by Gil Brewer
I had placed the forty-five on the seat beside me. Leda pulled it up from beneath her. “Some gat,” she said. “Or do you call it a rod?”
“I want you to tell me where the Hewitts live.”
“Right where they did before. They just moved over the line of their land after Frank took it away from them. They built a shack.”
I knew where it was, beyond Cypress Landing about five miles in more pine country. It wouldn’t take us long to get there.
This thing had to work itself out. Fast. If the Hewitts seemed okay and knew nothing, then we’d have to head for Frank’s cabin. Until I thought of something better. And until I could rid myself of the prompting in the back of my head, saying, “The dream, remember, Eric? You were asleep out there on the beach. Did you dream?”
I remembered Norma’s flashing legs in the headlights of the car as we’d come out of the sand road. What had she wanted? Probably just calling my name. She would think the worst when she heard what had happened. I couldn’t blame her for that. She’d had a raw deal.
We came out on a stretch of main road.
“Going to have to run on this for about a mile,” I said. “And we’d better get some gas at the first station.”
Her fingers tightened on my arm. “Should we take the chance? They may be broadcasting descriptions.”
“We’ve got to take the chance.” I pointed to the gauge. It showed empty, the needle wavering. We were probably running on aroma.
I got to thinking about Burkette. By now he was after us, trailing like the bloodhound he was, and cursing himself and everybody else. If I knew this country well, he knew it equally well, or better. He’d hunted every inch of the land for miles in all directions, and he was a backwoodsman at heart. A dead shot with any kind of gun, hard man on the trail, he spared quarter to no man and least of all himself.
I knew what I was dealing with. He was mad clear through me by now, and chances were he’d shoot on sight if he glimpsed me.
I didn’t want to kill anybody. All I wanted was freedom now, freedom and the rest of my life with Leda. I’d straighten that life out now, too. For rights.
“There’s a gas station up ahead,” Leda said. “I’ll make a dash for the ladies’ room while you fill up.”
“All right. But be sure it’s a dash.”
It was small place, with two pumps. Rain silvered the scene and I imagined the guy running it would howl plenty when we drove up. It was a wonder he was open.
As I drew up beside the pumps, Leda swung her door open and ran for the side of the station itself. She leaped puddles through the rain with her hair showing copper in the lights. I knew what must be going on inside her, knew how she must feel, yet she was holding up. Because she knew about the dream, too. She had the stuff, all right. There hadn’t been a whimper.
The round-faced attendant came to the car with a slicker pulled to his ears. He was soaked.
“What’ll it be?”
I told him to fill it up, then remembered I was broke. I didn’t say anything. Leda had to have some money.
“That’ll be five and a half,” he said. He peered in the window and thrust out a dripping hand.
“Wife’s got the money,” I said. “She’ll be right along.”
He stood there in the rain. I knew he was swearing under his breath. Still she didn’t come.
Finally, after what seemed an hour, she appeared, running toward the car. She got in, slammed the door.
“Money,” I said. “Quickly!”
“Money?” She looked at me, her eyes wide. “Oh, Lord.”
Something went bang inside me. Then she started fishing in her coat pockets. She came up with a five and three ones in a crumpled wad.
“Here.” I gave the man six dollars and gunned the car out of there. He would remember us, that was sure.
“Darling,” Leda said. “Sorry to be so long. But I got you something. Look!”
She pulled a crumpled bundle of something from beneath her coat. “A pair of overalls,” she said. “They were hanging on a nail in the men’s room.”
“What were you doing in there?”
“I just peeked in. Stop the car and put ’em on.”
I did. It was getting plenty cold. They were grease-stained and I was certain they were the attendant’s overalls. This would mark us for sure. But it couldn’t matter now. I felt better with them on.
Fifteen minutes later we crawled along the muddy road opposite the Hewitt’s land, or what once had been their land. Through the vicious streams of rain ahead I glimpsed a lighted window.
