Bobby the Accountant – An American Landscape Short Story

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Training for his first ultra-marathon, Bobby runs. The thirty-two-year-old lanky man runs every day. Today, he stops.

At the edge of the dirt road, up Big Canyon Creek Valley, Bobby gazes into the brush, spying a shiny metal case. He leans left, bends down, shuffles a step to the right. Once a path through the scruffy foliage exposes itself, Bobby slinks and slides down a rocky slope to the would-be treasure.

As he inspects the double set of latches on the aluminum case, he hears a noise. The whoosh of mechanical mayhem comes close. In a rush. Bobby slips deeper into the thicket and toward the creek bed below, while he drags the heavy case with him.

A faded, blue-gray pickup rushes past, gravel and dust blasting up and out in its wake. The noisy beast is gone in a flash. 

Bobby finds a hole through the flora which leads to a sandy patch of dry streambed. He sits on a smooth rock and hefts the case to his lap. A three-digit combination lock becomes his focus. He starts with 0-0-0. The latches don’t budge. He tries 1-2-3 and hears a click. With a latch under each thumb, he flips their tabs outward. The case opens. 

Like the slam from an NFL linebacker, a flood of surprise and emotion shoves him off the rock. The case slips from his grasp, its contents spilling to the ground. Dozens and dozens of bundled hundred-dollar bills litter the gray sand. 

Bobby pulls the case back onto his legs, dozens more bundles still inside. He collects the loose money and restacks them in the case.

The adding machine in Bobby’s head whirrs to action. Eight bundles deep, twenty-four bundles per layer. Each packet is wrapped by a white band with $10,000 printed in yellow. Nearly two million dollars. 

“Crap. What do I do now?” Bobby the accountant says into the dry air. “I can’t just take this. I’m no thief. But who would I be stealing from, the coyotes?”

Bobby closes the case and locks it again. For a quarter of a mile, he scrambles along the rocky streambed. Finding a suitable spot above the high-water line left after last winter’s storms, he conceals the case under some stones, so he has some time to answer these questions pinging around in his head. 

With skills learned in boy scouts, he triangulates the location to landmarks above him, up the slope on both sides, committing them to memory. Bobby heads farther down the creek bed, then climbs to the road. He checks the coast is clear and resumes his training run, turning back for home. His pace is slow, crazy ideas cascading through his mind. More than once he says to himself, “What do I do now?” Or “The coyotes won’t mind.”

At home, Bobby is wistful, nervous. His wife, Darcy, notices. 

Holding a knife above a pile of veggies and a cutting board, she asks, “What is your problem, Robert?” Darcy never uses her husband’s nickname. “Didn’t you have a good run?”

“Oh, huh, yeah, fine,” Bobby says as he fills a glass at the kitchen sink. He turns toward her and drops the glass. Water spills in a fan across the floor.

“Robert! Did something happen out there? Where did you run today?”

“It’s Tuesday,” he says while he soaks up the mess with a dish towel too small for the task.

“Ah, out the canyon road. What happened?” she asks as she hands her husband another towel.

The floored dry, Bobby refills the glass and takes a seat on a stool at the marble-topped island. His wife starts a stir fry while she eyes her husband across the stovetop. 

“Sweetie, what would you want to do or have if we won the lottery?” Bobby asks.

“Have you, have we won the lottery?”

“No, no. It’s just a game.”

“A stupid game,” Darcy says. “We’ve played this before. It’s silly.” 

Bobby stands and slips around to Darcy. He reminds her how much she complains that they never talk, says he’s making conversation. “What would you want if we had millions?” he asks as he takes her free hand in his.

“I don’t know. I am perfectly happy as we are. We have all that we need,” she says.

“I’m talking about what you want, not what you need. What exotic place in the word could I visit with my beautiful wife?”

“What are you talking about? Want, need, what’s the difference?”

“You need air and water and shelter,” Bobby says like a professor to a student.

“Well, I don’t know,” Darcy says while she ponders the idea and stirs sizzling veggies in a cast iron wok. “I’ve always wanted to travel to Paris, to see the Eiffel Tower, visit the Louvre.”

