by Eric Beetner
“What’s going on?”
“Looks like a takeover.” Calvin eyed the prisoners as well. “Stanley’s men are shutting down this lab, taking the finished product and closing up shop.”
“Closing up shop? What does that mean?”
“You really have to ask?”
The same three men walked the same path down to the car with a new armload of bundles, depositing them in the backseat of the Lincoln.
Three more loads went in until any more would start to block Calvin’s view out the back.
“How much more?” he asked one of the movers after the fifth delivery.
“A bunch.”
Calvin pressed a button under the dash and the trunk yawned open.
Upstairs, Tucker saw orange. The glow reminded him of the sun that had wisely moved on to another part of the world. He recognized the slow dancing movements of color as fire.
Three windows from three different bedrooms ran across the top floor. Gables arched over the end two. Each window lit up a few seconds after the previous until three glowing rectangles shone in the darkened sky.
Tucker put a hand on Calvin’s arm. “Delivery is one thing, but this?”
“Another test.”
“What else do they need to know about us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s that the job has changed since I was in it. Running cases of moonshine liquor was a bunch of laughs back then. All we had after us was the keystone cops. I could count the number of guys I saw killed on one hand. Now…”
Calvin kept his eyes on the porch. Counted to seven. Touched the tips of his fingers one by one.
The next load went into the trunk and the men immediately spun and went back for another. Rudy stepped down off the porch and returned to the car.
“Almost there.”
Calvin lifted his chin towards the porch. “Then what?”
“Then you deliver this stuff.”
Tucker’s eyes were watching the fire grow and reach into the attic. “Then you all gonna sit down and roast marshmallows?”
Rudy looked past Calvin to Tucker, almost seeing him for the first time. He didn’t answer. They exchanged disapproving stares.
Calvin spoke up as casually as if they were standing on the banks of a pond fishing and drinking beers. “You know anything about Webb McGraw?”
“McGraw? The driver?”
“Yeah. Went missing.”
“Not what I heard.”
Tucker’s eyes leapt away from the fire to Rudy. The glow of the flames reached down across the yard and gave him the orange features of a man telling ghost stories around a campfire.
“What did you hear?” Calvin asked, calm as you please.
“That truck was stolen. And Webb, well shit, he’s—”
A pop and crackle of glass interrupted the story as the middle window in the upstairs burst from the heat.
All eyes went up to the roof line. Mistake.
Tucker wasn’t sure who, but one of the seven took the distraction and used it. A shotgun was quickly liberated and put to use. The blast of even a single barrel put to shame the weak tinkling of glass from the window.
A black-clad body fell from the porch. The remaining six Hispanic men managed to move in a dozen directions at once. The two other shotguns were similarly confiscated and two more eruptions filled the night air.
Tucker crouched and spun in place, unsure where to go.
Calvin ducked behind the back end of the Lincoln, grateful for stealing an American car with a thick hide and no concern over gas mileage or weight-to-power ratios. The panels on a Lincoln were one step away from armored.
Calvin was joined by Rudy, his pistol drawn and ready. They watched as the seven prisoners charged back inside the house where the three moving men, and the upstairs arsonists, would be.
The farmhouse became a shooting gallery.
Calvin turned to Rudy. “What did you hear about Webb?”
“What? Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“Tell me what you heard about Webb McGraw.”
“Are you fuckin’ nuts? They’ll kill us. Get in and drive.” Rudy stayed low and started to move toward the open back door. Calvin grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him off his crouched feet. He spun Rudy around and pushed his back into the tire of the Lincoln, their bodies hidden for the moment by the open door. Gunfire inside the house gave away who was winning the fight. Shotguns: one. Arms full of drug bundles: zero.
“You tell me what you know or I kill you here and now.”
“Granddad!” Tucker scrambled along the passenger side of the car feeling alone and unprotected.
Rudy looked into Calvin’s serious eyes. “I’ll tell you on the way. Let’s go!”
A load of buckshot peppered the Lincoln. Calvin grabbed the front of Rudy’s shirt.
“Tucker, get in!”
Tucker froze his progress around the back and retreated to the passenger door, grateful for the instruction.
Calvin pulled Rudy along, away from the back seat, filled with tight bundles. He grunted as he lifted Rudy up and pushed him forward into the open trunk.
Rudy, shocked, fell into the deep well of carpeted storage. Roomy enough for two sets of golf clubs, the sales pitch went.
Calvin slapped a hand over Rudy’s gun and pulled it free. He turned the barrel on the frightened man. “Next time, you answer me on the first go ’round.”
Another shotgun blast tore into the hood of the car. In the front seat Tucker squeezed himself onto the floor.
Calvin slammed the trunk shut. Rudy’s “NO—” was cut off.
Calvin raised the gun and fired off five quick shots in the general vicinity of the front porch. The noise was enough to make two shotgun-toting ex-prisoners dive for cover even if none of the shots landed anywhere that would do harm.
Calvin slid behind the wheel of the Lincoln and powered the engine to life. He dropped the gear lever into R and had a brief moment of panic when he turned and saw only an empty passenger seat. He looked down and noticed Tucker curled up on the floor mat and stomped down on the gas.