“This is it,” Leda said. “Just a shack. See, that’s where they used to live.”
“Yeah.” We passed a dark house, thrust against the pouring landscape, and I slowed down by the shack just beyond a fence. There was a driveway. I turned in, then slammed on the brakes. A big man in a Stetson ran toward us.
“Burkette!”
“Garth! Damn it! That’s him!” Burkette bellowed.
“Get out of here,” Leda said. Her voice was tense.
Burkette was running from the shack toward us, then he veered over to his large gray sedan parked ahead of our car in the drive. He yelled something else but his voice was drowned in the sound of wind, rain, and my car’s abruptly snarling engine. A spotlight swiveled around to us, blinding me for an instant. I saw Burkette raise his arm and a gun spat flame into the streaming night.
I shoved the gas pedal to the floor and cramped the car across a short expanse of lawn, back to the dirt road. Again the gun blasted, once, twice, three times. But we weren’t hit.
For the first time I really understood the jam I was in. I was in it for murder. It hadn’t been clear in my mind until now. It hadn’t been real, but a snarl of panic coiled inside me as I shouted, “You all right?”
“Yes, yes. Get going—that’s all, Eric!” She was twisted in the seat, looking back toward the shack. “They’re coming.”
“Got it to the floor. Can’t see a damned thing.”
“You got to! They’re shooting again.”
The car lurched and skidded over the road in the mud-slimed ruts.
“They’re closing in, Eric.” She moved next to me in the seat. “You’ve got to go faster. You’ve got to lose them.” There was a sob in her voice, then she began to swear. The things she called Clyde Burkette reached beyond obscenity, beyond my imagination. She pounded the dashboard with her fists. “You’ve got to lose them!”
Burkette had figured this was where I’d head for first. I’d proved myself a dope all over again.
Leda’s voice was shrill. “Eric, suppose they shoot our tires.”
I wheeled the car off the road at the first turn. For an instant I thought it was all over with. Grass sprung in the middle of the road and I saw it was nothing more than a wagon trail, one of those which spider-web parts of Florida like Martian canals. I recalled it as a detour to a main road leading away from Cypress Landing. If we could make that road we might be able to lose Burkette long enough to lose ourselves in the backwoods and head for Frank’s cabin.
I tramped on the gas and prayed.
“They missed the turn,” Leda said. “They missed it!”
Chapter 18
Burkette may have missed the turn that first time, but it didn’t take him long to swing the car around. Only moments, and that spotlight gleamed like the leaping white eye of a dragon in the rear-view mirror. I gave the car all she had. The wheels thundered over the rough road.
Leda’s voice was quieter now, but there was an edge to it I’d never heard before. “What if they get us, Eric? What’ll you do?”
“I don’t know. They won’t get us.”
“Sure, but what if they do?”
I didn’t answer. What use was there? A file of car headlights spat their meager illumination through the blinding rain ahead on the main road. I cut directly into the traffic and started passing.
There was barely room for two cars abreast, but I let it ride,
cutting between oncoming autos down the middle of the highway.
“There’s no point my saying be careful,” Leda said.
“No. Just sit tight.”
“I wish to hell I was tight.”
By the main route I knew it was about fifty miles to Frank’s cabin if I judged right. But we couldn’t take the main route. It would mean staying on this road too long. We could only use this road long enough to lose Burkette, if that was possible.
It was almost blind driving. All I had to depend on was the natural instinct of the other fellow to get out of the way. To them I was a drunk and they did get out of the way.
“I can’t see anything of them following us,” Leda said. “But it’s hard to say.”
Fifteen minutes of that and we were clear of traffic. The road was just pouring night as far in both directions as we could see.
On either side of us now lay jungle and swampland. An occasional water-filled cutoff glistened in the car’s lights, pushed into that tangle of throbbing vegetation. Tall cypress trees flanked us, their skeletal arms trembling with the weight of wind-smashed Spanish moss.
