by Jake Hinkson
"Please!" I said—the way you might snipe at an impatient child.
Stan elbowed the man in the throat. The man raised his hands to his neck.
"Now get his other hand," Stan said forcefully.
I struggled to get the man's wrist but the poor bastard was fighting not only me, but his crushed larynx, and the mace in his eyes, too. His hands were all over the place. I managed to get his second wrist clasped. Sweat covered my face. I wiped it away with my forearm, pulled the black cloth sack from my pocket and pulled it over his head.
Stan started up the truck.
"Easy," he said loud enough for us to hear. For a moment, I wasn't sure which one of us he was talking to. "Just stay calm and this will be over in a few moments."
He pushed the man's head into my lap.
"You just stay down," he shouted over the truck's roar, "and stay calm and you'll be done with this in a couple of minutes. You've been maced. It burns like hell. It causes temporary blindness." He popped the brake and we lurched forward up the alley. "But you will be okay. We are going to let you go. You're going to be okay in a matter of minutes. Your eyes will hurt for a little while, but you will be okay. Do you understand?"
"Yes," the man shouted.
I held his head in my lap.
Stan stopped at the end of the alley. A car with a father, mother and a couple of kids passed. An SUV filled with older women. Stan turned left. His driving wasn't as expert as the driver's had been, but it was good. You could tell he knew what he was doing. We crawled behind the SUV.
The man in my lap began to spasm. "My eyes," he cried.
Hands still on the wheel, Stan leaned over and shouted, "Shut up or I'll kill you." It was the first threat he'd used, and it worked. The man whimpered quietly.
At the stop sign, Stan turned left and gained speed as we headed for the interstate. We turned onto the interstate, gained more speed and joined the flow of traffic heading west.
The man in my lap whimpered and spasmed and clawed at his eyes through the hood, but he didn't cry out and he didn't vomit. I held him down, but I tried to do it without a sense of malice—like a parent holding down a screaming child at the doctor's office.
After a time, Stan signaled that he was pulling over to the side of the road. Traffic was fairly scarce and the place lay in darkness.
I opened my door and slid onto the top step of the truck. I started to pull the man out slowly to help him down, but Stan planted a foot in his back and kicked him out. He fell, slammed onto the ground, and rolled down a ditch into the dark.
"Let's go!" Stan shouted.
I swung back in and Stan pulled away.
* * *
The plan was to switch trucks. Our first stop was a little town just off of Interstate 40 called Fowler. We turned off the inter-state, took the two-lane service road a few miles, and pulled into the parking lot of a wholesale fence company. Stan drove to the back of the building, turned around and backed up through an open door into an enormous enclosed pole barn.
A few overhead lights illuminated the center section of the barn. Rolls of chain link and stacks of wrought iron and treated wood crowded three racks that climbed toward the roof. Waiting for us, Quiet Tom paced in a tight circle while Felicia leaned against the front of a cargo truck—probably thirty feet long—with ARKANSAS FENCE CO. painted on the side
When we'd parked, she walked around to my side. As I climbed down she asked, "How'd it go?"
I couldn't think of what to say. I kept hearing that truck driver hit the ground. I just nodded.
She patted my arm, but she had already turned her attention to the truck.
"I didn't think the truck would be this big," she mumbled. "Where's Stan?"
We walked to the rear of the trailer.
The doors were open, and above us Stan stood inside, slouched against pallets of shrink wrapped boxes, reading the load's pink paper invoice. He was not smiling.
Felicia gasped. "What is it? Oh Jesus, Stan. Is it the wrong truck? Is it not the Oxy?"
"Oh, it's the Oxy, all right," he said, "but it's more than double the load. So instead of two million bucks worth of shit, I'd guesstimate we're sitting on about five million."
-CHAPTER EIGHT-
The Old Stuff
No one seemed happy about this seemingly good news.
Stan was mad because the plan had called for 80,000 units of Oxycodone, but it now appeared we had 200,000 units. For him it was a logistical nightmare. Though he didn't say it, I could tell he was also troubled by the simple fact that the information had been wrong. One flawed piece of information could mean mistakes in other areas.
Felicia seemed scared. She'd worked up just enough courage to steal two million dollars. The escalation to five million seemed to overwhelm her.
Quiet Tom said nothing, of course. But he'd been texting since we pulled up. I didn't think we'd have to wait long to see DB.
Among our little band of thieves, I had a unique perspective. I'd never loved money. When I was a preacher, I'd preached against such love—though that particular sermon never seemed to get a fair hearing because people naturally assume that greed is a sin of excess. Greed, they think, is wanting too much money. In reality, the problem with greed is that it prescribes an earthly remedy to a spiritual need, like giving salt water to a thirsty man. As I watched my new associates, it occurred to me that criminals like us were just stealing someone else's salt water. The trick, I could have told them, is that the contents of that truck were never going to make any of us happy.
Being the disgraced ex-preacher among a band of hijackers is a dubious position of moral authority, however, so I kept my observations to myself.
"What do we do?" Felicia asked.
Stan climbed down from the truck. Sweat dripped from his slicked back scarlet hair and fell down his bony face.
