McNally's caper

THREE’S COMPANY

Where were we? I didn’t know — and I was driving. Dick sat beside me. Jack Donohue was in the back seat, alone, calling out rapid instructions without the benefit of a map:

‘After we get through Savannah, take a right onto Route 17. Just below Midway you’ll hit Route 82. Make a right on that and go west to Hinesville. Then southwest to Jesup. We’ll connect up with Route 301 south of Jesup and go down to Folkston. Then over to Jacksonville where we’ll meet up with 95 again. It’s a detour. Takes more time, but they’ll be patrolling the Interstate. They’ll never find us in the backwoods.’

I wasn’t so certain. I thought Antonio Rossi would follow us through the thickets of hell.

After the death of Hymie Gore, we had made our getaway in a wild, roaring dash across the shopping center parking lot. Jack had been at the wheel, and that escape from the crowded lot had been like running an obstacle course, a heart-stopping careen around startled pedestrians, grocery carts, and moving cars. I remember only lights flashing by, outraged faces, screams of protest, squealing brakes, the angry blast of horns, the screech of tires in tight turns.

We made the highway with no signs of pursuit and headed south again. We paused on the verge just north of Savannah and changed places. That’s when I got behind the wheel and Black Jack crawled into the back seat and immediately poured us all drinks.

Dick, I knew, was trying hard to control his tremors. He clutched his plastic tumbler of brandy in both hands, elbows pressed against his ribs. I was not so much shaken as numb. Too many things had happened too quickly. When I had asked Donohue the sequence of events back there in the alley, he had been cold and laconic.

‘I wasted the guy, I think he was one of the clerks from Brandenberg’s. I blew his fucking brains all over the fucking alley. Then I took a look at Hyme. He was still alive, but he had at least three pills in him. He was going; I could tell. So I split.’

‘I saw Rossi kill him,’ I said faintly.

‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘Well, that figures.’

‘He was such a sweet man,’ I mourned.

‘Yeah,’ Donohue said, ‘he was okay. Not much between the ears, but he was a good muscle.’

‘Did he have a family?’ Fleming asked.

‘Who the hell knows?’ Black Jack said irritably.

I was about to reproach him for his heartless unconcern — but what was the use? No one would pity a dead Jack Donohue either, or grieve for his wasted life. He knew it and accepted it.

But still, the death of Gore was on his mind — or perhaps it was the implacableness of the enemy who followed. Whatever he felt, alone there in the back seat, he drank heavily. He finished the brandy, lowered the window, and tossed out the empty bottle. He cackled when it smashed to splinters on the highway behind us. Then he started on a quart of vodka, drinking from the bottle.

We drove in silence then. We were south of Savannah before Donohue spoke again. His voice was heavy and dull, the words slurred.

‘The funny thing is …’ he mumbled. ‘You know what the funny thing is? That suitcase Hyme held up in front of him was filled with clothes. The slugs went through it like a hot poker through butter. I got the case right here. I’m feeling the holes, front and back. We got to ditch this case. But if he had been holding a suitcase full of jewelry, it probably would have stopped the slugs or deflected them — you know? It was just bad luck that Hyme had a suitcase full of underwear and shirts. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Luck, I mean.’

Then he was silent again. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw that he had stretched out. His chin was down on his chest. I hoped he was sleeping.

I tried to remember all his instructions, but I got lost. 1 ‘stayed on Route 82, going southwest. Finally, at Waycross, Dick and 1 saw signs pointing to the Okefenokee Swamp Park, and knew we were on the wrong road.

We discussed in low voices whether we should wake up Donohue and see if he could get us back on course. It was then almost 12:30 A.M., I was bone-weary, and I knew Dick’s ankle was bothering him. It seemed foolish to push ourselves over the edge of complete collapse.

We had to drive another thirty miles before we found a motel that was displaying a Vacancy sign. It was another of the fleabag variety, but I couldn’t have cared less. Dick woke up the night clerk and registered for two rooms, paying in advance. Between us we wrestled all the important luggage inside, then supported a stumbling, grumbling Jack Donohue and got him onto a lumpy bed.

Dick said he’d take care of undressing him, and 1 thankfully went off to my very own room. It was, I thought with a shock, the first time I had slept alone in I couldn’t remember how many days. I took my personal luggage in with me, including Project X, and just did manage to take off coat, shoes, wig, sweater, and skirt before I fell on top of the ratty bedspread in bra and pantyhose. I didn’t know which smelled worse, me or that bed. But sleep conquered all.

I woke about 8:00 the next morning because some idiot was emptying trash cans into a dump truck right outside my window, and whistling mightily as he worked. After he left, with a great grinding of gears, I tried to get back to sleep again, but it was no go. So I got up, showered in a stained stall no larger than a vertical coffin, and put on fresh clothes, makeup, and a brushed wig.

Then, feeling reasonably presentable, I ventured outside. A hot, smoky day, the rising sun hidden behind a scrim of white fog. I looked around. Mostly flatland. Some clumps of scrub pine. The earth looked old, baked, worn. And our motel was designed to fit right into that landscape.

The Buick was where we had parked it, and I figured the men were still sleeping. I wandered over to the renting office and found a fat woman sitting behind a desk, filing her nails with a piece of steel as big as a saber. She was about half my height and double my weight, with an enormous purple birthmark that covered one cheek and dripped down onto her neck. But it hadn’t soured her: she was perky enough.

‘Morning, dearie,’ she said cheerily. ‘How you this bright, sunshiny morning?’

I won’t attempt to reproduce the Georgian accent. But that ‘morning’ was more like ‘mawnin’ and the ‘how’ was ‘haow.’ Still there was a softness to her speech, a warm lilt. I liked it.

‘I’d feel a lot better if I could get some coffee,’ I said grumpily.

‘Got it right here,’ she said happily. ‘Thirty-five cents a cup. Doughnuts go for two bits each.’

‘ One coffee,’ I said. ‘Two doughnuts.’

She served me from a ten-quart electric coffeemaker on the end of the checkin desk.

‘We got canned milk,’ she said.

‘Black will be fine.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, grinning slyly. ‘Black is beautiful. Plain, sugared or chock doughnuts?’

‘Plain, please.’

‘Where you folks headin’?’ she asked pleasantly as she filled a plastic container with coffee and wrapped two doughnuts in a paper napkin.

‘South,’I told her.

‘Mostfolks is, this time of year. Miami, Ibet.’

‘Uh … maybe.’

‘Me and the old man plan to get down there one of these days,’ she nattered on. ‘Last year we went to Disney World. Ever been there?’

‘No, I never have.’

‘Don’t miss it,’ she advised me seriously. ‘Just the nicest place. I shook hands with Mickey Mouse. Can you imagine? Me, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse?’

Feeling a lot better, I carried my breakfast back to my room. I put coffee and doughnuts on top of the stained maple dresser and pulled up a straight-backed chair. I got out the yellow legal pads and ballpoint pen. Sipping the hot, flavorless coffee, chewing the spongy, flavorless doughnuts, I wrote as fast as I could, trying to bring my manuscript up to date.

I must have worked for at least two hours. I was just describing our arrival at the shopping center motor lodge near Hardeeville, South Carolina, when there was a knock at the door. I peeked through the front windows before I unlocked. I was learning.

Jack and Dick came in, carrying their own coffee and doughnuts. Dick was still limping slightly, but they both looked rested and cleaned up. They sat hunched over on the edge of my bed.

