Three Men, One Brain

There were three of them, and between the three of them they shared perhaps one full brain. Even that estimate was generous. But the brain is a complex instrument. Surely one is capable of planning a bank robbery… right?

They called themselves the Dalton Gang. Not the real Daltons, mind you, as those men were dead and buried and had, in their prime, actually managed to rob a bank or two. No, these Daltons were Daltons in name only, a title self-bestowed one humid night in a saloon outside of Abilene when Cletus Bickle, the eldest and self-appointed mastermind of the outfit, had slammed his fist on the bar and declared, with the full weight of destiny in his voice, that they were going to be legends.

The other two were his younger brother Virgil, and a man known only as Possum. Both had nodded in solemn agreement. And so the Dalton Gang was born.

On this particular morning, the morning of what Cletus had taken to calling The Job, the three men sat in a circle on the dirt floor of an abandoned barn just south of the town of Dryer’s Gulch, New Mexico Territory, going over the plan one final time.

Cletus held the plan in his hands. It was drawn in charcoal on the back of a hymnal page he’d torn out of a Bible, which Virgil had pointed out was probably bad luck.

“Alright,” Cletus said. He smoothed the page across his knee and cleared his throat. “One more time. For clarity.” Cletus pointed a thick finger at the drawing, which, to anyone else, would have resembled a child’s sketch of a rectangle with several lopsided circles inside it. “This here is the bank. First National of Dryer’s Gulch. One door in, one door out. Same door. That’s important.”

“Why is that important?” asked Virgil.

“Because it means we know how to enter the building, and then exit it after it’s all said and done.”

Virgil considered this. “That’s a good point.”

“It’s a great point. Now. Step one: we ride into town at high noon. Why high noon? Because that’s when folks eat lunch. Lunch makes a man drowsy. Drowsy men don’t fight back. Step two: Virgil holds the horses outside. This is critical. If there ain’t horses when we come out, we’re just two men running down Main Street with a bag of money, and that don’t look right.”

“It don’t,” Virgil agreed.

“Step three: me and Possum go inside. We approach the teller. We present the note.”

Cletus reached into his coat and produced a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it carefully and held it up. Written in large, labored letters, it read: THIS IS A ROBERY. PUT THE MONEY IN THE BAG OR ELSE.

“You misspelled robbery,” said Possum.

“They’ll be too scared to check my spelling.”

“And if he ain’t scared?”

Cletus patted the revolver on his hip. “Then we move to step four, which is: pull out your firearm and shoot it in the air (not too much as to waste ammunition).”

“I thought step four was the escape,” said Virgil.

“Step five is the escape. Virgil, I swear to God, if you cannot keep five steps in your head—”

“I can keep ’em! I just got four and five mixed up.”

Cletus eyed him down as if pondering whether to shoot him dead and then continued. “Step five is the escape. We ride north. Not south, not east, not west. North. Because nobody rides north. You know why?”

“Why?” both men said.

“Because there ain’t nothing north. And that’s exactly why they won’t look for us there.”

There was logic to this plan. Not a lot of it, but each step led to the next in a reasonable way. Hell, it just might work.

* * *

High noon found the town of Dryer’s Gulch in its usual state of indifference. A dog slept in the middle of the road. Two old men played checkers on the porch of the general store. A woman beat a rug against a post.

Into this scene rode the Dalton Gang at what Cletus had described as a “commanding trot.” In practice, this meant Cletus’s horse moved at a reasonable clip, Possum’s horse lagged a full length behind because it was old and frankly didn’t want to be there, and Virgil’s horse had stopped entirely to eat a shrub at the edge of town. It was high noon afterall, lunchtime if you will.

“Virgil!” Cletus hissed over his shoulder.

“He’s hungry!”

“We are in the middle of a robbery!”

“We ain’t in the middle of nothing yet. We’re still on the road.”

This was technically true. Cletus grit his teeth and nudged his horse forward. They would adjust. Great men always adjusted he found himself saying

They pulled up outside of what Cletus was certain was the bank. It was a squat, sun-bleached building with a sign above the door, though the sign was angled in such a way that the sun caught it directly, rendering it unreadable from horseback. No matter. He had cased this building. He had walked through its front door not four days ago and spoken to the man behind the counter and asked how much money they kept on hand. The man had stared at him for a long time before answering. Cletus had taken this as a sign that his disguise (a hat he did not normally wear) was working.

“Bandanas up,” Cletus ordered.

Cletus and Possum swung off their horses. Cletus handed his reins to Virgil and pleaded.

“Don’t move,” he said.

“Yessir.”

Cletus turned to the building. He set his jaw. He put his hand on his revolver. He pushed through the door with full force. He’d been practicing this entrance, and so far, the practice was paying off.

The room was not a bank.

It was, unmistakably, a dentist’s office.

