“Dude, I don’t know about this,” Doug said.
Mitch had figured it was coming, but he had hoped that Doug would just keep his reservations to himself until the robbery was over.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t need money this bad, man. I mean, I can work at Chicken Buckets. I should be at Chicken Buckets right now, handing in my drug test.”
Mitch knew Doug felt this way and he had, in fact, always known. Every sign pointed to it, from the poorly prepared car with two gallons of gas in it to the cut-up ski masks, yet he had been denying it to himself, pretending Doug was still an enthusiastic team player. They should have left Doug out of it and he and Kevin should have been there alone. But it was a team effort and Doug was always part of the team.
“Well, shit, man. I wish you’d have said something before now.” He lit a cigarette, aware that Doug was basically asking him permission to go. He didn’t want him to. If Doug left, Mitch knew that nothing would ever be the same between them, that their friendship would basically be over. “Why’d you let it go this far?”
Doug began shifting his weight from leg to leg, and Mitch could never recall seeing him more uncomfortable. For a moment, they watched the black SUV, in which, Mitch now realized, there was a teenage girl being taught by her mother how to parallel park. Over and over, the SUV lurched awkwardly toward a parking space at an extreme angle, then stopped, then jerked forward.
“I gotta tell you something,” Doug said.
Right then, Mitch heard angels singing. There was a clanking and whirring of the heavy chains on the tires of the armored car as it turned the corner. And there it was, old, battered, and lurching, a monolith of scarred metal, parking right in front of the bank. Mitch could see, behind the windshield wipers, the familiar faces of the old guy and the fat guy. They were right on time, despite the snow. God, you had to love this company’s punctuality.
“There’s the truck. Look, is this about you and Linda?” he asked, hoping to move the conversation along. At the mention of her name, Doug looked like he had been punched. “I know about that,” Mitch added.
“How, how… Does Kevin know?”
“No, of course not. Dude, look, I’ve got to rob this thing, OK? If you want out, go ahead and take off. I’ll see you later.”
Before he could finish the sentence, Doug was running off into the street. Right behind the SUV, which inexplicably accelerated backward, knocking Doug down with a loud bang of metal and a yelp of pain.
“Awwww!” Doug screamed as he fell into snow. The SUV slammed to a halt. Mitch, who hadn’t moved, saw the passenger door fly open, and a middle aged woman hopped out, looking panicked.
“Ohmigod,” she was saying. “I’m so sorry. My daughter is learning to parallel park…”
Still standing in the alcove, Mitch saw the elderly guard come over to help Doug up. And then, right behind him, the fat guard, waddling over. From his vantage point, he could see inside the SUV, where a teenage girl was sitting with her head in her hands and appeared to be crying. But he wasn’t thinking about that. He was thinking about the fact that
His legs moved before he could think about it. He darted along the side of the building, his feet crunching in the snow as he pulled his ski mask down. There they were-two big brown leather bags, just sitting in the truck with the door open. Mitch reached inside, wrapped his arms around them both, pulled them towards him, and, clutching them to his chest, ran over to the Impala.
“Go, go, go!” he yelled at Kevin, who was sitting in the idling Impala, wearing a ski mask. Mitch opened the back door of the Impala, threw both bags of money into the backseat, and climbed into the front passenger seat. Behind him, he heard someone scream, “Hey!”
“What about Doug?” asked Kevin as he put the Impala in drive. The Impala sputtered and lurched forward.
“Go, go, go!”
Kevin punched the Impala and they shot out into the street, where Mitch could see both guards running toward them. The fat guard was fumbling with the gun on his holster. Kevin drove right by him. The older guard slipped and fell in the street.
“Ouch,” said Kevin as he drove by the old man. He pulled up next to Doug, who was standing next to the woman who had been in the passenger seat when the SUV hit him.
“Get in the fucking car!” Mitch screamed. He leaned into the backseat and tried to open the back door for Doug. The woman he had been talking to about the accident was staring into the Impala, now looking even more horrified than she had a few seconds before as she regarded two men in ski masks.
“British accents!” Kevin was yelling.
Doug didn’t seem to be understanding that he should get in the car, so Mitch leaped out and in one smooth movement grabbed his coat, opened the back door of the Impala, and started to shove him in.
There was a gunshot and a yelp of pain.
“Jesus!” Mitch screamed. He looked over at the fat guard, who was crouching in a combat position back where the Impala had driven by him, a smoking pistol in his hand. Mitch knew that he hadn’t been shot. Had Doug? Where had the yelp come from? He shoved Doug all the way in and slammed the door.
