Jinny fisted a hand to snap back Curly’s head with a quick jab to the chin. “Wo-wo-wo. Wait. Listen, can’t you hear it? Someone wants in.” Curly’s breath felt warm against Jinny’s cheek but chilled her whole body. The barn door racked back and forth. Weathered cedar slats scored the ground and retreated but a few inches with each angry shove.
“Papa!? I’m up . . .” Jinny tried to scream bloody murder, but the words cauterized in her throat. She tried again, but Curly cupped a hand over her mouth.
“Jinn, I tell you, it’s not your Pa.”
A specter appeared in the doorway below, his mouth pumping out short bursts of steam like a locomotive under load. Jinny and Curly eyeballed one another, rolled to their knees, scampered deeper into the loft like penitent rodents, and hid behind some stacked bales of moldy hay.
A shrill voice whined above the panting wind, “I SWEAR ON MY MOTHER’S GRAVE—I THOUGHT THAT DUDE HAD A GUN. ENOUGH’S ENOUGH. STOP BADGERING ME. AND I STILL CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHY WE HAD TO COME TRAIPSING CLEAR DOWN TO ABILENE. WE’RE A LONG WAY FROM TOLEDO, DON’T YOU KNOW? SHOULDA JUST LEFT THIS STUFF IN THE TRUNK, BLOODY BAG AND ALL. “
“SHUT UP AND GET OUT OF MY WAY.” Jinny watched first one shadowy hooded figure, then another, squeeze through the lighted, narrow gap and into the barn. Each man brandished a flashlight. The taller of the two wheezed as he forcibly dragged something heavy toward a stall, pausing long enough self-embrace and brush Mother Nature’s winter welcome from his hoodie. Both intruders stomped their feet and blasphemed. Both men were freezing. The wheezer, his lungs starved for oxygen, disappeared into a stall and the dragging stopped. Jinny could hear both men gasping for air. They sounded like mismatched bicycle pumps, frantic to fill a punctured tube.
“GIT BACK THERE AND SHUT THE BLINKING BARN DOOR.”
The whiner spat more profanity, left the stall, and tortoise-walked to the door. He pressed both his forearms and head against the quavering barricade, grunted, grunted, and struggled against the wind. “YOUR STUPID KHARMAN GHIA MIGHT AS WELL BE PARKED UP AGAINST THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS MOTHER-IN-LAW OF A DOOR. I CAN’T BUDGE IT. No, wait, I think I got it . . . CANCEL THAT. I DON’T GOT IT. IT WON’T SHUT.”
“Apparently, neither does your mouth,” said the taller intruder, his deep bass voice booming through the darkness. He peeked over the top of the stall. “Do you smell what I smell?”
“Smell what? . . . NO-NO-NO, I’M LOSING IT. I’M LOSING IT. HELP ME.”
The wheezer bolted from the stall, leaned into the barn door, and ordered, “PUT YOUR BACK TO IT AND PUSH, GOL DARN YA.”
“I AM PUSHING, GOL DARN YA.” The men heave-hoed and the latch clicked.
The wheezer stomped his cigarette, and while lighting up another squawked, “I said I smelled smoke. Didn’t you smell it?”
“HA. YOU SMOKE. I SMOKE. THAT DEATHTRAP YOU CALL A CAR SMOKES. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT TO SMELL? ONIONS? . . . Awe, now I’ve stepped in it.”
“Stepped in what?”
“DUNG.”
The wheezer coughed up a sour guffaw and offended his companion, who aimed a middle finger and fired off a defamatory curse point blank. Neither Jinny nor Curly could see the faces of the contentious consorts, but Jinny made a mental calculation. Based on the fire protruding from the wheezer’s lips, his trembling cigarette accounted for six feet of the brazen hoodlum’s stature, but Jinny estimated him to be taller; so, she imagined adding a short stack of poker chips to make up the difference. “He’s about six-two,” she concluded, still not sure if either man had been born with a full deck. “Curly, if you have to speak, use your tiny voice, or we may find ourselves with a losing hand.”
The whiner folded and walked toward the stall. He paused long enough to hold his nose, point at his feet, and grumble, “Awe, grubs. Have I had a streak of bad luck or what? These boots are going to stink all the way back to Toledo.”
“Shush. I thought I heard something.” They paused to listen while the wheezer shined his light into the loft and arced it slowly back and forth like a prison searchlight.
“I see nothing. I hear nothing. We’re alone. It’s just me, you, and my donkey poop.
“And we’re going to L. A., not back to Toledo,” the wheezer declared.
