All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

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.”