Joe Lansdale - All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

Sometimes he walked all right, and sometimes he stumbled.

“You better let me stop for a moment,” he said. “Let me get my breath.”

We stopped.

I heard Bad Tiger yell out, “Might as well just move on, Buddy. It ain’t going to get no better.”

“I reckon not,” Buddy said, and we started moving again.

We got him to the sycamore and helped him sit down under it. He breathed a little more heavily.

“You feel any better?” I asked.

“Course not, kid. I got a bullet in me.”

Jane spoke so only the three of us could hear. “Bad Tiger Malone is a bank robber. He’s almost as famous as Pretty Boy Floyd.”

“That’s him, all right,” Buddy said. “We hit a bank. Things didn’t go well. I got shot and someone else got the money.”

“Someone else?” I said.

“Forget it,” he said. “I ain’t up for conversation. Just keep me company awhile.”

“He told us not to,” Jane said. “He said he’d hurt my little brother.”

“He can be all right sometimes,” Buddy said. “Until he isn’t all right. You’d think Timmy is the crazy one, but he’s just less calm. Tiger, he’s the one you got to watch.”

“You seem nice enough,” Jane said. “What are you doing with them?”

“I’m not nice, and I’m with them because I was raised bad. I’ve known Tiger since we was kids. He wasn’t raised bad. He’s just bad. Timmy, I don’t know nothing other than I don’t like him. I really should have taken up some other line of work.”

“We’re sorry you’re hurt,” I said.

“Yeah,” Buddy said. “Me too.”

“You coming back up here,” Bad Tiger called, “or do I twist this kid’s arm off and beat him with it?”

“We’re coming,” I called back.

“I’m sorry,” Jane said. “We got to go.”

“Ah, that’s all right,” Buddy said. “It can’t be helped.”

“What about you?” Jane asked.

“It is what it is,” he said.

“But who’ll take care of you?” Jane asked.

Buddy snorted, and then laughed. “Oh, I’ll be taken care of, all right. You can count on that, missy.”

12

We went back to the car, and Bad Tiger let go of Tony.

“How’s Buddy doing?” Bad Tiger asked.

“Not so good,” I said.

“Yeah, well,” Bad Tiger said, “that’s how I figured it.”

“A stomach shot,” Timmy said, “that don’t do nobody any good. Not even a little bit.”

“That seems like an understatement,” Jane said.

“Girlie,” Timmy said, “you better shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”

Jane went silent, but I could tell it was paining her to do it.

“Would you say Buddy is going to get better?” Bad Tiger said to her.

“Not without some medical help,” Jane said. “You could leave him with us. Maybe we can stop someone that comes along the road.”

“Naw,” Bad Tiger said. “Can’t do that. I need you three for a while, and I don’t want you talking to nobody on the road. And I figure you’re right. Without a doctor he ain’t getting no better.”

Bad Tiger looked at Timmy.

“I got it,” Timmy said.

Timmy went out across the pasture. We watched him walk to the sycamore tree. He said something to Buddy we couldn’t understand. But we could hear Buddy.

“I hate to die in a bloody shirt,” he said.

“That’s just the way it is,” Timmy said. We could hear him clearly this time.

“I reckon so. Well, get it over with,” Buddy said.

We stood there stunned. I kind of knew what was coming but couldn’t believe it was about to happen.

Bad Tiger said, “Why don’t you kids turn and look down the road there.”

We did just that.

And then we heard the shot.

“All right, then,” Bad Tiger said, and we turned around.

Timmy came walking back toward us. I could see Buddy lying out by the sycamore tree.

Jane looked right at Bad Tiger and said, “You ain’t nothing but the lowest of low.”

Bad Tiger looked her right back in the eye. “You said yourself he wasn’t going to get any better.”

“ Without a doctor he wasn’t going to get any better,” Jane said. “He shot him in cold blood.”

“Buddy knew the score,” Bad Tiger said as Timmy came back. “And I’ll tell you, cutie pie, doctor or no doctor, he wasn’t going to make it. I’ve seen it before. He had done mostly bled out. We done him a favor.”

13

“We have to keep them all?” Timmy said. “How about I just shoot the girl, the blabbermouth.”

I felt Jane grab my elbow.

“One hostage is good,” Bad Tiger said, “but I reckon three is better. They get to be trouble, we’ll bump them off. I’ll let you start with Blabbermouth.”

“You would make my day, you let me do that,” Timmy said.

They put us down in the ditch, right under our car, so that if it slid back, we’d be crushed like bugs. I guess this was their way of keeping us in line. It was scary, but I couldn’t think about nothing but how Timmy shot Buddy like he was popping a bottle off a fence post. It hadn’t meant no more to him than that. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how Buddy knew it was coming. I wasn’t even sure he minded all that much.

After Timmy killed Buddy, he looked in the turtle hull of the Buick, and I could tell from the way he was looking it wasn’t his car. It was a car they had stole. Just like they was planning to steal ours. Whatever he was hoping to find wasn’t there.

They looked in the hull of our car and found the spare, some tools for changing the tire, and something that made them real happy: about twelve feet of chain.

“They even got a toolbox in here,” Bad Tiger said. “You folks was prepared.”

I didn’t say it wasn’t our car and we didn’t know the stuff was back there. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Timmy walked back to the Buick and got behind the steering wheel. For a while I thought he might not get it started, but when he did, he drove it around in front of the Ford and kept it running while Bad Tiger fastened the chain to the rear bumper of the Buick and the front bumper of the Ford.

That’s when they made us get down in the ditch.

“You better hope the chain don’t have a weak link,” Bad Tiger said, looking down on us in the ditch. “ ’Cause I want you to stay right there under the rear of it. That way you got something to think about in case the chain snaps or the Buick slips back into it.”

We heard Bad Tiger get in behind the wheel of the Ford and start it up.

Jane said, “We could run now.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and we might get as far as climbing up the side of the ditch before we was popped. That Timmy, he can’t wait to pop something. We’re careful and wait for the right moment, we might get away.”

“You’re right,” Jane said, and I felt those weren’t words she used often. “But it isn’t just Timmy. Buddy said Bad Tiger is even worse, and considering he knew him better than us, I’m going to take him at his word.”

“They’re both crazy,” Tony said. “It don’t matter which one is crazier than the other. It ain’t no contest.”

Jane patted him on the shoulder lightly. “That’s a good point, Tony. A real good point.”

We heard Big Tiger speak loudly. “All right. I got it in neutral. Pull.”

“I just hope the chain don’t slip,” Jane said as the Ford rocked back and then moved forward.

In the next moment, they had it out of the ditch. Bad Tiger came around and looked down on us.

“Just stay where you are while we change the tire,” he said.

They changed it and called us up, and we climbed out of the ditch. Bad Tiger took our little bags of goods and chucked them in the hull of the car and closed the lid without even looking in them.