All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky Page 6

  Tony had laid out on the ground in front of us. He had his arm in such a way he could lay his noggin on it. He was sleeping deeply. I could hear his steady breathing.

  I looked to see whose shift it was, but there was no one sitting beneath the tree across the way. I moved my eyes without moving my head, saw that both Bad Tiger and Timmy had given up on the guard business and had built a little fire under a tree not too far from the car. It was a cool night, and though I wasn’t miserable, the idea of that fire seemed like a good thing. Not that I was in any frame of mind to get up and go over there and join them.

  They were talking softly, but their voices still carried on the night, and I could understand every word. They were talking about somebody called Strangler.

  “He took us for a ride,” Timmy said.

  “Yeah, well, the ride ain’t over,” Bad Tiger said.

  “He took all the money and run out on us, and he’s good and gone. I’d call that ride over.”

  “He shouldn’t do a thing like that to Bad Tiger,” Bad Tiger said of himself. “He ought not to have thought he could get away with a thing like that.”

  “He did get away with it.”

  “Keep talking like that,” Bad Tiger said, “and you’ll be laid out under one of these trees like Buddy.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m just saying.”

  “And I’m just saying I’m going to catch up with him, and when I do, I wouldn’t want to be Strangler Nugowski. And here’s another thing. That fifty thousand we got. That’s the biggest haul I ever took. That bank must have had every payroll there was in it. Splitting that four ways, that was good money. With Buddy hit like he was, I figured it’d be three ways at some point. But then Strangler run off with the money.”

  “Which made it a one-way split,” Timmy said.

  “Yeah, but we get it back, it’s a two-way split, and that’s good. He won’t be splitting nothing, but you and me, we’ll take it right down the middle.”

  “Unless he’s spent it.”

  “He hasn’t spent fifty thousand dollars. A few bucks here and there, but he hasn’t spent it yet. You know what he’s going to do, don’t you?”

  “I got an idea.”

  “Yeah,” Bad Tiger said, “and if you’re smart, you got the same idea I got.”

  “The kid.”

  “Yeah, the kid. He thinks he can take that money and use it to get his kid’s foot fixed.”

  “I remember—twisted up or something.”

  “Clubfooted. They can fix that sometimes, and he wants it fixed. So to get it fixed, he’s got to go back and find her.”

  “East Texas,” Timmy said.

  “Tyler. I been there. I know where it is. He’ll probably show up there. He goes where he knows. I know that much about him. Eventually, he’ll be there.”

  “Way we’re going, we ain’t never going to get there.”

  “Take a straight shot, we might not get there either. Cops are all over the place. I figure we’ll run into some at some point, and we do, we got those kids for hostages.”

  “What happens when we get to East Texas?” Timmy asked.

  “We find Strangler and we get the money.”

  “I mean with the kids.”

  “Oh,” Bad Tiger said. “I don’t know. We could let them go, or you could shoot them. But you know, I’m thinking about keeping the girl.”

  “You’ve gone silly.”

  “She’s a looker.”

  “There’s lots of lookers,” Timmy said.

  “They don’t look like that. I just want to clean her up and get some war paint on her, have her hair fixed, some nice clothes, keep her around for a while.”

  “I know what you want. I don’t have to puzzle over what you want. I know.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re right,” Bad Tiger said.

  “She ain’t nothing but a kid.”

  “You sure are standing up for her. A while ago you were a man wanted to shoot her,” Bad Tiger said.

  “Not exactly standing up for her, but I know if you take a shine to her, I don’t get to shoot her. And I owe her one.”

  Bad Tiger laughed. “She sure laid one into you, didn’t she?”

  “It’s not so funny from this end.”

  “Yeah, but from my end it’s a riot,” Bad Tiger said. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think you’d like to see her cleaned up too, spend a little time with her before you shoot her. How’s that thinking?”

  “It’s a thought that might have crossed my mind, but I don’t have to like her to want that. And for me, she don’t even have to be cleaned up. So, yeah. It crossed my mind.”

  “Well, uncross the thought,” Bad Tiger said. “She stays with anyone any time at all, it’s me.”

  16

  Of course I had been thinking about getting away, but now, it was all I could think about. The idea that Bad Tiger and Timmy might do something to Jane was more than I could stand, and just a day or two ago, I wasn’t even sure I liked her.

  She was a liar and a thief and a bit of a con, and she had dragged me into this business with her and her little brother, and I wasn’t even sure where I was going or why. There was just something about her that made you want to follow her. Some kind of thing that made you feel she knew where she was going, and you ought to want to go too.

