OCTOBER 2008

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Raise ‘Em High for Matty Wayne
By Mike Faloon, Jul 22, 2008

Thanks, Curtis. When I saw Curtis at the funeral today he said that a bunch of people would be getting together here tonight and I asked if my brother and I could say a few words. I know that’s going to surprise a lot of you, but we never got to thank Matty and it’s important to us to do that.

True enough, Matty’s the man who arrested us but we’ve owed him our gratitude for a long time. Phil and me went through some tough times. You don’t understand what it’s like hearing the same questions over and over again, about not wearing masks for a bank job, trying to get away in a donut truck, kidnapping Evelyn and Artie. Nothing worse than people asking you questions they think they already know the answers to. None of it is quite what you think—we had a good plan—but our situation, our lives, especially the eight years we did down in Warren, would have been much worse if it wasn’t for Matty Wayne.

When you grow up a Jensen in Penobscot County you grow up hearing about how the shoreline along the southern end of the lake might bear the name of the Felix family but actually, legally, it belongs to you. Our dad used to take us hiking in those woods, and owling, too. I remember those nights, moonlight trickling through the branches. He’d say we weren’t trespassing because the property was really ours. ‘The Felix family is a bunch of liars, a bunch of cheats,’ he’d say. ‘All this was your great-grand dad’s. It was taken from us but one day it’ll come back to our family. The Felixes can hide the truth in that safety deposit box for only so long.’ Our dad went to jail trying to break into that safety deposit box and so did our grand dad. But me and Phil had the advantage of being twins. Two heads working together, even if, like Phil, one of those heads is selectively mute.

Why bother wearing masks? The day we held up the Savings and Loan the first thing Evelyn Milford said when we walked up to her window was what took you boys so long? We were proud of what we were doing. We wanted people to know it was us. We didn’t feel good pulling guns on neighbors but we had to set the record straight.

And we didn’t have to say a word about what we wanted. They led us straight to the vault, we put all the papers in Phil’s book bag, and we were out of there in no time. We hopped in our car and took off. The donut truck came later. Escaping wasn’t part of the plan. Figured we’d turn ourselves in if we didn’t get caught. We just needed time to read that deed, which was old and brittle and broken up along the folds, and it was confusing, too. We tried looking for names but Evelyn kept interrupting. She was in the backseat. We had to take her along just in case. You don’t understand how hard it is to tie someone up and gag them. We didn’t hurt Evelyn—she came right up to Phil at the funeral this afternoon—but that day she just wouldn’t stay quiet. That book bag we had was full of promise. I wanted to let the moment sink in but she kept shaking off that gag and Phil would have to stop reading, climb over into the backseat, and tie the gag back on. Then a couple of minutes later she was back at it, telling us about this nephew of hers who was diabetic but didn’t do anything about it for years, so he lost his job and fell into a coma, and now he’s back to talking but they don’t know about his liver. Don’t know why she felt the need to catch us up on gossip but she was making it really hard to concentrate on driving, never mind figure out what Phil was saying. Most of the time him not talking is kind of nice. I get a lot of thinking done. Other times it’s like living with a damn mime and I think to myself, Just say something already! Of course, it would have been a hell of a lot easier if Phil was driving, then I could have done the reading myself. Phil can drive, he’s got a license and all, he just doesn’t like to. So anyway I’m behind the wheel and I’m driving as fast as I can and then Evelyn’s babbling again, this time about a neighbor’s son-in-law who got his arm caught up in a wood chipper and Phil’s reading and finally he gets to the part where everything turns to shit. The truth of the matter was simple: Our great-grandfather sold the land. The Felixes didn’t lie, didn’t cheat. They were right. We were wrong. All those stories? Knocking over the bank? For nothing. Half my life washed away right then and there. We’d have done time to vindicate our family but it wasn’t worth getting caught at that point.

We turned on this little police scanner we brought with us and they’re going on about armed and dangerous, and robbery and kidnapping. They identified Phil’s car, too, so we went to Plan B, pulled into Artie’s Diner to change vehicles. We knew Artie left the keys in his truck—or at least he did when we worked for him—but they weren’t in the ignition so we locked Evelyn in the trunk and went inside. That’s when Phil pointed out that we needed money—we didn’t take so much as a roll of nickels from the bank—and a diner like Artie’s is all cash and no security. Like I said, we don’t like pulling guns on neighbors but Artie played it stubborn, which surprised us. We knew we were violating the law but we thought people would be on our side. They’d look past what we were doing and see why we were doing it. Kind of like Robin Hood or Martin Luther King. Anyway, we came away with a couple of hundred dollars, a mess of donuts, and a couple of coffees—we didn’t get one for Evelyn because of the gag and all. Only problem was that Artie’s pick up was almost out of gas, so we had to take his delivery van. You know, the one with the big pink frosted donut mounted on the roof. Not a fast vehicle but if you think with reverse psychology it was perfect cover for a getaway. Lucky for us there wasn’t anybody in the diner but Artie. I ripped out the phone cord because we knew Artie couldn’t keep his mouth shut and just as we’re about to leave we see him take out a cell phone—Artie has changed a lot since he got remarried. Personally, I never did care much for that Laura Wilk—so of course we had to take him too.

