The teller was Ruth Van Dine. Her ma wanted her to get braces when she was twelve, thirteen, but Ruth said she didn’t care to. I’d have to call that a big mistake on her part. “Say there, Royce,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
Now Royce shoved his savings passbook across the top of the counter. Don’t ask me why he brought the blame thing. I couldn’t tell you.
“Deposit?”
“Withdrawal.”
“How much?”
Every dang old cent you got in this here bank was what he was going to say. But what came out of his mouth was, “Every dang old cent.”
“Three hundred twelve dollars and forty-five cents? Plus I guess you got some extra interest coming which I’ll figure out for you.”
“Well—”
“Better make out a slip, Royce. Just on behind you?”
He turned to look for the withdrawal slips and there was Buford Washburn, also standing. “They off at the sawmill today, Royce? I didn’t hear anything.”
“No, I guess they’re workin’, Mr. Washburn. I guess I took the day.”
“Can’t blame you, beautiful day like this. What’d you do, go and get a little hunting in?”
“Not in March, Mr. Washburn.”
“I don’t guess nothing’s in season this time of year.”
“Not a thing. I was just gone take this here across to Eddie Joe. Needs a little gunsmithin’.”
“Well, they say Eddie Joe knows his stuff.”
“I guess he does, Mr. Washburn.”
“Now this about drawing out all your money,” Buford said. He fancied himself smoother than a bald tire at getting from small talk to business, Buford did. “I guess you got what they call an emergency.”
“Somethin’ like.”
“Well now, maybe you want to do what most folks do, and that’s leave a few dollars in to keep the account open. Just for convenience. Say ten dollars? Or just draw a round amount, say you draw your three hundred dollars. Or—” And he went through a whole routine about how Royce could take his old self a passbook loan and keep the account together and keep earning interest and all the rest of it, which I’m not going to spell out here for you.
Upshot of it was Royce wound up drawing three hundred dollars. Ruth Van Dine gave it to him in tens and twenties because he just stood there stiffer than new rope when she asked him how did he want it. Three times she asked him, and she’s a girl no one ever had to tell to speak up, and each time it was like talking to a wall, so she counted out ten tens and ten twenties and gave it to him, along with his passbook. He thanked her and walked out with the passbook and money in one hand and the other holding the twelve gauge Worthington, which was still propped up on his shoulder.
Before he got back in his panel truck he said, “Half my life, Lord, half my dang life.”
Then he got in the truck.
When he got back to his house he found Essie in the kitchen soaking the labels off some empty jam jars. She turned and saw him, then shut off the faucet and turned to look at him again. She said, “Why, Royce honey, what are you doing back here? Did you forget somethin’?”
“I didn’t forget nothin’,” he said. What he forgot was to hold up the bank like he’d set out to do, but he didn’t mention that.
“You didn’t get laid off,” she said mournfully. (I didn’t put in a question mark there because her voice didn’t turn up at the end. She said it sort of like it would be O.K. if Royce did get laid off from the sawmill, being that the both of them could always go out in the backyard and eat dirt. She was always a comfort, Essie was.)
“Didn’t go to work,” Royce said. “Today’s my dang birthday,” Royce said.
“ ‘Course it is! Now I never wished you a happy birthday but you left ‘fore I was out of bed. Well, happy birthday and many more. Thirty-nine years, land sakes.”
“Thirty-eight!”
“What did I say? Why, I said thirty-nine. Would you believe that. I know it’s thirty-eight, ‘course I know that. Why are you carrying that gun, I guess there’s rats in the garbage again.”
“Half my life,” Royce said.
“Is there?”
“Is there what?”
“Rats in the garbage again?”
“Now how in blue hell would I know is there rats in the garbage?”
“But you have that gun, Royce.”
He discovered the gun, took it off his shoulder, and held it out in both hands, looking at it like it was the prettiest thing since a new calf.
“That’s your shotgun,” Essie said.
“Well, I guess I know that. Half my dang life.”
“What about half your life?”
“My life’s half gone,” he said, “and what did I ever do with it, would you tell me that? Far as I ever been from home is Franklin County and I never stayed there overnight, just went and come back. Half my life and I never left the dang old state.”
“I was thinkin’ we might run out to Silver Dollar City this summer,” Essie said. “It’s like an old frontier city come to life or so they say. That’s across the state line, come to think on it.”
“Never been anyplace, never done any dang thing. Never had no woman but you.”
“Well now.”
“I’m gone to Paris,” Royce said.
“What did you say?”
“I’m gone to Paris is what I said. I’m gone rob Buford Washburn’s bank and I’m not even gone call him Mr. Washburn this time. Gone to Paris France, gone buy a Cadillac big as a train, gone do every dang thing I never did. Half my life, Essie.”
Well, she frowned. You blame her? “Royce,” she said, “you better lie down.”
“Paris, France.”
“What I’ll do,” she said, “I’ll just call on over at Dr. LeBeau’s. You lie down and put the fan on and I’ll just finish with these here jars and then call the doctor. You know something? Just two more cases and we’ll run out of your ma’s plum preserves. Two cases of twenty-four jars to the case is forty-eight jars and we’ll be out. Now I never thought we’d be out of them plums she put up but we’ll be plumb out, won’t we. Hear me talk, plumb out of plums, I did that without even thinking.”
Essie wasn’t normally quite this scatterbrained. Almost, but not quite. Thing is, she was concerned about Royce, being as he wasn’t acting himself.
“Problem is getting in a rut,” Royce said. He was talking to his own self now, not to Essie. “Problem is you leave yourself openings and you back down because it’s the easy thing to do. Like in the bank.”
“Royce, ain’t you goin’ to lay down?”
“Fillin’ out a dang slip,” Royce said.
“Royce? You know somethin’? You did the funniest thing this mornin’, honey. You know what you did? You went and you only shaved the half of your face. You shaved the one half and you didn’t shave the other half.”
(Now this is something that both Ruth Van Dine and Buford Washburn had already observed, and truth to tell they had both called it to Royce’s attention — in a friendly way, of course. I’d have mentioned it but I figured if I kept sliding in the same little piece of conversation over and over it’d be about as interesting for you as watching paint dry. But I had to mention when Essie said it out of respect, see, because it was the last words that woman ever got to speak, because right after she said it Royce stuck the shotgun right in her face and fired off one of the barrels. Don’t ask me which one.)