"We'll have to renegotiate the deal with the buyer."
Quiet Tom showed the readout of his cell phone to Stan.
"Nothing from the cops yet," Stan said. "Either the driver hasn't been found, or it hasn't been reported. That luck won't last much longer. He'll scramble to the top of the ditch and someone will stop."
"How much time do we have?" Felicia asked.
"None," Stan said. "We should assume it's already happened. So we proceed as planned: First we unload the shit. We'll fill the switch truck and stack the rest here. We can hide it here. Then we ditch the big truck."
He clapped, and we got to work. Quiet Tom pulled out the ramps on both the trucks, while Stan produced two pallet jacks. He worked one, and Tom worked the other. They jacked up a pallet and pulled it while either Felicia or I pushed from the other side and helped to steer and stabilize. We moved quickly and had the switch truck full in a matter of minutes.
Quiet Tom disappeared around a corner and then reappeared a moment later driving a large, loud contraption that looked like the bastard offspring of a combine harvester and a fork lift. It was yellow and black with four-foot high tires and a huge hydraulic lift. He operated it with as much skillful ease as the truck driver had guided his tractor trailer. In a few moments he'd stashed the remaining pallets on the highest rack of the warehouse, well out of sight of a casual observer.
"He does that well," I said.
Felicia wiped sweat from her face with a small handkerchief. "He owns the place," she said.
"He does?"
"Arkansas Fencing Company," she said. She leaned close to my ear. "On the verge of bankruptcy."
"Ah," I said.
After we were done, Stan climbed into the stolen truck. "Elliot, you're with me. Tom you're here. Felicia, you follow us in the Armada."
We all scurried to our assignments. In just a few minutes Stan and I hit the service road and for the first time since the robbery had begun I felt a real, gut-level fear. Committing a crime, I'd discovered, wasn't that scary. Trying to get away with it, however, was terrifying.
Beside me, very softly, Stan began to whistle the hym
n "Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?"
I almost laughed. Was he pretending to be at ease? Trying to sooth his jittery apprentice? Was he just messing with me?
Then in a startling voice—high and clear like a fine bluegrass singer—Stan sang:
"Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?"
He sighed. "Those old church songs, they're so beautiful. Don't you think so? I hate that new stuff they play today. The old hymns really said something. About heaven and hell. About transgression and sin."
"Yes ..."
"Did you play the old stuff when you were a preacher or did you do the new stuff?"
"You want to talk about this now?"
"Would you rather sit there and worry?"
My nerves settled a bit as I tried to formulate a response. "We did a mix. I like the old stuff better myself, but a lot of people like the contemporary Christian. So we'd alternate it."
Stan shook his head. "Tells you all you need to know about our country that the word 'contemporary' is just another way of saying 'shitty.'"
"I guess."
"Whole damn point of religion is that it's old. There's nothing new under the sun—that's scripture, ain't it?"
"Ecclesiastes."
"What?"
"The, uh, the book of Ecclesiastes. 'What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.'"
Stan smiled at that, but he was quiet for a while. Finally he said, "A scripture quoting heist man. That's fucking beautiful."
We arrived at our drop off point, the parking lot behind a bus factory in another town just off the interstate. Stan parked, and I got out. He ignited a gallon milk-jug full of gasoline in the cab, tossed another into the trailer, and we got into Felicia's car and left as the truck went up in flames. We were on I-40 in less than one minute, heading back to the fence company.
When we pulled in, DB was waiting with his brother. They huddled together next to the SUV in the warehouse.
As soon as Felicia parked, DB broke away from his brother and rushed to us. When Stan opened his door, DB said, "We need to get this shit out of here."
"What's the latest?"
"There is no latest."
Stan frowned. "They haven't found the driver yet?"
"No!"
Stan leaned against the SUV and pondered that a second. "That's damn peculiar." He turned to me. "You see that guy get up after we pushed him out of the truck?"
"No."
"Hmm. Maybe he hit the ground at a funny angle."
That made me dizzy. I reached out and steadied myself on the SUV.
DB said, "Either way, he'll be reported as soon as the hospital calls whoever they call to complain that the shipment didn't come in."
"No telling when that will be," Stan said.
"I don't care when it is," DB said. "We need to get this shit out of here." He pointed at the top rack. "I don't know why you stashed that stuff up there."
"We might need to store it," Stan said.
DB shook his head violently. "Won't work."
Felicia said, "Not to interrupt, but is there a bathroom?"
Stan said, "That's not a bad idea. We could use some food, too."
DB said, "We don't have time—"
"Until I talk to Fuller," Stan said, "we don't have anywhere to go. We need to call him and bring him up to date and see if he can pony up the extra three million for all the excess shipment."
DB wanted to argue, but his brother touched his arm and seemed to calm him. He motioned up the road running behind the building.
"Okay," DB said. "Let's go up the house."
-CHAPTER NINE-
Chief Among Sinners
The twins lived a few miles from the Arkansas Fence Company along a two-lane road. We passed quiet houses and fallow fields, and pulled into the driveway of a one-story brick home with an oak tree in the front yard. Quiet Tom led us inside. The house had brown carpet and striped wallpaper that dated from the late seventies or early eighties. Family pictures hung on the wall over a worn sofa. The twins took after their stout, sour-faced mother. Their scrawny father had buckteeth and thick glasses.
