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By Root 390 0

“Let’s go outdoors,” he told us. Up close I saw the white squint lines breaking up his tan, I smelled the clean smell of his pale plaid shirt. He was one of those ambling, gentle-faced men who never act startled. He seemed like somebody I might know. Or maybe it was this place we were in—clearly a home, in spite of the counter, with a tangle of baby-blue knitting abandoned in an armchair. I felt suddenly disoriented. I stumbled after him, nudged by Jake, out the door and down the porch steps, deep enough into the yard so that we could be hidden by twilight. Then we stopped. Mindy reached out and touched one finger to Oliver’s forearm. “Why would they be after him?” she asked. “Is it on account of me? He hasn’t done wrong.”

“Is that true?” Oliver said. He turned to Jake. “They came by yesterday. They got my name from your address book. It was the only one in there besides the liquor store, they said, and so they tracked me down, wondered if I’d seen you. I said no. And Ma did too, of course, and Claire had no idea who they meant.”

“Who’s Claire?” Jake asked.

“My wife.”

“Wife?”

“They told me you had pulled this crazy … but you didn’t, did you?”

“Well, I don’t know. Sort of,” said Jake. He jammed his hands in his pockets and gazed off across the street.

“But … I mean, it doesn’t sound logical. Had something gone wrong? What would make you hit that fool bank for that piddling amount? And hostage! Taking a … and now who’ve you got? Who’s a hostage here and who isn’t?” he asked.

Mindy said, “Hostage?”

He focused on me. “Lord, Jake,” he said.

I felt that I was shriveling up.

“But Oliver,” said Jake, “just let me tell you. This wasn’t nothing I planned, you know. Seems like things just worked out this way. I’m a victim of impulse, right? Look, now, you’re the one last hope I have. You’re the last way open to me. Oliver? O.J.? Can’t you just give us a room to stay the night in? Sit down with me and figure some way out of this, Oliver. I’m just not up to handling things on my own right now. It’s all started getting muddled.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “I’d like to help. But Ma would call the police, you know she would. It’s not her fault; she’s old and she’s scared and she still isn’t over that mailbox business. And Claire, well, she’s having a difficult pregnancy and I don’t want her getting upset. You see my position?”

“Yeah, well. Sure,” Jake said.

“Jake, maybe you ought to turn yourself in.”

We were very quiet. A woman’s voice sailed out across the lawn. “Ollie?”

Jake said, “Your mama’s calling.”

“Think about it, Jake.”

“Why don’t you just go,” said Jake. “Your mom will be out here in two minutes flat. Just go, why don’t you, tend to that little life of yours.”

“Jake, I’m twenty-six years old now,” said Oliver.

But he didn’t get any answer to that. He waited a while, looking toward Jake with some expression that I couldn’t make out in the dark. Then he said, “Well. So long, I guess,” and walked away. A minute later I heard the screen door shut—a summer evening sound that hung on and on. The three of us stood in the yard, empty-handed. We kept on looking at the rich gold rectangle of the door, even though there was nobody there.

Then Mindy said, “Well, I just don’t understand this thing in any manner whatsoever.”

“Hush up,” said Jake. “Let me think.”

He was rubbing his forehead, over and over. His profile was stark and jutting, like something hastily cut from black construction paper. Mindy tipped forward to look at him. “Please, Jake,” she said. “Will you please tell me what is going on?”

“Hush up, Mindy.”

“I’ve got a right to know.”

“Come on, let’s get in the car,” he said.

He started toward the street. I stayed where I was. Without saying anything, he came back and clamped my arm and led me forward. Mindy followed. She kept saying, “Jake?”

The car listed under a streetlight. I was used to squinting at it in the sun and saw, now, what I had missed before: in the course of our trip we had wrecked it pretty thoroughly. Its rear end was caved in, one tail-light hollow, front bumper gone, and there were