‘We missed the turnoff at Jesup,’ Fleming told me.

‘But no problem,’ Donohue said. ‘You kids did just right to hole up for the night. There are two or three ways we can get back on the Interstate from here. If we want to.’

I looked at him.

‘If we want to?’ I said. ‘I thought you were in such a hurry to get down to Miami?’

‘Well … yeah,’ Jack said, ‘I was. Still am. But me and Dick have been talking it over. Maybe it would be smarter to find some backwoods hidey-hole for a week or so. Someplace way off in nowhere. We could lay low till the heat’s off. We got plenty of money for that.’

‘It’s Georgia,’ Dick explained. ‘Jack says he knows the roads and the land like the palm of his hand. He says he can find us a safe spot.’

‘What do you think?’ Donohue said.

I thought that now the Donohue Gang was reduced to three living members, it was becoming more democratic. Our Leader was consulting rather than commanding.

The idea of holing up for a while seemed more attractive to me than fleeing from our nemesis down Route 95.

‘Sounds okay,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Where do we find this safe place?’

‘I figure we’ll go back to Waycross,’ Jack said. ‘Then head west toward Albany. I know that country pretty good. I’ll find a spot.’

‘We’ll stop for food at the first decent place we come to,’ Fleming said. Then he added: ‘Won’t we, Jack?’

‘Why not? We’ll take our time. No one’s going to find us in the Georgia boondocks. I’ll bet on that.’

So we went back to Waycross, then headed north and west to Alma, Hazlehurst, McRae, and Eastman. Jack

Donohue was driving. I sat beside him, trying to follow our route on a Mobil map. I thought he was heading toward Macon, but I couldn’t be sure.

I wasn’t sure because four-lane concrete highways became three-and then two-lane. Then we were on two-lane tarred roads. Then graveled roads. Then one-lane dirt roads. Everything dwindled down until we were running between bare fields so baked and dry that we spun a long plume of dust behind us.

We passed crossroad villages — no more than a filling station and a grocery store that sold beer and snuff. I saw men in faded overalls, women in calico dresses, mule-drawn wagons, and once, like something out of the past, a man in a field following an ox-drawn plow. The land here seemed bleached out, blooded and drawn, and so did the people. In our big Buick, dented and dusty as it was, we were visitors from another planet. To me, this was terra incognita, the earth sere and hard, a gigantic sun burning through the morning fog and filling the sky with shimmering heat. That sun looked like it might set right into the cropped fields and char the world away.

I glanced sideways at Black Jack as he drove, and saw the light in his eyes, the twisted smile on his lips. I thought at first that he was seeking the most deserted, malign, and remote spot he could find, thinking of our safety and the enmity of our pursuers.

Then I realized it wasn’t wholly that. It was a return for him. He was coming home. After all his travels and adventures, happiness and pain, he was coming home. Yes, I decided, it was that. As paved roads shrunk to paths and we went jouncing over pits and rumbling across dried creek beds, I saw his lips draw back from his teeth and heard his low laugh. He was remembering.

‘Ran alky through here,’ he said, ‘in a beatup truck. White lightning, panther piss — whatever you want to call it. Clear as water and maybe a hundred proof. Scorch your tonsils, that stuff would. But pure. No artificial additives or flavorings, as the ads say. Vintage of last Tuesday. At least we let it cool off. I had a route. Delivered it to some regular customers and some local distributors. All kinds of bottles: milk, medicine, whatever. It had to hold a pint, at least.

That was the minimum. With a cork. You got a dime back if you returned the bottle. Two cents back on the cork.’

‘How old were you then, Jack?’ Dick Fleming asked from the back seat.

‘Shit,’ Jack Donohue said, ‘I was small fry. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen — like that. They used kids for drivers, figuring if you all got caught, what would they do to you? Whump you up some, that’s all.’

Something else I noticed: As we got deeper into hardshell Baptist country, Jack’s speech subtly changed. Not changed so much as reverted. The rapid New York cadence slowed, a drawl became evident, and I noted the same lilt I had heard in the speech of that birthmarked lady back at the motel. It wasn’t ‘you-all’ or even ‘yawl.’ But there was only a tiny hesitation between ‘you’ and ‘all.’ And humor — dry, wry, and unsettling.

‘You heerd about how to handle a mule? First thing you do is to smack him across the skull with a two-by-four. That’s just to get his attention. This feller I knew tried the same thing on his wife. She just wouldn’t stop gabbing. He’s still breaking rocks somewheres.’

This followed by a mirthless laugh.

So there we were in a foreign country, being chauffeured by a native guide. Only Jack Donohue spoke the language and knew the customs. It was like a time warp, going back to the 1920’s, a time of dirt roads, hand-cranked gas pumps, tin signs advertising Moxie and chewing tobacco. All the men seemed to spit endlessly, and the women looked old before their time.

Another thing I noticed as we went slowly through those small, sad, crossroad towns …

So many of the males were injured. One-armed men, boys with missing fingers, cripples jerking along on false legs or crutches.

‘Farm machinery,’ Jack said when I commented on this phenomenon. ‘You get in any rural area, anywhere in the country, you find guys who lost a finger or hand or arm to a tractor or binder or thresher. Happens all the time. One reason why I got out.’

We came, finally, to a village no smaller, no larger, no different from a dozen others we had passed through on the packed dirt road, trailing our cloud of dust.

‘Yeah,’ Donohue said, ‘this is it. Whittier, Georgia. We’ll settle in around here.’

‘Why this place?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t look special.’

‘It ain’t,’ he said, grinning. ‘That’s the point. Just another spot that the mapmakers forgot. There’s a hundred places like this around here. I know them all. One gas station, one general store, one feed and hardware store. Maybe a small branch bank. A restaurant and liquor place side-by-side. A church somewheres. Maybe a school.’

‘No motels?’ Fleming asked.

‘Motels?’ Jack said. ‘Who comes through here? Exceptin’ folks who go through. I mean, this is a non-stop place.’

‘So where do we stay?’ I said.

‘What I’m looking for,’ he told us, ‘is a private home owned by a spinster or widow lady. It’ll have a sign on the front lawn that says, like, “Tourists Welcome.” Or maybe just “Boarders.” There’s bound to be at least one around here.’

He found it, too. A big white house set back on an improbably green lawn. The sign read: ‘Tourist Accommodations — Day, Week, Month.’ The house was all fretwork and gingerbread trim: a wedding cake of a house.

On the wide porch, a woman swung slowly back and forth in a rocker, cooling herself with a palm leaf fan. There was a crushed stone driveway that led up to the house, then curved away to a clapboard building that looked like a barn converted into a garage.

We pulled up on the edge of the dirt road. Donohue switched off the ignition, turned to Fleming in the back seat.

‘Hyme had a hat,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t wearing it when he got blown away. Is it back there? Or any hat?’

Dick rooted through the scrambled mess, came up with a stained grey fedora. He handed it over. Donohue clapped it on his head. It slid down to his eyebrows. He shoved it back so it was hanging.

‘We leave the car here,’ he said. ‘All of us, we walk slowly up to the porch. Just looking around, casual-like. You’re a step or two behind me. Let me do the talking. Dick, you limp on that ankle of yours more’n you have to.’

‘What’s the hat for?’ I asked.

‘So’s I can take it off,’ he said, almost indignantly, like I was the stupe of stupes. ‘Anyone want to make a bet?’

Dick and I looked at each other.

