Rules of the Road

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “How much money?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars? He owed fifty thousand dollars? To whom?”

  Johnny Gee burst out laughing.

  “Jesus, Jesus, I’m sorry,” he said, trying to stop.

  “What the hell is so funny?”

  “ ‘To whom.’ You said, ‘to whom.’ S’the funniest thing I ever heard. I don’t know why. I guess I’m scared.” He looked at Sam, relieved to see the beginnings of a smile on his face. He understood.

  “So who were the tough guys? You were laughing so hard you forgot to say.”

  “Harlan Greene. Howie said he’s a real bad actor. He’s a big hoopdeedoo from around here, and he’s connected. He’s nobody to mess with, and neither are his people.”

  “Harlan Greene? This whole thing was about Harlan Greene?”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “Damn right I’ve heard of him. He runs the next county over from where I grew up.”

  “Then you know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “More or less.”

  “Well, he’s why we’ve got to stay away from the bus depot. His people will be watching it for sure. Besides, there isn’t one out of there until six in the morning.”

  “So what do you have in mind?”

  “Paducah. I thought we’d drive over there. You can get an express. You’ll be at your base in a couple of hours.”

  Sam considered what the stranger had said. He wasn’t sure he was getting the whole story, but the mention of Harlan Greene let him know he was getting enough.

  Johnny Gee had his comb out and was working studiously on his hair, smoothing it back, patting it down. He caught Sam’s eye and grinned.

  “How’s the coif lookin’? Think it’ll do?”

  Sam couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Sure. Looks very Jack Nicholson. A cross between distinguished and dastardly.”

  “Really? You’re not kiddin’ me?” Johnny Gee touched his gleaming pompadour with a fingertip. He squared his shoulders and extended his neck. His grin faded into a look of sublime satisfaction, and he pocketed the comb.

  “Let’s blow this popstand, man. Paducah beckons. ’Sides, I don’t like sittin’ still.”

  Sam put the Caddy in gear and started out of town the way they’d come in.

  “How far is the interstate?” Johnny Gee asked as they passed the last streetlight in Annoyance.

  “About twenty miles. We’ll pick it up, head south to Paducah. Be there in no time.”

  “How we doin’ for gas?”

  Sam checked the gauge.

  “Half a tank. That’s about a hundred miles in this thing.”

  “We’ll stop outside Paducah. There’s a million truckstops down near the state line.”

  With the car once more at speed, the rolling hills of Illinois disappearing beneath its wheels, headlights poking through the darkness, Sam relaxed. He’d be back on schedule in a matter of hours, back in uniform in just over two days. His uniforms! He panicked. Then he remembered. He’d checked his duffel through to Clarksville, where it would be waiting for him at the baggage claim window at the bus depot. He relaxed his grip on the wheel and cracked the window for some air. There was really nothing quite like piloting a big, overweight, overbuilt, overpowered American car down two-lane roads at high speeds at night. All that invisible land off to the left and right of the car cloaked in mysterious blackness … the whisper of the wind in your left ear … the silence and calm behind the wheel … the soft green glow of the dashboard instruments just below the windshield, through which you saw only a tunnel… .

  You wanted never to lift your right foot from the gas, never to stop going forward. It was like borrowing a piece of the night, wherever you passed became yours for an instant, and then it was gone, and so were you, into the darkness and over the hill and down the road and out of sight.

  There were worse ways to spend an evening. Things had started out a little rough, but it seemed like they’d taken a turn for the better. He glanced over at Johnny Gee.

  “Hey, I think we’re getting close to the interstate.”

  Johnny Gee perked up. In the distance were the usual gaggle of fast food plazas and gas stations that populate the curlicues of entrance and exit ramps on the nation’s freeways. The car slowed, and they drove into a night zone illuminated, bright as day.

  “Turn around,” Johnny Gee said.

  “What …”

  He grabbed Sam’s arm.

  “Make a U-turn, man. Don’t ask questions. Just do it.”

