“I can’t say as I have.”
“Here, try it. It’s fun.”
“Penelope, my mind is made up, I—”
“Here, I’ll go first…”
Penelope put one hand over her eyes and reached out with the other. She smiled. She wasn’t touching anything, but Mr. Lachfurst was.
“Why, Principal Lachfurst! That’s your tongue!”
Jenny braced herself against the dash as the LTD’s tires sang along one of 241’s sharp curves.
“Sid, what the hell is goin’ on? Day started out normal. Trailered my boat to the launch at Mink Run, put in, motored up to your place, and then this loony-toon jumps out of the bushes next to your house and takes me hostage. Now he’s swiped my boat! And I don’t much favor a knife to my throat or him pushin’ me in the river.” She wiped river water from her face.
“You need your boat, and we need that tape. Jenny, listen t’me here. Now’s when we gotta keep our heads, all right? Think first and fast, be pissed off later. Where can we get in at the river?”
Jenny wiped at a rivulet running down her neck, glowered at the road, and said nothing.
“Are you thinking or what?” Sid prodded. “If you wanna get that boat, we gotta figure a way to grab him, either when he comes ashore or…”
“Hey.” Jenny’s eyes brightened. “Go straight here on 241.” Her heart beat to the rhythm of the windshield wipers. “Sid, when ya was a kid, your dad ever take ya to the rodeo?”
“A what?” Sid glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed Big Bob’s Bronco veer off behind them. “When I was a kid, the only place my dad took me was the woodshed. You got an idea?”
“Yup. Make a left at the railroad crossing.”
The Bobs veered off at 383, headed for the bridge to New York.
“Where are they going?” From the passenger seat, Little Bob pointed at Sid’s LTD barreling straight on 241.
“Hell, I dunno. Jenny’s plenty angry, though. River’s pretty cold this time of year to get dunked in it.” Big Bob shrugged off a sympathy shiver.
“Couldn’ta missed the turn, and that way they’re just gonna drive away from the river.” Little Bob shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“Well, what we gotta think about is what we’re gonna do. So we drive down 79 on the New York side, follow him. Then what?”
Little Bob shrugged.
“He’s gotta be headed somewhere, and when he gets there, he’s gonna come ashore, right?”
“Yeah, well, we just better hope it’s the New York side of the river, maybe right at Mink Run. We won’t be able to cross again until we hit Frustrumburg.”
The Bronco buzzed across the simple truss bridge spanning the Delaware River called the Mink Run Bridge. They slowed to a stop midcrossing.
“There he is, comin’ this way.” Big Bob tapped the glass, pointing.
“Wow, but I don’t see Russ and Lloyd.” Little Bob craned to see past Big Bob’s bulk.
“They’ll be along. Russ’s motor’s got ten horses, Jenny’s got seven. They’ll be along any—hey, there they come!”
A thousand feet upriver was Russ’s boat in full-speed pursuit.
Big Bob drove the Bronco to the New York side of the bridge and pulled in to Mink Run’s dirt lot and boat launch, right next to Jenny’s pickup and trailer.
They got out and scrambled along a slippery path down to the river, headed for some boulders under the bridge at its pier. The drizzle had slackened to mist, and the sky was brightening.
Price looked at the bridge and the shore, then slowed his motor. Then he noticed the Bobs, throttled up, and zoomed on.
“There he goes,” Little Bob moaned.
“Maybe we shoulda stayed up top, caught him when he landed. What do ya think?” Big Bob jerked a thumb back toward the Bronco.
“I think he’s headed for Frustrumburg.”
Price’s mind was soaring on sleepless wings, empowered by greed, aloft in skies clouded by the persistent gong of a shovel blade bashing his parietal bone. The sutured bullet wound on his chest bled lazily.
“There’s a whole lotta these people in on this thing. That woman, the old guy, the big guy, the little guy, the bearded guy—they’re all in on it! Boy, maybe there’s rewards for them. Maybe they’re all fugitives.”
Motoring toward the right shore, he cut the boat into a flume, glancing off a rock and wending through some rapids.
“Let’s see, now the hundred grand will be all mine, and if you guess that, on average, each of the others gets me, say, five grand…Maybe I’ll end up with a hundred twenty-five grand.”
