Jewel’s Tell

"What’s your name, teller?"

"Marcy," she mumbled.

"Marcy Teller. Marcy Teller. Marcy Tel- "

"Just Marcy."

He just grinned.

"What do you need me here for, anyway?"

"Never you mind. Just sit back and be quiet and no harm’ll come to you."

From the passenger side window, she could almost see the heat outside. Everything vibrated, outside on the streets, in the truck, in her own body. Her hands sweat, and her feet felt swollen, stuffed like sausages into a pair of black pumps. Her hair was matted down against the flesh wound on the left side of her neck. She thought about touching it, rubbing it, pampering it and maybe searching for a stray tissue from her purse to blot the blood that collected on the surface, but he’d already warned her against sudden moves. She watched the anxious tapping of his fingers against the steering wheel. Looking directly at him felt like looking down the barrel of a twelve gauge.

"You got a husband?" he asked. "Girls like you always got husbands."

"What are girls like me?"

"You know, Marcy Teller. Small town bimbos who stay all their lives in the same place they were born, unhappy and unresolved with their lives but too scared to change. ‘Fraid o’ doing something that the Sunday preacher wouldn’t like hearing about from one of the neighbors at the summer picnic. Scared of a little adventure. Scared of life."

"You don’t know nothing about me or life."

"I know you work in a bank as a teller."

She sniffed. "Like I said – nothing."

"You got a husband or not?"

"Do you?"

He gently tapped the revolver on the seat beside him. "I’d watch my mouth if I was you, seeing as how I got a loaded gun right there. You want to try to grab it and shoot me with it? Go ahead. See if you can."

When he smiled, she saw spaces between his front teeth and two metal fillings on the bottom row. "I’d never do that."

"Oh no? And why not? Would upset the preacher, I suppose."

"I don’t answer to no preacher," she lied. "I just ain’t a killer like you."

"Have you seen me kill anybody, girly?"

Silence, at first. Then, "No. But you could, probably have. I seen it in your face."

He turned to look at her again.

"Alright, I got a husband."

"He work in a bank too?"

She laughed. "You think everybody in Grady works at the Savings and Loan?"

The man tapped his pistol on the steering wheel.

"He’s a teacher," she lied again, in a softer voice.

"So that’s four things I know about you, then. What’s his name?"

"I ain’t telling you that. Now stop this damn car and let me out."

The man shook his head slowly and bit his lip.

"What you want me for, anyway?"

"Collateral."

"For what? You stole every last cent in the damn vault. What more do you want?"

"In case the cops come up on me outta nowhere and think of shooting at me, I got myself a Marcy Teller in my front seat." He grinned and patted her knee. She jerked it away. "That’ll teach ‘em. Marcy Teller, Marcy Teller, Marcy Marcy Marcy Teller," he chanted as a song.

For a long time neither of them spoke. She laid her head against the door in simulated sleep, but her wide eyes were taking in everything she could about their route and possible destination. After all, he was bound to get weak or tired or drunk eventually, which would give her a window to try to escape, or at least call for help. She’d worry about finding her way home later. While guzzling beers one after the other, the man sang along to the one of the five country music radio stations in Grady. And when he wasn’t doing that he would sniff, chew tobacco, fart, rub his chin and fidget in his seat. Aha, she thought. Beer.

"So how’d you get to be a robber, anyway? You get dropped on your head or something when you was a baby?"

"Natural leadership qualities."

She couldn’t help but laugh.

"You’re just a small town thug is all. Leadership qualities get you into officer training school in the Army or a senator or something. Shee-it. You sure ain’t no senator."

"I think Marcy Teller’s got herself a smart mouth. I think she’d better clamp it shut or it’s libel to swell up on her."

"I ain’t scared of no man."

She smiled to herself as she watched him clench his fists. The less control he had over his emotions, the more probability there would be for escape. There were a thousand possible scenarios. Grab the gun while he was pulling the truck over to the shoulder of the road, hit him in the face with it, push him out and drive away. Problem: If the cops had taken his license plate number, they would track down the money and the truck and find her in it which meant one thing – jail. But she couldn’t exactly push him out of the truck and push the money out too. What kind of moron did her mamma raise her to be anyway? Opportunity comes but once in a lifetime if you’re lucky, and doesn’t look back as it’s screeching away.

"Oh no?"

"No."

"We’ll see."

"What you want with all that money anyhow? You don’t got no family to spend it on, probably live out of your car. So what then? You gonna get hooked up for a noseful of cocaine, or buy some cheap hotel and rent it out to pimps and hookers?"

