I started trying to pay attention to things. I had grown up on a farm and I knew weather, but on direction I could be iffy. I was never like Daddy, who could get up in the middle of the night and be spun around and still point true north. He always knew which direction was which, and he could tell time by the sun, and there were times when he wasn’t in sight of the sun and he could still tell you what time it was within five to ten minutes. He could hear a dog run across the yard in the middle of the night. But I never really picked up his skills. Heck, maybe they couldn’t be taught. Maybe they were inborn and I just didn’t have them.
I watched out the window to see if I could locate the sun, but it wasn’t high up yet. There was a lot of light from one direction, and since it was early, it stood to reason that was the east. That was where the sun rose on its way to the middle of the sky, and then down on the other side into darkness.
Okay, I decided, we were finally traveling south, because the sun’s strongest light and the warmest spot was on my left shoulder, and the shadow from the steering wheel lay across me. Yes, to the left of me was east, to my right was west, and that meant we were heading south, and into Texas.
I was just sitting there with my mind on that, when Timmy said, “You ever cut up anything alive with a knife, boy?”
I glanced at him.
“No,” I said.
He grinned. “It’s an experience.”
He went back to driving, fished a toothpick out of his shirt pocket, and put it in his mouth. “It’s going to be a hot one,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t lost my hat. I’d like it better with my hat. It gets hot, a hat keeps the sun off, but mostly I’m just used to wearing it.”
“Shut up about your hat,” Bad Tiger said. “Just shut up and drive.”
I glanced at Timmy. He swallowed heavily, like what he was choking down was a green chicken gizzard full of bile.
We come to a little town with a filling station. We was still in Oklahoma, because painted on the buildings were signs with the town’s name and
When we were parked in front of the station, they pulled at their coats so their guns were well hid, and Bad Tiger said, “Any of you talk, it better be something you’ve always wanted to say, ’cause it’s going to be your last bit of chat. Timmy, you stand outside with him till he puts in the gas. Then go in and get us something to eat, some Coca-Colas.”
“Some tissues or some toilet paper would be nice,” Jane said.
“Those are your last words?” Big Tiger said.
“Nobody’s come out yet,” she said.
Bad Tiger grinned. “You like to push it, don’t you?”
Timmy slammed a fist down on the horn. It made me jump. Timmy looked at me and laughed.
“Nervous?”
About then a young man in coveralls strolled out from behind the station and Timmy started to get out of the car. Bad Tiger said, “And don’t forget the toilet paper, they got any. They don’t, get some paper towels. The lady here, she likes it tidy.”
Timmy got out of the car and told the station man to fill it up.
When it was full, the boy checked under the hood and checked the tires, and then he and Timmy went inside the station.
After a while I heard a pop, and Timmy came out of the station with a bag of groceries. He put them on the seat between us and started the car.
Bad Tiger said, “You didn’t need to do that. It just makes it hotter for us.”
“How was I going to pay for it? My good looks?”
“You didn’t have to shoot him,” Bad Tiger said.
“You said that,” Timmy said, pulling onto the road. “But if it makes you feel better, I just shot him in the foot. He ain’t going to go tell anyone anything quick-like. And he ain’t got no phone in there. I asked if I could borrow it, just to see. That gunshot, it didn’t sound like nothing. We’re off scotfree. At least enough to get us down the road a ways.”
“Yeah, well,” Bad Tiger said. “You better hope so.”
18
By the time we pulled off the road it was near dark, and I was feeling sick from hunger. They found a place down by a little creek that had some water in it, and we got the groceries out.
Timmy used the car door handle to hook the Coca-Cola bottles under so he could pop off the lids. It scarred the car. It wasn’t my car, but it made me feel guilty. Old Man Turpin had always taken care of it, and now it was scarred. He’d had it for a while and kept it perfect, and in a couple of minutes, Timmy had messed it up.
There weren’t any trees right where we were, but the bank was deep and the water was shallow, running over white gravel that we could see in the creek bed through the water. I looked down the creek a ways, and about thirty feet away was a little clutch of struggling willows growing on the edge of the bank. The bank had fallen out beneath them, leaving their roots hanging down like electrical wires. The place where the dirt had washed away was from a long time ago, when there had been some good rains and the water had been high and had pushed the earth out. The dirt there had turned hard and it was dark, unlike the sand along the creek, which was red and white mixed up together the way I thought strawberry and vanilla ice cream might look.
Truth was, I’d only seen pictures of strawberry ice cream. Only kind I had ever had was vanilla, made with ice cream salt and milk and lots of arm cranking on the ice cream maker. Someday, I wanted to try strawberry. It was another thing to live for, and another reason to think about escaping.
Timmy took a pocketknife and opened up some cans of potted meat with it and gave them to us. That made me remember I still had a pocketknife. They hadn’t even bothered to search us. It wasn’t much, that knife, but I liked knowing I had it. I had forgotten all about it.
We sat and scooped the meat out of the cans with our fingers and licked it off and drank our Coca-Colas. When I finished, I was still hungry, but I was used to that. There never seemed to be enough. The last time I had really been full was when I had eaten all that rabbit, and that had been the first time in a long time.
Timmy went back to the car and came back carrying some toilet paper. He come close to Jane and threw it hard, hitting her in the head.
He laughed when she let out a noise.
“How you like that?”
Jane picked up the paper and laid it in her lap. She said, “Don’t think I’ll forget that.”
“Ha,” Timmy said. “Do or don’t. I’d rather you didn’t.”
Timmy went over to the sack and pulled out a couple extra cans of potted meat. He tossed one to Bad Tiger and kept one for himself. They opened them with their pocketknives and ate.
There was a darkness moving in from the north, and I was proud of the fact that I was now certain which way was which. I was learning. At first they just looked like rain clouds, but I’d seen clouds like that too many times. I knew better.
Bad Tiger had seen them too. He said, “Looks like tonight we’re going to have a blow. I figure me and Timmy will sleep in the car. And I’ll keep you with us, sister.”
“Why me?” she said.
“Why not you?” Bad Tiger said. “I got to have one of you in the car so the other two don’t run off. You’re my hostage to hold the other hostages, so to speak. Course, they still might run off. But if they do, I still got you, and me and you, we could get cozy if we had to.”
“I’d rather die,” Jane said.
“Yeah, that could happen,” Timmy said.
“You don’t want to value yourself too highly,” Bad Tiger said. “ ’Cause a thing you ought to know is we don’t even value ourselves all that much.”
“I hate to admit it,” Jane said, “but that does show something I didn’t expect about the two of you.”
