The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 95
“Not Rye!”
He smiled wider and reached for his door handle, but I cranked the steering wheel to the right and he fell against me. I spun the car in a circle away from the courthouse. I was unsure where I was going—just going.
I’d always been going. Since I left Whitehall, maybe since birth. Always running. But in that instant I saw my brother in his new baggy suit—my God, the kid just wants to be somewhere—I was felled by regret and wonder—where was I going all those years? why couldn’t I just be still?
“Come on now, Gig,” said Early.
And I said again, “No. Not Rye.”
He made a quick thrust with his left hand, and I felt a tightness in my chest and let go of the throttle—my God, he’d put a blade in me, in my rib cage, the snake was murdering me—he was a goddamn murderer—and I wondered if I’d always known what kind of man this was.
We were barely moving now, listing like a boat in chop. He grabbed the satchel and reached for his door again, but I knew something else: that even with his knife in my side, and after a month in jail, I was still stronger than he was, and as he opened his door, I reached over with my right arm and pulled him into a headlock. I held his neck as tight as I’ve ever held anything, cranked my arm like I owned his skull, his hat tumbling to the floor of the car as I held his face just below the knife handle, and then he swung at me—but with his head down, he had no angle and couldn’t get anything behind it. I squeezed his treacherous neck as if juice might come out.
With my knee, I kicked the throttle lever up and the car began moving faster, Early squirming and fighting with me, and I sensed in him a shift as he realized how hard I would go to keep him away from my brother.
We ripped down Madison, struggling and squirming in the cab, the car veering and shaking, him grunting and choking and slapping at my legs, my face, anything—still no force behind his blows. I let go of the wheel with my left hand to give him a quick pop to the nose and then grabbed the wheel again.
He pawed at the knife, maybe to stab me once more, but I had his neck so tight he could do nothing but kick wildly, one leg out the flapping door, the other forward into the windshield, which cracked and buckled, and now he was crazed, like a dying animal, like anything dying, I guess, and still I squeezed that goddamn neck, choking him, and me, too, choking on the pain in my chest, so sharp now that I cried out, and he cried out, a hacking, bleating sound as we bounced over the first set of tracks—
We rattled over the second set and I hit the roof of the car, and we bounded over the third, then down a small embankment into a field and I slammed against the wheel but I held his neck as we tumbled downhill through weeds and rocks, shaking and falling until we were at the edge of the canyon and that was when I let go of the murderous son of a bitch and he sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, squealed in terror as I yelled in triumph, because for just a moment, Rye, we goddamn flew—
37
Rye was aware of sounds as he ran, his own breathing and crying, the clap of his new shoes on the street, people yelling, crashing metal, then a thunderous boom! and still he ran, down Madison Street toward the river gorge, over the railroad tracks, and down an embankment as black smoke began to waft up, and finally, he reached the gorge and peered over the edge.
He’d watched the car speed away, down Madison Street, past buildings, swerving and jerking, the passenger door flapping, and then it had crossed the tracks and then it was just gone.
And now he was looking down at what appeared to be the back half of a Model T, burning on a ledge on the steep hillside forty feet below. The front half of the car had been sheared off or blasted away and had cartwheeled over the gorge, another two hundred feet into the river. Smoking pieces of debris littered the banks and floated in the water, moving slowly downstream toward Peaceful Valley.
Rye stood panting at the edge of the canyon. He looked around. People were rushing to both sides of the gorge. On the bridge, a streetcar had stopped, and passengers were running to the railing to look over the side.
“Did you see that?” a man asked him.
Rye slumped over, his hands on his knees. He vomited in the grass.
Then he slid over the edge and began picking his way down the canyon wall to the burning wreckage, using his hands to hold on to grass and rocks. The hillside was steep, though, the footing loose, and he slipped and tumbled before catching himself on a tree root. He slid on his belly toward the burning car. “Gig!”
He reached the small ledge that had caught part of the car, and Rye stood shielding his face from the smoke. He was staring at the smoldering rear end of a Model T, the torn backseat, two back fenders, one broken wheel, and the twisted frame of the top. The rest of the car had been shorn completely off and tumbled down the canyon or blasted into the river.
Down there, he could see part of a tire, floating around the bend, toward Peaceful Valley, where they had all met.
“Ryan!”
He looked up. A big