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Down in the Dirt (v128) (the Mar./Apr. 2015 Issue)




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Shucked

Hal Savage

    As he calmly left the bank, Jeff thought: Lisa would diss me if she ever saw this get-up. But she wasn’t going to see it, the bitch.
    On this late December day Jeff could have slipped away without the help of the scruffy street guy, who was still shouting nonsense at the top of his lungs inside the bank.
    For a split second Jeff wondered if the teller had picked up the smell of fish from his clothing, along with the scent of weed. Impossible. It had been two years since he worked at the oyster farm. The teller had seen him sweating, but so what? The important thing was that she believed he had a gun and wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
    Jeff slipped into the throng of Christmas shoppers outside and zig-zagged along the short block to the Castro Muni station. In under two minutes’ time he had crossed Castro Street and was descending the long flights of cement steps. He glanced over his shoulder once. He could see people hanging around the plaza across the street and bustling Christmas shoppers.
    No cops.
    Once he reached the platform he turned away from the mob of waiting passengers and found a spot against the tiled wall, near the trash bin. Off came the ski cap and fake beard and the 49ers sweatshirt. When no one was looking he dropped them into a bin. Being careful not to open the bag too far, he reached below the bundle of bills and pulled out an old soiled denim jacket. With his currently fashionable torn jeans and the jacket he was just another guy in the crowd. He was a bit too old to be dressing like this, he realized, but it was too late now.
    He took a deep breath and turned around. A cop! But his uniform was brown. Just a Muni cop. He slowly exhaled. He looked up at the electronic monitor. A downtown train was in the tunnel and about to arrive. Just a few seconds more, he thought.

