Bank Robbers
I.
Betty couldn't find any scotch tape so she removed all the store coupons and football schedules from the refrigerator leaving it completely clear and put one state magnet on each of the four corners of the note to her husband Jim so he couldn't possibly miss it. This is what the note said:

Dear Jim,
I am going out to rob the credit union. Don't try to stop me. I know what I am doing. Here is the thing . . . . I got another one of those rejections yesterday and I didn't want to tell you because you never sympathize, you just say you don't understand why I waste my time writing stories when I could be making more money typing those stupid theses for those stupid pissant college students who don't know their asses from a hole in the ground and I just don't want to hear that anymore. If you can't understand this need that I have to write then at least accept it. Well, be that as it may, I am also pretty tired of the rejection letters, even the nice ones that say they liked the story but it wasn't what they needed at this time: why the hell don't they just SAY what they need? I could write it if I knew what they were looking for. You know I've been writing stories ever since high school. I did because I had no one to talk to. No one ever paid me any mind but you. No offense but there are things I want to talk about that you are not interested in. So, anyway, I've been seeing all these folks getting big book contracts after they've committed a crime or been a witness in a crime trial or a lawyer representing someone who committed a crime and I got the idea that if I robbed the credit union and got caught maybe I could get my stories published. And if I don't get caught, well then we'll be rich and god knows we could use more money. Either way, at the end of the day, I expect to be either rich or famous and you can't beat that. I'll see you later, sweetie.Love, Betty


Of course Jim completely missed the note. He opened the fridge door and got himself some orange juice and then walked around the house hollering for Betty. The house was not very large, one of those brick ranchers with two little bedrooms and a tiny bathroom off a long narrow hall. It took Jim five minutes to search the house including huffing and puffing his way back up the stairs from the basement. He hadn't checked the kids' rooms, empty now for years since the two girls and a boy had left home to get their own apartments and work jobs they hated while they searched for the perfect mate and one of them tried writing screenplays, got that from her mother, dammit. Just about broke his heart the way Betty could never be satisfied. She woke up one morning last week saying 'it never happened, it never happened'� and he thought she was having a nightmare but turns out she was saying it had just hit her that she was 58 years old and all her life she kept thinking something wonderful would happen one day and now that she was 58 she had to realize that it never had happened yet and probably never would and she cried and cried and Jim didn't know whether to be hurt or angry and was probably both but he did his best to comfort her, held her and told her that she was the wonderful thing that happened to him and he meant it and she said 'Oh, honey, I'm so sorry'� and he thought maybe then they'd have sex but she said another time. He was tired of it but couldn't imagine what to do about it and now, now the woman was gone. He'd checked the garage off the kitchen and her little car was gone.
Maybe she was kidnapped, right from their own home, made to drive some crazy person to Mexico in her own car, a damn hijacking from their own house. He felt suddenly guilty that he hadn't been more vigilant, hadn't been more sympathetic, more understanding. After all he had married the smartest girl in the senior class, he should have realize a gifted girl would want more out of life than three children and a tract house. Then he rationalized that he'd done the best he could and why did she marry him if he wasn't good enough for her? Finally he decided to call the police.
During all of this he hadn't noticed the note on the refrigerator door. Neither did the police who came to look for clues to an intruder in the house and ask him questions about where he thought she might have gone. They were all over and he even offered them Diet Cokes from the fridge but no one noticed the note. They suggested he might call her friends to ask if they had any ideas about where she might have gone and he called her friend Jean who asked him if she'd left a note.
A NOTE!
Of course, Betty was always writing him notes, but she usually taped them on the mirror so he'd see them when he was shaving. He looked all over for a note and still missed the letter on the refrigerator which she had taken care to place over the freezer section right at his eye level.
So, in her bathrobe and slippers and a look of disgust on her face, Jean came over and found the note right off the bat for him and by then it was pretty late, too late to stop Betty, which turned out to be a stroke of good fortune for Maureen over at the Podunk International Bank in the next town down the highway.

II.
So, what is this International Bank business? Betty was going off to rob the home town credit union. Thing is, she forgot that the credit union was closed on Wednesday mornings and stayed open later that night. After having written her letter about being rich or famous she didn't feel like going back home to wait for the credit union to open so she headed out west on the highway.
