I could feel she was up to something, and let her play it along, but at the same time, I was beginning to feel pretty nervous. Sid stared at the bills, and what went through his mind I don’t know, maybe that if he picked them up, no one would ever know what he actually used them for. Anyway, he did, straightening them up in a little pack, neat. Then he took out his wallet to slip them in.
I’ve said she had moved in close, so she was now knee-to-knee. Suddenly she slapped that billfold, so it bounced on the table and landed on the floor, in front of the TV set. He jumped up and started after it, but I stepped in between. He wrestled me, but I dumped him back on the sofa. My mother, first smoothing her dress, picked up the wallet, then knelt by the table, and started counting what was in it. It seemed mainly to be $20 bills, and when she’d counted them all, she said: “OK, Sid, that says it, I flushed it out — 100 twenties, exactly what she took with her, when she banged out of this house, and what must have been still in her bag when you went through it last night there at the other house, before walking down, stealing that boat, and taking the bag from that tree. OK, Sid, where is it?”
She looked up at last, and I looked up — into a blue.45 automatic Sid was leveling at her, holding it on his knee.
22
Motioning with the gun, he marched us back to our seats, to our chairs, on the other side of the table, beside the TV set. Then with one hand he picked up the twenties. Folding them, he slipped them in his coat pocket. He picked up the wallet and slipped that in. Still with his eyes on my mother, he bent both knees and pawed around on the floor, for the tens, which had slipped down there. He got them, stood up, and walked over to my mother, dropping them in her lap. Then: “OK, you lying, thieving bitch,” he began, but I cut in: “Watch your language, Sid.”
He did a quarter turn with the gun, to point it at me. “I called her a lying, thieving bitch,” he said. “What do you call her?”
“I call her my mother,” I growled. “And you better.”
“I call her a lying, thieving bitch, and on top of that a filthy whore. And you don’t say any different, do you? Do you?”
His voice was pure bile, and I made no answer. I measured with my eye how far I was from him, and whether I could make it before he could shoot. But my eyes must have tipped him. He did another quarter turn, quick, so the gun was on me, to mean it. “Don’t move!” he snapped. “Stay right where you’re at, kid.”
He went back to the sofa, sat down, then suddenly ordered us: “Lock hands! Put them in front! On your knees, where I can see them! And lock them!”
We did as he said.
“OK, where is it?” he asked.
“Where is what?” asked my mother.
“The poke! What do you think?”
“You have it, Sid. You tell me, why don’t you?”
“You got the goddamn gall to sit there and tell me that? After you lined it out for me, word for word, after you all but owned up it was you who took that poke?”
“I all but owned up? Sid, I always thought you were crazy, but not that crazy, oh no! What do you mean, I all but owned up?”
“Last night, so you said, you were here and then you left. For God’s sake, Myra, who knew about that boat? Where it was and how to get to it? Who knew about the tree? Where it was and how to get to it? Who do you think you’re fooling?”
“OK, Sid, but the thing of it is, I’m not like you, thank God. I wouldn’t go back on my kin, on a girl who will be my kin. I couldn’t do that to her.”
“What do you mean, you’re not like me?”
“You know what I mean, Sid. If you don’t, drop the nose of that gun and I’ll tell you.”
He angled the gun at the floor, and she said: “I’m talking about those boys, those two cousins of yours, that you turned on year before last and left to die in that mine you’re caretaker of. They were your partners, weren’t they? In that business of yours? You brought them over, didn’t you? From Logan? To help out in that mine, share and share alike?”
Now his business, as I’ve said, was booze — moonshine, it used to be called, except the way they do it now, mixing corn and rye, and letting it color in charred kegs, it’s more like regular bourbon, and the bars in Ohio grab it on account of the low price. “And suppose I did, what then?” he snapped. “What’s that got to do with the bag?”
It was some time before she answered him. She sat staring at him, like trying to screw up her nerve to say whatever it was that was still on her mind. Outside a car drove up, then passed the three cars on the loop, my car, my mother’s car, and Sid’s car, then drove off again without stopping. I didn’t pay much attention, remembering what she had said about people that wouldn’t come in if they saw certain cars out front. Turned out that was the reason, but in a way different from what she had meant, and a lot more important.
“It’s got to do with a rat, leaving his kin to die, so he could keep their share of the bundle of money they’d made.”
She said it at last, and it was Sid’s turn to stare, as though figuring how much she knew. Then, kind of hoarse, he asked: “When did I do that?”
“The day the top fell down in that dead entry you used to get to the still you had, in the old Ajax number three — as everything started to shake, when the strip shovel started up on the other side of the mountain. With that top blocking passage, it meant those boys were trapped. But they could have been saved, couldn’t they? Could have been gotten out, if you’d put in a call about them, to Ajax, the police, or someone. But no! That would have tied you in to the still, and besides, there was the cash, the money that had piled up, that still hadn’t been split. So you didn’t call, did you? You just walked away from those boys, said they’d gone West in their car, let them stay in that mine — which is where they are now, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”
There was a long argument then, but what they said I don’t rightly recall, as I suddenly had the feeling, whether from something I heard, or from a hunch I had, that something was behind me, out there in the hall. And I must have made some motion or tipped it where my mind was, because instead of answering her, he whipped the gun around, so it pointed straight at my gut, and told me: “Stay where you’re at! Don’t move or you get it!”
I stayed where I was, I promise you, but I kept trying to think what was next on his schedule, as bringing someone in, someone to sneak up behind us, didn’t seem to make sense, unless he wanted help carrying bodies down to the river or something like that. However, all I actually did, with that gun looking at me, was sit there, without moving, as he said. In a moment he turned back to my mother, telling her: “I don’t have to answer you.” And then: “Do I?”
“I guess not,” she whispered.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
“I thought it was.”
He patted the gun, said “Now” as though getting ready to talk, and let a grin spread over his face. But at that she really exploded: “It’s not all, it’s not all! I haven’t even started yet!”
“Oh yes you have — it’s all!”
“Mother,” I couldn’t help saying, “for God’s sake!”
“It’s not all. I’m going to say it and nothing can stop me! You said they’d left for the West, that they’d driven off in their car — but there their car was at your house. So you hid it in the woods and that night drove it here. And next day, when David had gone in to work, you let her show you where, and toppled it into the river. But that left the money, which if found on you could have got you 20 years in prison. And she put it away for you, with you rowing the johnboat, in that place where she hid that bag, in that very selfsame tree you knew she’d use, to hide something in a hurry. So you knew where the poke was, so you took it. Didn’t you?”