Big City Girl (9 page)

When he had cleared the outskirts of the city, headed east, he looked at the gasoline gauge. It was low, below a quarter full, and he began looking for a station. It was after midnight now but there would still be plenty of them open along the highway. If I was going to steal a car, he thought, why couldn’t I have stolen one with a full tank? It was a good car, though, a late-model Lincoln with lots of power.

He passed two or three Stations, large, brilliantly lighted, watching for a smaller one. In them big stations, he thought, even when you stay in the car you got light coming at you from all directions. One Lincoln looks like any other Lincoln, at least till they get it on the pickup list, but my face has been in too many papers.

He hit the open country, and then there was a small town, asleep now except for the flashing caution light across the highway, an all-night café and a constable making his rounds, and on the far end of the darkly huddled cluster of buildings he saw what he wanted. It was a small station, set back slightly from the street, with only one light over the driveway.

The door of the station was open and a youth in grease-stained white sat at a desk looking at the pictures in
Life
. Sewell stopped under the light in the driveway and the young man came out, smiling.

“Yessir,” he said eagerly. “Fill her up?” He had friendly gray eyes and big shoulders, and the arms below the rolled-up white sleeves were tanned and heavy, rope-muscled. Football player, Sewell thought.

“Think it’ll take about twelve or fifteen,” he said, bending his head down and pretending to be looking for something in the glove compartment.

“Regular or ethyl?”

“Ethyl,” he said over his shoulder.

The young man went around to the back of the car and took the hose off the hook. Then, suddenly, he was back at the window.

“The keys to the gas tank?” he asked pleasantly.

It’s little things, Sewell thought. Always little things. You can’t think of ‘em all. Lots of people forget to give ‘em the key, sure, but it just takes a little thing like that to start one of ‘em thinking. What kind of dope is it that don’t even know his own car’s got a lock on the gas tank?

“Oh, yeah,” he said casually, still looking down at the road map he had taken out of the glove compartment. He slipped the ignition key out of the lock and passed the leather key container out the window. But suppose it’s not in there? he thought. When the attendant went back around to the rear he shot a hand into the glove compartment again. There it was, a key tied to a small plastic tag.

The attendant was back at the window, handing in the leather key case and smiling apologetically. “None of them seem to fit.”

“Yeah, here it is,” Sewell said, passing the other key out with his left hand. “It was in the glove compartment. Wife uses the car,” he grumbled. “You never know where the hell anything is.”

The gasoline pump stopped ringing and he took out the wallet Dorothy had given him and held a five-dollar bill out the window. The youth gave him the key and went inside for the change. The cash register clanged and he waited impatiently. The car was directly under the single light in the driveway and inside it he was in partial shadow, but the longer this took the more chance there was that the fellow would get a good look at his face. He took the change with his left hand and stowed it in his pocket. The attendant reached for a rag hanging on the pump.

“Never mind the windshield,” Sewell said.

“Lot of bugs spattered on it,” the other urged hesitantly, reaching for the water hose.

“The hell with—” he began, and then stopped. Never attract attention. Never start ‘em thinking. They don’t see you unless you start ‘em thinking. “O.K.,” he said. “Thanks.”

He folded the road map, keeping his face down. He glanced up only once, swiftly. The youth was leaning over the fender, working on the windshield, looking at the bugs on the glass. Or was he looking in? Go on, kid, he thought. Get nosy. Get yourself killed.

I’m just jumpy, he thought. The kid ain’t seen anything. If he’d recognized me it would be on his face.

The youth finished with the windshield and stepped back. He started the motor and slid out of the station, and as he started to swing back on the street he glanced once at the rear-view mirror. He could see the white figure standing under the light, looking after him. Reading the license number? he thought. Maybe I ought to go back and blast him. No. No. Probably just wishing he had a Lincoln himself. It’s this forever wondering that gets you after a while.

The highway straightened out and he eased the accelerator in slowly and smoothly, feeling the power. Fifty, sixty, sixty-five . . . Louisiana in another couple of hours, he thought. The only thing, though, is having to get out before I found her.

Back in the station the young man sat down at the desk again with the copy of
Life
, looking at the pretty girls. All those big brown freckles, he thought. I never did get a good look at his face because he was always fooling with that map, but those big splotches on the backs of his hands . . .

He got up and went to the phone on the wall and lifted the receiver off the hook.

“Give me the sheriff’s office,” he said.

Mitch awoke in the night, feeling the charged and swollen darkness and the heat. There had been no sound, and as he lay there the stillness was something he could almost hear. There was no accustomed rustle of leaves in the post oaks or sighing of breeze among the pines around the house. The door was only an oblong of lighter blackness than the walls around him, and on beyond he could see no stars above the black line of the trees. In a moment there was a nervous flicker of lightning, far off, because there was no thunder.

