A Simple Plan (11 page)

I didn’t feel evil. I felt nervous, scared, nothing more.

He struggled very little. He moved his hand once, a wiping motion across the ground, as if he were trying to erase something, but that was all. His eyes stayed shut. There was no noise, no death rattle, no final groan. I held the scarf there for a long time. The sky had cleared enough now for the sun to come out, and it warmed my back. I could see a cloud shadow moving slowly along the edge of the field across the road. As I watched it pass, I started to count. I counted very slowly, pausing before each number, concentrating on the sounds they made in my head. When I reached two hundred, I let go of the scarf, took off my glove, and felt carefully for the old man’s pulse.

There was nothing there.

I
RODE
east through the nature preserve, keeping the road just out of sight to my right. I reached the pond after a minute or so. It was frozen solid. Picnic tables were scattered haphazardly about its border. Everything was covered with snow.

Past the pond, the woods were thicker, and I had to choose my route with more care, winding in and out between matted tangles of underbrush. The branches of the trees scraped against my jacket, as if they were trying to stop me, hold me back.

Pederson’s body straddled the seat in front of me, slouched forward like the pilot’s in the plane. I had to press right up against his back to reach the controls.

I tried to occupy my mind solely with thoughts of my plan. I sensed a danger in circling back to what had happened already that morning, sensed that doing so would only lead to confusion and anxiety, that the safest path was forward, where things could still be changed.

The bridge would be plowed and salted, I knew; there would be a thick bank of snow along either edge. If Pederson had wanted to cross without damaging his snowmobile’s treads on the cement, he would’ve had to have ridden along one of these banks—banks that were just wide enough to support his machine and just high enough to crest the top of the guardrails.

People would wonder what he was doing there, why he’d decided to cross the bridge, but it wouldn’t be enough to make them suspicious. It would be a mystery, something they’d shake their heads over, nothing more. Unless, of course, the plane were discovered before it snowed. There would be the snowmobile’s tracks then, the footprints leading into the park. There would be signs of a scuffle alongside the road.

I glanced up at the sky. It was continuing to clear with a startling rapidity. There was a wide expanse of blue now, sun streaming down through the branches of the trees, the air cold and crisp. What clouds remained were fair-weather clouds, white and fluffy. There was no sign of impending snow.

The closer I got to the edge of the park and the bridge beyond it, the harder I had to work to keep my mind fixed on my plan. Other thoughts crept in. It began with the physical sensation of Pederson’s body against my chest. His head was nestled beneath my chin. I could smell his hair tonic through his hat. His body itself was compact, dense. It didn’t feel at all like I would’ve expected it to. It felt like it ought to be alive.

And as soon as I thought this—that Pederson was dead, that I had killed him, smothered the life out of him with my own hands—my heart fluttered heavily up into my throat. I realized that I’d crossed a boundary, done something abhorrent, brutal, something I never would have imagined myself capable of. I’d taken another man’s life.

This thought bewildered me, set my mind tumbling backward and forward, rationalizing, justifying, denying, and it was only with an extreme effort of will that I regained control. I shut myself down, pulled back, forced my mind to concentrate on nothing except what was going to occur in the next fifteen minutes. I continued on toward the eastern edge of the park, my arms supporting Pederson’s body, guiding the snowmobile through the trees, half my brain occupied with thoughts of the bridge and Jacob and the sheriff, the other half desperately trying to fight off a strange, horribly threatening sensation—that I was doomed now, trapped, that the rest of my life would pivot somehow off this single act, that in trying to save Jacob, I’d damned us both.

T
HE PARK’S
southeast corner went right up to the foot of the cement bridge.

I paused at the edge of the woods, making sure no one was in sight. The creek was about fifteen yards wide here. It was frozen solid, the ice covered with a thin layer of snow. Pederson’s farm was behind me, down the road. There were fields across the creek, empty to the horizon. Jacob hadn’t arrived yet.

I eased the snowmobile out alongside the road, the engine rumbling beneath me. I looked to the east, then back to the west. There were no cars in sight. I could see the old man’s house now, just visible around the edge of the trees. It was closer than I’d thought. I could make out its windows, could see the collie sitting on the top step of its porch. If someone had been standing there watching, they’d have been able to see me, too.