“That’s better. Now you see the difference.”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with us?” she asks as she plates their meal. “Robert, what have you done?”

This goes on in different ways for a while, Bobby never answering her questions. He gets more and more pensive, pushes the food around on his plate until it’s cold.

“What is up with you?” she asks. “If you’re not hungry, there’s something seriously wrong.”

Later, they go to bed. Darcy falls fast asleep. Bobby tosses and turns.

The first week, Bobby sticks to his routine. He runs in the park on Wednesday. Thursday, he sprints intervals at the school track. Fridays are gym day and Saturday cross training on his road bike. All that week, he reads the newspaper from front to back and watches the local news channel for the first time in years. He gets up early each morning and goes to the coffee shop to work on his laptop while he eavesdrops on nearby conversations. After work, he stops for a beer at the one bar in their little town. 

The only out-of-the-ordinary item on people’s tongues has been a mysterious car wreck on Mallory Road at the end of the canyon road over ten miles out of town. They say the driver was dead, and there was no ID on the body. It was a rental car.

It’s a long week before Bobby returns to Big Canyon.

The next week he can’t help himself. He runs out the canyon road three times. He seldom sees a car, figuring no one cares what his training schedule has ever been.

He runs past the cache every day now. He looks for signs of people in search of his money. But he doesn’t go to the case.

Two weeks later, two tattooed men in dark clothes and leather vests show up in town. They rent a room in the dive motel out past the town’s water tank. Mornings, they go for coffee. Afternoons, they stop in for cold beers. They chat up a few locals each day, different people each time. Bobby knows what they’re after. He watches them, follows them. His work now suffers. Clients are calling, nagging, looking for promised reports. They get on his nerves. He goes out for another run, then home.

Bobby takes off his running shoes and enters the house through the garage as usual, and walks into the kitchen. His respiration rate is still elevated. He goes to the sink for some water. Darcy steps out of the pantry.

“How was your run?” she asks. “Where did you go?”

“Oh, it was fine,” replies Bobby as he distractedly looks out the window. With his water, he wanders through the living room and out to the patio. He sets his glass down and stretches his legs. The sliding door opens and closes.

“Robert, we need to talk,” says Darcy. “You remember when you told me all about needs? Well, I need to know what is up with you. I got a call from a Mr. Briarson, over in Tillsdale. He says he needs his reports done. Why is this man calling the house, calling me?”

“Don’t worry about old Briarson. I’ll get reports to him in the morning, first thing.”

“Your clients are everything to you, Robert. Or they were. What gives?”

“Nothing. Maybe just nervous about this race I’m training for. It’s my first ultra, my first fifty-miler,” Bobby says as he comes around the table and pulls Darcy into a hug. “It’ll be fine. I just need some time. You’ll see. It’s all good.”

“You know I hate the saying, Robert. It’s never all good. And you stink.” She pushes him away.

“You’ll see,” her husband says as he leans into a runner’s stretch against a post.

The next morning, Bobby sees the tattooed men as he leaves the coffee shop. They pass him at the doorway, both scrutinizing him through glaring eyes behind dark glasses. Bobby melts under their gaze but goes to his car and sits there, waiting to see what the two men do, where they will go.

A half an hour later they come out with cups in their hands. Bobby watches them as they climb into a beige sub-compact four door. He follows them out of town. He has seen this a thousand times on TV: don’t get too close, don’t lose them.

They drive out to the freeway bypass and go north. After about fifteen miles, they take an offramp to Wells Ranch Road. He follows them to the crossing with Mallory Road.

Bobby backs off some. He can follow their plume of dust on the gravel road. As feared, they turn onto Big Canyon Creek Valley Road, back toward town, suggesting they’ll complete a loop. They slow their pace. The dust plume dies. Bobby must slow down, anticipate.

The tension in Bobby’s muscles hurt worse than after a trip to the gym. From his hundreds of training miles out this way, he knows every turn and dip and crest in this old dirt road. He sneaks around corners and spies on the two strangers as they stop and search through the roadside brush in a haphazard pattern. 

Back in town, the beige car stops at the motel. The two men climb out of their car. Bobby shrinks down in his seat as he drives past. 

