Unexpectedly, Milo

by Matthew Dicks

  “Who would buy a bicycle when the streets are all dirt and stuff?” Eugene asked.

  “Be quiet!” Lily said, raising her finger to her lips.

  On screen, the scene had shifted to a small farmhouse outside of town. Sundance and his lover, Etta Place, were sharing a moment together in bed. Though the scene was hardly racy by today’s Hollywood standards, the mere implication of sex, in combination with his companion and their current seating arrangement, made Milo think again of Christine. What would she think of all this? He was sitting in a darkened room with a beautiful woman whom he had known less than an hour, watching two people on television roll around in bed together. Regardless of the innocence of his intentions, he couldn’t help but feel guilty, and he was certain that Christine would see it this way, and probably worse. If so, Milo could hardly blame her. He had thought that Thick-Neck Phil and his top-down Jeep and mirrored sunglasses had been bad. But this was downright illicit, even with Eugene sitting to his right. In response to these thoughts, Milo leaned closer to Eugene, increasing the distance between him and Lily. He straightened his back, pulled his knees together (considered crossing his legs for a moment but then thought otherwise), and folded his hands on his lap, in the hopes that this position would somehow enhance the visual purity of the situation in the event that anyone else walked in.

  He knew it was crazy, but it nevertheless made him feel better.

  Seconds later, the on-screen action shifted again to the infamous “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” scene, in which Butch takes Etta on an early-morning, dialogue-free bicycle ride around the farm.

  “Did you know that Paul Newman did all the bicycle stunts himself?” Milo asked, taking advantage of the absence of dialogue. “The stuntman couldn’t stay on the bike, so Newman did everything except for one fall. A cinematographer had to do that one.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Lily said, eyes still locked on the screen. Milo had hoped that his knowledge of the film might impress her, but Lily seemed utterly uninterested in this cinematic tidbit. A moment later, she spoke again, this time turning to face him. “The thing is, Etta wants to be with Butch. Or at least part of her does. The sensible part.”

  “Huh?”

  “Etta,” she said, turning back to the screen. “She wants to be with Butch. See her on the bike with him? You can tell. Sundance might be the good-looking guy, the fastest draw in the West, the guy that every girl wants to sleep with, but Butch is the guy who every girl wants to marry. Or the guy who every girl should marry, at least. He’s the kind of guy who reminds you of your father. He’s safe. For a bank robber, I mean. He’s safe and dependable and loyal. You can trust Butch. And that’s the sticky part. Sticky for Etta and sticky for the rest of us too.”

  Milo waited for Lily to continue. On screen, Etta was hanging her feet out of a hayloft, throwing hay down at Butch as he rode in circles in front of the barn. Finally, when it was clear that Lily wasn’t going to continue, he said, “I don’t get it. What’s the sticky part?”

  “Who a girl chooses to marry. A girl has to decide whether she wants the dangerous guy or the safe guy. Marry the dangerous one and your life may be exciting, but you’re just as likely to end up pregnant and alone, or even worse. Marry the safe guy and you’ll always have your man beside you, but you risk a lifetime of boredom. That’s what Etta’s problem is. Her dilemma. Butch or Sundance? Safe or dangerous? Like most girls, she chooses dangerous. But you can tell that part of her wants to choose Butch. Just look at her. Even Sundance knows it.”

  “You’re crazy, Lily,” Eugene said in a whisper, as if the three were sitting in an actual movie theater. “All girls care about is money. Who got the biggest paycheck.”

  “Shut up, Eugene,” Lily whispered back. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. When was the last time you even had a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t want a girlfriend,” Eugene countered. “Too damn expensive.”

  Milo couldn’t help but wonder if Christine saw things the same way Lily (and perhaps Etta Place) did. Did she equate her husband to a law-abiding, exponentially safer version of Butch Cassidy? Was Christine suffering from a lifetime of boredom?

  And if so, was Thick-Neck Phil currently starring in the role of Sundance?