He sat up and rolled a cigarette and lit it, the match blinding, brilliant for an instant, and then the night rushed back and swallowed him. It’s like waiting for something, he thought. Like waiting. But for what? For rain? It’s been threatening ever since dark and ain’t rained yet. Maybe it won’t. But it’s too still; it’s a weather-breeder. He thought of two men moving slowly around each other inside the ringed and silent faces at any gathering when there was about to be a fight, the two of them circling and poised, each waiting for the other to make a move. Why the hell do I keep thinking of that, he thought? I ain’t been in a fight, or about to be in any that I know of.

He wondered what time it was, knowing he would not be able to go back to sleep. He was as taut and tightly wound as the night. When he had finished the cigarette he threw it out the door and put on his clothes and went toward the back porch of the house.

As he passed the spot where Joy had put down the water bucket and cried out he thought about it. What the hell did she do a crazy thing like that for? he thought. When I tried to help her she shoved me off like I was trying to rape her. Well, who knows why women do anything? And especially that one.

He lifted the lantern off its nail by the door and lit it, and started down the trail past the barn, going toward the bottom, thinking of the river and worried about it. He had lived here above the river all his life and loved it as an old friend, but he knew its moods and its strength and the things it could do when it had the mind. Twice he had seen it rise without rain, and it was a frightening thing to watch, like seeing a dead body mysteriously come to life and move.

The trail dropped down toward the level floor of the bottom where the lantern threw long pendulum-swinging shadows of his legs against the towering columns of the oaks, and then suddenly there was the sinuous weaving of deadliness ahead of him in the trail, almost under his feet. It was a big rattler, diamond-marked, cold, and silken-flowing, moving up the trail toward higher ground. He caught up a dead limb and smashed it across the head, killing it, and threw the body off the trail. It was a had sign. There were few rattlers in the bottom, and when you saw one coming up out of the low ground like that it meant high water coming.

He hit water before he got out to the river’s bank. When he came to the old wagon road coming downriver and going out to the ford there was muddy water in a low spot in it. He was barefoot, so he stepped in and waded across. It was only a little over his ankles, but it meant the river was spilling up against the tops of its banks in places.

He came out to the ford and stood holding the lantern above his head. As far out as he could see in its feeble circle of light the brown flood slipped past, silent, swollen, bearing on its surface the telltale flotsam of drift, twigs, limbs, and small logs. A big bridge timber came by, slowly turning end for end on the dark and turgid bosom of the current. It’s just like it was that last time, he thought, the year Sewell went away. No rain here at first and it just kept coming up all the time, getting higher and higher every hour, going past quiet like that, like a river of oil, and then when it started to rain it came right out of its banks and over the bottom.

Another foot and it’s going to be pushing on that levee we built across the head of the field. And I ain’t got my fresno this time to build it up any higher. That road camp we borrowed it from is gone now.

I still got a shovel, though, he thought, silently watching.

He slowed to go through a small town, and suddenly a police car shot out of a side street behind him with the rising snarl of the siren ripping into the night and drawing ice along his back. He hit the accelerator and the speedometer needle began its dizzy swing, thirty-five, fifty, seventy, eighty-five, and still climbing. The highway ran straight out beyond the town and he let it roll, kicking the headlights up on high beam and watching for curves coming up. Then there was a long easy swing to the left and he rode hard on the throttle, hearing the scream of the tires go up higher and higher.

I should have shot the nosy bastard, he thought with cold ferocity. He was looking at me through the windshield all the time. They wouldn’t have this car on the pickup list this soon, and I wasn’t speeding, so it’s only one thing. That nosy punk kid called the cops. And that means there won’t be just one of ‘em. There’ll be a road block somewhere up ahead.

At this speed he could not take his eyes off the road to look back, but he could tell he was slowly pulling away. The siren was dropping behind and the reflection of the headlights was less glaring in his mirror. Going to have to shake ‘em fast, though, he thought. They’re just chasing me into a road block, and God knows how much time I got before I hit it.

The police car began to drop out of sight behind him for minutes at a time. In another ten miles it was only a faint flashing light seen occasionally far back down the road, and he slowed abruptly, looking for a turnoff. His luck was good and he spotted a gravel road going off to the left inside a mile. He swung into it and cut the lights, waiting.

The police car shot past with the siren screaming and he whirled back onto the road headed the other way, gunning the motor in second to pick up speed. That’ll take care of ‘em for a few minutes, he thought. But not for long. They’ll know it before I can get very far and they’ll get on the phone, or on the radio if they got one, and both ends of this road’ll be plugged. I can’t go south, there’s just the Gulf down there. I got to ditch this car and get another one. The description and license number’ll be all over the state in fifteen minutes.

