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First, the neighborhood was infested with motorcyclists, Devil Rams buzzing through the streets of Pitchford like wasps, eyeing everyone with suspicion. Whenever I heard the whine of a motorcycle engine I ducked inside the house, hoping to avoid getting caught by one of those maniacs with a guilty look splashed across my face. Then the empty Grubbins house was broken into, not once but repeatedly, over and again, as if something was being desperately searched for. The place would be plagued by break-ins for months, for years actually, as first the motorcycle gang, and later treasure seekers, sought out the missing money.

But the burglaries didn’t stop at the Grubbins house. There were rumors that the cops who had found the drugs had stolen boatloads of cash, rumors that spread like wildfire throughout the community and were reported in the press. And the rumors only increased when the houses of a number of cops were broken into and their families violently threatened by gangbangers with bandannas over their faces. No one was seriously hurt, thank God, but we three knew what it was about, that the gang was blaming the cops, just as Ben had expected when he made the call. There was cash in the crawl space, the police showed up, the cash went missing; what other conclusion could be drawn?

Eventually the state police were called in to calm the waters. The cops who found the stash were questioned by the attorney general’s office and publicly cleared. At the same time, the press reported an all-out search for an elderly male who made the 911 call to the police. It was all such a mess, no one could figure out what the hell was going on. No one but Augie, Ben, and me. Though we never talked about it, not even when we were alone. It was all too big, too scary, we were too afraid of being overheard, afraid of being seen even whispering one to the other. All we said
when we passed each other in the hallway was a soft “Still here,” which was both mordant as hell and amazingly comforting.

The first time we lit up after, together, in the woods by the cherry tree, we were all so freaked about the possibility of lurkers that we ended up not talking at all. No snarky opinions about movies, no rude fantasizing about girls. Sitting in silence as our brains got wacked by the weed, it was like getting high alone. Even so, when the drug hit I was filled with such an acute paranoia—every corner of my body screaming in panic—that the whole experience was far more terrifying than sublime. In every brush of the wind through the trees I heard the roar of motorcycles. After a few more attempts, where I ended up curled in a petrified ball as the world rose up high to crush me, I stopped smoking weed altogether, and so did Ben. And Augie, not willing to quit getting high, started hanging out with a different group of heads, using, according to the rumors, far stronger stuff.

And then the newspapers reported that Derek Grubbins had turned state’s evidence and was spilling all he knew about the drug operation of the Devil Rams. Half the cyclists were arrested based on his testimony and the other half stopped hanging around Pitchford. The Grubbins house was finally sold to a family named Morris, and Pitchford gossip moved from the theft to more intriguing matters, such as the Madigans and the Digbys switching partners like at a square dance. Everything calmed, leaving the three of us one final task.

“What are you doing?” said Ben.

“I’m counting up my share,” said Augie.

“What does that matter?” said Ben. “We’re going to be here all night as it is; just help us split it up and get on home.”

“I want to know how much we have.”

“A heap,” I said. “We’ve each got a goddamned heap of money.”

We were in Augie’s living room with the doors locked, the curtains drawn, the lights low, the furniture arrayed around us
as a shield, and music playing loudly from the stereo to drown out any of our words that might actually reach past the front door. Augie’s parents were in Pittsburgh for a couple of nights as his father received treatment for the kidney ailment that would eventually kill him, which would have been a perfect excuse for a party, but that night we three were attending to more serious business. Ben and I were taking scoops of money out of the buckets and dividing them into equal piles of three. Even with all the bundled bills, the job wasn’t as easy as you would think. Some of the bundles had a few bills missing that we had to account for, and there were a lot of loose bills, too, hundreds and fifties and piles of twenties and tens, so we had to go through every bill to make sure the division was even. Ben and I figured it was more important to get our splits exact than to get an exact count. We could estimate the thing pretty damn well, and the numbers were boggling.

“I want to know exactly,” said Augie. “Unlike you dolts, I’ve got plans for my share.”

Ben lifted his chin and calmly put down the stack of bills he was working on. “What kind of plans?”

“You know, bub,” said Augie. “Plans.”

“No,” said Ben. “I don’t know. What plans could you mean other than burying your share back in your crawl space like we all agreed?”

“That would be such a waste,” said Augie. “I’ve been reading up on this money shit at the library.”

“You’ve been in the library?” said Ben. “That’s enough of a story right there to make the
Daily News
. What did you do, Augie, ask the librarian for everything she had on what to do with a huge haul of stolen cash?”

“I’m just getting myself informed about handling money, now that I’ve got me some. Inflation’s almost five percent, man, and it was double that just a couple years ago. Do you know what inflation can do to cash? And the market’s shooting up like a
rocket ship. We’re losing value every day this crap sits in a hole. But there are banks in the islands that will keep our IDs safe and pay interest to boot. We can make stock plays from there.”

“Stock plays.”

“Have you guys ever heard of this guy called Buffett?”

“Jimmy Buffett?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“But you’re the one talking about islands, right?”

“Yeah, man. Aruba.”

“And you’re going to take your share down to Aruba?” said Ben.

“Or Bermuda,” said Augie. “Or the Caymans. We could make a load and at the same time grab a couple days at the beach to work on our tans. You need to think these things through, Ben. You need to be smart. I’ll take your split there, too, if you want.”

“And what if they catch you at the border with all that cash?”

“They won’t.”

“And what if it gets in the papers that you had in your possession hundreds of thousands of dollars? What do you think happens to us?”

“It’s my money.”

“The minute you get picked up, Augie, we’re all dead. You can’t just think about yourself anymore.”

“No one else is thinking about me, that’s for sure.”

“I hear you’ve been shoving coke up your nose like it’s Afrin.”

“Who told you that?”

