After an hour he passed the town at the bend with the Bible store and noticed a state trooper’s car hiding in the shadow of two small restaurants. A few miles later, the smell of freshly cut pine trees invaded the car. His headlights caught the pine-milling operation up ahead. Acres of forty-foot-long trees lay on the side of the highway, waiting to be turned into two-by-fours. He filled his lungs with the great-smelling air.
He saw headlights come up from behind him. A Jeep, going way over the speed limit. Gerry shifted into the right lane. The Jeep moved over as well and got on his bumper. It had its brights on, and Gerry put his mirror down to cut the glare. He didn’t like how close the Jeep was, and punched his accelerator.
The cars separated, then the Jeep caught up. Where in hell was the state trooper when you needed him? Gerry heard a loud bang. The flash of a rifle being discharged was quickly followed by his car lurching to one side, its left rear tire blown to bits. Gerry hit the brakes and saw the Jeep swerve to avoid slamming into him. He accelerated and heard another loud bang followed by someone in the Jeep cursing.
This time when he hit the brakes, he put his foot straight to the floor. The rental screeched a hundred yards down the highway before it came to a halt. The Jeep couldn’t brake that hard without flipping over. It flew past him on the highway, then slowed down and did a hasty U-turn.
Gerry looked up and down the highway. He was in the middle of Mississippi nowhere. On one side of the road was a barren field. On the other, the pine-milling operation. He drove the car over the median, crossed two opposing lanes of traffic, and looked for a place in the logs that he could drive the rental through. Behind him he heard three men’s coarse laughter. They sounded like good old boys.
He found an opening in the logs and drove through it. It was just wide enough for his car. Then he had an idea. Braking, he threw the rental into reverse, then opened his door and jumped out. He started to run as the rental went backward. He heard it hit the Jeep.
“Shit,” a good old boy screamed.
“He’s getting away,” another shouted.
“Out of the car,” the third yelled.
Gerry ran down an aisle of stacked trees. They were stacked with spaces between them, and he saw his assailants on the other side, running alongside him. Each had a pump shotgun, a big belly, and a ponytail. What had happened to the old days, when guys with long hair stood for peace, love, and understanding? He saw one of them stop, aim, and fire. The blast flew by Gerry’s head.
Up ahead he saw another opening in the logs. He was doomed: Those good old boys would run through and shoot him and that would be it. Gerry couldn’t believe it. He’d finally gotten his act together, and now he was going to die.
His eyes saw a green and white metal sign. It was positioned next to the logs, and its lettering glowed in the moonlight. DANGER!! DO NOT TOUCH!
“There’s an opening,” one of them yelled.
“He’s mine,” the second screamed.
“No, he’s mine!”
Gerry felt his feet sprout wings. He reached the glowing sign before any of his pursuers reached the opening. Groping around in the dark for the thing that the sign didn’t want him to touch, his fingers latched onto a metal handle. He grasped it with both hands and looked through the space in the logs at the three bear-size men. They had stopped and were smiling like it was a rabbit they’d cornered and not another human being.
He yanked hard on the handle. A mighty roar followed as the forty-foot-long trees became disengaged from the metal cables holding them together. One of his pursuers screamed.
Gerry stood motionless. The space between the trees did not immediately close, and he watched as two of the men were instantly crushed. The third got a running start and was halfway across the highway when the trees caught up with him. He was knocked down like a bowling pin and carried along, his body banged and smashed.
The trees spread out evenly across the highway. Gerry waited until they’d stopped rolling, then walked over to where the first two men lay. Both had died with looks of surprise on their faces. He wanted to feel happy that they were dead; only, he didn’t. All he’d wanted was to get away. He hadn’t wanted to crush the life out of their bodies. It had just worked out that way.
He crossed the road and stopped where the third man lay in the middle of the road. The man was hanging on by a thread, the whisper of life in his eyes. His shotgun was still in his hand. Gerry kicked it away.
“You…,” the dying man moaned.
“Who sent you?”
“…gonna…”
“Tell me.”
“…die…”
He shut his eyes, and Gerry saw his chest cave in and realized he was passing into the great beyond. The wind, which had been blowing forcefully from the gulf, suddenly died off, and for a long moment time seemed to stand still. Gerry stared into the dead man’s face. Then he walked to the side of the road and surrendered his dinner.
The rain came back with a vengeance during his walk home, and Valentine peeled off his soaking wet clothes as he passed through the front door of his rental house and headed straight for the shower.
When he emerged ten minutes later, his skin was tingling and he felt refreshed. In the refrigerator he found the half-eaten sandwich from yesterday, and sat down at the kitchen table with a can of Diet Coke to wash it down. Since his wife had died, he’d been eating sandwiches for dinner and keeping crazy hours and basically living like a kid in a college frat house. Mabel was constantly scolding him about it, and out of deference to her, he picked up his wet clothes lying in the foyer when he was finished, and threw them in the washing machine in the basement. Then he dug out his cell phone and called his neighbor.
“How’s it going?” he asked when she answered.
“Oh, Tony, I’ve done something really stupid,” she replied.
Valentine sincerely doubted it. Mabel was one of the sharpest people he’d ever known. She rarely blundered, and when she did make a mistake, she was a master at fixing it.
“Let me guess,” he said, walking up the creaky basement stairs. “You wiped out the database in my computer.”
“That will
Reaching the first floor, he walked through the foyer to the kitchen and halted. A white envelope lay on the threadbare rug in the foyer. He’d had a visitor while he was downstairs, and he opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. It was still raining buckets. In the distance he faintly saw a kid on a bicycle pedaling furiously up a hill and out of sight.
“It must have been a doozy,” he said, closing the door. He picked up the envelope off the floor and went into the kitchen.
“I was in your study going through today’s mail, and I got distracted and without thinking…oh, this sounds like such a senior moment.”
“Come on,” he said, dropping the envelope on the kitchen table. “What did you do? The suspense is killing me.”
“I ate your hundred-thousand-dollar candy bar.”
“My what?”
“The 3 Musketeers bar that Ron Shepherd in Canada sent,” his neighbor replied. “It came in yesterday’s mail. Shepherd said it was for your collection of crooked gambling equipment, so I figured it must be important, even though I didn’t know how it worked. Well, like a dope, I absentmindedly tore off the wrapper and took a huge bite out of it. When I realized what I’d done, I nearly got sick.”
Valentine put his hand over his mouth. He’d helped Ron with the case over a year ago. A casino in Canada suspected its gift-shop manager of stealing from customers. Ron had sent him a videotape of the manager at work, and Valentine had quickly made the scam. Later, he’d learned the manager was stealing a hundred thousand dollars a year. It had to be a record, and he’d asked Ron to send him the candy bar after the trial so he could add it to his