The next town was Podunk, yes there really is a town named Podunk. Some hippies back in the sixties had actually taken over a small ghost town, once a mining town and they thought it would be funny to call it 'Podunk'� and the name stuck even as the hippies grew up to be more or less the usual run of the mill country folks just doing whatever to get from one day to the next.
Maureen had come to the town about ten years later, driving cross country to escape New Jersey. There was this little bank there called the Podunk International Bank because they did a lot of business with Mexico and she got a job and sort of expected to be promoted because the owner of the bank was one of these hippies and she didn't expect the same old sexist shit from him that she had experienced in New Jersey. But the boss was busted when local police tipped off the Feds that the green-house in back of the barn was filled with marijuana plants. He went to jail and sold the bank to an out-of-town outfit who hired some young suit from back east to manage it and once again Maureen found herself training some man to be her own supervisor.
Once Maureen tried leaving, went to Denver and ended up marrying a prisoner. It was quite the romance on paper but once he got out and the letters stopped and real life began she realized she'd made a huge mistake. She left the man without telling him she was pregnant and went back to the security of her job with the Podunk International Bank and worked hard to get her kid raised and out of there to something better. It broke her heart when her daughter did no better in life than she had. The kid couldn't wait to go to Denver and find her Dad and ended up working as an office temp and supporting the old drunk. Sometimes she'd call Maureen and tell her she wished she would have listened to her when she was younger.
So, when Betty came in, waving her husband's gun, demanding money, Maureen said
'You got it honey and you can put that gun down. I'll help. We can pretend I'm your hostage and that way you and I can both get away.'�

III.
Meanwhile back at the rancher that Betty had called home for thirty years, Jim went back to bed. When Jean had come striding in her hair rolled up in pink curlers, her slippers flapping, clutching her robe around her and tore the note off the fridge without even looking for it and swung it onto Jim's chest saying only 'there'� (the 'you dope'� being implied by her expression) he had been mortified. The two police officers who had also missed the note didn't want to embarrass him further and excused themselves with mumbled words the gist of which was 'glad she's OK'� the idea of suicide never occurring to any of them and 'see you around'� stuff like that, and did a little dance at the door trying to figure out who would go through it first. Finally they figured it out and walked outside and down the driveway before carrying on a whispered argument. The female cop said
'Was I right? Tell me, wasn't I right?'�
'I don't know why you think that.'� answered the male cop somewhat defensively.
'I'm telling you it'll come out later. Her body will be found in a ditch somewhere and he did it. This morning was just his cover.'�
'We should have read the note.'�
'I'm sure he planted it, needed us to find it so he could act surprised.'�
'All the more reason we should have read it. What if it said she went to the store?'�
'I'm telling you, whatever it said, HE wrote it! It's his cover!'�
'Let's go back. We need it for handwriting analysis.'�
But they could hear their car radio screeching and scratching and hurried up to answer. They were told to go immediately to the Canyon to wake up, ticket and send packing some guy in a pick-up, parked at a picnic site where signs expressly stated that overnight camping was not permitted
Jim went back to bed even though it was the middle of the week, got up again to call in sick at work, and then fell into a deep and deeply mortified sleep. Jim did that. Sometimes he had a six pack to help him sleep. That was what Betty called a 'stupor'�.
IV.
Back at the Bank Betty was wondering about the surveillance cameras and suddenly worried about getting caught now that she had an accomplice who was more interested in the money than the fame.
'Oh those things, the system hasn't worked in weeks.'�
'????????'�
'The thing is when the boss bought the system they talked him into buying a five year warranty and he found out later that he paid way too much for it and that pissed him off so when he got a renewal notice for the warranty he said no way were they getting any more money out of him and the system crashed completely the day after the warranty expired, just about 8 hours actually and when they refused to come out and replace it because it was 8 hours too late he sued them and they are still waiting to get into court over it.
Maureen had a tendency to run on about things and get sidetracked and she was talking about violent crime in the county while stuffing little packets of rather large bills into some bags she had back in the vault and Betty just sort of stood there, the unloaded gun dangling from her hand wondering if she should be helping or something.
