A Simple Plan (13 page)

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mitchell,” she said. “I just can’t do that. You’ll have to go across the street to the bank.”

“Come on, Cheryl,” Jacob pleaded. “They’re closed.”

“Then you’ll have to wait till the morning.”

“I can’t wait till the morning,” he said, his voice rising. “I need it now.”

There was something about how he was standing, some visual clue in the way his feet were positioned beneath the bulk of his body which made me sure suddenly that he’d been drinking.

“Jacob,” I said, cutting off Cheryl’s reply.

They both turned toward me at the same time, identical expressions of relief on their faces.

“She won’t let me cash this,” Jacob said. He had a check in his hand, and he waved it at Cheryl.

“We’re not a bank,” I said. “We don’t cash checks.”

Cheryl, who’d gone back to counting out for the day, let a smile slip quickly across her face.

“Hank—” Jacob started, but I cut him off.

“Come into my office,” I said.

He walked across the lobby to my office, and I shut the door behind him.

“Sit down,” I said.

He lowered himself into the same armchair Sarah had sat in earlier that afternoon. It made a creaking noise beneath his weight.

I went to the window and opened the blinds. The sun was nearly set. Lights were coming on in the town. The church and cemetery were already submerged in darkness.

“You’ve been drinking,” I said, not turning from the window. I heard him stir uncomfortably in his chair.

“What do you mean?”

“I can smell it. It’s not even five o’clock, and you’re already drunk.”

“I had a couple beers, Hank. I’m not drunk.”

I turned from the window, leaned back on the sill. Jacob had to twist around in the armchair to see me. He seemed awkward, embarrassed, like a child called to the principal’s office.

“It’s irresponsible,” I said.

“I really need the money. I need it tonight.”

“You’re worse than Lou.”

“Come on, Hank. I had two beers.”

“He’s told Nancy, hasn’t he?”

Jacob sighed.

“Answer me.”

“Why do you keep harping on that?”

“I just want to know the truth.”

“But how would I know that?”

“I want to know what you think.”

He frowned, slouching into the chair. He wasn’t looking at me. “She’s his girlfriend,” he said. “They live together.”

“You’re saying he told her?”

“If Lou asked me whether or not you’d told Sarah, I’d say—”

“Has Lou asked you that?”

“Come on, Hank. I’m just trying to show you that it’s only me guessing. I don’t know anything for sure.”

“I’m not asking what you know. I’m asking what you think.”

“Like I said, she’s his girlfriend.”

“That means yes?”

“I guess so.”

“And do you remember what we said? How you’re responsible for him?”

He didn’t answer.

“If he screws this up, it’s your fault. You’ll be the one I’ll blame.”

“It’s not like—”

“I’ll burn the money, Jacob. If I think you two’re going to screw this up, I’ll just burn it.”

He stared down at his check.

“You better straighten him out, and you better do it quick. You tell him that he’s responsible for Nancy, just like I’m telling you you’re responsible for him.”

Jacob looked up at me, thinking. He worked his tongue along his teeth, sucking, as if he were trying to clean them. His forehead, wide and low, was spattered with pimples. His skin was greasy; it glistened in the light from my desk lamp.

“It’s like a food chain,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

“A food chain?”

He smiled. “Lou’s responsible for Nancy, I’m responsible for Lou, you’re responsible for me.”

I thought about this; then I nodded.

“So in a way,” Jacob said, “you’re responsible for all of us.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to this. I stepped away from the window, walked over to my desk, and sat down behind it. “How much is the check for?” I asked.

He glanced at the check in his hand. He was still wearing his gloves. “Forty-seven dollars.”

I reached across the desk and took it from him.

“What’s it for?”

“It’s from Sonny Major. I sold him my ratchet set.”

I scanned the check, then handed it back to him along with a pen. “Sign it over to me.”

While he signed it, I removed two twenties and a ten from my wallet. I gave them to Jacob in exchange for the check.

“You owe me three dollars,” I said.

He put the money in his pocket, seemed to think about getting up, but then decided against it.

He glanced at my forehead. “How’s your bump?” he asked.

