Graves' Retreat Read online

  Byron looked miserably at Susan. It was obvious she did not want him to agree with her father.

  But meekly, Byron said, “Yes, sir. You are surrounded by incompetents.”

  He knew he dare not look over at Susan.

  ***

  T.Z. was still thinking about the girl in the tavern last night.

  His tastes seemed to change. Constantly. One day he liked the type of sophisticated women he’d known in Chicago and St. Louis, other days he preferred the working girls of smaller towns.

  To T.Z. women were power and he had understood that since an incident that took place when he was eight years old.

  A nine-year-old, a bully who seemed to have a special dislike for T.Z., beat him up savagely in front of other children on the way home from school.

  T.Z. had never been hit so many times or in so many places.

  Finally, he fell on the ground, bleeding from eyes, mouth and even ears.

  The others, including the bully, had run away, leaving him there in the chill autumn afternoon.

  Despite the temperature, despite the fact that he knew he should get up and hobble home, he could find no strength for anything but lying there, letting the pain pound through him.

  Then he’d felt a warm and gentle palm on his forehead, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a girl he knew to be in the grade ahead of his bending over him. He knew one other thing about her too. She was generally regarded to be the bully’s girlfriend.

  “I’m sorry he did this to you,” she said, and he noticed there were tears in her eyes.

  She lifted his head and poured water from a cup into his mouth.

  “My name's Audrith,” she said, as she then helped him to his feet.

  Between swollen lips, T.Z. had said, “I’m T.Z.”

  “I know who you are. I mean I’ve-” He saw she was blushing. “I mean I’ve noticed you around before. You’re-”

  She stopped then, embarrassment claiming her completely.

  Even through his pain he wanted to hear her say it because he saw the way she looked at him and he sensed in her glimpse real power for himself. Money he had not; nor the strength of even an average boy; nor was he especially intelligent at schoolwork.

  “You didn’t finish what you were going to say,” T.Z. had said.

  “Oh, it wasn't important.”

  “Of course it was.” And he’d faced her directly. “Everything you think is important. To me, anyway.”

  So that afternoon, as purple dusk gathered, they took the long way home, down by the railroad yards, where the great trains linked and unlinked like huge metal dinosaurs copulating, and as they walked, and the more she blushed, he sensed within himself his growing power.

  There was a crooked creek, silver with the season’s first membrane of ice, and they stopped there and found cold water for his face. And once his face was clean, he did what he’d been longing to do, and what he knew she had been longing for him to do-he kissed her, right there and right on the lips.

  And he was almost overwhelmed with his power.

  Three more times the bully beat him before the snow flew, but from this experience T.Z. learned that he had one thing most men did not have and would never have-a real grip on the hearts of women.

  Let the others boast of strength or gold; T.Z. had his looks and his laugh, and no matter how imposing the man, there was a good chance, if T.Z. applied himself, he could steal the man’s woman- maybe for no more than an hour or two, but steal her nonetheless.

  Lying on the bed, late summer sunlight rich red gold across his slender body, T.Z. sighed.

  In the three months following the death of that baggage car man, there had been little time for women. There had been time only for running and hiding and jumping at even the vaguest hint that he and Neely had been discovered.

  And that was why the nightmares were back. The one about holding the old man in his arms and crying for him not to close his eyes because when he did close his eyes, all history would come crashing down and there would be only darkness and oblivion and-

  “Easy,” Neely said.

  “What?” T.Z. said.

  “Easy. I said it was going to be easy.”

  Neely sat over in the comer of their hotel room. He had been at the table with his tablet and pencil for more than an hour.

  Neely was always this way before any kind of operation, no matter how big or small.

  Neely liked to draw diagrams in blunt pencil strokes, the way military commanders did before battles. Strategy, it was called.

  “We hide in the closet and then, when the guard goes, all we have to do is sneak out and unlock the safe.”

  T.Z. smiled lazily. “I didn’t know you knew a whole hell of a lot about safes.”

  “Don’t need to.”

  “Then just how do you propose to get into the safe?”

  Neely frowned. “Since when did you start worrying about how I handled things? I’ve always handled them all right in the past, haven’t I?”

  T.Z. sat up on the bed, lit up the yellowed remains of a quirly. “The kid’s got things good here. I want to get that money without anybody finding out that he even knew us.”

  “I’ve got it all figured.”

  T.Z. kept his eye on him. “I’m serious, Neely. I don’t want nobody to know that the kid’s my brother or that he’s got anything to do with

  us.”

  Neely stood up and smiled. “You don’t sound real scary, pretty boy, when you make threats like that.” He picked up T.Z.’s shirt from the chair and then tossed it to him. The smile was long gone. “Come on. We’re going to go watch a little baseball.”

  Sullenly, and without a word, T.Z. put on his fancy lace shirt and his string tie, and then his fancy-cut black coat.

  "I want you to go easy on the kid, Neely. And I’m serious,” T.Z. said.

  Neely just shook his head. “You’re a pathetic bastard, T.Z. You know that? Whose idea was it to come to Cedar Rapids anyway?”

