Driftless (30 page)

More accelerating, tire screaming, and engine noise.

The car ahead turned again, this time down a snow- covered gravel road, leaving a white cloud behind it. But this did not make the slightest impression on her crazed kidnapper, who of course drove into it without thinking about the inevitable consequences of driving as fast as mechanically possible without the benefit of sight.

They continued like this for what seemed like a mile or more, then faint red lights could be seen through the billowing snow as the car ahead turned off the gravel road and onto another highway, with her suicidal driver right behind it.

Soon they were so close to the car in front that Olivia was sure they were going to hit it, and then, to her utter and complete astonishment, they did. The imbecile sitting next to her rammed right into the car ahead, denting the trunk and busting out one of its taillights.

A little further down the road there was a loud
crack
and a ragged hole appeared in the upper middle of the windshield.

“Those bastards shot my car!” shouted her driver, rolling down his window with a manual crank.

This statement provided vital information to Olivia. Combined with the fact that her kidnapper had just rammed his car into the one they’d been following, she felt pretty sure he was chasing them, and not simply trying to keep up. Perhaps, despite dressing and looking and talking alike, they were not all in this thieving and kidnapping business together.

Then, while he was driving with one hand, and sometimes only a single finger, the young man beside her reached under the seat, withdrew a short, fat, thick gun with two enormous barrels, held it out the window, and fired twice. The sound was so incomprehensibly loud that Olivia had nothing to compare it to. It made the sounds of the engine and radio seem like the purring of kittens. It more resembled a solid blow to the head than a sound, and afterwards she could near nothing at all.

Ahead, the car’s remaining taillight had been extinguished, and there was a trunk-sized hole in the back window. Through the ragged opening she could see the backs of three heads. One of them turned toward them and threw something that slid over the trunk and landed in the road. Her driver ran over it and stomped on his brakes.

This time she
was
thrown to the floor.

There, lying on a black rubber mat that smelled of something resembling furniture polish, she conducted a quick assessment of her new circumstances and felt surprisingly safe. The dashboard created a little roof over her head and the partially sequestered ambience seemed almost reassuring.

From her more secure home, she felt the car come to a stop. The madman next to her moved his long legs, opened his door, and ran into the night. Then she was alone for a while, and when he returned, he had her handbag.

“I got it, Ma’am,” he said proudly, reaching down and lifting her back onto the seat next to the fat gun.

Olivia could not hear what he said because her head was still ringing from the shotgun blasts. But she recognized her handbag as well as a triumphant smile beaming from the driver’s bejeweled face. And while she was looking through the hole in the windshield at a single star in the sky, she came to a clearer understanding of what had happened.

In the farmhouse down the road, a light came on, then two more. The front door opened and a man in pajamas stood in it. Much farther down the road, over the distant horizon, came two police cars with lights and sirens.

“Oh fuck,” her driver said. His face turned white and she could feel his fear like a wind blowing. “Fuck,” he said again. He buckled her into her seat, closed his door, turned around in the road with a shriek of tires, and roared off in the opposite direction. When they reached the gravel road, he turned down it, just as the police cars reached the house with the man in the doorway. One of the cars stopped. The other continued after them.

At least this time we can see,
thought Olivia, as they hurtled down the gravel road and over a little bridge she hadn’t noticed before. It occurred to her that perhaps the young man had taken this road in order to raise enough snow- dust to prevent his license plate from being read. It seemed unusually thoughtful for someone who was completely insane, and her estimation of him inched slightly upward in the animal kingdom. At the stop sign they turned right and she noticed his hands shaking. Again, she could feel his fear. After another mile he braked hard again and prepared to turn left.

Olivia’s hearing was returning, and as sounds began to reach her again she noticed she no longer felt as though she would die immediately. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She still felt certain of perishing into the afterlife at any minute, but for some reason she was becoming accustomed to the feeling. Sensing the fear of her driver had a mitigating effect on her own, as though only so much terror was allowed in any given enclosure.

“Wait!” she shouted. “
Don’t go that way.
I have a scanner at home. They always catch people going that way. Go straight ahead and take a right, then take the next left. You can’t outrun a police radio.”

Her voice seemed authoritative for her size, and Wade obeyed it, continued to Highway H, turned right, and sped to Willow Creek Road.

“Turn here,” commanded Olivia. “There are plenty of curves and hills on this road. It ends up on the ridge, where you can go three ways.” Wade braked, and at the intersection Olivia rolled down the window and hurled the shotgun into the snow-filled ditch.

“Damn, what did you do that for?”

“You can get it later if you really need it.”

They continued for several more miles, around corners and over hills, following the illumination of their one unbroken headlight.

“Turn into that drive up there,” shouted Olivia.

“What?”
shouted the frantic driver.

“Turn at the mailbox. Hurry. The Rasmussuns are on vacation. They left this morning. Park behind the garage, behind the house.”

Panic oozed from every pore on his face as he turned into the plowed drive. Behind the house in the snow-filled yard, he turned off the engine, lights, and radio.

Suddenly they were sealed together in near-total darkness, surrounded in every direction by a silence as overwhelming as the earlier din of engine and thundering music.

Olivia could hear him breathing.

The sirens grew louder and louder and then flew past them toward the ridge roads.

“You can’t walk?” he asked.

“Not a step.”

“I guess you pretty much need that wheelchair.”

“Pretty much,” said Olivia.

“These people on vacation?”

“Yes, until next month. They went to the Holy Land on a trip sponsored by CUC—Christians United in Christ.”

Outside they could hear more sirens, and as they continued listening three more mechanical insects flew past the house. Fifteen minutes later two more passed, one from each direction, moving slowly, with searchlights stretching into the countryside like probing yellow tentacles. Both continued without stopping.

