Mark Dunn - American Decameron

The frightened, yet undeniably beautiful, blond-haired teller whose tasseled leather vest, a uniform of sorts for this cowboy bank, does little to restrain her large Tetonical breasts, answers in a high, tortured register: “I was there. I was sitting in the third row. I can tell you all the hymns we sang: ‘Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,’ ‘Old Time Religion.’ I can hear them now in my head. The memory of them fills me with the wonder-working spirit!”

“But why didn’t you come down during the invitational? Why did you not rededicate your life to Christ at that most blessedly opportune moment, my darling girl?”

“I was shy, I suppose,” peeps the teller.

“Honesty, child. Your mind wasn’t on the Lord, now was it?”

“It was on the Lord, Reverend.” And then with a glance over at the two bank robbers and their guns, “ Oh for the love of all that’s holy was my mind on the Lord! ”

Proctor clucks and shakes his head. The security guard is shaking his head at the same moment, trying to bring himself back to full consciousness. Cutler kicks him again hard with his boot, right in the left temple, and returns him to dreamland.

Codges shakes the phone receiver in the air and cries, “We simply do not have all day!” His older partner Cutler nods in agreement.

“Reverend,” says Cutler, “my colleague-in-crime reminds me that we need to deliver a couple of hostages to the police A-S-A-P. Now if you can’t make up your mind whose faith is worth a get-out-of-bank-free card, we’ll just have to go back to the old standby: women and children and old men with heart ailments first.”

“My heart! My heart!” cries Mr. Lanell, dramatically clutching his chest.

“Oh please, I beg you!” weeps Mrs. Sherman, both her son Billy and the Hollis twin pulled protectively to her sides. “Let it be women and children first!”

“Spoken like a true Latter Day Saint,” hurls the other teller, Mrs. Witemeyer, a woman in her fifties with Mamie Eisenhower bangs. “Let it be known here and now, gentlemen, that Mrs. Sherman is, in point of fact, a Mormon. She calls herself a Christian, but she’s a Mormon, all right. And Mr. Reese over there is, in fact, a worshipper of the Pope, and Cornelius McIntire and his daughter—” She’s looking straight at Cornelius and me now. “They aren’t any kind of believers at all. I think they’re either atheist or Buddhist or something else Asian and heathen. I’ll tell you who the true Christians are. I’ll put them in any order you like, and I can be fast about it. Just let me get some paper and a pencil. Don’t leave it to this tent preacher to decide. He doesn’t know us. I know every hostage here except for that uranium man over there, and good Heavens, you already know he’s a doctor-denying Eddyite. Give me some paper.”

As the younger bank robber goes looking about for some paper, the uranium man, who is on the floor not far away, suddenly grabs the young man by the ankle and jerks him off his feet. The young criminal named Codges fires upon the uranium man and wings him before his gun goes flying out of his hand. At the same time Pops, the security guard, having come once again to his senses, draws his own gun and puts a fatal bullet into the back of the older robber Cutler. Codges’ gun, by luck or miracle, lands within a couple of feet of me and I roll right over to it.

Then, I don’t know — maybe it’s mischief or maybe it’s rancor over the fact that Mrs. Witemeyer had called my father and me atheists, I aim the gun at Mrs. Witemeyer and shoot her in the knee. Then I draw a bead on the revival preacher who had clearly manipulated our dire straits for his own benefit, and I plug him in the arm. I’ve been shooting tin cans and barn rats since I was six; a runny-mouthed Pharisee’s a pretty easy target.

There are several of us either dead or severely wounded when the police, having heard the various shots, come storming in from the back offices of the bank and take Mr. Codges into custody, and various ones of us away to the hospital (or in the case of Mr. Cutler, to the morgue) — even the uranium man, who protests the medical attention.

I spend six months at a camp for juvenile delinquents and learn to rope calves and how to release my bean farts for optimum dramatic effect. I don’t regret what I did for a second.

Amen.

Tessie was in her slip. Her ten-year-old daughter Regina stood next to her. “I won’t wear the jumper if I can’t find the belt,” Tessie said to her daughter. “What do you think about these Bermuda shorts? Are they too casual?”

“It’s a barbecue, Mom. It’s supposed to be casual.”

Regina handed her mother the purple cinch belt that went with the purple jumper.

“Where have you been hiding that? Go check on the au gratin.” Tessie laid the matching cinch belt and jumper on the bed. She crossed to her dresser and looked at her image in the mirror. She gave gentle pats to her Maggie McNamara pixie cut, which was probably too young for her by about ten years. “Go on, Regina. I don’t want the cheese to burn. Where’s your father?”

“I think he’s out on the patio.”

Tessie went to the bedroom window as Regina left the room to look in on the spaghetti-broccoli au gratin.

“Rory! Rory!” Tessie called through the window screen. “Can you come over here?”

Tessie stole back to the bed to set her violet print blouse against the cotton jumper. “I don’t like this,” she said to herself. “It doesn’t look insouciant. I want to look insouciant. Like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday . Where is that sundress with the bib halter front?”

“Are you talking to me?” asked Rory. He was now standing just outside the bedroom window, holding his grill brush.

“This won’t do,” said Tessie, taking up the jumper and blouse. “I’m going to wear my salmon floral print sundress. Any of our guests who think I look too casual will just have to keep it to themselves.”

“What did you want, Tessie? I have to finish scraping the grill.”

“You should have done that already. I want you to promise me you’ll keep the TV off. It will absolutely ruin the party if everybody goes into the den and starts watching the hearings.”

“The Army — McCarthy hearings aren’t held on Saturdays, Tessie. Weekends is when the whole country gets a break from the ravings of the ‘Distinguished Senator from Wisconsin.’”

“Well, I don’t want you even talking about those awful hearings. I want this party to be a success. I don’t need rancorous political debates over my broiled fish with celery sauce or your vermouth-basted sirloin steaks.”

“Translated, Tessie: you don’t want me to do anything that will bring even a moment’s discomfort to our new neighbors. I know how important membership in the River Oaks Country Club is for you. I know how much you’ve been aching for a recommendation, regardless of the fact that your husband — your husband, the butcher —has absolutely no interest in hobnobbing with the Hobbys and the Hoggs.”

“You have no interest in doing anything ,” said Tessie with a frown.

Rory didn’t reply right away. Then he said, “I’m in the bowling league.”

Another silence.

“I have to finish cleaning the grill. Then I need to go pick up your Aunt Irma.”

“Why? I didn’t invite Aunt Irma.”

“I did.”

“Without asking me?”

“She’s your only aunt, Tessie — your only living relative, not counting Regina and me.”

“You know she doesn’t mix well with our friends. And Dr. Crowley and his wife are an unknown commodity. What if she’s in one of her moods?”