He reversed the Town Car down the dirt drive, turning his head over the back seat and away from the house where the two men were up and shooting again. He quickly receded into the night and the buckshot did no harm at that distance.
There are damn good reasons the Daytona 500 isn’t run in reverse. As a gear—it sucks.
The Lincoln weaved from edge to edge of the dirt driveway on a drunken retreat barely hitting fifteen miles an hour. Calvin had to turn her around to do any serious getting away.
He cut the wheel and the car made a wide arc, bouncing over the rough embankments of the path. The trunk of the car backed into a mess of overgrown bushes and the metal echoed with the pounding of a hundred sticks and branches. Rudy cried out from the trunk, the sound a confusing din of unknown threats.
Calvin brought the lever down to D and laid his foot hard on the gas. The tires spun and the car lurched forward, but then fell back into the comfort of the tangle of bushes.
Tucker looked up from the floor. “Are we stuck?”
Calvin ignored him. He dropped the lever into second gear and pressed more gently on the gas this time. The car moved forward, the front raised as the tires reached the top of the small mound separating yard from driveway, then gravity pulled them back like the bushes held a firm grip with ten thousand spindly fingers.
Tucker got himself off the floor and into the front seat. He looked back toward the house and saw two pairs of headlights swinging into line as both vehicles found the top of the drive.
Calvin had the steady focus of a surgeon, his mind melding with the engine, imploring the machine to do what he asked.
Once more the Lincoln rocked forward on the soft shock absorbers and teased them before being pulled back into the bush. The pitch on Rudy’s voice rose an octave with each failed attempt.
“They’re coming,” Tucker said.
“I know
it,” Calvin said.
Four dots of white stuttered along the uneven dirt path as they approached. One more attempt and the best they could hope for would be a T-bone collision with one of the cars.
The lever came down again, engaged R. The car powered through the bush. Branches clawed at the car from beneath and ran brittle talons over the sides, strong enough to carve lines in the paint and tear loose the side view mirror on Tucker’s side.
The noise was like marbles in a blender, but the Lincoln bumped over the last bush and again hit flat ground. Soft grass cushioned the ride but made for poor grip on the tires. It didn’t matter much because neither of the two cars followed. Tucker watched as the two sets of headlights ran parallel to the Lincoln as Calvin tried to keep the weaving to a minimum.
Visibility was awful. They ran over an old tree stump and Calvin thought sure they’d cracked the rear axle but the car kept running.
Calvin cut the wheel sharply when he spotted the T-shaped meeting of driveway and country lane. The wheels spun and kicked up grass. Calvin smiled a bit; his version of mowing the lawn.
He dropped the car into drive and banged up onto the paved road.
The two vehicles following them, one a four door sedan and the other a pickup truck, made a wide turn onto the road as well.
“About time we had ourselves a decent run at this,” Calvin said. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”
What they had were shotguns. A powerful boom sounded behind them followed by the thinner sound of buckshot hitting the thick American steel on the back end of the Town Car.
Calvin already had the V-8 pushing forty-five and winding up for more.
“The glove box,” he said to Tucker.
“What?”
“In the glove box. Get the gun.”
Tucker was tempted to look around and see who else Calvin could have possibly been speaking to. He opened the glove compartment and saw Calvin’s weathered gun. He left it inside.
Calvin urged the car over sixty.
“Well? Use it.”
“For what?”
“Shoot back!”
Another blast of a shotgun filled the night, still not as loud as the branches scraping the car.
Calvin began to cut wide arcs across both lanes of the country highway. The swerving kept his speed down, but made for a moving target.
He turned to Tucker. “Shoot at their tires or just shoot in their direction. They’ll get the point. I might be able to break away if you can slow them down.”
Tucker turned back to the open glove box, saw out the windshield instead.
“Watch it!”
Calvin was aimed at a fence post blocking an access road on the left of the highway. He swung the Lincoln around with a squeal of the tires.
“Pay attention,” Tucker said. Calvin did not appreciate the driving advice.
“Just use the damn gun.”
Using Calvin’s lapse of attention, the sedan pulled up to their rear door, edging closer with the front bumper.
Tucker lifted the gun out of the compartment. He turned over his shoulder to see the rear window of the sedan open and the long barrel of a shotgun poke out and aim down at their tires.
Calvin pressed a button on his door and Tucker’s window powered down. The sudden blast of air snapped Tucker into action. He thrust the gun out the window and fired a shot into the hood of the sedan.
It punched a hole in the sheet metal and the driver swerved to the right. The shotgun barrel retreated inside the car.
Tucker pulled his gun inside too and looked down at it. He hadn’t fired a gun since he was ten, and that was at cans. He wasn’t aiming for anything in particular so he was glad to have hit anything at all.
“I think I know this area,” Calvin said. “Used to be an old moonshine shack up here not too far.”
“I think we need to get to town.”
“No, we can lose him in the backwoods. That’s McGraw country.”
The sedan came roaring back, the driver accelerating and backing off, thrusting forward then retreating with whining complaints from the tiny engine.
Tucker raised the gun again, tried to find the sight and focus on a target but the car was moving too much.
