Lights Out

by Peter Abrahams

  Outside: Day 7

  26

  Monday.

  Jack dressed for the occasion. He came out of the bedroom wearing a black turtleneck, black Patagonia jacket, black jeans, black high-tops. He was carrying a black gym bag.

  “What’s in there?” Eddie said.

  Jack unzipped the bag, showed him the contents: two handguns, clips of ammunition. “One for you, one for me,” Jack said.

  “You’re a gun owner?”

  “Lots of gun owners on Wall Street,” Jack said. “You’d be surprised.”

  Eddie shook his head. “No guns.”

  “No guns?”

  Eddie had heard hundreds of robbery stories, most of them robberies gone wrong. Guns didn’t help. They made people overconfident and careless. That was the opinion of Jonathan C. McBright, former cellmate and a pro. “It’s not that kind of thing,” Eddie said. “No one’s even going to see us.” The sign of a good job, Jonathan C. McBright liked to say, was when no one knew he was being jobbed.

  Jack returned the gym bag to the bedroom, came out rubbing his hands together. “Jesus,” he said, “this is exciting.”

  Eddie didn’t like that. Excitement was one of the common elements of robberies gone wrong. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Jack’s car was waiting in front of the hotel. All the new equipment, paid for in cash, was in place. The two mountain bikes were locked onto the rear carrier, the large capacity, lightweight EMS backpacks lay on the backseat, the ax was in the trunk. Jack took the wheel. They drove out of the city. The rain stopped and the setting sun poked through a hole in the clouds, casting a coppery glow on the river, on the bridges, on every puddle, windshield, pane of glass.

  “Sun at last,” Jack said. “I was giving up hope.”

  A few minutes later it went down, sucking away the coppery glow and all other color. Jack turned up the heat.

  “Nice car,” Eddie said.

  “Never use it,” Jack replied. “It just sits in the garage.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “It’s leased, Eddie. Not really mine, so I couldn’t get anything for it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He stopped at a toll booth, took a ticket from the dispenser, drove south on the turnpike. “There’s a bottle of something in the glove compartment,” he said.

  Eddie shook his head. Alcohol was another factor in robberies gone wrong.

  “You’ll never guess what I’m thinking,” Jack said.

  “Plundering the Spanish Main,” Eddie replied.

  Jack took his eyes off the road for a moment, looked at Eddie. He reached over, squeezed Eddie’s knee. “You know me, bro,” he said. “Don’t take offense. Just an expression. You’re my brother. It’s something special, right?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. It meant you had the same mother and father. After that, it was what you made it. He left the thought unspoken; this wasn’t the time for introducing complications.

  “Know something?” Jack said. “You’re a smart guy. I deal with smart guys all the time and you’re a smart guy. In a little different way maybe, but you really could have been-” Jack stopped himself. A mile or two went by. “Still, everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?”

  “In what way?”

  “In what way. Shit. In a material way. What are you going to do with all that money?”

  Eddie hadn’t thought about that, had no desire to. “Take the next exit,” he said.

  Jack took the next exit, drove west on a two-lane state road. For a while they had it to themselves. Then taillights appeared in the distance. Jack was driving fast. The taillights grew bigger and brighter. Then Eddie saw a beer can rolling beside the road.

  “Slow down,” he said.

  “Slow down?”

  “That’s them.”

  Jack took his foot off the gas. The taillights dimmed and shrank, finally disappearing. Jack turned down the heat. He was sweating; Eddie could smell it.

  There was a long silence. Then Jack said, “What are they like?”

  “It doesn’t matter what they’re like,” Eddie said. “They’re not going to see us.”

  “Right. That’s key, isn’t it?”

  “If we want to live,” Eddie said.

  Jack laughed, high and tight.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Eddie asked.

  There was a buzzing sound.

  “What’s that?” Eddie said.

  “The phone.”

  Jack reached into the console between them. “Hello?” he said. His voice was low, as if someone nearby might overhear.

  “Jack?” It was Karen on the speaker phone. “I can hardly hear you.”