Ten miles back there was a secondary road taking off to the north. There were no cars in sight when he made the turn. The road was narrow and in poor condition, not safe for over forty miles an hour, but it wound north, in the direction he wanted to go. A few miles farther along another one led off to the right and he took that, swinging east again. If I can keep heading north and east, he thought, I ought to hit the highway going north. He looked at the clock on the dash. It was almost two.

He wound for miles through the maze of country roads, past dark farmhouses and through desolate second-growth timber. The worn macadam pavement gave way to gravel in places, and then went back to macadam again.’He was on a graded dirt road when the rain began. I got to get out of this mess and back on the highway before it begins to get slick, he thought. If I get stuck out here I’ll be in a hell of a mess.

Then, shortly after three o’clock, he came into a small town and there was the pavement going north. The town was asleep, dark in the rain, except for an all-night filling station. He turned left and picked up speed again.

I’m going toward home now, he thought. When I cross the river up there I’ll be within fifteen miles of the old place. I hope they don’t expect me to drop in for a visit. He grinned coldly. Time’s going to be kind of pressing for that. I wonder what the old man’s selling these days, now that he’s diddled off everything he ever owned.

The rain was coming down harder now, and it reminded him of that other night a week ago with George driving and himself in the back seat shackled to Harve, going to the penitentiary. God, he thought, was that only a week ago? It seems like a year. Remembering Harve, he thought of Joy, coldly and regretfully. Ain’t no help for it, he thought. I couldn’t find her. And if I get out of this mess alive, that’ll be a miracle itself.

Long miles rushed back in the darkness and the slanting gray lines of the rain, and the country towns dropped behind one by one, huddled darkly beside the highway. He slowed a little going through the towns and then hit the accelerator again when he had passed them, feeling a grim satisfaction in the smooth surge of power under his foot.

Then it happened. He was going through one of the small towns, slowly, around thirty-five, and saw the light streaming out into the rain from an all-night cafe and the four or five cars parked in front of it. The last one was a patrol car and it started to back out into the street as he went past. He swerved out, feeling again the icy shiver along his back, and went on at the same speed so as not to draw attention to himself. The patrol car backed on out and straightened up, and for an instant its lights were full on him. The muscles of his back were bunched up in a cold knot and he fought down an almost overpowering impulse to bear down on the accelerator and flee. Maybe they hadn’t paid any attention to him. Maybe they didn’t even have a bulletin on him yet. Maybe . . . And then the siren snarled, then screamed, as the cruiser shot toward him.

It had terrific pickup and was gaining on him. He gave the big motor wide-open throttle and held it, and when he passed ninety he could see he was gaining back a little of the ground and he began to draw slowly away. It’s just a question of which one of us piles up first, he thought. This ain’t no hundred-mile highway, to begin with, and at night like this, in the rain . . . Somebody’s going to leave it on one of these curves.

They slammed on through another town, and in going out on the other side had to make a right-angled turn. The big Lincoln skidded sickeningly, then straightened. The cruiser was within a half mile of him and it was growing light. I won’t be able to pull any turnoff this time, he thought, coldly examining his chance’s.

Then, suddenly, he had no chance, and knew it. They were waiting for him at the river. He went slamming down a long turn coming off the hill and saw the river bottom spread out below him in the gray wet dawn, the river in flood and spread out over the bottom, the long fill going across, the big steel bridge black in the rain, and the two patrol cars drawn up and waiting for him. He took it all in in one flashing fraction of a second at ninety miles an hour, coming down off the grade. Jesus, what a sweet setup, he thought. What a stinking, lousy sonofabitch of a thing to run into.

He was going too fast to stop and get out of the car and make a run for the timber on foot. The other car was right behind him. And the two up ahead were pulled part way across the road, one at each end of the bridge, He saw all the terrible beauty of it in one quick, coldly assaying glance. It was perfect. If he shot past the first car and got onto the bridge, the other one would pull squarely across the other end of it and he would be trapped like a fly in a bottle. And even if he could pull down to a stop before he hit the bridge, he would be caught between the car at this end and the one following him.

He was going too fast. He was right on top of the first car and still doing fifty. They were shooting now; he heard the guns and saw a hole appear in the windshield. Then he slammed into the car. There was a crash and a scream of metal as the right side of the Lincoln tore off the front end of the patrol car. Then he was skidding onto the bridge. The Lincoln was completely out of control. It raked one guard rail, shot across the pavement into the other, then spun end for end and stopped, facing back the way it had come.

Before it was stopped he was out on the bridge in the rain with the gun in his hand. The bridge was about five hundred feet long and he was near the center of it, over the main channel of the river. The patrol cars had both ends of it blocked now, the one chasing him having come up and stopped. They knew it was down here, he thought, and slowed down enough to get under control.