“If they catch me I’ll go to prison,” said Wade.

“No you won’t,” said Olivia. “You can tell them what happened.”

“It wouldn’t matter what the fuck I said. I’ve been in trouble before. I’m on parole.”

“I see,” said Olivia. “Well, as long as we’re making confessions, I’m afraid I’ve peed on your car seat.”

Wade laughed—a sound that in some ways troubled Olivia more than anything else so far. “Hell, that doesn’t matter,” he said. “But
we’d better get you into some dry clothes. My grandmother had trouble with that like you can’t fucking believe. I took care of her for three years.”

Wade reached for the ignition to start the car.

“Don’t do that!” shouted Olivia. “They’ll catch you for sure if you leave now. With shots fired there’s no telling when they’ll give up. You have a hole in your windshield. And that man at the house probably got a look at your car.”

“Can’t just stay the fuck here. If I don’t show up at seven o’clock at the cheese plant they’ll call my goddamn parole officer. And we got to get you some dry clothes. Folks are probably looking for you.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Olivia.

“We can’t just sit the fuck here. Look, I know someone two or three miles down the road. I’ll run over there and be back as soon as I can with his truck.”

“That won’t work!” shouted Olivia, frightened by the idea of being left alone. “All these families along here have dogs. We’ll borrow the Rasmussuns’ car. The Mitchell family drove them to the airport. I’m sure they won’t mind. It’s in the garage.”

“How are we going to start it?”

“The keys are probably in it. They wouldn’t have taken them to the Holy Land.”

“Are you sure you know these fucking people?”

“You can trust me.”

“I have no choice.”

“True, you don’t, and thank you for not using that f-word.”

Wade was gone for what seemed to Olivia a long time—enough for her to wonder if he had decided on his foolish plan of walking to an acquaintance’s house. When he returned he crawled in beside her and said, “The garage is locked.”

“I guess you’ll have to break a window,” said Olivia.

“I’m not breaking a window.”

“Then carry me over and I’ll break the window.”

“I won’t do that either.”

Then a light came on inside the house and a silhouette stood in the window, a telephone pressed to one side of its head.

They left hurriedly.

“I thought you said there was no one home,” said Wade, accelerating at open throttle down the blacktop.

“It looked like Florence Fitch. It would be just like her to stay in someone’s house when they were gone, snooping around under the pretense of looking after the place.”

“Oh fuck, there’s no way out of here,” he cried as the end of the dead-end road loomed ahead.

“Quick,” said Olivia. “Stop swearing and turn in here.”

“Where?”

“In the driveway.”

“Who lives here?”

“Who cares—it goes back into the woods. Hurry, the police lights are on the ridge.”

Wade turned into the lane running between the trees.

At the end of a very long and curved driveway, he pulled up next to an odd-shaped log house. Still in a panic, he looked out the window, surveying the windows lit from an inside light. Then he saw someone standing on the back porch holding a machine gun, and cried, “Get down.”

Wade threw his body like sack of potatoes over Olivia.

She lay there for an unthinkably long while, half on and half off the seat, his weight pressing against her in a warm, heavy, and unfamiliar way. Finally she decided there could be no reasonable explanation for why they were doing this and she said, “Get off me, you big lug.”

When Wade sat up again the man on the back porch had left the machine gun on the porch floor and was now standing next to the car.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, looking inside. “Oh, hello, Olivia.”

“I’m not Olivia,” said Olivia, trying to look like someone other than herself by frowning and smiling at the same time.

“Of course you are,” said Jacob.

“If she says she isn’t, she isn’t,” said Wade, who didn’t know who she was.

“Is that the motor from July Montgomery’s toolshed last summer?” asked Jacob, listening to the idling engine.

“Yup,” said Wade proudly.

“Aspirated engines have a distinctive sound,” said Jacob.

Sirens were descending from the ridge.

Wade gripped the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking. “Fuck,” he said.

Jacob noticed the smeared blood from Wade’s face on Olivia’s blouse. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

“Pay attention,” said Olivia to Jacob. “We need you to understand a whole lot of things in a whole little time. First, we’re completely innocent. Second, those police cars don’t know that we are innocent. Third, this will likely be one of the places they suspect that people who they think aren’t innocent but are in fact innocent might be hiding. We need your help. Please.”

Jacob listened to the sirens, then ran to the garage beside the log house, backed his jeep out, and drove down the drive. Halfway to the road, in the narrowest part of the lane, he turned the motor off, climbed out, and lifted the hood.

Several minutes later a patrol car turned off the road and followed the drive as far as the jeep. A policeman climbed out, his searchlight fastened on Jacob.

“This your place?”

“Yes.”

“Live here alone?”

“Yes again.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jacob Helm.”

“Having trouble?”

“Battery keeps shorting out.”

“Kind of late to be working on it.”

“I need to get to work in a couple hours.”

“We’re looking for a fancy car, green or light blue, loud motor. You see anyone tonight? Anyone come by here?”

“Sorry, no,” said Jacob. “Say, can you use your government radio
to call someone for me?—I mean the one in your car. I’d sure appreciate it.”

“Call who?”

“My cousin in Grange. I’ve got the number here.”

“Why? Is this an emergency?”

“I need to get this jeep running. Here’s the number. If an old woman answers, don’t talk to her, just ask to speak to Frank. If a man answers it will probably be Frank, and if it is Frank, ask him for Lenny. When Lenny comes to the phone, tell him Jacob, that’s me, wants the battery—the one the old woman has stored in the back of the shop next to the tarp and paint—the one with the side terminals, not the other one. He’ll know which. And tell him to—”

“Sir, I haven’t got time for this. You can walk back to your house and use your own phone. You have one, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

The patrol car backed along the drive to a place wide enough to turn around, then returned to the road.