  “Well-”

  “Who said, ‘My brother works in a bank. He can get us some money.’ Was it me, T.Z.?”

  “Well-”

  Neely shook his head again. “Like I said, T.Z., you’re one pathetic bastard. You know that?”

  Then they went to the ballpark.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In the seventh inning, the sky vermilion and banked with golden clouds, Harding came out to the mound.

  The score was 6-5. The second team was beating the first.

  Les Graves stood slamming the ball into his glove. The cheers of the crowd had long ago vanished into the gathering dusk.

  Harding, reaching him, said, “You gotta concentrate, Les.”

  Les looked up. There was a wildness in his eyes. “I am concentrating.”

  “No, you’re not. Just before you throw, your eyes move to the right. To the stands.”

  Les sighed.

  “I know who you’re looking at.”

  Les shook his head, fearing the answer that Harding would offer.

  “You’re looking at Clinton Edmonds.”

  Les frowned. Harding was half right. He was probably, in fact, looking to the right, just to the west of the batter’s box, but it was not Clinton Edmonds he was looking at. It was Susan Edmonds.

  “You remember how I told you to relax?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then try it.”

  “I-I don’t know if I can.”

  “C’mon, Les. You gotta try.”

  “All right.”

  Les turned slightly away from the manager, closed his eyes and began taking a series of deep breaths and trying to blank his mind entirely. Harding insisted that an ancient Sioux Indian who lived up near Parnell had taught him this trick. (Les had never had the courage to ask Harding what an ancient Sioux Indian was doing up near Parnell, when the Sioux reservation was three hundred miles north.) But he tried it. He pictured in his mind his toes and then his legs and then his groin and then his stomach-all the way
up his body to his brain itself-relaxing, relaxing, relaxing… and in truth, the tension did seem to flow out of his body as his awareness of the crowd, even Susan, began to diminish. His felt his muscles surrender, surrender…

  A few minutes later, Harding said, “Now, we’re going to do that again when we’re up to bat and you have some more time. Now, you just step up to the mound again and everything’s going to be fine.”

  Les smiled. “I sure hope you’re right.”

  “You just wait and see. That damn Sioux chief I told you about knew half the secrets of the universe.”

  This time the ancient one was a chief. The last time his name was invoked, the man had been a mere warrior.

  Les laughed. “You sure you knew this Indian?”

  “You think I make up shit like that?”

  “Hell, yes, I do.”

  This time Harding laughed. “You should be ashamed of yourself,

  Graves.”

  He walked back to his team, waddling a bit because not only was his stomach spreading as he reached forty but so was his backside.

  Les, continuing his deep breathing, and concentrating, concentrating, stepped up to the mound, shook off two different signals from the catcher, waited till he found one he liked and then sailed one so fast and so fine across the plate that the crowd went flat-out crazy again.

  He struck out the next two batters and trotted back to the home team side with the crowd giving him a standing ovation.

  ***

  The fat man had himself two more soft drinks and then took the folded-up poster from inside his jacket.

  It was a crisp folder, recently printed, and if you held it close enough to your nose, you could smell the printer’s ink, which was one of the fat man’s favorite odors in all the world.

  He opened the folder and pressed it flat, and stared at the visage of T. Z. Graves and the big bold word wanted and then that glorious figure $5000 dead or alive.

  Only crazy people trifled with the railroads, which, in this year of Our Lord 1884, virtually if not literally owned the country. (It was said that in the halls of Congress, the paintings of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been replaced with the portraits of J. P. Morgan and James J. Hill.)

  T. Z. Graves had not only robbed a train. He had killed a railroad employee.

  Even desperadoes as popular and pampered as the James Brothers had paid for foolishness of that magnitude, Jesse shot dead just a year and a half ago, and Frank James going through a series of bitter trials that could yet end up in his hanging.

  Just how did T. Z. Graves think he stood a chance against the might and cunning and tirelessness of the railroad?

  The fat man had some more of the cool drink and watched as Les Graves ran back to the home team side.

  The fat man smiled as his eyes followed Graves. That was one trick the railroad men, beginning way back when Allan Pinkerton was just a tyro, learned well.

  You didn’t stalk the criminal himself. You stalked his family. Because when you got the family, you got what Pinkerton liked to call “leverage.” The fat man had heard Pinkerton give a talk in St. Louis once. Pinkerton said that the Romans had learned one truth about torture-that some men you can torture for hours, days and get nothing from them. But take these same people and threaten to torture somebody they love and-the men broke almost immediately.

  The fat man leaned his arms back and enjoyed the sight of the teams trading places on the field and the men in their new straw hats and the women in their floral hats and the kids with pennants and homemade baseball caps made up to resemble those worn by the players.

  You got to a man through his loved ones, the fat man thought contentedly to himself.

  And that was just what he planned to do.

  ***

  Neely said, “Remember the year the White Stockings won twenty games in a row?”

  But T.Z. wasn’t listening. T.Z. never listened when the subject was sports. T.Z. had his women and his nightmares and that was about it.

  They stood at the north end of the bleachers, watching the game in its last inning.

  “Boy, there sure are some pretty ones in this town,” T.Z. said.

