“We’ll hurry fast as we can,” I said.
“Naw, don’t hurry,” Bad Tiger said. “Buddy’s going to need your help. But don’t hang on the clock hands, if you know what I mean.”
“We know,” Jane said. She was sounding a little subdued for the first time.
We went over to the Buick. The back door was still open. We looked in and saw a man stretched across the seat. His feet were on our side. His head was on the armrest across the way. His hair was down on his forehead, and it was wet with sweat. His face was beaded up with it, and his bloody gray suit jacket and tie lay on the floorboard. He had his hand on his stomach and he was breathing heavy. The seat and floorboard of the car were covered in blood.
A coat to match the pants Bad Tiger was wearing was slung across the front seat. A gun in a harness was there too.
The man in the seat saw me look at it. “I wouldn’t, kid. It won’t do you no good. Timmy would shoot you before you could get it pointed. And you’d have to be good just to get that far.”
I didn’t say anything. I just looked away from the gun.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jane asked.
“Didn’t you hear?” said Buddy. “I got a stomachache.”
“We heard,” she said, “but that’s some stomachache. There’s blood running between your fingers.”
“That don’t make it any less of a stomachache,” he said.
“We’re supposed to help you out and put you under a sycamore tree,” I said.
Buddy sighed. “Yeah, I heard. I guess you better help me.”
It took some work, and he screamed a couple times, but we got him to a sitting position. Jane got on one side and I got on the other. We put his arms over our shoulders and tried to walk him into the pasture toward the sycamore tree.
Sometimes he walked all right, and sometimes he stumbled.
“You better let me stop for a moment,” he said. “Let me get my breath.”
We stopped.
I heard Bad Tiger yell out, “Might as well just move on, Buddy. It ain’t going to get no better.”
“I reckon not,” Buddy said, and we started moving again.
We got him to the sycamore and helped him sit down under it. He breathed a little more heavily.
“You feel any better?” I asked.
“Course not, kid. I got a bullet in me.”
Jane spoke so only the three of us could hear. “Bad Tiger Malone is a bank robber. He’s almost as famous as Pretty Boy Floyd.”
“That’s him, all right,” Buddy said. “We hit a bank. Things didn’t go well. I got shot and someone else got the money.”
“Someone else?” I said.
“Forget it,” he said. “I ain’t up for conversation. Just keep me company awhile.”
“He told us not to,” Jane said. “He said he’d hurt my little brother.”
“He can be all right sometimes,” Buddy said. “Until he isn’t all right. You’d think Timmy is the crazy one, but he’s just less calm. Tiger, he’s the one you got to watch.”
“You seem nice enough,” Jane said. “What are you doing with them?”
“I’m not nice, and I’m with them because I was raised bad. I’ve known Tiger since we was kids. He wasn’t raised bad. He’s just bad. Timmy, I don’t know nothing other than I don’t like him. I really should have taken up some other line of work.”
“We’re sorry you’re hurt,” I said.
“Yeah,” Buddy said. “Me too.”
“You coming back up here,” Bad Tiger called, “or do I twist this kid’s arm off and beat him with it?”
“We’re coming,” I called back.
“I’m sorry,” Jane said. “We got to go.”
“Ah, that’s all right,” Buddy said. “It can’t be helped.”
“What about you?” Jane asked.
“It is what it is,” he said.
“But who’ll take care of you?” Jane asked.
Buddy snorted, and then laughed. “Oh, I’ll be taken care of, all right. You can count on that, missy.”
12
We went back to the car, and Bad Tiger let go of Tony.
“How’s Buddy doing?” Bad Tiger asked.
“Not so good,” I said.
“Yeah, well,” Bad Tiger said, “that’s how I figured it.”
“A stomach shot,” Timmy said, “that don’t do nobody any good. Not even a little bit.”
“That seems like an understatement,” Jane said.
