A Simple Plan

'He's got a gun,' Jacob said. He reached up and pushed at my back with his hand, urging me forward, and then, when I didn't move, rushed past me through the door. When he reached the walk, he broke into a run. I just stood there, watching Lou approach. He'd left the garage door open behind him, so that he came toward me out of a square of darkness, like a troll emerging from his cave. I was thinking that I could calm him down.

'What're you doing, Lou?' I asked. It seemed silly for him to be acting like this, like a thwarted child throwing a tantrum.

Nancy called his name again, her voice sounding as if she were already halfway back to sleep. 'Lou?'

Lou ignored her. He stopped about five feet away from me, then raised the gun until it was leveled at my chest. 'Give me the tape,' he said.

I shook my head. 'Put the gun down, Lou.'

Behind me I heard Jacob opening the door to his truck. There was a moment's pause, and then it slammed shut. He's leaving me, I remember thinking. He's running away. I waited for the cough of the engine turning over, waited for the crunch of the tires on the gravel as he pulled out of the driveway, but it didn't come. Instead I heard the heavy clumping of his footsteps returning toward me, and when I glanced back over my shoulder, I found him running up the driveway, his rifle held out in front of his chest. It was my older brother, finally, after all these years, coming to protect me.

But it was all wrong: so wrong, in fact, that at first I couldn't believe it was actually happening. An image floated up into my mind, absurdly, of Jacob playing army as a child: I saw him emerge from the cover of the south field, hesitate there like a real soldier, then scuttle toward the house, panting with the effort, a toy machine gun cradled in his arms, our uncle's World War II helmet balanced loosely on his head, bouncing forward and backward with every step, so that he had to keep reaching up and pushing it away from his eyes. He'd been coming to get me then, to capture me off the porch -- a boys' game with make-believe weapons -- and that was how he looked now, as if he were playing but pretending to be serious.

The sight of him, the sight of the rifle in his hands, sent a surge of terror through my body. It felt electric; my fingertips seemed to crackle with it. I held up my hand, waving him off, and he stopped at the foot of the walk, twenty feet away. I could hear his breath, a sawtoothed sound in the darkness. I turned back toward Lou, trying to fill the doorway with my body. I knew I couldn't let him see my brother, knew implicitly that if it reached the point where they stood facing each other with their guns, anything could happen. It would be out of my control.

'Give it to me, Hank,' Lou said. His voice came out sounding remarkably controlled, and this hint of composure, tiny as it was, momentarily reassured me.

'Why don't we talk in the morning, Lou?' I said. 'Everybody'll be calmer then, and we'll work things out.'

He shook his head. 'You're not going to leave until you give me the tape.'

'Hank?' Jacob called from the foot of the walk. 'You okay?'

'Go wait in the truck, Jacob.'

Lou craned his neck to see outside, but I blocked his view. I stepped backward onto the porch, dragging the door shut behind me. I was trying to separate them, but Lou misinterpreted it. He thought I was running away, thought I was scared of him, and it gave him a burst of confidence. He took two quick steps forward, grabbed the edge of the door with his right hand, and yanked it open. He waved his gun in my face.

'I said you're not going to--' he started.

'Leave him alone, Lou,' Jacob shouted.

Lou froze, startled, and we both turned to look. My brother was squinting down the barrel of his rifle, aiming it at Lou's head.

'Stop it, Jacob,' I said. 'Go back to the truck.' But he didn't move. He was focused on Lou, and Lou was focused on him. I was being shoved off to the periphery, a prop in their drama.

'You gonna shoot me, Jake?' Lou asked, and then, together, they both began to yell, each trying to outshout the other: Jacob told him to leave me alone, to shut up, to put down the gun, that he didn't want to hurt him; and Lou started in about their friendship, about being tricked in his own house, about how much he needed the money, and how he was going to shoot me if I didn't give him the tape.

'Shhh,' I kept saying, pleading now, and ignored by everyone. 'Shhh.'