I knew we’d have to turn off soon into that. I knew what it could mean, but it was our one chance. Unless I wanted to trust luck on an upstate run.
The thought barely struck me when I pushed the brakes and wheeled the car around.
Just ahead on a curve in the road two squad cars hovered, with slicker-tented men patrolling patiently. I didn’t think they’d seen us, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Roadblock,” Leda said.
“Yeah. This is really it. We’ve got to start into that.” There wasn’t must else to say. I hoped to select the lesser evil of the many rain-washed and insecure roads.
“But—but this isn’t the way Frank took me up there,” Leda said.
“Sure. I’ll find it, though. We’re headed right, and I know this country.”
“God. We’ll get stuck, sure.”
“Maybe not.” I swung in to the left through a running ditch of water nearly hub-cap deep. It fanned out in a muddy shower beyond the slope of the hood, then back-fired onto the windshield.
I wrestled the car straight.
“Keep an eye on our tail.”
Not that it would do much good. If they’d seen us at the road block, and tailed us, we’d have to stick to this road anyway, because I knew it didn’t turn off save for cow paths into nowhere.
Now came the fun. The road was swamped with water. We sloughed from one side to the other in running ruts, leaped over unseen roots. Rubber shrieked and screamed against the fender and I thanked my dead brother for buying the best. Rain drummed all over the car in increasing and diminishing thunder—hood, top, windshield, side—like a reefer-drunk drummer on different kettles.
Off in the rain-shrouded night jungle life let loose their agony in high-pitched sounds that rose even above the motor’s howl and the driving rain.
I kept the pedal on the floor. I knew the road was straight for a good long time. Then gradually the road rose and we came up out of that swamped mud. The tire hummed on what was once hard-packed ground. It was softer now, like glass mushed over with oatmeal, but a hell of a lot better than back there.
“We’re going it now,” Leda said. “We’re okay now, aren’t we, Eric?”
I chanced my first look at her for quite a time. She had both hands on the dash, her head thrust forward, bright eyes searching the wild night ahead.
“You’re a trooper,” I said. “A real one. I’m sorry I got you into all this, baby. But I’ll get you out.”
She glanced at me and smiled. Her lips were a bit tight and the smile went cockeyed. “I know you will, darling.”
Then I saw the yellow gleam of two cat’s eyes ahead. It was another car approaching. I didn’t decrease speed.
“There’s a bridge!” Leda said.
But I saw that too late. The other car and I started across the narrow bridge at the same time. Wood planks ripped in a staccato roar, loose, and our rear end bucked and swung straight at the oncoming car’s lights.
I tried to wrench it back. We were going too fast.
At the instant we hit, I knew it was a truck. An old truck.
Leda screamed and we rocked off into the night, smashed through the wooden guardrail. For a time there was no sound save the wild whine of the motor and the monotonous thump and crash as metal and glass gave way, as young trees snapped. I held to the wheel and watched us dive down an embankment of withered pines, straight at the rain-mottled, gleaming surface of water.
We struck hard, head on, and water geysered into the air. I heard a sharp clunk beside me, and Leda sprawled across the wheel. She’d smacked her head. She groaned, and the car settled a bit to one side and was still.
A small cloud of steam hissed above the water and vanished. The engine creaked, we settled again, then it was very silent. For a moment.
“Hey, down there!” A cracker voice yelled through the rain from up on the bridge. It was the voice of an old man. “Y’all right, down there? Hey, y’all right?”
Chapter 19
“Leda, Leda!” I shook her, tried to straighten her in the seat. She moaned. Up on the bridge the old man yelled something again. “Are you hurt, Leda?”
She moved against me, then slowly pulled herself around in the seat. We sat with our feet braced against the dashboard, looking down at the windshield, the hood of the car, water and darkness.
“I’m—I’m all right,” she said. “Hurt my head.”
“Quick,” I said. “Out your side of the car. We’re in water, but it isn’t deep. Just climb out and start away from the car. Think you can do it?”