“Girlie,” Timmy said, “you better shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”
Jane went silent, but I could tell it was paining her to do it.
“Would you say Buddy is going to get better?” Bad Tiger said to her.
“Not without some medical help,” Jane said. “You could leave him with us. Maybe we can stop someone that comes along the road.”
“Naw,” Bad Tiger said. “Can’t do that. I need you three for a while, and I don’t want you talking to nobody on the road. And I figure you’re right. Without a doctor he ain’t getting no better.”
Bad Tiger looked at Timmy.
“I got it,” Timmy said.
Timmy went out across the pasture. We watched him walk to the sycamore tree. He said something to Buddy we couldn’t understand. But we could hear Buddy.
“I hate to die in a bloody shirt,” he said.
“That’s just the way it is,” Timmy said. We could hear him clearly this time.
“I reckon so. Well, get it over with,” Buddy said.
We stood there stunned. I kind of knew what was coming but couldn’t believe it was about to happen.
Bad Tiger said, “Why don’t you kids turn and look down the road there.”
We did just that.
And then we heard the shot.
“All right, then,” Bad Tiger said, and we turned around.
Timmy came walking back toward us. I could see Buddy lying out by the sycamore tree.
Jane looked right at Bad Tiger and said, “You ain’t nothing but the lowest of low.”
Bad Tiger looked her right back in the eye. “You said yourself he wasn’t going to get any better.”
“Without a doctor he wasn’t going to get any better,” Jane said. “He shot him in cold blood.”
“Buddy knew the score,” Bad Tiger said as Timmy came back. “And I’ll tell you, cutie pie, doctor or no doctor, he wasn’t going to make it. I’ve seen it before. He had done mostly bled out. We done him a favor.”
13
“We have to keep them all?” Timmy said. “How about I just shoot the girl, the blabbermouth.”
I felt Jane grab my elbow.
“One hostage is good,” Bad Tiger said, “but I reckon three is better. They get to be trouble, we’ll bump them off. I’ll let you start with Blabbermouth.”
“You would make my day, you let me do that,” Timmy said.
They put us down in the ditch, right under our car, so that if it slid back, we’d be crushed like bugs. I guess this was their way of keeping us in line. It was scary, but I couldn’t think about nothing but how Timmy shot Buddy like he was popping a bottle off a fence post. It hadn’t meant no more to him than that. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how Buddy knew it was coming. I wasn’t even sure he minded all that much.
After Timmy killed Buddy, he looked in the turtle hull of the Buick, and I could tell from the way he was looking it wasn’t his car. It was a car they had stole. Just like they was planning to steal ours. Whatever he was hoping to find wasn’t there.
They looked in the hull of our car and found the spare, some tools for changing the tire, and something that made them real happy: about twelve feet of chain.
“They even got a toolbox in here,” Bad Tiger said. “You folks was prepared.”
I didn’t say it wasn’t our car and we didn’t know the stuff was back there. It wouldn’t have mattered.
Timmy walked back to the Buick and got behind the steering wheel. For a while I
thought he might not get it started, but when he did, he drove it around in front of the Ford and kept it running while Bad Tiger fastened the chain to the rear bumper of the Buick and the front bumper of the Ford.
That’s when they made us get down in the ditch.
“You better hope the chain don’t have a weak link,” Bad Tiger said, looking down on us in the ditch. “ ’Cause I want you to stay right there under the rear of it. That way you got something to think about in case the chain snaps or the Buick slips back into it.”
We heard Bad Tiger get in behind the wheel of the Ford and start it up.
Jane said, “We could run now.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and we might get as far as climbing up the side of the ditch before we was popped. That Timmy, he can’t wait to pop something. We’re careful and wait for the right moment, we might get away.”
“You’re right,” Jane said, and I felt those weren’t words she used often. “But it isn’t just Timmy. Buddy said Bad Tiger is even worse, and considering he knew him better than us, I’m going to take him at his word.”
