Drifting South

“I’ll make sure she gets home. I’ll take care of her. You know I’ll take care of her. Now go!”

“But why was he looking to just kill—”

I was looking at Amanda Lynn, begging for some answer, for her to just say something, and then at Ma, when another blast came. This time I found out that the yelling and the gunshots had come from three elders who were trying to part the crowds. Elder Bertrand Puckett had stuck his shotgun straight up in the air and fired it. The other two elders were carrying their double-barrels at the ready.

I looked over at Uncle Ray still laying there in a heap with his legs tangled up underneath him. His eyes were still wide-open, the front of his white shirt was red and the dirt around him had turned into a dark maroon color.

Ma let go of Amanda Lynn, then half dragged and half pushed me the last few feet to the car, flung open the door and I jumped in it or I’d of fell into it with Ma pushing me so hard. “I’ll find you, baby,” she said. “I promise I’ll find you. Don’t get off the dirt roads.”

She slammed the door.

I looked at Amanda Lynn, dropped the key on the floorboard, found it and then couldn’t hardly get it into the ignition with my fingers not working. So Ma grabbed the key back from me, fired that car up and started yelling “go” over and over and over, as I just held on to the steering wheel.

“Get out of that car!” Elder Warren Ratcliffe ordered. He’d taken cover behind the corner of Steiner’s Fine Men’s Clothier and had his shotgun pointed right at my head. Ma ran and put herself between him and me, waving her hands in the air and screaming for nobody to shoot because it was her boy in that car.

She then turned back toward me, pleading with her eyes for me to get out of there.

My leg was barely able to hold in the clutch as I jammed the shift straight up the column into Reverse and spun the car around until it was in the road. That’s when Ma grabbed Amanda Lynn’s hand and they ran nearer the elders as she begged them again not to shoot.

I watched in the rearview mirror as Amanda Lynn pulled away from Ma and ran back toward me before she fell in the street right where we’d just stood. She went to her knees and screamed my name as the elders kept ordering me to get out of the car as they slowly circled Amanda Lynn and Ma, waving away the crowds with their shotguns when they weren’t pointed at me.

I started crying like I hadn’t cried since I was a little kid, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I did what Ma said. I slumped down in the seat, popped the clutch and stomped the gas pedal to the floor, praying those elders weren’t gonna shoot. I never let my foot off until I’d climbed the first hill that led out of Shady Hollow.

I wasn’t planning on running all the way to the coal towns just over the border in West Virginia like Ma’d said. I was just gonna go far enough where I couldn’t hear Amanda Lynn’s screaming or Ma’s yelling no more. I pulled the revolver out of my pocket and laid it on the seat beside me because the long barrel was pushing into my leg and the butt of it was jammed into my stomach, making me sit almost sideways. I then sat up straight once I was out of the elders’ shotgun range and I drove that old car as hard as it would go up the steep hill out of Shady, and almost tore the bottom out of it bouncing over ruts.