  “I can’t talk right now,” Jack said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “That’s not good enough. I’m concerned about my account. Extremely. I spoke to my lawyer about it this afternoon. She’s extremely concerned too. I don’t want this to get messy, Jack, but I’m afraid-”

  Jack’s voice rose. “Tomorrow. You’ll have it tomorrow.”

  There was a pause. Then Karen said, “Where are you?”

  “I’ll call you by noon,” Jack said, and clicked off.

  He turned to Eddie. “And don’t you patronize me,” he said. Again Eddie was conscious of the shifting balance between them. “I may not have your experience in these matters, but I’m used to managing risk.” He drove on; in the glow of the instrument panel Eddie could see his hands tightening around the steering wheel.

  “Then take the next right,” he said.

  Jack turned onto the dirt road. “Besides,” he said. “What choice have I got?”

  “Cut the lights.”

  Jack slowed down, switched them off. A half moon hung just above the trees, lighting their way. Big clouds drifted across the sky like continents. “My night vision has gone to shit,” Jack said.

  “We’re not in a hurry.”

  Eddie checked the odometer. The road ran straight through the woods. The moonlight glistened on the wet branches, on a pond in the distance, on the eyes of a small animal that ran across the road. Good things happened under the light of the moon, at least in “The Mariner.”

  The moving moon went up the sky,

  And nowhere did abide;

  Softly she was going up,

  And a star or two beside.

  Eddie looked up through the windshield for a star or two, saw none.

  Three miles passed, three and a half, four. Eddie wanted to make their exit as fast as possible, but he didn’t want to take the chance of being heard from the gate.

  “Stop the car,” he said.

  Jack stopped the car.

  “Turn it off.”

  Jack switched off the engine. Eddie got out, listened. He heard nothing but the wind rising in the trees. A cold wind: he looked up at the sky and saw that more cloud continents had appeared. Those near the moon had white trim, like beaches. Eddie got back in the car.

  “Next place you can pull off to the side, do it.”

  Jack drove on. There was a small clearing a few hundred feet ahead, an opening in the shadows.

  “Back in,” Eddie said.

  Jack backed in, parked behind a screen of trees. Eddie walked into the road. A ray of moonlight caught the antenna; otherwise the car was invisible. Good enough. Eddie glanced up at the gathering clouds: there wasn’t going to be moonlight much longer.

  They took the bikes off the rack, the ax from the trunk. Eddie put it in one of the backpacks and strapped it on. Jack strapped on the other, locked the car, pocketed the keys.

  “Is there another set?”

  “Why would we need another set?”

  Eddie didn’t want to let his imagination go on that one. “Someone I knew did six years because his keys fell through a grate at the worst possible moment.”

  Jack smiled; that old smile, flashing in the moonlight. “There’s another set under the floor mat in back.”

  Eddie smiled too.

  They got
on the bikes.

  “I feel kind of silly,” Jack said.

  But bikes were perfect for what Eddie had in mind, faster than a man could run, and silent. They pedaled off on the dirt road, side by side.

  The wind whistled in Eddie’s ears, cold, exhilarating. Wind, like the moon, was a good omen. Eddie felt excitement rising inside him and stilled it. Omens, exhilaration, excitement: these were the stuff of ballads, and of robberies gone wrong.

  “I haven’t been on a bike since we were kids,” Jack said.

  “Sh.”

  Ahead, Eddie saw a metallic gleam. He braked, at the same time reaching across the space between them and touching Jack’s arm.

  “What?” said Jack.

  “Sh.”

  Jack halted a few yards ahead, came back, walking his bike. “What is it?” he said in a low voice.

  Eddie pointed. In the distance he could see moonlight on a steel gate, and beyond it a shadow that might have been a man.

  “I don’t see anything,” Jack said.

  Eddie didn’t explain. He turned and started walking his bike the way they had come. Jack followed. After a few hundred yards, Eddie cut into the woods at a right angle.

