A World of Thieves

The muted hollers came from directly back of me. I glanced in the rearview but saw only Buck’s headlights, even farther behind than they’d been before. Russell half-turned in his seat and shouted, “Shut the hell up, you pitiful pussy!”

The guy they’d stuck in the trunk. Walsh, Wills had called him. He had to be taking a pounding back there.

The trail rose and dipped and curved, the Olds slid, lost traction, tore through brush and banged against rocks with the undercarriage, regained the trail, powered ahead. If we didn’t blow a tire or rupture the oil pan or break an axle, I figured we could catch them. We slid through a tight turn that tilted the car so far over I was sure we were going to roll but we didn’t.

“God dammmn, boy!” Russell said. He was clutching to the dashboard and grinning crazily. “I’d say we’re going to run down the sumbitch, we don’t crash and die first.”

We went around another rise and the junction road came in view. Scroggins’ truck was making a right turn onto it, heading west toward the Rankin road.

“Yessir, yessir!” Russell whooped. “We got them. That ten grand is good as ours!”

Steam started blowing back from under the Olds’ hood panels but the motor was still going strong and I kept my foot down hard. The junction road was almost empty of other traffic at this hour, but an oil truck was coming from off to our right, heading for Blackpatch, and I could see that we’d reach the road before he passed by.

“We gonna cut it close with that sumbitch,” Russell said, watching the coming truck. “Don’t the fool see our dust?”

I made the turn onto the road with the tires shrieking. Walsh wailed in the trunk as the Olds carried all the way across the road and the left wheels went off onto the shoulder and flung up dust and the rear end fought for traction and here came the truck with its blinding headlights bearing straight at us and then the Olds’ wheels grabbed again and I cut to the right an instant before the truck went by in a whooshing blur, its horn wailing. All I could see in the rearview was a mass of dust.

I floored the accelerator once more and the Olds sped up. The steam streaking from under the hood was thicker now but on this smoother surface we were fast gaining ground. Russell was shoving shells into the shotgun.

We closed to within fifty yards of Scroggins’ truck. Thirty. Fifteen. A pair of headlights showed way behind us. I hoped they were Buck’s. Now the Olds’ engine was knocking. We’d probably torn a hole in the oil pan and were about to throw a rod.

Russell pumped a shell into the chamber and got in position at the window. “Closer!” he yelled.

I brought the Olds to within ten yards of the truck. There was no traffic in sight ahead of us, so I pulled out to the middle of the road to give Russell a better angle. He leaned out the window and took aim on the left rear wheel. The truck’s driver must’ve seen what we were up to—he cut sharply to the left as Russell fired and missed the tire and the buckshot caromed up against the truck’s underside and ricocheted every which way and some of it slung back and busted our headlamp and rang off the fender and Russell yelped.

He swore and shook his left arm, then pumped the slide and the empty shell case flew off into the dark and he set himself again. The engine was knocking louder now and I could smell it beginning to burn. Any minute now it would lose power and seize up and that would be it, we’d lose them. The driver was rocking the truck from one side of the road to the other to try to throw off our aim, but Russell took his time and gauged the truck’s movements just right and the next boom of the shotgun blew the tire apart.

The truck sagged and started fishtailing and the ruined tire flew off the rim and came back and hit the Olds’ windshield, shattering the right side and spraying us with shards and spiderwebbing the glass in front of me. I flinched and hit the brakes instinctively and too hard and the car started to skid sideways but I steered into the slide and managed to stay on the road.

The truck veered away, pitching and bouncing over the rough ground, and then swung into a tight turn and its left wheels left the ground and kept on rising and the truck capsized in a great crashing cloud of dust and skidded to a halt upside down.

And BOOM!—it exploded into an enormous, quivering sphere of orange fire.

I pulled over on the shoulder, the engine clattering like skeletons wrestling in a tin tub, black smoke streaming from the tailpipe. I switched off the ignition and we got out of the car but there was nothing we could do except watch the truck burn. The fire looked like molten gold, it was so thick and richly fueled. It lit up the countryside for a good hundred yards all around. We were thirty yards away but a light wind pressed the heat hard on our faces. Rivulets of flaming whiskey snaked from the truck in all directions over the stony ground. There were no screams, no cry at all except for Walsh’s muffled cries for help from the Oldsmobile trunk. Russell picked up a large rock and flung it against the back of the car and the trunk fell quiet.

Buck arrived and parked the Model A behind the Olds. He left the motor running and got out and came to stand beside us and stare at the fireball wreckage. He looked grieved. So did Russell. Probably so did I. It was ten thousand in cash money plus a valuable load of hooch going up in flames.

Another truck was approaching from the west, slowing down as it drew closer. The driver leaned out the window and we turned back toward the fire to hide our faces from him. “Hey!” he called out. “What the hell happened?” But none of us turned around or answered him, and if he’d been thinking about stopping he changed his mind. His gearbox clashed and the engine wound up and he rolled on by.

And then on top of the odors of burning gasoline and oil and alcohol came a sickening smell unlike any I’d ever known, one I couldn’t begin to describe for the lack of anything to compare it with.

“Jesus,” Buck said. “Been a while since I had a whiff of that.”

“Since France,” Russell said. “Since them flamethrowers.” He’d rolled up his left sleeve and was examining two small bloody spots on his arm where he’d been hit by ricocheting buckshot.

More headlights came in view a long way down the road.

“Well hell, we best get a move on,” Buck said, and we headed back to the Ford.

“What about him?” Russell said, nodding at the Olds.

Buck shrugged. “He don’t know who we are or even what we look like. If you owned that load of hooch, wouldn’t you wonder why he’s the only one still alive? Maybe wonder if he was some kind of inside man? Let him try and talk his way out of it.”

“What if he is the inside man?” I said.

“Tough luck for him,” Buck said. “You drive.”

I went around to the other side of the Model A and slid in behind the wheel. Buck sat in the shotgun seat and Russell got in back. I wheeled the car onto the road and got rolling.

“I got to tell you, kid,” Buck said, “that was some piece of driving. It was all I could do to keep you in sight.”

I smiled my pleasure at the compliment.

He looked back at Russell. “What say, little brother? This boy shake you up some with that hairy ride?”

“Naw,” Russell said. “Not so bad a change of pants and a few drinks won’t fix me right up.”

Well, sir, I’ve been the grease monkey here for six months, and I can tell you for a fact he’d had his suspicions for a while. Couldn’t hardly blame him—you ever seen Eula? Real piece of calico, I’m telling you, and she damn well knows it. Likes to strut it, know what I mean? My daddy always said the worst trouble a man could have was to be married to a goodlooking woman. It’s about the only trouble I ain’t had in this life—just don’t tell my wife I said so.

Like I say, it wasn’t nothing that took him by real big surprise, but still. Happened just last week.