'Where did all that money come from? I mean that seems like a lot of money for such a little town.'�
'You noticed this was an International bank right?'�
'Yeah I did notice that. Because of being so close to the border?'�
'Exactly and because a couple of local farmers do a lot of trading across it and that is why there is so much cash here. It's all drug money. The working folks just cash their checks at the grocery store and buy money orders for things. They have their own reasons for not wanting to make a paper trail or have to show ID but the thing is the bank manager is in on the drug dealing. They think I don't know or else they don't care that I know. I get a nice Xmas bonus but come to think of it, they should have been treating me better all these years. I could have called the FBI or something. The local sheriff is in on it too.'�
'Won't they come after us? kill our families?'�
'Oh, no! they aren't violent people. They just fell into something too good to pass up and went for it.'�
'How much is there anyway?'�
'About a mil.'�
'Doesn't anyone ever come in? I mean shouldn't you lock up or something?'�
'Sure, I'll go hang a gone to lunch sign in the door and you can continue filling up these bags.'�
Betty sat there cross legged on the floor surrounded by packets of cash and suddenly started laughing. She realized with half a million dollars she didn't really need the notoriety to get her work published. She could afford to start her own publishing company. Then she interrupted her own fantasy about the publishing business remembering that she had three children who were paying way too much rent for tiny little apartments in big cities where everyone seemed to have more money than they did. Of course she would use the money to buy them each a home. And if they moved away or married and needed something larger, they could rent it out. Betty was a firm believer in the value of real estate, something she learned as a child reading Gone With The Wind and whenever she bought a lottery ticket she thought about it. The dream of actually publishing a best seller and using the book money to buy homes for her children lasted about three seconds. She was thinking all this when Maureen came in and told her the front door was locked and she had put the out to lunch sign facing outward with the little cardboard clock hands pointing to 2pm as her estimated time to return.
The two women finished putting the money into the two bags, trying to count it out in equal amounts and then walked out and put the two bags, each containing roughly, if not exactly, half a million dollars, into the little trunk of Betty's car. The lock didn't work anymore but they didn't worry about the money in the trunk of the car. Betty's car was so old and unappealing that potential thieves would not give it a second glance assuming, she supposed, that whatever was inside would be equally old and unappealing. The trunk was filled with tools, an emergency blanket, a first aid kit, some flares, a half crushed cardboard box, a ripped jacket with a broken zipper. They took all that out and then replaced it on top of the money bags, giggling with excitement, not really believing it yet. Maureen did demonstrate some rather practical good sense when she went back and changed the 'out to lunch'� sign with a 'Got the flue'� sign, made sure the bank door was locked and the metal gate drawn down over the facade and padlocked. Then she thought about calling her boss and leaving a message but decided not to bother.
'I think he's in Mexico this week anyway and that gives me a couple days to pack up my stuff and get the hell out of Dodge.'�
'I thought you said they weren't violent people and couldn't do anything because they never reported any of this to the IRS and all that?'�
'Well it's true they aren't the kind of people to track us down and kill our families but you've heard of 'heat of passion'� right? I mean if I was standing right in front of the guy and refusing to tell him what happened to a million dollars, that could be scary. So this way I've got time to disappear and they'll never know about you.'�
Betty drove and Maureen started in to talking. It was obvious she'd been lonely and needing a friend for some time.
'You know, I have worked so many years at that bank and I do not understand why I never did this before. God knows my daughter could have used a few more advantages growing up. I guess I was afraid I'd get caught. After the surveillance camera system crashed I actually had the thought that, now that the cameras weren't working, we'd have our first ever bank robber, you know Murphy's law and all, but it never occurred to me to just up and take the money myself and go to Denver.'�
'Denver?'�
'My daughter lives there. She's temping and taking college classes, one, two classes at a time, will take her forever to get her degree. I wonder if she could get into a school like Harvard if she had the money. She was a good student in High School.'�
'With all this money, why not send her to Oxford? Living in a foreign country would be kind of fun I think. If I were younger I'd want to do that.'�
'Good idea. Well she'll have to want to I guess. Anything I suggest she automatically does not want to even consider.