‘What kind of a bet?’ I said cautiously.

‘I’ll bet you a sawbuck her name is Rose, Opal, Pearl, Minnie, Faith, Hope, or Charity.’

‘Okay,’ Fleming said. ‘I’ll take you. It’s got to be Rose, Opal, Pearl, Minnie, Faith, Hope, or Charity, or you owe me ten — right?’

‘Right,’ Donohue said. ‘Let’s go.’

We got out of the car. Closed the doors to keep in the air conditioning. We walked slowly up the driveway to the porch. The woman in the rocking chair watched us approach. Very calm. That chair didn’t pause or vary its rhythm for a second. As we came closer, I saw that she was a big woman in her mid-sixties. Tall rather than full. Almost gaunt. A face like an axe blade. Strong hands. Eyes as clear as water. Wearing an old-fashioned poke bonnet, calico housedress, thick elastic stockings. The shoes were unusual: unbuckled combat boots from World War II. She was chewing something placidly. Gum or tobacco or whatever. (I learned later it was a wad of tar, which she was convinced would make her remaining teeth whiter.)

As we came up to the porch, Donohue motioned Dick and me to stop. He put a foot lightly on the bottom step of the three stairs leading up to the porch.

‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ Jack said, taking off his hat with what I can only describe as a courtly gesture.

She nodded, quite regally.

‘Hot,’ she said, fanning herself. ‘For this time of year.’

‘Yes’m,’ Donohue agreed, ‘it surely is. Ma’am, my name is Sam Morrison. This lovely lady is my good wife, Beatrice. And this other feller is my brother, Dick. Richard, that is. We’re all from Macon, y’know? Well, we’re heading south for a couple of weeks. Figure to do some fishing down in the Florida Keys. But Dick, he up and sprained his ankle just this morning. You saw him limping? Nothing serious, the doc says, but keep the weight offen it a day or more. So we’re in no hurry and figured we’d just rest up awhile and give Dick’s ankle a chance to heal. Him being in pain, and all. So what we were wondering is this: if you could fit us out with two rooms, me and my wife in one, my brother in the other, like for a few days, a week at most? No trouble, no wild parties, oh no, ma’am, nothing like that. We all been working hard. This is our vacation. Rest is all we want, ma’am. Peaceful rest.’

The rocker never stopped. The waving palm leaf fan never stopped. She and Jack Donohue looked at each other. It seemed to me the silence lasted for an eternity. But out there in that deserted countryside, I figured absolute silence was normal: no cicadas, no birdcalls, no passing traffic, no airliners overhead. Nothing.

The stare between Donohue and the woman in the rocking chair never wavered. It was like they were talking to each other with their eyes. I didn’t understand it.

‘Sam Morrison, you said?’ she asked.

‘That’s right, ma’am,’ Donohue said gently. ‘I’m born and bred from up Macon way. My wife and brother, they’re from up north.’

She nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world that a man from ‘up Macon way’ would have a wife and brother from the north.

‘Ten dollars a day,’ she said, still fanning her sharp face. ‘Per person. That includes breakfast. You all‘11 have to go into town for your other meals. The food ain’t great at Hoxey’s there, but it’s filling. For a week or so. No cooking in your rooms. I don’t hold with hard liquor, but if you want to drink in your rooms, quiet-like, I’m not one to complain. Ice cubes in the kitchen refrigerator. I got myself a TV in the parlor if you’re wanting. You’re welcome to watch.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Jack said softly, taking out his wallet. ‘That sounds just grand — a nice quiet place where we can rest up, and my brother, he can let his ankle get good again. And what’s your name, ma’am, if I may ask?’

‘Mrs Pearl Sniffins,’ she said firmly.

From slightly behind me I heard Dick Fleming’s low groan.

‘You can pull in behind the garage,’ she went on. ‘The drive curves around to the back. Plenty of room in there. Just my old Plymouth. A few chickens. One goat. Two hounds. They won’t cause no trouble.’

‘We’ll take care, ma’am,’ Donohue assured her. ‘I’d like to pay in advance. IsMrSniffins …?’

‘Mr Sniffins has passed on.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,’ Jack Donohue said, hanging his head. ‘But it’s a glory to know he has gone to his reward.’

‘I hope so,’ she said grimly.

Those rooms we stayed in for eight days in the tourist home outside Whittier, Georgia, really belonged in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum. I don’t mean they were furnished with valuable antiques or in exquisite taste. But they were a touching reminder of how middle-class rural Americans lived fifty years ago.

Wide, waxed floorboards. Gossamer, hand-hemmed curtains at the generous windows. Maple furniture with a high gloss. Beds with spindle posts. Armchairs covered in flowered cretonne. Pressed ferns framed on the white walls. Oval rag rugs on the floors.

And all so neat, clean, and glowing that I felt like weeping. Because there was nothing chic, smart, or trendy about those rooms. They were just reminders of what home had once meant. The light filtering through those gauzy curtains seemed to infuse the old rooms with young beauty. They smelled faintly of lavender sachet, and sounded of peace, security, and a sense of the continuum of life.

It was all so different from the speed, violence, loud noise, and sudden death of the preceding days. We were doused in peace, lulled by it. We had almost forgotten a world without fear.

I don’t mean that the past was wiped away. But we did begin to forget.

We carried all our luggage upstairs to the larger of the two rooms assigned to us. There were three other bedrooms on the second floor, all empty, and one enormous bathroom with a tub on legs and a toilet seat with a needlepoint cover.

‘Mrs Pearl says she finds it hard to make the stairs,’ Donohue told us. ‘Arthritis. So she sleeps downstairs on a sofa in the parlor. Got a john down there. A colored lady comes in once a week to clean up for her.’ He looked at Dick Fleming meaningfully, ‘That’s Mrs Pearl Sniffins I’m talking about,’he said.

‘You son of a bitch,’ Dick said ruefully, handing over the ten dollars. ‘How did you know?’

Black Jack pocketed the bill.

‘Sucker!’ he said. ‘One born every minute. This is my home. Mrs Pearl Sniffins? She’s every aunt I ever had.’

‘And your mother?’ I asked curiously.

‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘Not my mother.’

We were all in the larger bedroom then, not yet having faced the problem of who was going to sleep with whom, and where. The fact that we had the entire second floor to ourselves simplified things, or complicated them. But I wasn’t worried; just curious.

I sat in one of those neat armchairs. It was equipped with a crocheted antimacassar, naturally. And how long has it been since you’ve seen one of those things? The two men sat on the edge of the bed. It was covered with a patchwork quilt that looked like Betsy Ross had had a hand in it, after she knocked off Old Glory.

When the men sat down, the bed sang and rustled beneath them. Donohue was amused and patted the coverlet with his palm.

‘Straw-filled mattress,’ he explained. ‘Great sleeping — if the noise doesn’t keep you awake. I’ll bet she bought the material and sewed up the tick herself, then stuffed it. A great old lady.’

‘And what a con job you did on her,’ Dick said. ‘She went for it hook, line, and sinker.’

Jack turned slowly to look at him.

‘Think so? Think again, sonny. She knows we’re on the run.’

I gaped at him.

‘Jack,’ I said, ‘how in hell would she know that? Your spiel sounded believable to me. I thought she went for it.’

