Monday, January 23, 2012

Detour

My friend assures me that sharing stories I wrote a decade ago will be fun.  Not embarrassing.  We'll see.  Here's one:


DETOUR





I could no longer feel my feet.  It's a strange sensation to know that they're there, but have no physical proof of it, without looking.  I visualized myself climbing Mt. Everest.  The view from the top of the world would make  disappearing feet worthwhile.  But I was not on a mountain, I was in line at the bank.  The only cold thing I could see was the look on the loan officer's face as he talked to old Mrs. Ennis.  She wasn't getting good news.

The line hadn't moved in three months and I'd been on my feet for at least that long, maybe longer.  I worked double shifts at the diner.  The more money, the better, and the faster, the better.  I don't like waitressing; pretending to be eternally cheerful, lying about where the pies are baked, the smell of scorched coffee in my nose.  But it was a quick way to make money.

     Not as quick as stealing.  The guy who took my cash took my heart first, and left me in this nowhere town.  Now I wanted to get away from the kindness of strangers who weren't strangers anymore as much as I wanted anything else.  I wanted to see the world, and I'd been saving up to leave since my excuse for a boyfriend left me.  I was almost ready.  It's a big world, and I didn't want to get stuck somewhere worse, so I was still saving. 

     Mrs. Ennis, who came into the diner every day for the early bird special and had taken to “grandmothering” me, said I was making excuses.  She brought me library books on world travelers and gave me lectures on living my dream.  Just yesterday she’d said, “Do I look like I belong here?” and both of us turned away from each other before any tears could make the trip from our eyes to our chins.

Just as I was thinking that the bank might close before I ever got up to the teller, a tall man wearing a fake beard walked in.  He was dressed in black and had what looked like a CB radio duct taped around his waist.  In one hand he held a very large gun which he pointed at the security guard, who immediately peed his pants and dropped the weapon he’d pulled from its holster.  In the other hand was a shopping bag.

"If you hit the silent alarm I'll hear the call on this scanner," he shouted to everyone behind the counter.

  I saw that on a TV movie once.  I remember thinking that if any criminals hadn't thought of it themselves, Hollywood was giving them a good idea.  He and I must have watched the same show.

"Everyone get down on the floor!  On your bellies, and put your arms straight out in front of you.  No one has to get hurt, if you all cooperate."

  We all obliged, though I practically fell over, from not being able to feel my feet too well.  I thought my klutziness might get me shot, but it didn't.

I could see Mrs. Ennis trying to do as he'd said, but having trouble getting her bones to go along with the program.  She was pushing 80 and probably hadn't been down on her knees, no less her belly, in quite some time.  She sat on the carpeted floor, her back against the front of the loan officer's desk, and asked the robber if she could stop there.

"I cannot seem to assume the position, young man.  Either I die trying or you shoot me.  The bullet would hurt less."

"Shut up lady and don't move around."

"I'll take that as a reprieve," she said, then looked terrified as he swung the gun in her direction.  She stopped talking.

The bank wasn't very big.  Mostly a rectangular shaped room cut in half by the counter that separated the tellers from the public.  The loan officer's desk was at the end of the counter.  The only office you couldn't see from the main area was the manager's, and he was standing right next to Cindy, a teller, out in the open with the rest of us.  I didn't think there was anyone conveniently hiding under his desk, calling 911 and telling them the robber had a radio.  But I was praying I was wrong.

The sorry excuse for a human's only disguise was a fake beard and a baseball cap.  I was sure he was going to kill us all so we couldn't identify him.  As if to prove me right he fired at the one, lone video camera.  I know I screamed and I think everyone else did too, though the sound of the shot wasn’t as loud as it always is in the movies – more of a dull pop.  He told us to shut up (robbing banks being like golf, I guess; he needed quiet), and dumped folded up cloth totes out of the shopping bag.

  He told the tellers to fill his duffels fast, and with hundreds, not twenties.  He warned them about putting dye packets in with the money.  He said he was going to pick one of them to go with him and if he found any dye packets he'd kill them.  The guy had thought of everything.

I thought about how different things looked from the floor.  I sometimes have fantasies about what I'd do if I were in a hostage situation or had made the mistake of buying milk at a convenience store late at night.  I'm always the heroine.  I jump the bad guy, when he foolishly turns his back on little ole me, and grab the gun with one hand while twisting his balls off with the other.  I'm very violent and very brave in these scenarios.

The reality was that I could barely take in oxygen.  I could only see a couple of the other customers, besides Mrs. Ennis, from my position on the floor, and neither one looked like he had any dreams of being a hero.  Gary, who fixes cars at the gas station, looked like one of those Himalayan cats.  All white with black trim.  I don't think their hands and nails are ever really clean after they choose that particular job.  I had seen the other man in the diner on occasion, but didn't know who he was or where he lived.  From the gray color his face had taken on, and the sweat that was pouring off him, I thought a nitro pill would help immensely.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this.  I wasn't supposed to die before I'd accomplished anything worthwhile.  How could I write best-selling travel books about exotic places if I was dead?  I thought about my friends back home seeing a picture in the paper of me in a pool of blood, wearing a white waitress's uniform.  They'd say things like, "How horrible.  Did you know she'd gone out west with some loser and ended up waiting tables in a dive?  What a shame."  My tenth grade English teacher would be just sick about it.  I couldn't let myself consider what my parents would go through.  I almost did for a second, but the room started to spin.  First my feet were gone, then I had to hold onto the floor to keep from falling.  It just wasn't supposed to happen like this.

