The Getaway Man Read Online Free PDF

of the pickups wheeled around behind us. It had a row of bright
    lights in a bar across the top of its roof, blazing.
    “Drive us,
    Eddie!” Tim said. Real soft, but it was like a shout to me.
    I
    bent the stock car into that first corner, and put my right foot through the
    floorboard. I’d been over those roads dozens of times, practicing. It
    felt like there was a wire running from my hands direct into the front wheels,
    like I was bending my own body around those curves. Once in a while I could
    catch a flash of the pickup’s lights on an angle, but they never got
    close enough to fire any more shots. At least, none I could hear.
    When
    I spotted the big tree with the giant white “X” I had spray-painted
    on it, I knew we were nearly home. Just up the road a piece from the
    “X” was a tight hairpin curve around a mass of rocks. I could hear
    the pickup coming on. I braked deep, sliding just a little bit. Then I slowed
    down even more, so we were just barely moving. I could hear Virgil slam another
    clip in his pistol.
    I looked over at Tim. He finally had his gun up,
    but he couldn’t turn enough to aim back out his window.
    The
    pickup came closer. I goosed the throttle with the clutch in, making sure the
    carburetor was clean. The second I saw the wash of the pickup’s lights,
    we took off again. The stock car slipped around that hairpin like water through
    a pipe.
    The pickup thought we were going much faster than we really
    were. By then, it was too late for them to slow down. I couldn’t see the
    crash, but I heard it.
    “They ain’t got no more!”
    Virgil yelled.
    W hen we got back, we found out that Tim was all cut
    up, but none of it was too bad. I didn’t even know I’d been nicked
    until Tim’s girl Merleen finished cleaning him up and came over to
    me.
    “Your ear’s bleeding, Eddie,” she said.
    “Probably some glass, like Tim got,” I told her.
    “Let me see … Damn! The whole lobe is about gone. You must
    have had a bullet go right by your face.”
    “I don’t
    remember anything like that.”
    “It’s all …
    burned, too. Like you got shot up close,” Merleen said.
    She
    poured some alcohol on my ear, then covered it with some white ointment from a
    tube. She wrapped a lot of tape all around my ear, real tight. It looked
    stupid, but it didn’t hurt.
    By then, I figured out what had
    happened, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want Virgil to feel
    bad.
    “ Y ou feel bad about it?” Mr. Clanton asked
    me.
    He meant that we had to cut up the stock car and get rid of all
    the pieces.
    “No, sir,” I told him.
    “That car
    was a
horse
for you boys,” Mr. Clanton said.
    I wanted to
    explain to him. How I didn’t care about cars, just about driving. But I
    thought that would sound dumb, so I just shook my head like I was sad. That was
    what Mr. Clanton expected of me, I think.
    V irgil showed me how to
    bury money in mason jars, like they use for canning. Money’s only paper.
    If you don’t seal it up real tight, it could rot on you, especially if
    you left it a long time.
    We couldn’t spend most of the money
    right away, Tim said. The men who were in that poker game had people all over
    the place. If we started throwing money around, word could get back to
    them.
    I asked Tim if he would hide my share for me.
    “I’ll hide half of it for you, Eddie,” he said.
    “The other half, you have to hide for yourself.”
    “How
    come?”
    “You can never have all your money in one
    place,” he said. “What if I had to come back for my own money? In a
    hurry, you understand. I might not have time to cover my tracks. Anyone coming
    hot on my heels would find your share, too.”
    “If that
    happened, you could take my share with you.”
    “Eddie
    … you can’t
always
get away. Not every time. If I got
    caught,
all
the money would be gone. Yours, too,
    understand?”
    “I guess I do. But I could
    always—”
    “Half,” Tim said. “No
    more.”
    V irgil was a