The Highway Kind(61)

“Yeah,” Terri said. “I’d be mad, I was them. I can hold a grudge.”

“Damn right,” the man said. “What I told Smat. Mama Johnson didn’t raise no idiots.”

“I guess that’s a matter of opinion, Mr. Johnson,” Terri said.

“I swear, girl, I’m gonna cut you from gut to gill if you don’t hush up.”

Terri went silent. I glanced at her in the mirror. She was smiling. Sometimes Terri worried me.

“Thing was, I couldn’t let him mail that map, now, could I? So we had this little scuffle and he got the better of me by means of some underhanded tricks and took off with the car, left me stranded but not outsmarted. You see, I knew he had a gal he had been seeing up near Lawton, and the money was around there, so I figured he’d go back. He might mail that map, and he might not. Finding the map in your car when I come up on missy here, that was real sweet. I knew then you knew Smat, and that he was the uncle you were going to see.”

“Did Uncle Smat ever mention us?” I said.

“No,” Johnson said. “I hitched my way back to Oklahoma, went up to where we buried the money one night, had me a shovel and all, but I didn’t use it. Wasn’t nothing but a big hole under that tree. Smat had the money. I thought, Damn him. He pulled it out of that hole on account of me. I didn’t know if he reckoned to give the bad boys a new map with the new location of the money or if he took it with him, deciding he wasn’t going to give it back at all. Now he could keep it and not have to split it, which might have been his plan all along. I was down in the dumps, I tell you.”

Terri was leaning over the seat now, having forgotten all about Johnson’s harsh warning and the knife.

“Sure you were,” she said. “That’s a bitter pill to swallow.”

“Ain’t it?” Johnson said.

“I’d have been really put out,” Terri said.

“I was put out, all right. I was thinking, I caught up with him, I’d yank all his teeth out with pliers. One by one, and slow.”

“He wouldn’t have liked that,” she said.

“No, he wouldn’t. But like I said, I knew he liked a gal in Oklahoma, and I’d met her, and he was as moony over her as a calf is over its mother, though it wasn’t motherly designs he had.”

“It wouldn’t be that, no, not that,” Terri said.

I thought, How does Terri know this stuff? Or does she just sound like she knows?

“I got me a tow sack of goods I bought with some of that money I had, made my way to her house, and hid out in the woods across the road from her place. I lived off canned beans and beer for two or three days, sleeping on the dirt like a damn dog, getting eat up by chiggers and ticks, but he didn’t come by. I didn’t know where he was staying, but it wasn’t with her. I was out of beer and on my last can of beans and was about to call in the dogs on my plans when I seen him pull up in front of her house. He got out of his car, and, let me tell you, he looked rough, like he’d been living under someone’s porch. He went inside the house, and I hid in the back floorboard of his car. When he come out and drove off, I leaped up behind him and put my knife to his throat, which was all I had, having lost my gun in a craps game on the way back to Oklahoma. I had some good adventures along the way. If you two are alive later, I’ll tell you about them.”

Considering Johnson was telling us everything but what kind of hair oil he used, I figured he wouldn’t want us around later. We knew too much.

“So there I was with my knife to his throat, and you know what he did?”

“How would we?” Terri said.

“He drove that car into a tree. I mean hard. It knocked me winded, and the next thing I know I’m crawling out through the back where the rear windshield busted out, and then I’m falling on the ground. I realize I’m still holding the knife. When I got up, there was Smat, just wandering around like a chicken with its head cut off. I yelled at him about the money, and he just looked at me and seemed drunk as a skunk, which I know he ain’t. I say, ‘Smat. You tell me where that money is, or I’m going to cut you a place to leak out of.’ He says to me, ‘I ain’t got no mice.’”

“Mice?” Terri said.

“I’m sure that’s what he said. Anyway, I got mad and stabbed him. I’m what my mama used to call real goddamn impulsive. Next thing we’re struggling around, and he falls, and I fall, and I bang my head on the side of the car, and when I wake up I’m on my back looking at stars. I got up and seen Smat had done took off. So I went looking for him high and low, thinking I’d got a good knife thrust or two on him, and he’d be dead thereabouts. But he wasn’t. So I went wandering around for a few days, thumbed a ride back to Texas, knowing Smat knew a fellow just over the river. But Smat wasn’t there. I cut that guy good to find out if he knew anything about where Smat was, but I killed him for nothing. He didn’t know shit. I went wandering for a couple more days, and then I seen you two at that station. Ain’t that something? Ain’t life funny?”

“Makes me laugh,” Terri said.

“I wandered a couple more days, finally caught a ride from a farmer and was dropped off at the Red River bridge, and when I got to the other side, what do I see but your car and this little fart outside of it, and I think, Where’s that boy? He’s gonna drive me. Then I seen the map on the seat and knew you knew Smat and knew he hadn’t mailed any map at all, ’cause there was the same one he’d drawn. I figured you knew where he was, that he’d been in your car, and then the rest of it you can put together.”