After what felt like several hours, but was only a couple of minutes, the scourge of the Earth had enough in his duffle bags.  He looked up and down the length of the counter, apparently deciding on which teller to take with him.  One of them threw up.  We all heard it, then a moment later, smelled it.  I buried my nose in the carpet pile to avoid following suit.  It was one way to keep from being picked.

The lowlife decided quickly on Cindy and told her to come out with one of the bags, while the manager was to hand the other one over the counter.  I could hear her dragging the heavy bag, bumping into the swinging door with it, while the manager pleaded to change places with her.  Instead of thinking that we might have a hero after all, I thought that he and Cindy were probably having an affair.  I just couldn't see this guy risking his life with chivalry as his motivation.  Dogshit wouldn't consider it.

"If you've followed orders and there aren't any dye packets in here, she gets to live, and come back to your fine town,” he said as she took the second bag from the manager and left it in front of him.  “But maybe we'll party for a while first, me and CindyLou," he said, putting his face close to her nametag and pantomiming licking her breast.  To the manager he said, "You're just not my type, friend."

The Arctic Express blew down my spine, and I realized I could feel the chill to my toes.  My feet were back.  A small war broke out inside my head, with half the troops wanting to charge the dirtbag.  Pillaging was one thing, but rape another.  The survivalist camp was having no part of it, though.  Staying so still that I looked dead already was their plan.

While the debate raged, the psycho told Cindy to take one of the bags and put it in the trunk.  Then she was to sit in the passenger seat and wait for him.  He handed her the keys.  The collective hope and fear in that room was that she'd run.  I'm sure we all wanted her to get away, but didn't want to have to take her place.  Especially me.  I was pretty sure I was the only other good-looking, non-vomiting young woman in the bank.  But he knew what he was doing.  Casually, just as she was pushing open the door, he said, "If you don't do as I say, your lover will really open up to you, babe.  Literally."  As he laughed at his own sick joke and kept the gun leveled at the manager, I realized that this nutcase had had the same impression that I had about Cindy's love life.

First the same taste in television movies, now this.  For some reason, knowing that I'd formed the same conclusion as him was upsetting in the extreme.  Another man I had things in common with, who’d be attractive if he weren’t a bank-robbing, rape-threatening lunatic, and he was going to blow town with cash he hadn’t worked for.  Déjà vu all over again.  My stomach churned at the comparison to my ex-boyfriend.  Or maybe it was just all that stress.  I didn't get a chance to dwell on it.  I heard the thunk of the trunk lid closing just outside the door, and a car door opening and closing.  God, this was it.  He was either going to kill us all or be satisfied with Cindy.  I wanted so much to close my eyes, but they seemed frozen open.  I didn't even blink.

The cretin lowered the gun slightly as he grabbed ahold of the duffel bag to pick it up.  In what seemed like slow motion, I saw Mrs. Ennis reach into her purse, pull out a pistol, aim and fire.  One shot to the heart and he was down.  No one moved for a second that stretched into forever, then an acrid odor wafted into my nose, bringing me around the way smelling salts would.  Someone was sobbing behind the counter. 

Mrs. Ennis calmly got up, as if arthritis wasn't in her vocabulary, and said, "Will someone hit the alarm, please?  And tell Cindy that everything's okay now."

I sat up, staring at her with my mouth hanging open.  "There is no point in owning a gun and knowing how to use it if you can’t pull the trigger when it’s called for,” she said.  “I saw my chance and took it.  I'm not sorry.  Get up now, dear."

I got up.  And as the screaming sirens closed in, and we all avoided looking too long at the blood soaking into the carpet around the body, I decided that the world wasn't as big as I'd thought.  I had money enough, and it was time to go.





The End

6 comments:

  1. Man! That was some good stuff. I could feel the tension in the room like I was there myself. :D

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  2. Mary, this is so much fun. By that I mean, you have all the twists that a great story should, but none seem too contrived. I love it. Thank you for sharing.

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  3. What a fantastic ending! Totally unexpected. But I hope you never turn to bank robbing. You're far too clever and would probably get away with it.

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  4. Thanks so much for the compliments (and keep 'em comin'!) :-) Okay, you all know I don't do mornings well, so if someone could explain what would be wrong, exactly, with getting away with it, that'd be helpful.

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  5. Popped in to add another comment, just because now I can. I had to sign out of Google to get this page to work. Now I'll have to sign in again to publish my comment and then remember to sign out so I can access the page next time.

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  6. Mary Lou, are you going to FB first and following the link there? Because, since FB and Google don't like each other much, I'm assuming any troubles caused are due to that. If you've bookmarked my blog and going directly to it, I suggest contacting Google and telling them of your problems. Maybe they don't know there's a problem. That's all I can think of to do.

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