Макс Коллинз - Shoot the Moon (and more)

It had been dark when we started out. I’d watched the dawn as we drove through Wisconsin on into Illinois, and the morning was turning out sunny and blue-skied by the time we hit Iowa. Elam kept the Mustang at a steady fifty-five, taking no chances. That was fine with me: I was in no hurry, though at the same time wished to hell it was over. Finally, we crossed a bridge over the Cedar River and Elam took a side road turn-off, which was as expected, since his plan called for a side route into Wynning, rather than taking the regular turn-off a few miles hence.

Soon we were pulling in behind the yellow Mustang down a gravel drive that led to an abandoned farmhouse, a two-story clapboard gutted by fire and beyond restoration. A barn stood nearby, a paint-peeling, gray building that had been untouched by the fire but was badly sagging and apparently not being used or if so just for storage or something. I parked the Volks on the far side of the barn, so that the car could not be seen from the blacktop road that passed by the farmhouse.

We gathered together, beside the Volks, and Elam told us one more time what it was we were each to do. We were dressed casually, Wheaty and I in cut-off jeans and tank-top tee-shirts, Elam and Hopp wearing unusually bright Hawaiian print sport-shirts and light summer slacks. It seemed odd to me that Elam and Hopp would dress so loudly, and I pointed that out, but Elam explained that the attention of the bank employees would be drawn to the shirts, not the faces of the men wearing the shirts. There was, evidently, a lot of psychology in bank robbing. There was also a lot of attention to detail in Elam’s run-through: Hopp was even going to carry the laundry bag into the bank, rolled up under his arm, the laundry bag that would be used to dump the money in on the real robbery.

Then I got in the Mustang, behind the wheel, while Elam got in on the rider’s side and Hopp climbed in in back. We left Wheat behind with his Volks. All of this was according to plan.

A little more than a mile later we were in Wynning. The side route into town brought us through a middle class residential neighborhood of older homes, ranging from modest one-story clapboards (usually white, with a screened-in porch) to nearly elaborate two-story gothic types, and most of those were white clapboard too, but not always: a red brick house broke the monotony now and again, and some of the less conservative residents had dared to paint their homes a color other than white... you know, something really daring, like a washed-out pastel yellow. Glancing down side streets I saw that the town seemed to be nothing but middle class: the lowliest residence around was an occasional trailer, and those sat in large, well-tended yards.

I also saw a church, or maybe I should call it a chapel; it was Methodist, and I thought of my father, and squirmed.

And then the residential area seemed to end before it began, and we were sitting at a stop sign looking out onto the smallest, least active Main Street imaginable.

Down to the right I could see the lumber yard and feed stores Elam had mentioned, with the grain elevator looming behind them; to the left I could see the towers of the oil company’s storage silos. In between was the world’s smallest business district. On the side of the street closest to us was the filling station and garage, where farm machinery was repaired and sold, all of that taking up a small city block. Next to that, across a narrow street, was a city park, which was for the most part a green open area, with a few trees around the edges; there was a small band shell and benches in front of it. The park took up somewhat more space than the nearby filling station and garage, having some room to stretch out, as there was no street cutting between it and its sprawling next-door neighbor, the oil company storage dump. By normal standards, the park was small, but by the standards of this tiny town, it was huge, and I found it somehow refreshing that Wynning, seemingly a very business and industry-oriented little community, had set such a relatively large section of itself aside for a park.

Directly across from the park, but staggered somewhat so that it was also across from the filling station and garage, was the long single block that made up the bulk of Wynning’s business district. On the corner straight across from us, as we sat at the stop sign, was the town’s only bar. Next to the bar was a Clover Farm grocery store.

Next to that was a general store of sorts, apparently a hardware store as much as anything. Then came a large appliance store, and finally, on the other corner, the branch office of the Lone Tree bank.

All of these stores were old; none of them had had their faces lifted. The buildings were brick and the store-fronts were wood and glass. Old, but scrupulously well-maintained. Wynning had looked the same way in 1925.

And clean. The whole damn town was frighteningly clean: you couldn’t find a candy wrapper or crushed cigarette package to save your life.

We could see some cars parked down the street, at the cafe, but the curb in front of the bank and other store-front businesses was empty of cars. It was not what you’d call a hustling, bustling Saturday morning in Wynning.

I pulled up in front of the bank, not directly in front as Elam didn’t want the two bank employees to be able to look out their big glass window and get a good look at the car, but back just a ways. The sidewalk was raised several feet, meaning there was a sort of wall as you got out on the rider’s side, so I left some room, didn’t pull in close.

That was when Elam told me the car was stolen, and to watch myself accordingly, and he and Hopp got out and went into the bank.

An Iowa Highway Patrol car drew up alongside of me and slowly slid into the space at the curb in front of the stolen Mustang. I shut my eyes. I opened my eyes. The Highway Patrol car was still there.

I hadn’t even gotten over the car being stolen yet, and here was the Highway Patrol already! Terrific.

The patrolman who’d been driving climbed out. He was wearing a faultlessly pressed green-brown uniform, with a badge that the sun glinted off, a tall guy who was trim-looking, in a big-framed, supple, athletic way. He didn’t look much older than me, which should’ve been a comforting thought, I suppose, but it wasn’t: he looked very much like the sort of college jock who got a kick out of doing bodily harm to non-jock sorts like me. He looked very much like Shaker Saltz, as a matter of fact, who, in case you’ve forgotten, is the college jock S.O.B. who got me into all this.

And he was walking back to me. Kind of stretching, rolling his neck around, limbering up like a wrestler getting ready for a match. He was wearing sunglasses, the wrap-around goggle type, and the sun glinted off them, same as his badge. His teeth were shiny white and the sun glinted off them, too.

Only he wasn’t smiling. He just had his lips pulled back across his teeth, getting ready to speak. To me. He pushed his Highway Patrol hat back on his head and let me look at the fringe of military trim blond hair on his tanned, shiny forehead. He leaned forward and said, “I notice you have an out of state license.”

“YES!” I shouted. And realizing I’d shouted, grinned feebly, tried to disguise how hard I was breathing, said a prayer for my bladder, and repeated, with superficial calm, “Yes.”

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, in a flat tone of a voice.

“Wrong? Wrong?”

“You nervous about something?”

“No, no, no, no, no, nervous about something? No.”

He sighed. “Well you’ll have to move your car.”

“Move my car?”

“I would if I were you. Unless you’re here for the day.”