  Milo tried to push those thoughts out of his mind and focus on the film. “Well, at least that makes this scene a little more bearable. The way you describe it, I mean.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I hate this scene. It nearly ruins the movie. Sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s like one minute I’m watching a Western and the next I’m watching some ridiculous musical. I have no idea what the director”—who Milo knew was George Roy Hill, Academy Award winner and two-time nominee who died in December of 2002—“could have been thinking when he included this scene.”

  “Oh, but I love it,” Lily said. “I think it says so much, and without any words. Without any dialogue, at least. The song isn’t so important. I could take it or leave it. That doesn’t matter so much. Just the way Butch and Etta are together. They way they want to be together but can’t. The scene says it all, but without a single word. It’s perfect.” She paused a moment before adding, “But a couple of people in my film class felt the way you do, so you’re not alone, Milo.”

  “I’m with you, man,” Eugene said, still whispering. “This scene sucks.”

  Milo, Lily, and Eugene sat silently on their wooden bench as Butch and Sundance botched the second robbery of the Union Pacific Flyer, blowing up the safe and the money in the process. They laughed at the conversation between Butch and Woodcock, the man assigned to guard the safe, and especially at Woodcock, the spectacled, mousy, unlikely protector of anything precious.

  Butch, you know that if it were my money, there is nobody that I would rather have steal it than you.

  A minute later, the second train, loaded with a posse specially trained to hunt and kill Butch and Sundance, arrived on the scene and the chase was on.

  “Oh, shit,” Eugene murmured to himself. “This ain’t good.”

  Eugene was right, Milo knew. Across miles and miles of desert and scrubland, the posse, led by a man in a white hat, followed Butch and Sundance, undeterred.

  The three sat nearly silently for the next hour, watching Butch and Sundance and Etta make their way to Bolivia, where the duo, aided by Etta’s lessons in Spanish, resumed their bank robbing ways. As Milo sat and looked on, the desire to see the film end differently and the resulting pressure of anticipation grew as Butch and Sundance drew closer and closer to their fate. But even if the universe had wanted to change the ending of the movie, allowing Butch and Sundance to survive this one time, he doubted that it would happen on this day, when he was in the presence of two other people. To witness a miracle alone seemed entirely possible to Milo. It had to be possible for the incessant demands to watch these films over and over again to make any sense. Though it ran contrary to everything he believed, Milo was certain that someday, his persistence would pay off. Butch and Sundance would survive, Mace Windu would strike down Palpatine, Quint would dodge the jaws of the great white shark, and Jack would climb on that goddamn door with Rose. But to witness one of these miracles in the company of another seemed highly unlikely.

  In Milo’s mind, one of the key components of a miracle was the ability of the majority to discount its having ever taken place.

  Nevertheless, as Butch and Sundance took jobs as payroll guards in an attempt to go legit, Milo felt the pressure building more and more, knowing that if they could just save the mining boss, Percy Gather, and protect the payroll that he was transporting up the mountain, they could have a chance at a normal life. Milo had argued more than once with Andy, another fan of the film, over the merits of a normal life for Butch and Sundance. Andy’s contention was that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were not meant to live a normal life, and that they should instead be admired for their chosen path. “Butch and the Sundance Kid were ban
k robbers,” Andy had said. “Both the real and fictional versions of them. And they were damn good ones at that. That’s more than most of us can ever claim of ourselves.”

  But for someone who craved normalcy as much as Milo did and understood the difficulty in being anything but normal, he suspected that if given a chance, even the Sundance Kid would’ve taken a wife, three kids, and the life of a rancher over his chosen profession.

  Normalcy, in Milo’s mind, was consistently underrated by the normal.

  “I love this guy,” Lily whispered, seeming to unconsciously adopt the same movie-house etiquette as Eugene. She was referencing the mine boss, Percy Gather, who was seconds away from being shot in the chest by Bolivian bandits—unless the universe decided to intervene.

  “That old guy?” Eugene asked. “Are you crazy?”