We’re not five minutes down the road when Matty Wayne comes on the scanner and we hear that he’s in pursuit of a donut truck northbound on 95. We figure that’s us. So we get off the highway and head for Baxter Park. Figured we’d lose them there. We know those trails well but the access roads are unmarked—and it was so hard trying to concentrate with Evelyn and now Artie talking so much and Phil saying so little—we got lost and wound up down by the lake. That some bitch van couldn’t do shit in the sand and before we know it we’re on foot.

We left the back door open to let in fresh air for Evelyn and Artie. Then we made a beeline for the woods. A couple of minutes later we stop, catch our breath, and realize we left the money in the van so we head back and it turns out we weren’t very good at the binding part of kidnapping either because when we got back to the van, Evelyn and Artie were gone, so we had to split up to find them.

I gave up after a couple of hours. Thought it was more important to avoid Matty than it was to find Evelyn or Artie. I found cover and stayed put until sundown, planning to move at night. Figure Phil for the same. About dusk I was at the edge of this clearing. I heard one of Phil’s bird calls. I spotted Phil about a hundred yards away and then all of sudden I see Matty standing in the clearing between us. I swear Matty sees me and I can’t tell if he’s looking to talk or shoot. I don’t like pulling a gun on a neighbor but I knew I couldn’t take any chances so I fired first. I knew something was wrong as soon as I squeezed the trigger. I heard a second shot just as I saw Phil flinch and drop like a rag doll and I felt this flash of rage at Matty for shooting my brother just before there’s a god awful sting in my shoulder, like a copperhead came up on me, and I realized I’d been shot too. Meanwhile, Matty? Nowhere to be seen, like he disappeared.

It took me a couple of minutes to get up but somehow I staggered across that clearing—yelling out every move I made because I could only raise the one arm and I didn’t want Matty or whoever else might be with him thinking I was still armed and I was trying to draw attention to myself thinking maybe Phil could get away. I mean, Phil and me look out for each other. We’ve lived together our whole lives. We’ve always had the same jobs, listened to the same music, liked the same shows, and I got this image in my mind of being at the grocery store and Phil not wanting to try one of those cheese-on-a-stick samples unless I did too. Funny what goes through your mind at a time like that.

I made it to Phil and he was lying there pointing first at his gun and then me and I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say—he does his best gesturing with his right hand, which he couldn’t move because of the gunshot wound—and I was cussing at him, saying, You can talk, Phil, and this is one of those times where you damn well better and all of a sudden there’s Matty again. He was telling us to keep our hands up, which we couldn’t do and he ought to have known because he shot us, or at least I thought at the time, and he was making us nervous, cussing us for taking him on this wild goose chase and scaring poor Evelyn and Artie. When he got to us he was looking down the barrel of his gun, moving it back and forth between Phil and me. Then Matty stopped. I could see the anger on his face. He was seething. And then there was a long moment where I wondered what he was going to do next. I’d never met the man but I knew about his reputation. I expected him to finish the job. Then I swear I saw him hold back a laugh. Phil was lying there on the ground, gesturing toward his own gun, and I was standing there clutching my shoulder, couldn’t figure out what Phil was trying to say and that smirk came back on Matty’s face and that’s when it hit me, that’s when the worst day of our lives got worse: Matty didn’t shoot me or Phil. We shot each other. I could have sworn I was shooting at Matty and Phil was thinking the same thing but my brother and I shot each other. Matty cuffed us and we waited for the ambulance. He didn’t say a word the whole time. I never felt such shame and remorse. Just look at Phil’s face. You can tell he felt even worse.

But you know what? No one ever said a word about the shootings to us. We heard about robbing a bank without masks and not taking any money and the donut truck and kidnapping old folks and all the rest of it but nothing about shooting each other. To this day I have no idea how or why Matty Wayne kept that information under wraps but he let us keep some of our dignity and Phil and I need to thank him for that. We’re not drinking men much any more but tonight we’re making an exception. Here’s to Matty Wayne.