“What’s the matter?” Evans said.
“The wheel busted.”
“Fix it.”
“The tire split. I got to go back to the line shack for another one.”
“You ain’t going nowhere. Let me see it.”
Toussaint gripped the tree limb tightly. He waited for Evans to get close. He raised up quickly and struck him squarely across the forehead. The limb was rotten and it broke in his hand. Evans fell back heavily and lay still, his cork sun helmet beside him. Then Toussaint was racing across the bare strip of ground beside the brush pile, expecting to hear a guard call out to the others, into the protection of the woods, the branches whipping against his face and tearing his clothes. He tripped across the vines that covered the ground, and the thornbushes broke his skin. He ran through the undergrowth and briar, and then the woods began to thin and he could see the green grass on the riverbank through the trees.
He ran down the slope and dove into the water. Swimming out to the middle, he let the current catch him and carry him downstream. He looked at the high clay banks and the trees hanging over the water. There was a houseboat tied to the shore. He didn’t see anyone on it. He went underwater and stayed down until he believed he was past it. Some sunken tree branches brushed under his legs. He came up for air and swam towards the opposite bank. The river made a curve ahead, and beyond it a logging company was working in the woods. He walked up through the shallows onto the mud flat. The police would be delayed while the dogs had to hunt along the bank for his scent after crossing the river. He entered a pecan orchard and stopped to get his breath and pull off his boots. The leather was wet and would blister his feet, and running was faster barefooted. The orchard opened onto a meadow; to the right there was a narrow bayou that cut back through a thicket. He carried his boots in one hand and followed the bayou, walking in the shallows as much as possible so the dogs wouldn’t be able to track him. He took off his shirt and turned it inside out to hide the stenciled prison letters and put it back on again.
By late afternoon he had reached a crossroads off the main highway. There was a grocery-and-hardware store on the corner and some farmhouses in the distance. A bridled mule was hitched to the porch railing of the store. A Negro came out with a cloth sack of groceries, got on the mule, and rode down the gravel lane. Toussaint knew the police would have the main roads blocked, and the town constables would be watching for him in the small settlements. He needed food, a change of clothes, a gun, and ammunition. He wanted to keep going south until he hit the swamp country around Bayou Lafourche; once there, he could get a pirogue and slip through the canals into Barataria where he could hide indefinitely. He had relatives in Barataría, and people in that part of the country cared little for the law. Later, when the police had stopped looking for him, he could get out of the state.
He hid in a cornfield and waited for nightfall. A police car came down the road and stopped in front of the store. An officer got out and spoke to the men sitting on the porch. He went back to his car and stood with one foot on the running board and talked into the microphone of his radio. Toussaint could see the sunlight glint on the butt of his revolver. He wished he had a gun. He felt helpless without one. There was a chance they could take him back to the work camp if he had no weapon.
The officer got in his car and drove off. Toussaint smelled the clean odor of the earth. He rubbed some dirt between his hands. This was good land. The corn was high and green, and there was a field of strawberries across the road. Around his home most of the men were fishermen, but he liked the land and things growing. It had been a long time since he had been on a farm. There had been his time in prison, and before that the city where he saw nothing except concrete buildings and the faces of people he didn’t understand, nor who understood him. He could have lain in the field without ever getting up. The soil was cool and a thin breeze ruffled through the cornstalks. A cottontail jumped into his row and stopped, its ears pressed down against its back, the nose twitching. We got to keep moving, don’t we, rabbit? Toussaint thought. If we don’t there won’t be no more cornfields or strawberries or going home. There won’t be nothing.
That night he waited until the store closed. He could see two men playing dominoes through the window. The light went off in back and the two men and the owner came out on the porch. They got into a car and drove down the road. Toussaint moved forward to the edge of the field and remained watching to make sure they were not coming back for anything. He could see the lighted farmhouses in the distance. The moon was down, and the road was dark. He could hear the crickets and the frogs in the woods. He crossed the road and went around to the back of the store. He pushed in the screen on the door with his hand until it broke from its fastening. The inside door had a glass pane in it. He tried to force the door by slowly pushing his weight against it. It was bolted. He got a piece of brick and wrapped it in newspaper. He broke out the glass near the corner of the frame and reached in and slid the bolt loose.
He was thirsty. He hadn’t had a drink of water since he swam the river. He took a bottle of pop out of the cooler and drank it. He opened another and drank it while he went along the shelves and took the cans of food he would need. He found a gunnysack behind the counter and put in the cans. There was a rack with used clothing and work clothes by the front door. He took a shirt and a pair of trousers and put them in the sack with the cans and tied a knot in the top. He set the sack on the counter and looked around the store. The guns rested on wooden pegs against the wall. They were all secondhand. He took a Winchester off its pegs and worked the action. He could find only two boxes of shells for it. He loaded the magazine and put the rest of the shells in his pocket. He would need a knife also. He slid back the cover of a glass case and chose a good Queen knife with a yellow bone handle and two long blades. He picked up the gunnysack from the counter and looked out the front window at the road. He went out the back door and circled around the store, crossed the road, and ran through the cornfield into the woods.
He went deep into the trees before he stopped. He took the shirt and trousers from the sack and changed clothes. He rolled his prison denims into a ball and dug a hole in the leaves and soil with his hands and buried them. He traveled south through the meadows and wooded areas, avoiding the roads and farm settlements. He made good time, and by dawn he had found a deserted cabin in a pinewood where he could hide until the next night. One side of the cabin was stored with grain, and there was a damp cool mealy smell inside. There were tracks in the grain where the squirrels had come to feed. The roof of the cabin had a big hole in it, and Toussaint could see the blue light in the east spreading across the sky. He was tired, and after he had eaten he lay back in the grain and slept.
It was noon when he awoke and heard the dogs barking. They had picked up his trail at the crossroads. He grabbed his rifle and ran out of the cabin into the hot light. He hadn’t thought they would catch up with him so soon. He cut through the woods and hoped that he could find a bayou where he could throw the dogs off his scent. The trees were thickly spaced and slowed his running; there was no bayou. The barking of the dogs seemed farther behind him now, but that was because the police had stopped to search the grounds around the cabin; it would not take them long to discover that he had just fled and was less than a mile away. He had left the sack of food behind.