John Sandford - Mad River

A helicopter flew over Gates’s truck and the abandoned farmstead just after full dark. A searchlight poked through the woods, then spent a moment probing the old sheds, then moved on down the road. Becky held her breath as she heard it coming in, and let it out when it moved on.

The beating blades woke Jimmy, who groaned and said, “This fuckin’ leg is killing me,” and, “What the fuck is going on?”

He sounded clear-minded, and Becky said, “A helicopter. Jeez, Jimmy, they’re using everything. It’s going away now.”

“Didn’t see us?”

“No, I put some old tar paper over the truck. We look like a pile of dirt.”

“Good. We got any more pills?”

“One.”

Jimmy took the pill and a long drink of water, and then asked, “What time is it?”

She said, “After seven. We’ve been sitting here a long time.”

“Gotta move before it gets light,” he said. “Get way south, toward. . Ohio or. . whatever.”

“Iowa,” she said.

“Farther than that. Ohio or. . Kansas. Those helicopters. . didn’t think they’d get no helicopters to chase us.”

“Got searchlights on them, just like in the Cities.”

“If we could get to the Cities, we could get lost,” he said.

“I don’t think we’d get that far,” Becky said. “That’d be running toward them. We’ve got to run away.”

“Okay.”

She was a little surprised by his acquiescence; he usually wanted to be the boss. She asked, “You want a cigarette?”

“Hell, yes.”

She found a pack of Marlboros, shook one out for him, lit it with a paper match. The smoke smelled good, though she didn’t smoke herself.

“I think I’m feeling better-my leg is better,” Jimmy said after a while. She thought he might be lying, but she nodded. He said, “All we need is one good break. Get out in the open country and run. Some of that country down there, it’s almost empty. That’s what my old man said. He drove down to Texas once, and he said it’s mostly empty. That’s what we need.”

“Okay,” she said.

“We’ll be set for life, starting with that money,” Jimmy said. “We might have to cross the border, you know, until this all blows over. Don’t think we could come back here.”

“I don’t want to come back here,” she said. The bitterness of the place almost choked her. “Nothing ever good has happened here. If we get down south. . get a place to live. You know, you could grow a beard, I could do up my hair different.”

“You’re not gonna be able to make yourself less pretty,” Jimmy said.

He startled her with that. She didn’t say anything right away, but then said, fishing for a little more, “Oh, I’m not really that pretty.”

“Yeah, you are,” he said.

They sat and he smoked and she eventually said, “I’d like a daughter. I mean, I’d like a couple of boys, for sure, but I’d like a daughter. I know a lot of shit that I could teach her. You could teach the boys.”

“I’d do that. Teach them to hunt,” Jimmy said.

“I could teach the girls how to take care of the house,” Becky said. “And cook. We could get some cookbooks. My mom, she couldn’t cook, and didn’t care. I ate so much macaroni and cheese it makes me sick when I smell it. And fish sticks. Man, I hate fish sticks.”

Jimmy giggled, and after a moment, said, “I know where you’re coming from. Macaroni and cheese. You know what makes me sick? Those little fuckin’ slippery shells with tomato sauce and mushrooms. I must’ve ate about fifty gallons of those things. My old man could eat that shit morning, noon, and night. Christ, you go into my house, that’s all you could smell. Those little fuckin’ shells.”

They talked about food for a while, and then Becky found a couple of Snickers candy bars and they shared them, and then Jimmy asked, “You think we oughta get married?”

She stopped chewing for a moment, startled again, then swallowed. “You askin’ me?”

“Well, yeah. I guess.”

“Well, okay. Yeah, I’d marry you.” And she laughed, and then clapped her hands. “I thought maybe nobody would ever ask me.”

“You’re so pretty, somebody was going to ask you. For sure. Lots of guys.”

“Jimmy. .” She moved closer to him and kissed him on the lips, and tried not to think about the porno films back at the old man’s house. He kissed her back-and tried not to think about the porno films.

“I shouldn’t have took that job, killing Ag Murphy,” Jimmy said. “That kinda fucked me up in the head for a while, you know? It felt. . pretty good. First time I ever felt that good, and then, you know, shooting that Negro. Just felt it right down to my balls. It was like I couldn’t stop. . But if I didn’t take that job, we wouldn’t be here.”

“You did all right,” Becky said. “We wouldn’t be here-we’d still be on the street, and starving to death. There wasn’t anybody going to save us from that.”

“Yeah, that might be right,” he said. “You got another cigarette?”

She said, “When we get married, I don’t think we should do it in a church. I don’t think we should make any big deal out of it, you know? Maybe we should just go to some guy down in Texas, or Mexico, you know, and just dress in regular clothes, and do it. If you do it in a church, they put your pictures in the newspaper.”

“We’ll have to think about that,” Jimmy said.

He was smoking the second cigarette when she heard the sound of somebody sneaking up on them. She whispered, “You hear that?”

He listened, heard the rustling in the brush. “Yeah. You got the gun?”

“Got three of them now,” she said. She found the pistol under the seat, then whispered, “Where are they?”

“Sounds like they’re in front of us,” he whispered back.

“What do you think?”

“If it’s the cops, then they know we’re here,” he said.

“How?”

“Maybe the helicopter?”

She listened, then whispered, “Right in front of us.”

There was a metallic scratching sound, and she said, “I gotta look,” and hit the headlight switch. A twenty-pound raccoon was sitting on the hood of the truck, caught flat-footed, looked at them for a second or two, then dove over the side, the big striped tail bushed out like a chimney broom. She switched the lights off, and they both started giggling.

Becky laughed until tears came, and she said, “That was so funny. I was so scared, I almost wet my pants.”

That started them laughing again.

The truck got cold. Jimmy slipped back to sleep when they stopped talking, and she made sure he was completely wrapped with blankets, then wrapped herself in the remaining blanket and tried to go to sleep. It was not easy, sitting mostly upright, but the night was quiet, and she dozed.

When she woke, she was freezing, blanket or no blanket. Jimmy was still asleep. She was so cold that she decided to turn the engine on and use the heater; she did it, and ten minutes later, the truck was warm again.

She slept off and on for the rest of the night, sat up when she realized that she could see tree trunks. Dawn. Jimmy had said that they should leave while it was still dark, but it was too late for that. She wasn’t sure she could take another day in the truck-they had water, but not much in the way of food.

She turned to Jimmy, and shook his shoulder: “Jimmy. Wake up. We gotta talk.”

Jimmy didn’t wake up. She shook him harder, and his shoulders rolled back and forth, but he didn’t wake up. She cried, “Jimmy. Jimmy. Wake up, Jimmy.”

When he still didn’t wake, she peeled the blanket off him and looked at the bandage on his leg. The bandage was dry, but long, fiery-red tendrils of infection snaked out from under the bandage and up and down his leg, which was swollen to half-again its normal size.