He tried to wipe some of the dried mud from his face with a filthy forearm. Sweat beaded on his brow.
“Lord knows how many people these folks have bumped off. They lure them up there, then run them over with trucks! Probably where the New York mobs dispose of people. Who would ever think of Hellbender Eddy! Ha! It’s brilliant. Maybe that tough old bird’s the ringleader.”
Price saw something black coming at him in his peripheral vision and ducked—Reverend Jim swooped down and landed on the boat’s bow. The boat swerved under some willow branches and veered back out toward the channel. The prop fouled briefly in the weeds, and he played with the throttle a moment to make sure the outboard kept running. He squinched his eyes shut and gave his brain a rattle. Sleep had been a stranger to him these past couple of days. Was that a one-legged bird sitting on the bow?
Reverend Jim considered Price with one eye, then the other, his head cocked in anticipation.
“Maybe I should just forget about calling Captain Reuster. Yeah, maybe I should just call the FBI. This is interstate, after all. Reuster, if I call him, he’ll just laugh. Those bastards at the hospital! Ha! Try to keep me from my wife, will ya?”
His watery, feverish eyes scanned the shore, then focused on Reverend Jim. What did that damn bird want, anyway?
“Damn.” Russ nodded at the bridge ahead. “I thought he was gonna pull over at Mink Run.”
Lloyd looked downriver.
“The Bobs scared him off. But now where’s he going to come ashore? Beyond here, he’ll have to walk a mile or so or do some rock climbing to get outta the woods.” Lloyd scratched his beard. “He can’t be thinking about going to Frustrumburg.”
“Can’t he?” Russ snorted.
“But what about Peekamoose Falls?”
Widely known as the Delaware’s most treacherous rapids, Peekamoose Falls gave pause to even the most seasoned canoeists and kayakers. As the sides of the falls were comprised of unruly mobs of boulders, there was only one way through the rapids—right down the center, a quarter mile of unpredictable liquid maelstrom. Recreational boaters knew to take out at Mink Run to avoid the falls altogether. Though there were no sheer vertical drops along Peekamoose Falls, the remarkably turgid boils thundered downhill, aimed at one rock that stood out from the gangs to either side. Known as “The Moose,” this towering boulder was the biggest, meanest, most igneous rock of them all, a drunken, belligerent bully who’d stepped out to face down all challengers.
Russ throttled back his outboard at the Mink Run Bridge, where signs to either side of the river warned boaters: “DANGER: IMPASSABLE RAPIDS—POINT OF NO RETURN.”
Lloyd pointed downriver. “Is that Reverend Jim in the boat with him?”
“Jenny, I gotta tell you, this is nuts!” Sid looked up and down the tracks. “What should happen, if, like, a train comes?”
“Ya got any better ideas?” Jenny coiled rope around her forearm. “Besides, trains don’t come along that often.”
Sid heaved the rest of the rope out of the trunk of his LTD and slammed the lid. It was the same rope he’d used for dropping Fest’s body down the pile casing. He and Jenny stood on a high, narrow steel and stone bridge with one track and no handrails.
“What, a train once a week, once a month, what?”
Jenny pointed an arresting finger. “Look, buster, you owe me one.”
�
��How often?”
“Once a day or so.”
“Once a day? Or so?”
“If a train comes, we’ll pull off the tracks, O.K.?”
“Jenny, we’re in the middle of a goddamn bridge here! Pull off where?” Sid gestured to the river below. “Into that mean-lookin’ piece of river? I don’t think so.” He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head at Peekamoose Falls far below. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, not with Jenny wearing those damned red hikers. Sid wasn’t just tempting fate, he was baiting it.
Jenny cinched a slipknot in the rope and fixed a loop in the end. “We’ll be outta here in no time, Sid. Don’t be such a chickenshit.” She tossed her lasso over an I beam and down the side of the trestle.
Sid glowered at her. “Can y’at least tell me which way the train comes, so I’m not, like, driving toward the friggin’ thing as it comes at me?”
“From Frustrumburg, from New York, that direction.” Jenny lashed her end of the rope to the bumper of the LTD. “Now get in the car and I’ll tell ya when t’go.”