A man sat in a reclined chair with his mouth pried open by a set of iron tongs. Another man who was most likely the dentist, stood over him with a pair of pliers and a look of professional concentration. Both men turned to look at Cletus and Possum, who stood in the doorway with bandanas over their faces and hands on their weapons.

No one spoke.

The patient made a noise, but the tongs were in the way.

Cletus’s eyes swept the room. A cabinet of instruments. A spittoon. A certificate on the wall. No vault. No teller. No money.

Possum leaned in close. “Cletus.”

“I see it.”

“This ain’t the bank.”

“I said I see it.”

The dentist lowered his pliers slowly. “Can I help you gentlemen?”

There are moments in a man’s life when the correct course of action is to apologize, turn around, and leave. Cletus Bickle had never, not once in his thirty-eight years on God’s green earth, chosen the correct course of action.

“We’re from the county,” he said. “Health inspection.”

The dentist looked at the bandanas. He looked at the revolvers. He looked at the man in front of him and the man behind him and the busted-open door still swinging on its hinges.

“Health inspection,” the dentist repeated.

“That’s right. Routine. You passed.” Cletus gave a curt nod. “Good day.”

He turned and walked out. Possum followed. They did not run, because running would suggest guilt, and guilt was not part of the plan.

Outside, the sun was merciless. Virgil sat on his horse, holding the reins of the other two, looking proud of himself for not having moved.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“The bank,” said Cletus, his voice flat and measured, “is not that building.”

“Which building is it?”

Cletus looked down the street. There were six buildings. One of them was the bank. He did not know which one. He had been certain it was the one they had just walked into, because he had walked into it four days ago and spoken to a man behind a counter. It was now occurring to him that the man he had spoken to four days ago might have been a dentist, and that the question “how much money do you keep on hand” might have been interpreted rather differently than he’d intended.

“We adjust,” he said. “Great men adjust.”

“You said that already,” said Possum.

“Because it bears repeating.”

They stood in the street for longer than any three men with bandanas around their necks and revolvers on their hips should reasonably stand in one place without drawing attention. Cletus studied each building with squinted intensity. Possum leaned against a post and picked at his teeth. Virgil's horse was eyeing the shrub again.

“We could just ask someone,” said Possum.

“We are not asking someone where the bank is. That is exactly the kind of thing a man about to rob a bank would do.”

“We are men about to rob a bank.”

“But they shouldn’t know that.”

An old woman emerged from the general store carrying a sack of flour. She moved slowly, with a careful, wide-legged gait. Cletus adjusted his bandana so it hung casually around his neck, and approached her with what he believed was a disarming smile. It was not disarming. It was the smile of a man who had recently been told he should smile more and had tried to teach himself using a creek's reflection.

“Ma'am,” he said, tipping his hat. “Fine afternoon.”

She looked at him.

“My associates and I are looking for the bank. Not to rob it. Just to go inside of it. For personal, non-criminal banking purposes.”

The woman stared at him for a very long time. She looked at Possum, who waved. She looked at Virgil, who wasn’t doing much as always.

“It's that one,” she said, pointing to a building two doors down from the dentist's office. There was a sign on it that read, in letters large enough to be seen from considerable distance: FIRST NATIONAL BANK.

“Much obliged, ma'am. And again, we are simply going in there. As customers. Of the bank.”

“Uh huh,” said the woman as she walked away, clearly decided this was no longer her problem.

Cletus turned to the others. “See? No suspicion whatsoever.”

“She looked pretty suspicious,” said Possum.

“That's just how old women look. They're suspicious of everything. It's got nothing to do with us.”

Virgil kept hold of the horses while the other two walked to the bank. Cletus paused at the door. He pulled his bandana back up. Possum did the same.

“This is it, boys. Stay sharp. Follow my lead.” He pushed through the door.

The interior of the First National Bank of Dryer's Gulch was small, quiet, and aggressively ordinary. A wooden counter ran the width of the room. Behind it sat a woman with her hair pinned up tight and spectacles perched on the end of her nose. She was writing something in a ledger. She did not look up.

Cletus approached the counter. He noticed he was getting nervous. This was his moment. Don’t mess it up.

She continued writing.

He cleared his throat.

She held up one finger without looking.

He waited, sweating under his bandana.

Finally, she set down her pen, looked up, and spoke with flat, mechanical courtesy. “Good afternoon. Are you here to make a deposit?”

Cletus felt the blood drain from his face. She knew. She already knew. He didn't know how. Maybe the dentist had sent word, maybe the old woman had run ahead. But this woman behind the counter had clearly been informed, and now she was testing him, feeling him out, trying to see if he'd tip his hand.

He would not tip his hand.

“Yes,” he said.

Possum looked at him. Cletus did not look back.

“Wonderful. Do you have an account with us?”

This was a trap. It had to be a trap. If he said no, she'd know he wasn't a real customer. If he said yes, she might ask for proof. Cletus did what he always did when cornered and chose the option that required the most commitment.

“Not yet. I'd like to open one.”