“Go, go, go!” Mitch shouted. Kevin gunned the accelerator and they skidded up to a stop sign. Mitch could feel the car sliding, tractionless, in the snow.
“Don’t stop! What the fuck are you doing? This is a getaway!”
“I’d rather not be hit by someone coming the other way,” Kevin said calmly, talking through the ski mask. He accelerated through the intersection.
“Owwww,” Doug moaned.
“Dude, did you get shot?” Mitch stuck his head into the backseat, where Doug was lying on the bags of money, clutching his leg. He didn’t answer.
“Man, I think Doug got shot,” Mitch said to Kevin.
Kevin pulled up his ski mask. “No fucking way,” he said.
“That fat bastard was shooting at us. I heard a shot.”
“Yeah, I heard a shot too.” Kevin looked into the rearview mirror. “Doug, man,” he yelled. “Did you get shot?”
“Awwww,” Doug moaned. “What are guys talking about? I got hit by a car. I think I broke my ankle.”
Mitch leaned back over the seat, looking for blood, or a bullet hole. “You didn’t get shot?” He began to pat Doug down, trying to find a wound. He felt relief welling up inside him as his search yielded nothing.
“Will you stop touching me?”
“I’m not touching you. I’m trying to see if you got shot.”
“I didn’t get shot, man. What the fuck are you talking about? I got hit by a car.”
“You’re sure you didn’t get shot? You don’t, like, feel funny?”
“Can you feel your legs?” Kevin shouted. “Can you feel your legs?” He started to crane his neck backward, and they nearly careened off the snow-slicked road.
“Dude, will you just drive?” Mitch snapped.
“Yeah, I can feel my legs. I can feel one ankle which feels like it’s, like, fucking broken.”
Mitch began to believe that Doug had not, in fact, been shot, and relief washed over him. He couldn’t see any blood and Doug was being his usual self.
“We got plenty of pain pills,” Kevin said. “When we get home, just take some pain pills.”
“I intend to,” said Doug.
Mitch sat back down in the passenger seat. “That’s something you won’t have to tell him twice,” he said to Kevin.
They pulled onto the dirt road, which was now snow covered. Kevin parked the car as far back into the trees as he could.
“Man, I sure wish there was a ravine around here we could push this fucker into,” Mitch said.
“This’ll have to do,” said Kevin.
“Awwwww,” moaned Doug.
“Come on, you big pussy,” Mitch said. They grabbed the bags and loaded them into the truck, under the tarp, then pulled the tarp tight to prevent anything from falling out. Mitch peeked into one of the bags, but all he could see was another bag.
“Don’t look now,” Kevin said. “Later, later.”
They got into Kevin’s truck, with Mitch helping Doug, who was noticeably limping. Kevin cleaned the snow off the windshield. He fired up the truck.
“Ski masks off,” Kevin said. “Make sure you’ve got your ski masks off.”
Mitch was still wearing his. He pulled it off and nodded to Kevin. Doug had never had his on.
They sat for a second in the truck, listening to the country radio station to which Kevin left it permanently tuned.
“Dudes,” Kevin said, before putting the truck in gear. “We did it.”
THEY WERE SITTING in Doug and Mitch’s living room, high on the adrenaline from the robbery. Doug’s ankle was propped up on the coffee table, wrapped in ice, though Mitch thought he was exaggerating the pain as an excuse to eat more pain pills. The swelling didn’t look that bad and Doug had never exactly been John Wayne when it came to minor injuries.
Mitch turned the TV on to wait for the five o’clock news as Kevin dumped the bags out onto the living room floor. Inside the bags were smaller, blue bags, made out of seemingly impenetrable plastic, with locks on them. They regarded the locks, then the bags, wondering which would be easier to cut through.
“We need bolt cutters for the locks,” Kevin said.
“I bet I can get through the plastic with a steak knife,” Mitch said. Then he tried doing exactly that until, after three attempts at stabbing the bag, he cut himself. “Fuck!”
“I have bolt cutters at home,” Kevin said.
Nobody wanted to wait for him to drive home and back. They shook the idea off.
“This is like the shit they make bulletproof vests out of,” said Mitch.
“Kevlar,” said Doug helpfully.
Mitch stabbed the bag again. The knife just bounced off, cutting him again and spattering him with his own blood. “Fuck!”
“Dude, I bet you can rip that lock off with a wrench,” Doug suggested. “Or two wrenches. I’ll hold it, and you…”