I touched it with my finger. All that was left was a tiny scab. “It’s healed.”

He nodded.

“Your nose?” I asked.

He wrinkled his nose, inhaled through it. “Fine.”

After that we sat in silence. I was preparing to stand up and guide him toward the door when he asked, “You remember Dad breaking his nose?”

I nodded. When I was seven, our father had bought a mail-order windmill, to help irrigate one of his fields. He’d almost finished putting it together, was up on a ladder tightening a bolt, when a sudden gust of wind set the contraption’s aluminum sails spinning. Our father was hit in the face, knocked off his ladder to the ground. Our mother had seen it all from the house, and—since he’d remained on his back for a moment, his hand clamped on his head, rather than instantly regaining his feet—she’d run to the phone and called an ambulance. Ashenville had a volunteer fire department, so it was our father’s friends who came rushing out to the farm, and they kidded him about it for years. Our father never forgave her for the embarrassment.

“That windmill’s still up,” Jacob said. “You can see it from the road when you drive by.”

“It’s probably the only thing he ever built that actually worked,” I said.

Jacob smiled—our father’s inadequacy as a handyman had been one of our family’s running jokes—but when he spoke again his voice came out sounding mournful, full of loss and regret.

“I wish they were still around,” he said.

I looked up at him then, and it was as if a curtain were being dragged back from a window, giving me a sudden glimpse into the depths of my brother’s loneliness. Jacob had been much closer to our parents than I had. He’d lived at home up until the year before the accident, and even after he moved out, he still spent most of his time there, doing chores, talking, watching TV. The farm had been his refuge from the world. I had Sarah, and now a baby coming, but Jacob’s family was all in the past. He didn’t have anyone.

I tried unsuccessfully to think of something to say. I wanted to reach out in some way, to tell him something reassuring, but I couldn’t find the proper words. I didn’t know how to talk to my brother.

Jacob broke the silence finally by asking, “What do you mean, blame me?”

I realized with a little jolt of panic—a jolt that instantly subverted whatever empathy I’d been feeling for him before he’d spoken—that if I wanted to control Jacob, I needed to offer some concrete threat rather than the simple, abstract idea of blame. It took me only a second to come up with one: it was the obvious choice, the only thing I really had that I was sure would frighten him.

“If we get caught because of Lou,” I said, “I’ll tell about Pederson. I’ll say you murdered him, and that all I did was help you cover it up.”

He stared at me. He didn’t understand.

“I’ll say I tried to stop you, but you pushed me aside and killed him.”

Jacob seemed genuinely shocked by this. When he spoke, he had to search for his words. “You killed him, Hank,” he said.

I shrugged, lifted my hands. “I’ll lie, Jacob. If we get caught because of Lou, I’m going to make you pay.”

He grimaced, as if he were in pain. His nose was running, and he rubbed at it with his glove, then wiped his glove on his pants. “I don’t want to be responsible for him,” he said.

“But that was the deal. That was what we agreed upon.”

He shook his head. The folds of flesh beneath his chin, white and marbled, continued to tremble for a second after he stopped. “I can’t control him.”

“You have to talk with him, Jacob.”

“Talk with him?” he asked, his voice exasperated. “Talking’s not going to keep him from doing stuff.”

“Threaten him,” I said.

“With what? You want me to tell him I’ll beat him up? Say I’ll burn his house down?” He gave a snort of disgust. “Threaten him.”

We both fell silent. I could hear people moving about in the lobby, getting ready to head home for the night.

“I don’t want to be responsible for him,” Jacob said.

“Then I guess we have a problem.”

He nodded.

“Perhaps,” I said, “we ought to just burn it.”

It was only a bluff, I didn’t mean it, and Jacob didn’t respond to it. He stared down at my desk, his forehead creased. I could tell that he was struggling to think.

“Lou’s not going to get us caught,” he said.

“That’s right. Because you’re not going to let him.”

Jacob didn’t seem to hear me; he was still lost in thought. When he finally spoke, he did so without glancing up at me. “And if it looks like he is, he could always just get into an accident.”

“An accident?”

“Like Pederson.”

“You mean we could kill him?” I asked, appalled.