Jinny watched the moving beam of light intermittently blink on and off between the closely spaced rails of the stall. The wheezer exclaimed, “Where’s the shovel. I put it right here when me and . . . never mind who . . . scoped this place out. Go find it and dig a hole. Right here.”
“Two halves make a hole. I’ll dig a half; you dig a half.”
Jinny heard a scuffle and the shorter thug came flying out of the stall. He landed on his backside—again in the dung. Jinny and Curly feared the worst but couldn’t see the daggered looks exchanged by the fugitives.
“Tell you what,” snapped the whiner, “maybe I’ll just take my cut now and split.”
“Oh no, no, Dumbo. We’re sticking to the plan—lay low for a few days, then the three of us will dig it up and ‘split,’ as you say. I saw the shovel over there on that tarp. Get it and dig. Hurry, somebody’s been in here since me and my—that is—my associate, scoped this place out.”
Jinny and Curly remained kneeling like a pair of postulants sharing a vow of silence, and because the wheezer turned his back to them, they couldn’t make out the double-edged words slicing from his mouth. “Because of you, Jimmy boy, we’re still a long, long way from Los Angeles.”
Curly whispered, “Did he say, ‘Jinny’?” Jinny didn’t even twitch, knowing that if she moved, dust, hay, and scat would seep through the cracks and pirouette to the ground. A dead giveaway. From behind the baled alfalfa, neither frightened teen could see the two men nor the hole being dug in the stall, but incessant complaining confirmed that the shorter man did all the shoveling. And the whining.
“This dirt’s like cement. I need a stick of dynamite or a pick.”
“You want a pick? Pick your nose, stop whining, and keep shoveling. It’s good exercise and don’t take all day. I’m hungry as a hyena,” snarled the boss.
An hour later the cavity was ready to be filled. The whiner, done and done in, hadn’t the strength to heft himself out of the hole. “Give me a hand up, Ozzie.”
“I told you NEVER TO USE MY NAME!” The clang of shovel striking bone sent shivers down Jinny’s spine. Shivers must be contagious; Curly caught them, too. Both were as terrified as two mice with their tails caught in a closed door. Ozzie cursed and yowled, “Check-mate.” I promised you a fair split, and it killed you.” Unseen by Jinny and Curly, Ozzie angrily put his hand to his ear. “What was that, Jimmy boy? You say I forgot the eulogy? Okay, how’s this: Here lies Jimmy Ray, who got his split, or so they say. May his ma this gravesite lease, so he can decompose in peace. Amen and pass the shovel.”
Now a richer man, Ozzie dropped the duffle bag in the hole next to Jimmy. “You two cozy up now. We’ll be back to collect what’s ours when things cool down . . . I mean, warm up.” Wheeze-shovel-wheeze-shovel.
“He sounds like a derrick pumping crude,” whispered Jinny calmly. Curly continued to shake like a Republican conservative on the campaign trail in Vermont until Ozzie had expended three or four thousand calories filling the hole. He tamped the ground, flung the shovel violently into the dank air, and cursed the darkness. The shovel clanged with a thud on top of Curly’s truck.
Curly swore.
Ozzie poked up like a prairie dog sticking its head from a desert burrow, his shiny gun looking like a tail, and for three minutes he eyeballed the loft in veiled silence. “Okay, Ozzie my man, it’s time to get cracking. You’re leaving behind all this cash and barely five dollars in your pocket.” He cursed. “It’s always feast or famine with you, old man, but you can wait. You can wait.” He dragged several bales of rotting hay over the depository and then—flashlight in hand—left the stall and walked across the strawed floor.
Curly uncoiled from a fetal position, as scared as falling egg forty feet from being scrambled. With clenched teeth he mumbled incoherently, “Jinny, whad if he clines uf here to snoof aroun-d?” The metallic clack of the door-latch releasing was followed by what sounded like the distress call of a wild boar.
“I think I better climb up and have a look-see so I can sleep tonight.” Ozzie hastened to the ladder like a man on stilts and began to climb. “Squeak-wheeze-squeak-wheeze-squeak-wheeze.” Jinny tensed, ready to spring forward and body-block the hoodlum to the ground, but Ozzie paused on the fifth rung. He held his breath, sniffed, and then rattled aloud, “RATS! BIG, FILTHY RATS.” He jumped from the ladder, tumbled over, righted himself and, chilled to the bone, yanked the door open and beat a retreat.
Curly lost his breakfast.
Seventeen-year-old Jinny stood up, stretched, and hurried to the air-conditioned barn wall. Through a knothole she spied the snow-caked Karmann Ghia as it fishtailed back and forth before disappearing from the pasture. Within minutes, falling snow had covered the car’s tracks. But not Ozzie’s deeds.