The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [29]
We crested the bridge, the road making a smooth twist down and to the left, beneath us now that marsh. Tabitha’s fingers tapped hard on the dash, her mouth open, teeth clenched. Still she took in quick breaths I could hear even over the engine screaming.
We hit ninety-one on the downhill, then fell back to eighty-nine. Then the engine shuddered, a kind of quiver that made the wheel jump. Tabitha turned to me: she’d felt it, too.
I looked down at the speedometer. There, next to it and to the left, was the gas gauge.
Empty, the little white needle down past the E, not even touching it.
I looked at her. She did nothing, only stared at me.
The engine flinched again, and now we were doing seventy-eight, up ahead another green highway sign: HWY 61 NORTH with an arrow to the right.
I moved to the right lane, saw them coming up behind us, that single headlight growing in the thin strip of sight the rearview gave me. We were doing sixty-four now, the off-ramp just ahead, right there the yellow speed-limit sign, 35 MPH, and the big curved arrow showing where to go.
And now they were behind us, right on our ass, like they’d been at that intersection, and they bumped us, the steering wheel wild in my hands, and I pulled hard on it to keep it straight. We were only fifty yards or so from the ramp now, doing fifty, and I tried for the exit, leaned the wheel to the right.
Then the headlight in the rearview disappeared, and here they were on the right shoulder, the big yellow hood pulling up beside us.
The truck slammed us to the left, the steering wheel flying of its own, and Tabitha’s window exploded into a shower of glass pieces all over us, cold air flying in after it. She jumped over to me, pushed herself into my shoulder, her hands to her face, that sound she kept coughing out the back of her throat lost to the roar of the truck pushing us to the left, and to the cold air shouting in on us, and now we were past the exit, in the middle lane again, and we had only the chance of the next one, 61 South, not two hundred yards ahead.
Here was that yellow hood still riding right up against us, edging up, both of us slowing down and slowing down, and now here was the cab, higher than ours, so that the first thing I saw as they pulled up even with us was the pistol, thick and shiny, in the driver’s hand, his arm just hanging down out his window like he had hold of a beer bottle, then the driver himself with his baseball cap on straight, still grinning, his mouth moving fast, chewing away. He wasn’t looking at me but at the road, his other hand at the top of the wheel, holding on. The one with the cap on backward was leaned over and looking at us. He held that beer up, made that salute again, but he wasn’t smiling anymore, their faces all moving shadows and angled light for the freeway lamp passing above us.
The driver gave out a little laugh, then lifted the gun, held it right there inside the Luv’s cab, pointed at us.
I tried to think what Unc would do.
I looked down: forty, thirty-eight.
“Best just to stop altogether,” the driver shouted, his voice loud and low. “You need to talk to us. About your uncle.” He glanced over at us, lost the grin. Still he chewed.
There went the exit for 61 South, the off-ramp on the other side of the pickup. Gone. Next stop, the end of the freeway, where it hit Savannah Highway. Only a mile ahead, but what might as well have been twelve light-years away.
I thought of Yandle, his finger pointed at me, shooting it at me, and of a hanged woman, and of a dead man at Hungry Neck, and of Unc hidden away somewhere.
And I thought of the paperweight.
The driver held the gun at us, his hand still to the wheel, thirty-five now, thirty.
Maybe it wasn’t what Unc would do at all. Maybe it was a coward’s way out. But it was a way.
I shouldered Tabitha away so I could get at my pocket, pulled out the paperweight.
“Is this what you want?” I yelled at him, and held it up. “Is this what you want?” I paused. “I don’t even know where Unc is!”
Tabitha pushed herself into me again, hands to