Orville Pike told me the rest on the tailgate of his old truck in the parking lot of Holy Spirit church, in a cold wind, with the funeral luncheon going on behind the doors. He said that in 1974 there had been three guards on the payroll truck, not two. The third was a young deputy named Clive Rudd, the son of the county sheriff, a smiling restless boy who had arranged the whole thing with four men from Reno. Clive had meant to split the money with them. But in the dust storm, with everything going wrong, the four men had panicked and fled, leaving the bags in the sagebrush.
“Stan and I found them,” he said, “on our hands and knees in the dark, with sand in our teeth. Two hundred thousand dollars in old twenties. Clive had run off with the truck. We knew he would come back for it.” He took off the white cowboy hat and turned it in his hands. “Your grandfather said, Orv, we cannot give it to the sheriff. The sheriff is the father of Clive. We cannot keep it. They will say we did it. So we made a pact, out there in the storm. We hid the bags where no one would look. And Stan wrote down everything, that night, and signed it.”
I pressed my gloved hands to my face. The wind pulled at my coat. He said, “They arrested me in the morning. Clive had told them it was me. He said I had been seen near the truck. I had no witness but your grandfather, and your grandfather had a wife and a new baby, which was your mother. I said, Stan, you keep your mouth shut. I will take it. When I come out, we will go to a judge together.” He gave a dry little laugh. “But when I came out eleven years later, Clive was the sheriff. And your grandfather said, Not yet.”
A promise kept for fifty one years is not weakened by silence, and a blank postcard can carry the whole weight of a friendship.
“Fifty one years,” said Orville. “Every December he sent me a card. A blank card with a picture of the Canyon, which meant, I still have it, Orv. I am still waiting. I kept every one. Stan wanted to wait until the man was dead, so that he could not hurt your grandmother.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Last week I read in the Ely paper that Clive Rudd, ninety one years old, retired from the state senate, was in hospice in Reno. So I thought, now. It is time. And then I saw the obituary of Stan.”
I asked where the money was. I said, “Mr. Pike, I do not know. I swear to you.” He studied my face, and I saw that he believed me. He said, “Then think, Jenny. Think of anything he said. He was a man who kept his promises. He did not hide things in banks. He hid them where he could see them every day.” I stood in the wind and I thought, and I thought of the postcards, the stamps, the Grand Canyon, the man under the hood of a car. And then, quite suddenly, I thought of the lilacs.
My grandmother had planted them in 1975, along the south wall of the little house on Pilot Butte Avenue, after the birth of my mother. They were enormous now, a hedge of purple and white that perfumed the whole block in May. My grandfather had tended them himself, fussing and trimming, and had never once let anyone dig near them. He called them the girls. He used to say, jokingly, that the roots went down to China. I told Orville. He closed his eyes. He said, “That sly old fox.”
We drove to the house in my car, with Orville wrapped in a blanket. I fetched two shovels from the garage. It was nearly dark, and sleet had begun to fall. We started under the biggest bush, at the corner, where the ground was frozen, and we took turns. My arms burned. The old man dug in short furious bursts, and then leaned on the shovel, wheezing, and then dug again. Near eight in the evening, with a sound that I will remember when I am dying, the blade of my shovel rang against metal.
It was a steel ammunition can, wrapped in three layers of oilcloth, sealed with wax. We lifted it out between us. Inside, tight and dry, lay bundles of twenties tied with string, and a flat white envelope. The money smelled like dust. Orville touched it with one finger as though it might burn. Then he opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of lined paper, covered in my careful block print of my grandfather, and signed, and dated, and witnessed by a notary from Elko whom I later learned had died in 1983.
It named Clive Rudd. It described the plan, the four men, the storm, the bags, the night. It said, in plain words, that Orville Pike was innocent and that he had been willing to take eleven years of his life to protect a family that was not his. At the bottom my grandfather had added a line in his own hand. Orv, I am sorry. Tell Jenny to cook you a pierogi. We both read it by the light of a flashlight, in the sleet, on our knees in the lilac bed, and neither of us said a word.
I took it to the Attorney General in Carson City. It took fourteen months. The money went back to the mining company, in a ceremony with the governor. Clive Rudd died in Reno in the spring, but the statement was read into the record anyway, and the court of Nevada, in a quiet hearing, overturned the conviction of Orville Pike. He was ninety five. The state awarded him six hundred thousand dollars. He bought a small house in Ely, and a new truck, and he sends me a card every December. It is blank. I know exactly what it means.