This Side of Jordan (7 page)

“You like them, don't you?” said the dwarf. “Me, too.” Rascal stuck the cards up through the hole and laid them on his bedroom floor. “I used to take them out every so often. Not every day, of course, but I'd have to say three or four times a week. Auntie would say I'm sinning, but what does she know? She's never married.”

Feeling an attack of claustrophobia coming on, Alvin looked away from the dwarf toward the exit framed in sunlight across the dark underside of the house. He coughed, and his ears rang.

“I suppose you're late for your appointment,” the dwarf remarked, sounding disconsolate. “I'd sure hate you to get in trouble for visiting me.”

Through the grate in the crawlspace, Alvin watched the bottom branches of the white oak swaying in the afternoon breeze. “Yeah, I guess I ought to get along pretty soon.”

“I wish I had a job,” said the dwarf, sitting down against one of the support pillars. “Something stimulating, yet profitable. Perhaps in a department store or a rollercoaster park. Do you know of anything fitting that description?”

“Not today.”

“I suppose I should study the newspapers, prowl the pavement, ring doorbells. How else can I expect to gain employment? Can you read?”

“Sure.” Scarcely more than labels and street signs, if truth be told, but Alvin didn't feel like admitting one of his worst shortcomings to a stranger. The year of school he had missed being sick set him back so far that he never caught up and didn't care any longer. He hated reading.

“I try to study ten thousand words a day. That's in addition to the fifteen new ones I memorize out of Webster's every night before I go to bed. I also read philosophy and the natural sciences. I've always believed in bettering myself through learning. ‘Education has for its object the formation of character.' That's a credo of mine. Do you have one?”

Before Alvin was forced to embarrass himself by asking what exactly a credo was, Rascal leaped up and ran across the dirt to a small hiding space under the veranda where the slats between the front steps afforded a discreet view of the sidewalk.

“Do you see this fellow out here?”

Alvin crab-walked to the steps, then knelt down and angled for a look. He saw a tall man in a gray suit pacing the sidewalk in front of the dwarf's house. “What of it?”

“Well, I'm convinced he's either one of Auntie's gigolos or a cat burglar planning to rob us. I've seen him out there now three days in a row and I confess it's beginning to spook me. Last night, I actually slept with a candle lit. It was quite humiliating.”

Alvin didn't think that was anything to get cut up about. Men like him came out to the farm all the time, mostly to take a look at the girls and talk up some bargain that didn't amount to nothing. “Maybe he's just one of those fellows selling soap flakes.”

“Oh, I don't know. He doesn't seem very friendly.”

They both watched the man, who did nothing but pace up and down. Alvin had no opinion about his character, so he kept quiet. What could he say? The dwarf studied the fellow with a persistent frown. Then the guy broke one of the old fence pickets with a hard kick and walked off.

When he had gone, the dwarf slid away from the steps. “I'm sure he'll be back.”

Alvin crept out from under the steps behind him. “If he's a regular burglar, it'll be a knock if he don't.”

“Well, I won't stand it. I have a pistol, you know.”

“Don't blow off your toe.”

“Oh, I'm a sure-shot,” the dwarf boasted. “When I was younger, I used to practice on Auntie's empty Cascara bottles nearly once a month.”

Alvin remembered his appointment at the bank. “I ought to go.”

“Do you have to? Really, entertaining is so much fun. If only I had more room.”

“I don't want to be late.” In fact, he was afraid of what Chester might do if he didn't show up on time. He had a temper that didn't need showing to be taken account of. Alvin saw it in his eyes. He could be mean if he had to, and Alvin knew it.

“Where are you going? If I may ask.”

“First Commerce Bank downtown. Do you know where that is?”

“Of course, I do. It's at Sixth and Calhoun,” the dwarf replied. “Why, that's where Mr. Sinclair works.”

“Who?”

“Harrison B. Sinclair. An old friend of the family. He and Auntie are quite close. You'll like him a lot. He can be a very pleasant fellow, particularly if you have any money to invest.”

“Well, I ain't never been there before.”

“Oh, it's only a short walk from here,” the dwarf explained, “I could take you, if you like. I really haven't been out of doors in almost a week. I miss the air. A good walk now and then makes for a fine constitutional, don't you agree?”

Alvin thought about that, bringing the dwarf with him. He imagined Chester standing outside even now, checking his watch. How sore would he be if he saw the dwarf? Alvin told Rascal, “I ain't sure I can take you along. It's private business.”

“Oh, I wouldn't be a bother. What sort of business?”

“I ain't supposed to say.”

“Is it a secret?” The dwarf broke a sly grin. “I adore secrets.”

“Sure it is.”

“Well, I wouldn't tell anyone. Cross my heart.”

Alvin took the note out of his shirt pocket and showed it to the dwarf, figuring it didn't give away much. Besides, he thought, the note's a lie, ain't it?

Rascal laughed when he finished reading. He said, “This is very clever.”

“That ain't my real uncle.”

The dwarf smiled. “Did you compose this yourself?”

“My partner did,” Alvin told him. “He's pretty smart.”

“How long've you been in cahoots with this fellow?” the dwarf asked, as he read over the note again.

“Well, I ain't saying.”

Rascal looked up. “Beg your pardon?”

“We ain't in cahoots,” Alvin said, feeling somewhat awkward now. Maybe he shouldn't have shared Chester's note. Deciding he ought to put the dwarf off the track, Alvin told him, “He's just a fellow I met to do some business with. See, he owns a box factory in Kenosha that makes a new sort of pasteboard and he's looking for folks to work there. I seen his ad in the
Daily News
when I was up north to a show at the Chez Paree, so I sent him a telegram with all the dope about myself, and here we are.”