He had tuned her out. Not a single muscle twitched, moved or looked away from the stony glass gaze in his eyes and their focused attention on the street ahead of them. She bravely turned, looking full at him for the first time since he’d stuffed her into the front seat of this sweaty, beer-stenched truck. Long, blonde hair hanging limply in his face and down the back of his neck, eager brown eyes darting left and right as if he were working calculus problems in his head, and a face and chin smoother than any she’d ever seen on a man. Even his arms had no hair on them. This made her wonder, as if the human mind should be so open and searching during such dire circumstances. He mumbled something to himself, then touched the butt of the gun on the seat with the fingers of his right hand. The left hand fingers still twitched and tapped out some interior metronomic rhythm.

They were five miles past the boundary that separated Logan and Garfield Counties, and he still hadn’t stopped. She strained her eyes to look into the cooler without turning her head. She’d counted eight beers floating around in it over an hour ago and there were two left. It was getting dark. The Oklahoma sky, as wide and beckoning as always, was a premonition. Streaked in red and orange, a last shaving of sun hovered at the bottom edge of the horizon while a cool blanket of gray clouds slinked in on silken feet. The air was thick with rain and impending doom.

She decided that finding a weakness would be her only chance for escape. That’s assuming she had the strength to escape after he’d done whatever he was planning. She recalled some of her training from the bank, when the branch manager brought in a private consultant, a retired police detective, to talk about fraud and bank theft. Watch your customers, the man had said. Pay attention to who comes in your bank, what they’re wearing, how long they take writing out their deposit slip, whether they make chitchat with you while you’re processing their transactions. Notice who they walk in with and how they behave. Remembering small details of your day could save your life and the life of your coworkers.

He would need to stop for gas soon, she figured. The tank had been full when they left Grady and that was two hours ago. The truck probably had a big tank, but it guzzled gasoline like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

"So what’s your name?" she asked, as part two of her plan.

"Alvin."

"Just Alvin?"

He gave her a half-look and then turned his attention back to the road. "Jewel. Alright? Alvin Jewel. Go ahead and tell me it’s a girly name. You won’t say nothing nobody’s said before."

The truck veered off the highway and onto an asphalt driveway that led to a tiny store. No cars were parked in the lot. The man stepped out, closed the door and hurried toward the store, but then turned back when he got halfway there. He stood in front of the passenger door and leaned his arms on the rolled down window. Her stomach turned as he leaned his head close and the aroma of cigarettes, beer and sweat filtered into the cab. If anxiety had any odor, she thought, it had to smell like this.

"You see many trees around here, Marcy Teller?"

"Seeing as this is the Oklahoma panhandle, no."

"Okay then. Like I said, you’re just collateral to me. I got no plans to harm you. But if you run away while I’m in here buying supplies," he cleared his throat and looked at the ground, "I’ll make you real sorry you did. You hear me?"

"I ain’t deaf if that’s what you think."

The next three days were spent in eight different hotel rooms, each time with Marcy tied to a corner chair with bungee chords and him smoking by the window. Jewel said they had to move constantly to avoid detection by the police, which Marcy already knew had been following them all along. Or she suspected so. After a dinner of cheeseburgers, fries and a chocolate shake, she politely wiped her mouth and presented her crossed wrists behind her back for him to tie with the chords again. He seemed surprised the first time she did this.

"Why haven’t you tried to escape?" he asked at one point, half in the bag with his head leaning against the bed frame.

"On accounta me being tied to this chair, for one thing."

"Yeah," he agreed.

"Besides, where would I go? There’s no police station around here. If I broke out and ran to the front desk and said you were holding me hostage, the manager would be dead before he could pick up the phone. Let alone me."

"Unless you took care of me first."

She could take care of him all right. Start by getting out of the wrist bind while he was asleep, binding his own hands, emptying the bullets out of his revolver, taking his truck keys and driving to the nearest pay phone. But these possibilities seemed neither real nor necessary. She really wasn’t afraid of him. More than that, though, she felt different than she ever had her whole life. Different, brave, even bigger. Could it be that she was bored and a dangerous adventure was just the kind of edgy change she needed? She thought about Morris every few hours, and wondered if she could live without him. Then again, she’d wondered that since they got married. If I can live outside of Grady for five days with a robber, I can certainly live without Morris Moran.

