Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

Upshot of it was Royce wound up drawing three hundred dollars. Ruth Van Dine gave it to him in tens and twenties because he just stood there stiffer than new rope when she asked him how did he want it. Three times she asked him, and she’s a girl no one ever had to tell to speak up, and each time it was like talking to a wall, so she counted out ten tens and ten twenties and gave it to him, along with his passbook. He thanked her and walked out with the passbook and money in one hand and the other holding the twelve gauge Worthington, which was still propped up on his shoulder.

Before he got back in his panel truck he said, “Half my life, Lord, half my dang life.”

Then he got in the truck.

When he got back to his house he found Essie in the kitchen soaking the labels off some empty jam jars. She turned and saw him, then shut off the faucet and turned to look at him again. She said, “Why, Royce honey, what are you doing back here? Did you forget somethin’?”

“I didn’t forget nothin’,” he said. What he forgot was to hold up the bank like he’d set out to do, but he didn’t mention that.

“You didn’t get laid off,” she said mournfully. (I didn’t put in a question mark there because her voice didn’t turn up at the end. She said it sort of like it would be O.K. if Royce did get laid off from the sawmill, being that the both of them could always go out in the backyard and eat dirt. She was always a comfort, Essie was.)

“Didn’t go to work,” Royce said. “Today’s my dang birthday,” Royce said.

“ ‘Course it is! Now I never wished you a happy birthday but you left ‘fore I was out of bed. Well, happy birthday and many more. Thirty-nine years, land sakes.”

“Thirty- eight! ”

“What did I say? Why, I said thirty- nine . Would you believe that. I know it’s thirty-eight, ‘course I know that. Why are you carrying that gun, I guess there’s rats in the garbage again.”

“Half my life,” Royce said.

“Is there?”

“Is there what?”

“Rats in the garbage again?”

“Now how in blue hell would I know is there rats in the garbage?”

“But you have that gun, Royce.”

He discovered the gun, took it off his shoulder, and held it out in both hands, looking at it like it was the prettiest thing since a new calf.

“That’s your shotgun,” Essie said.

“Well, I guess I know that. Half my dang life.”

“What about half your life?”

“My life’s half gone,” he said, “and what did I ever do with it, would you tell me that? Far as I ever been from home is Franklin County and I never stayed there overnight, just went and come back. Half my life and I never left the dang old state.”

“I was thinkin’ we might run out to Silver Dollar City this summer,” Essie said. “It’s like an old frontier city come to life or so they say. That’s across the state line, come to think on it.”

“Never been anyplace, never done any dang thing. Never had no woman but you.”

“Well now.”

“I’m gone to Paris,” Royce said.

“What did you say?”

“I’m gone to Paris is what I said. I’m gone rob Buford Washburn’s bank and I’m not even gone call him Mr. Washburn this time. Gone to Paris France, gone buy a Cadillac big as a train, gone do every dang thing I never did. Half my life, Essie.”

Well, she frowned. You blame her? “Royce,” she said, “you better lie down.”

“Paris, France.”

“What I’ll do,” she said, “I’ll just call on over at Dr. LeBeau’s. You lie down and put the fan on and I’ll just finish with these here jars and then call the doctor. You know something? Just two more cases and we’ll run out of your ma’s plum preserves. Two cases of twenty-four jars to the case is forty-eight jars and we’ll be out. Now I never thought we’d be out of them plums she put up but we’ll be plumb out, won’t we. Hear me talk, plumb out of plums, I did that without even thinking.”

Essie wasn’t normally quite this scatterbrained. Almost, but not quite. Thing is, she was concerned about Royce, being as he wasn’t acting himself.

“Problem is getting in a rut,” Royce said. He was talking to his own self now, not to Essie. “Problem is you leave yourself openings and you back down because it’s the easy thing to do. Like in the bank.”

“Royce, ain’t you goin’ to lay down?”

“Fillin’ out a dang slip,” Royce said.

“Royce? You know somethin’? You did the funniest thing this mornin’, honey. You know what you did? You went and you only shaved the half of your face. You shaved the one half and you didn’t shave the other half.”

(Now this is something that both Ruth Van Dine and Buford Washburn had already observed, and truth to tell they had both called it to Royce’s attention — in a friendly way, of course. I’d have mentioned it but I figured if I kept sliding in the same little piece of conversation over and over it’d be about as interesting for you as watching paint dry. But I had to mention when Essie said it out of respect, see, because it was the last words that woman ever got to speak, because right after she said it Royce stuck the shotgun right in her face and fired off one of the barrels. Don’t ask me which one.)

“Now the only way to go is forward,” Royce said. “Fix things so you got no bolt hole and you got to do what you got to do.” He went to the cupboard, got a shotgun shell, broke open the gun, dug out the empty casing, popped in the new shell, and closed the gun up again.

On the way out of the door he looked at Essie and said, “You weren’t so bad, I don’t guess.”

Well, Royce droveon back to the bank and parked directly in front of it, even though there’s a sign says plainly not to, and he stepped on into that bank with the twelve-gauge clenched in his hand. It wasn’t over his shoulder this time. He had his right hand wrapped around the barrel at the center of gravity or close to it. (It’s not the worst way to carry a gun, though you’ll never see it advocated during a gun safety drive.)

He was asked later if he felt remorse at that time about Essie. It was the sort of dumb question they ask you, and it was especially dumb in light of the fact that Royce probably didn’t know what the hell remorse meant, but in plain truth he didn’t. What he felt was in motion.

And in that sense he felt pretty fine. Because he’d been standing plumb still for thirty-eight years and never even knew it, and now he was in motion, and it hardly mattered where exactly he was going.

“I want every dang cent in this bank!” he sang out, and Buford Washburn just about popped a blood vessel in his right eye, and Ruth Van Dine stared, and old Miz Cristendahl who had made a trip to town just to get the interest credited to her account just stood there and closed her eyes so nothing bad would happen to her. (I guess it worked pretty good. That woman’s still alive, and she was seventy-six years old when Calvin Coolidge didn’t choose to run. All those Cristendahls live pretty close to forever. Good thing they’re not much for breeding or the planet would be armpit deep in Cristendahls.)

“Now you give me every bit of that money,” he said to Ruth. And he kept saying it, and she got rattled.

“I can’t, ” she said finally, “because anyway it’s not mine to give and I got no authority and besides there’s another customer ahead of you. What you got to do is you got to speak to Mr. Buford Washburn.”

And what Buford said was, “Now, Royce, say, Royce, you want to put down that gun.”

“I’m gone to Paris, France, Mr. Washburn.” You notice he forgot and went and called him Mr. Washburn. Old habits die hard.