“I thought the bus was going to blow up, so I dragged you over here,” I said. “I was wrong.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
“What?”
“Let’s get outta here. You stupid or somethin’? We gotta run.”
Of course he was right. The Peckerwood justice system had proven to be anything but, and if I remained I faced perhaps another year tacked onto my sentence for surviving the crash.
“Come on, boy!” the cracker shouted, getting up to pull me into moving with him. “Run!”
And so we ran. Without looking back. Without looking at each other. We roughly yanked each other this way and that, not thinking about destination or even direction, moving only to put distance between the wreckage, the guards, the cops, and ourselves.
We ran through a hollow and got scratched thoroughly by a stand of some kind of thorny bush. Finally we stopped running, panting like dogs. Peckerwood tugged the chain and I pulled back and suddenly we were wrestling with it. He tried to yank me past him, but he lost his balance and I fell on top of him. He must have injured his back in the bus crash because he screamed out in pain that I had not inflicted. I stood up and over him, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
“My back be fucked up,” he said.
I fell to sitting on my butt.
“What your name, boy?” Peckerwood asked.
“Poitier.”
“What? That sound like some kinda girl’s name.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Patrice,” he said. He spat on the ground between his feet.
I said nothing.
He started to get up, pulling me by the chain. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” I asked.
“South,” he said.
“Atlanta,” I said.
“I gots people southa here.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I sayd we’se going south, boy,” Patrice said. He struggled to his feet and gave me his best cockeyed dangerous look, but when he pulled on the chain he grimaced in pain.
“Atlanta,” I said again, observing how my yank at the chain caused him such discomfort. “I’ve got people and money in Atlanta.”
“You ain’t got shit, nigger.”
I tugged the chain again, this time with a bit more authority. “Well, I don’t have an injured back, you stupid moron.” I pulled once more and watched him wince. “Atlanta.” As I said it I realized I didn’t know how I planned to get us there. I knew only that we needed to head east.
Due east we ran, or as close to east as I could guess, as hard and as fast as we could go, which wasn’t very because of Patrice’s injured back and our inability to move with any coordination whatsoever. We fell over each other like a couple of Keystone Kops, pulled ourselves up over each other, scrambled up steep hills and tumbled down muddy yet rocky embankments. We listened the while for the barking and howling of dogs, but heard nothing. I wouldn’t have thought to be concerned about dogs at all, but Patrice said, “Them dawgs is fast and if’n dey catch yo ass, yo ass is last week’s poke chops.”
We paused for another necessary breather, this time sitting side by side on a fallen log. I looked at him and realized just how ugly he was. His face was somehow much too big for his head; his crude features sprawled everywhere to no good effect. “Why do you think they chained us together?” I asked for no reason other than to make conversation.
“I guess that thar warden guy has got hisself one of dem senses of humor,” Patrice said.
“No doubt.”
Patrice looked at me and then at the sky. “Atlanta,” he said. “That don’t sound so bad. Dem’s some purty gals in Atlanta.”
“What did you do?” I asked. “Why did they put you in prison?”
“I stole me a fuckin’ car. Twere the finest midnight blue Buick deuce and a quarter with cream yeller insides you ever laid yo sad darkie eyes on, boy. And then I drove the thang into my girlfriend’s living room, the lyin’ cheatin’ bitch. What about you?”
“Apparently it’s illegal to be black in Peckerwood County.”
“If it ain’t, it oughta be.” He focused his eyes on the sky again. “Atlanta. If’n I had me some money I could be Charlie Potatoes in Atlanta.” He winced at a pain in his back.
A dog barked in the distance. We got up and ran. We climbed a short hill and found on the other side what could only be called a raging river. The water was churning, violent, wearing steadily away at boulders of all sizes. It was about fifty yards across, but it looked like a mile. The river’s noise was deafening. The din served to cover any sounds dogs might make, but also made them seem closer and more real. I could not hear what Patrice was yelling at me, but I understood that we had to cross. I took the first step into the, if not icy then cold as hell, water. The water pushed first at my ankles. I was surprised by the strength of the current even in the shallow water. Then it pushed at my knees, my thighs, until I was chest-deep, and it was all I could do to move my feet at all. I tried to drag my feet through each step, feeling the water wanting to lift me. I clung to slippery, slimy rocks. I picked up a foot to step over a stone and felt the force of the river seeking to push, pull, twist, and suck me into its flow. I glanced back at Patrice. He was tracing my path, gripping the chain that connected us in the fist of his cuffed hand. Suddenly I was weightless, completely without purchase, and I was gone, sucked under and popped back up like a cork. I felt a momentary snag as Patrice tried to hold onto a boulder, but then he was with me, bobbing and thrashing and crashing into each other and every rock we could find. I was pulled completely under, and I could see my mother’s face. I was in our old kitchen and she was baking cookies, talking about investments and the changing face of media. “News will be the new entertainment,” she said. “Trust me, Not Sidney. It won’t be enough to report it, news will have to be made. It’s going to be a bad thing, but it’s going to be.” She slid the first batch into the oven and closed the door. “That’s where we’ve gone. Everything in this country is entertainment. That’s what you need for stupid people. That’s what children want. Drink your milk.” Then my head was out again, and I was sucking in much-needed air. Though Patrice was tethered to me, he seemed very far away. I saw that we were passing a calmer section of water and I tried to kick toward it, but I had no control. Patrice was able to swing around into the friendlier water where he grabbed an overhanging branch. He screamed as he pulled me to him. We pulled ourselves into the safety of some driftwood and panted like dogs.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what, nigger?”
“For pulling me out.”
“She-it, I ain’t pulled you out.” He hacked and spat. “I kept yo ass from pullin’ me in.”
We dragged ourselves onto the bank, up and away from the river. It started raining, pouring. I was surprised at how bad the rain felt even though I was already soaking wet.
“Well, at least them dawgs gonna lose our scent trail for a while,” Patrice said, coughing up and spitting out more river.
I caught a whiff of him and wondered if that was true about the dogs losing our scent. I looked back and imagined the redneck trackers and the bloodhounds coming to the river’s edge. It wouldn’t take much more than a below-average intellect to conclude that we had crossed over, so to speak. We climbed and then came down a hill into an open scar of land. A rusting and idle backhoe was standing near a pit. The rain fell harder, and thunder rattled in the distance. The place seemed to be a construction site, but nothing was being built, and so I thought it was a fitting metaphor for Peckerwood County. The ground was sloppy with mud, and we sank to our ankles with each step. Then we heard the sound of a car or truck, and we jumped into the pit. We splashed and fought with the mud and standing water in the bottom until we were plastered against the red clay wall. The engine noise faded, and we looked around to find that the hole was about ten feet square and as high.