That evening, he doesn’t go for a run. He stays later than usual in his office. He finishes Mr. Briarson’s reports, then emails them to the businessman.

On the way to his car, the beige sedan cruises into the parking lot. It parks behind Bobby’s car. He freezes at the end of the walkway from the office building, briefcase in one hand, workout clothes in a duffle in the other. His dress shirt is moist before he takes another breath.

The two men climb out of their car, lean against the roof, and eye Bobby. The driver slides his dark glasses down the bridge of his nose. “You Bob?”

“Yeah. Ah, yes,” Bobby stammers.

“Your wife says hello,” says the other tattooed man. Bobby flinches, drops his duffle and briefcase to the cement.

“What have you done with Darcy?” Bobby says in six one-word sentences. The world has slowed. Clarity of purpose like he has never experienced before rushes Bobby’s presence, blossoming from his chest, and radiating out to fingertips and toes.

“Get in,” barks the driver.

Bobby thinks about running. He could escape these goons; run into the surrounding hills he knows so well. But what about Darcy, sweet, beautiful Darcy, his only reason for breathing? What of her? Stalling, he bends down and collects his things. He glances left and right, hoping someone from one of the other offices will magically solve his problems or, at least, call 911.

He looks through the trees and toward Elm Street, watches the few passing cars, hoping for help of some type. Hoping to see Darcy drive up in her little red sports car, smiling at him like this is all a joke, or a dream.

“I said get in the damn car, Bob,” the driver says again, this time with pure venom dripping from the words. 

Bobby’s knees weaken. He locks them for a second, then walks, almost goose-stepping toward the two men. 

“Throw your crap in the back, then get in the front. You drive.” Again, the malice in the man’s few words coat the scene in darkness. Bobby’s shirt is soaking wet, turning cold, clammy. He shivers but does what he’s told. He buckles in and adjusts the mirrors. The two men bore holes into his soul with their eyes. The thick smell of stale beer turns Bobby’s stomach. He swallows hard.

“Where are we going?”

“To our money. First things first,” says the man in the back seat as he extracts a switchblade knife from an inside pocket of his black vest. The blade flips out with a menacing hiss and a metallic click.

An odd thought occupies Bobby’s mind as he steers the car out of the parking lot: Darcy doesn’t like that saying either, “First things first.” He gathers his random, rather stupid thoughts and ponders his next move. As if he might have other options, he reminds himself.

At the edge of town where Big Canyon Creek Valley Road turns to gravel, the compact car rattles and bounces over boulders too stubborn for the county’s road grader and in and out of the many potholes.

“Where is my wife?” asks Bobby as he looks at the man beside him.

“First things first.”

“This will take some time. Is she okay for a while?”

“Not to worry, thin man,” says the guy with the switchblade. For emphasis, he reflects sunlight from the setting sun into the rearview mirror and into Bobby’s eyes.

“What will you do with us after?” Bobby asks while perspiration consumes his undershorts and thighs. He hopes it’s just sweat. Sunlight hits his eyes again, and he slams the mirror to the ceiling with the back of his hand. The guy beside him flinches and spins a quarter turn.

“Don’t get uppity, Bob.”

Bobby slows the car. The man beside him says, “What we doing? Are we here?” Bobby grins a brief grin to himself at the man’s inane questions.

“It’s this road,” says Bobby. “It’s too rough to drive any faster.”

The man in the back says, “Don’t mess with us, Bob. That wife of yours is damn pretty. We wouldn’t want to cut ’er.”

“We are close now,” Bobby says. “So, where is my wife? You tell me that, and I’ll show you where your money is.” The two men glance at each other.

The man in the front seat says, “She’s at the motel. Don’t worry about her. You do what we say, then we go see her, maybe have a little celebration after our swap.” He glances again at his partner. They smile at each other with greedy, lust-filled grins. 

Until then, Bobby would have done whatever these men wanted, in the hopes he could save his bride, the future mother of his children. Everything changed when he saw those depraved smirks.