“They’re both crazy,” Tony said. “It don’t matter which one is crazier than the other. It ain’t no contest.”
Jane patted him on the shoulder lightly. “That’s a good point, Tony. A real good point.”
We heard Big Tiger speak loudly. “All right. I got it in neutral. Pull.”
“I just hope the chain don’t slip,” Jane said as the Ford rocked back and then moved forward.
In the next moment, they had it out of the ditch. Bad Tiger came around and looked down on us.
“Just stay where you are while we change the tire,” he said.
They changed it and called us up, and we climbed out of the ditch. Bad Tiger took our little bags of goods and chucked them in the hull of the car and closed the lid without even looking in them.
“Now,” Bad Tiger said, “this is how this is going to work. I’m going to drive for a while, and, girlie, you’re gonna ride up front with me so Timmy won’t decide to shoot you just for the heck of it. You two boys are going to ride on either side of Timmy in the backseat. And don’t get you no tough-guy ideas. You try to take him on, I can tell you now he’s stronger than he looks. And you still got me. I have to pull the car over for any kind of trouble from any one of you, you all get left beside the road, and not so you can thumb a ride. You understand me?”
We said we did.
“That’s good. That’s real good. That way things will go smooth and there won’t be any rough moments. We don’t want any rough moments, now, do we?”
We agreed rough moments were not good.
“All right now,” he said. “Just the way I told you, get in the car.”
14
We rode in the car in the way Bad Tiger said for us to ride, and we rode that way all through the day and into the night, except for when they stopped to switch drivers, or we took turns going off in the woods one at a time to do our business.
When Timmy drove, Bad Tiger moved me up front with Timmy, and he moved Jane to the backseat and sat between her and Tony. I don’t think he did it because he cared all that much for Jane’s welfare, I think it was because he admired Jane for standing up to them and kicking Timmy. I think he liked that, but it was nothing you could confuse for friendship.
At one point Timmy said, “The gas is almost gone.”
“How much you got?” Bad Tiger said.
“Less than a quarter.”
“All right, then. Let’s stop for the night somewhere, and tomorrow we’ll get some gas. We ought to be over the Texas line tomorrow. There’s a couple little towns the way we’re going. We’ll stop in one of them.”
Timmy had a new toothpick in his mouth, and I could see it in the glow from the lights on the instrument panel. He moved it from one side of his mouth to the other like the pendulum of a clock.
After a little bit, Timmy found a dirt road that wound up into some trees. He drove off the road and over what had once been a cow trail, but now there was no grass for cows. The trees weren’t like the trees before, when we had found the green spot down by the big creek. They were like the ones closer to home, and I figured it was because here the soil had been farmed out, and the wind had come and blown it off the earth and shot it through the trees like bullets. The sand had torn off what leaves were left that hadn’t been eaten by starving bugs and animals. Even the bark on the trees was beat off by the sand in spots, like the trees had been in terrible knife fights with one another.
We parked and they had us get out. The wind was cool. The shadows wound and fell and twisted through the barren trees.
Bad Tiger stretched and looked around. “We’ll be in Texas pretty soon,” he said. “It don’t look much better than Oklahoma.”
“There’s East Texas,” Timmy said.
“Yeah, well, East Texas is all right. I like all those trees, creeks, and rivers.”
“They got alligators down there, just like in Louisiana,” Timmy said.
“Yeah,” Bad Tiger said, “thanks for the nature tip. I know that. I got relatives from there. Or did once. They all died, and I shot my daddy, so I don’t have any relatives anymore.”
“You killed him?” Tony said.
“Last time I looked at him,” Bad Tiger said, “he was still dead.”
“You shot and killed your own pa?” Tony said.
“Me and him didn’t get along,” Bad Tiger said.
“An understatement, I’m sure,” Jane said. “I didn’t like my pa neither, but I didn’t shoot him. Course, we left him under a tractor and some dirt.”