“Here it is.”
Tucker banged into the door as Calvin cut the wheel hard to the left. Tires squealed in a discordant harmony as all three cars changed course.
Calvin speared the Lincoln off onto a short access road. His eyes squinted as he drove, trying to dredge up memories of secret paths and shortcuts. Instead he saw a semi-trailer, rusted out and tires flat, painted with JESUS SAVES on the side, completely blocking the roadway.
“Aw, shit. This ain’t it.”
The wheels of the Lincoln bit the dirt as he turned a sloppy U, kicking up dust that came in through the window to choke Tucker.
The sedan and the pickup each split off in opposite directions as the trio dug trenches into ground that hadn’t seen a car in decades.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Tucker asked.
“Shut up.”
The chasing sedan proved more nimble in getting back to the highway and by the time they had gotten back up to speed he was neck and neck with the Lincoln. Tucker could see the crazed eyes of the driver, a man who had stared death in the face not ten minutes earlier. His rage was focused completely on the Town Car.
Tucker did his best to aim at the front tire of the sedan. He fired a round and it punctured the front panel of the sedan, but the tires kept spinning. The driver had seen through Tucker, saw his inexperience. He didn’t veer away, he kept his car straight and true and the nose of the shotgun began sniffing the air again.
Tucker closed one eye and squinted his other as he tried to sight down the barrel. Calvin swung right and brought the two cars together like sumo wrestlers when the whistle blows.
Tucker barely got his arm inside the window in time to keep it from being crushed.
“Jesus Christ. Tell me if you’re gonna do that.”
Both cars resumed their course. Spring cornfields rushed by on either side with low stalks thirsty for rain. The lights from distant farmhouses nothing more than stars on the horizon. The road curved slowly to the left, a rarity in a state laid out in grids.
Tucker fired again. The front tire on the sedan exploded in a burst of flaccid rubber. The sedan pulled quickly at an angle and the back end swung out. The driver kept the car from flipping, but it slid down off the highway into a drainage ditch running alongside the cornfield. The sedan landed hard and the sound of metal folding in on itself carried out over the field.
One down.
The lights of a town glowed ahead. The curve of the road straightened and the beacon ahead called, offering twenty-four hour gas and drive-through hamburgers.
The headlights of the pickup truck stared hi-beams through the back window on the Lincoln.
“We get up here and I can outmaneuver him in the streets,” Calvin said.
Tucker looked at his granddad. Hunched over the wheel, eyes straining, brow furrowed. He did not instill the confidence that having a McGraw behind the wheel should.
It was obvious to Tucker, as much as Calvin wanted to still be the best, his days were behind him. He wondered if Calvin felt the same thing.
The pickup breathed heavy on their back like a lion on the hunt. Tucker thought how glad he was they weren’t in an Impala. The coincidence would have been too much.
Calvin strained to see street signs as the edge of town came up on them fast. These Midwest horse towns all smeared out on the edges like soft clay. A few streets, then the first streetlight, lucky if you got two or three. A gas station, a market, a liquor store—always a liquor store—and then before you knew it the smear began again and you were back in the corn fields. And that’s even when you were not doing seventy.
The town was already asleep. Stop signs meant nothing.
“Here’s where I lose him.”
Calvin cut the wheel again,
the grin of confidence back on his lips. The pickup followed but lost ground on a sloppy turn. The heavier, bulkier truck was no match for the Lincoln, even though Calvin was wishing for Bandit right then.
If that old girl was under him they would have burned these clowns ten miles back.
Off the main drag the streets were dark. The squint returned to Calvin’s face and Tucker started scanning the view for anything to help his granddad.
They began to run out of road quickly. This was no giant maze to get lost in, this was a one-horse town.
Calvin turned up one street, headed back down towards the main road. The pickup swerved and had trouble sticking to the corners like Calvin, but he stayed persistently, annoyingly in the rearview.
Calvin powered forward putting more distance between them. They reached the main road through town and Calvin swung left, continuing back on his route and pointed out of town.
“Okay, maybe I can lose him on the straightaway. I’ve got more engine than him I think.”
Tucker had never heard his granddad say “maybe” before when it came to driving.
Up ahead a horn blasted. Tucker jumped and looked for oncoming traffic, but saw none. The sound signaled again.
A train.
“I can make it.”
“No, you can’t. Turn around.”
“I can make it.”
“Granddad!”
A half mile ahead lay train tracks. The endless nighttime moan of cross-country trains rambling across the flat Midwestern plains used to comfort Tucker as he lay in bed. A mile away from where he grew up was a route which ran through after dark carrying a hundred cars of corn and soybeans and hogs. The deep chorus of air horn blasts reminded Tucker every night that there were tracks leading out of Iowa. The train song became his lullaby.
It was about to become his death march.
“You have any idea how many trains I outran in my day?”
Tucker felt certain whatever the number was, he wasn’t going to add to it tonight.
The lights on the train stretched back as far as they could see. A hundred cars. More? Two engines up front did the pulling and even though the train ambled across the fields at a comfortable cruise not above forty-five, stopping that much tonnage would take five miles at least.