The Highway Kind(60)

“All right,” I said.

“I ain’t staying,” she said. “He needs me to read the map and such.”

“I ain’t going the same place you was going,” the man said.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“Back the way you come,” he said.

He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the folded sheet of paper I had left lying on the front seat. He pointed at the map.

“I’m going here to see where my partner hid the bank money.”

Damn you, Uncle Smat. I said, “You mean that dollar sign means real money.”

“Real paper money,” he said.


After I put water in the radiator, the man sent me back down to get more water while he stayed with Terri. I didn’t have no choice but to do what he wanted. Next thing I knew I was turning the car around and heading back the way we had come.

“It stinks in here,” said the man.

I was at the wheel; he was beside me, his knife hand lying against his thigh. Terri was in the backseat.

“You ought to be back here,” Terri said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Be sick out the window,” said the man.

“So you and Uncle Smat were partners?” I said.

“Guess you could say that. Ain’t this just the peachiest coincidence that ever happened? You coming along, him being your uncle, and me being his partner.”

“I think you stabbed your partner,” Terri said.

“There is that,” said the man. “We had what you might call a falling-out on account we split up after we hit the bank and he didn’t do like he said he would. Let me tell you, that was one sweet job. I had a gun then. I wish I had it now. We come out of the bank in Lawton with the cash, and the gun went off and I shot a lady. Not on purpose. Bullet ricocheted off a wall or something. Did a bounce and hit her right between the eyes. Went through a sack of groceries she was carrying and bounced off a can in the bag or something, hit right and betwixt.”

I didn’t believe his story, but I didn’t bring this to his attention.

“So Smat, he decides we ought to split up, to divide the heat on us, so to speak, and he was going to give me a map to where he hid the money. He said he’d hid it in haste but had made a map, and when things cooled, we could go get our money.”

Terri leaned over the seat.

“So he come and told you he had a map for you, and he was right with you, and he didn’t give it to you?”

“Get your nose back before I cut it off,” the man said, and he showed her the knife. Terri sat back in the seat.

“All right, here it is,” he said. “It wasn’t no bank job at all. We robbed a big dice game in Lawton. One, that was against the law, but the law was there playing dice. This was a big game and there were all these mighty players there from Texas and Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, I think Kansas. Hot arms, they were. Illegal money earned in ways that didn’t get the taxes paid. This was a big gathering, and the money was going into a big dice game and there was going to be some big winners. We were just there as small potatoes, me and Smat. Kind of bodyguards for a couple of fellas. And then it come to me and Smat we ought to rob the dice game. It wasn’t that smart an idea, them knowing us and all, but it was a lot of money. Right close to a million dollars. Can you imagine? You added up every dollar I’ve ever made sticking up banks and robbing from folks here and there and what I might make robbing in the future, it ain’t anywhere near that. Me and Smat decided right then and there we was going to take the piles of money heaped on the floor and head out. We pulled our guns and took it. That woman I shot, it wasn’t no damn accident. She started yelling at us, and I can’t stand screeching, so I shot her. It was a good shot.”

“Yeah,” Terri said. “How far away were you from her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I bet you was right up near her. I bet it wasn’t no great shot at all.”

“Terri,” I said. “Quiet.”

“Yeah, Terri,” the man said. “Quiet.

“Well, we robbed them, made a run for it in Smat’s car, and then we hid out. Smat, after a few days, he begins to think he’s done shit in the frying pan. Starts saying we got to give it back, like they were gonna forgive and forget, like we brung a lost cat home. We hid the money near Geronimo’s grave one night, took some shovels up there in the dark and buried it by an oak tree. There ain’t nobody guards that place. There ain’t even a gate. It was a lot of money and in a big tin canister—and I mean big. A million dollars in bills is heavier than you’d think. We took about ten thousand and split that for living money, but the rest we left there so if we got caught by cops for other things we’d done, we wouldn’t have all that big loot on us. If we went to jail, when we got out, there’d be a lot of money waiting. Right then, though, we didn’t plan on being caught. That was just a backup idea. We were going to wait until the heat died down, go back and get it. But Smat, he got to thinking that, considering who we robbed, the heat wasn’t going to die down. He reckoned they’d start coming after us and keep coming, and that worried him sick. It didn’t do me no good to think about it either, but I didn’t like what he wanted to do. He was planning on making a map and mailing it to them so they could come get the money. He showed me the map. We had driven to Nebraska, where we was hiding out. He was gonna send them the map with an apology, just keep moving, hoping they’d say, ‘Well, we got our money, so let’s forget it.’ He thought he could go on then and live his life, go back to small stickups or some such, and steal from people who would forget it. But them boys at that dice game, I tell you, they aren’t forgetters. With a million dollars, I tell him, we can go off to Mexico and live clear and good the rest of our lives. You can buy a se?orita down there cheaper than a chicken. Or so I’m told. Shit, them boys were gonna forget it like they would forget their mamas. Wasn’t going to happen.”