‘Use your head,’ he said. ‘We pull up here in a big, dust-covered Buick. We say we’re on our way to Florida. If we were going from Macon to Florida, we’d be nowheres near this place. We’d be on Route 16, going over to 95. Or going straight south on 75, and then cutting over to 95 at Orlando. Listen, that lady’s no idiot. She knows we’re running and need a place to hole up for a while.’

‘Then why — ‘ I began.

‘Needs the money!’ he said, shrugging. ‘Wants the company. Whatever. When she was looking at me, it was nip-and-tuck; she knew but couldn’t decide. Finally she figured we were good for the green and wouldn’t cop her knitting needles. But that’s why she’s clipping us ten each per day. I’ll bet her regular rate is five.’

‘She won’t talk?’ Fleming asked nervously.

‘Nah,’ Donohue said. ‘It’s no skin off her nose who we are or what we done. If we behave ourselves she’ll keep her mouth shut. Most of the folks around here are like that; they mind their own business. It’s some of the white trash in town who’ll sell us out. But not Mrs Pearl Sniffins. She’s a lady, she’s seen a lot, and there’s no way you can surprise, shock, or scare her. Hey, listen, let’s take a look around this place. The land’s hers, but she’s got tenant farmers. She says it’s mostly peanuts and corn. Some okra. And she’s got a mud crick back aways. That I gotta see. Let’s go.’

As we walked slowly across the stubbled fields, it seemed to me that day was so splendid that we would live forever. A fulgent sun filled a blue, blue sky, and even that hardscrabble land took on a warmth and glow that made me want to lie down naked in the dust and roll about. I began to understand why people might choose to live in such a bleak landscape — for days like that one, when the sun seemed created for that plot alone, coming low to bless, the firmament serene, the air as piercing as ether, the whole universe closed in and secret.

We paused in the middle of an empty field, swallowed in silence. We followed Jack’s pointing finger and there, high up, saw a black thing no more than a scimitar, wheeling and soaring.

‘Chicken hawk,’ Donohue said somberly. ‘Big bastard.’

We watched that dark blade cut through the azure. Then it came between us and the sun and was lost.

‘See that line of trees?’ Jack said. ‘That’s gotta be the crick. We’ll just go that far. How’s the ankle, Dick?’

‘I’ll live,’ Fleming said. ‘If there’s a drugstore in town I’ll pick up an elastic bandage.’

‘If not,’ Jack said, ‘Mrs Pearl will wrap it in rags for you. These country women can doctor anything from an ass boil to a mule down with colic.’

I’ve seen bigger creeks than that after a water main break in Manhattan. But Donohue was enchanted with it and we humored him. It was a muddy stream, no more than twenty feet across, and looked to be about waist-deep.

‘Smell that?’ Jack demanded. ‘Catfish in there — I’ll bet on it.’

‘Where does it go?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, does it run into a deeper river?’

‘Who the hell knows? The Oconee maybe, but 1 doubt it. Probably just pisses out in a field somewheres and disappears. Most of them do.’ He looked around. Not a soul in sight. Not a sound. He began to unbutton his shirt. ‘I’m going in,’ he said.

‘In that?’ I said, astonished. ‘It’s a mudpuddle.’

‘So?’ he said, continuing to undress. ‘It’s wet and it’s cool. Used to be a crick just like this where we lived when I was a tad. A big old hickory hung over from the bank. My pappy rigged up a rope and an old tire so we could swing out and drop off. Jesus, those days!’

Dick Fleming looked at me doubtfully, then sat down on the dirt bank and began to pull off shoes and socks. I sat down too, lighted a cigarette, watched the two men undress and wade, white-bodied, into the shallow stream.

They plunged and began to shout, laugh, splash, dunk each other. They floated awhile, then leaped up into the air, glistening, and then slipped below the surface again. I watched them awhile, smiling. Then I ground out my cigarette, kicked off my shoes. I rose, stripped down. Took off my wig. Waded cautiously into the muddy water. It was colder than I expected. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and belly-flopped in.

I think we spent about a half-hour in that shallow stream. I never knew muddy water could wash you clean, but that creek did. Washed away fears and tensions, terrors and regrets. We played with each other, then lay side by side, drying on the dirt bank. I wanted the moment never to end. Thought was lost, thankfully, and all I could do was feel the hot sun on my bleached skin, feel a finger-touch breeze, feel the closeness and the intimacy. No one spoke.

After a while we rose, brushed ourselves off as best we could, dressed, and went struggling back across those shaved fields, still in silence. We heard Mrs Pearl moving about in the kitchen, and Donohue called to tell her we were back. She didn’t reply.

We trudged upstairs, all of us weary with a divine, sunbaked tiredness. We took turns in the big bathroom, showering away the dust and the sun-sting.

Then we went back into the big bedroom, locked the door. Got out a quart of vodka and drank it warm, passing around the big bottle like a loving cup. Then we all, the three of us, threw back the patchwork quilt and the top sheet (unbleached muslin, many times laundered) and got into bed together.

It wasn’t the sex, but it was. What I mean is that it just wasn’t randiness that drove us together. It was sweet, loving intimacy. We had been through so much, shared so much. And perhaps we were all frightened; there was that, too. Whatever it was, we huddled, and were kind, solicitous, and tender with each other.

I think that’s what I remember most — the tenderness. We comforted each other. I make no apology for having sex with two men at the same time; it was a delight. There was nothing vile, sweaty, or grunted about it.

I think, after a while, we all slept for an hour or two. When we awoke, in a tangle of limbs, the room had cooled, and darkness was outside. We hadn’t banished that.

That night we drove into town for dinner. We knew where we were going; as Mrs Pearl had said, in Whittier, it’s Hoxey’s or nuthin’.’

Hoxey’s looked like it had been designed by the same benighted genius responsible for the Game Cock. It had identical scarred wood floor, bar, tables, booths, kitchen in the rear, raucous jukebox, and glittering cigarette machine. Even the odor was similar, although now the grease had a fried chicken flavor. In addition, Hoxey’s had a pool table off to one side and a table shuffleboard up near the bar.

Just as at the Game Cock, conversation temporarily ceased and heads turned as we walked in. But things got back to normal when we slid into a booth, and the waitress came over to take our order. She was an older and plumper version of the Game Cock’s houri, and looked a lot jollier.

‘Evenin’ folks,’ she beamed. ‘My name’s Rose. You drinkin’, eatin’, or both?’

‘Both,’ Donohue said. ‘We’ll have vodka on ice to cut the dust. Then we’ll take a look at the menu, if you got one.’

‘Sure, we got one,’ she said. ‘Whaddya think, this is some kind of a dump? Don’t answer that question!’

She left us three sheets of dog-eared paper, spotted with grease, that looked like they had been ripped from a memo pad. Each sheet was headed, in longhand: ‘Hoxey’s: Where the Elite Meet to Eat.’ The menu read: ‘Soup. Bread and but.’ Then it listed the entrees, followed by: ‘Pots and vegs. Ice cream or Jello. Coffee.’ Across the bottom was a stern admonition: ‘Don’t take this menu for a suvenire.’

‘Too bad,’ I said. ‘I wanted it for my Memory Album.’

‘Sounds like a real banquet,’ Dick Fleming said. ‘Should we start at the top and work our way down; a different entree every day? If we stay around here more than six days, we’re in trouble.’

Rose came back with our drinks and a bowl of peanuts in the shell.

‘Just throw the shells on the floor, folks,’ she advised us breezily. ‘Keeps out the termites. You decided yet?’

‘What’re catfish balls?’ I asked, consulting my scrap of a menu.