“Of course.” She reached below the counter and produced a form. “Name?”

Cletus blanked. He had not prepared a false name. He had prepared a note that said THIS IS A ROBERY and a five-step plan drawn on the back of a hymnal page. A false name had not made the list.

“...Dalton,” he said.

“First name?”

“...Bill.”

“Bill Dalton. Lovely.” She wrote it down. “And what is your initial deposit, Mr. Dalton?”

Cletus reached into his coat pocket and produced, after some rummaging, a crumpled bill and a handful of coins. He set them on the counter. It amounted to four dollars and thirty-seven cents. It was, in fact, every cent he had in the world.

“And will there be anything else?”

Cletus looked at the woman. She looked back. Her face betrayed nothing. She was good, better than he'd expected. A professional. He respected that. What he needed now was to extract the money without breaking character.

“I'd like to take out a loan,” he said.

“A loan?”

“That's right. Five million dollars?” Cletus suggested.

The woman looked at him over her spectacles. “I cannot loan you that amount.”

Well shit. “Okay what about fifty?”

“A loan requires collateral, Mr. Dalton. Do you own property? Livestock?”

“I own a horse.”

“What kind of horse?”

Cletus thought about his horse, how he stole it and had not a clue how old or what kind of horse it was.

“A good one.”

The woman considered this. She looked at the form. She looked at him. She appeared to decide that this was not worth the argument.

“I can approve a short-term loan of fifty dollars at eight percent monthly interest. You'll need to sign here and here.” She turned the form around and tapped two lines.

Cletus signed. Bill Dalton. Twice.

The woman counted out fifty dollars in bills, stacked them neatly, and slid them across the counter. Cletus picked them up. He held them. Fifty dollars. In his hands. Taken directly from the bank.

It had worked.

He turned to Possum, who looked like he wanted to say something. Cletus gave him the smallest of nods, as if to say, “We got 'em.”

Possum did not nod back, because Possum was beginning to understand what had just happened.

“Pleasure doing business,” Cletus said.

“Likewise, Mr. Dalton. You'll receive your first repayment notice by post. The address?”

“We don't have one. We're… between residences.”

“I'll mark it pending.” She made a note in her ledger and looked up one final time. “Anything else?”

“No, ma'am. That'll be all.”

They walked out. Cletus walked taller, perhaps, than he had ever walked. The sun hit his face and he squinted against it like a man emerging from battle. Behind him, Possum walked in silence. Virgil was waiting by the horses.

“Well?” said Virgil.

Cletus held up the bills.

“Fifty dollars,” he said. “Clean.”

Virgil's eyes went wide. “You did it. You actually did it.”

“Damn right I did.”

“No one got shot?”

“Didn't even have to show the note.” Cletus tucked the money into his coat. “Gentlemen, I told you. Plan works every time if you trust the plan.”

Possum opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he opened it again.

“Cletus,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“You just took out a loan.”

“I just robbed a bank.”

“You signed a form. With a name. She wrote it down.”

“A fake name.”

“You gave her four dollars.”

“That was a diversion.”

Possum looked at him for a long moment, but found he had nothing to say. He had ridden too far and sat in too many barns to start asking hard questions now.

“...Sure,” he said.

“Damn right, sure. Now mount up. We ride north.”

***

At least Cletus had been right about one thing in his life. There really was nothing north. He had undersold it, if anything. It was a place that made a man feel like God had started working on this part of the land, wandered off to do something else and just never got around to it again. Flat, pale dirt stretched in every direction, unbroken by tree or rock or any feature that might suggest the earth was trying. The sky above was enormous and indifferent.

They made camp at sundown. Possum had gathered what scrub brush he could find, and the fire it produced was thin. Virgil sat cross-legged in the dirt, turning the fifty dollars over in his hands, counting it for the fourth time.

“Sixteen dollars and sixty-six cents each,” said Possum. “With two cents left over.”

“I get the two cents,” said Cletus.

“Why?”

“Because I’m the one who robbed the bank.”

“You didn’t rob the bank. You opened an account and took out a loan at eight percent monthly interest.”

“Which is robbery in reverse.” Virgil pointed out.

“You shouldn’t even get money Virgil you didn’t do anything!” Cletus yelled.

“Virgil probably would’ve got more if you sent him in.” Possum said

Cletus poked the fire with a stick. The fire did not respond.

“The way I see it,” Cletus said, “we are fifty dollars richer than we were this morning.”

“We are fifty dollars in debt.” Possum mumbled.

“That’s a matter of perspective. They sent the repayment notice to an address we don’t have, under a name that don’t exist, in a town we are never going back to. So who’s the fool, Possum? Who is the fool?”

No one had an answer. Virgil looked up from the money. “So what do we do now?”

Cletus stared into the fire. The stick in his hand had caught a weak flame at the tip, and he held it up and studied it.

“Boys,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about the next job.”

The fire popped once and went out.