Feast for Thieves Read Free

when I heard him. I swear I did. The man spoke loud, although I couldn’t tell from what direction his voice came. Some man I didn’t recognize, maybe a lawman who sprinted alongside the riverbank. He shouted at me the same clear way I’d shouted at Crazy Ake exactly eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds earlier by my count of Mississippis.
    “Hey fella!” came the voice. “You want to live?”
    How that man’s voice was reaching me so far under the water, I couldn’t rightly fathom, but there under the river, caught as I was and speeding along in the current of destruction, I nodded my head and hoped a saving rope would soon follow.
    “Then find the good meal and eat your fill,” it said. “Swear you’ll do that?”
    I nodded again.
What a crazy thing for the man to say
, I thought. Maybe I was going unconscious, but just then the tree broke loose like a strong hand moved it, the tangle of branches passed over my head, and I shot to the surface. A moment later my knees scraped gravel on a shallow section of riverbed. I stumbled forward out of the river, walked three steps onto dry ground, and vomited a bellyful of muddy water.
    No one was around. I flopped down on my side and stayed flat against the cold river stones for some time, panting. I could see the river bent right where I washed up. The river’s force must have propelled me to safe ground, and the lawman, whoever had yelled at me, was lost in the dusk. Maybe passed by on the bank.
    Little by little, the rain let up. Somewhere a coyote howled. Crazy Ake was nowhere to be seen, same as the deputy and the fella in the overalls chasing me in their car. The sack of money was still tied to my belt. After a time, I stood and walked to the river’s edge. I washed away the vomit’s slime from my mouth,then scrambled a mile or two more downstream on my feet, all the while taking stock of what to do next. I found a thicket to hide myself and waded into the midst of the trees. Again I listened carefully. No sirens. No dogs in the distance. If the shouting lawman had been near he would have caught me by now. I didn’t know exactly how far I’d traveled, but I might be ten miles away from Cut Eye now at the rate that river raced.
    A piece of flint lay in my jacket pocket, same as I always carried it, so I gathered some brushwood, lit a tiny flame so as not to be seen, and set about drying the chill out of my wet clothes. The thicket covered me well enough, so in stealth I counted out the cash, ventilating stacks of bills in the heat of the flame so they wouldn’t stay wet and grow moldy, and saw we’d bounced out of the bank with exactly $18,549. That amount of money would solve any man’s aggravations, I knew, including mine. But when I stared at the loot it looked oddly tarnished, as decaying as an enemy corpse found in the woods. As impossible as it seemed for someone like me, I actually whispered out loud, “I don’t want it.”
    ’Course, I didn’t know what to do with the money neither. A man can’t be roaming around the Texas countryside with fifteen years’ wages stuffed in a gunnysack. I clambered halfway up the bank, far enough so high water would never touch the mark, and eyed out a location at the base of a tree. I scraped out a hole, lined it with rocks to prevent rot, and buried the money still in the sack.
    My stomach rumbled. The adrenaline buzz of nearly dying gave me the shakes, and I reckoned some food might do me good. After making it up the rest of the bank, I stopped, momentarily mesmerized by the clearing of the clouds. The wind blew stormlike, except the storm was leaving, not coming, and high in the night sky as far as I could see was a breathtaking blue and black. Below that were the ends of a sunset, the purples and reds, and low against the horizon were the last oranges and yellows, all fire and brilliant, an absolute pure light.
    I didn’t want to leave this sight of wonderment but I knew a criminal needs to make haste. In