Turkey Ranch Road Rage (22 page)

“Damn grasshoppers.” Lucille gripped the steering wheel with both hands and leaned forward, her nose just above her clenched fingers, squinting to see through the darkness and bug splatters. “Good thing I know the roads.”

Yes, a good thing, that. I chanced a glance in her direction and had an unfortunate thought, considering the current circumstances. “Did you ever have that last cataract surgery?”

She wiggled her butt in the seat and leaned a half-inch closer to the windshield. “I can see just fine out of my good eye, now shut your mouth so I can concentrate on driving.”

Crap. I’d just survived being kidnapped, gassed twice and manhandled by a smelly ape and now I was going to die in car crash? Seemed kind of anticlimactic.

Since there was only one way to Redwater Falls from Kickapoo and we were on it, there were no shortcuts and no options until we hit the edge of town, which was about ten miles away. The car behind us was keeping up with us and maybe even getting closer. It was hard for me to tell since even a quick glance sent me reeling.

“Oh, my Lord,” Lucille shrieked. “He’s flashing his headlights at us like we don’t know he’s back there. “Did you call the police?”

“I’m trying. If I look down to dial the phone…” I said, doing just that. A wave of nausea hit.

“Well, I sure wish you’d try harder because that car is just getting closer.” She stomped her foot on the accelerator—hard—but the car didn’t respond. “This damn Buick won’t go over ninety-seven.”

Yes, that meant that’s how fast we were going. Ninety-seven miles per hour in the dark on a two-lane road with a half-blind geriatric at the wheel and a windshield covered with bug guts. What could go wrong?

“Now, he’s waving something out the window! Oh, my Lord,” she screeched, bobbing her head up and down between looking forward and looking in the mirror. “He’s gonna shoot!” She unclutched one hand from the steering wheel and wagged it at the floorboard. “Get my gun out of my purse and hand it to me. Hurry up!”

I don’t usually agree with my mother on much of anything, especially regarding firearms. Maybe it was pure fear, revenge for the kidnapping or a motion sickness death wish, whatever the case, we were on the same page tonight. I kept my eyes focused on the road straight ahead and felt around beneath my legs for her purse then pulled it up into my lap. I fished around inside and found the soft case, fumbled with the zipper and pulled out the gun. “Is it loaded?”

“Of course it’s loaded, Jolene, what good is a gun if it’s not loaded? Now, hand it to me.”

“You can’t shoot, you’re driving. You can’t do both.”

“Well then, you reach over here and hold the wheel.”

“That seems like a really bad plan going a hundred miles an hour, not that anything we’re doing here is a good one.” I lifted the gun and held it out in front of me, trying to get it level enough with my line of vision to see what I was dealing with. “You just pay attention to the road.”

Lucille sucked in her breath. You’re not going to try to shoot it are you?”

“If I have to. I’ve done it before.” At the handgun handling and safety class Jerry wishes he’d never taken me to. “Are you sure you saw a gun?”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll just stop this car. You can hunt around for the number nine on your phone while I shoot them all myself right here and now!” She let off the accelerator. “Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

“Do not stop this car!”

She jumped and the car lurched forward. “All right! Quit yelling at me!”

“Just keep driving.” I clutched the door and tried to balance with the movement. “I’ll try to get them to back off.”

Lucille growled and clutched the wheel tighter, possibly realizing that I had a point. Possibly. “Well, you be careful with it.” She paused for added emphasis. “Be real careful.”

Now, do not think that her concern was for my safety. Oh, no, indeed. You see, her concern was for the gun. That pistol is like a daughter to her. Actually, no, much better than that. She loves the gun and has great admiration and respect for it, not that any of my childhood neuroses were cropping up at this particular inopportune moment. As I held the gun in my hand, something about it felt different. Or maybe I just didn’t really remember. Or care. Until now. “Does this damn thing have a clip in it?”