  I didn’t feel so good about it now. It had been bad enough at home with my folks dead and buried in the barn, but now I was on the run, and we was with real gangsters. Heck, they had stole the car that we had stole from a dead man, so we couldn’t exactly place ourselves on a much higher level than they were. Course, we hadn’t shot anybody, and they had. But to tell you true, I wasn’t feeling so good about myself right then.

  Bottom line was, they had guns and bad attitudes, and they both wanted Jane for one thing or another, and none of it good. On top of that, one of their partners, a guy called Strangler, seemed to have betrayed them to take the money to get some kind of doctoring for his kid, and they were going after him, and if the law showed up, we were hostages. And there wasn’t any guarantee that the cops would be all that worried about our safety. We might get shot at from both sides.

  I thought on things awhile, decided there was nothing to be done at the moment. And Jane had been right about them driving back up into the Dust Bowl. They were zigzagging, but doing it in such a way it would eventually take them southeast, into Texas.

  I closed my eyes and surprised myself by going to sleep, only waking up when Timmy put a foot in my side.

  “Up and at it,” he said. “We’re moving out.”

  “I’m hungry,” Tony said.

  “Get up,” Timmy said.

  “What about breakfast?” Jane said.

  “What about it?” Timmy said. “Was you expecting it in bed?”

  “That would be nice,” she said.

  Timmy kicked her. I grabbed his leg and lifted it and he fell back on his butt. I was up and on him then, but when I straddled him and drew back my fist, he pulled out the automatic and put it against the tip of my nose.

  “Why don’t you go on and do that,” he said. “See how it works out for you.”

  Next thing I felt was being pulled off him. It was Bad Tiger. He jerked me to my feet and slapped me hard enough it knocked me down and made my ears ring.

  “I ain’t up for it,” Bad Tiger said. “Not even a little bit. Everybody get in the car. Now! Timmy, you’re driving.”

  17

  I sat up front with Timmy at the wheel. We hadn’t gone far before he turned on the radio, but all he got was a sound like someone rubbing a jagged rock over sandpaper. He turned it off and hummed a little, whistled a few bars, then went silent.

  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 Oklahoma on the end of it. I didn’t point this out to Bad Tiger and Timmy, and I hoped Jane wouldn’t. It was all right we knew they were lying the night before, but it wasn’t a good idea to let them know we knew.

  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.”

  “What’s that, sister?” Bad Tiger said.

  “You’re good judges of character,” she said.

  Bad Tiger let out a hoot and Timmy sat silent.

  “We got some time before the storm,” Bad Tiger said, “so you got some business to take care of in the bushes, this is the time to do it. You got your paper, n
ow, honey. That make you happy?”

  “Ecstatic,” said Jane.

  19

  It wasn’t long before I realized the clouds coming our way were moving fast, and much too fast for a storm front, even if it had been a tornado coming.

  And it wasn’t true clouds at all. I figured that when they came so fast and when I heard the loud hum. I knew then it was grasshoppers, millions of them. I had seen clouds like this before, several times, and I hadn’t liked it then, and I didn’t like it now.

  The humming blackness came down from the sky and hit the willows down below, and in a moment the grasshoppers ate the green off of them, and the willows shook like they was in a high wind, but the only wind was the wind the grasshoppers made.

  “Hit the dirt!” I yelled, and me and Jane and Tony dropped down over the side of the bank. But I didn’t go down before I saw Bad Tiger running like a frightened little girl toward the Ford, and Timmy on his tail.

  The hoppers hit me hard, so hard and in such a big wave, it was like being kicked by a mule. Even if I hadn’t been diving for the ground, they would have knocked me down anyway. They splattered against me and I swear I was lifted forward a bit as they hit and I dove.

  I lay with my face down tight against the bank and I could feel them crawling all over me, tugging at my shirt. I lifted my head a little. The sky was dark with them. So dark, it seemed like early evening.

  I saw Jane and Tony. They were both down close to the water.

  I said, “Crawl,” and a grasshopper hit my mouth. It tasted sour. I spat it out and started crawling, and when I looked back, Jane and Tony were crawling with me.

  We crawled along the bank and still the grasshoppers came. We crawled into them instead of away from them, and finally we came to where the dirt had been scooped out by wind and rain and time, underneath the willows. When we got there, I saw that the indention was deeper than I’d expected. You couldn’t tell that from where we had been, but once you were right up on it, you could see it was almost a cave. And down low there was an even deeper opening. Roots dangled down like worms. I could see all the way through the lower opening. It wasn’t very wide, but it went deep and it came out after a great distance. There was water in the groove. It was the water that kept it open like this. When rain was hard and the water was high, it must have churned through there like it was shot out of a hose.