"What’s that for?" she asked as Jewel got up from the floor. He walked to the roll of wrapping paper on the floor, looked up at her, and withdrew a pair of scissors and tape from the paper bag beside it. Then, from another bag, he pulled out a toy train. Laying everything out on the bed first, he picked up the paper and removed it from the wrapping, then unrolled about two feet of it and cut off a large square with a brand new pair of blue scissors. She watched his stringy hair hanging in his face, watched him lick his lips and wipe his nose with the back of his hand. This was the kind of man he was, Alvin Jewel. The kind who had never blown his nose into a handkerchief, never had a professional haircut, didn’t floss his teeth, pay taxes, probably didn’t shower more than two or three times a week. He robbed banks, stole money, probably lied and cheated everyone he knew, maybe even had aliases and fraudulent bank accounts. But then the bank account part would require a level of stealthy intelligence that she was sure he fundamentally lacked. Nevertheless, Alvin Jewel, bank robber, sat with his legs spread out on the bed wrapping a toy train with the care of a surgeon removing a brain tumor. The way his face looked, she could have set fire to herself and the chair and he never would have noticed. The thought of untying her wrists and heading for the door crossed her mind for the hundredth time.

"You got a son," she said instead.

"What do you care?"

"I just think it’s strange, that’s all, that you could rob banks but still buy your son a birthday gift."

"You think I don’t got no heart? Who said he’s my son anyway?"

"What’s his name?" she ventured, hoping to divert his attention from her fumbling wrists and fingers.

"Reece. He’s five three days from now."

She felt like telling him that the train he got was for two year olds, not five, but knew where this comment would get her. Nowhere or worse.

Jewel put the wrapped package in one of the knapsacks he kept the money in. "I’m gonna take a shower," he said before she had the chance to speak. "I don’t expect no song and dance while I’m in there. You just sit and be quiet. You want the TV on?"

She didn’t, but recognized the opportunity. "Yeah. Any channel’s okay. And turn it up high. I don’t hear so good in my right ear."

Without looking, he turned the volume up high, looked out the window, gave her an eerie glance and turned the volume back down low.

She wondered why he’d asked about the TV. Was politeness within his repertoire of behaviors? And wondered, even more, about why he’d been so careful to make sure her dinner was hot. Sure, it was just fast food, but he had taken great care in asking her specifically what she wanted and brought it exactly the way she asked. Was loneliness his weakness, or was she?

The sound of the shower one room away made her crave a bath and a hair wash more than oxygen. Not to mention a toothbrush, soft bed, the smell of biscuits in the oven or good strong coffee. Three questions arose in her mind. How badly do you want to escape, what are you willing to do to escape, and what would you be running back to? The last question was too painful to consider right now. The feeling of her shoulders beginning to dislocate was easier to bear than the implication of an empty life. She found herself curious. Was he absorbing the hot water stream with his eyes closed leaning against the wall? Did he smoke in the shower like Morris did? Or did he spend the time scrubbing every inch of himself squeaky clean? She also wondered about his body. Not out of sexual attraction, but from the curiosity of a strange man’s private parts. After all, the only man she’d ever slept with was Morris Moran, the man she gave it to at the Duck Pond and married a year later. Twenty-one years older than her and one of her high school teachers, the marriage had been doomed before they even met.

She let the memory fade out as a throbbing began in her temples. She could hear the sound of him drying off with a towel. It was then that she remembered something Morris had said the day they met.

"You got a thousand stories in your eyes, Angel." That’s what he called her back then. "And I want to hear all of them."

It was a line of course, but it sounded pretty. Pretty enough to get her into his bed on the first date. Was it true? Did her eyes tell stories? Stories that Alvin Jewel, lonely drifter Alvin Jewel might be interested in? He opened the door and she knew he’d been thinking along the same lines. His face was red and searching with the hope of something to come.

"My arms got pins and needles," she started. "Do you think you might take off them handcuffs for just a little while? I need to use the bathroom and I was thinking of soaking in the tub."

"I’d have to clean it first. It’s all dirty now."

"I don’t mind," she said softly, applying a precise dosage of the story-look.

Alvin Jewel stayed silent for a long time, leaning in the bathroom doorway, towel around his waist, accepting the look, asking for the stories and looking back the same way. It wasn’t a smile, but it didn’t need to be.

"I’m gonna take your cuffs off for the rest of the night. You can even sleep in the other bed. I won’t lock you up. If you want to try to leave, you risk waking me up and getting shot with that –"

"I already know what kind of gun you have, Jewel. You’ve showed it to me a hundred times in the last three days. And I know what kind of bullets are loaded in it and where you keep it. I even know how you talk to it."

"What you mean talk?"

"You got a move that you do when you’re holding your gun in one hand. You take your left index finger and rub the corner of your eye with it while your right hand is grabbing for your gun. I seen you do it three times already. Like a tell in a poker game."

