[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.‘That you, Leroy?’ he says.‘Yeah, it Leroy.’‘You done a dumb thing, you know that.You think I’m going to forget this?’‘I don’t give a fuck what you remember,’ I says.‘Where are they two?’‘Could be anywhere.You know that.We’re eighty miles or more from where they jumped.Could of stepped off anywhere.’‘You think that, what for you sitting out here in a fancy car?’‘You like it, do you?’ he says, playing me for stupid.‘They killed my brothers.’‘Maybe,’ he says.‘Ain’t no maybe.They dead and them two done it.’‘Looks that way.A jury’ll get to decide.’‘We already got us a jury,’ I says.‘Where they at? They go up the hill,’ I says, ‘or you reckon they split cross-country?’‘Where’s your dogs?’Got it in one.Should of brought the dogs.‘Fuck the dogs,’ I says.‘Probably,’ he says.Then he says, ‘Take this stuff off my eyes.’‘You be al’ right you sit still.There’s enough’n us to cover the points.’‘Think about it,’ he says.‘Eighty miles and all they had to do was jump off on a curve.Could be anywhere.In a day they’re out of the state.Leave it to us.We got cars and radios.We got … dogs.’‘They ain’t here, you ain’t here.’‘I’m just sleeping, or I was until you came by.Assault, that’s what it is, you know, Leroy, assault.Can’t look in the dark.Just catching some sleep, is all.Been checking the depots, seeing if anyone saw anything.Why would they get off here? I favour them just stepping off when it suited them.Untie me, Leroy, and I can maybe forget about it.Put it down to you being concerned over your brothers.’‘Concerned,’ I says, ‘that’s what folks in the city feel maybe.Where I come from, we’re fucking mad.’‘Go home.Take your brothers and go back.If we get on their track, we’ll let you know.Right away.’I looks up at the light with the bugs banging against it and I think of him parking in this place and I know they here.He’s just waiting for light.‘They here,’ I says.‘Ain’t likely,’ he says.‘One thing for sure, they not backtracking.They know we be following.You too, likely.And why they go on if they just climbed down off a train that would’ve taken them forward.Only two ways they could go.’There was a smell about the car.Smelt of flowers or something.He smelt like a girl.‘Leroy, leave it to me, leave it to us.’‘I reckon we just leave you.Good to be talking to you,’ I said, and stuck the tape back on his mouth.I don’t know that I was sure before, but now I was.They were here all right.No one would choose this for a place to sleep, at least not him.He got soft hands.He would have taken his smart car and driven to some place with a bed.No, he were just waiting for the light and now so were we.There were four on us and we could split up like we had back at the river.They were here.I could smell it as clear as I smelt the flowers on the man that called hisself a sheriff.* * *He was climbing now for no other reason than that he could think of nothing else to be doing.At first it had been to get away, put as much distance as he could between himself and the boy and that thing they had found in the wagon, abandoned and left to rot and be carried off where no one would know who did it.He had been running from whoever was following them, and he realized he had yet to see the face of any of them, being shot down out of nowhere, nearly died in the river, risen out of it and come to this place which he had come to think of as Indian land, though the only reason for that was because of an arrowhead and a doll and a memory, somewhere, of a story he had been told, though when and by whom was as lost to him as most of his life that was so much the same from day to day that there was no way to mark one off from another.The arm was hurting him now.He told himself that it would ease off, but he had seen the line where the poison was and had begun to think how it would slowly move over him until it stopped his heart.Still he went on, the boy behind him, silent, thinking on something he could never know since the boy couldn’t talk, even scratching his name in the dust rather than speak it out loud.Yet for all that, there was something made him feel settled, no, not settled, he thought, talking to himself inside his head, just at peace.He had travelled further than ever before, there being no reason before to travel except when he and his wife had planned where they might go, knowing they would never make it but imagining it all just the same.And he had never been so high.He knew there was land stretching every which way but had never seen it all of a piece like he did now, turning now and then to see the boy was still there, to see the earth stretching out brown and green with splashes of blue, flashing gold.Strange thoughts had started coming to him as he climbed higher.It seemed to him that he breathed less easily, took less air in, feeling light and faint even
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