  “I love him too,” Milo said, and he meant it. Percy Gather was someone to whom Edith Marchand might refer as a character and whom Arthur Friedman would surely call a goddamn idiot; a wild-eyed expatriate who couldn’t spit tobacco straight but never stopped trying and who described himself to Butch and Sundance with six words that Milo had clung to during his darkest moments:

  I’m not crazy; I’m just colorful.

  It was easy for Milo to fear that the demands placed upon him were a symptom of insanity, and though he had learned to live with them and almost accept them as part of his life, his greatest fear was that they were simply the tip of the iceberg, the beginning of something more, the first steps in his descent into madness. So far, this had not been the case. The demands had changed over the years, some falling by the wayside while others took their place. Overall, the demands had increased in variety and frequency, but they had remained the extent of his insanity, its only symptom. And whenever Milo began to think of it as insanity, he would think of the old expatriate prospector Percy Gather, who was not crazy.

  Just colorful.

  The universe did not choose to intervene in Percy Gather’s fate today, and so he was once again shot in the chest and the movie went on. Perhaps because Lily and Eugene were sitting beside him and the chances that the ending might change seemed even slimmer than usual, Milo did not feel the usual level of tension building as Butch and Sundance’s stolen horse was spotted by that nosy little boy, or when dozens of Bolivian soldiers surrounded the marketplace.

  “Damn,” Eugene said, leaning in toward Milo. “That little son of a bitch. Don’t tell me how it’s gonna end, but are those boys gonna die?”

  “Just watch,” Milo suggested, unable to suppress a grin at Eugene’s contradictory request.

  “This was stupid,” Lily said, her voice sounding even softer than before. “Why did I do this to myself? I was right when I said that this is lousy way to start off the day.”

  “Do you want me to stop the movie?” Milo asked, knowing she would decline. To stop now would leave the demand unsatisfied and even more potent.

  “Hell, no!” Eugene said, and Milo noticed for the first time that the large man was sitting on the edge of his seat.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lily added. “It’s sad, but it’s the right ending too. I mean, how else could it end?”

  “They could ride off into the sunset,” Milo suggested, envisioning the ending that he hoped for each time he watched the film, including today. “Or maybe they could go legit. Start a little business together. Sundance could marry Etta, and Butch could find a girl of his own.”

  “Good Lord, Milo. Thank goodness you weren’t in charge of the script. That would’ve just about killed the movie.”

  “But I thought you said that you wished the ending were different too.”

  “Of course I do,” Lily said. “I don’t want Butch and Sundance to die.”

  “They’re gonna die?” Eugene nearly shouted. “Damn. Why did you tell me?”

  “You just asked Milo to tell you.”

  “I know, but he was smart enough not to tell me. Damn, Lily. You just ruined it for me.”

  “They have to die,” Lily said. “That’s what makes the movie so great. Just look.” She was pointing at the screen, where Butch and Sundance were reloading their guns. “Even in the end, as they are getting ready to charge out into the town square and face all those soldiers, they’re chatting away like it’s just another ordinary afternoon together. They’re both shot, probably bleeding to death already, and they talk about going to Australia like it might actually happen. Have you ever seen two braver men?”

  Milo wanted to assure Lily that it might happen someday, regardless of how hopeless their situation appeared. Butch and Sundance might make it to Australia, if Milo watched often enough. Instead he asked, “But why do they have to die? Why can’t they slip out the back and end their lives as cattle ranchers in Australia?”

  “Yeah,” Eugene said, sounding genuinely emotional. “Why can’t they?”

  “Because sometimes bravery requires death. Butch and Sundance have to die so that we can love them.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Eugene said. “Bullshit.”

  “It’s all right, Eugene,” Lily said, reaching across Milo’s lap in order to squeeze his hand.

  As Lily said these final words, almost in a whisper, Butch and Sundance launched themselves into the open square, guns drawn. A second later the image of the two men froze, turned sepia, and the sound of a thousand gunshots filled the break room.

  Lily, Milo and Eugene sat silent for almost a minute as the credits began to roll. As expected, the ending had satisfied the demand placed on Milo, but the relief that he typically felt was muted. He didn’t mind. He had enjoyed watching the film with Lily and Eugene. But before he even had time to stand up, placebo had returned to the foreground of his mind, as persistent as ever.