He didn’t seem to hear the last part as he walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her body to unlock the metal rings. He smelled of soap and shampoo, probably the kind they kept in motel bathrooms since she was sure he didn’t carry around any. Whenever he looked at her, he had a habit of avoiding her eyes. This told her all she needed to know.

"Too bad about that husband."

"Too bad for who?" she said rubbing her arms and wrists.

"For me I guess," he said and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Does he bring you flowers?"

"Once a year on my birthday. When we first met he brought them all the time. All wrapped in shiny pink paper with a thick organza ribbon tied around them. I’d get a fresh bouquet even before the last one had died. My momma always says there’s no such thing as too many flowers." She felt herself smile and even blush, slightly, then wished she hadn’t. What was he trying to do, anyway? "I don’t suppose you’ve bought too many flowers in your lifetime."

"You might be surprised."

"I just might. Nothing else about you fits any mold, so why should flowers be any different?"

"For ten years I worked at a power plant in Lawrence, Kansas and saved up eight thousand dollars. I was planning on buying a new car and an engagement ring for Reece’s Momma. One of the guys at the plant had done time in Leavenworth for grand larceny. He and I were assigned to repair some of the equipment, so we started spending a lot of time together. During the lunch hour every day, Rattler, that was his name, used to tell me stories of things he heard from the other prisoners in Leavenworth. Things about what they done to get in there, what they done before prison and how they were planning to escape. Everyone in prison’s planning an escape, you see. They might not say it, might not even tell no one about it," he pointed at his temple, "but it’s in there all the time all day and all night. Plans. Plans plans plans. It’s the one thing that gives a man in prison the will to get up every morning."

"What’s that got to do with flowers?"

Jewel nodded and scratched his head. "I remembered Rat telling me once that this guy escaped from Georgia State Prison by putting flowers under the covers of his bed as a way to thumb his nose at the guards. He never knew how he got them flowers in there since you can’t send them or even deliver them on visiting day. But sure enough he put flowers under his covers and propped up the mounds with books on the bottom."

"They ever find him? The man who got away?"

Jewel looked at her and rubbed the part of his eye that he typically rubbed when he was grasping the grips on his revolver in the other hand. An invisible fist grabbed the insides of her stomach and throat and squeezed until she could barely take in air through her widened nostrils.

"You’re the prisoner, ain’t you? Jewel isn’t your real name, and no one else from the story’s real, neither. What were you in for?"

"Same thing every time. Guess everybody’s got a weakness."

"Not me."

He shot her a look. "Everyone’s got something, or someone, that makes them do things they’d never do."

"I got a weakness for chocolate ice cream, and lemonade on a hot summer day, but not for crime."

He moved toward her on the bed and with his right hand grabbed onto her arm. "I know your weakness," he said with a sly grin. "Me."

She didn’t move. "What you mean?"

"You like being here, don’t you? You were bored living with your husband in the big house with the maid and the fancy car outside." He grabbed her arm tighter, then even tighter. "You know I’m right, don’t you? You wanted an adventure; I saw desire flaming in your eyes when I was in the bank. Desire for danger, and wanting to be so close to the edge of something that you could see yourself falling off the other side. That’s why I took you."

She jerked away, but he continued holding her arm. "Let me go," she cried out, pulling her arm out from his slick, watered grip on her arm. "Every night since you took me, I pray of being back in my own house, being at my momma’s house for Sunday dinner, going to my same old boring job and boring boss, boring co-workers that only want to gossip all day long and never do a damn bit of work. You don’t know what I want and you don’t know me."

"You’re lying, and that’s what you can’t stand about yourself – that you’re actually enjoying the ride. He mustn’t barely even talk to you. I’ll bet you come home from work every night and he’s not even there to ask you how your day was."

She wiped tears from her eyes. "Why you doing this? Why would you say things like that?"

"To show you that we’re not all that different, you and me. The way you looked at me when you said I was the escaped prisoner could have frozen a heart made of lava. Guess I was just trying to make a point."
"So what is it?"

"High people and low people. You consider yourself to be higher on the chain than a poor, small town petty thief, but you’re not. Having money and a maid and an expensive car don’t separate you from other people. Motivations and what’s in your heart make people high or low."

The next day they drove for fourteen hours out of Oklahoma and through Kansas toward Nebraska. The landscape was similar; more green than brown. A neon sign ahead lit up the gray, dusky sky like a strobe. Leisure Bowl, it read. Alvin Jewel pulled into the lot, packed the bag of money into his knapsack, hooked it on his back and walked around the truck to let her out.

"Don’t hold me up now. I’ve barely eaten all day."

