A Simple Plan Read online

  I continued to buy the drinks. I told Lou my ginger ale was scotch and soda, and he laughed, calling it an accountant's drink. He wanted to buy me a shot of tequila, but, smiling, I refused.

  It was interesting, watching him get drunk. His face took on a deep redness, and his eyes went watery, their pupils slowly sinking beneath a flat, glassy sheen. He started to use the bathroom between every round, and by nine o'clock the meanness had begun to unshroud itself, the petty spitefulness, the essential Lou. At odd moments he seemed to forget that I was buying him his drinks: he'd begin to call me Mr. Accountant, start his winking routine with Jacob, his sneers and giggles. Then, just as quickly, he'd bounce back, slap me on the arm, and all three of us would be the greatest of friends again, coconspirators, a gang of gentlemen thieves.

  Whenever a fresh drink arrived, he'd make a toast, the same one each time. "Here's to the little lady," he'd say. "Blessings on her downy head."

  The tape recorder was in my shirt pocket. I reached up and scratched at it every minute or so, obsessively, as if it were some sort of talisman and I were touching it for luck.

  After we'd been drinking for about an hour, I turned to Lou and asked, "Would you really've told the sheriff if I hadn't agreed to split the money?"

  We were alone; I'd given Jacob my wallet and sent him up to the bar to buy another round. Lou pondered the question, his head bowed. "I needed the money, Hank," he said solemnly.

  "You couldn't wait till the summer?"

  "I needed it right away."

  "Five months? You couldn't have held on for five more months?"

  He reached across the table and took a sip of Jacob's beer. There was only a little left, but he didn't finish it. He smiled weakly at me. "I told you how I had some gambling debts?"

  I nodded.

  "Well, I lost some of Nancy's savings."

  "How much?"

  "See, I knew I could afford to lose because I had the money from the plane coming, so I put some big bets on a couple of long shots. I thought that even if I got just one, I'd be all right." He gave a little, nervous-sounding laugh. "I didn't get one, though. I lost it all."

  "How much?" I asked again.

  "Seventeen thousand. A little more. It was from her mother's will."

  I was stunned, silenced. I couldn't imagine betting that much money on a horse. I watched him finish off Jacob's beer.

  "We're broke, Hank. We don't have anything. Not to buy food, not to pay the rent, not anything till I get ahold of those packets."

  "You're saying you would've told?"

  "I needed the money. It didn't seem fair, your keeping it all this time when it's obvious no one's looking for the plane."

  "I want to know if you would've told," I said, leaning across the table toward him.

  "If I say no" -- he smiled--"you might back out on your promise."

  "My promise?"

  "To split it up."

  I didn't say anything.

  "I need the money, Hank. I can't get by without it."

  "But let's say you hadn't found out about Pederson. What would you've done then?"

  Lou pursed his lips. "I guess I would've begged you," he said. He thought about this for a second; then he nodded. "I would've gotten down on my knees and begged."

  The bar was crowded now, pulsing with voices and laughter. Clouds of cigarette smoke hung in the air, mixing with the sour smell of beer. I could see Jacob across the way, paying the bartender.

  "You think that would've worked?" Lou asked.

  I tried for a second to imagine him down on his knees before me, begging for the money. In many ways it seemed more threatening than the idea of him blackmailing me. It would've called on things I considered virtues -- pity, charity, empathy -- rather than simple fear, and thus, when I refused him, as I would've had to, it would've been a judgment not of him but of me. It was what he was probably going to do after we got the tape, I realized, and the thought of this gave me a tired feeling in my head.

  "No," I said. "Probably not."

  "Then I guess it's a good thing I found out about Pederson, isn't it?"

  My brother was returning to the booth, so I didn't answer. I just pushed the empty glasses off to the side of the table and said, "Here come the drinks."

  Lou reached out and touched my wrist. His fingertips were cold from holding Jacob's glass. "I had to get the money, Hank," he whispered quickly. "You understand that, don't you? It's nothing personal."

