Michael Smith - Rivers

He wanted her to stop and called for her to stop but she didn’t stop. He moved from out in the open and back into the tree line. But she walked casually and Cohen was able to get a good look at the place. It was a two-story Spanish-style house, terra-cotta-colored with arched windows and doorways. A balcony reached around the entire second floor and the ceramic roof tiles seemed intact but for one missing here and there like a lost tooth. A patio stretched out of the back of the house and there was a pool. The house appeared to sit in the middle of the fenced-off property as the white fence lined all sides but was at least a hundred yards away from the house in all directions. A horse trailer and truck were parked in the field to the west side of the house. Cohen wondered why he had never seen this place but he didn’t think about it long as two SUVs drove around the side of the house. He grabbed Habana’s reins and held her. He whispered to her and she let him lead her back into the trees.

The SUVs drove out toward the horse trailer and truck but continued past and didn’t stop until they came to the fence. At the fence line, five men piled out of each vehicle. The back doors of the SUVs were opened and each man took a shovel from the back. Each man put on a pair of gloves, each man went to a fence post, and each man started to dig.

Cohen stroked Habana’s neck and watched. He watched for an hour as the men dug in a spot, then moved on and dug in another, working their way from fence post to fence post in an orderly fashion. There wasn’t much light remaining in the day and Habana was getting restless. Cohen saw the men were occupied and he and the horse were far off and in the trees, so he felt safe moving. He held Habana’s reins and led her and she went with him this time without hesitation.

After walking for a mile back along the tree line and into the woods, as the last of the day disappeared, he stopped and told Habana that this might go a little better if we do it the old-fashioned way. She seemed calm, so he put his foot in the saddle and mounted her and led her home.

THE NEXT MORNING, AT FIRST light, they returned.

This time Cohen had the shotgun and a shovel and gloves. When they came to the house, the SUVs and truck were not there. The horse trailer sat in the field.

Cohen waited against the tree line and when he felt certain that no one was there, they rode out to the part of the fence where he had last seen the men digging. What he discovered as he rode along the fence were holes at every post along almost the entire south section of the fence. The holes were a yard wide and a yard deep.

He got down from Habana, tied her to a standing piece of the wooden fence, and then he didn’t know why, but he started digging. He added five holes to the long line and then he stopped. His back ached and his hands were sore and it was midmorning. The feeling that the men in the SUVs would be back told him to quit, so he quit.

The next morning he came back before daylight. At the fence line, he noticed that the holes now made the entire length of the south side and there were another ten stretching up the west portion of the fence.

He got off, tied Habana, and went to work. He dug through dawn and then it started to rain and he quit. Riding back to his place, he explained to Habana that he didn’t know what the hell was going on but that he was done. My damn back is killing me.

The next morning he was back again. A light rain fell and made him nervous as he dug because he couldn’t hear as well if the SUVs returned. Habana seemed unhappy standing in the rain, moving around more than usual and picking up her feet and smacking them down in the wet ground. An hour past dawn, he was wet and hurting and felt a little stupid.

And then the shovel hit something. He was about two feet down and whatever he hit was strong and solid, and as if he had been plugged in, he began to dig at double speed, his imagination and adrenaline both racing, and in a matter of minutes he had uncovered all sides of the trunk. It was wide and broad, larger than any of the holes that had been dug. He didn’t bother trying to dig it out but instead he removed the dirt from the top and from around its sides. When he was done, he lay down on top and it was as long as he was, and he stretched out and grabbed the sides with his arms straight. He got up and stood on top, thought quickly about what to do. The trunk latch was padlocked and he didn’t want to fire the shotgun and risk making a big noise, but he had to. He fired and the lock and latch busted and Habana reared and whinnied. Cohen tossed the shotgun aside, stepped off the top of the trunk, and knelt at the edge of the hole. He reached down and tugged at the top and pulled it open.

He was unsure what to think. He looked around as if it were a joke on one of those hidden-camera shows where the jokesters were waiting to leap out and point at him and cackle hysterically. There were stacks and stacks and stacks. Pretty and clean. Crisp and straight. So perfect, they seemed fake.

He took Habana’s saddlebag and stuffed in as much as he could. Then he shoved stacks into his coat pockets and down into his pants and into his boots and anywhere else he could shove them. He mounted Habana and ran her across the field, hurried her through the jigsaw of the fallen trees and limbs, and ran her to the house. He hopped off, took the saddlebag inside and unloaded, then hurried back out, mounted, and ran. He was able to make two more trips and it took until midday. The rain fell steady and Habana seemed to be getting tired but he didn’t have half of what was in the trunk.

“One more trip,” he told her and they took off again.

This time when they came around the bend of the tree line, the SUVs were there. And the men were there. They were pointing and yelling at one another and he didn’t wait to see what they were going to do.

He turned Habana and disappeared.

EVAN REALIZED THAT NO MATTER what the old man had said, no matter what had been agreed upon, and no matter what had exchanged hands to make the agreement, it wouldn’t be long before the two men outside the door decided to come in and see what they could find. It was a simple message that was delivered by both common sense and by Cohen’s twenty-four-hour whisper.

In less than a minute, the world had changed again. One moment he was lying on the bed watching television, with Brisco safe and dreaming next to him. The next moment a man with a gun had pushed Cohen and Mariposa into the room and Cohen had told him they had to go back down and those two will stand outside your door and make sure you don’t leave until we get back. Brisco never woke through the exchange and Evan was glad he didn’t. But Evan paced the room now, looking at his little brother, looking out of the window, walking in and out of the bathroom, replaying Cohen’s words in his head, wondering what the hell.

Twenty-four hours and then do what you gotta do.

A lamp on the bedside table provided low light in the room and the wind had picked up outside and drove the rain into the windows and walls of the buildings on the square. Evan heard the men talking outside the bedroom door but couldn’t make out anything they said. Only muffled words in a muffled night but he didn’t need the details to know what they were talking about. They were talking about the same thing that damn near every other human being he’d ever known talked about—how much can I get and what’s the best way to get it.

He reached between the mattress and took out the pistol that Cohen had given him. He tucked it into the back of his pants and knew he needed to find the other one. He walked through the bathroom into the other bedroom and went to the dresser. The top drawer was the last place he had seen Cohen put it and he opened the drawer but it wasn’t there. He wondered if Cohen had somehow managed to have it with him but didn’t figure Charlie was the kind of man to make that sort of mistake. The room was a mess, with clothes on the floor and laid across chairs and the bed-sheets and blanket twisted and half hanging off the bed. Evan lifted sheets and picked up and tossed aside clothes, opened the nightstand drawer and the other dresser drawers, looked on the closet shelf and looked between the mattresses, but he couldn’t find it. He knelt and looked under the bed at the rifles and shotgun and thought it would take the men about fourteen seconds to find them, and then what would happen?