We got to Cushing’s about 7:30. There was a frosty half moon and a sky low and bright with Midwestern stars. No lights shone in the house. No car was parked in the driveway. We checked the corner. We didn’t see Michaelson parked there waiting for us to make our move.
“Ready?”
“Yeah,” Barney said.
We ran across the street and along the walk that paralleled the house and then Barney stopped.
“I’m freezing my ass off.”
“You’ll be fine. You got the whistle?”
“Yeah.”
We’d agreed that Barney would scout — if he saw anything strange, he’d take this basketball whistle that belonged to my older brother, the right honorable Corporal Gerald, and blow the hell out of it.
“Hurry up,” he said.
He was starting to irritate me, the way only somebody you really like can irritate you.
I took off running. The ground was winter-hard between house and barn.
I pushed the big sliding barn door back only far enough so I could slip in. The place smelled of hay and kerosene and sweet horseshit and winter. I got my flashlight on and moved the beam around the place.
It was pretty well empty, actually. From the ancient horsecollars on the walls and the hay rakes and manure shovels stuck in the corners, you could see that somebody had probably kept animals here at one time. Probably had farmed it, too. But that was long ago. Everything was now dusty and stiff and faded.
I’ll skip over the next half hour. It was a bitch but it was also pretty boring. I must have covered every single inch of that barn, as well as the haymow. I had no idea what I was looking for, just something that looked like it would be a good hiding place. I remembered the tarpaulin sack Roy had had the money in. A guy could hide that without too much trouble.
I went up and down the haymow ladder twice, making sure that I hadn’t overlooked anything up there. I went into each stall with the rake and cleared the floor of hay and looked for any kind of trapdoor. A lot of the older barns in this area had them. About halfway through all this, my flashlight started flickering on and off, which reminded me of a pretty neat way the Hardy Boys had sent signals in one of their books. At least it had seemed pretty neat to me when I was a little kid.
I found a lot of dead stuff, too: a cat, two rats, a sparrow and this really obese possum. Poor bastard probably ate himself to death.
And then I was walking straight down the center of the barn and I turned my ankle and I acted real mature about it — I stood right there, pain traveling up my ankle and calf and thigh like thunderbolts — and I must have strung somewhere between fifty and sixty swearwords together. I didn’t know who to be pissed off at, but I was sure pissed off at somebody.
And then I tried to put pressure on my foot and ankle again and I realized that the reason I tripped was that below all the hay, there was a slight indentation in the ground.
I dropped to my knees and started digging up the hay like a dog searching for a lost bone.
I dug up hay and then I dug up earth with the help of the rake tines and then I felt a piece of cold unyielding wood below the level of dirt.
Among all the long-deserted gardening tools, I found a shovel and I went right to work. I was so excited I forgot all about my ankle.
I dug for about ten minutes. The hole grew wide, wide enough that I could reach down and feel the shape of a wooden box.
I set the shovel down. I started to bend over to raise the box from the hole when Barney said, “Tom.”
I turned around.
Barney stood in the door of the barn.
“What’re you doing in here?” I said.
And then a second silhouette stepped up behind Barney. “He didn’t have any choice. Neither of you little girls have any choice now.”
“Aw, shit,” I said. “Aw, shit.”
“Get in there,” Cushing said to Barney and pushed him into the barn.
“Michaelson cruised by and saw me, I guess. He musta gone and got Cushing,” Barney said.
The three of us stood around the hole in the middle of the barn. Wind slammed the hay doors against the barn.
Cushing stepped into the light, such as it was, the flashlight lying on its side on the ground. He wore a nice new overcoat. He always looked spiffy. He also had a gun in his gloved hand.
“Get that box up from there,” he said. “And hurry up.”
“Why?”
He kicked me. There was no warning, there was no threat. He just kicked me. Right in the mouth, and so hard that my mouth filled up immediately with hot, thick blood.
“Leave him alone!” Barney said.
“You get down there and help him,” Cushing said, and shoved Barney down next to me.
I didn’t want to get kicked again, so I got to work. I worked fast and I worked good and in less than five minutes, I had the long, square box sitting up on the ground. There was a padlock on it the size of a catcher’s mitt.
Cushing threw me a key. “Open it up, girls.”
We got it open. Inside was the bag filled with cash.
“Take it out of there.”
We took it out.
“Set it on the ground.”
We set it on the ground.
“This time when I hide it, you little girls’ll never find it. Believe me. Now stand up.”
We stood up.
“Next time I see you little girls around here, you’re really gonna get hurt. You understand me?”
I couldn’t talk real well. I just sort of nodded. Barney just sort of nodded, too.
All I could think of was how much I hated Cushing, how smug and violent he was, and how he’d killed Roy when Roy had no chance of defending himself—
And that was when I remembered the lighter, Roy’s lighter, in my pocket.
“Now you two little girls get the hell out of here and never set foot on my property again.”
He waved his gun at us.
We got.
My ankle hurt and my mouth hurt and my head hurt. I felt angry and humiliated and terrified.
We went maybe a quarter mile and I said, and it wasn’t any too easy for me to speak, “I’m going back, Barney.”
“Huh?”
“Back into his house.”
“For what?”
I told him.
“You’re crazy, Tom.”
“Maybe so but I’m goin’ back.”
I turned around and started back in the darkness toward the house. Cushing wouldn’t have had time to hide it yet.
A minute or two later Barney was right alongside of me.
“I know you’d be pissed if I didn’t go along.”
He was right.
Cushing’s police car was parked along the side of his house. The kitchen light was on. I could see him, more shadow than substance, moving around in there.
We went to the back of the house and got on the latticework and went up real quiet. It wasn’t difficult at all, not even with my ankle in the condition it was.
We got in his bedroom and then stood very still. All I could hear was our ragged breathing; all I could smell was our sweat.
I remembered right where it was, what drawer it was in, and where he kept the bullets, too.
Barney stood by the door watching and listening while I got Cushing’s extra gun and loaded it up. My brother, Gerald, had taught me how to shoot, even if I didn’t want to kill animals, which he said I’d “grow out of someday.” Then I grabbed the small yellow can of Zippo lighter fluid, which Cushing kept in the drawer below.
When I got the gun all loaded up we crept down the hallway and then crept down the stairs and then crept across the darkened living room and crept out to the kitchen.
Cushing’s back was to us. In the bright light, he sat at the table. He poured Old Grandad straight from the bottle into a small water glass. His gun was on the table. So was the bag of money.