“Is it true? Have you been taking the money and spending it on coke?”

“No. Ben, man. No. I haven’t spent a penny. I haven’t even looked at the buckets since we buried them. I swear.”

“Then how are you getting the shit?”

“I just am.”

“How?”

“What are you now, a fucking lawyer?”

“You took some from the stash, didn’t you?” I said.

Augie looked down at the sheet on which he had been jotting his numbers. “Maybe,” he said.

“How much?”

“One brick when we were in the crawl space. Jesus, it was just sitting there. It’s high-grade stuff, boys. Zoom. And I’m willing to share.”

Ben turned to me. “We should never have trusted him.”

“He’ll be okay,” I said.

“As soon as the coke he stole runs out, he’s going to buy more and kill us all.”

“You know,” said Augie, “I’m right in the room with you.”

“I don’t know if we should divide this or burn it,” said Ben.

“Hey, Ben,” said Augie. “Fuck you.”

“You already have,” said Ben, shaking his head. “Every time you snort up with the stolen coke, my asshole hurts.”

There was a long silence as Ben and Augie stared at each other, something ugly sparking in the air between them.

“When the hell did we become old farts?” said Augie finally.

“The day we stole a million dollars from a motorcycle gang,” said Ben. “From here on in, being old farts is the only thing going to keep us alive.”

It took us a couple of hours to do the whole split-up thing, Ben and I working while Augie did the calculation. And at the end, with Augie’s money in a leather gym bag, Ben’s in a locked wooden chest, and mine in a green metal toolbox, one of the few things of my father’s that my mother had taken when we moved, only a final twenty lay alone in the middle of the floor. And we each had, by Augie’s count, $424,390.

The new Springsteen was out, and Augie was playing it on his stereo, and just as we finished the split Springsteen called out the “Two, three, four” for “Bobby Jean.” Tired as we were from the job, and hyped as we were from what we had pulled off, and scared as we were by the real threat to our lives that still lurked
outside, we couldn’t help ourselves. First I got up and started hopping around, and then Augie, and then finally Ben struggled to his feet. And together, the three of us, without even thinking about it, started dancing. “Bobby Jean” is a great song about old friends who drift apart, and the chord changes in the tune itself are so classic they radiate a sad nostalgia even as they’re rocking out. There is a point where Bruce calls out, “You hung with me when all the others turned away, turned up their noses,” and the three of us looked at each other and started laughing.

When the song was over we jumped around some more and looked at all our money. It was a great moment, really, between old friends who had fallen into an opportunity and run with it right off a cliff. The last great moment we ever had together. And it felt, yeah, it felt the way it felt before it all happened, and we were the best of friends, and all we wanted was to get trashed together in the woods and keep the future at bay. And even though Bruce was now singing “I’m Goin’ Down,” we didn’t care. We were back, together again, at least for a moment.

When we fell down to the floor, still laughing, Augie pulled out a joint. Ben and I begged off and watched as Augie lit up, dragged deep, held the smoke inside until it almost smothered him.

“Where are you going to hide your share, J.J.?” said Augie after he exhaled. “In your own crawl space?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“What about you, Ben? Going to bury it in a time capsule, only to be opened when you’re ninety?”

“I’ll put it someplace safe.”

“Where?”

No answer.

Augie took another drag, stared for a moment at the roach in his hand. “What’s the matter, boys,” he said with that constipated voice that comes from talking without letting the smoke out of your lungs, “don’t trust your old friend Augie?”

Neither Ben nor I said anything, which was an answer right there.

“It’s better if none of us knows where the others put the money,” said Ben. “If one of us gets picked up, the other two are going to have to run for it. This way, we’ll be able to run with our nest eggs intact.”

“I thought we swore to be loyal forever.”

“This just makes it easier to keep our promises.”

“So that’s the way it’s going to be?”

“That’s the way it’s going to be, son,” said Ben.

“And you, J.J.?”

“It’s safer,” I said.

“I get it,” said Augie. “I understand perfectly.”

“Don’t be a douche bag,” I said. “It’s safer for all of us.”

“Yeah, yeah. If I were you guys, I wouldn’t trust me either,” said Augie. “All right, no hard feelings, it’s all cool. You guys want to do a line to seal the deal?”

“Got to go,” said Ben.

“Me, too,” I said. “It’s late.”

“What about this last twenty?” said Augie, pointing to the orphan bill in the middle of the floor.

“Keep it,” said Ben as he and I both stood.

“No,” said Augie, “fair is fair. I wouldn’t want you boys to think I was cheating you.” He took the bill, ripped it into three, and gave us each a piece, leaving the last third for himself. “Fifty years from now, we’ll tape it all together and buy each other a beer.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Then I guess this is it.” Augie stared down at the joint smoldering in his fingers. “Keep in touch.”

We should have shared Augie’s joint just then, or done a line in solidarity, we should have sworn our fealty one to the others one more time, we should have done something other than what we did, which was just to leave Augie alone with his pile of easy
money and his burning joint and what was left of his stolen stash of coke. Was the future inevitable from that point on?

I think maybe it was, because after that night the three of us, we kept drifting further apart. Augie found a whole new group to get trashed with, along with a whole new bouquet of ever-more-powerful drugs. And Ben, strangely, started playing the full jock role, banging down beers with the rest of the football team, acting like a jerk in the hallways. And I had a new landscape to explore, someplace foreign and lush and absolutely intoxicating, the landscape of Madeline Worshack.

I loved Madeline Worshack. I loved her eyes, her lips, the way her limbs draped around me when we had sex in my bed while my mom was at work. She was everything I ever wanted. I began to make plans for our future. I looked teary-eyed at old couples I passed on the street. I felt sorry for the rest of the world. I was besotted, which should have been warning enough.

And then I felt the knife at my throat.