'I've got one like that too. If I say or do anything that in any way implies her life is less than perfect she takes it as a criticism of her, like her life is her fault. The boy and the younger girl are easier. Although, my youngest is a writer too.'�
'So I take it you are a writer and you have three children? Did you raise them alone?'�
'No, I've got a husband although sometimes it seemed like I was raising 4 children alone. No, I shouldn't say that. He brought in a paycheck and I got to stay home with the kids and that is really what it is all about. I don't know how some of these women do it, working full-time jobs and raising children. I made extra money typing term papers for the college kids but I could do that on my own schedule you know?'�
'Sounds nice.'�
'Yeah I guess I was lucky that way.'�
'So what do you write? Are you going to write about this?'�
'Well, you know that is funny you ask because my first plan was to get caught so I could get some media attention and then maybe get a book deal, you know?'�
'No kidding. So I sort of blew the plan for you.'�
'Well it wasn't really such a good plan. I mean the people who get the book deals commit really awful crimes and they are usually celebrities to begin with or connected in some way to a celebrity. And they don't write stories they make up they write autobiographical books, who slept with who, that kind of thing. I would never write about my own life.'�
'Why the hell not?'�
'Well for one thing it isn't that interesting but for another, dull as it is, it isn't anyone else's business you know?'�
'So how do you think up stories if they aren't about your own life? I always wonder how people do that.'�
'And I always thought everyone did it.'� Betty looked like she was going to say something more but fell silent.
'You look tired. Want me to drive?'�
'Oh no, I was just distracted I guess. I'm fine unless you prefer to drive.'�
'No I actually don't like driving someone else's car. Although I guess I am getting reckless in my old age. But you, damn! woman, you are just crazy, you know in a good way. I was needing to get crazy like that and there you were, right on cue. Are you real? Or am I dreaming you? Maybe I did rob the bank and they caught me and put me in a mental hospital and shot me full of hallucinatory drugs and I'm dreaming all this from inside an institution. What do you think? If all of a sudden the car vaporizes and I find myself in another place I'll know I'm hallucinating. . . . . . .'�
Betty just smiled at Maureen and told her she should write fiction and then she drove on in silence while Maureen did indeed doze and maybe did dream a bit about being in another place.
V.
Betty stopped to fill the tank and decided to give Jim a call just to let him know that she was OK and that in fact she did not get caught because at that point she didn't want him disclosing the contents of her note to anyone. First she called his work and some guy there told her he had called in sick and sounded surprised she didn't know this, which worried her, made her think her note upset him. Then she dialed home.
It took him a long time to answer the telephone and she told him she was fine and that she'd be home in time for dinner and not to worry about anything and to put her note in her top desk drawer. He couldn't remember where he put her note but told her he would take care of it because he didn't want her to think he'd lost it or didn't even read it, which he didn't, but he wouldn't want her to know that because, even drunk, as it happens he was, he understood that would hurt her feelings just like it always hurt her feelings when he didn't listen to her when she was talking to him. So he told her 'OK'� and 'be careful'� and 'I love you'� all of which sounded like the sort of thing a husband would tell a wife who had just robbed a bank but which was also the sort of thing a husband would tell his wife if he just wanted to end the conversation politely and go back to sleep.
Maureen had awakened and gone to use the bathroom and they decided to just have lunch at a truck stop because they were both starving and Betty realized that they shouldn't take that much time anyway if she was going to get back home in time to fix her husband dinner. For her part, Maureen was starting to think about all the things she'd have to do before leaving Podunk forever. She had walked to work that morning because her car was in the shop and it was just dawning on her that with all that money she could just buy a new one in Denver. Then it occurred to her that she could buy all new clothes and whatever else she needed so maybe she didn't even have to go back home at all. This was a liberating thought but also a bit depressing. Then she remembered her photographs of her daughter and she realized that she couldn't just leave behind the history of her child's development so she would have to return home to get the photographs. Maybe Betty would wait while she got them, all seven shoeboxes full, and then drop her off at the Greyhound station and then Maureen could just disappear forever from that town where she had spent or wasted, depending on how you looked at it, twenty years of her life 'Don't you have any friends in town?'� Betty asked when Maureen made her request after they ordered sandwiches and fries at the truck-stop.
