The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

us out, Officer?” she asked, cutting John Wallace Johnson off in midsentence.

“You sure it was Arson and Claire?” Tate asked, because it was the only question worth asking.

“I’m absolutely certain,” John Wallace Johnson said. “I’ve studied their pictures in the paper, and these two were dead ringers. Only the woman wasn’t smoking a cigar.”

“That was just a gag, J. W.,” the little flapper said. She almost sounded mad. “Claire Ives doesn’t really smoke cigars.”

“Hell if she doesn’t. That girl’s a vixen. Acts like she’s a man. Why, if I’d had a chance — ”

“You did, J. W.” The girl winked at Tate. ‘You had your chance, and you ended up losing your car and your pants.”

“Now wait just a minute — ”

“Cigar or no cigar, it makes no difference,” Tate interrupted, kick-starting his bike. “I’ll put out a bulletin on your stolen vehicle as soon as I get to Fiddler.”

“That’s fine,” J. W. Johnson said. “But what about us?”

“What about you?”

“Well, we need transportation back to town. Imogene can’t go about in her underthings. And I’m a young man with prospects. In September, I’ll be attending Stanford University. I certainly can’t go walking into town without my pants.”

“Son,” Tate said, “this is a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, not a limousine.”

“The officer’s right,” Imogene said. “There just ain’t room for you, J. W.”

Before Tate could protest, the little flapper slipped into the saddle behind him. “Thanks for the picnic, J. W.,” she said. “If you get your Ford back, you can call me any old time.”

The girl’s thighs pressed against Tate’s ass. It was a plain fact that there wasn’t much room in the Harley’s saddle, just as plain that Tate Winters was quite suddenly glad of that.

“What am I to do?” J. W. Johnson asked. “I am a long way from anywhere. And I am without my trousers.”

“There ain’t no Woolworth’s out here,” Tate said. “So you might as well start walking.”

“Or look for a clothesline.” Imogene giggled. “You’d look awful cute in some sodbuster’s overalls, J. W.”

Tate Winters didn’t know about that. He only knew that the world was a much more interesting place than it had been twenty minutes before.

He twisted the throttle.

The Harley roared and the flapper squirmed.

Tate geared up and took off.

Running hurt. Especially Claire’s hip, which hadn’t healed right after the crackup. And the way her skin pulled where she’d been shot in the shoulder bothered her, too, the scars tugging like she was wearing a tight sweater that didn’t fit right at all.

Sometimes just moving made her feel like she was coming apart at the seams. But she had to run. For Arson’s sake, if not her own. He couldn’t see her this way, and that was a natural fact.

Because, this time, she was coming apart at the seams, and she knew it.

She clenched her right hand. There was no denying the blood on it. There was no washing it away. It was there, weeping from her palm through busted stitches.

Wash it away and a fresh trickle would only well up along a lifeline that was much too short. Stitch it closed and those stitches would sure enough bust like all the others.

Sure enough… somehow… no matter what she did…

The cut just wouldn’t heal.

The fear tried to rise up in her, but Claire pushed it down. She wouldn’t think about it. She’d think about running. Running with a gun in her hand. Running and breathing and being alive.

Because she was alive.

She was. But it was hard to think of that in a place like this. Everything here was dead. Cornstalks withered and yellow as parchment. Dry roots that tore up from the ground when tall girl rushed by with a loaded gun in her hand.

Harvest time had come and gone, and there wasn’t anything left to reap in the cornfield.

Only Claire. All of a sudden, she stopped running, her heart pounding in her throat. The sky had gone the color of iron, but it still held the heat of the day like a skillet.

She stared at the dark thunderheads boiling down from the mountains, and that was when she saw the birds. They circled in a black ringlet, coming closer and closer, and their cries rode the whispered hush of the wind as the circle spun on black wings, a circle unbroken like the one in that song her mother sang when Claire was just a little girl.

But her mother never sang about a circle of vultures.

Claire couldn’t run anymore. She stared at her hand.

In her palm welled a red oasis.

Above her, the sky came alive with a chorus of thirsty screams.

Clouds churned in the sky and a hot wind whispered low, rustling the dead cornstalks like a deck of cards that had been dealt one time too many.

The three of them sat in the car. Arson was done yelling at Hank and Pearl. They should have known better than to push Claire that way, especially after all the hell she’d been through. The two of them sure didn’t have the stomach for that kind of hell.

Claire did, though. Arson was sure about that. Claire was damn near healed up. Sure she had a few more scars than she’d had before their last run-in with the law, but she wasn’t one bit less pretty for ’em, not to him anyway. Soon enough she’d get her gumption back, too. She always did, and then things would be just the same as before.

“If we’re gonna do this thing,” Hank said, “we’d better get to it.”

“Hank’s right,” Pearl said. “That bank’s gonna close in an hour. We ain’t got no money. And I don’t care how much you holler, Arson Pike, I sure as hell ain’t gonna sleep in this cornfield tonight, not with all these damn vultures around. Why, just look at that sky. If the buzzards ain’t bad enough, just take a look at them clouds. Any fool can see that it’s gonna storm but good and I ain’t gonna get struck by lightnin’ sittin’ out in a cornfield in a stolen Ford Roadster. Christ, these days even folks on relief got decent roofs over their heads while we ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to — ”

“Shut up, Pearl.” Arson whispered the words, eyeing her in the rearview. Boy, did she give him a look. The floozy bitch made Arson’s blood boil. She was just the kind of trash his brother would bed. Just the kind —

Pearl opened her mouth. Red bee-stung lips on that fat little face of hers. Arson couldn’t hardly believe it. Hell’s bells and buckets of blood, he’d told the little floozy.

She started to mouth off again. “Shut up,” Arson said, but it was like she didn’t even hear him. So he told Hank to shut her up, but it was plain that Hank wasn’t the kind of man who knew how to do that or Pearl wouldn’t be talking in the first place.

Well, fair warning was warning enough.

Arson climbed out of the car and reached through the open window and took hold of Pearl’s peroxide blonde hair and gave it a pull that made her scream. Then he dragged her out the door and kicked her in the ass and she gave out with a startled cry as she went face first into the dirt and then Arson yanked her to her feet and slapped her up but good.

And, boy howdy, did the cure come over her but quick, like Arson Pike was one of those tent show miracle men. It was something to see. First Pearl was gabbing like she actually knew what she was talking about and then she was screaming like some she-goat taking a rutting and when it was all over her nose was bloody and her eyes were red with little girl tears.