Downriver Read Online Free PDF Page B

and snarling and collecting foam in the corners of its mouth.
    “Walker!”
    I was wearing my magic stupid ring that night. Walking past the truck I hadn’t noticed the open door on the passenger’s side, or the hulk passed out across the seat. Now he rose up and off it like some swamp monster, six feet and two hundred and fifty pounds of fat and muscle in overalls, scooping a shotgun off a rack below the rear window. But DeVries’s shout had startled him before he could level it at me, and as he was turning in the ex-convict’s direction I had six chances to drop him before he remembered me. So naturally I didn’t shoot. Instead I charged him.
    For all his bulk and obvious drunkenness he had reflexes like a cat’s. I was halfway to him when the shotgun swung back around and I could see myself snatched off my feet by the blast, pieces of me flying all over and lighting in the trees. DeVries yelled again — just a yell this time, not a name or a word anyone would recognize — but Overalls wasn’t going to be distracted by that a second time. In the light from the window I saw his finger tensing on the trigger. All this time I was still running, my feet touching the ground in slow motion, a running dead man trying to gain as many yards as possible before the whistle.
    DeVries’s next shout had a new quality: a killing edge. It made both of us stop what we were doing and look at him. He was standing on the sagging boards of the porch with one huge arm bent across the pregnant girl’s throat. Her bare feet were off the ground and from the position she was in he had his other hand around her wrist and her arm locked behind her back. She had come outside to see what the commotion was about and DeVries had acted with the speed that would have made him a basketball star if the law hadn’t beaten the scouts to him. The girl was grimacing, but in her eyes was the same blank look she’d been giving the television screen. I’d seen that look in hospitals and nursing homes, directed at the walls.
    “Lurleen.” The name had a dull sound in Overalls’ mouth, like thumping a grain barrel.
    “I’ll break her, man.”
    I couldn’t tell if DeVries meant it. For a man his size, doing it was easier than saying it. I saw the fight go out of Overalls’ eyes. They were big and brown in a red face with dun-colored stubble. He looked to be in his late thirties. The shotgun came down.
    Alter a beat I stepped forward and took it out of his hands. He stank of whiskey and caked sweat and dirt. I holstered the revolver.
    “Burt?” said Lurleen. She had a little girl’s voice.
    “Where’s your brother?” I asked Burt.
    He was still thinking about that one when a man in an undershirt and patched jeans came to the shack’s open door from inside. He was as tall as Burt but not as broad. Light from behind him limned his slabbed solid frame and sparkled off the sight of the big automatic pistol in his left hand. He was black-bearded with a white streak in his rumpled hair, a birthmark. His feet were bare. He was younger than Burt.
    “You’re Hank?” I trained the shotgun on him.
    He gestured with the automatic at the bigger weapon. “It ain’t loaded. Burt can’t be trusted with no loaded gun. One beer makes him crazy.”
    I swiveled the shotgun aside and squeezed the trigger. It clicked. I lowered the barrel.
    “Put it down or I break her,” DeVries told Hank. He had moved to the end of the porch to keep both brothers in sight.
    “Nigger, if you move I’ll shoot your eye out.”
    We were like that for a while. There was something in the way he held the gun. I said, “ ’Nam?”
    “Grenada. You?”
    I nodded. “Cambodia too. Why the marines? That’s strictly volunteer.”
    “I had some trouble here and walked into the first place I came to and raised my right hand. Next time I’ll take the trouble.”
    “Give it time. It’ll fester out.”
    “This here’s private property. Come in here, scare my brother, threaten