  I stared down at his hand. It was gripping my arm like a claw, and I had to resist the temptation to pull myself free. "Yes," I said. It seemed like a small thing to give him. "I understand."

  Around nine-thirty, Lou rose to his feet and headed off, a little unsteadily, to use the bathroom again. I watched him until he was safely out of earshot. Then I turned to Jacob.

  "Can you tell when he's solidly drunk?"

  My brother's nose was running; the skin above his lip was shiny with snot. "I guess."

  "I want him drunk enough so that he's not thinking straight, but not so much that he slurs his words."

  Jacob sipped at his beer. His glasses were fogged up, but he didn't seem to notice.

  "When he looks like he's going to start slurring, stand up and say you want to head back to his house, that you've got a bottle of whiskey in the truck."

  "I still don't think--" Jacob started, but I silenced him with a touch of my hand. Lou had emerged from the bathroom, swaying a bit. He stumbled against a barstool, and when the young man on it glanced over his shoulder, Lou loudly accused him of trying to trip him.

  "You think that's funny?" Lou asked. "You think you're some kind of comedian?"

  The young man, full bearded and twice Lou's size, stared in astonishment at him. "What's funny?" He was too surprised to be angry yet.

  Lou hitched up his belt. "Tripping people coming back from the can. Sneaking up on them for laughs."

  The young man turned all the way around to face him. The bar started to quiet.

  "Sit down, Lou," someone said from one of the nearby stools. "You're gonna get yourself killed." A few people laughed.

  Lou glanced around the bar. "Mocking me," he said. "I could've fallen and cracked my head." He pointed his finger at the young man. "You'd have gotten a kick out of that, wouldn't you? A big kick."

  The young man didn't say anything. He stared down at Lou's finger.

  "I'll give you a kick," Lou said. "You want a kick? I'll give you a good solid kick."

  "Listen, buddy," the young man said. "I think maybe you've had a few too--"

  "Don't buddy me," Lou said.

  The young man started to climb off his stool. Simultaneously, Jacob stood up.

  "You're not my buddy," Lou said.

  Jacob, given his size and relative lack of sobriety, moved with surprising agility across the room. I watched from the booth as he rested his hand on Lou's shoulder. Lou turned, his scowl changing instantly to a beaming smile. "You're my buddy," he said to my brother. He glanced at the bartender. "He's my buddy," he shouted. Then he waved over toward me in the booth. "He's my buddy, too."

  Jacob shepherded him back across the bar. I ordered another round of drinks.

  IT WAS eleven o'clock before my brother stood up and suggested that we head back to Lou's house.

  The dog was waiting for us in the cab of the truck, looking cold and dejected. He didn't seem to want to climb into the rear, so Jacob had to pick him up and shove him, whimpering, back through the torn plastic window. Lou urinated against the side of the building, a long, steady hissing in the darkness.

  I drove. I'd bought a bottle of whiskey that afternoon at the liquor store, and now I told Jacob to take it out and offer it to Lou. Lou accepted gladly.

  It was one of the coldest nights of the year. There were no clouds. The moon was just rising, a thick, white sliver, like a slice of cantaloupe, sitting cocked against the edge of the horizon. Above it hung a brilliant infinity of stars, high and bright in the deep blackness of
the sky. The road out of Ashenville was empty of traffic, and Jacob's one functioning headlight, the left one, made it look narrower than it actually was. As we drove, the wind whipped through the cab, buffeting us, tugging at our jackets, and cracking the plastic window back and forth behind our heads like a bullwhip.

  I turned off the lights before I reached the house so that I wouldn't wake Nancy. I parked at the bottom of the driveway.

  "Well?" Jacob asked. He was on the passenger side. Lou was sitting between us, slouched over a little, one hand on the dashboard. Jacob had to lean forward to see me.

  "Let's go inside," I said. "Bring the bottle."

  "That's right," Lou said. "Bring the bottle." He slapped me on my leg. "You're okay. You know that? You're not half bad."

  We climbed out, leaving the dog in the truck, and walked up the driveway to the house. Jacob and I went into the living room and sat on the couch while Lou used the bathroom. We could hear him urinating through the open doorway. It seemed to go on for several minutes.