'Yeah actually I do have a few friends, but I can't tell them what I'm doing and I'm thinking I probably should not even get in touch with them after I get established somewhere else.'�
'Oh, now I feel terrible. You are tied to the scene of the crime. You have to disappear. I can just go home and hide the money and nobody will be the wiser but you have to give up your whole life, just like in a witness protection program.'�
'Well those people do it. And you know I'll get word to my friends somehow. The thing is I left my life, and my friends in New Jersey when I moved out here. All those folks who promised to come out and visit me and not a one ever even picks up a damn telephone to say hi, how are you, screw you, drop dead, nada. So much for friends.'�
Betty felt a little alarmed by Maureen's vehemence. Obviously this woman had been hurt by her former friends' neglect, obviously the subject of friends was a sore spot. Betty decided to change the subject.
'How old are you actually, if you don't mind my asking?'�
'Forty-five.'�
'Yeah I figured, I would have taken you for younger but you have a daughter old enough to be living on her own in Denver so . . . . . I could be your mother, well not quite, almost. But I think you are better off getting out of there while you still have some energy, enough youth to enjoy yourself and enough maturity to make better choices. What do you think?'�
'I think you are going to write a story about me.'�
'Do you mind?'�
'No, you may as well. You'll probably make my life more interesting than it was or ever will be but you know I have traveled some. I got three full weeks paid vacation after I'd been at the bank a year so I've been to nineteen wonderful places and even though I appear to be just another boring tourist I feel like an adventurer and I take photographs as proof that I've been to,let me see . . . . .'� and Maureen started counting off places on her fingers: the Canadian Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, South America three times, Scandinavia and the UK, France and Italy and Morocco, Mexico didn't really count, being just over the border and . . . . . ' oh and Spain, did I say Spain already?'�
Betty just knew Maureen was one of those people who make lists of everything.
'I'm going to get myself some oil paints and canvas and paint pictures from those photos. What do you think?'�
'hmmmmm'� Betty barely had time to give a minimal response as Maureen went right on developing her new plan now she was going to be free of the job and the town.
'I'll be an artist too, create something with my name on it. I could have been doing that all these years but I'd get home from work and fix dinner and watch television or rent videos. You know television can be so debilitating'�. . . . . . .
'I do know what you mean . . . . .'�
Maureen stopped talking when the waitress brought their food and for a while they both just chewed. Maureen ate faster and resumed talking.
'It just occurred to me that one reason it is so easy to leave my friends behind is that we never did talk much, just watched television together usually after a meal where everyone ate more than they even wanted to. For birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, funerals, we just ate and watched television. Now I think on it, I am appalled, absolutely appalled. You were writing stories I bet.'�
'Hmmmm'� and Betty frowned a little as she chewed.
'That's a good thing right?'� . . . . . . . .
more frowning, more chewing, a little throat clearing and then:
'Not really now I think about it. I wonder now if all that time I spent writing stories about what I'd observed about people wasn't really just as much a waste as watching television shows about people who aren't real.'�
'hmmmmm'� said Maureen.
'I mean I didn't really know the people I wrote about. I just used their bodies and mannerisms and background to talk about myself. Like in dreams you know, where all the characters in your dream are yourself? I never thought of that before until you mentioned all the time spent watching movies and it occurred to me just now that I've been terribly selfish all my life. In fact I think, no I know that I neglected my kids. Its not that I turned my back on them when they expressed a need for my company but you know I think they just took for granted that I would be pre-occupied and didn't even try to engage me in conversations about school or friends. I always thought I was lucky that they did so well in school and didn't need my help with homework or encouragement but maybe that would have forced me to pay more attention to them.'�
Maureen, usually so talkative was dumbfounded. She'd always thought any woman with kids and a husband was automatically a better mother than she had been and hadn't expected a confession like this. Betty finished chewing, swallowed with some difficulty and continued.
