Monies to finance the bomb-making! Monies to demolish the status quo! To fight the system you gotta go within and undermine it, kick the scaffolding away. Whatever falls, falls. Those left standing are standing. There are incongruities to any movement, man, errors of judgment, hypocrisies all around, but that’s just the way it is, just the way things are, Byron says. The day is brilliant and clear with beautiful thick clouds drawing themselves lazily across the sky. Heading south from the hideout — following Route 9W, the old post road from Albany to New York, to avoid the cops who hang around tollbooths, moving through the old river towns, each presenting itself as brutal proof of the system’s failure, with boarded windows and dusty shop fronts and sad men smoking cheap cigars — she listens to Byron, a soft lisp rounding his words as he speaks of the downfall of the system, of tort law, of simultaneous orbital spin reversal, of the Rolling Stones at Altamont, of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, of his cohorts and colleagues, those who had failed him and those who hadn’t; of the need to locate plain speech, to find a new vernacular, to absolve the transgressions; he speaks in Latin, quoting Horace—“Nay, Xanthias, feel unashamed / That your love is but a servant / Remember, lovers far more famed / Were just as fervent”—while the river through the trees widens and then narrows as they coast the steep grade around Storm King Mountain. (During all of this, August remains silent with his big, meaty hands atop the wheel. He’s a quiet man. His words — when he does speak — seem to be pulled from a well by the bucket of his jaw.) Then they’re heading down the Palisades Parkway, past the state park, driving carefully, sticking to the speed limit, until they exit to the mall, where they look at their watches and assure themselves — in the bright late-morning light — that the plan is hitchless, locked into simplicity: exploit the open space between the store and the armored truck, the one soft vulnerability in the transportation of great funds. (She imagines the guards on a coffee break, sipping inside the cab of the truck, ignoring the money in the back, bored with the tedium of security work, not so much hoping for a robbery as fully aware that it might be the only way out of the monotonously long days of picking up loot. Perhaps there is some pleasure in staring out the bulletproof glass, far above the fray, and at times peeking through the thick aperture of the arm ports at what seems to be the far-off light of day.) To rob someone takes a sense that certain borders can be violated, she thinks. In the crux of the act, of course, lies violence. One way or another, the space will be, when they get there, neatly clear of other vehicles. (It’s gotta be pure karma, man, Byron had explained. All of the elements have to be aligned. It’s as simple as that.) At that moment, a deep, robust smell will emerge from the willow trees that hang delicately over the chain-link fence at the back of the mall. Long, narrow leaves sweeping slightly in the breeze. Byron will point a gun. August will, too.
The two men hauling sacks look up from behind their sunglasses; one of them has his pistol stuck between his big swing of belly and his belt. The other guy is lean, thin, boyish, nervous-looking, with his hand resting loosely on his gun, as if about to draw, when August says, Stop. Stop.
They agreed, when they were driving east from Nebraska, that the best way to control someone was with one-word commands, the way you’d train a dog, not by shouting but rather by speaking softly, with complete authority.
The thin one pauses, his lips parted slightly in a half smile, as if to say: This is the part of the job we expected. It was an eventuality, resting in the tedium of pickups, banks, Laundromats, furniture warehouses. The tedium of take-out coffee, of casual banter, of heavy traffic — gone. At some point along the line, I was going to come face-to-face with you. Then he lets his hand tighten down on his gun, taking one step forward, which causes August to say stop again. From the car, it all seems remote, as if on a stage. All four actors are forming a rhombus of tension points, a little toe dance from side to side. Then for a minute or so they rest in a frozen stasis. The fat one — from her view — seems wobbly, lifting his arms to reveal long dark stains below his armpits. Stop, Byron says. Step back to the wall. Step back and don’t make a move. Then August gives the signal, fluttering his hand behind his back, fluttering some more because:
It is decided, passing over the Mississippi in St. Louis — seeing the arch glinting in the sun, cranking the Rolling Stones, talking about the plan — that the unavoidable cost will be two lives. It is the only way. The discussion that ensues will last all the way across Ohio and into Pennsylvania. The counterargument she puts forth is that it would be just as easy to tie the men up and gag them, and then take them into the culvert behind the mall, down into the weeds by the creek, hidden by the willow branches. But this might allow for a slip-up. A passerby might see us dragging the men (Byron argues); whereas if the men are simply shot against the doorway, they will slump down behind the cover of the parked truck and give us ample time to drive away, unnoticed. The gunshots will present a problem because even with the silencers there might be enough of a report to draw notice, so I think you should honk the car horn, a few sustained toots, and then, in the cover of that sound, we’ll shoot both men. August will signal you. He’ll wave his hand behind his back.
Yeah, there are certain moral objections that can certainly be made, Byron admitted, sipping stale coffee at a truck stop in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. Out the windows, past the bright lights over the gas pumps, beyond the tractor trailers lined up along the curb, strip-mine rigs dug coal, their frames lit like constellations, their car-size maws scooping intergalactic darkness. In the wider moral drama lies the truth, man. The truth is in the wide view. We can’t look for it in the minutiae. We’ve got to keep the larger vision in mind. End of story. End, of the fucking, story. Byron sucked coffee from a spoon and looked out the tall windows. Bathed in a colorless carbon light, the trucks were mulling softly, their engines going while their drivers slept. The topic of death seemed perfectly suited to the truck stop, as it had been to the old shack, back in Nebraska. Death was just one of many objectionable qualities in a landscape littered with antelope horns, the whitewashed skulls of long-dead bison, old truck tires, and, scattered everywhere, fossilized remains so long gone as to be ensconced in meaninglessness. Back there — in the afternoons — huge clouds had ranged up into themselves, towering high until they darkened along the bottoms, flattened out by their own weight, and spit toy forks of lightning that produced audible thunder only if they were listening for it; otherwise, the distance, and the ceaseless wind, devoured everything. Byron put his coffee cup carefully in its saucer, stood up, and went outside to stand in the parking lot. She and August finished their breakfasts. I’m afraid, she said. I’m afraid. I don’t think we should kill. I don’t think it’s right at all. August looked at her and fiddled with his eggs. I want to agree with you, he finally said, nodding at the window, but I have to go with Byron. I can’t see leaving them bound and gagged in the ditch, where they might die anyway.