  The living room was down a step from the entranceway. It was wide and shallow, with a dark green shag carpet. There were two upholstered chairs in it, a black leather couch, an old-looking TV, and a long, low coffee table cluttered with magazines. It was nicer than I would've expected, but not by much.

  Lou went into the kitchen after he finished peeing and got us some glasses. When he returned, Jacob poured the whiskey. I wasn't used to drinking hard liquor, especially not straight, and it burned my throat as it went down. The smell of it reminded me of my father kissing me good night, his head appearing suddenly above my bed, bending closer and closer but always stopping just before he touched my forehead, as if he were afraid to wake me. Some nights I didn't open my eyes, and there would only be the sweet fragrance of the alcohol on his breath to indicate his presence, along with the creak of the floorboards as he came forward, bowed toward me, and then retreated from the room.

  Lou sat in one of the upholstered chairs, on the opposite side of the coffee table. Neither he nor Jacob seemed like they wanted to talk, and I couldn't think of a way to begin on my own. I kept glancing toward my brother, willing him to help me, but he didn't respond. His eyes were puffy from the liquor, so that he seemed like he was about to fall asleep.

  It was several minutes before anyone spoke. Then Lou chuckled to himself and asked Jacob if he knew what you called a man with no arms and no legs in a swimming pool.

  "Bob," Jacob said, sending them both into laughter.

  They started talking about a man I didn't know, a friend of Lou's who'd lost his arm in an accident on a construction site last summer. He'd been feeding brush into a wood chipper and had gotten dragged into the machine. Lou and Jacob debated whether or not the man should blame himself for the accident -- Lou thought he should, that it could only have happened out of carelessness or stupidity, but Jacob disagreed. The man was working in an auto supply store now. He'd told Lou that his arm had weighed ten and a half pounds. He knew this because that was how much lighter he was after the accident.

  I sat there, quietly working at my drink, the tape recorder a tiny weight against my chest. Jacob and Lou seemed to forget about my presence, to talk as if I weren't there, and it gave me a glimpse of their friendship that I'd never had before. There was something about their dialogue -- the sparse gruffness of their statements, the lengthy silences between responses -- that reminded me of the conversations I used to overhear between our father and his friends. It was how I'd always imagined men were supposed to speak with one another, and to hear my brother do so now threw him suddenly into a different light, made him, for perhaps the first time in my life, seem more mature, more worldly, than I was.

  When I finished my drink, Jacob refilled it.

  They started arguing about one of their fishing spots, Devil's Lake, and how it had gotten its name. Jacob said that it was shaped like a head with two horns, but Lou didn't believe him. The whiskey was beginning to make me feel very warm, and when I noticed this, when I stopped and thought it through, a little spasm of panic shot across my body, like the trilling of an alarm bell. To be drunk in this situation was to fail, I knew; I needed to think clearly, to choose my words and actions with precision.

  I set my glass down on the coffee table and, concentrating, tried to find an entry into their conversation, tried to think of a question or a statement, something subtle, a little verbal push to redirect things toward Pederson and the money. I strained and strained, but my mind refused to help me. It kept veering back toward the man who'd lost his arm, kept offering guesses about how heavy my own arms were, weighing them in my lap.

  Finally, in desperation, I simply said, "What if I were to confess?"

  It came out loud, almost a shout, surprising all three of us. Jacob and Lou turned to stare at me.

  "Confess?" Lou asked. He grinned at me. He was drunk, and I think he must've thought I was, too.

  "Could you imagine that?" I said. "Me confessing?"

  "Confessing to what?"

  "To taking the money, to killing Pederson."

  He continued to smile at me. "You're thinking about confessing?"

  I shook my head. "I just want to know if you can imagine me doing it."

  "Sure," he said. "Why not?"

  "Can you?" I asked Jacob. He was sitting slouched beside me, looking down at his hands.

  "I guess," he managed. It came out fast, like a squeak.

  "How?"

  Jacob gave me a baleful stare. He didn't want to have to answer.

