Tornado Alley Read Free Page A

and the clean sweet feeling of being born. He read that somewhere, in an old western ... but the fear can go on and on until you can't stand it, it's going to break you, and that's when the fear breaks—you hope.
    "Let's go," he croaks.
    He wonders if they are all as scared as he is—his gun seems clumsy and heavy in his hands, alien, malignant—sure they are, but you don't talk about it. Click of hammers and breeches.
    They are in the car now, shutting the door. He is sitting by the car door on the right side. The road is full of holes and water in the holes and deep ruts. Please God we don't get stuck—seeing themselves stumbling around in the woods with the bloodhounds closing in.
    "STOP! Douse the light!"
    Chug chug ... another car coming this way. Closer, the light coming around a corner of the narrow road, between heavy timber.
    Ishmael gets out slow, his feet like blocks of wood, and stands in the middle of the road, his hands up. The old car sputters to a stop. Old gray man behind the wheel. He walks over slow and shows the old man the wallet.
    "FBI."
    Ishmael's lips are numb. This is no pawn-shop badge; it's a perfect replica of the real thing, with cards to go with it. Made up by a forger in Toronto. Cost $150. Flashed him out of some tight spots.
    The old man sits there with his face blank.
    "We're looking for some bank robbers. Holed up around here. You live here long?"
    "Forty years."
    "Must know the area."
    He brings out a road map. "Mow we've got roadblocks up here, and here, and here. Is there any other way they could get out?"
    "Yep. Old wagon road cuts in right here. Bit rough, but they could make it. Comes out here on County Road 52. Yep, they could get clean away."
    "If your information checks out, you'll be eligible for a reward of $500." He hands the old man a card. "Just call the office in Tulsa."
    "I'll do that I surely will." The old man drives on.
    The driver studies the map under the dashboard lights: "Make it exactly five and three tenths to the turn-off."
    Old man on the phone: "That's right, posing as a G-man."
    Ishmael remembers old Doc Benway saying, "You face death all the time, and for that time you are immortal."
    A raccoon crosses the road, its eyes bright green in the headlights, not hurrying, slipping along—and it came with a rush, a sudden, evil-smelling emptiness and the raccoon was slipping lightly along the edge of it: "Get away to Mexico ... I've been there ... only way to live ... got five G's in a money belt... go a long way down there
    The fear is back around his chest, like a soft vise squeezing the air out, the gun heavy in his hand, he knows he couldn't lift it. All the strength is running out of him in waves of searing pain.
    They pull around a corner and light jabs into his eyes and his brain explodes in a white flash and he is freeee, throwing the door open, jumping out in the air as the windshield explodes glinting yellow shards and Tom throws a hand in front of his face.
    Very light on his feet, the tommy-gun light in his hands like a dream gun, when a sincere young agent—religious son of a bitch too—leaps to his feet, rifle levelled. He hasn't made his dog meat yeat, as they call it— "Animals!" his fellow agents tell him that's what they are, animals! and don't you forget it—
    "Get down for chrissakes!" bellows the D.S.
    And Ish stitches three .45's across the boy's lean young chest, an inch apart. He has the touch.
    "It's an instrument" Machine Gun Kelly told him. "Play it!"
    He must have dozed off in the car. Another shoot-out dream. He knows they have been driving all night, home safe now, coming down into a valley. Warm wind and a smell of water.
    "Thomas and Charlie."
    "What?"
    "Mame of this town." Ish remembers Thomas and Charlie. From here you climb ten thousand feet to the pass. Remembers Mexico City and his first grifa cigarette. Went crazy on it, wonderful crazy, wandering down Mifio Perdido and everywhere he sees sugar skulls and fireworks, kids