  Sam whipped the wheel and the Caddy made the turn, hanging its front wheel in the dirt. In an instant they were back in the darkness beyond the swarm of commerce around the interchange.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Step on it, man. Get us the fuck outa here.”

  Sam put his foot to the floor, they crested a hill, and the lights in the rear view mirror disappeared. Johnny Gee stayed on his knees for another mile, peering into the darkness out the back window, then he turned around.

  “Take the next right. It’ll be coming up around the next bend,” he said.

  “What’d you see back there?” asked Sam, watching the road ahead, looking for the turn.

  “You see that Burger Chef off to the right?”

  “Yeah. I saw it.”

  “Parked right at the exit. Blue Buick. It was the shooters from the diner. They were watching the interstate entrance. I don’t think they saw us, the direction we’re coming from. Ain’t nobody behind us. I think you turned just in time. Another two hundred yards and we’d have been right the fuck in front of them. They woulda seen us for sure. That was some U-turn you pulled. I thought you’d put us in the ditch, fast as we were goin’.”

  “You said they’d be watching the buses. Now you say they’re watching the interstate ramps. How many of them are there, anyway?”

  “Harlan Greene? He’s got as many goons as he wants, man. He runs a lot of shit in this part of the state. There!” Johnny Gee pointed. “Make the turn.”

  Sam turned onto a county blacktop, an access road to farms in the area. It was half as narrow as the state road they’d been on, recently surfaced with sand and oil. There were patches, he knew, that could still be slick.

  “Where is this thing going to take us?” he asked, adjusting to the changing road conditions.

  “We’ll head west on these back roads and jump back on the interstate outside Paducah. I know these county roads. Been on ’em all my life.”

  “This was a dirt road not too long ago,” Sam said. “What could you possibly be doing out in boonies like this? You don’t look like the shit-shoveling type.”

  Johnny Gee chuckled and looked over his shoulder.

  “I was comin’ out here to little bars and luncheonettes most every day for quite a while,” said Johnny Gee. “Run-nin’ numbers. Takin’ bets. I had a good piece of territory for a while.”

  “You’re a criminal,” Sam said. “That’s how I got into this mess. Both of you are criminals.”

  “Sure, I been a con,” said Johnny Gee. “But I got out of that business after I got arrested and did a hitch inside. I haven’t run numbers or taken bets out here for years.”

  “Yeah? What am I supposed to be? Relieved and appreciative that you decided to clean up your act?”

  Johnny Gee turned and fixed him with a glare.

  “I don’t give a fuck how you feel, man. I didn’t organize my life around your judgments about what the fuck is right and wrong in this world. What in hell’s wrong with takin’ a guy’s bet on a football game and passing it along, anyway? I guess you never bet a dollar on your college team, put down five on the Superbowl. Huh? You never placed a red-blooded American bet on a red-blooded American blood sport? You never put down a buck in a football pool?”

  “I’ve bet on a few games,” Sam said. “I just never thought about the bets … going anywhere. I mean …”

 
“Somebody’s got to take the bets, man. May as well be me as the next guy, huh? Look. Let’s knock this shit off and get this machine down the road.”

  “How far does this road go?”

  “We gonna come to a series of T-intersections. When you hit them, just keep turnin’ left. We’re gonna pass through a series of little towns. Keep to the speed limit going in and out. They got two-man police departments, and they just love to pick up some municipal income from speedin’ tickets.”

  “I know what you’re talking about. We’ve got the same little burgs around my hometown.”

  “They ever get you for speedin’, man?”

  “Nope. I used to test my race car on dirt farm roads, red-line it in every gear, listening to the engine for flat spots in the tune. When you tune an engine right, it’s got a certain note it hits in each gear at different rpm. It’s like a guitar. You’re listening for the same thing … a certain harmony, a coming-together of the mechanical noise.”

  “You make it sound real nice and artistic-like. It must make you feel good to know about stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about cars, but I know somethin’ about how to get in and out of shit, and how to keep movin’,” he said, without elaborating. “It’s useful to know, when the time comes. Its own kinda wisdom.” He extracted a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, shook out the last one and lit it. He inhaled deeply, cracked the window, and blew the smoke into the wind.