“That direction?” Sid pointed, taking the opportunity to wipe sweat from his brow with a forearm. “You’re sure?”
“Will ya get in the damn car, Sid? He’s coming….”
“The train’s comin’?” Sid prepared to run.
“No, Sid. Look, upriver. That fool with my boat is what’s coming. Now get in the car.” Jenny shoved him toward his charge.
Sid glanced skyward, where the sun seemed to have edged its way between the clouds so as not to miss the action. “What’d I do to deserve this?”
Actually, he could think of a few things.
Price hardly noticed the “POINT OF NO RETURN” signs, but he did notice the car above, the woman, and the snare. There was no real way around the rope’s area of influence. It was evident to Price, even in his state, that any effort to avert a direct shot at the main channel would put him into some nasty-looking rocks. Peekamoose’s roar blended with the shovel clanging in his head.
A lasso hung just three feet above the water. But there was nothing to keep Price from deflecting it, which, as he drew near, he prepared to do with an outstretched arm. If nothing else, he hoped the lasso would scare off that damn black bird that was circling above him.
Reverend Jim ducked under the loop as it passed over the bow, then seemed to sense trouble and took flight.
The loop approached Price’s hand.
The loop went suddenly up, over his head.
Then down, behind him. It was a fake-out. The snare came down flat, and right over the outboard.
“Go!”
Sid could have sworn he heard a locomotive blast at some distant grade crossing. The LTD rolled five feet, and the rope snapped taut with a sound like the crack of a bullwhip.
Price was struggling to pull the snare back over the outboard’s cowling when the rope lashed tight. The outboard punched him in the chest and a jolt folded him over the motor. His next, gasping sensation was like getting clonked over the head with a shovel again. Spinning, buzzing, floating. He caught a flash of the boat drifting pretty-as-you-please down the rapids. From above he heard a resounding shout.
“SHIT!” Jenny shouted again, stomping the gravel and kicking the ties with her crimson hikers. She leaned back over the bridge to reaffirm the disaster. Yup, there went her boat, drifting down Peekamoose Falls. Below dangled her motor, still sputtering on fumes, the fuel hose hanging down like a monkey tail, and Price draped over the top. The idea had been to lift the boat by the engine and dump Price.
The rope crackled as it slid over the I beam, her catch-o-the-day twirling as he rose.
“Sid! Stop, Sid!” The LTD didn’t stop. In fact, it sped up. “What the…?” Jenny propped a foot on a rail and her kneecap hummed. Steel rail plates clattered up and down the track.
“Oh, damn it to hell!” She took a few steps backward, turned, and hightailed it over the bridge toward New York.
“Jenny? Hey! Jenny!” Lloyd shouted from Russ’s boat under where Price hung.
Russ had the boat pointed upriver, three-quarter throttle just to remain in place. He noted tiny bits of leachate and rust starting to fall from the trestle, dimpling the water.
“Uh-oh.” Rope bristled over the I beam overhead as Price rose steadily into the air. Russ looked toward the Pennsylvania bank and saw the LTD’s shadow on the swirling water, headed for shore.
“You hear that? Is that a…? That’s a train!” Lloyd shouted. “When it rolls over the rope…if Jenny, or the car…” Lloyd looked over at the LTD’s shadow.
Rail plates clanked above, while Price twirled and moaned.
A huge steel sphinx on wheels, the locomotive and a mile of freight cars quaked around the bend just as the LTD, trundling over the wood ties, reached a stone’s throw from Pennsylvania. And just when Sid thought he was going to dodge the bullet, he took his eyes from the rearview mirror. The bend that the train was coming around was in Pennsylvania, dead ahead.
The gap was closing fast.
Sid stomped both feet on the brake.
“Drop the tape in the boat and we’ll save you,” Russ urged Price, who seemed on the verge of delirium as he dangled above.
Reverend Jim swooped out from under the railroad bridge and landed on Price’s back. He made a clucking, chuckling sound and pecked at Price’s ear.
“Jim!” Russ yelled at the bird. “No! Go away!”
Price groped at his ear. “My earring!”