There was no panic in him now that he had finally been trapped, only a cold and terrible concentration as he looked swiftly around at the river bottom and at the two ends of the bridge to see how many men there were. He could see two at one end and three at the other, and now they were pulling rifles from the cars.

No protection behind the car, he thought, because they’re on both sides of me. And this .38 ain’t no good against them rifles. Couldn’t even hit a barn with it at this distance.

He put the gun back in his pocket and ran for the rail. There was the sudden impact of something crashing into his arm and he spun around and fell, hearing the rifle shot crack in his ears. He got up and made it this time and climbed over, holding to a slanting steel girder. They were running toward him, but not all of them at once, for the rifles cracked twice more and lead slammed into the girder to go flattened and screaming off into the rain. He looked down. The muddy and drift-laden surface of the flood was about twelve feet below him. He let go and dropped.

He took a deep breath before he hit the water and let himself go deep into it, and then began kicking downstream, going along with the current and pushing upward with his hands to keep from coming to the surface. When his lungs could stand no more he swam upward and felt his head go above water. He took another breath and went under again as a small geyser exploded just beyond his face. This time he changed course slightly and went quartering down the current in order not to come up too near to where they would be expecting him.

They’ll be coming down the river, he thought. The current’s carrying me along and two or three more dives and I’ll be out of range of the bridge, but they ain’t going to stay up there like it was a shooting gallery. The river’s overflowed the main channel but they can still get along the banks all right. It won’t be over knee-deep. One of ‘em will stay on the bridge and there’ll be a couple of ‘em coming down each bank, and there ain’t no way in Christ’s world I can get out of here. And I sure as hell can’t swim from here to the Gulf of Mexico underwater.

He came up again. This time with the swift intake of breath he took a quick and sweeping look around across the drift-laden, roily surface of the flood, seeing the two men in black slickers splashing along the bank. One of them spotted his head out in the current and stopped to raise the rifle, yelling, and he went under, but not before he had seen the drifting sweet-gum tree some thirty feet to his left and slightly upstream. Just as his head went under he heard and felt the sharp concussion as a rifle bullet hit the surface and glanced off. A half second later, he thought, and my head would have been busted open like a green gourd.

He turned underwater and fought his way across the current toward the place the tree had been. It was a small sweet gum, not much more than a sapling, but he knew there would be submerged branches he could locate if he could come near it underwater.

They’ll be looking for me downstream, he thought. The thing is to find it and come up inside the limbs. If I can hold straight enough I may be able to do it. Must have come twenty feet now, and it should be right ahead, not more’n another ten feet. Can’t figure out about that arm. It was hit, but I don’t feel nothing. Hardly nothing at all. Must not have hit the bone, because I can swim with it. If it had, the bone would have been busted all to hell. They weren’t shooting 22’s. Well, I ain’t in any hurry to feel it. When the shock wears off I’ll get it all right.

I must have passed that tree. Come fifty feet anyway, and I must have got off the course and missed it. And it ain’t going to do no good to make a second run at it, because when I come up over here instead of downstream they’ll know what I’m up to and they’ll start blowing the tree out of the water. I missed it, that’s all. Then leaves and small twigs brushed the top of his head and he felt a surge of hope.

Right under it, he thought. He raked upward with his right arm and felt a limb, still underwater, and began following it up, forcing himself to go slowly in spite of the pain in his lungs. Then there was the trunk of the tree directly over his head. He held onto the limb under the surface and came up slowly until his face was just out of the water. He took a deep, gasping breath and opened his eyes. It was perfect.

The tree was eight or ten inches in diameter here, with a couple of inches of it out of the water. Several limbs took off at this point and his head was in a cluster of leaves and small twigs. Through breaks in the foliage he could see the two men on the near bank, standing now in knee-deep water and intently searching the surface of the flood downstream, waiting for him to come up. It fooled ‘em, he thought, and started to swing his head slowly around to look out at the opposite bank for the other two when he heard an ominous and terrible buzzing just back of his ear like an egg beater whirring in a pile of dead leaves and felt all his nerve ends turn to ice in one of the few moments of absolute terror he had ever known.

Cold fury looked at him six inches in front of his face, and the deadly triangular head drew back to strike. The big rattler had been stretched along a limb as high as it could get out of the water it hated, and his movement or the pull of the current had disturbed the balance of the tree and rolled the limb downward toward the water. There was no time to pull his head back or submerge. One more slightest move and it would strike him full in the face. He brought a hand up and took the deadly, loathsome impact of it on his wrist and felt the puncture of the fangs. His hand closed over the body just back of the head and he pulled it below the surface, squeezing terribly with all his strength, feeling the sinuous, thick-bodied power of its threshing, and then the fangs pierced his hand once more before it stilled. He let it go and vomited into the water in front of his face.