CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The air inside Sissy’s Plymouth smelled like burned oil and unburned gasoline. The translucent cloud of smog spewing from the tailpipe looked like a primitive mosquito-abatement program. The automobile’s engine made mysterious bubbling noises, and something rubbed intermittently under the right rear tire well. The car was a testimony to the engineering genius of Detroit and Oklahoma’s lack of a vehicle safety inspection program.
Sarah didn’t miss her shoulder bag until they passed by Durant, eighty miles from their point of origin by the Kiamichi River.
“Raccoons won’t take it,” Sissy reassured her. “Nor possums nor coyotes.”
Sarah wasn’t worried about the forest creatures making unauthorized calls on her cell phone or stealing her identity. “There was a pistol in the bag. Archie insisted I bring it along.” She could see Sissy’s eyes conducting a search of the back seat in the rearview mirror.
“We’re still well armed,” Sissy said. “There’s my shotgun, and it looks like your fella’s got a pistol.”
Robert pulled the semi automatic pistol out of his shoulder holster. He jacked the chamber open and closed, removed the magazine, and shook it beside his ear. “No bullets. The gun is just for show.”
“Robert pretends to be a policeman, so he has to carry a weapon,” Sara explained.
“Not much use in a gunfight,” Sissy said. “But we still got my shotgun if it comes to that.”
Sarah searched the back seat for more shotgun shells, but Sissy told her not to bother. “The two inside the breech is all we got. Maybe two is all we’re meant to have.” She patted Marie’s shoulder and threw what must have been a smile in her direction.
“When I opened my eyes and seen Marie, my first thought was
‘Momma’s here. Now everything’s gonna be all right.’”
The Plymouth vibrated violently and backfired several times as its worn out engine pulled them over a gentle hill. “Shakes like a hound dog shittin’ peach seeds,” Sissy said. “Nothin’ works right about this old car, but she’ll get us all to Bob’s.”
Sissy smiled at Marie again and coaxed the ancient Chrysler product over the next rise. As the land gradually leveled out, the old automobile got its second wind and picked up speed. By the time they reached the bridge over Lake Texoma, they were traveling fifty miles per hour, close to the vehicle’s upper limit.
“Car runs on regular gasoline and miracles.” Sissy directed her comment to Marie, but said it loud enough for everyone to hear. She licked her right index finger and drew a cross on the windshield.
Just when Sarah was beginning to relax and turn her problems over to Sissy’s higher power, the driver/philosopher underwent a change in attitude.
“Holy shit!” Sissy’s attention locked onto an image in the rearview mirror to such an extent that she nearly scraped against the concrete border of the bridge.
“Holy shit!” Sissy was a woman of few words, and none of them very descriptive.
“Get that shotgun ready,” Sissy said. “Hashilli Maytubby is comin’ up behind us. I’d know that black SUV anywhere.”
Robert helped Sarah crank her rear window down. She held the shotgun in her lap and waited for Hashilli to catch up.
“Scootch down in your seats,” Sissy said. “The witch has seen this car before, but he don’t necessarily know you’re in it.”
Marie laid her head in Sissy’s lap, and Robert and Sarah scooted their heads down well below the back of the seat. Sarah pulled the hammers of the double barrel shotgun into the firing position. The act gave her a momentary sense of power, but the feeling passed quickly. She had never fired a weapon like this. Not even once in her life.
She placed her fingers on both triggers and waited for Sissy to talk her through her first shotgun assault. Things would happen quickly if Hashilli knew they were in this vehicle.
“Fate is what it is.” Sissy’s mind was at work reconciling their current circumstances to her belief in Karma. “The witch on the same road like this and us with only one gun. He’s pulling up close behind us now.” She waved to his reflection in her mirror. “No point pretendin’ we ain’t family.”
Marie was resolved to the conflict. “Why do my relationships always end with my boyfriends trying to murder me?”
Sarah watched Robert reposition himself so the wind would have more access to his face. If he was worried about their impending doom, there was nothing in his demeanor that showed it.
“Do they always end that way?” he asked.
“Not always,” Marie admitted. “Sometimes they’re arrested first. Warrants, you know. There are always warrants.”
Sissy said, “I’d take that as a sign.”
