“Have you gone crazy?”
“I’m just making sure you don’t run out on me. I can’t guess what’s going on inside that woolly head of yours, so I’m not taking any chances. You might decide this is a good time to skip.” Earl’s eyes glinted with bitter humor. “I’m the anchor in this deal. I’m hurt, I can’t travel. You—”
“You’re crazy,” Ingram said frantically. “We’ve got to stick together. We don’t have a chance any other way.”
“You got money, you got the car,” Earl said. “You could make it to the highway and be on your way. Leave me stuck here with a bullet in my shoulder.”
“It’s what’s in your head,” Ingram cried. “It’s your idea, not mine.”
Earl’s eyes narrowed with tension. “Start field-stripping, Sambo. You can rat out if you want, but you won’t get far in your birthday suit. You can’t stop for gas, you can’t buy a mouthful of food. If you don’t come back here, you’ll freeze. So you’ll come back. Not for me, but to save your hide.”
“I’m not thinking that way, I swear it.” Ingram despised his fear, but he couldn’t control it; his voice trembled like that of a frightened child. “It’s freezing outside. I’ll die out there.”
“Start stripping,” Earl said harshly, and at that the old man began to laugh in shuddering little gasps. “Don’t let him wheedle you,” he cried, watching Ingram with hot, expectant eyes. “Make ’em toe the mark and cut the buck, I say.”
“Shut up!” Earl said. “You hear? Shut up!”
Ingram took the money from his pocket and dropped it on the chair. There was no point arguing any more; Earl was crazy enough to shoot him. Then he’d be all alone, hurt and helpless, but he couldn’t see that far ahead. Ingram pulled off the soaking jacket, then his shirt and trousers, making a soggy pile of them on top of the money. The cold bit deep into his bones, making them ache with a heavy sort of pain, and he could feel goose pimples crawling along his bare arms and legs. His teeth began to chatter, and when he picked up the car keys they stung his fingers like pieces of ice.
The old man tittered softly, squirming under his great mound of dirty quilts and blankets. “Only a fool or a rich man would go outside on a night like this,” he said.
The music from the radio was warm and bright and intimate, pointlessly gay in the bitterness of the room, incredible and incongruous as hummingbirds fluttering through a winter storm. Ingram flushed with shame as the old man chuckled and stared at him with brutal, clinical curiosity. Earl looked away from Ingram’s thin body, the movement of his head abrupt and angry. “All right, get going,” he said in a thick, hard voice. “Don’t stand there.”
He didn’t look up until he felt the blast of cold wind sweep into the room and heard the front door pulled shut with an obvious effort against the storming night. Then he stared at the pile of wet clothes on the chair and let out his breath slowly and wearily. The pain was all through him now, sick and turbulent and demanding, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the wound in his shoulder. It won’t take him long to get rid of the car, he thought. It’s just a quick ride...
The dance music broke off in the middle of a phrase, and a smooth impersonal voice said, “We are interrupting this program to bring you a special bulletin from the State Police. In an unsuccessful attempt to hold up the National Bank in Crossroads, one man was killed and another wounded shortly after eight o’clock tonight.”
The old man got up on his elbow, breathing heavily with excitement, and Earl shifted closer to the radio.
“... as yet the dead bandit has not been identified by police. Sheriff Thomas Burns of the Borough of Crossroads surprised the holdup men as they were leaving the bank. He ordered them to halt, but they opened fire. In a gun battle which took place on the main street of the village, one robber was shot to death and his accomplice seriously wounded. The wounded man escaped in a blue Pontiac station wagon, bearing California license plates QX 1897 — I will repeat that license number — QX 1897 — traveling southwest from Crossroads. He is wounded and believed to be armed. He is six feet tall, weighing about one hundred and seventy to one hundred and eighty pounds, with black hair and dark blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a black overcoat and brown felt, snap-brim fedora. Roadblocks have been established by State Police, and motorists are urged to report any suspicious calls for assistance to State Police immediately. Mr. Charles Martin, President of the Crossroads bank, has reported that all funds taken in the holdup have been recovered. Stay tuned to this station for...”
Earl snapped off the irritatingly impersonal voice, and stared bitterly at the gun hanging in his hand. No mention of Ingram at all. Just him. Wounded, dangerous, needing a doctor. That was him, all right. Like some animal in a cage. Don’t get too close, folks, he’s mean and he bites. But nothing about Ingram. It was just like Novak said it would be. Nobody noticed colored people.
“So they killed one of your fellows,” the old man said. “And you didn’t get no money, either. Seems like a waste, don’t it?”
Earl didn’t answer. He was still thinking of what Novak had told him. Colored people could drift in and out of places like smoke. That’s what Novak had said... Nobody saw them. A colored man carrying a tray or wearing overalls could go anywhere. White people went through whole days without seeing who brought them their coffee or shined their shoes or swept their cigarette butts into the gutter. That was the big part of his plan. Ingram drifting into the bank like a wisp of smoke...
A great plan, he thought with a weary confusion and anger. Ingram was in the clear. Novak was in the clear. Even Burke was in the clear. Dead and out of it for good. They only wanted him, the wounded animal. That’s who they were hunting for.
The old man was smiling with pleased, secret knowledge. “How’d the colored fellow fit into it?” he said. “How come they didn’t talk about him on the radio?”
Earl stared at him in silence.
“It’s funny, ain’t it?” the old man said. “They just talked about you. You suppose the colored fellow knows they don’t care about him?”
Earl stood slowly and limped toward the old man’s bed. “That’s going to be our secret, Pop. You understand me?”
“Oh, sure. I wasn’t going to tell him nothing. But it’s funny, ain’t it?”
“No,” Earl said. “It’s not funny. It’s just something to forget. You want to enjoy the time you got left to live, Pop? Or are you tired of lying under those stinking blankets?”
“No, I ain’t tired of it,” the old man said quickly. The look in Earl’s face frightened him; every minute and hour of his life was as thrilling to him as money to a miser. He savored time greedily, exultant with pride when he opened his eyes and found his old heart pumping faintly but steadily within his frail breast. But here was a man who could take all his treasure away with one twist of his hand. “Sure, sure,” he said, “it’s our secret, mister. I wouldn’t ever tell him nothing.”
“Remember that,” Earl said.
Chapter Twelve
It was after nine o’clock when Sheriff Burns left the bank and returned to his office in the Municipal Building. He hung up his wet slicker and told Morgan to post himself at the bank to keep traffic moving through town. Already there was a congestion of curiosity on Main Street; people exchanging garbled versions of what had happened, cars from a dozen miles around converging on the excitement. “Keep it all moving,” the sheriff told Morgan. “I want that street clear. If the truckers get tied up we’ll have a jam all the way back on the highway to Middleboro.”