  Neely said, “There are pretty ones everywhere.”

  “Yeah, Neely,” T.Z. said, “but you never seem to do anything about it.”

  “Wasn’t my fault she ran off with that goddamn drummer.”

  “You could always try to find another one.”

  "She’d be just like Myma was.”

  “Myma wasn’t so bad.”

  “If she wasn’t so bad, why did she run off with that goddamn drummer?”

  “Maybe she got tired of your politics.”

  Neely shook his head. “I never understood that.”

  “Understood what?”

  “Why she hated me talkin’ about politics.”

  “Women don’t give a damn about things like that.”

  “Some women do. Look at the suffragettes.”

  T.Z. laughed. “The suffragettes. Hell. Who gives a damn about them?”

  But suddenly Neely wasn’t paying so much attention to their argument. Suddenly Neely wasn’t paying attention to anything but sight of a certain man way up high in the east section of bleachers.

  There was a kid behind them in the stands with a pair of field glasses.

  Neely leaned over and said, “Want to make a penny?”

  “For what?” the kid said suspiciously.

  “For your glasses?”

  “You mean buy them?”

  “Just use them.”

  “For how long?”

  Neely wanted to crack the kid across the face. The kid was ten, chunky and mean-looking.

  “For no more than a minute.”

  “What the hell are you doin’?” T.Z. asked Neely.

  “Shut up,” Neely said.

  “A nickel,” the kid said.

  “All right,” Neely agreed, tossing and flipping him a nickel. “Now give me the glasses.”

  “No more than a minute,” the kid warned.

  Neely jerked the glasses out of his hand.

  “What the hell’s going on?” T.Z. asked.

  “I already told you,” Neely said, as if to a child. “Shut up.” Then Neely turned the glasses east to the bleachers where he’d spotted the man.

  He adjusted the glasses to get the best look possible.

  The kid said, “It’s been more than a minute, I’ll bet.”

  T.Z. said, “You watch your mouth, kid.”

  “He promised,” the kid said, sounding as if he were going to start crying. “He said a minute. One minute.”

  “Shut up,” T.Z. said.

  “Shit,” Neely said, not taking the glasses from his eyes.

  “What is it?” T.Z. asked.

  “Shit,” Neely said again.

  Then he yanked the glasses from his eyes and plumped them back in the lap of the kid.

  He started walking very fast for the exit from the ballpark.

  T.Z. had to half run to keep up.

  “What’s wrong, Neely?”

  But Neely didn't say anything more than “Just keep your head down and move as fast as you can.”

  T.Z. always got scared. He was scared now. “What’s wrong, Neely? Tell me, please. What’s wrong?”

  “Like I said,” Neely said through gritted teeth. “Keep your head down and move as fast as you can.”

  Thirty seconds later they had left the ballpark. That was when Neely broke into a full run and headed for the maze of the railroad yard down in the valley below.

  T.Z., trying to keep up, said, “I’m scared, Neely. I’m real scared.”

  But all Neely could think about was the glimpse of the fat man in the bleachers and who the man was.

  And why he’d be here in Cedar Rapids.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A home run won the game by a single run for the first team. The second team had never come this close to beating them before.

 
The crowd’s applause was sparse.

  Clinton Edmonds, all curses and bluster, got up and stalked from his box seat, Susan and Byron following meekly in his wake.

  The fat man sat up in the bleachers until nearly everybody had left the park. Dusk was full in the sky now, a low and gorgeously purple dusk, with a scattering of bright stars and a full moon so vivid it looked like a painting.

  ***

  The fat man made his way carefully down the bleachers and back to the Grand Hotel, over on Second Street East. He had a last glance at Les. He would see the man later tonight.

  ***

  Harding, the team manager, went through his usual postgame talk, spiced with derision, occasional praise and finally a vaguely patriotic theme (“Our ancestors didn’t come to this country so you men could look as rotten as you did today”), and then he dismissed the team, warning them not to drink more than one bucket per man at Pearly’s tonight.

  Les did not need to be told that Harding wanted to talk to him privately.

  Les sat at the far end of the bench, elbows on hands, staring at the starry sky. So many things crowded his mind-Susan, T.Z., what a hanging would look like, the bank robbery plan Neely had outlined last night-so many things that it literally exhausted him to contemplate them.

  Then an image of May Tolan came to him, the memory of her this afternoon in the hat shop. Her eyes and the look he’d imbued them with. Yet for all his guilt over May, thought of her gave him some comfort. He was thinking of her when Harding came up.

  Instead of speaking, or standing over him as he usually did, Harding sat down next to Les, very tight, like kids on the front seat of a buckboard, and he didn’t say anything for a long time, and when he did finally speak, it wasn’t about baseball at all. He said, “Boy, don’t you love the smell of dewy grass on a summer night?”

  “It’s great,” Les said, sounding as if it were anything but great at all.

  “And haven’t you ever wondered just how many stars there are in the sky?” Harding said, sweeping his hand to the heavens as if he were a minister invoking his flock to passion for God’s handiwork. “When I was a boy, my mother always let me sleep in the front yard and I’d always fall asleep counting the stars.”