He drove his brakeless truck to Tijuana. I knew his need for exuberance, the impulse to freedom the same as that to fiction—the liberty to remember his life as he chose. He sometimes offered descriptions with an impetuous edge to his voice, perhaps still testing the limits of the possible.
His trip to Tijuana was no more than this. He was warming up for a change, a new type of crime, but first he needed to enjoy the emptiness of the highway sky and see the many shapes the earth could hold.
✴
HE PULLED A string of robberies along the West Coast. He claimed that in more than a decade of crime he’d robbed at least fifty banks and as many jewelry stores at gunpoint. Wanting to look respectable, he got a nose job to repair the damage of fights and years in prison. He triangulated his life between LA, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City, where his girlfriend thought he was a traveling businessman. All that time, he was contemplating the details of the Hollywood burglary, the big job, the one that would set him free and allow him to go home with pride.
But there was still the recklessness—casinos and resorts and a night when, drunk and standing on the hood of a moving car, he fell off and broke his arm. He robbed a jewelry store with it in a cast, but, back in the car, couldn’t get his gun out of his pocket. He asked his partner’s girlfriend to take it out, and she accidentally pulled the trigger and blew a hole in his pants.
“We were lucky the bullet didn’t hit the gas tank,” he told me and then described another time when his partner forgot his gun in a jewelry store, having put it down to fill his bag. Nobody wanted to go back, but their fingerprints were on it since they’d all used the same guns.
“I was scared that time,” he said, “going into a place I’d just robbed, with a bunch of people who were pretty angry and had one of our guns. I went in with my gun pointed, but they hadn’t even picked up the one we’d left. They all got right back down on the floor…
“You know, I understand why you want to write. I get it…”
I just nodded, as if he could see, and he began telling me about the big job again.
“When I pulled it, I thought everything would be easy. I thought it was my way out. I couldn’t know my partner was going to be stupid and set fire to the surveillance apartment. When his girlfriend and I got to the house in Nevada, we drew the blinds and dumped the money on the living room floor. The pile of stacked bills came up past my knees. I thought I’d done something so big, so perfect, I’d never have to worry about anything again. I thought I’d fooled life…
“That’s when I finally went home. I knew the police were after me, and I wanted to show my family how rich I was. But I couldn’t stay. I was already on the run. It’s the only thing I regret. What I did to my mother. She didn’t deserve it.”
✴
I’D BECOME USED to his contrasts—the way he spoke like an old man, tired of life, and then swung to anger, before sounding hopeful again.
After the big job, when his partner didn’t show up, he knew the police would come looking. He bought a Chevy convertible, new silk clothes, dozens of gifts for his family, and drove to Quebec, crossing the continent and border, passing Montreal, following the rugged coast home—the Saint Lawrence growing wider until he could barely see the other shore.
His sisters and brothers ran outside as soon as he parked.
“Maman, maman!” they were shouting.
His mother kissed his cheeks. There was no recrimination. He’d called over the years and sent letters with lies, but there had been gaps during his times in prison. He realized that the feeling he’d always had, that he’d been her favorite, was right. She would forgive anything.
Bernard was there, in boots and work pants, his arms covered in tattoos. His own nose had been flattened, and he teased my father about the new nose and asked if he was a Hollywood star.
My father said no and lied that he had a transportation company in the US.
Bernard snorted. “Une compagnie de transport?”
He wiped his mouth and turned away.
A few days later, my father took his mother to the north coast, to visit the sisters she hadn’t seen in years. He chartered a small airplane, and in the spring sunlight, she gathered with her family, children milling about as he stood with the men, saying little, just practicing stories about his imaginary company.
When they returned, Bernard teased him about the presents, calling him a good boy, “un bon ’tit garçon.” My father ignored him, and Bernard spoke about the merchant marines, the brawls in port cities. He was glad their father had taught him how to box. He wanted to go drinking, to see my father fight again, but my father was afraid of drawing attention. He said he didn’t fight anymore, and Bernard nodded, watchful.
My father talked about life in the US, how he’d chosen not to become an American citizen since he didn’t want to be drafted for Vietnam. Bernard asked what he thought of the province now that the priests had lost power and Le Front de libération du Québec was planting bombs in Montreal. But my father just shrugged.
“You don’t really have a transportation company, do you?” Bernard said.
“Of course I do,” my father told him and walked away.
Expo 67 had begun in Montreal, and my father planned to take his two youngest brothers. The day