He found a small corner table, ordered hamburgers and beer and, after setting them down on the table, walked up to the other counter to get bowling shoes, cards and pencils. She wondered if he would ask her if she’d bowled before.

"Guess bank teller’s don’t get much bowling time."

She smirked to herself. "A little, not much. I’ll bet I’m not very good. Got a good pitching arm, though."

He watched her wolf down the food as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks. "Sorry," she said. "I was hungry I guess."

"Me too." Again, for the second time, he looked deeply at her.

Okay, she thought. Step three. "Did you ever have a mustache?"

He chuckled, and set the money bag down beside him on the seat. "A long time ago. People said I looked like Butch Cassidy."

"Who’s he?"

"Damn. You ain’t watched many movies or else you’re younger than I thought."

She waited.

"How old are you anyway?"

"Twenty-one. What did he do?"

"Who?"

"Butch whatever."

He paused to swallow the food in his mouth. "Bank robber."

She politely laughed, and blinked her eyes. The undercover cop that had been following them since Enid was sitting at the soda counter now with his back toward them. There were so many ways of handling it, so many possibilities. Her head began to throb again. One false move, one yell or scream or distraction and the cop would be two steps away from them pointing a gun at Jewel’s head. That’s not how she wanted it. Not all of her, anyway.

"I suppose your husband’s got the National Guard out looking for you in every county in Oklahoma. Guess we’ve been pretty smart about our route. Huh?"

"You’re the one who’s driving. But we haven’t seen one policeman since we left Grady. You must be pretty good at bank robbing." She didn’t say what she was thinking, about how her husband probably didn’t even know she was gone. Or that he wasn’t really a husband at all but more like a prop she carried around to support the illusions of normalcy necessary for living in a small town.

He stood with a bowling ball in his hand at the edge of the lane. They took turns for a while without speaking. She glanced peripherally at the cop every time her turn was up, but he still hadn’t moved, hadn’t looked back once. Was he dead? Or was he writing something that required him to keep his head down? If Jewel would just go to the john, she could walk over there and say something to him.

He turned toward them, almost as if hearing her thoughts.

The officer looked at her, then Jewel, then her. Jewel touched the corner of his left eye with his left hand and glanced at her while his hands fumbled for something under the table. He slowly got up, looking at the floor, and walked toward the men’s room. How had he known? Then again, Alvin Jewel was more than just a part-time robber. He’d spent a lifetime planning, plotting and committing crimes. Marcy’s thoughts oddly moved to Morris as she watched the officer slowly walk toward the hallway leading to the men’s room. Morris had his business, his partner, his employees, a week’s worth of stock market headaches and the uncanny ability to not feel anything about any of them. Any of them or her. Alvin Jewel wasn’t refined, didn’t get manicures like Morris did, didn’t wear expensive clothing as it was obvious that his body would no sooner fit into an Armani suit as it would a military uniform. But in the midst of a slick plan to steal money and hightail it down to Mexico, he had found the time to buy his five year old son a birthday train.

Too much time had passed now. As if being struck by lightening, her heart ricocheted off the walls of her chest in an uneven Flamenco pattern. She wiped her palms on her pants and brushed hair out of her face.

"Would you like another pitcher, Ma’am?" a young, pimply-faced boy asked with an empty tray in his hand.

"No thank you, but my friend went in the men’s room a few minutes ago and hasn’t come out. Do you think you could go in there and check on him?" she asked without thinking. God, she thought. What have I done? But the young boy had already left, setting his tray on the table by the shoe counter. The men’s room door squeaked as it opened and closed.

Marcy blinked as the thought came and went.

Run out the front door, hitch a ride South.

She looked down at the truck keys on the plastic bench. As she reached her hand toward them, she heard the low-pitched crackle of a strike followed by a woman’s high squeal. She jumped and shuddered, and then heard the squeaky door again.

"There’s no one in there, Ma’am. I’m sorry. Do you need a ride, or something?" the boy asked and quickly looked at the floor.

Marcy grinned, not sure if from a teenage boy finding her attractive or of the implications of his question. It was possible that he’d driven off and left her there stranded, having no more use for her as a hostage, but more likely that the Oklahoma police officer that had followed them through two states and a thousand miles caught him going out the men’s room window and found some loophole in the jurisdiction law. Therefore, she thought, that truck must still be in the parking lot.

With a ten dollar bill wadded up in the corner of her pants pocket, she paid the boy for the shoe rental, the burgers and beer, walked out into the cool night air and smelled the tangled mess of cigarette smoke, diesel fuel and rain being pulled across the flat, stretched prairie.