GRAND LARCENY

I confess. I stole the negatives from my father’s house on the farm. I plan to re-print photos of my lost mother, my childhood, relatives who matter. I want tangible proof of my own history. So I confess. Hundreds of negatives are in the backseat of my car—old reliable—in a small shoebox. And on Interstate 80, in western Iowa—my getaway—the road map shows me that I am about to pass the site of the first train robbery in the west. Because I feel guilty now, I am in tune with this villainy. I am on the run. But I see no evidence of criminal activity on this section of the interstate—no advertisements with six-shooters, no arrowheads pointing this way to the great train robbery—nothing to testify that this is a notorious site. This is Iowa. Still, I am anxious. My hands grip the wheel. I suspect there is a state trooper hiding behind an upcoming billboard. There are likely off-duty cops with CB radios running my plates. Outside my window, there are lazy green hills with scattered black cows upon them. It is pretty and not what you’d expect.

I have my own fantasies about the first train robbery in the west. And I can’t imagine horses galloping alongside locomotives in Iowa. Not here. In the southwest maybe. John Wayne and saguaro cactus. Coiled rattlesnakes and leather boots. Pretty women as common as tumbleweeds. But John Wayne was born in Iowa wasn’t he—with its gentle hills and pockets of leafy timber? He must have left some evidence behind. We all do. But without a sign—something to show me the way—I can’t imagine this robbery as anything other than a movie-heist: A farm boy suddenly leaps from his workhorse and just manages to hang on to the ladder that leads to the train’s roof. The boy’s gritty partner—chiseled entirely out of evil itself and from a place far distant from here—is already running and then, precariously, he is leaping across roaring space to the next passenger car. How his black hat stays on faithfully, I’ll never understand. The rolling Iowa hills though, rushing along this highway, are beautiful. And the boy hesitates and thinks of this.

Now, it’s time to steel oneself. Lift the black bandana from around his neck and place it over his mouth and nose. This will stop anyone on the train from recognizing the local boy gone tragically wrong. Or at least we can pretend. He has such a young face for stealing.

The world doesn’t give us anything, does it? Whatever we want, we must take. It doesn’t matter that the men in our families beat us, that everyone on this train has had their own beatings. It doesn’t matter that our mothers died too young or that we all lost what mattered most to us.
          That young woman there … with the plunging neckline and the bashful look. She is wearing such a pretty brooch. Her hair wants to come down in a fistful of ringlets. She could love me. And the man sitting against the window. He’s nervous that I might take his father’s silver watch. I have that reputation now, and he never thought much of us boys in his general store.
          It’s the stranger who unnerves me. Reading me. Judging. He thinks he can outgun me when this gun is all I’ve ever had—me and this metal—the only reliable thing in my life. I could kill him.

Stop. This is a stickup. Keep your hands where we can see them. We are neither locals nor boys. This is not about myth or legend. This is not about you. This is about me now. For one beautiful moment. This is crime.