  “This bother you, mister?”

  “Smoking? Nah.”

  “We gotta stop and get me some more Pic’s,” said Johnny Gee. “I’m out.” He exhaled another deep puff into the night and leaned his head back against the seat, closing his eyes.

  Sam peered into the dimness ahead. One shallow rise after another, like a gentle earthen roller coaster, the road itself nearly straight as a ruler, farmlands broken by occasional bursts of timber dark against the night sky and the dim glow of a nearby farmhouse. He leaned forward to switch on the radio and caught a glimpse of the rear view mirror in the corner of his eye. He wasn’t sure … could have been … it was just a glimmer. He straightened up, got a fix on the road ahead, and looked into the rear view mirror dead on, kept watching it, glanced at the road ahead, back in the mirror at the road unwinding like a ribbon in the red glow of the Caddy’s taillights.

  There it was! Just as he crested the hill. Headlights in the far distance, two little pinpricks of light. A half-mile back judging by the size of the lights in the mirror.

  “Hey. I think we’ve got somebody behind us.”

  “What kinda car?”

  “I don’t know. They’re too far away. I can see them every time we reach the top of one of these little hills, and then just for a moment. There they are again! See the lights?”

  Johnny Gee turned around and crouched on the seat, looking out the rear window. He’d tossed his cigarette out the window and gave his full attention to the road.

  “Yeah. I got ’em. There they are again. I think the car’s gainin’ on us. Looks closer now.”

  “You’re right. They’re coming on strong.”

  “Did we pass through one of those little towns while I was dozin’?”

  “Yes, we did. Tiny place. One blinking yellow light. But I didn’t see any cops back there. The town was shuttered up tight. Nothing was moving.” Sam kept glancing up at the rear view mirror.

  “There they are again. They’re moving up. Maybe a quarter of a mile back.”

  “Put your foot in it and get us the fuck outa here,” said Johnny Gee, never taking his eyes off the road behind them. “All we need is a couple of Harlan Greene’s boys on top of us this far out on a county road. They catch us, nobody’d find us for a week.”

  “Maybe it’s your friend’s brother, the chief of police.”

  “That ain’t Howie’s brother back there, man! You better push it, or they’re gonna leave us all over the road, man,” said Johnny Gee. “They’re still comin’ on.”

  Sam looked in the rear view mirror. As he did, a flashing blue light winked at him between the headlights, now about a hundred yards distant.

  “It’s a police car. I’m pulling over,” he said, lifting his foot from the gas. The Caddy began to slow.

  “It ain’t the cops!” screamed Johnny Gee. “I don’t know who it is, but it ain’t the cops! Get us outa here!”

  “Yes, it is. It’s an unmarked car. I’m not going to try and outrun them. I don’t want resisting arrest added to a speeding violation.”

  “Don’t you understand anything, man? So it’s an unmarked sheriff’s car. That don’t matter. Harlan Greene owns the sheriff in this county and every other county around here for a hundred miles! That son-of-a-bitch stops us, he’ll deliver us to Harlan within the hour. Now get us outa here. Outrun the bastards. C’mon, man. Do it!”

  The car was right on their tail now, the strobe filling the interior of the Cadillac with bursts of blue light. Sam kept the Caddy in his lane, but he slowed to fifty-five miles an hour, the speed limit. He didn’t know what to do. He knew from what his mother had told him that Harlan Greene was nobody’s angel, but the kid was saying the sheriff was owned by Harlan Greene, and that the hoods at the diner worked for him? That was very, very hard to believe. The Caddy slowed to fifty. The other car started to pull alongside.

  “Step on it! Get the fuck outa here!” screamed Johnny Gee. “Those fuckers would just as soon kill us!”

  The car was abreast of the Caddy. Sam looked to his left. The man in the right front seat stuck a twelve gauge pump shotgun out the window. The barrel was pointed directly at him, only a few feet from his face. Sam pushed his right foot to the floor. He heard the shotgun go off. The Caddy’s rear window shattered, filling the interior of the car with flying glass. He reached for the back of his neck. It felt as if a hundred bees had stung him. He grabbed the wheel with both hands, glanced at the speedometer. Ninety-five. One hundred.

