“Slide up here and take this!” I yelled. They clamped their hands on it and I let go, ducked back, and made for the deputy. I got him by the arm and yelled in his ear.
“That wall’s coming down any minute! We got to get ‘em out of here.”
“What you think I’m trying to do?” he roared back.
“Look! Go tell ‘em to cut the water on this hose. Then get as many men on it as you can. Pick it up. We’ll shove ‘em back.”
He got what I meant, and ran towards the fire engine. I turned and plowed my way back to the nozzle. Just as I got my hands on it the hose went limp. I started running, dragging it, down alongside the wall and out into the vacant lot at the rear, as far as it would reach. Men were falling in behind me now, picking it up. I started swinging it out and away, like hauling a fish seine. The deputy was yelling and motioning backwards with his arms. They began to back up, and every time they gave a step we dragged the hose against them. In a couple of minutes we had the whole crowd shoved back across the street.
The wall didn’t fall outwards after all. It sagged a little and went on burning. But I had accomplished the thing I wanted. That deputy, and at least a half dozen others, would remember me all right. My clothes were a mess; I looked as if I’d been fighting fire for a week. There wasn’t much to do now except to keep it from spreading to the houses along the street. We put out fires in the weeds and sprayed water on some of the nearer shacks. And all the time I was waiting. It would break any minute now.
Then I heard a siren, pitched low and merely growling. Another highway patrol car was inching its way through the crowd jammed in the street. The driver got out and waved his arm towards the deputy sheriff. The deputy went over, while people pressed around them. Then I saw some of them break away and start running towards Main.
I shoved into the knot of men. The word was traveling faster than another fire. “What’s up?” I yelled at a man squeezing his way out.
“Bunch of men held up the bank! While everybody was over here at the fire they stuck it up and got away with ten thousand dollars!”
“Did they catch ‘em?” I tried to grab his arm.
“Not yet. They got away in a car.” He was gone past me.
By the time I got back to the lot it had grown to four men with sub-machine guns and thirty thousand dollars, and the car was a black sedan. I didn’t pay much attention to it. This was the kind of rumor you’d expect; the men who were working from facts, over there at the bank, wouldn’t be saying what they’d found out. It was just a matter of time till they got the hunch the fire was rigged and start at it from that angle. As far as I could see it had come off without a hitch; I hadn’t left a track.
The letdown began to catch up with me. I told them I was going over to the room to change clothes. What I really needed was a drink. As soon as I got out of the shower I dug the bottle out of the suitcase, poured a stiff slug in a glass, and collapsed on the side of the bed. It had been rough. I had lost all track of time. I took a jolt of the whisky, felt it explode inside me, and wondered how much money there was out there in the trunk of the car. I couldn’t even guess.
I went back to the lot. The whole town was in an uproar. It was the biggest thing since V-J Day. The Sheriff and two more deputies had just arrived from the county seat twenty miles away. Highways were being blockaded in all adjoining counties. The story was already spreading across town that the fire had been a decoy. The next rumor was that two experts from the insurance company were already on their way up from Houston. Well, they’d have a hard time proving it, and if they did they wouldn’t be much better off except that it’d point a little more to somebody here in town.
It was hard on the nerves, thinking of that money still in the trunk of the car, but the only thing I could do was ride it out until after dark. I went up and mixed with the crowd gawking round the bank. Julian was all right, they said. He hadn’t been hurt, just a little shaken up and scared. He was inside there now, with the police. But he couldn’t give any description of the man, or men; all he’d seen was a blanket flopping down over his head. He hadn’t heard any voices, though; which might mean there’d been only one man. Old Mort, the Negro, was a sensation. He’d been so close to one of the robbers he could hear him breathing. He was that close, he said, measuring with his hands. He could of reached out and touched him.
I sweated out the afternoon some way, and after it was dark I eased out of town, driving south on the highway. Nobody stopped me, or even seemed to notice. Before I turned off on to the dirt road I looked back for lights. There was nobody behind me. The moon wasn’t up yet, and it was partly overcast and very dark. Just before I got to the abandoned farm up on the sandhill among the pines, I pulled off and cut my lights. I wasn’t being followed. When my eyes were accustomed to the darkness I pulled back into the road and went on. At the gate I turned sharply left and went on around behind the old sagging barn and stopped the car where it would be out of sight of anyone going past out in front.
Fighting the impatience, I waited a few minutes to be sure. Nuts, I thought; there’s nobody within miles. I got out, opened the trunk, and carried the bag inside the barn before I switched on the flashlight. My hands were beginning to tremble a little and I was conscious of a wild excitement. I went inside the corn crib and closed the door. I didn’t notice the heat now, or the sweat on my face. I upended the bag and let the bundles and loose bills cascade on to the floor. It was wonderful.
I didn’t try to count all of it. Most of the bundles were fifties, twenties, and tens. Without any of the loose bills or the ones it came to $12,300. I whistled softly. A wild impatience began to get hold of me. I wanted to get going, to put it back in the car and run.
Run where? I thought.
The world wouldn’t hold me, and I knew it. It wouldn’t take them an hour to figure it out if I disappeared now. They could add too. I couldn’t leave. The only way I could beat them was the one I’d known from the first, and that was to keep my head down and wait it out. After a month or so, when the heat began to die down… I gathered the bag up and went out the door of the crib.
Picking a spot near the rear wall of the crib, inside one of the stalls, I scraped the old manure out of the way with a piece of shingle, and started to dig. The ground was sand, and easy to gouge up with the shingle. I was careful to place all the loose dirt in one pile. When I was down about eighteen inches, I rolled the bag of money into as tight a ball as I could make it, and shoved it into the hole. Then, just before I started scooping the dirt back in, I thought of something. I lifted it out and began looking over the undershirt. There was a laundry mark on it, all right. Taking out my knife, I sawed out the piece of cloth and stuck a match to it, then ground the ashes into the bottom of the hole. If anybody did happen to stumble on to it I’d lose the money, but they’d never tie it to me.
I put it back in the hole and began filling it, tamping the dirt down with my fist until it was as firm as the rest of the ground. The little which was left over I spread evenly around, then raked the dried manure and old straw back over the whole area.
Snapping off the light, I went back to the door. The old house was just a faintly darker shadow in the night, off there to the left, and as I looked towards it I thought for the hundredth time of that other day and what Sutton had said to her and the way she detested and feared him. There was something insane about it. You could keep trying for years to add it up and you’d never come out with an answer that made sense. She wouldn’t even know Sutton. The hell she didn’t—!