In the midst of all this, I saw a light come on in one of the upstairs windows. I stared up at it, waiting for Nancy to appear, hoping that her voice, drifting down like an angel's from the sky above our heads, might stop this insanity, might silence their shouts and make them put down their guns. She didn't come to the window, though; she opened her bedroom door and ran down the hallway to the head of the stairs.

'Lou?' I heard her call. She was out of sight, but I could imagine how she looked from the sound of her voice -- sleepy and bewildered, her hair tangled and matted, her face puffy around the eyes.

Instantly, Lou fell silent, and when he stopped yelling, my brother did, too. My ears were ringing from their shouting. The night seemed to settle around us, softly, in little pieces, like falling snow.

Nancy came down a few steps. I could see one of her feet now through the upper frame of the doorway. It was bare and very small. 'What's going on?' she asked.

Lou's face was a brilliant red, his nostrils flared. He seemed to be having a hard time catching his breath. He was pointing his gun at the center of my chest, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at Jacob. 'You fucking piece of shit,' he said, very quietly. Then he glanced at me. 'The two of you. Pretending to be my friends.' He raised the gun until it was pointing at my face. 'I ought to blow your fucking brains out.'

'Come on, Lou,' I said, keeping my voice low and calm. 'We can talk this out.' I didn't think he was going to shoot me; I thought it was just bluster, like a dog barking. Nancy's presence was a good thing; if we let her, I knew, she'd bring us out of this danger. Another few seconds and Lou would lower his gun. Then she'd take him inside, and it would all be over.

Nancy came down another step. I could see two feet and a shin now. 'Put down the gun, baby,' she said, and the softness of her voice was like a balm to me. I felt myself relax beneath its touch.

But Lou shook his head. 'Go back to bed,' he said. He pumped a shell into the shotgun's chamber, adjusted his aim at my face. 'I'm just going to shoot these two pieces of--'

He didn't finish his sentence. There was an explosion behind me, a flash of blue light followed instantly by a sense of movement over my left shoulder. I ducked, shutting my eyes, and heard Lou's gun clatter to the tiled floor.

When I lifted my head, he'd disappeared from the doorway.

There was perhaps a second's worth of silence before Nancy began to scream. It was just long enough for me to make out the sound of the wind sighing though the branches of the trees above me, and then it was over, and there was only her voice. It filled the house, strained against the walls.

'Noooooo,' she screamed. She went on and on, until she ran out of air, and then she began again. 'Noooooo.'

I knew what had happened: it was the absolute stillness behind me, and the utter horror which this stillness implied, that made it undeniable. My brother had shot Lou.

I stepped forward and up, across the porch and into the house, and found Lou lying on his back a few feet from the door. The bullet had hit him in the forehead, about an inch above his eyes. It had left a very small hole in front, but there was a large puddle of blood on the floor, working its way out across the entranceway, so I knew that the hole in back must be bigger. His face was absolutely expressionless, almost serene. His mouth was partly open, his teeth visible, his head tilted slightly back, so that it looked as if he were about to sneeze. His right hand was thrown flamboyantly out across the floor; his left was covering his heart. The shotgun was lying beside his shoulder.

He was dead, of course. There was no doubt about this: Jacob had killed him. And so, I thought to myself, just like that, in an instant, it was over -- everything was going to be revealed now, all our secrets, all our crimes. We'd let things slip out of our control.

Nancy came down the stairs one step at a time. She was a big woman, larger than Lou. Her hair was shoulder length and dyed a peculiar, unabashedly artificial tint of orange. She was holding her hand over her mouth, her eyes locked on Lou's body. I watched her approach, feeling as if I were in some sort of trance. Everything seemed to be happening at a distance, as though I were observing it from behind a sheet of glass.

'Oh my God,' she said, the words coming out at double speed, as if they'd been glued together. She kept repeating it, over and over again. 'Oh my God oh my God oh my God.'