'I really feel just awful. There was this thing that happened once with my youngest daughter and by then it was too late for the other kids. I always went to their events at school, and parent teacher conferences, that kind of formal thing but, well what happened was she told me about being in the school play and I forgot, was too pre-occupied and didn't go shopping for a new dress and the day of the play she reminded me that it was that evening and I tried on my dress up clothes and nothing fit because I was just fatter that time of the month I guess and I yelled at her for not telling me sooner and cried because I thought I wasn't going to look nice and she was so nice about it and reminded me that she had told me and that I must have forgotten. She was actually very sweet about it, but I got this funny feeling that night that she was just tolerating me and couldn't wait to leave home.'�
Maureen tried to interject an 'I heard that, thank you and amen'� but Betty was on a roll, not stopping to let Maureen get a word in edgewise.
'I had certainly not meant for my kids to feel that way. I don't think I ruined her evening for her because she had stopped depending on me for so much, she went out with her friends afterward for the opening night party and it was at the home of some other family. Someone else's mother had planned this wonderful party for the kids. And the other mothers baked things to take to the party and my daughter, my Sarah, she brought the sodas. She had already volunteered to bring something she could buy at the store. I felt so hurt but what did I expect? Ohmygod. I can't believe I'm just seeing this now. There's no money in the world can get me those years back, you know do them right, be more attentive to my children, stop waiting for something special to happen instead of living my life. What was I thinking? It was just plain crazy planning to rob a bank, what was I thinking? What was I thinking? and now you are in trouble and . . . do you think we could take it back? before anyone notices?'�
Maureen didn't know what to say. She had been feeling absolutely euphoric since Betty came into her dull and unrewarding life and liberated her from all that and here she'd bummed the woman out. She hadn't meant to but there you are. Confessions can be a bonding experience but the penance seemed too extreme. So she didn't say anything at all and the two women finished up what was on their plates and said 'shall we?'� and began searching their wallets for the right number of $1 bills so they could leave a tip before taking the check up to the cashier. This struck each of them at the same moment as hysterically funny given that they had a trunk full of $100 bills outside and then without even having to discuss the matter, they each emptied their wallets onto the table saving just enough to pay for the lunch. The waitress came running outside after them not believing they had intended to leave her an $87 tip for a $14 lunch and they waved and yelled: 'we won some money on the rez, enjoy.'� She shouted back 'Go girls!'� pocketed the money and turned back to the diner with a little hip swivel and a skip. It was a light moment in an afternoon rapidly filling with anxiety.
Betty got behind the wheel and headed back toward Podunk.
'So, you know I was actually serious about giving the money back. I know it has to be a joint decision but I want to ask you to think very carefully about this. Even if we are able to get away with it, are we really able to get away with it? I mean how does one spend all that money? We can't very well open bank accounts and write checks and where would we hide it? I know you want to send your daughter to a high dollar college but you can't send them a boxful of cash can you? You probably couldn't even get a cashier's check without raising suspicion, I mean what exactly does one do with that kind of cash?'�
'Money orders I was thinking. You can deposit money orders into a bank account as long as they are under $10,000. Anytime you deposit $10,000, the bank has to report the deposit to the IRS.'�
'So you . . . . . what? go to the grocery store and buy a money order?'�
'Well actually you go to a lot of grocery stores, every grocery store you can find in a big city where they are too busy to talk to each other and buy money orders in small amounts and open several different bank accounts and keep depositing small amounts in each until you have enough in them to write checks to colleges, make down payments on homes, that kind of thing.'�
'Well what about the casinos? Can you say you won $10,000 at a casino?'�
Maureen took the question as a good sign that Betty was regaining her senses and did her best to encourage that.
'I'm thinking, I'm thinking. The last time I won any money worth counting I got $300 in quarters and they gave me the rest, yes it was in cash, 17 $100 bills. OK that's one way, I was worried if the casino paid by check we'd get ourselves in trouble but that would work, yes that is one way. So does this mean you are back on track here? You don't want to give the money back?'�
'I don't know, I don't know. I never dreamed I'd ever get away with this. It's scaring me. You know: karma?'�
'Hmmmmm.'�
Betty drove and Maureen thought. Maybe it was too good to be true that they would have all this money and not get caught and just get to enjoy the rest of their lives without suffering consequences.