‘Delicious,’ Donohue told me. ‘And very hard to find. They can only get them from the male catfish, y’see.’

‘Oh, you‘ the waitress said, slapping his ear with her other pad. ‘You’d make me blush effen I hadn’t heerd that joke a hundert times before. Honey, they’re ground-up catfish meat, deep-fried.’font>

‘What’s the soup?’ Dick asked.

‘Tomato,’ she said. ‘Campbell’s best.’

‘How’s the breaded veal cutlet?’ Jack asked.

‘I ate it tonight, and I’m livin’.’

‘Any veal in it?’ he wanted to know.

‘Some,’ she said.

We all took the soup and cutlet. The pot. and vegs. turned out to be home fries and string beans. If we hadn’t been so hungry, we would have starved. The ice cream was warm; to make up for it, the coffee was cold.

But the drinks were big, and for every two rounds we bought, the house bought one. A pleasant custom. When

Rose brought our coffee, Donohue asked her, ‘That guy behind the bar, is he Hoxey?’

‘Nah,’ the waitress said. ‘Hoxey was smart, sold out to us and moved to California. We never got around to changing the name.’

‘The bartender — he’s your one and only?’

‘That’s what he thinks,’ Rose laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s my hubby. Ben Lufkin.’

Donohue slid out of the booth, went over to the bar. In a minute the two men were shaking hands. Then they leaned toward each other, their heads together. I saw Jack slip him money, so neat and quick and smooth, I think I was the only one in the restaurant who noticed it. Donohue came back to the booth.

‘Think we could get a couple of cold six-packs, Rose?’ he asked.

T think maybe I could fix you up. Anything else?’

‘Not right now, thank you, ma’am. The food was fine.’

‘I always did like a cheerful liar,’ she said, adding up our bill. ‘Please pay at the bar. Ben won’t let me handle the money. He figures if I see more’n five bucks, I’ll take off after Hoxey.’

We drove slowly back to Mrs Pearl’s, watching a lemon moon come bobbing into a cloudless night sky.

‘Nice people,’ Dick Fleming said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Donohue said. ‘Most of them. Some ain’t so nice. Like everywheres.’

‘I saw you give Ben some money,’ I said.

‘Yeah. He’s going to keep his eyes and ears open. Give us a call out at Mrs Pearl’s if anyone comes around asking for us.’

‘You trust him?’ Fleming asked.

‘Got no choice, do we?’ Donohue said. ‘But I think he’s straight. Hell, let’s forget it and just relax. That bastard Rossi is probably knocking on doors in Jacksonville right now.’

Mrs Sniffins was rocking on the porch, a white wraith, when we arrived. Jack parked on the crushed stone driveway alongside the house. We walked around to the front, Dick carrying two cold six-packs of beer in a brown paper bag.

‘Evenin’, ma’am,’ Donohue said. ‘Right pretty night, with the moon and all.’

‘Right pleasant,’ she said, nodding, if you’re of a mind to set a spell, there’s plenty of chairs.’

We thanked her and pulled up wicker porch chairs with thin sailcloth cushions.

‘Would smoking bother you, Mrs Sniffins?’ I asked her.

‘Land, no,’ she said. ‘I smoke a ciggie myself ever’ now and again.’

So we lighted up, Black Jack holding a match for Mrs Pearl’s cigarette. She gripped it between thumb and forefinger of her left hand and smoked it importantly. I don’t think she inhaled. But it was obvious she was enjoying the smoke, and enjoying our being there. Donohue had been right: She wanted company.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘we picked up some cold beer at Hoxey’s. It’d be a downright pleasure if you’d share it with us.’

It wasn’t hard to persuade her. So there we were a few moments later, all four of us sipping Budweiser from cans, smoking our cigarettes, and talking lazily of this and that. I couldn’t remember when I had been happier.

After a while, Jack got Mrs Pearl talking about her family’s history. It wasn’t difficult; it almost seemed as if she had been waiting for the opportunity to tell the story. She didn’t want it to die with her.

She herself was from Alabama, but this piece of land had been in her husband’s family since before the War between the States. She had met her husband, Aaron, at a church convention in Athens, Georgia. They had corresponded and then he had traveled to Evergreen, Alabama, to meet her family. She and Aaron had been married a year later, in Evergreen, and she had returned to live with him in the big white house in Whittier. Aaron’s mother was alive then, living with them, and it was evident the new bride and the mother-in-law didn’t hit it off.

‘I won’t say a word against that woman,’ Mrs Pearl Sniffins said firmly, in a tone of voice that implied if she ever started, she might never stop.

She accepted a second can of beer graciously from Dick Fleming, and said, ‘I thank you kindly,’ when he removed the tab for her. She took a deep swallow and belched gently before continuing her story.

She and Aaron had six children. One boy died at childbirth, one girl died at the age of three months from a respiratory ailment. ‘Just coughed up her pore little lungs.’ Another son died aboard a battleship in World War II. The others, three girls, married and moved away. They were all over: Arizona, Chicago, Toronto. Mrs Pearl had eleven grandchildren.

For a few years after they were married, the girls came back to Whittier to visit with their husbands and new babies. But they didn’t come so often anymore. But they wrote regular, Mrs Pearl assured us, and sent pictures of the children and gifts on her birthday.

‘I already got their Christmas gifts,’ she said proudly. ‘All stacked up. I’ll open them Christmas morning.’

We didn’t say anything. Just sat there in silence on a balmy night in Georgia, staring at moon shadows.

‘What about your own family, ma’am?’ Jack Donohue asked softly.

‘All gone,’ she told him. i was an only child and my folks passed. Uncles and aunts passed. Cousins passed or scattered. We just lost track.’

‘Yes,’ Dick Fleming said slowly, ‘that’s what happens: We just lose track.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Pearl Sniffins said, it just seems a shame that a family should break up like that. It wasn’t always so. My land, my husband’s family just went on for years and years. I’ve got all the pictures. Tintypes, they called them then. And some little paintings framed in velvet. And bundles and bundles of letters, so faded now you can hardly make them out. But that was a family that lasted. Now it seems like they bust up so fast. People die or move away. No one stays in the same place anymore. So we lose track. A name used to mean something. People knew who you were. They knew your people. But no more. Well … I ain’t one to pity myself; don’t you go thinking that.’

‘No’m, Mrs Pearl,’ I said, ‘we’d never think that of you. But times change, and customs, and the way people are. And we’ve got to go along with the changes, like it or not.’

‘You maybe,’ she said sharply. ‘You’re young enough. Not me. I don’t hold with the new ways, and don’t have to.

I just wish I had my children around me, that’s all. My own sons working this land that’s been in the family so long. Great-grandchildren I could see and hug. This house is big enough for all. But it’s not to be, and that’s God’s will, and we must accept it and believe it’s for the best. And now I do believe that delicious sip of nice cold beer has made me drowsy enough to sleep, so I will excuse myself and go off to bed. You all set out here just as long as you like.’

We all stood up and Dick Fleming helped Mrs Pearl out of her rocker. She smiled at us in the dimness.

‘Good night, all,’ she said in a tremulous voice. ‘Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Now that’s just a little saying we have. You won’t find any bedbugs in this house, I do assure you.’

Then she was gone. The screen door closed behind her. We sat down again. I took Mrs Pearl’s rocker, the cushion still warm. I closed my eyes, rocked back and forth and saw it all. I hoped no one would say anything, and no one did.