The diamond gripped in his beak, the bird hopped off Price’s back and glided away toward shore.
“Hey, Russ.” Lloyd pointed toward the LTD on the bridge above. “What’s Sid stopping for?”
Russ followed Lloyd’s finger and saw the shadow of the LTD backing up. Price started spinning downward rapidly.
As if it wasn’t hard enough driving backward fast in a Wal-Mart parking lot, it was nearly impossible on railroad tracks.
Sid’s arms cramped as they tried to hold the steering wheel straight, and his vision was so violently jarred that he couldn’t make out the train rolling toward him from the other end of the trestle. But he felt it.
Just as Lloyd was getting a hand on Price’s windbreaker, the LTD clunkered overhead, and Price and the motor shot back up into the air with a protracted wheeze.
Russ paled. From Pennsylvania, a huge, dark shadow drew across the river. There was the sound of a thousand fingernails drawn across a blackboard, sparks cascading from the trestle, and braking train wheels above.
Russ throttled up to get clear of the impending catastrophe. His boat lunged upriver, and Lloyd fell back over his seat to the floor.
When the train was five feet away, Sid was able to make it out clearly enough. And when the locomotive’s front rammed into the LTD’s hood, there was a millisecond where Sid looked up and saw the engineer. He was wagging his head. “Not a chance,” he seemed to be saying.
Sid cut the steering wheel—hard. And for a sweet, brief moment, the jarring, the vibration, the squealing metal, and the locomotive were gone. The moment lingered, as such moments of truth often do, long enough for Sid to flip back through all the red shoes to the very first ones pounding a Chevy window on a steamy nighttime Passaic River bulkhead.
Russ and Lloyd shook splashes of water from their arms and eyes, staring back slack-jawed at the calamity.
The LTD stood on its trunk end in some rocks at the rapids’ edge, water up to the driver’s door, sparks and splash raining down from above. The train was still thundering overhead when they motored up to the car. Only the frayed end of a rope still hung where Price and Jenny’s motor used to be.
Lloyd grabbed hold of the LTD’s fender when they pulled alongside, and the car groaned, tipping farther backward.
“Don’t!” Russ shouted.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Lloyd yelped.
Russ nudged the boat up close to the car, and Lloyd tried to lean into the driver’s window. He quickly withdrew.
“Can’t.” Lloyd flapped his arms in frustration. “Can’t get the angle on him. Too heavy, and with my back…And what if the car falls over?”
“Here, take the throttle.”
They switched places, and Russ was soon assessing the situation through the open driver’s window.
Blood was splattered on the fractured windshield and on Sid’s face, which was held out of the water by the headrest. His eyes were partially open, and one hand pawed at the water indifferently.
“Sid! Sid, c’mon! Wake up! Gotta get outta there.” Russ slapped him on an outstretched arm, then tugged his wrist.
Sid’s eyes goggled a moment, and he gurgled.
“Sid!” Russ screamed.
Jerking his head forward, Sid let it splash back onto the headrest. He groaned, and his eyes rolled at Russ.
“Id was me dat…” he slurred, then smiled like a drunkard. “Y’still owe me, Russ.”
“Sid! C’mon! Snap outta it!” Russ implored.
Pawing the air a moment, Sid groped the steering wheel in a vain attempt at pushing himself toward Russ.
“Y’owe me, Russ.” He groaned. “You was in that wreck, an’ I grabbed your, your…” Sid made a gun out of his hand and pointed it at Russ.
“Sid!” Russ had ahold of Sid’s sleeve, and he pulled. The LTD groaned, twisting toward him. He could hear the trunk grinding into the river bottom. But the car stopped.
“Get me outta here,” Sid pleaded, his eyes unable to focus, his hands slapping at the steering wheel.
“Russ,” Lloyd shouted, “get the hell away from that car. It’s going to go!”
The train overhead finally lumbered to a stop.
“Bring me right up to the car. I’ll grab him, then I’ll tell you when to back away.”
Russ leaned far enough in to grab Sid by the collar.
“Russ, y’owe me, dammit, d’int y’understand.” Sid’s bloodshot eyes rolled aimlessly. “I pulled you from that wreck. The car was burning, you were, were…”
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