Free The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell Page B

sight when ducking was required, and he opened the second bottle for another slug of scotch he didn’t need. They came across two grinning kids with switches and a mutt driving hogs to the sale barn at Mountain View and that slowed them. The weather was fine, all kinds of sky and not cold or hot. It was called Eleven Point Road and only lightly stamped into the dirt and narrowly snaked those leaning hillsides. The kids used switches and the mutt to part the hogs at the next wide spot and Buster picked a way through. The bigger boy trotted beside the window and asked, “How fast will she go?”
    “Fast enough to get me there.”
    “Bare feet’ll get you there, mister.”
    “Not as fast.”
    “Show us how fast, would you?”
    They needed to make time back to town and came up fast and honking behind an old man in a mule-drawn wagon who didn’t pull aside but gave them looks over his shoulder that hinted he did not much respect the assumed dominance of automobiles on the road or those modernized people who did. Glencross said to pass the sonofabitch but there was no room and Buster said so.
    “Pass that sonofabitch.”
    “There’s no room.”
    “Maybe if you had just one tiny drink you’d get the nerve up to pass that sonofabitch.”
    “There’s no room.”
    “Here, perhaps a mere smell of this will do the trick.”
    “Get that away—I don’t drink—hold on to your hats back there.”
    The road-mud skirting broke away beneath the wheels when Buster drove wide to pass and dropped them down-slope to the south. The car slammed along with tires touching ground to bounce and ended as part of a tree with the hood crushed upward almost straight and Buster wasn’t moving. The steering wheel pushed into his chest. Released dashboard pieces, sprung seats, dust and personal items scrambled about inside the car or flew out. The motor ticked and wheezed and wheels spun and creaked. The windshield showed green leaves and blue sky behind cracked glass and Buster’s blood had reached the cracks to flow them as tracings. He made sounds but did not speak or move.
    Ruby had a broken left forearm and bruises on her neck and brow, but rolled from the backseat onto weeds. Gasoline smell was strong and spreading. Glencross heaved in his chest and hacked blood and phlegm but joined her in the weeds. When he could stand he looked in on Buster. You could see the future cross the banker’s mind and scare him cold. He saw tomorrow forget his name and title and stroll past him without so much as a fond glance his way, and dulled years ahead living faded from wealth, and didn’t care a bit for the depleted sights or sensations. Blood leaked onto his own coat and shirt collar from his nose. He went down to his knees at the car aimed up and reached under for the bottle of scotch and carried it to the steering wheel where he sprinkled whisky over Buster, whose eyes moved his way and blinked. Buster impaled was sloshed by whisky he craved in anguish every day but denied to himself of late in his strengthening pursuit of benediction, and weakened horribly as the homing smell gathered and rose about him. Glencross pulled Ruby to her feet, and said, “We’ve got to get to West Table.”
    “What about Buster?”
    “He’s a goner and we aren’t. I can’t be caught here.”
    “He’s not dead.”
    “They’ll smell him and that will be that. I can’t be caught here.”
    “We need to find help.”
    “There’s no help around anywhere near—look at that old man drive those mules away. Think he’s going for help?”
    “I think he might be.”
    “I can’t be caught here—coming?”
    And Ruby did so state to her sister that she considered running, gave thought to fleeing Buster as he died, but something in her center came awake and she saw … she had not suspected him to be this brute bigwig now revealed in alarm before her, but understood on the instant that he was, he was, and felt sickened in a manner she’d never been sickened