Sarah thought that Sissy took almost everything as a sign.
“You think he’ll really try to kill us?” Robert asked.
Sissy told him, “You can take that notion right to the bank. Y’all get my shotgun ready. We only get one chance.”
When Hashilli crashed his SUV into the back of Sissy’s Plymouth, Sarah doubted they would have even that. She rose up in her seat—no point in hiding any longer.
Robert held Sarah’s legs as she cantilevered her body out the rear passenger window. She pushed the shotgun stock tight against her shoulder and positioned its business end so that Hashilli’s head was centered between the barrels. She had thought he would pull back when he was confronted with the blank dead stare of the double barrel weapon, and she was prepared to squeeze off two shots before he retreated beyond the gun’s killing range.
Instead of retreating, Hashilli veered into the lane beside them. He raked the bumper of his SUV down the left rear fender of the Chrysler K car.
Sarah’s aim was thrown wide by the collision, and the two barrels of double ought buckshot shattered the black SUV’s passenger side window and the most of the windshield. She saw Hashilli wipe blood off of his right ear and brush safety glass shards out of his hair as he dropped back.
The noises from the Plymouth’s engine had diminished to a barely audible level, and the rubbing sounds under the right rear tire well vanished completely.
“Wonders and miracles. He’s fixed my car.” One more thing Sissy was sure to take as a sign.
Marie resumed her upright position in the passenger seat. “I know how to stop him,” she said. “I know exactly what to do once he realizes we’re out of bullets.”
Hashilli rammed the back of their car with his SUV and quickly pulled back again.
Marie leaned over the back of the front seat and poked around in Sissy’s reload boxes. She was jarred substantially by a couple more rear end collisions delivered by Hashilli’s SUV, but she found what she was looking for. She held a ball of double ought buckshot up for everyone to see.
She said, “A man can be undone by a lie even more easily than the truth. Roll down your window, Sissy.”
Hashilli imagined the grill of his SUV must look like a set of broken dentures. A thin strand of steam trailed over the hood and drifted through the shattered windshield, covering his face with droplets of coolant and filling the interior of his vehicle with the scent of hot rubber tubing. It was clear the SUV could not withstand many more collisions with the apparently indestructible relic Sissy McCurtain drove.
He pulled close to the rear bumper of the Plymouth and then dropped back. He repeated this action several times, and when no one fired a shot at him, he surmised they had no ammunition. He would take them while they were still on the bridge, where they would have no opportunity for escape.
Hashilli pulled into the overtaking lane and eased his SUV beside the Sissy’s Plymouth until their front side windows were aligned. He raised his 9mm semiautomatic pistol and prepared to send a shower of lethal projectiles flying at his enemies. He had plans for each and every slug.
Marie would be the first to die and then Robert Collins and Sarah Bible. After everyone else was dead, he would put a bullet into Sissy McCurtain’s head. When the Plymou
th finally skidded to a stop against the concrete perimeter of the bridge, he would sort through the wreckage and find his magic bullet.
Like picking thornless blackberries. Like taking candy from a baby.
Hashilli saw that Marie understood his intentions completely, but the woman showed no fear. She held a small round object between the thumb and fingers of her right hand.
My prize!
She raised the object to her lips and kissed it tenderly.
My magic bullet!
Then she flicked the piece of double ought buckshot in front of Sissy’s face across the intervening space between the vehicles, through the shattered front passenger side window into Hashilli’s SUV.
Hashilli released his steering wheel, dropped his pistol and scrambled to catch the flying ball of lead, but its trajectory had been complicated by the differing speeds of the two vehicles and the forces exerted by the wind between them.
Sissy dropped back. She positioned herself behind Hashilli’s SUV, and drove the Chrysler K car into the truck’s right rear corner.
All of Hashilli’s attention was focused on recovering the power object Marie had thrown his way, and finally he did recover it. He held the lead sphere delicately in his left hand and marveled at the pristine regularity of its surface.
How could something so soft and delicate have passed through a woman’s skull and lodged itself in a cabin wall?
He had just about decided that it couldn’t when Sissy pushed his SUV through the concrete guardrail and into Lake Texoma. It was a very long fall.
Owl Dreams Page 51