  "You'd turn state's evidence," Lou said, smiling. "You'd rat on us so they'd let you off."

  "But what would I say?"

  "The truth. That you smothered him with his scarf."

  I felt Jacob stiffen on the couch beside me. Lou's knowing about the scarf could mean only one thing -- that Jacob had told him how I'd killed the old man. Lou might've guessed in the beginning, but once the issue had been raised, my brother hadn't held anything back. I noted this in my head, filed it away. It was something I could deal with later.

  "Pretend you're me," I said to Lou. "Pretend Jacob's the sheriff and you've just come into his office to confess."

  He gave me a suspicious look. "Why?"

  "I want to hear what you think I'd say."

  "I just told you. You'd say you smothered him with his scarf."

  "But I want to hear you say it like you're me. I want you to act it out."

  "Go ahead, Lou," Jacob prodded him. He glanced toward me, gave a mean little laugh. "Pretend you're an accountant."

  Lou grinned at him. He took a swallow of whiskey, then stood up. He mimed knocking on a door. "Sheriff Jenkins?" he called. He made his voice sound high and shaky, like a nervous child's.

  "Yes?" Jacob said, using the deep baritone he associated with authority.

  "It's Hank Mitchell. I've got something I want to tell you."

  "Come on in, Hank," Jacob boomed. "Have a seat."

  Lou pretended to open the door. He walked in place for a moment, grinning stupidly, then sat down on the edge of his chair. He kept his knees primly together, his hands in his lap. "It's about Dwight Pederson," he started, and I reached up to scratch at my chest. There was a soft click as I pushed in the button, and then the tape recorder began to hum.

  "Yes?" Jacob said.

  "Well, he didn't die in an accident."

  "What do you mean?"

  Lou feigned glancing nervously around the room. Then he whispered, "I killed him."

  There was a pause after that, while Lou waited for my brother to respond. I think Jacob was hoping that I'd stop it there, that all I wanted was that simple statement, but I needed something more. I needed him to say how he'd done it.

  "You killed Dwight Pederson?" Jacob asked finally. He pretended to be shocked.

  Lou nodded. "I smothered him with his scarf, then I pushed him off the bridge into Anders Creek. I made it look like an accident."

  Jacob was silent. I could tell just by the way
he was sitting that he wasn't going to say anything more, so I reached up and turned off the tape recorder. It seemed like we had more than enough: if a taped confession was going to frighten Lou into submission, then this ought to work as well as any other.

  "All right," I said. "You can stop."

  Lou shook his head. "I want to get to the part where you offer to testify against us." He waved at my brother. "Keep asking me questions, Jake."

  Jacob didn't respond. He took a long swallow of whiskey, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I removed the tape recorder from my pocket, rewound it to the beginning.

  "What's that?" Lou asked.

  "A tape recorder," I said. The machine made a soft thumping noise when it finished rewinding.

  "A tape recorder?" my brother asked, as if confused.

  I pressed the play button, turned up the volume with my thumb, then set the machine down on the coffee table. There was a second or two's worth of hissing before Jacob's voice jumped out at us: "Yes?"

  "Well, he didn't die in an accident," Lou's voice said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I killed him."

  "You killed Dwight Pederson?"

  "I smothered him with his scarf, then I pushed him off the bridge into Anders Creek. I made it look like an accident."

  I reached forward and pressed the stop button, then rewound the tape to the beginning.

  "You recorded us?" Jacob said.

  "What the fuck're you doing, Hank?" Lou asked.

  "It's your confession," I said. I smiled at him. "It's you saying how you killed Dwight Pederson."

  He stared at me in bewilderment. "That was you confessing," he said. "I was pretending to be you."

  I leaned forward, pressed the play button, and the machine began to spin out their dialogue again. We all looked down at it, listening. I waited till it was finished, then I said, "Sounds more like your voice than mine, doesn't it?"

  Lou didn't respond. He was drunk, and though he knew he was unhappy with what I'd done, it didn't seem like he could figure out exactly why.

  "We're not going to split up the money till the summer," I said.