After a while, the beer finished, we went inside, locked the door carefully, and went up to bed. We heard Mrs Pearl snoring in the parlor, and we moved on tiptoe, not talking, so as not to wake her.

That night we all slept naked together in the double bed in the big bedroom. I was glad I was between two men, being held by both. I never wanted to be alone again. I fell asleep, the old straw rustling gently beneath me: a derisive whisper.

Our stay in Whittier was twenty-four-hour champagne, the days sun-crisped, the nights moon-cooled. It was a shared dream that changed us all, in ways we could not understand. Something deep was happening to us, but what it was we did not know.

Our daily routine was simple enough. We slept together, although I kept my personal suitcase in the small bedroom. I rumpled the bed, scattered toilet articles about, left cigarette butts in ashtrays, gave the room what I fancied to be a lived-in appearance. All this to mislead Mrs Pearl in case she made an unexpected climb to the second floor, and to fool the cleaning lady when she appeared.

But ‘we slept together. Every night but one.

We rose before 8:00, dressed, went downstairs to have breakfast with Mrs Pearl in the big kitchen. And the size of the breakfasts matched that room: orange juice; oatmeal; eggs; bacon, ham, or pork sausages; pancakes; grits; corn muffins, blueberry muffins, toast; waffles; sweet butter; jams, jellies, and homemade preserves; milk or coffee.

Mrs Pearl bustled about, talking in a blue streak, and seemingly delighted with our appetites and praise for her cooking. She told us (three times) that her quince jelly had won a blue ribbon at the county fair. I could believe it; it was nectar.

After breakfast we usually drove into Whittier to shop. We knew what those gargantuan breakfasts were costing Mrs Pearl, so we took her shopping list into town and paid for the milk, coffee, pancake flour, ham, and all the other goodies. We also loaded her refrigerator with beer, cola, and tonic water, and put two quarts of vodka in the freezer.

By the second day of our stay, practically everyone in Whittier knew us, and we exchanged ‘Howdy’ and ‘Have a nice day’ a dozen times as we went from general store to liquor store to gas station to Hoxey’s.

At Hoxey’s Rose would have a bag of sandwiches made for us. Really dreadful sandwiches: processed cheese on dry white bread, pressed ham on stale rye. But we didn’t care. Everyone was just so nice, it would have been cruel to suggest to them that a luncheon of Twinkies and Yoo-Hoo wasn’t really the best food American agriculture could offer.

Then back to Mrs Pearl’s with our purchases, usually including a special treat for her. (She doted on licorice-filled mints.) Then, around noon, we took our sandwiches and six-pack of beer across the fields. We dunked naked in the muddy stream (even Dick and I were calling it the ‘crick’ by then), and ate our sandwiches and drank our beer, kept cold by immersing the cans in the running water.

On one of those trips Donohue carried our lunch in the emptied, bullet-riddled suitcase that had provided no shield for Hymie Gore. Jack and Dick scooped out a hole under one of the oak trees near the stream and buried the case.

In the afternoon, back at Mrs Pearl’s, I worked on my manuscript, and wrote enough so that I was up-to-date and describing current events. The men washed down the

Buick, then cleaned up Mrs Pearl’s seven-year-old Plymouth. They also consolidated all our gear into four suitcases and three canvas carryalls.

One afternoon they left me at Mrs Pearl’s and drove away, ostensibly to have the Buick gassed, oiled, and tuned. But when they returned, Jack had extra ammunition for all our guns and a complete cleaning kit. He and Dick spent hours stripping down the guns, cleaning them, and reloading. Donohue said Dick was very good at it and could become an expert if he applied himself.

Something else they brought back from their trip were two unlabeled pint bottles of colorless liquid which, Jack assured me, was the finest white lightning in the State of Georgia. I tried a sip and it felt like my vocal cords had been given a shot of Novocain, while sweat ran down from my armpits. I said, when I recovered my voice, that I’d stick to eighty-proof vodka.

But that night, after we returned from Hoxey’s and had a beer with Mrs Pearl on the porch, we retired to our bedroom, and the two men demolished the pints of alky. Fortunately, they were sitting on the edge of the bed as they drank, and all they had to do was fall back.

I lifted up their legs and left the louts, fully clothed, to their groaning unconsciousness. Then I went into the smaller bedroom. It was the only night I slept alone. In the morning they were full of that crazy macho boasting about which one had the worst hangover. I wasn’t sore at them — just amused, and amazed at the way Dick Fleming was acting.

Because, of the three of us, he had changed, was changing, the most. Some of it was physical. He was leaner and harder. The sun was burning his pale, freckled skin a bronzed tan. His hair was bleached to the color of wheat, and his blue eyes seemed deeper, steadier, more knowing. I saw the looks he got from the women in Hoxey’s and on the streets of Whittier.

But less obvious were the changes within. He took a more active role in our sexual shenanigans, frequently as initiator. He insisted on driving the car more often, ordered for us at Hoxey’s, offered his opinions on a multitude of matters in a firm, decisive manner.

I looked at him with astonishment: a new man. When, alone with Donohue, I mentioned something of this, Black Jack flashed me one of his wise grins and said, ‘He’s found his balls.’ Whatever had happened, was happening, I knew Dick and I would never again indulge in those tickle-and-squirm games. The pistonless and stamenless man had become more than a neuter. I was glad for him, I suppose. I wasn’t certain about my own reaction.

So the days passed in a dream, peaceful, golden, and each hour separated us further from what had gone before. We sniffed security like cocaine, certain that the chase had cooled, pursuit had ended, and we could leisurely accomplish all that we had set out to do.

Christmas was on a Sunday that year, and on the preceding Friday we bought a sad, lopsided tree in the gas station lot in Whittier. We brought it home” to Mrs Pearl, lashed on the roof of the Buick. We were certain she would have all the ornaments and tinsel necessary. Women like Mrs Pearl Sniffins don’t throw away Christmas tree ornaments. She didn’t disappoint us.

So on Friday evening, after our return from Hoxey’s, we gathered in what Mrs Pearl called the ‘sitting room’ and decorated our tree. It was, I suppose, a kind of party. We all drank a bottle of port wine. There were jokes, laughter, remembrances of past holidays. It seemed strange to me to be celebrating Christmas in such a warm climate. How can you lie naked on a muddy crick bed on Christmas day? But that wine made everything seem quite normal. I think we sang some carols, more for Mrs Pearl’s sake than ours. She surely was partial to ‘Silent Night.’

Later, in bed together, Mrs Sniffins snoring peacefully downstairs, we talked quietly of our plans. We decided to spend Christmas day with Mrs Pearl (she had invited us, promising a roast turkey ‘with all the trimmings’), and maybe even go to church with her. Then we would take off on the following Monday. We still had plenty of cash, and Black Jack said we could take back and secondary roads all the way down to Miami, just to play it cool. We’d probably arrive Wednesday or Thursday.

It all sounded good to us. After those glittering days and perfumed nights, it was impossible that anything could turn sour.

On Saturday morning, after breakfast, we drove into Whittier to buy Christmas gifts for Mrs Pearl. There wasn’t much choice. In the general store I found a quilted bed-jacket I thought she might like, and the men bought her perfume, a five-pound box of chocolates, and two palm-leaf plants.

We decided to forego our afternoon swim, so we didn’t stop at Hoxey’s for sandwiches and beer. We drove directly to Mrs Pearl’s, planning to spend the afternoon wrapping our gifts and getting a gentle buzz on in honor of Christ’s birth.