Felicia hit the bathroom. Stan went onto a small back patio and made a phone call. The twins dug some leftovers out of the refrigerator.
I used the bathroom next. Its decor was lighthouse and nautical-themed. I pissed while staring at a figurine of an old sea captain. When I was done, I washed my hands, and there, over the sink, was Elliot Stilling in the mirror.
He looked rough, this new Elliot. Tired, dirty. He'd helped steal a truck. A man might be dead because of him.
Oh Jesus, please no!
When you're a born again Christian, you teach yourself to listen for God in your own thoughts. You teach yourself to interpret your feelings and fears and desires as promptings of the Holy Spirit or tricks of Satan. It had been almost two years since I had been brutally relieved of the impression that God was listening to me. But like a grown man crying for his mother, some part of me cried out for Jesus to help me.
But I wasn't a child. I was a man. If that driver was dead, he was dead. Crying to God would have no affect on it one way or another. God lets everybody die.
When I walked out, Felicia was eating some cold pizza. She said, "You get the sense their mother decorated this place and they never saw fit to change it?"
I nodded.
The twins sat in the living room signing back and forth, ignoring the rest of us.
Stan walked in. "We'll have to wait."
DB stood up. "We've decided we can't wait."
"Who's we?"
"Me and my brother. We can't wait."
"Gonna have to," Stan said.
"Why?"
"Because we need to meet with Fuller to discuss the money, that's why."
DB shook his head. "My brother and me got millions of dollars worth of stolen drugs sitting down there in our fucking warehouse."
"Any reason why the cops would look there?" Stan asked.
"No, but that don't make me feel any more secure."
"What would you like to do, DB? Where would you like to take the fortune in stolen pharmaceuticals sitting down there in your warehouse?"
DB grasped for something to say to that.
Stan said, "You don't have any ideas. Of course not. So why don't you calm down. I've arranged a meeting with Fuller. With any luck, he'll be able to take the stuff off our hands tonight. Until then, just relax."
"How the hell am I supposed to do that?"
"Sit. Breath. Stop talking."
With hardly more dignity than a petulant child, DB slumped down in an easy chair by the kitchen doorway. Tom—apparently unable to watch his brother capitulate —jumped up and stalked into the kitchen. DB sulked.
Felicia and I sat down on the sofa.
Stan plopped into the love seat under a large picture frame window looking out on the short driveway. He grinned at DB's obvious displeasure. "Did I tell you that Elliot here used to be a preacher?"
"A preacher?"
Stan nodded.
"How come he ain't a preacher no more?"
"Excellent question. Been wondering that myself. Elliot?"
I rubbed my palms together. Felicia examined her hands, but I could tell by the tension in her shoulders that she was interested in the answer, too.
"I quit," I said.
"Obviously," Stan said. "How come, though?"
Felicia looked up at me.
"Life," I told her.
Stan massaged his cardinal-colored tie between his thumb and forefinger. "Come on. You have a better answer than that. You were a preacher. God's humble servant here on earth. A shepherd amongst the sheep. How could you turn your back on your calling?"
Felicia said, "Leave him alone, Stan."
Stan smil
ed. "How sweet." He asked me, "So, am I permitted to inquire if you were married, Brother Stilling?"
"Yes," I said. I nudged the nasty old carpet with the toe of my shoe. "I was."
Felicia said, "Leave him alone, Stan. He doesn't want to talk about it with you."
Stan watched her for a moment with no expression on his face. Then he asked me, "You met our sad-eyed angel here at the hospital. Why were you there?"
"I tried to kill myself."
His face brightened. I seemed to delight him in the same way that new facts delight a scholar. "Now why did you go and do that?"
"I was depressed."
Stan had a way of staring at you like a scientist taking something apart. "But what finally sent you over the edge?" he asked.
I shook my head.
I dropped the phone and ran. Out my office door, down the hall, down the steps.
My car was parked in my usual space. Right where I'd left it. Tree limbs bent in the wind and leaves slapped at a sky drained of color.
"Don't know or won't say," Stan inquired.
"Won't say."
Stan wasn't impressed by my sudden infusion of defiance, but he did keep smiling.
"Must have been bad," he said. "You tried to kill yourself over it."
"Didn't just try. Succeeded. I was dead for a few minutes."
"Three minutes," Felicia offered.
"You met Felicia then, what, as she was dragging you back into this world?"
"Something like that," I said.
"And now here you are. Hooked up with Felicia and her ragtag band of desperados. Felicia brought you back to life and now she's got you heisting trucks." He sat back and crossed his legs and laced his long fingers together over one bony knee.
Felicia sunk into the sagging sofa cushions.
"I guess," I said. "But I chose to be here. At this point, I don't know what the alternative could be."
"You can't repent of your sins, go back to God?"
"God and I are done."
"And here you are. Doesn't seem like a good trade off."
I shrugged. "Without God, there's no wall between us and the dark."