Bad Tiger laughed. “You’re all right, girlie. I bet if someone dipped you in hot water you’d come out pink and cute. Fixed your hair, put a nice dress on you, you’d look all right.”
“You don’t worry none about my looks,” Jane said.
Bad Tiger laughed. He said, “You kids go over and sit down by that tree there, and don’t get any ideas. I’ll get mad if you do, and if you make me run after you, you can’t imagine how mad I’ll be.”
Actually, I could imagine.
We went over and put our backs against the tree. I couldn’t tell what kind of tree it was in the dark, but it felt good to be sitting there with my back against it, away from Bad Tiger and Timmy.
I looked around for anything that might be a place to hide if we did make a break for it, but that little clutch of trees we were in was it. There was a rise of land that hid us from the main road, and that was some distance off anyway. The moon was high and partial, but bright. It wasn’t a great night for trying to make a run for it.
“I think they circled back up to the Dust Bowl,” Jane said. She said it so only we could hear. “The scenery changed for the better for a while, and now it’s like it was when we left. I think they’re running the roads in a way they think they can avoid the law.”
“They took a lot of back roads, all right,” I said. “Some main ones, like the one we just come off of, but a lot of back roads.”
“They’re zigzagging to Texas,” Jane said. “If they’re even going to Texas. I think all that talk might have been for our benefit so if we got away, we wouldn’t know what they had in mind.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think we’re still high up in Oklahoma. They’ve turned us around and confused us so we wouldn’t know it.”
“I know it,” Jane said.
“Yes, of course—how could you not, being all-knowing? I just wish you’d been all-knowing before that tire blew so we could have pulled off and changed it before our friends came up.”
“Oh, give it a rest.”
I did. We sat in silence for a long time until Tony said, “Did you see the way Timmy shot Buddy?”
“I don’t think it meant a thing to him,” Jane said. “Maybe he saw it like putting an animal out of its misery, but I don’t think so. I think he wanted to do it just so he could kill something. I know people like that. Boys, I’ll have to add. They kill birds that don’t
hurt nothing and that they don’t eat. They kill them and pick them up and look at them and toss them, then they kill another. They don’t do it for no other reason than the pleasure of the kill. That’s the kind of men these are.”
“I’m so scared,” Tony said.
He sounded like he was about to break out bawling.
“Don’t cry,” Jane said. “Don’t give them that. Don’t you cry, you hear?”
“Yeah,” he said, choking back a sob. “I hear you.”
“We’ll just have to wait for our moment,” I said.
“That’s right,” Jane said. “Our moment. And it’ll come.”
“Way I figure, a moment don’t always come,” Tony said.
“Sure it will,” Jane said. “We’ll get our moment. It’ll come when we least expect it, and we got to be ready to take advantage of it. It’ll come.”
“If they don’t kill us first,” Tony said.
“Don’t talk like that,” Jane said. “You can’t think like that. It’s defeatist. Think of John Carter of Mars. You remember those books? I read them to you, remember.”
Tony nodded. “I remember.”
“What was John Carter of Mars’s slogan?”
“I still live.”
“That’s right. We’ll be fine. We got to watch for our moment is all. We got to play it smart. We still live.”
15
What they did was they took turns watching us, sitting with their backs against a tree directly across from us, wearing their guns. The night had grown cool. Bad Tiger had his gun on now and his coat, and when I was last aware of one of them on guard, just before I fell asleep, it was him, sitting at the base of a tree across the way looking at us.
Sometime in the night I woke up, but I didn’t open my eyes at first. I just laid there and listened to Jane breathe. She had fallen asleep, and her head had ended up on my shoulder. I could smell her hair. All she had gone through, and she still smelled good. I felt kind of funny, but it was a good kind of funny, and even under the circumstances, it cheered me up a little. My shoulder hurt from the weight of her head, but I didn’t want to do anything to disturb her.