  The treetops filtered out the moonlight. Eddie couldn’t see the branches that reached out to snag the backpack, or the rocks the tires bumped against. He bumped against a few things himself. The ax in his backpack shifted into an uncomfortable position. Behind him, he heard a soft crash.

  “Shit,” Jack said.

  “Quiet.”

  Eddie listened, heard only the wind.

  They went on for a while, made another right-angle turn. Five or ten minutes later, Eddie caught another gleam through the trees. A few more steps and they were at the fence: four horizontal strands of barbed wire extending into darkness in both directions. A rural fence, meant for marking boundaries and containing livestock, not for keeping out determined people or attracting the curiosity of law-abiding neighbors. Eddie raised the lowest strand. Jack crawled through, dragging his bike behind. Then he held the wire up for Eddie.

  “It’s like that old punch line,” Jack said. “So far so good.”

  Eddie didn’t know the joke that went with it.

  They moved into the woods on the far side of the fence, turned right, and came to the dirt road sooner than Eddie had expected. They must have gone through the fence much closer to the gate than he’d intended. He’d have to remember that on the way back.

  They remounted their bikes, rode on, over the rise and past the turning to the farm. The wind blew harder now, and colder. Above, the clouds thickened, crowding the half moon on all sides. Eddie pedaled faster; without moonlight there might be trouble spotting the track that led to the airstrip. Jack was quiet except for his breathing, which grew heavier. He began to fall behind.

  Eddie was almost past the track before he saw it: a narrow opening in the darkness. He halted, waited for Jack. He heard the crunching of a fat tire on pebbled earth, Jack’s breathing, and then Jack was beside him.

  “How much farther?” he asked.

  “Not far,” Eddie replied. “And keep your voice down.”

  “When this is over, I’m going to get in shape,” Jack said, more quietly. “Maybe you and me’ll do some swimming.”

  “At Galleon Beach,” Eddie said.

  Pause. “Why there?”

  “It’s a nice place.”

  “There’s lots of nice places.”

  They rode up the track. Eddie wasn’t sure of the distance. It seemed like a long time before he heard water gurgling, came to the wooden bridge.

  “Here?” Jack said.

  Eddie nodded. He examined the bridge. It was about two car lengths long, surfaced with worn planks that weren’t laid flush to each other. The downstream side sagged slightly. Not a sturdy structure: that was good.

  Eddie walked his bike down the bank of the stream, laid it on the dry earth under the bridge supports. There were four of them, two on each side of the stream, wooden posts almost twice the diameter of telephone poles. He took off his backpack, removed the ax, unclipped the leather blade-cover.

  Jack, laying his bike beside Eddie’s, said, “What about the noise?”

  “That’s why I didn’t bring a chain saw,” Eddie said, and swung at the downstream support. High to low on the first cut; the blade sank into the wood with a thunk that didn’t sound especially loud to Eddie but made Jack suck in his breath. Low to high on the second cut. Again the blade bit deep; the wood was half rotten. This time Jack made no sound.

  Eddie cut a deep notch, then stepped around the support and cut a second notch on the other side, leaving a core of wood about six inches in diameter. It didn’t take long; he had chopped lots of firewood as a kid, and the occasional tree in the forest, just for fun.

  A beautiful night. Moonlight shone on his breath and Jack’s, rising above them, on the flowing water, on the silver blade of the ax. The stream bubbled at their feet. Everything was going to be all right.

  Eddie spoke:

  A noise like of a hidden brook

  In the leafy month of June,

  That to the sleeping woods all night

  Singeth a quiet tune.

  “What’s that?” Jack said.

  “ ‘The Ancient Mariner,’ ” Eddie replied. “Ever read it?”

  “Haven’t had much time for reading,” Jack said. “Heard of it, naturally.” He checked his watch. “It doesn’t sound like much from that bit.”

  “No?”

  “Moon-June stuff-no edge.”

  Eddie replaced the leather cover on the blade. He looked at his brother. Jack was studying him, a complex expression in his eyes. Then the clouds finally closed over the moon, and Eddie couldn’t see Jack’s eyes at all, couldn’t see anything until his own pupils widened in the darkness. “What’s the time?” he said.