    Jeff quickly boarded with the other passengers. He found an aisle seat next to an obese woman, hoping she would block the view from outside the window. The doors closed and the train pulled out.
    Just then he eyed the train’s big side mirror and saw them. Two cops in a hurry. They had split up and were checking the platform, which was empty now except for a few stragglers or those waiting for a different train. “Missed me,” he chuckled to himself. He looked down at his watch. It had all taken less than five minutes, from the time he bagged the money to now. He had been extremely lucky. The trains were often late. He had counted on their being extra trains to accommodate shoppers, and for once he guessed right.
    At the Church Street station two cops got on. He had expected this, but his heart was still pounding. Each cop took one side of the train and slowly proceeded toward the back, viewing each passenger. Jeff was in the second car, five rows back. He was sure that at least one patrolman had entered the second car through the rear doors to prevent an escape in that direction. He fought the urge to turn around and look behind him.
    The pock-faced cop on his side had three seats to go before he reached Jeff. He asked a young Latino to open his shopping bag. Apparently satisfied, he passed by the next seat with two women sitting in it.
    Jeff fervently hoped his present disguise did not call attention to itself. He had pulled out a paperback crossword puzzle book as soon as he sat down and started working it in pencil. He had made sure to complete a substantial part of the puzzle ahead of time, so it would look like he had been riding since SFO or at least Daly City. In the meantime he smelled the foul odor of human gas. The woman next to him had squeezed out a noxious fart. Perfect! The cop peered down at his shopping sack, seeing a box on top, all done up in Christmas wrapping. The heavy woman opened her purse obligingly, the picture of innocence. Jeff could feel the cop’s eyes boring into him and imagined him inwardly wincing from the odor. Something told him that this was the time to meet the cop’s eyes and smile. He did so. He was afraid to ask what all the fuss was about, afraid his voice would fail him. Instead, he turned back to his puzzle.
    When he looked up again the cop had moved to the next two passengers. For a moment Jeff felt as if he were going to throw up or shit his pants or both. He took a deep breath and the queasiness gradually subsided.
    “I wonder what’s going on,” said the woman next to him. “Maybe somebody ripped off a cell phone.”
    “Something bigger than that,” he said, his snide tone bordering on ridicule. He had hoped to shut her up, but instead he had engaged her. His peripheral vision caught her appraising him.
    “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe someone robbed a bank.”
    He felt his cheeks burning, but he was determined not to make eye contact. She was about to speculate again, but stopped herself, seeing him engrossed in his puzzle.
    Abruptly he decided to get off at the busy Powell station, where a throng of passengers nearly filled the platform. From there he would walk to the central terminal and catch the commuter bus to Marin County. As soon as the street car’s doors opened, he popped up and left before the woman could say another word.
    At the central terminal one city cop was roaming and searching. Thirty feet away another was surveying the line of commuters. Stout and black, she was all business, studying each person seperately. Jeff was the last in line. He felt himself trembling as she turned to him. Concentrate, he told himself, as he continued to work on his puzzle. Twenty three down was “singer Clooney.” “Rosemary,” he wrote. His hand shook, but what the hell, it was cold. He pulled his jacket tight with his other hand, a little show just for the cop. From the corner of his eye he saw the cop turn and leave. Safe for now, he told himself.
    The passengers ahead were finally boarding. After a seeming eternity he showed his ticket and climbed aboard. Glad to be away from the diesel fumes, he felt the welcoming heat inside. As he moved down the aisle he saw mostly business types in suits and overcoats and a few who “dressed down.” He wondered idly what someone would say if he told them he was a dirt farmer. Probably nothing, he guessed. What was there to say?
    Soon the bus rumbled by the toll both on the Golden Gate, into the billowing white fog. For a few moments Jeff let himself be a tourist. He smiled at the sight of it. He smiled as he remembered driving with his dad to Drake’s Oyster Farm through both fog and rain, the two of them with their lunch boxes, chugging along the road from Petaluma, on to Drake’s Bay.
    After crossing the bridge the sky slowly darkened. Instead of the wispy fog, Jeff felt a miasma forming around him, full of his troubles. It had started with the closure of the fishery. The Secretary of the Interior had decided it should not coexist with its pristine surroundings, even though it had done so for close to a century. How did an oyster farm threaten livestock, wild animals and birds? Jeff’s father had posed this question at a meeting. The government man reminded him that trucks traveled along the little road to the oyster farm on the bay, then out again. An irate shucker shouted “What about cattle trucks?” Others sounded off to no avail.
    After the closure Jeff and his father could not find work. Jeff and some of his coworkers could use the “fancy” new phones, but they had few technical skills, which the job market called for. Several of the men got jobs at gas stations, but then the stations, themselves, started closing. Jeff learned from a buddy that the gas stations made more on confections and cigarettes than on selling gas. Jeff had tried to get work at a grocery store, but he would have to start as a bagger, and those positions were all filled. “This sucks,” he told the manager. The manager shrugged his shoulders. He put Jeff’s name on a waiting list.
    During this period Jeff’s mother succumbed to ovarian cancer after a year of expensive treatments. It nearly bled them dry. As often happens, his father died soon after from a coronary. Jeff inherited the family home, along with its mortgage and considered himself lucky. The mortgage payments were considerably less than the rent he and Lisa were paying. But after a year he depleted his savings, and Lisa was in the same boat.
    At that point Jeff and his wife became desperate. Lisa had already lost her job as a receptionist in a local restaurant. She complained loudly about her supervisor, but Jeff knew she was often late to work. They decided to sell their house. They took that money and bought a run-down farm in Sonoma County. There was never any question about what they would raise. The main crop would have to be marijuana. They would plant potatoes and vegetables for their own consumption. Jeff read books, went on the internet and talked to some of his stoner friends. They planted their seeds in a secluded part of their property, away from the road. The first crop flourished in the mild coastal climate. They were ecstatic. Then, just before harvest, a neighbor reported him. Jeff never found out who the bastard was. It didn’t matter. The sheriff told him to destroy the crop or face jail time.
