All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

8

“They’re going to go check on Turpin,” I said, “and when they find him dead, they’re going to think we murdered him.”

“Murdered him?” Jane said. “And how did we do that? Piled sand on top of him while he sat there rocking, smoking his pipe? No. Even the locals around here won’t be that dumb.”

“You’re one of the locals,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, “but I can read.”

“So can I.”

“What? Tractor Digest?”

“You ain’t been to school any more than me. And there ain’t no school no more. We ain’t had school in more than a year. Ain’t no school to go to. Storms shut it down.”

“The teacher teaches in her own home,” Tony said. “I went there to stay away from Pa. He had a hankering to whip my butt now and then for entertainment. So school’s better.”

“That’s right,” Jane said. “And I went to school because I value an education.”

“It’s certainly doing you a lot of good right now,” I said. “You’ve left two men dead, stolen a car, and now we’re running from the law.”

Jane turned and looked through the back windshield.

“By the time that old man tells the law, we’re out of his town. And by the time he can get word to the county, we’ll be long gone.”

She turned front again. “It’s like in them movies where the cowboy crosses the Rio Grande and is free.”

“We’re going to Mexico?” I said.

“No,” she said, “course not. We’re going to East Texas. I was speaking in a metaphorical way.”

“You were?” I said.

“You wouldn’t understand. Teacher taught that after you stopped coming.”