A Simple Plan Page 7

  "It's just being careful, Hank. That's what we have to be from now on. We have to be thinking ahead all the time."

  I considered that for a moment, then nodded halfheartedly. Sarah watched me closely, as if waiting for me to argue. When I didn't, she gave my leg a squeeze beneath the covers.

  "We aren't going to tell him about putting the money back, though," she said. "You'll have to hide it under your jacket and go into the plane by yourself."

  "You're saying he'd go back and steal it?"

  "Maybe. Jacob's human. It'd be a perfectly natural thing to do. Or tell Lou about it. I know Lou would do it." She brushed at her hair with her hand. Wet, it looked darker than it actually was, almost brown. "This way we don't have to worry about it. We can just know it's there, and that if it's there, we're safe."

  She rubbed my foot. "Okay?"

  I nodded. "Okay."

  Smiling, she slid up the bed toward me, leaned forward, and kissed me on my nose. I could smell her shampoo, something lemony. I kissed her back on the mouth.

  I GOT UP to shower, and Sarah, wearing a dark green maternity dress, disappeared downstairs to fix us breakfast.

  I turned on the water to let it heat up, then went to the mirror and inspected my forehead. In its exact center was a small hole, no bigger than an acne scar. Dried blood spiraled out from it, highlighting it like the target on a bull's-eye.

  I stared at myself until the mirror began to fog over, cleaning some of the blood away with my thumb, then stripped out of my pajamas. I felt bloated, hazy, as if my body knew that it was New Year's Day and thus automatically assumed that I was hung over.

  As I was preparing to climb into the shower, I noticed there were no towels in the bathroom. When I opened the door to go get one, I found Sarah crouched with her back to me by the bed, the duffel bag resting beside her on the floor, packets of money spread out across the carpet.

  She looked up as I came into the room, glancing over her shoulder with what seemed like a guilty smile. Seeing it appear on her face, I felt a flicker of suspicion move through my body, like a shiver. I knew immediately that it was unwarranted, knew that it was merely my surprise at finding her in the bedroom with the money when I thought she was downstairs in the kitchen, and I instantly felt as if I'd wronged her somehow, falsely accusing her of a misdeed.

  "I need a towel," I said. I stood perfectly still in the doorway -- naked, and feeling foolish because of it. I'd never liked walking around undressed, not even in front of Sarah. My body -- its physical presence, the space it took up, the color of its skin -- embarrassed me. Sarah was just the opposite. On especially hot summer days, she liked to lounge bare skinned around the house.

  "Oh, Hank," she said, "I'm sorry. I meant to get you one." She didn't stand up.

  She was holding a packet of money in each hand. I started to take a step toward the hall but then stopped. "What're you doing?" I asked.

  She nodded toward the duffel bag. "I wanted to make sure it wasn't in order."

  "In order?"

  "If it was from a bank robbery, the serial numbers might've been in order. We couldn't spend it then."

  "Are they?"

  She shook her head. "It's all old."

  I stared down at the packets spread out across the floor. They were organized very neatly, stacked into piles of five. "You want me to help put it back?" I asked.

  "No," she said. "I'm counting it."

  "Counting it?"

  She nodded.

  "But we already did that. Jacob and Lou and I counted it last night."

  She gave me a little shrug. "I wanted to do it too," she said. "It didn't seem real unless I did it myself."

  When I got out of the shower, Sarah was back downstairs. I could hear her banging things together in the kitchen. I crouched by the bed and checked beneath it, moving one of the empty suitcases aside. The duffel bag was there, safe, pushed up against the wall, looking exactly as I'd left it the night before.

  I slid the suitcase back into place, dressed quickly, and hurried downstairs for breakfast.

  AFTER we finished eating, I called Jacob and told him that we had to go back to the plane.

  "Back to the plane?" he asked. He sounded groggy, barely awake.

  "We have to make sure we didn't leave anything behind," I said. I was in the kitchen. Sarah was at the table, knitting a sweater for the baby and listening to our conversation. The money I'd counted out the night before was stacked beside her.

