“He’s the closest doctor?”
“He’s the closest safe doctor,” Parker said. “You want a doctor that’ll call the cops?”
“Don’t worry, nobody’s gonna call the cops. You go to the nearest doctor.”
“That means finding a phone book somewhere and looking it up. This is the only doctor I know. We’ll be there in ten minutes, maybe less.”
“Why don’t you pass some of these people?” Manny was getting increasingly irritable. He was coming down off his high, and his wounded arm was probably bothering him, particularly because of the way he’d been overworking it.
“After this curve,” Parker said. He too was impatient. They’d come seven miles now.
In the next two miles, he managed to pass three cars. It made no difference in the timing, three car lengths wasn’t any great distance, but it made Manny feel better to think they were hurrying.
Nine miles. In the back seat, Jessup had started moaning, and moving around. Parker listened, his head back a bit so he could hear better, his eyes frequently on the rear-view mirror.
Ten miles. Motion in the mirror; Manny’s head lowering. They were whispering together back there, either because Jessup had no voice now or because he was telling Manny how to handle the killing of Parker.
Parker’s right hand moved nearer the gun under his left arm.
Again, motion in the mirror, this time Manny’s head coming back up. Parker tensed, waiting. There was no traffic coming the other way right now; if necessary, he would throw the car into a swerve to the left and ram a pole or a tree or a house on the other side, and finish them in the confusion. But that was the riskiest way, other ways would be better.
“Stop the car.” Manny’s voice, nervousness very plain in it now.
Eleven miles. Parker said, “The turnoffs just ahead.”
A harshly whispered sentence from Jessup. Manny said, “All right. Stop after you make the turn.”
It was nearly a mile farther before a road appeared on the right. Parker made the turn, and accelerated hard.
“Stop now.”
“The doctor’s just ahead.”
Parker drove at the top speed the road would allow. It was narrow and winding and hilly, a blacktop county road through alternating stretches of woods and cleared farmland. Parker slued around curves and floored the accelerator on the straightaways. Manny might be the kind of fool who didn’t think about consequences, but Jessup wasn’t, and would know better than to have the driver killed at this kind of speed on this kind of road.
“What the hell you doing? Slow down!” Manny sounded startled and angry, but not really afraid.
“I want to get you to the doctor.” Parker had the high beams on, and he kept staring ahead for a useful place. He knew that Jessup was conscious back there now, he knew that Jessup didn’t want any doctor, and he knew that Manny had been told to put a bullet in Parker’s head the second the car came to a stop. So it couldn’t be done quietly after all.
And there it was. The Plymouth topped a rise and started down the other side, and ahead was a long straightaway, sloping down, with a sharp right at the bottom. And at the curve, directly ahead of the Plymouth, was a broad low concrete-block building painted white, with several plate-glass windows across the front, and with a large sign running the width of the building above the windows, white letters on red: sussex county tractor sales, inc. On the stretch of gravel between the front of the building and the road stood several pieces of farm or construction machinery, all painted yellow: tractors, backhoes, bulldozers. At both front corners of the graveled area, on high poles, floodlights glared down on the face of the building and the squatting bulky machinery.
The Plymouth hit ninety going down the straight stretch. In the mirror, Parker saw Jessup struggling upward, his face twisted with strain. Jessup knew something was going to happen, and he wanted to be able to stop it. His voice creaked without intelligible words, and Parker saw the curve coming; he braced his forearms across the steering wheel, pressed his back into the seat back, and slammed his foot down hard on the brakes.
The car bucked, nose down, and squealed forward along the road, the tail swerving bumpily to the left, the rear tires leaving broad stripes of burned-off rubber on the blacktop. Jessup and Manny were flung forward off the seat, and Parker was pressed flat to the steering wheel.
The curve. Parker’s left hand was on the door handle; his right foot lifted from the brake, his right hand spun the wheel to the left. The car shook itself and straightened out, pointing at all that yellow machinery. There was a narrow ditch straight ahead; the driveway entrance was farther to the left. Parker pushed down on the door handle, and as the front tires left the road, sailing into the air out over the ditch, he shoved the door open and lunged out, pushing back with his right foot on the accelerator uk he went.
The car leaped away, hurdling the ditch. The door slammed behind him, missing his right foot by an inch. The Plymouth bounced on the gravel, sideswiped a backhoe, and ran head-on into the side of a tractor.
Parker’s legs hit a tractor tire while he was still rolling; his momentum slued him halfway around before he stopped, on his back in front of the tractor, his legs twisted sideways and knees bent around the tire.
The final crash of the car happened after that, a second or two later. It sounded very loud, and various, as though a dozen cars were involved instead of just one, and the noise seemed to come from everywhere and not from any particular point.
Parker straightened his legs, and felt pain in both of them. He sat up and stroked his palms down over his shins and felt nothing broken, but both would be bruised and aching for a while.
He didn’t mind using the automatic here. He took it out, and used the grill of the tractor to help him get up. The legs didn’t hurt any more or less when he put weight on them.
The car wasn’t burning. That was all right, but he would have preferred a fire. He moved through the machinery toward it, watching. Both headlights were out, and the engine had stopped running.