  “Four forty-two, a minute ago.”

  Eddie nodded. “I’d better get started.”

  “I’m all set.”

  “Any questions?”

  “Just one-how come you know poetry by heart?”

  “I had the time.”

  Eddie waited for Jack to say something. When he didn’t, Eddie said, “Stay out of sight,” climbed up the bank and began walking back the way they had come with the ax on his shoulder, leaving his brother under the bridge with the bikes and the backpacks. He should have said good luck, or shaken hands, or something, he couldn’t think what.

  Something cold landed on his nose and melted there.

  “It’s snowing,” Jack called after him in a stage whisper. “Is that going to make a difference?”

  “They don’t follow FAA regulations,” Eddie called back.

  He counted his paces, three hundred. Enough? He counted fifty more. He studied the trees that grew near the track. Snow was falling steadily now, brightening the night. Eddie chopped a thick branch off a hardwood tree-a beech, he thought, from the smoothness of the bark; there had been a lot of beech in the woods behind New Town-and dragged it into the track. He laid the branch at an angle, as though the wind had brought it down, making sure that the biggest clump of sub-branches covered the track, then walked a few steps away to check his work. He returned, dropped wet leaves on the scar the ax had made in the wood, and moved out of sight.

  Eddie clipped the leather cover back on the blade, stuck the ax in the back of his belt, sat on a log. Snow fell silently through the trees. He waited.

  Jonathan C. McBright, professional robber specializing in banks, had said: “It’s like any challenging work-details, details, details. You’ve got to picture everything before it happens. Even then, there’s always the unforeseen.” Eddie tried to picture everything: a white plane with green trim, somewhere above the clouds; an alarm ringing in the farmhouse, a few miles away; Jack waiting under the bridge, three hundred and fifty steps up the track. He could summon up those images, but no feeling of reassurance accompanied them. Had he forgotten something? He tried to figure o
ut what it might be, and was still trying when he heard an engine sound, distant and muffled by falling snow but growing louder. He crouched behind the log.

  Headlights appeared on the track, two yellow cones filled with snowflakes that blackened in their glow. Eddie recognized the outline of the poultry truck. It was going fast, maybe fast enough to plow right through the branch or sweep it aside. Details, details, details. There was nothing he could do but watch.

  The headlight beams reached the branch, snow-covered now, blending with the track. It wasn’t going to work, Eddie thought. But then the horn honked and the wheels locked. The truck went into a skid, sliding along the track, the rear end swinging around. It struck the branch sideways and came to a stop.

  The passenger door opened and Julio stepped out, wearing a ski jacket and a tuque with a tassel dangling from the top.

  “What the fuck?” he said, walking into the headlight glare. “It’s a goddamn tree.”

  “Move it,” called the driver from the cab.

  “Sure,” said Julio, switching to Spanish, “move it.” He approached the branch, grabbed a small stem, tugged. His feet slipped out from under him and he fell hard on his back. Eddie heard the driver laugh.

  “Fuck you,” said Julio.

  “Watch your language,” the driver told him.

  Julio got up, muttering to himself in Spanish. Eddie caught only one word: “chiropractor.”

  Julio reached into the tangle again, pulled. The branch shifted a few inches. The driver came down from the cab to help him. Someone else got out too. A much smaller figure, who hopped down, landed lightly: Gaucho. He wore a cowboy hat, vest, chaps, a gun belt.

  “Are we going to be late?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry,” the driver answered.

  Gaucho stood in front of the truck, watched Julio and the driver drag the branch to the side. The cleaved end passed right by his feet. Eddie could see the marks of the blade, straight, gleaming, unnatural. Gaucho stared at them. Then he bent down, picked up a handful of snow, tried to make a snowball, failed.

  “How come I can’t make a snowball?”

  “Too dry,” said the driver. “Let’s go.”

  “Snow,” said Julio, as they got back in the cab. “This country. I wish I was going with the kid.”