He nodded, staring down at my desk.

“Jesus, Jacob. He’s your best friend. You can’t be serious.”

He didn’t answer me.

“The big-time murderer,” I said.

“Come on, Hank. I’m just—”

“Ice him, right? Grease him.” I sneered, my voice rising to mimic his own. “‘He could always just get into an accident.’ Who do you think you are, Jacob? A gangster?”

He wouldn’t look at me.

“You make me sick,” I said.

He sighed, frowning.

“How did you want to do it?” I asked. “Did you have a plan?”

“I thought we could make it look like a car accident.”

“A car accident. That’s brilliant. And how were you going to manage that?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe put him in his car and push him over the bridge into Anders Creek?” I asked.

He started to say something, but I didn’t let him.

“We were lucky with Pederson. Everything worked in our favor. That’s not going to happen again.”

“I was just thinking—”

“You aren’t thinking anything. That’s the problem. You’re being stupid. Remember how you felt out by the park? You were crying. You were bawling like a baby. You want to go through that again?”

He didn’t answer.

“Look out the window,” I said. “Look across the street, at the cemetery.”

He looked toward the window. It was completely dark now; we couldn’t see outside anymore. The glass reflected my office back in at us.

“They buried Dwight Pederson last week. He’s out there because of you, because you were greedy and you panicked. How does that make you feel?”

I stared across the desk at him until he looked me in the eye. “If I hadn’t done it,” he said, “he would’ve found the plane.”

“You should’ve let him find it.”

Jacob gave me a perplexed look. “You killed him,” he said. “You could’ve saved him, but you didn’t.”

“I killed him to save you, Jacob. It was either him or you, and I chose you.” I paused. “Maybe I made a mistake.”

He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. He continued to gaze at me, the same confused expression on his face.

“But I’m not going to do it again,” I said. “Next time I’ll give you up.”

“I can’t be responsible for him,” Jacob whispered.

“Just talk to him. Tell him I’ll burn the money if I think he’s screwing things up.”

He stared morosely down into his lap, and I noticed for the first time that he was beginning to get a bald spot. It startled me. If he had lost some weight, he would’ve looked exactly like our father had at the time of his death. He looked beaten down, defeated.

“I wish we could just split the money up right now,” he said. “Split it up and run away.”

“That’s not what we planned, Jacob.”

“I know.” He sighed. “I’m just saying what I wish.”

T
HE NEXT
day was Friday. That evening, during dinner, Sarah asked me if I’d talked with Lou yet.

I shook my head. “Jacob’s going to do it.”

We were eating spaghetti, and Sarah was in the midst of helping herself to seconds. “Jacob?” she asked. She held the serving spoon poised in midair, pasta dangling off it toward her plate. She was wearing a dark blue dress. In the brightly lit kitchen it made her face look wan and anemic.

I nodded.

“Shouldn’t you do it yourself?”

“I thought it’d be better if he did it. Lou’ll listen to Jacob. He won’t listen to me.”

She finished serving herself and set the pot down in the center of the table. “Are you sure Jacob realizes how serious this is?”

“I scared him a bit,” I said.

Sarah glanced up at me. “Scared him?”

“I said I’d tell about Pederson if we were caught because of something Lou did.”

“And?”

“At first he panicked a little, but I think it’s going to work.” I smiled. “He even suggested that we kill Lou.”

She seemed unimpressed by this. “How?” she asked.

“How what?”

“How did he want to kill him?”

“He wanted to make it look like a car accident.”

Sarah frowned. She picked her fork up, twirled some spaghetti onto it, then stuck it into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I don’t think you should threaten Jacob,” she said.

“I wasn’t threatening him. I was trying to wake him up.”

She shook her head. “If Jacob can think about plotting with you against Lou, then it’ll be just as easy for him to plot with Lou against us.”

“Jacob’s not going to plot against us,” I said, as if the idea were absurd.

“How can you be sure?”

“He’s my brother, Sarah. That counts for something.”

“But who’s he closer to, you or Lou? Lou’s more of a brother to him than you are.”

I considered that. It was true, of course. “You’re saying Jacob would try to kill me for the money?”