I gunned the engine, maneuvering the machine up onto the bank of plowed snow, moving slowly along it until I reached the center of the bridge. There was a ten-foot drop there from the roadway to the ice. The guardrail was buried in snow.

I put Pederson’s hand on the throttle, adjusted his body in the seat, sliding him back a bit, planting his boots on the footrests. I slung his rifle over his shoulder, pulled his hat down on his ears, wrapped his scarf tightly around his face. The motor coughed a little, stuttering, and I gave it some gas.

I glanced up and down the road again. There were no cars, no movement whatsoever. The collie was still sitting on Pederson’s porch. It would’ve been impossible to tell, of course, whether someone was watching from a window there, but I quickly scanned them all the same. They reflected the sky back at me, the bare branches of the trees surrounding the house. I turned the snowmobile’s skis toward the creek and eased it slowly forward, until it hung partway over the ice, balancing on the edge of the snowbank.

I tried to think if I was forgetting something, shutting my eyes, but my mind refused to help me. I could think of nothing.

The collie barked, once.

I stepped down onto the roadway, braced my feet against the pavement, and pushed the snowmobile forward with my shoulder. It went over with surprising ease. First it was there, and then it was gone. There was a tremendous crash when it hit the ice, and the engine shut itself off.

I climbed back up onto the bank to see.

The snowmobile had rolled over in midair, landing on Pederson, crushing him beneath its weight. The ice was cracked, but not collapsed, forming a bowl-shaped depression around the old man and his machine. The creek was seeping slowly in, covering his body. His hat had fallen off again, and his gray hair floated out away from his head in the icy water. His scarf was tight around his face, clinging to it like a gag. One of his arms was pinned beneath the snowmobile. The other was thrown palm upward to the side, as if he’d died struggling to free himself.

J
ACOB
arrived a few minutes later, from the east. He slowed the car to a stop beside me, and I climbed inside. As we sped away, I glanced back at the bridge. The old man’s body was just visible beneath it, a splash of orange on the ice.

We drove by the Pederson place for the second time that day. The collie barked at us again, but Mary Beth, lying curled up in a ball on the backseat, didn’t seem to notice. I’d been right earlier, there was smoke coming out of the chimney. That meant the old man’s wife was there, sitting beside a fire in the parlor, awaiting his return. The thought of this made my chest tighten.

When we passed the spot where the fox had crossed the road, I heard Jacob give a sharp intake of breath.

“Jesus,” he said.

I looked out the window. There were tracks everywhere—the fox’s, the dog’s, Jacob’s, Lou’s, mine. There was a gash in the snowbank from Jacob’s truck and, crossing the road, tread marks from Pederson’s snowmobile. It was a mess, the whole thing, impossible to miss. The tracks seemed to converge as they disappeared into the woods, as if to form an arrow, pointing straight toward the plane.

Jacob started to cry again, very softly. Tears rolled down his face, and his lips began to quiver.

When I spoke, I made my voice sound very calm. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s going to snow. As soon as it snows, that’ll all be gone.”

Jacob didn’t say anything. He started making hiccoughing sounds in his chest.

“Stop it,” I said. “It’s working out. We’re getting away with it.”

He wiped at his cheeks. The dog tried to lean over the seat and lick his face, as if to comfort him, but Jacob pushed him away.

“Everything’s okay,” I said. “As soon as it snows, everything’ll be okay.”

He took a deep breath. Then he nodded.

“You can’t react like that, Jacob. The only way we’ll get caught is if we fall apart somehow. We have to stay calm.”

He nodded again. His eyes were red and puffy.

“In control.”

“I’m just tired, Hank,” he said. His voice was rough, barely more than a whisper. He looked out the window, blinked his eyes. His nose had stopped bleeding, but he hadn’t wiped off the dark smear from above his mouth. It gave his face the look of a fat Charlie Chaplin.

“I was up too late last night, and now I’m tired.”

I
HAD
Jacob drive us all the way around the park. We headed back toward town along its northern edge, on Taft Road.