  “What’d I fuckin’ tell you!” It was Johnny Gee, screaming in his right ear. The blue light flashed in his eyes, reflected off the windshield. He could barely make out the road ahead.

  “You still think that’s the cops back there? You hear any siren? You hear them honk their horn? You hear them yell a warning over their loudspeaker? They just started blastin’. Cops where you from usually shoot you for speedin’?”

  Sam glanced over his shoulder. The other car was gaining on them again. He waited until they were a car-length away. He held the steering wheel tightly and jammed on the brakes. The car behind slammed into the Caddy’s rear bumper and careened off to the side. The Caddy picked up a couple of car lengths. He looked in the rear view mirror. The shotgun was sticking out the window, pointed straight at them. He jerked the wheel, swerving his left wheels onto the dirt shoulder. He heard the loud report of the shotgun again.

  Missed. He swerved back into the right lane and hit the gas. He was doing a hundred and five miles an hour. He aimed the Caddy down the middle of the road. The car drifted aimlessly from side to side, five feet in either direction. He could just barely keep it between the ditches. A hundred and five, a hundred and ten. That was it, all the Caddy could do.

  He stayed on the gas, crested a hill, hit one-ten down the other side. He looked back.

  The flashing blue light was gone. So were the headlights. He studied the rear view mirror. Nothing back there. Darkness. He eased up. A hundred. Ninety-five. Johnny Gee sat bolt upright next to him staring out the windshield like a zombie. Frozen.

  “I think we lost them,” Sam yelled over the wind from the blown-out rear window.

  “Stay on it. Let’s get the fuck outa here,” yelled Johnny Gee, still staring straight ahead.

  Sam looked in the rear view mirror. Total blackness. They were alone.

  Suddenly he was blinded by the flashing blue strobe. The driver of the other car had switched off his lights and crept up on them in the darkness. Now he was pullin
g into the left lane, starting to come alongside. Sam squinted against the flashes from the strobe. The shotgun went off again. The Caddy shuddered as a blast hit the trunk.

  Sam didn’t hesitate this time. Everything he knew about driving a modified on a dirt track came back to him in a rush. He tapped the brakes, just enough to let the other car get ahead. Then he hit the gas and pulled abreast of the other car’s rear fender. As the guy with the shotgun swiveled to put the Caddy in his sights, Sam yanked the steering wheel to the left, slamming the car’s rear fender. The shotgun jerked upward and hit the window frame, firing harmlessly into the air. The guy recovered, pumped the shotgun, and aimed at the Caddy. Sam crashed into the other car again, throwing him into a slide. The car skidded onto the shoulder of the road and straightened out. The man with the shotgun was yelling at his driver. This was it. Sam tapped the brakes, drifting behind the other car. The guy with the shotgun leaned out the window from the waist up, aiming at the windshield of the Caddy. Sam pressed his right foot to the floor. The Caddy slammed into the car’s right rear fender. The car careened wildly off the road, skidded sideways into a ditch and back up the far side nose first into the air. Then it flipped, landed on its roof, skidded upside down through a muddy field, and slammed into a line of trees. Sam heard his left rear tire blow out and the Caddy went sideways. He threw the wheel into the slide and held on.

  THE CADILLAC SKIDDED to a halt in the middle of the road, its headlights shining along a narrow dirt lane at the edge of a cornfield. Two hundred yards distant stood the remains of an old farmhouse and outbuildings, weathered and crumbling, nearly obscured by a grove of oaks and un-trimmed hedges and vines at the end of the lane.

  The two men stared straight ahead without speaking as the dust settled around the Cadillac, which listed in the direction of the blown rear tire. Sam’s breath came in sharp, wet gasps. Johnny Gee was rigid. In the distance came the low muffled wail of a stuck car horn, a mournful reminder of where they were and what had happened.