Full Dark, No Stars

The next day I drove to town in my truck and did what I never would have thought of doing if I hadn’t needed to borrow 35 dol ars: I took out a mortgage for 750. In the end we are al caught in devices of our own making. I believe that. In the end we are al caught.

In Omaha that same week, a young man wearing a plainsman’s hat walked into a pawnshop on Dodge Street and bought a nickel-plated .32 caliber pistol. He paid with 5 dol ars that had no doubt

been handed to him, under duress, by a half-blind old woman who did business beneath the sign of the Blue Bonnet Girl. The next day, a young man wearing a flat cap on his head and a red bandanna

over his mouth and nose walked into the Omaha branch of the First Agricultural Bank, pointed a gun at a pretty young tel er named Rhoda Penmark, and demanded al the money in her drawer. She

passed over about 200 dol ars, mostly in ones and fives—the grimy kind farmers carry rol ed up in the pockets of their bib overal s.

As he left, stuffing the money into his pants with one hand (clearly nervous, he dropped several bil s on the floor), the portly guard—a retired policeman—said: “Son, you don’t want to do this.”

The young man fired his .32 into the air. Several people screamed. “I don’t want to shoot you, either,” the young man said from behind his bandanna, “but I wil if I have to. Fal back against that post, sir, and stay there if you know what’s good for you. I’ve got a friend outside watching the door.”

The young man ran out, already stripping the bandanna from his face. The guard waited for a minute or so, then went out with his hands raised (he had no sidearm), just in case there real y was a

friend. There wasn’t, of course. Hank James had no friends in Omaha except for the one with his baby growing in her bel y.

I took 200 dol ars of my mortgage money in cash and left the rest in Mr. Stoppenhauser’s bank. I went shopping at the hardware, the lumberyard, and the grocery store where Henry might have gotten

a letter from his mother… if she were stil alive to write one. I drove out of town in a drizzle that had turned to slashing rain by the time I got home. I unloaded my newly purchased lumber and shingles, did the feeding and milking, then put away my groceries—mostly dry goods and staples that were running low without Arlette to ride herd on the kitchen. With that chore done, I put water on the woodstove to heat for a bath and stripped off my damp clothes. I pul ed the wad of money out of the right front pocket of my crumpled bibal s, counted it, and saw I stil had just shy of 160 dol ars. Why had I taken so much in cash? Because my mind had been elsewhere. Where elsewhere, pray? On Arlette and Henry, of course. Not to mention Henry and Arlette. They were pretty much al I thought about on those rainy days.

I knew it wasn’t a good idea to have so much cash money around. It would have to go back to the bank, where it could earn a little interest (although not nearly enough to equal the interest on the loan) while I was thinking about how best to put it to work. But in the meantime, I should lay it by someplace safe.

The box with the red whore’s hat in it came to mind. It was where she’d stashed her own money, and it had been safe there for God knew how long. There was too much in my wad to fit in the band, so

I thought I’d put it in the hat itself. It would only be there until I found an excuse to go back to town.

I went into the bedroom, stark naked, and opened the closet door. I shoved aside the box with her white church-hat in it, then reached for the other one. I’d pushed it al the way to the back of the shelf and had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. There was an elastic cord around it. I hooked my finger under it to pul it forward, was momentarily aware that the hatbox felt much too heavy—as though there were a brick inside it instead of a bonnet—and then there was a strange freezing sensation, as though my hand had been doused in icewater. A moment later the freeze turned to fire. It was a pain so intense that it locked al the muscles in my arm. I stumbled backwards, roaring in surprise and agony and dropping money everywhere. My finger was stil hooked into the elastic, and the hatbox came tumbling out.

Crouched on top of it was a Norway rat that looked al too familiar.

You might say to me, “Wilf, one rat looks like another,” and ordinarily you’d be right, but I knew this one; hadn’t I seen it running away from me with a cow’s teat jutting from its mouth like the butt of a cigar?

The hatbox came free of my bleeding hand, and the rat tumbled to the floor. If I had taken time to think, it would have gotten away again, but conscious thinking had been canceled by pain, surprise,

and the horror I suppose almost any man feels when he sees blood pouring from a part of his body that was whole only seconds before. I didn’t even remember that I was as naked as the day I was born,