  "What could we've left behind?" Jacob asked.

  I could picture him in my mind, lying on the bed in his little apartment, still dressed in the clothes he'd worn last night, fat, unshaven, the covers wadded into a dirty knot at his feet, the shades pulled, the room smelling stalely of beer.

  "We weren't careful," I said. "We have to go back and look things over."

  "You think you left something?"

  "Lou left his beer can."

  My brother's voice took on a tired, exasperated tone. "His beer can?"

  "And I moved the pilot. We have to put him back like he was."

  Jacob sighed into the phone.

  "I think I might've bled a little onto the plane's floor, too."

  "Bled?"

  "From my forehead. They can tell things from blood. It's worse than fingerprints."

  "Jesus, Hank, nobody's going to notice a couple drops of blood."

  "We can't take the chance."

  "I'm not going to walk all the way--"

  "We're going back," I said loudly. "We're not going to fuck this up because you're too lazy to do it right." My voice came out even angrier than I'd intended it to, and it had an immediate effect on both my listeners. Sarah glanced up, a startled look on her face. Jacob fell into silence.

  I smiled reassuringly at Sarah, and she went back to her knitting. "I'll pick you up," I said to Jacob. "And after we're through we can stop by the cemetery."

  He made a low groaning sound, which solidified slowly into speech. "All right," he said.

  "In an hour."

  "Should I call Lou?"

  I debated for a second, watching Sarah work at the little yellow sweater. I had no desire to spend the morning in Lou's presence, especially not a hung over Lou. "No," I said. "There's no reason for him to come."

  "But I can tell him we're going?"

  "Of course," I said. "We're all in this together. Last thing we want now is to start keeping secrets from each other."

  WE COULDN'T figure out how to hide the money on me so that Jacob wouldn't notice it. There were fifty packets; it was like trying to conceal fifty small paperback books on my body. We filled my pockets, jammed bills up my sleeves, in my socks, under my waistband; but after a while certain areas of my body started swelling suspiciously, looking weighted down, stuffed, and there were always a few packets left over that we couldn't find a place for.

  "I don't think it's going to work," I said finally.

  We were in the kitchen still. I had my jacket on, was starting to get hot, frustrated. The packets stuffed into my clothes made me feel heavy; every movement was awkward, like a robot's. We were both wearing gloves.

  Sarah was standing a few feet away from me, looking me up and down. It was obvious from her expression that she didn't approve of what she saw. "Maybe you could just carry it in a bag."

  "A bag?" I said. "I can't carry it in a bag. What would I tell Jacob?" I unzipped my jacket, and three packets fell out, slapping to the floor in quick succession. I watched her squat down to pick them up.

  "Maybe we should put less back," I said.

  She ignored me. "I know what we'll do," she said. Then she turned and walked rapidly from the room.

  I waited in the kitchen for her, like a burly scarecrow, my arms extended stiffly away from my sides. When she came back, she had a little knapsack in her hand.

  "It's for carrying the baby," she said. She held it up in front of me. It was made of purple nylon, with a picture of a cartoon dinosaur on its front. Sarah seemed ve
ry pleased with it. "I got it out of a catalog."

  I took off my jacket, and we hung the knapsack over my shoulders, loosening its straps until it rested snugly against my stomach. Sarah wrapped the money in a plastic garbage bag -- so that I'd have something to leave it in when I reached the plane -- then stuffed the bag inside the pouch. After she finished, I zipped up my parka. There was a definite bulge around my abdomen, but the jacket's bulk obscured it.

  "You look a little fat," Sarah said, patting me on the belly. "But Jacob'll be the last one to comment on that."

  "I look pregnant is what I look like," I said. "I look like you."

  ASHENVILLE was a small, ugly town, just two streets really, Main and Tyler, with a blinking yellow light to mark their intersection. Each of the four corners formed by this junction supported one of the tiny municipality's essential institutions -- the town hall, Raikley's Feedstore, St. Jude's Episcopal Church, and the Ashenville Savings Bank. The rest of the town, a motley group of one- and two-story structures, splayed out around these four establishments, straggling off along either side of Tyler and Main: the post office, the volunteer fire department, a small grocery store, a gas station, a pharmacy, a diner, a hardware store, a laundromat, two taverns, a hunting goods store, a pizza place.