“Yes, but—”
“Never mind the buts. We can’t let that guy up there get sight of us. C’mon.” I opened the door against mud on her side. It would only open partway. “Squeeze through,” I told her.
She lifted herself through the door. “I’m dizzy.”
“Yeah.” I searched around on the floor for the Colt automatic. It was down between the clutch and brake pedal. I shoved it in my pocket and climbed out after Leda into the water and the raining dark.
Up on the bridge the man was shouting. Then I saw something else. Chickens were on the bridge, squawking, fluttering around. A dead chicken floated in the water next to our wrecked car. Three more flapped and clucked wildly in the small stream.
“Ye won’t talk,” the man on the bridge said. “Damn it all to hell anyways. Truck busted to nothing an’ all my chickens loosed, airy a one ain’t kilt or loosed. Damn an’ goddamn! Is anybody down there?” His voice echoed for a brief instant, then was muted by the rain. “They dead sure hell, I reckon.”
“Keep going,” I whispered to Leda. “Head for dry land, over there.” I shoved her through the water, which was up to our knees. “Be as quiet as you can.” It was then I knew I’d struck my leg on something. The one that’d been wounded in Korea. It was painful.
We made higher ground. I found a tall cypress on a hummock with knee-high grass soaked but soft around its base.
“Sit down—never mind the mud,” I said. “We’ll wait till he goes.”
Leda sank to the ground, leaned against the tree. I hunkered beside her and watched. It was very dark, but the lights from the truck on the bridge threw an eerie yellow glow over the landscape with the rain coming down in a steadied fall.
“How’s your head?” I looked and saw she’d cut it pretty badly above the right eye. It was best to let the rain wash it.
“Geez,” Leda said. “What a mess! Eric, what’ll—”
“Hang on.” I motioned her quiet. The old man on the bridge was coming down the far side, just beyond where our car went through the railing. Our luck, smash into a truck loaded with chickens. I tried to reckon how much farther we’d have to go to reach the cabin. I knew precisely where we were, and according to my guess we’d have a rotten sight of miles before we found the place. If we found it. . . .
“Dead,
sure as Blue’s a hound an’ Bessie’s belly’s swelled like a melon.” The man waded through water to the car. I couldn’t see him clearly, but he cursed plenty about the chickens. “I didn’t do nothin’,” the man said. “I didn’t do a thing, no-siree. Seen ’em comin’ like faar thu a tin hawn. Din’t do nothin’, damn an’ goddamn.” He reached the car. “Dead,” he said. “Dead as hell.” He looked in the driver’s side. “Airy a soul!” He thrashed around the other side and stood by the open door. He stood there for a long while staring inside the car. He didn’t say anything.
Finally he started away from the car, then stopped. “They gone,” he said. “They done taken off. Mebbe floatin’ in the river.” He started to cry, great racking sobs which cracked through the rain. He blew his nose with his thumb and sobbed some more. “Gone,” he said. “Reckon I’m done fer. Ain’t airy one chick lef’. Truck dead as hell.” Abruptly he cursed into the night and thrashed back toward the bridge. He didn’t say anything else. Then I saw him cross the top of the bridge, silhouetted in the lights from his truck. His shoulders were bowed and he shuffled. He picked a chicken off the guard rail and threw it with all his might in the direction of the truck. It screamed and clucked. Then he was gone.
“We’ve got to move on,” I told Leda.
“All right.”
I helped her up. She looked at me. Blood was running down the side of her face. “Which way?” she said. Her tone was resigned at first, then she seemed to summon courage and strength from somewhere. “Let’s go, Eric. Let’s go, we’ve got to get to the cabin.”
“Sure.” We had to get to the cabin. She was certainly determined about that.
“It’ll be dry there. We can build a fire,” she said.
The rain didn’t seem to be coming down so heavily now. Up on the bridge there was no sound, but the dimming headlights of the old truck still gleamed in shallow saffron.