    Now they were eking out a living selling their vegetables at the big farmers’ market in Petaluma. Lisa hated the farm. She preferred to go to her secret place on Mount Tam in the shadows of the giant redwoods to pick mushrooms, leaving him to the lion’s share of planting or harvesting. Then she would proudly add her “little bit” to the boxes of vegetables in the bed of their old Ford pickup. Invariably she would arrive at the last minute, just before he was ready to pull out.
    All that is about to change, he thought.
    The bus stopped in Sausalito to let out eight passengers. He squinted at them as they went to their cars, their outlines blurred. The window did not seem that dirty. Maybe I need glasses, he thought.
    Finally they turned into the commuter station in Petaluma. The longest bus ride ever was finally over. He peered through the window and saw Lisa waiting for him in their old pickup, the Drakes Bay signage still on the door, fading and rusted from the moist ocean air. It all seemed blurry to him.
    “Hey,” she said. She gave him a peck on the mouth.
    “Pull out slowly. Don’t want to look like we’re in a hurry.” She let out the clutch and backed out of the parking space. He peered into both mirrors, seeing nothing amiss.
    “I think I need glasses,” he said.
    “Well, now you can get some, as many pairs as you like. Hell, you could get oyster shell frames! How did it go?”
    “Like clockwork. I had an accomplice.”
    “What?” She was swerving into another lane.
    “Watch it!”
    She fastened her eyes on the road again. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “Don’t get your panties into a twist. I had an idea, that’s all. And it worked to perfection.”
    “Who...?”
    “I’m about to tell you. I saw this scuzzy guy on the street. Down on his luck, but not crazy, you know? I offered him twenty dollars if he would walk into the bank just after me and start shouting shit. And he did. ‘End of the world stuff.’ He was beautiful.”
    “That was risky.”
    “No, robbing the bank was risky.” He turned around and peered out the back window. No one was following them.
    She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a joint. “This will calm you down,” she said.
    “I’m not that nervous.” But he lit it anyway. “Funny thing is, I wasn’t that nervous in the bank, either. Kinda like I’d taken a few hits just before, you know?”
    “Interesting.”
    The chickens in the yard turned jerkily and clucked as they drove up. They shooed them away and went inside.
    She had cleared the place mats and condiments off their scarred oak table. He plopped down the shopping bag.
    “I’m going to need a drink,” she said. “You?”
    “Naw, I’m still mellow from the weed.”
    “Just to celebrate. Come on. It isn’t every day you rob a bank.” Said with a wink and a smile. He didn’t know what was going on with her, but he liked it.
    “Might as well.”
    She pulled down the Wild Turkey and poured them both drinks. They toasted. “To our first merry Christmas in years,” she said. She sat down and leaned back in her chair. For the first time in weeks she was smiling at him, her face radiant. “Maybe I should do this more often,” he said, and she chuckled, a soft throaty sound.
    Feeling dizzy from the pot and bourbon, he sat down, himself. “It’s time,” he said.
    “Go for it.”
    He pulled out the bundles of bills and divvied them up. She got up and went to a rolltop desk and got out two pocket calculators. By the time she returned to the table, he had apportioned their stacks. They began to count their separate piles, writing down the totals. To his chagrin, Jeff had to squint at the numbers on the calculator. His father had never worn glasses, even up to the end.
    “I get twenty-two thousand, three hundred and ten,” she said.
    “Twenty-nine, seven hundred,” he threw in. He had hoped for more. “These days hitting one teller won’t make you a millionaire.”
    “Aw. I think you did great,” she said. She got up and came around behind his chair and kissed the top of his head. “My bandit,” she cooed. Before he knew it they were in the bedroom tearing off their clothes. This time it’s going to be great, he told himself. And he was right. The euphoria, the plans they made together lasted on into the evening, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.
    The next morning he woke up in a fog. The magnitude of what he had done, the sheer desperate stupidity of it swept over him. As soon as he got out of bed he felt dizzy. Still high from the night before, he guessed. He stumbled into the bathroom and splashed water onto his face. Coffee. He could smell the aroma from the kitchen. Their coffee machine made the brew at seven. A cup of coffee would snap him out of this. He carefully made his way to the kitchen, determined not to fall.
    The first cup of French coffee did nothing. As he poured a second cup he realized that there was something seriously off. Suddenly he knew: He had eaten poison mushrooms. It had happened once before. He and Lisa were sick, but nothing like this. Yesterday he had been feeling weird, and there was the thing with his vision. Then today. The poison had to have been been in the sphaghetti sauce last night and in the mushroom gravy the night before. It was the amanita or the other one, both full of deadly coprine. And he had drunk liquor both nights, which accelerated the effects. Lisa had been unaffected yesterday. This morning? He didn’t know.
    She’s planning to skip with the money, he thought. He would wake her up and confront her. But first: time to call 911. Holding himself steady at the sink, his eyes roamed the kitchen. Where the hell was his phone? Bedroom, he remembered. Has to be there. He reeled out of the kitchen and lurched and weaved down the hallway, stopping to steady himself against the wall. He would make the emergency call first, then wake her up. Everything was blurring fast, now, the ceiling light in the hallway a dim halo. In the cowbebs of his mind he heard the voice of a spider: Strangle her. He moved on, steadying himself with the wall. Finally he made it to the bedroom door and reached for the knob. And missed. He fell onto the beige carpet and lay there. He knew he must get up but he could not move.
    A pleasant euphoria took hold. Something was coming into view... The old pickup. Dad was driving it, Jeff riding shotgun, on their way to the oyster farm. Oldies were playing on the radio. Then the scene shifted to the dock. Yes. He could see it clearly now. They were on the dock and Dad was smoking his pipe. Jeff could smell the salty scent from a mammoth pile of dry oyster shells, comingling with the pipe smoke. “Time to check the traps,” Dad was saying, and he was smiling, proud of his only son.



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