And that’s exactly what we did, until about 2:00 that afternoon, Christmas Eve. Then we heard Mrs Pearl calling from downstairs. Donohue opened the door and went to the top of the stair.

‘Mr Morrison,’ we heard her say, ‘you got a phone call. It’s Ben Lufkin at Hoxey’s.’

Jack went down the stairs.

Dick Fleming turned to look at me with bleak eyes.

‘Start packing,’ he said harshly.

We heard Donohue come up the stairs. He stalked into the room. He took two guns from a canvas carryall, a revolver and a pistol. He pulled back the slide of the pistol, let it snap forward. He put the revolver in his belt, the pistol in the side pocket of his jacket. Then he started helping us with the packing.

‘Two guys came into Hoxey’s looking for us,’ he reported. ‘Ben Lufkin says one was wearing a gray suit, vest, hat. Young, clean, fresh-shaved. Doesn’t sound like one of Rossi’s boys. Sounds like a Fed. The other guy was wearing a star, a deputy from the county sheriffs office.’

Even while I was listening, the worm of fear beginning to gnaw, I noted his accent: ‘deppity’ and ‘shurf.’

‘Ben says he told them nothing,’ Jack went on. ‘Maybe he didn’t, maybe he did. But someone in town sure as hell will; you can bet on that. They had photos of you two, descriptions of all of us.’

‘How could they trace us here, Jack?’ I asked him.

‘Got a line on me, 1 suppose,’ he said wearily. ‘Found out

I came from the Macon area. So they’re covering this part of the state, figuring I might head for home, like some animal going down its hole.’

‘That’s what you did,’ Fleming said. ‘What we did. You figure they know we’re here — at Mrs Pearl’s?’

i’d make a book on it,’ Donohue said. ‘By now, someone’s talked.’

‘Why should they talk?’ I asked. ‘Why betray one of their own?’

‘A reward maybe,’ Black Jack said, shrugging. ‘Maybe from envy — us driving a big car and throwing money around like we did. Maybe just to see the excitement. A shootout. Nothing much happens in Whittier. Who knows why they did it? But someone did, bet on it.’

‘A Federal agent and a county deputy?’ Fleming repeated. ‘The two of them won’t.try to take us. Not right away. They’ll call in more men, more cars.’

Donohue looked at him with affection.

‘You’re learning,’ he said. ‘You’re beginning to think like a pro. You’re right; we’ve got some time. Not a lot, but a little. All finished? Got everything? Okay, you bring the bags down. I’ll bring the Buick around in front.’

When we carried the luggage downstairs, Mrs Pearl Sniffins was leaning against the frame of the kitchen door. Beyond her, I could see the big turkey on the kitchen table, ready for stuffing. There were bowls and pots and pans. Potatoes and yams, stringbeans and corn. A pile of chestnuts. A pumpkin pie.

Mrs Pearl wore an apron over her housedress. Her hands were floured. She just stood there in those unbuckled combat boots. She watched us. She didn’t say anything.

Donohue came in and helped us carry out the suitcases. We stowed everything in the trunk and back seat of the Buick. Then we all came back inside.

‘Ma’am,’ Jack said, trying to smile, ‘we’ve got to be moving on. We’re just as sorry as we can be, looking forward to that fine Christmas dinner like we were. But we got no choice.’

‘No,’ she said, still staring at us. ‘I don’t suppose you do.’

‘Uh, Mrs Sniffins,’ Dick said, ‘we got you a few little things. Christmas presents. Not much. But we do appreciate all you’ve done for us.’

‘Your kindness,’ I said. ‘Your friendship. We’ll never forget it.’

We held the gifts out to her.

‘Leave them in the hall,’ she said, her face stony.

So we piled our packages on the hall table. We went outside. We got into the Buick, Donohue behind the wheel. We started up, pulled out of the driveway. I looked back. Mrs Pearl Sniffins was standing on the porch. Her hands were clasped under her apron. She looked like a statue. Something carved.

Jack turned to the left.

‘Through Whittier?’ Dick said.

‘The shortest and fastest way out,’ Donohue said. ‘Maybe they haven’t got a roadblock set up yet.’

But they had. We sped toward the town, trailing a cloud of dust. Then Jack slammed on the brakes. The car slewed sideways on the dirt, half-turned, skidded, came to a stop, rocking.

About five hundred yards ahead we saw a car and a Jeep blocking the road. They were in a V-formation, nose to nose, pointing toward us. No space between them. Men behind them with rifles and shotguns. On both sides were deep ditches, and then barbed-wire fences along the bald fields.

Donohue backed, swung, backed, swung. We accelerated in the other direction, speeding by Mrs Pearl’s again. I craned sideways. She was still standing on the porch, hands under her apron. We flashed by, went about two miles. Then slowed, slowed, and stopped.

Ahead of us, parked sideways across the road was a heavy tractor. No way around that. Two men behind it, peering cautiously over the treads.

‘Boxed in,’ I said.

‘They’re waiting for more men,’ Dick said. ‘More cars. More guns. Then they’ll move in.’

Donohue didn’t say anything. He was leaning forward over the wheel, staring through the dusty windshield.

‘Take off across country?’ Fleming suggested. ‘Bust through the fence and cut across the fields? It’s a chance.’

‘Where to?’ Black Jack said dully. ‘It’s miles to the nearest backroad, over fields, culverts, crick beds.

Meanwhile we’ll be leaving a dust cloud so big a blind Boy Scout could tail us.’

He put the car in reverse. We began to back up slowly. No reason. Just for something to do. Just to be moving.

‘Let’s run the roadblock,’ I said. “The one near Whittier. Just plow right on through. What the hell.’

Jack Donohue took a deep breath.

‘Suits me,’ he said. Then he turned, flashed his electric grin. ‘I love you, Jan,’ he said. ‘You too, Dick. If you’re all game, let’s go for broke.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Fleming said. ‘Stop here a minute, Jack.’

The car halted. Donohue and I looked at Fleming. His eyes were half-closed. He was breathing deeply, blowing air through pursed lips. His face had gone white. Freckles stood out on nose and forehead.

‘All right,’ Dick said, opening his eyes wide, ‘here’s what we do. Not much of a chance, but some. We go back to Mrs Pearl’s. Get her Plymouth. Pay her for it or just take it. Whatever’s needed. Unload the Buick, put everything in the Plymouth. Jannie drives the Plymouth, and Jack, you’re hunched down in the back seat, out of sight. Wait — another idea: Jan, you borrow one of Mrs Pearl’s bonnets. Get it? You’re driving an old Plymouth in a bonnet. You look like Mrs Pearl alone. They’re not going to shoot. They’re waiting for two men and a woman driving in a big black Buick. Okay, so now Jan, in a bonnet, is driving toward Whittier in the loaded Plymouth. Raising a big cloud of dust. And I’m right in the middle of that cloud of dust, driving the Buick. They’ll be watching the lead car — right? So at the last minute, just before the roadblock, Jannie, you pull as far over to the side as you can get. Not down in the ditch, but give me room to pass. I go roaring by in the Buick and crash the roadblock. Bam, biff, and pow! I’m going to bulldoze a way through; you can bet on it. Then, Jannie, the moment you see the opening, step on the gas and whiz through. What do you think?’

We were silent. I looked at Black Jack Donohue. He was staring out the side window at the cropped fields of Georgia.

