The Overall Gang
John Weagly
"What do you two want to do?" Ben asked.
"I don't care," Karen said.
"Anything is fine," Jamie agreed. "What do you want to do?"
"I don't know," Ben said. "What do you want to do?"
"We could rob a bank."
It was Karen's idea. A silly one. One of hundreds that the three of them talked about any given day. For some reason, this time the idea stuck. They were bored, that was the problem. They certainly needed the money, but the main reason for this foray into crime was to liven things up. Most days, "What do you want to do - I don't care, what do you want to do" was their primary activity.
They'd gone to high school together. Ben was quarterback of the Penville High Pirates and Karen and Jamie were both cheerleaders. In the two years since graduation none of them had left town. Friends out of habit more than anything else.
They knew they couldn't rob a bank where they lived, everyone in Penville knew them. Ben came up with the idea of driving a couple of hours to St. Louis.
Karen had the idea of everyone wearing denim overalls, she said it would give them a sense of unity. Like those street gangs and their colors out in California! Ben said that if they were going to be a gang, they should have guns. They went to the Penville K-mart and bought three plastic water pistols, one blue, one yellow and one pink. The guns made them feel like outlaws.
Jamie's idea was to use her Grandmother's old wheelchair in the caper.
Ideas. It was all about ideas.
Ben read a lot of mystery novels and told them everything he knew about robbing banks.
"Tellers are instructed to do exactly what the bank robber tells them," he said. "Our note should say no dye packs, nothing off the top or bottom of the drawer and no signaling anyone else in the bank. We'll do it at three o'clock, that way we avoid the busy times, right after they open, right before they close and lunch."
It all worked like a charm.
Karen kept the getaway car running a couple of blocks away. Jamie stood in the bank, just an anonymous customer who helped the handicapped patron with the door. Ben did the rest.
Put on the baseball cap and glasses.
Enter the bank.
Roll up to the teller.
Slip her the note.
Take the money.
Roll out of the bank and around the corner.
Get out of the wheelchair.
Lose the ball-cap and glasses.
Rendezvous with Karen and Jamie and drive back to Penville.
They made off with a little over six-thousand dollars. As expected, the news reports said all anyone in the bank could remember was that the thief was in a wheelchair.
Ben said to avoid suspicious spending, they should bury the cash for six months. They found a nice, secluded spot deep in the woods behind Jamie's place. They laughed and squirted each other with their pistols as they carried the loot through the trees.
A month passed.
"What are you going to buy?"
Then three months.
"I don't know. What are you going to buy?"
Then five.
When the time came to dig up their treasure, they all wore their overalls and brought their squirt-guns. Their way of sticking together.
Another fine idea.
In the woods, all of the trees looked the same. Karen said they should go to the left. Jamie knew they should go to the right. Ben was positive that they were supposed to go twenty paces straight ahead, turn left at the creek, go fifteen paces, stop at the big rock, then turn to face the setting sun. There was no big rock.
They spent the rest of that afternoon, and several weeks that followed, trying different scenarios. It was no use, the money was gone for good. In all of their camaraderie, in all of the laughter and delight of the robbery, getaway and burial, the one idea that none of them had thought of was to draw a map to where the money was buried.

Right after graduating from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale with a BA in Theater, John Weagly toured the US as a writer/performer with "Authorized Personnel: A Comedy and Improv Team" Since then, he has had plays produced by a variety of theaters in Indiana and Illinois, including Strawdog, CollaborAction and the Bloomington Playwrights Project. His fiction has appeared in such magazines as Futures, Pirate Writings, Blue Murder, Planet Relish, and in the Twilight Tales anthologies Tales from the Red Lion and Cthulhu and the Coeds. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America and a founding member of Iguana Productions. He lives in Chicago. John can be reached at John@TwilightTales.com