The nature preserve looked exactly the same on this side as it had on the other. It was just woods—sycamores, buckeyes, maples, a few evergreens, the occasional white curve of a birch. Some of the pines were still dusted with snow from Tuesday’s storm. There were birds every now and then, flashes of movement among the bare branches, but no signs of any other wildlife, no rabbits or deer, no raccoons or possums or foxes. It seemed strange to think that the plane was in there—the bag full of money, the dead pilot—and that beyond the wreck, on the other side of the park, was Pederson, whom I’d smothered, lying there in the icy water of Anders Creek.

I’d never pictured Jacob and myself as men capable of violence. My brother had gotten into fights at school, of course, but always because he’d been trapped, teased to the point where he had no choice but to lash out. He wasn’t articulate enough to use his tongue, so he used his feet and hands instead, but the result was just as pitiful. He never really learned how to fight, never managed even an imitation of the true pugilist’s desire to cause pain: no matter how overwhelmed with rage, he always appeared to be holding himself back, as if afraid to hurt his antagonists, and it made his fury seem farcical, make-believe, like something out of a silent movie. He’d flail clumsily at them, open fisted, as though he were swimming, tears streaming down his face, and they’d laugh at him, calling him names.

In our hearts, we were both products of our father’s temperament, a man so pacifistic he refused to raise livestock—no cattle, no poultry, no swine—because he couldn’t bear to see them slaughtered. Yet somehow, together, we’d managed to kill a man.

When we reached Ashenville, Jacob pulled to a stop in front of his apartment. He put the car in park but didn’t turn off the ignition. Most of the town was closed for New Year’s. There were only a few people on the street, hurrying somewhere private, heads tucked low against the cold. A wind had come up, and it blew things across the road. The sky was perfectly clear now; sunlight danced off of the hardware store’s plate-glass window and made the pavement sparkle. It had turned into a beautiful winter day.

Jacob didn’t get out. He stared blankly past the windshield, as if he wasn’t sure where he was. He touched the bridge of his nose with his fingertips.

“I think I broke it,” he said.

“You didn’t break it,” I reassured him. “It’s just bleeding.”

He still looked scared, shaken up, and it was beginning to worry me. I didn’t want to leave him like this. I reached across the seat and turned off the engine.

“You know what I thought of?” I asked. “Right when you hit him?”

He didn’t answer me. He was still probing at his nose.

“I thought of you getting into a fistfight with Rodney Sample.” I tapped my head with my hand. “I had this instant flash of it inside my brain, an image of you swinging at him and falling down.”

Jacob didn’t say anything.

“How old were you then? You remember?”

He turned and gave me a distracted look. He had his gloves on again. The right one was stained dark with blood; there was a dime-size spot of dried egg yolk on its forefinger.

“Rodney Sample?”

“In gym class. You swung at him, and you both fell down.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything. He gazed down at his gloves, noticed the egg yolk. He lifted his hand and licked at it, then wiped it on his pant leg.

“We’re in it now,” he said, “aren’t we?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “We are.”

“Jesus.” He sighed, and then it seemed, for a moment, as if he were about to cry again. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and, rocking a bit, started to scratch at his elbows.

“Come on, Jacob. Pull yourself together. What’s done is done.”

He shook his head. “I killed him, Hank. They’re gonna do an autopsy, and then they’ll know.”

“No,” I said, but he ignored me.

“It’s easy for you to be calm. It’s not you that they’ll send to jail.” He was taking deep breaths now, panting.

“You didn’t kill him,” I said, surprising myself. He was scaring me with his panic; I was trying to calm him down.

He glanced at me, confused.

I realized immediately that I didn’t want to tell him what I’d already begun to. I tried to backtrack. “We both killed him,” I said. I looked out the window at the street, hoping he’d let it go. But he didn’t.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I attempted a smile. “Nothing.”

“You said I didn’t kill him.”

I stared at him, trying to work it through in my mind. Since we were children I’d known that I couldn’t depend on him—he’d be late, he’d forget, he’d let me down out of laziness or ignorance—so of course I should’ve known better. But he was my brother; I wanted to trust him. And, though I could sense that there was a danger in it, I saw that there might be a benefit, too. I’d saved him; it seemed like he ought to know about it. It would put him in my debt.