Frank’s Cat

tpc007

Frank’s cat finally killed a mouse and that’s when he decided to finally rob a bank. Nine of them to be exact. He got into his Plymouth Horizon and got on the Pike, and started robbing. If that cat was gonna finally start, then so was he. The ninth was the hardest one. He knew damn well he couldn’t get away with robbing nine banks on the same stretch. He knew that.

It wasn’t about the money. It was about that mouse. He was proud, and he felt like his only reality was on that road - in his head, driving made it real. He was doing something. Anything. One foot in front of the other. He wanted to kill a mouse too.

He didn’t even have a gun. He walked into that first bank and just said, “give me the money please.” The teller who hadn’t done much in the last hour said, “the money?”

Franklin said, “yes, the money please,” and he held the pause like it was the gun he didn’t have. And just like that, he got the money. He walked back to the Horizon with this beat up sack of cash, climbed in through the passenger side cuz the driver-side door hadn’t opened for years, pressed play on the boombox on the passenger side floor, and smiled showing the dimples that he forgot he had.

The next bank was twelve minutes up the highway. Keep collecting sacks.

Twelve minutes didn’t seem like enough. Like writing a sentence and caring more about the spaces, he drove and wanted to keep driving, but he needed the words to make the spaces spaces, so like his adorable Sammy, he pounced on sacks. He pounced with politeness. He watched Dillenger and Bonnie and Clyde…the pause, the loaded pause…the spaces between words. “Just the money please.” And hearing the shadow of his nerves he thought, “I need a partner,” and then he thought, “that’s the first time in a long time that I thought, ‘I need.’”

As he walked into the eighth bank for the eighth sack, Frank thought he was lucky a smile goes a long way with a bank teller these days; they really don’t have much to do.

The teller handed him the sack. He knew she was pushing the button. He knew he was on camera. He had no illusions of a ninth life what-so-ever.

But Sammy finally caught that mouse, and he brought home those sacks and showed her that he could catch a mouse too.