“I already told you it’s loaded. I always keep a full clip in it at the house. It comes in handy as you well know.”

Indeed I did know that. A lot of people knew that.

“It’s on safety, of course. I always have the safety on. You know about the safety, right?”

“I took the damn class, Mother. I know about the safety.”

“Well, you most certainly do not know about the safety because they’re all a little different. This one is real easy to find with your thumb there on the left side. Flip it forward.”

I fumbled around until I thought I had the safety released. Doing it all by feel was harder than you’d think. “Is there one in the chamber?”

“Now why would you ask a dumb thing like that? I thought you took a class, Jolene. Didn’t they teach you anything at all? Oh, for Pete’s sake just take it off safety, chamber a round and shoot. Like in the movies.”

Nothing was ever like in the movies. “This doesn’t feel right,” I said, trying to find a comfortable hold. The handgrip’s different. Rubbery and fatter.”

“That’s the laser sight. Don’t you know anything?”

“Apparently not.”

“Oh, that’s right. The laser’s new. It’s a new gun too, but you wouldn’t know the difference about that. This one is a Kimber Ultra-Elite. The name kind of bothered me at first, what with that little twerp Kimberlee always coming to mind over it. Then I decided to just call her Miss Ellie and that just works out fine.”

“Oh, for godsakes.”

Lucille wiggled her fingers on the steering wheel and glanced at the rear view mirror. “Well, I enjoy my guns. Now, get it pointed out the window and get on with it. This one works the same way as my Little Lady, except for the laser. The old sight had a switch, remember. Well, this is better. Just squeeze the handgrip. You’ll see a red dot. Or, you could just shoot the thing. You supposedly had a class.”

Oh, if only we had time for me to supposedly and properly respond to that little comment. I squeezed the handle and a red dot of light danced across the dash of the car. Okay. I had the safety off and could work the sight. Now all I had to do was chamber a round and shoot. I did not want to do it.

“Did you chamber the first round, Jolene, because I didn’t hear it. It’s a real distinctive sound and I didn’t hear it. I don’t have time to explain every little thing to you so why don’t you just hand it over here to me and I’ll take care of it.”

Oh, how I’d like to unleash my scathing wit on Mother Control Freak about now. “Just chill, I’m getting it!”

“Well, you better hurry up. They’re getting closer,” she said, eyeing the mirror. “I’d go for the radiator.”

“Yes, Mother, I realize you have a thing for radiators.”

“Don’t be getting smart with me, Missy, I hit what I shoot at,” she snapped.

I took a deep breath and told myself I had no choice. The vehicle was maybe four car lengths behind us, and any Driver’s Ed student knows that’s not safe. Not safe at all when you’re going ninety-seven miles per hour. I took a deep breath and stared straight ahead to keep what little balance I’d found. My hands were shaking, but I held the gun in front of me with my left hand and pulled the slide back with the right. Snap. “Fine. Done.”

“Well, it is about time. I knew I hadn’t heard you do that, I just knew it. Now lean out there and shoot ‘em!”

I did not want to do this. Still shaking, I slid around in the seat and worked my knees up under me and leaned my left arm on the door. I snaked the gun out the window, using my left hand and leaned out so I could see. However, going backwards made the world spin in the wrong direction and the hurricane force winds whipped my hair around, stinging my eyes. This did not seem like a good plan on any level.

“Hurry up! Shoot!”

I held as steady as I could, keeping close to the car so they couldn’t see what I was doing or shoot at me easily if they were so inclined. Besides, I didn’t want to kill anybody, I only wanted to keep whoever it was from following us, warn them off. It had seemed the only choice we had a minute ago. “I don’t think we should do this.”

“Shoot!”

“They haven’t really done anything wrong.”

“Shoot! Now!”

I aimed the pistol toward the car and looked for the squiggly red dot. With the hair in my eyes I couldn’t see much of anything except headlights blinding me. They apparently could see the red laser beam, however, because they started backing off in a hurry.

