the night table and settling softly onto the blanketed bulk of her pregnant body.

  It was quarter till one. Outside, the car's engine shut itself off.

  I slipped out of bed and padded to the window. The sky was clear. A half moon, pale yellow, almost white, hung at its very center. Stars shone through the branches of the trees, bright and precise. The snow in the front yard sparkled with their light. At the bottom of the driveway, parked with its nose facing the house, was Lou's car.

  I glanced quickly at Sarah, who continued her steady, muted breathing; then I tiptoed across the room and out into the hallway.

  As I headed down the stairs, I heard a car door squeak open. After a moment, it squeaked shut again, slowly, quietly.

  At the front door I peeked through the s
lit window. Lou was making his way carefully up the driveway. He was wearing his white camouflage jacket and walking like he was drunk. I wasn't sure, but it looked like there was someone waiting in the car. As I watched, Lou veered off toward the garage.

  The garage was attached to the left side of the house. I couldn't see the front of it, and when Lou got near it, he disappeared from sight.

  I didn't have any weapons in the house. All I could think of were the knives in the kitchen, and I didn't want to leave the window to go get one.

  He spent a long time by the garage. The doors were unlocked, but there was nothing in there for him to steal. I stared at his car. There was definitely someone waiting there, maybe even two people.

  The miniature grandfather clock in the living room ticked loudly through the silence, punctuating it, seeming to draw it out.

  I considered briefly turning on a light, trying to scare them away, but I didn't do it. I just peered out the window, shivering in my pajamas and bare feet, and waited for Lou to reappear.

  When he finally did, he headed not for his car but straight toward my front door.

  I stiffened, took two steps back into the entranceway.

  Lou climbed up onto the porch, his boots making a hollow sound against the wood, a pair of drumbeats. He tried the door, jiggling the knob, but it was locked. Then he knocked, very softly, tapping with his glove.