‘Only one thing wrong with that idea,’ he said.

‘What?’ Fleming demanded.

7 drive the Buick,’ Jack said. ‘You hunker down in the back seat of the Plymouth.’

‘No way,’ Dick said. ‘It was my idea; I get to have the fun.’

‘We’ll flip a coin,’ Donohue said. ‘Heads you do the hero bit, tails I do.’

He fished in his pants pocket, brought out a fistful of change. He selected a quarter.

‘Bullshit!’ Fleming said. ‘I’d never let you flip a coin, you lousy crook. Jannie, you flip it. Heads, I drive. Tails, Jack does.’

I flipped the coin, caught it, closed my fist over it. Opened my fingers slowly. Heads.

‘Beautiful,’ Dick said. ‘My lucky day. Let’s go.’

We drove back to Mrs Pearl’s. No one on the porch. But when we pulled up in front with a scattering of crushed stone, she came out. She must have been watching from behind the screen door.

‘Let me do the talking,’ Jack said in a low voice.

She watched the three of us come up the steps. Those water-clear eyes regarded us gravely.

‘Another man called you,’ she said to Jack. ‘Said he was from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Wanted to talk to you. I said you was gone.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Donohue said. ‘Ma’am, we need your car, we surely do. We don’t mean to harm you, no ma’am, we don’t but we need that car in the worst way. And there’s no trouble for you in it, see’n as how we’re desperate characters and forced you to give us your keys. Leastwise, that’s what you can say. And we’ll pay you good money, ma’am, we surely will.’

She looked at him sorrowfully.

‘I’ll get the keys,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want no money.’

It took about five minutes to bring the Plymouth around and transfer the luggage. Mrs Pearl handed over one of her poke bonnets without asking why I wanted it. I supposed she guessed. Then we were ready to leave her for the second time. We stood close on the porch, me wearing the bonnet pulled down over the red wig.

‘Ma’am,’ Jack Donohue said, ‘there’s just no way we can thank you for all you done for us. You’ll get your car back sooner or later, I promise you that. I know you won’t take any cash for yourself, but I’d be much obliged if you’d let us make a contribution to your church.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll take it for the church. For good works. And I’ll say a prayer for you all.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Pearl,’ I said, and stepped close to kiss her leathery cheek.

The men did the same. She just stood there, expressionless, not moving.

Jack took out his wallet, counted out a thousand dollars. He folded it, put it into her palm, closed her fingers over it.

Then we went down to the cars. Black Jack and I turned to Fleming.

‘Well …’ Dick said. ‘Everything straight? Jannie, get as close to the roadblock as you can before pulling aside. Then I come roaring past and you pile it on the moment you see the opening.’

I nodded dumbly. I looked toward the sky. I didn’t want to look at him. If I looked at him, I’d burst, collapse, and die.

‘After you bust through,’ Donohue said to him, ‘get out of that car in a hurry. I’ll cover you and I’ll have the back door open. We’ll pick you up on the other side. Real bang-bang stuff. The Late Show.’

‘Sure,’ Dick Fleming said with a radiant smile. Then he said lightly, ‘Take care.’

We climbed into the cars. I drove the Plymouth. Donohue got down on the floor in the rear. When I glanced in the mirror, I saw he already had both his guns out. Dick Fleming followed us in the Buick.

Mrs Pearl Sniffins watched us go. I thought she waved a hand in farewell, but I may have been imagining that.

Jack gave me a series of commands from the back seat. So many, so rapidly, I knew I’d never remember them all …

‘Keep it under forty. Before we get in sight, swerve back and forth all over the road. Kick up the dust, slow down, then speed up suddenly. Try to churn up the road. That dust has got to be thick. Figure about thirty feet from the roadblock. Then stand on the brakes. You’ll skid in the dirt. Be ready for it. Try to stop fast. Turn to the left. Get it. The left! So when Dick goes by, he can see how much room he has. The moment he’s past, tell me. Yell something. I’m out of sight; I won’t be able to see. After you yell, I’ll start popping away to keep them down. Don’t get spooked by the noise. You pour on the gas. He’ll hit and then you get through. Go fast! Brake on the other side. Wait for Dick. Then-’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘all right! You’re telling me too much too fast. Just let me do it my way.’

He was silent for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle.

‘Sure, babe,’ he said. ‘Do it your way.’

1 glanced in the rearview mirror, then ahead, then in the mirror, then ahead. I gave Jack a running commentary …

‘Dick’s right behind us. About fifty feet back. Lots of dust. I can hardly see him. We’re coming to the final turn. Now we’re around. Now we’re on the straightaway. I’m slowing a little. I’m sitting up. I’m leaning forward so they can see the bonnet. Soon now. Get set; I’m going to turn off to the left. They see us. They’re standing behind the cars. A two-door and the Jeep. They’re waving their arms. I’m slowing. I’ll count down. Five, four, three, two, one … NOW!’

I jerked the wheel to the left. I felt the rear end break away. I fought the skid. The Plymouth started down into the ditch. I wrestled it back. Then we slowed, slowed. Stopped, tilted slightly, on the verge. The black Buick went roaring by. So close, so close. I caught a quick glimpse of Dick Fleming bent over the wheel, his face impassive.

It all should have gone in a flash. But it didn’t. It went in slow motion. I saw everything.

Dick aimed the accelerating Buick at the Jeep. Men scattered. One dived into the ditch. I pulled back onto the road. Donohue was up. He leaned out the open back window. He fired the pistol as fast as he could pull the trigger. Dick hit the Jeep just back of the right front fender. The crash deafened me. The Jeep lifted into the air. It rolled. The Buick spun and spun. A tire blew. The Jeep rolled over. The Buick plunged down into the ditch. There was room ahead. I aimed for the opening, sobbing, cursing, whatever. Jack held the back door ajar. He fired the revolver. I heard screams. Crack of rifles. Boom of shotguns.

Dust everywhere. A reddish haze. Screech of torn metal. Sudden whumpf1 as the Jeep exploded in a blossom of orange flame. I swerved to avoid the other car. Then 1 was through, past the mess. I stood on the brake, skidded to a halt. Jack Donohue was out and running back. I twisted to see. The Buick was crumpled in the ditch on its right side. The hood and trunk lid were sprung. The driver’s door was thrown back.Dick Fleming crawled out. He jumped to the ground. His left arm was dangling. I found the gun in my shoulder bag. I opened the door, stepped out onto the road. I held my gun with both hands. I aimed at the sedan and the men behind it. I pulled the trigger. Again. Again. Donohue was close to Dick. So close! His arms reached out. Shotgun boom. Dick lifted into the air. Literally lifted. Flew. Smacked down. Rolled. Jack halted, turned. He came running back. White face, white eyes, white teeth. All of him leached and straining. I stood there clicking the trigger on an empty gun. Donohue came gasping up. He pushed me sprawling into the front seat of the Plymouth. He jammed in beside me, behind the wheel. He shoved the car in gear. We took off. Spinning wheels. Shouts. Rifle fire. Something spanged off the roof of the Plymouth.

We went careening down the road. TTirough Whittier. Pedestrians and dogs scattered before us. Blank faces turned to us. Cars pulled onto sidewalks. I dragged myself from the floor. I sat upright on the seat.

Jack Donohue was singing a hymn, banging on the steering wheel …

‘Brighten the corner, where you are,’ he bellowed. ‘Brighten the corner, where you are …’