  “Well, thanks for letting me watch that with you, Milo,” Lily said, rising from the bench and switching on the lights. “Eugene, are you crying?”

  “Fuck you, Lily. I ain’t crying. I might be crying ’cause I just wasted two hours of my life, but I ain’t crying.” He rose from the bench and exited the room, head down.

  “He cried when the Giants won the Super Bowl too. He’ll be fine.”

  “He’s a nice guy, huh?”

  “Yup. Most big lugs are. I’ve worked with him for five years now. You know, a couple months ago, he walked me to my classes after a girl was attacked on campus. Not hitting on me or anything. Just being nice.”

  “It’s good to have friends like that,” Milo said.

  “Yes, it is. Listen, Milo. I’ve got to run if I’m going to be on time for my mom. But this was great. Thanks for … I don’t know. For letting me watch the movie with you and not thinking I was crazy.”

  “Hey, I was the one who wanted my room back to watch a movie I’ve seen a dozen times,” Milo said, knowing the number was much higher. “If anyone acted crazy today, it was me.”

  “I don’t think so, Milo. You may be a little sentimental, but you’re certainly not crazy. It’s a damn good movie. Worth watching again and again.” Lily extended a hand and Milo reached out to shake it, but before he could clasp her palm, she had converted the handshake into a brief, somewhat awkward hug. Then she turned, said one final “Bye,” and was off.

  Before Lily had even disappeared from view, the ring of placebo forced him get moving once again.

  Chisholm, North Carolina, waited.

  Before Milo could resume his journey south, however, placebo would need to be satisfied. Milo’s solution had come to him while brushing his teeth earlier that morning, and for that bit of seemingly divine inspiration, he had been thankful. So far away from home and without his customary resources, he had started to worry about how he might meet this demand. But in the end, the solution had actually been easier than most. Ten miles south of the hotel, Milo stopped at his third pharmacy that morning and finally found success.

  “Good morning,” he said to the pharmacist, a middle-aged man wearing glasses and a yellow bow tie, looking a little bit like a modern-day
Woodcock, Milo thought. “I have an odd request. I’m traveling with my daughter, who gets car sick anytime we’re on the road more than an hour. We used to give her Dramamine, but about a year ago, our doctor prescribed … What do you call it? A fake pill? The one that makes her think that she’s taking real medicine?”

  “Oh, you need a placebo?”

  “Yes,” Milo said, trying to mask the wave of relief washing over his body on hearing the word spoken. “A placebo.” The first two pharmacists had failed to use the word, referring to them instead as sugar pills. But the modern-day Woodcock had come through.

  “So the placebo helps her with the motion sickness?” the pharmacist asked.

  Milo said yes, answered a few more questions, laughed at a bad joke, and finally left the pharmacy with a dozen sugar pills, free of charge. There were twenty more already in the car from his previous two stops.

  Finally, after all these distractions—Butch and Sundance, Lily and Eugene, and placebo—Milo pulled into Chisholm, North Carolina. By the time he brought the car to a halt in the gravel parking lot of the Town Chef, a diner on Main Street, it was after five o’clock. He was tired, hungry, and once again in need of the restroom.

  As he entered the restaurant to the sound of bells ringing above the door, he was pleased to see a redheaded waitress behind the counter, chewing gum, drying a plate, and welcoming him with a smile.

  Town square or not, maybe things were looking up.

  chapter 23

  Prior to leaving for North Carolina, Milo had acquired several bits of information that he thought might assist him with his search of Tess Bryson.

  In reading additional news reports of Sean Bryson’s arrest and conviction, he found that the niece whom Bryson had molested had been on his wife’s side and that his wife’s maiden name was Plante. He also found that Sean Bryson’s wife, Tess Bryson’s mother, had died of pancreatic cancer a year before her husband had been arrested.

  Milo wondered if Tess Bryson had ever returned to Massachusetts to attend the funeral or visit her mother’s grave. Probably not the funeral, but maybe the cemetery, he thought. That is, if she was still alive.