Greg says, “We can’t leave Henry, man.”
Mike is looking at me. Or the me in the rearview mirror. Maybe that me is different somehow. Mike says, “We’re not turning around. You’re not pulling over. We can’t stop, not yet. Keep driving.”
I nod. Maybe I’m wrong and Mike always was our thinker, not Henry. Mike’s right. About everything. But if Mike told me to turn around, I would. He’s known Henry as long as I have, and we both owe him everything.
We pass hotels, the local arena, and UMass medical center. Highway ramps all around us. I should probably take one, head out of Wormtown. I put on the interior lights instead. “Is the duffle bag there?”
Greg roots around the trunk. “The shotgun and the duffle are here.” He lifts the bag up, and it sounds like a pocketful of change. “There’s a ton of blood. Oh man, what the fuck?”
“Did Henry get hit?” Never did hear the end of the pawnshop story, what happened after the old man went over the counter, and then the three gunshots.
Mike says, “The old man got off a shot, some semiautomatic piece of shit, but I didn’t think he hit Henry. I was right next to him and he didn’t say nothing about getting hit.”
I don’t ask about the other shots I heard. I see now what I didn’t see before. I say, “All right. How did the tailgate get shut, then?”
“Huh?” Mike has his ski mask off. He rubs his shaved, bald head and the thick stubble around his goatee. His eyes closed, arms folded across his chest. Greg sits back down, holding his hands out. Showing off the wet paint. It’s red.
I say, “The tailgate. How’d it shut? While I was waiting for you guys, it was open. Like it was supposed to be. So I’m thinking I didn’t see what I thought I saw, right? Henry was hit, got in the trunk, but because of the blood loss he wasn’t strong enough to pull the tailgate closed behind him, and maybe I started moving before it was totally shut and he fell out onto the parking lot. But that doesn’t seem right. How’d the tailgate get shut? I mean, what, did Henry get up after he fell out and shut it for us, tap the back twice and wish us bon voyage?”
Greg says, “Oh fuck. Nah, that ain’t it. Henry ducked his ass out and he’s gonna turn us in, pin the robbery and shooting on us. That blood came off the duffle bag, man. He didn’t get hit. That bag was sitting in the old man’s blood after Henry took care of him, right, Mike?”
Mike says, “I don’t remember. I don’t know.”
Greg says, “That’s gotta be it. He dumped the duffle bag and his shotgun back there to pin the whole thing on us while he slinks away. That fucker.”
Mike turns to look at Greg, and looks at him like a kid staring at a real ugly bug about to get squished. “If he did, I don’t blame him. It all went to shit because of you.”
Greg doesn’t fire back. He’s scared of Mike. So am I. I drive into a residential neighborhood and early morning commuters are starting to fill the roads. Maybe that’s good. We can lose ourselves in the everyday traffic.
Greg says, “So what do we do now, boys? Where we gonna go?”
We’re supposed to drive across Wormtown, into Auburn, to Henry’s old girlfriend’s farmhouse. Seemed like a good plan at the time. Now I can see all the gaping cartoon mouse holes in everything. Maybe my brother Joe was right. I don’t think ahead.
Mike says, “We’re not going to her house. We’re gonna play it like Henry is ratting us out.”
“What if he isn’t?” I say. I mean it too. Because it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like Henry. Even with Greg blowing it all up like he did, Henry wouldn’t play us. Henry has always taken care of us. He’s fifteen years older than me, and he worked at the Mobil just a few blocks from where I grew up. Him and his early gray hair. He looked like someone’s dad. He saved us a couple of times when me and Mike were walking home from school and got jumped by these kids. The second time they jumped us, he busted their heads open with a bike chain. So Henry kept us safe, took us for rides around Worcester, would sit and watch as we bent car antennas and broke windows near the Holy Cross and Clark campuses. Henry would sell us weed, and eventually, we helped him sell to our friends. By we, I mean me and Mike. My brother Joe didn’t like or trust Henry, wouldn’t come out with us ever. I tried telling him that Henry was a good guy, that he was fun, that he was one of us, but Joe didn’t care, wouldn’t listen to me. He never listened to me. Stubborn ass would pull the oldest-in-the-family bullshit about knowing what was best. So I went out with Mike and Henry, and Joe, he just stayed home with Grandma and painted his goddamn pictures while she watched TV.
Mike says, “Even if he isn’t, we still can’t show up at that farmhouse without him.”
Greg starts swearing and crying into his hands. Like that’ll help. Then he gets back into his old tune. “Fuck. What if we left him? We can’t just leave him. Maybe he’s hiding in a dumpster or something, back near the pawnshop, waiting for us to come back. Someone call him. Mike, you call him.”
“We can’t. No calls.”
Mike is right again. Especially if we left a bloody Henry in the parking lot. Cops or an ambulance would definitely have him by now. We can’t be on any phone records today.
Then it hits me, suddenly. Where we can go. Good a place as any for a half-assed getaway, or some kind of last stand.
I say, “I know where we can go, boys.”
——
The trip is going to be longer than it has to be. Need to avoid the Mass Pike and its tollbooths and cameras. So we go north on 190, then we’ll hit Route 2 West, then 91 North, then over the river and through the woods to my grandma’s old lake house in Hinsdale, Vermont, a one-cow town just outside of Brattleboro. It’s not her place anymore, but it’s no one’s place anymore, either. My great-grandmother had the tiny two-bedroom bungalow built next to a private lake. I don’t even remember the lake’s name. Something long and with a lot of consonants.
It’s not Grandma’s place anymore because her family never really owned the land. They got the place on a ninety-year lease. Grandma died two years ago, and so did the lease. The state took the land back over, wouldn’t offer a new lease, and talked about using the house and lake for some electric-company outpost or some shit like that. I didn’t take that estate meeting well and left Joe to the room and the lawyers. Two years ago is the last time I was up there with Joe. The two of us and a dumpster. Didn’t save anything.
Far as I know, nothing has been done with the rundown place, and I can’t imagine anyone would use it, completely out in the boonies with only a five-mile-long, one-lane dirt road as access to the property. I guess we’ll find out.
We’ve been on 190 for almost half an hour. Finally turning onto Route 2. We’ve left our cell phones on in case Henry decides to call or text us. Nothing. Same kind of nothing on the radio, too.
I pull my cell out of my pocket and stare at the screen. I kinda want Joe to call, too. Not that I could answer his call or anything. Not that we’ve talked to each other in a month or so. Not after the last time I called him, and he bitched me out for having no real job and still hanging around Henry.
Greg can’t be quiet for too long, so he starts in on another of his cute little rants. Mike’s gonna pop Greg’s head off like he’s a dandelion if he keeps it up. Greg says, “This is a big mistake. Going to a place that we don’t even know we can go to. Great fucking plan.”
Mike says, “It’ll work out.”
Greg rubs his head and face. “I feel like shit, and you two idiots are making it worse.” He’s lathering himself up, breathing heavy, blinking like his eyelids are hummingbirds, in total freak-out mode. He says, “How about we pull over at a rest stop, dump the shotgun and bag, instead of carrying the shit around with us? Might as well be driving with ‘we did it’ painted on the windows.”