  There was a gray uniformity about the buildings, a seemingly universal dilapidation that inevitably depressed me whenever I saw them. Paint peeled from their clapboard sides in huge barklike strips, as if they were molting; cracked windowpanes were covered over with yellowed newspapers; gutters sagged; shutters banged in the wind; and giant black gaps dotted the rooftops, marking the blank spaces left by storm-blown shingles. It was a poor town, a farm town which had seen its greatest days sixty years ago, in the decade before the Depression, a town whose population had steadily decreased in every census since 1930, and which clung now, leechlike, to the land around it, sucking out only enough sustenance to maintain its tenuous hold there, hunched over, careworn, dying.

  It was nine-thirty by the time I pulled up in front of the hardware store, above which Jacob lived. Ashenville was quiet, its sidewalks virtually empty. The pale, cloud-filtered light gave it a tired, pallid quality, as if, like many of its inhabitants, it was hung over, entering the new year on wobbly legs, a dry, sticky taste in its mouth. Christmas decorations clung to the light poles lining the street -- green, red, and white tinselly creations: snowmen, Santas, reindeer, candy canes, looking old and limp, beaten down, like things you might see at a garage sale.

  Jacob was waiting on the street with Mary Beth, leaning against a parking meter. I was relieved to see him there; it meant I didn't have to enter his apartment, something that always oppressed me, highlighting as it did his material failure in the world. Jacob lived in squalor: it was a poor person's apartment, badly lit and grimy, full of broken-down furniture and leftover food, and the thought of him waking and eating and sleeping there infused me with a disagreeable mixture of pity and contempt.

  I'd tried on several occasions to help Jacob, but it never worked. The last time had been seven years before, just after our parents' accident. I'd offered him a part-time job at the feedstore, driving a delivery truck. It was something that, when we were children, had been done by a semiretarded man, a slow-moving giant with mongoloid features who spoke a high-pitched language full of nods and giggles that no one could understand. That was years ago, and I'd forgotten all about it, but Jacob hadn't. He was insulted, angry, as mad at me as I'd ever seen him. For a moment it even seemed like he was going to hit me.

  "I just want to help you," I'd said.

  "Help me?" he asked, sneering. "Leave me alone, Hank. That's how you'll help. Just stay the fuck out of my life."

  And so that, essentially, was what I'd done.

  Jacob shoved Mary Beth into the backseat of the station wagon, then climbed in beside me, breathing loudly through his open mouth, as if he'd just sprinted up a flight of stairs. He had a Styrofoam cup full of coffee, and after he shut the door he pulled something wrapped in a greasy paper towel from his jacket pocket. It was a fried-egg sandwich, liberally ketchuped, which he immediately began to eat.

  I eased out onto the road, appraising his condition. He was wearing his red jacket, and its bright color highlighted the wanness of his face. He hadn't shaved; his hair was greasy and uncombed. The lenses of his glasses were speckled with dirt.

  "You went out with Lou last night?" I asked. I could feel the baby bag hanging like a large, heavy football against my stomach. My jacket was bunched up over it, touching the edge of the steering wheel. It felt obvious to me, absurdly so, and I had to resist the temptation to look down.

  Jacob nodded, his mouth jammed full of toast and egg and ketchup.

  "Have fun?" I asked.

  He nodded again, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  "Where'd you go?"

  He swallowed, took a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup. I noticed that there was no steam coming off it; it was cold. The thought of this made me feel a little sick.

  "The Palace," he said. "In Metamora."

  "You and Lou and Nancy?"

  He nodded, and we drove for a while in silence. Mary Beth rode with his head sticking over into the front seat, resting next to Jacob's shoulder. We were outside of town now, moving west. In the distance, swaybacked, its roof caving in, was an old, brown barn, a handful of holsteins clustered around its rear. The day was still and gray, neither particularly cold nor warm, the temperature hovering just below the freezing mark. If it were to snow, as it was forecasted to, it would be wet and sloppy.