“Shoot!” Lucille screeched again. She let off the gas and hit the brakes, which was sort of not the point of a getaway, but adrenaline was screaming just as loud as she was. “Shoot it! Hurry!”

So I did.

Twice.

And then I leaned the whole top half of my body out the window and shot again, this time with two hands on the grip. Rapid fire. “I’m empty,” I said, ducking back inside.

She punched the accelerator and we were off again. “Looks like you at least got a headlight, she said, glancing in the rear view mirror. “But they’re still coming. Hurry up and reload.”

“I’m doing the best I can here, Mother, now where’s the damn clip release?” She told me—in excruciating detail—adding further tedious instructions on how to release one clip and slide in a new one. “I’m not a monkey doing brain surgery. I know how to change a damn clip for godsake. You just get us to the police station.”

“I know what to do, Jolene, now would you let me drive.”

“Absolutely, Mother Dear. I wouldn’t dare presume you don’t know what you’re doing and that I needed to tell you how to do every little thing as if you’re a three-year-old.”

“Yes, well, that’s why you ought not do it.” She leaned closer to the steering wheel. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Jolene, really I am, but would you kindly shut up so I can watch the road. You’re distracting me. And it’s dark.”

Meaning, she couldn’t see for shit.

I managed a glance in the side mirror. “Looks like they’ve stopped chasing us. You can slow down some now.” And significantly reduce our chances of a one-car fatality. “I’ll let you know if I see lights again.”

“Well, maybe you did hit the radiator after all,” she said, begrudgingly. “Even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then.” She let off the accelerator. By the time we were down to 75 it seemed like we were crawling. “They could still be driving without their lights, so you pay attention. I’ll speed up again if I have to, don’t you worry about that.”

Nope, that was not one of the blind hog’s worries. I had plenty of others, however.

After a few minutes, I saw a cluster of lights and what looked like a tall tower sticking up out of the middle of it up ahead on the right. “Is that an oil well going in over there?”

Lucille glanced over but did a good job of keeping her eyes and the car on the road. It seemed like she’d slowed down a little more too. “Yes, I believe it is.”

“Is that what you saw behind your house?”

“Sort of. I don’t think it was that big though. There was other equipment around, but I don’t know about those boxes and things, I really couldn’t see all of it.”

As we went flying by the road that led out to the rig, I noticed a truck pulling away from the group and heading toward us. It had a row of yellow lights across the cab and a pole sticking up behind. “That’s Gilbert Moore coming out of there.”

“Well, what’s he doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“That’s a rig. Maybe it’s his or maybe he was just out there fixing something on it. Guess he works all hours.”

“Well, I don’t trust him and now here he is again. I wish I’d cornered him at the Dairy Queen when I had the chance. If we weren’t running for our lives, I’d drive right over there right now and pin him in where he’d have to face me. He’d be giving me some straight answers, that’s what he’d be doing.”

I watched the lights on the truck from the side mirror. He was almost out to the road.”

“You keep an eye out and see where he goes. If he follows us, you just shoot him too.”

“Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.” It really did. “I’ll go for the radiator.”

She glanced over at me, unsure of whether she should expound on the fact that I’d learned something from her or chastise me for being a smartass. Yes, we know which it was, but thankfully she kept silent for once.

I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I saw Gilbert Moore’s truck turn the other way and a gush of air burst from my lips. “He’s not following us.”

“Hmmph. That’s too bad. I had plans for him.”

Chapter
Fifteen

Lucille pulled up to the Redwater Falls Police Station in less than five minutes. We even arrived without anyone tailing us or a fatal high speed car crash. Mother parked near the door in a “no parking” area and we hurried inside.

There were a couple of things that convinced the officer at the front desk that we needed help. One was, of course, the very obvious use of duct tape on my face. That in itself, he noted, wasn’t particularly unusual, or even indicative of a crime, but it did get his attention and was a good backup for the story we told.