'I wonder if maybe we could put back most of it but still keep some out for college tuition for my kid and down payments on houses or apartments or whatever for yours. I hate to see my daughter have to work so long and hard just because she didn't know what she wanted soon enough.'�
'Maybe she still isn't sure? Sounds to me like all she knows is she just doesn't want to be you. Don't be offended. I mean, I know for a fact my kids don't want to be me or their Dad.'�
'I'm not offended. I'm concerned, you know about giving up all this money. So, if I understand you correctly, you think we should put it all back?'�
'If we did get caught it would be silly to have to go to jail over less money wouldn't it? I think it has to be all or nothing and right this minute I just don't know. One voice is telling me give it back, I wasn't meant to be a successful criminal. Another voice is telling me to go for it because the reason I've never been a successful anything was because I was too timid. Too timid to leave home for one thing, marrying my high school sweetheart because I was lonely and getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere for my entire fucking life.'�
Maureen was shocked to hear the F word coming from Betty's neatly lipsticked, middle aged mouth but relieved as well. It meant it was OK to swear in front of her new friend. Not wanting to appear too greedy or amoral, Maureen decided to let Betty battle this out with her conscience while she drove. Later, when they got back to town, if Betty was still indecisive about keeping the money, Maureen could always put her two cents worth in then, her two cents worth being that she had long ago given up on Karma but if she did believe it in it she would say that both she and Betty had earned a break.
'Oh speaking of the sweetheart, I think I need to pull off and phone him. There is no way I'm going to be home in time for dinner and he'll be worried as hell by now.'�
'My god Betty where have you been?'�
'Well actually it is really a long story and I don't want to tell you over the telephone but I did want to be sure you didn't worry about me. I may be a bit late for dinner so when you get hungry just fix yourself something and don't wait for me. I had a late lunch. I will tell you all about it when I get home. You put my note in the desk drawer right?'�
Jim had forgotten she had told him to do that and he wasn't exactly sure why it was so important and it occurred to him that maybe he should read it after all but he forgot where he had put it. He just told her yes, of course he'd done that and she said
'good, I'll have a lot to tell you when I get home and I hope you won't be too disappointed.'� which remark really got him wondering so as soon as he hung up the phone he began searching for that note.
During the comings and goings of the day it had slipped off the kitchen table and onto the floor beneath, then wafted across the floor where it rested under the gas range. Jim would have frustrated himself to no avail had their son not called and distracted him.

VI.
'Thank-god, Maureen you weren't inside. The metal gate was down and we were afraid maybe someone came and trapped you in there. We couldn't put it out. . . . . .
Maureen didn't say anything about putting the metal gate down: too much talking was what got people in trouble on television. Better to be asking the questions so she asked if they thought someone had deliberately started the fire, did they have any evidence of arson?
'No not yet. It's possible there was an electrical short. I warned your boss about those security cameras, they could short out and cause problems. Sometimes you get some electrical wire smoldering inside the walls for a couple days before anything erupts and then POW out it comes.
'The worst thing is that woman who lived in the frame house behind the bank: wiped out, the wind was blowing just right to catch her house. Thankfully she and the baby were at the grocery store when it happened and the older kids are all in school. Those kids will be staying with various friends for a while and my wife is going to organize a fund raiser for them so they can rebuild, this time with brick. These flimsy little frame houses, don't know why anyone would construct buildings of wood this close to the forests with all the forest fires we get every summer. Funny when you think on it: no one yet has been burned out by a forest fire but now we got two buildings down due to a possible electrical short. If it's not one thing, it's another.'�
He sighed and said he had to get back to work. They needed to make sure the wind didn't blow anymore chance flames around the town and he was the man in charge.
