The pinewoods again loomed high on both sides of the road as the Model T sped into the curve and out of sight of the shooting policemen. The car leaned hard to the left and raised a tall roostertail of lime dust as it swung out wide to the edge of the highway at the top of a grassy incline and its right wheels almost left the ground as Claude Calder fought to keep it on the road. Just as the curve began to straighten out and the car leaned back toward a level pitch its left front wheel dipped into a hole in the shoulder and the car bounced high and yawed sidewise with the wheel fluttering wildly and everyone rose and fell and Kid Lowe’s head bounced against the cartop and his pistol discharged and the bullet angled into John Ashley’s head at the juncture of his left eye socket and the nosebone and passed through the hard palate and struck his lower right jaw and instantly filled his mouth with blood and bits of teeth and bone.
The car plunged down the roadside slope into the brush and went snapping through a half-dozen saplings before crashing into a thick pine—and all in the same moment Claude Calder’s forehead shattered the windscreen and the right front door slung open and Kid Lowe catapulted from it and just did miss hitting a tree and lit in a clump of palmettos and Bob Ashley lofted over the front seat and struck against the dashboard and felt one of his ribs stave and John Ashley slammed against the back of the front seat and crumpled to the floorboard.
He was yet conscious but his head felt strangely stuffed, his skull somehow askew. Blood overran his mouth and rained to the floor-board. He felt the vaguest pain. There was a loud hissing from the front of the car and now he remembered where he was and why. Claude Calder groaned. Bob Ashley grunting and cursing now and getting out of the car. Kid Lowe’s voice at the car door, saying, “You hit?” Bob Ashley saying, “I’m all right. Claude? Claude, you?” Claude saying he didnt think he was hit. Bob Ashley saying for Claude to get up on the road and see was anybody coming after them. Now the rightside rear door sprang open and Bob said, “Oh
Hands at his armpits. Lifting him, pulling him out of the car, turning him over and easing him to the ground on his back and he choked on the blood of his wound and turned his head to let the blood gush onto the grass. Then Bob was dragging him by the armpits to a pine tree a few yards away, helping him to sit up with his back against the trunk. Blood running off his chin and sopping the front of his shirt. His left eye throbbing now, its vision redly hazed but functioning. Bib looking close at it—then touching his jaw and pain bursting incandescent in his skull and he flinched from Bob’s hand.
Bob asked if he was hit anywhere else and he was able to say quite clearly, “No.”
“July missed that eye,” Bob said. “Dont know if you been hit twice or one bullet went through your whole entire head to end up in your mouth like that.” He smiled weakly. “Lucky for you it was in the head, hey? Not much to hit in there.” And then: “That
“Wasnt Bobby’s doin,” Kid Lowe said. He stood over them and told what happened.
“Well, God
“Aint his fault,” John Ashley said. His voice deeply nasal, his tongue clumsy and feeling like an alien appendage. He marveled that he could talk at all, never mind with clarity.
And now here came Claude Calder on the run and shouting, “They’re coming! Both damn cars!”
“Let’s get our ass in the swamp the other side of his pineywood,” Bob Ashley said. He tried to help his brother to his feet but John Ashley felt the ground undulate and he almost passed out from the effort of trying to stand. He slumped back against the pine trunk and waved his brother away. “Go! Go on!” he said, his voice gargled with blood. “I be arright,
“I aint leaving you!” Bob Ashley said. They could hear the police cars closing in.
“
“Come
“Go on, bubba—Goddamn it,
The cop cars braked hard to a halt, raising a cloud of limerock dust. The driver’s door of the sheriff’s car swung open and the driver came out with a pistol in hand and from around the other side of the car came the other deputy and Bob Baker and both of them with shotguns. Now the Stuart policemen got out of their car too and stood beside the county officers and all of them looked down the grassy incline at the figure of John Ashley watching them from where he sat under the pine. John Ashley raised his hands slightly to show them he was not armed. He was sure they were going to shoot him anyway. He was conscious of the feel of the ground under him, the swell and fall of his chest with each breath, his heartbeat pulsing steadily against his ribs. He brushed the blood from his eye.
Bob Baker said something to the others and they started down the grade, spreading out and moving slowly. All of them keeping their weapons trained on the wrecked Model T but for Bob Baker who held his twelve-gauge pointed at John Ashley’s chest.
“Anybody in that car?” Bob Baker said as he drew near. John Ashley shook his head and pain streaked through his skull like a cat afire.
Bob Baker gave a hand signal and the others began shooting the Model T. They stormed it with buckshot and .38- and .45-caliber rounds and they emptied their weapons into it and reloaded and continued shooting and shooting and the car seemed to flinch and sag under the fusillade and its glass flung in shards and John Ashley who sat but a few feet from the vehicle covered his head with his arms and reflected that A.R. was going to be mighty dismayed when next he saw his car. The cops fired on the Model T for a full minute before they finally stopped. John Ashley lowered his arms and saw that he’d been cut on a elbow and felt now a stinging on his neck and put his hand to it and his palm came away bloodstained.
The car listed like a ship afounder. Its tires were shot to ruin, its bodyshell pocked like something diseased, its glasswork reduced to sparse jagged remnant, its top in tatters. The two Stuart cops advanced cautiously through a thin haze of gunsmoke with their revolvers raised. They carefully peered into the car and now one of them jerked open each door in turn and then the cops lowered their pistols and one called to Bob Baker that the car was empty.
Bob Baker went to John Ashley and squatted down beside him and leaned on his shotgun like a staff. He pushed back his straw hat and mopped the sweat from his face with a bandanna and smiled at John Ashley. John Ashley smiled back and his whole face felt numbly weighted and overwide. One of the county deputies started to come their way but Bob Baker waved him off and the deputy shrugged and looked about and then headed into the woods.
Bob Baker smiled. “Guess you right there’s nobody in the car,” he said. His gaze moved over John Ashley’s bloody and distorted face. “How you been keepin?”
“Doin all right, Bobby,” John Ashley said. “How bout youself?”
“Lot bettern you, by the look of things.” He leaned forward for a close examination of the wounds and John Ashley felt his breath warm on his face. “Pretty good shootin, hey?”
“Wasnt your bullet done it.”
“Hell it wasnt,” Bob Baker said. “Your face in the back window like that, I couldnt hardly miss. Had you square in my sights. But it wasnt really good shootin. I was tryin to blow your brains out.” The yellow teeth of his closeup grin were huge. “I seen that Calder boy doin the drivin. And your brother Bob, seen him too. Who’s the other one? The little fella?”
John Ashley shrugged.
“Whoo! Would you just look at this eye! How you seein out that eye, Johnny?”
“Still seein all right with it, Bobby, thank you.”
“Well, I seen some bloodshot peepers before but nothin like this. Dont believe I ever seen a eye lookin so bad and still workin.” He put his fingers to the shattered and swollen jaw and John Ashley winced and sucked air through his teeth and Bob Baker said, “I bet that does smart.” He looked around and John Ashley followed his eyes and saw that none of the other policemen were about.
New Bob Baker leaned closer still and gently laid a hand on the left side of John Ashley’s face. “
“Billy the Kid.”
