“Bet y’all don’t need no coffee now,” cawed Ty from the back.
Then a whistle came from somewhere back in the shadow of the barn, and the dogs pointed and stopped. Their noses came down, ears spread out. Automatically. Someone hailed them again, and away they went.
“Jesus,” Walter said. “That wigged me out.”
“I hate dogs,” Ty said.
“You do?” said East.
“Yes,” Ty said. “Always making noise, drooling. Trying to be your friend.”
East sat stunned and leery. He did not like dogs either. A dog changed the situation, always.
The bit of light their van threw had not given him any sense of the space around them. And nobody was coming out.
“Everything was right,” Walter said. “Black truck. Short drive. Pickup at a farm. All this I got told by ol’ Abe. All checks out.”
“Let’s wait then.”
“You supposed to get out and go,” Ty said.
For a flash of a moment, East felt everything he’d ever felt for his brother: righteousness and rage, exhaustion at the impudence.
“Take a look,” Ty said. “That window. It’s like a drive-through window off a bank.”
East turned. The window was indeed the right shape, low and wide. A single metal drawer perched along the metal sill, a loudspeaker mounted there.
“I’ll be damned,” said Walter. “I never saw anything like that.”
“They stole a drive-through window?”
“Likely bought it. At some auction for five dollars,” Walter said. “Business ain’t so good out here, if you hadn’t noticed.”
East said, “Maybe you can drive up?”
“They don’t want you to,” said Ty. “Ground isn’t flat. Tip the van over.”
“Shit.” Walter clicked his belt open and unwrapped it.
East looked around again. “Ty? What you think?”
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Ty said. “You two go out the front. Unlock the back gate for me, but don’t open it. I’m a stay in here and watch.”
“Oh?” said East. “You ain’t gonna come?”
“I think that makes sense,” Walter said. “Come out hard if we need you?”
“Right. Keep me a surprise.”
East sighed. “All right,” he said. “Stay in the van if you like.”
“I like,” Ty said.
East opened his door. The cold startled him — his breath became visible and lit in the stray light from the van. East headed around the back and unlatched the gate without opening it. Walter joined him in the exhaust and frosty red light.
“How cold is it, you think?” East asked.
“Not so bad,” Walter said. “It’s the wind that makes it feel cold.”
“Not so bad?” said East. “It’s cold as hell, son.”
“You skinny boys,” said Walter ruefully. “Well. Here goes nothin’.”
They approached the window — loose scraps of concrete and chunks of sod made a pile at its foot, as if they did indeed mean to keep cars away. East looked for a way to step up to the little call button colored an unlikely red. A two-way speaker. It crackled now.
“You the boys?” said a voice from inside. “From out west?”
“That’s us.” East glanced at Walter.
The voice came high but quaky, an old man’s voice. “First off, you boys is covered,” it said. “So let’s do like we said.”
East wondered whether to believe this. Another gun sighted on him — how many was that? He kept himself from looking around.
“Where’s the other two?”
“Other two what?”
The voice said, “The other two boys you got?”
“Oh,” said Walter, taking over. “In the van.”
The speaker crackled. “We got to see them. For safety’s sake. Nothing funny. That’s the deal we made.”
“That’s a problem,” Walter said. “They’re asleep.”
“No matter about that,” the voice said. “You come back when they wake up. Or you can even wake them up, can’t you?”
“We don’t want to wake them up.”
“Seems strange, you’d drive out here,” the voice said. “And then you aren’t willing to wake them up.”
“Well,” Walter said. He bugged his eyes at East.
East had nothing.
“The deal is one, two, three, four. We done our part of the deal. I got a package here for you, exactly what you asked. And I’ll be here when your boys wake up,” the voice said.
“Hold on.” East stepped back from the dark-tinted window and studied the barn. The wind-blasted house, the two anonymous silos. Every window and shadow too dark to read. There may have been half a dozen gunners covering them. Or no one at all.
The cold prickled on his bare arms.
Walter retreated with him and leaned in close.
“Like he’s trying to trap us,” said Walter. “Bank robbery: you put all the people together so you can cover them.”
“Why’d you make it so we have to have four?” East hissed.
“I didn’t make it, I told you,” said Walter. “Be different if I did. I would have been happy doing the deal back there at the grocery store.”
East rubbed his cold palms together and cursed.
“Old people,” Walter said. “Country-ass religious people. Somebody told them four, now that’s the scripture. I dealt with people like this before.”
“You dealt with everyone.”
“Tell you a story sometime. You want to fetch your brother out?”
East said, “He ain’t gonna make four.”
Shivering now, again they approached the window. The speaker shot a burst of static as they neared it, then cleared.
“Hello again.”
Walter cleared his throat. A burst of mist rolling out. “We put one out on the road,” he said. “So we’re down to three. That’s all we have.”
“I seen you talking it over,” came the voice. “I just do what I’m told.”
“Come out and look. Ain’t no fourth to see.”
“I ain’t stupid,” said the voice. “And I cain’t change on the plan. We agreed it was four. You show me four and I place your order in the drawer.”
“The plan changed,” Walter said. “Let me make a phone call.”
The static came thick, like fry grease. “Go ahead.”
Crestfallen, Walter said: “I mean, if we can use your phone.”
“No phone,” said the voice of the man.
East eyed the hard glass, the reflected blur of the van, the frost-lit world. His lips and skin were shrinking, emptying of blood. Black sky, taunting stars.
“Search us,” Walter was saying. “We got three. That’s all. Tell me what you need. But don’t waste the whole day.”
“I do what I’m told,” the voice came back, unruffled.
“This is a whole organization we’re here for,” Walter tried. “You are stopping it up. I don’t know how or why you got put in the way. But you got to understand that you are now a problem.”
The old man coughed into the microphone. “That’s why I sit in here, where it’s safe.”
“Can I make a new arrangement somehow?”
“Yes,” said the voice. “You made an arrangement before. Follow it again.”
“Can’t you call your boss, whoever that is?”
The crackle insisted, without annoyance: “No phone.”