After a tight, hair-pinned turn, Bobby stops the sedan, puts it in park. They had not seen another soul since they left town. In his mind, he runs through his one chance. “This is it. From here, we climb to those rocks.” Bobby points out an outcropping of gray stone a hundred feet above the road. The two men stare at the rock pile like it were presents under a Christmas tree. They open their doors and climb out of the car.

Bobby pulls the key out of the ignition and opens his door. He steps out of the car, puts the key in his pants pocket, and removes his jacket. He folds it neatly and sets it on the driver’s seat. The man with the switchblade turns back and eyes Bobby’s actions.

“Bob, old friend, you run up there and get our money. Then we’ll go see your missus back in town.”

Turning from his view of the rocks above, the other man says, “Yeah, Bob, then we’ll go and have us a little party.” He releases a vile chuckle, which turns into a malicious laugh, like a madman at a hanging.

Bobby looks to his black leather shoes, recalling the day he bought them, remembering how Darcy had chided him for buying a leather product. Will these shoes meet the challenge he has in mind for them today?

“Get on up there, Bob,” says the man with the knife as he points the blade up the hill.

Bobby fingers the car key in his pocket. He pulls it out and grips it in a tight fist. Bobby lifts his gaze to the outcropping of rocks above. He stares at the rocks on the hillside for a long moment. The two men follow his eyes.

Bobby is around the curve in the dirt road before they realize he has gone. He hears them shout, but not what they say. The ultra-runner settles into an 8-minute mile pace, observes his respiration rate, and controls his heartbeat. He can do this forever; he thinks to himself on a Thursday evening in his street clothes and black leather shoes.

It’s dark when Bobby gets to town. He stops at the bar and calls the sheriff’s office. He gives them a quick account of his kidnapping, of Darcy’s kidnapping, and the two men they will find on Big Canyon Creek Valley Road. Nothing more.

That task complete, Bobby runs through the sleepy town to the motel where he had seen the men staying. On the second floor, he finds the door to room 213. He bangs on the door and listens. He thinks he hears a murmur, a muffled voice. “Darcy,” he yells, then listens with an ear to the grimy door. This time, he is sure. Bobby looks around. There is no one. He back steps to the rusted iron rail and blasts at the door with a wild leg kick. His foot strikes below the doorknob, and wood splinters explode out in every direction. The door flies back on its hinges and slams into a table. 

“Darcy,” he shouts again. He hears her muffled plea much better now and finds her in the bathtub, tied and gagged. “Darcy, I’m so sorry, baby,” he says while he removes her restraints.

As they leave the room, Darcy asks her husband a string of questions a mile long. But there is a sheriff’s deputy there to meet them.

At the office, Sheriff Cobb tells the couple that his deputies picked up the men who had kidnapped Darcy and Bobby. He asks a lot of his own questions. Cobb and Darcy watch Bobby as he negotiates a path to please them both while keeping his secret. 

A deputy comes into the room and hands the sheriff two pieces of paper. He reviews them, then says, “Well, you two, you are damn lucky.” He looks up at each of them. “Your buddies are wanted for murder and drug running in five counties and three states.” 

Bobby looks to his wife and hot liquid streams from his eyes and down his cheeks. She follows suit. They hug tight.

“We’ll take your statements and get you home. You will, someday when the legal system gets ‘round to it, have to testify in court. You may even get the reward money. But then, maybe they got enough on those two this matter won’t even get brought up.” 

It is after midnight when a deputy with a handlebar mustache gets them home. He goes in with them to ensure all is well, then leaves.

Bobby pours a beer for himself and pours a glass of white wine for Darcy. They sit on the couch. Darcy asks all her questions with one look deep into Bobby’s soul. He explains everything, tells all his secrets, right down to how to find the case full of money.

“Drug money,” Darcy says.

“Must likely. But we can discuss what to do about it later, maybe find a charity we both care about.

Darcy sets her wineglass down, wraps her arms around Bobby, and says, “You stupid man, I love you.” 

Bobby says, “I know, but I don’t understand why.”

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While sketching out the backstory and family history for my upcoming nCamino Child and our lead character, Summer Darling, I wrote a novella about her grandmother when she was a young woman backpacking through Europe in the 1980s with her older sister. CLICK here to download your FREE copy of Georgia & Patricia.

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