  I cleared my throat, was about to speak, but then didn't. Jacob finished his sandwich. He balled up the paper towel and set it on the dashboard. I eyed it with distaste.

  I had something I wanted to ask him but sensed that he would take it wrong. Finally I just did it. "You think Lou told Nancy?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "Leave him alone," he said.

  I glanced across at him, trying to read his expression, but he was turned away, staring out the window at the passing fields, a sullen set to his shoulders.

  I braked the car, pulling over to the side of the road. Mary Beth skidded, legs flailing, to the floor behind us. "He told her, didn't he?"

  We were somewhere near where we'd counted the money the night before. There were no houses in sight, no cars. The land was treeless and white.

  Jacob turned from the window. His face looked tired, creased. "Come on, Hank. Let's just get there and do this."

  I put the car in park. The dog scrambled back up onto his seat, whimpering. We both ignored him.

  "He'll have to tell her someday, won't he?" Jacob asked. "How's he going to take his share without telling her?"

  "You're saying she knows?" I asked. I took a deep breath. My voice sounded panicked, even to myself.

  "You're trying to tell me you didn't say anything to Sarah?"

  "That's right."

  He watched me, as if waiting for me to change my mind.

  "Did he tell her or not?" I asked.

  He continued to stare at me. He seemed to consider something for a second but then put it aside. He turned back toward the window.

  "I don't know," he said.

  I waited. Of course Lou has told her, I thought. Just like I told Sarah. And Jacob knows about both of us. I considered briefly the importance of this, that Jacob had lied to me, that I in turn had lied to him, and that we each knew the other was lying. For a second it almost seemed funny, and I smiled.

  Jacob waved down the road. "Come on," he said tiredly. "Let's get this over with."

  WE APPROACHED the nature preserve from the same direction we had the day before, coming across the low cement bridge over Anders Creek, then down past Dwight Pederson's farm along the park's southern edge. There was a dog sitting at the end of Pederson's driveway, a large collie, and it barked at us as we drove by, a deep, full-chested sound. Mary Beth barked back, high-pitched, startling us, and then, tail up, turned to watch the c
ollie recede through the rear window.

  I parked next to the gouge Jacob's truck had left in the snowbank the day before and shut off the engine. I was appalled at the marks we'd left on the place. Our tracks moved off from the road, cutting a giant, ragged gash straight into the woods. Anyone driving by would've noticed them immediately. To the left the fox's tracks trailed across the field toward Pederson's farm, a string of tiny black dots in the snow, straight and precise. I followed them with my eyes.

  "You're going to park here?" Jacob asked. "Right out in the open?"

  I considered this briefly. He was right, of course, but I could think of no alternative. "You see a hiding place somewhere?" I said.

  "We could drive around to the park entrance, bring the car inside."

  I shook my head; this was something I'd already debated and put aside. I listed off my reasons now, one at a time. "The gate'll be locked," I said, "the road inside won't be plowed, and we'd probably get lost if we tried to find the plane without having our tracks to lead us to it."

  Jacob glanced back toward the bridge. "It just seems like a risk, leaving it out like this."

  "We left your truck here yesterday."

  "Yesterday we didn't know what was in there."

  "It's okay, Jacob. We'll do it quickly. In and out in a flash."

  "Maybe we should just blow it off."

  I noticed that he was sweating profusely, a hangover sweat, pungent smelling, like overripe fruit. He wasn't worried about someone seeing the car, I realized; he was worried about the hike into the park.

  "You drank too much last night," I said. "Didn't you?"

  He ignored my question. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket, and it left a dark spot on the fabric. "My truck yesterday," he said, "your car today. It might start people wondering."

  I unhooked my seat belt, preparing to climb from the car, and as I did so, I felt the bag of money resting heavily against my gut. It'd be easier, I saw suddenly, if he didn't come. I turned to look at him. He had ketchup smeared across his chin.