Betty and Maureen walked around back and conferred. Clearly they could not put the money back now, nowhere to put it. They decided to take the fire as a sign from God (or whatever) that they were supposed to have control over that money. No discussion necessary on giving a substantial portion to the woman who's house had burned down. Then they had to figure out how to get that much money to the poor woman without raising suspicion. Maureen suggested that she volunteer to help the fire captain's wife with the fund raiser. Of course there would be a dance, with nothing much else to do, the people in these small towns organized dances for everything. And there would be those little canister things at all the businesses for miles around for people to drop their change into. At that rate the woman would have money to rebuild in about twenty years. Ordinarily the bank would have made a sizeable donation to some family who lost their home in a forest fire or to a tornado, but this time the bank had been burned out so that was not a good cover.
'What about brown paper bags full of money? We could just leave them next to those little canisters in the stores.'�
'No, the wrong people might accidentally or on purpose pick them up.'�
'Well who is this woman? Can't you just hand her the money, without anyone else around? She'd be nuts to report us if we give her the money.'�
Because the woman had so many kids and didn't want to be separated from any of them making it well nigh impossible for ordinary people in ordinary trailers and tract houses to offer her hospitality, the owner of the local motel where the woman already worked as a maid, offered her a choice of any three rooms to stay in until another house could be built. It was off season anyway. Therese Gonzales had been cleaning all the rooms for years and she knew which rooms had heaters and AC that worked, which had extra closet space and better TV reception. She took the Wyatt Earp room and put all her girls into the Annie Oakley room and the boys in the Billy the Kid room and everyone was happy, little things like that being a big deal when the big things in life have fallen apart. Because Wyatt Earp was a law enforcement personality, Maureen and Betty made a few jokes about meeting Therese Gonzales in that room to give her half a million stolen dollars.
Therese Gonzales was pretty cool about it, astonished of course, but kept a cool head when it came to hiding the money. She took one of the large industrial laundry bags and lined it with a couple of sheets, then dumped the cash into it and put some more sheets on top. All three women were amazed at how little space a half million dollars actually consumes in with all those well-worn sheets. They stood around looking at it for a while, then Therese explained in spanglish and hand gestures, that the men who would be building the house didn't have green cards and always got paid in cash anyway, that was how the entire town worked so this was going to be a piece of cake. Maureen and Betty had been surprised that she didn't seem curious about where and how they had gotten their hands on so much money so they both assumed that she assumed they had indeed robbed the bank and she wasn't about to say anything.
'Know nada, say nada'� she kept repeating. She'd probably seen a lot of marijuana and money exchanged in the very rooms she was occupying. Knowing how to keep a poker face was definitely one of her skills.
The good deed done, Betty and Maureen drove out to one of the trail heads outside of town and once again divvied up the cash into the two money bags from the bank. Maureen took Betty's phone number and address and Betty took Maureen home to pack up her shoeboxes full of photographs. Then she dropped her off at the Greyhound depot in a slightly larger town along the highway. Maureen promised to call Betty once she found a place to settle in Denver.
By the time Betty returned home it was well past dark, well past dinnertime and Jim was still or again asleep. Betty looked into her desk drawer expecting to find and destroy her note but found nothing. She sighed, realizing he had probably not even read the damn thing. Then she looked around and with that eagle eye that women develop to spot dust balls under furniture she noticed the little corner of white peaking out from under the gas range on the earth-toned tile floor. She bent to pick it up thinking it ironic that not only was she unable to get anyone to read her stories, she couldn't even get her husband to read a note. She resolved then and there to give up writing for good.

Epilogue
About a month later, Betty received lots of good news all at once in the mail: A story she had forgotten ever sending out was accepted for publication in a small literary journal. Her payment was to be two copies of the journal. Her children had all made down payments on a house, a condo and a coop apartment respectively and were now saddled with mortgages just like their friends. There was a long letter from Maureen about finding and buying a small two bedroom home she was sharing with her daughter who was now enrolled for a full load of coursework at Metro State College. Maureen herself was taking painting classes at the Art Students' League. She also mentioned that she'd called the fire captain's wife who reported that Therese Gonzales had used the money raised at the dance to buy nine bus tickets and moved out of town, no one knew where, probably back to Mexico. The motel owner was irritated because, after all his help, she'd stolen some linens from the motel. The fire captain's wife figured Therese took the sheets because she felt she'd been overworked and underpaid all those years and the linens were more symbolic than anything else. Betty had to chuckle over that.

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...