The dwarf laughed. “Oh, I hardly think so. Truth is, you're both here to rob the First Commerce Bank, aren't you?”

Alvin frowned. “Quit your kidding.”

“Look, any fool can see this is a decoy note,” Rascal said, enthused with discovery, “and not a very persuasive one, either. If you give this to any of Mr. Sinclair's tellers, you'll be a jailbird by suppertime. Let me help you write another.”

“Huh?”

“Wait here.” The dwarf straightened up, his head still easily below the floorboards. “I've just had the most marvelous idea!”

He dashed off toward his bedroom.

“Hey there!” Alvin called after him. “I got to get along!”

But the dwarf had already climbed up through the hole and disappeared. Alvin crawled under the house toward Rascal's bedroom, afraid he was going to be late now to the bank. He heard the dwarf rummaging through his closet, tossing more things about. It occurred to Alvin that the dwarf bore his cross better than anyone he'd ever known in his life. Had anybody else come to visit Rascal beneath the house in the time he'd been locked indoors? Did he have any friends? Alvin promised himself that if he ever came back through Hadleyville again, why, he'd take Rascal out fishing. The poor little fellow had probably never even been in a boat before.

After a few minutes, the dwarf dropped down through the hole in his bedroom floor, carrying a small black leather doctor's bag. He took a slip of paper from the pocket of his romper and gave it to the farm boy to read.

“This is a much grander plan,” Rascal assured him, as he put down the doctor's bag. He wore a big grin. The note read:

The dwarf said, “We might've asked for more money, but then they'd have to count it out by hand and that could take more time than we'd want. The police station is only four blocks away.”

Alvin was flabbergasted. He knew he shouldn't have said anything about his appointment at the bank. Now what was he supposed to do? If the dwarf was right about Chester intending a stick-up, wouldn't changing the plan now make things even worse? He was scared and confused, and felt his bellyache returning. He coughed again and his eyes watered.

He told Rascal, “Look, I ain't asked for your help. What if they got a bank dick? I could get shot in the head.”

“They do and his name's Elmer Gleason and he's only got one eye. He lost the other fighting with Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. If he draws his revolver, just remember to keep to his left.”

The dwarf laughed.

Alvin scowled. “That ain't so funny.”

“Nobody'll shoot you. I promise.”

The farm boy grew more desperate. “What if my partner ain't robbing the bank, after all? I'll look like a damned fool.”

“Oh, there's no mistake, I assure you. I've read more accounts of bank robberies than you can shake a stick at and anyone who'd deliberately choose to hand your partner's note to one of Mr. Sinclair's tellers, well, I'd have to say he hasn't got the sense God gave an oyster. Now, tell me this: what sort of motor car did you fellows drive to town?”

Feeling resigned to the dwarf's intentions, Alvin said, “It's a Packard Six. Sort of straw-colored.”

“All right, listen,” Rascal said, unfastening the latches to the doctor's bag. He handed it to Alvin so he could see what was inside. “This is what we'll do.”

 

Downtown Hadleyville felt quiet in the noon hour. Motor traffic was intermittent. Birds flew noiselessly from treetop to flagpole. Children and mothers sat together picnicking on the summer grass. Dogs chased after fluttering leaves.

Alvin waited across the street from the bank. A clock tower on the square indicated he still had a few minutes to run off and avoid the necktie party when the dwarf's plan went on the bum. Chester was inside the bank already, his automobile parked in the alleyway behind Orrey's jewelry shop. Frenchy told Alvin once that
“It ain't what you got, it's what you can get away with,”
but everyone in the family knew he was kind of a half-crook and nearly always in trouble. Frenchy couldn't drive through downtown traffic without skipping a light or two, and always thought it was a swell gag to walk out of a five-and-dime with some hot stuff in his pocket. Just last summer, in fact, he'd been to jail for stealing watermelons from a Mormon market down in Nauvoo. He spent six weeks there mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. One night, the convict he shared a cell with popped him in the mouth and knocked Frenchy's tooth out. When Alvin was younger, before the consumption, he had given hell himself to truant officers and gotten sick on corn liquor and stolen molasses candy and penny chocolate drops every so often from Smead's drugstore, but he had been afraid of the punishment for getting caught to do anything much worse. Robbing a bank was different, more than a germ of youthful anarchy or a one-horse beer racket. This would put a smut on his life. Yet when the clock struck a quarter till, Alvin Pendergast carried the small doctor's bag across Third Street and entered the First Commerce Bank of Hadleyville, Missouri.

It was stuffy indoors, a musty odor of perspiration and dried-out leather. Electric fans suspended from a plaster Greek Revival ceiling high overhead spun dust motes lazily through the sunlight. The wood floor creaked underfoot. Chester stood by the wall opposite the merchants' window, scribbling on a sheet of paper and chatting up a pretty girl in a yellow bloomer dress. Seated in a white wicker chair beside a potted palm was an old man wearing a faded butternut gray Civil War uniform with a navy Colt .44 revolver hanging off his belt. He was sound asleep. Three clerks worked behind the cage. A door leading to offices on the second story was open and voices echoed in the stairwell. Except for the rhythmic tapping of a Monroe adding calculator downstairs and a typewriter clacking upstairs, it was even quieter than outdoors.

Remembering his instructions from Rascal, Alvin went to stand in line behind the other customers at the teller's window. He made eye contact with the young man at the adding calculator and nodded a greeting. Chester and the girl stepped into line behind him. One of the bank officers went upstairs carrying a large sack of coins that chinked with every step he took. The elderly bank guard began to snore.

As the first customer in line finished his business, Chester tapped Alvin on the shoulder. “Pardon me.”

The farm boy turned around. “Yes, sir?”

“Would it be too great an inconvenience for you to allow this young lady to go ahead? She's in an awful rush.”