Nightwoods by Charles Frazier Read Free Book Online Page B

a bench feeding peanuts to pigeons, and when a group of them took to the air their wing beats were like muffled applause.
    Many high feelings rushed through Bud. Mainly he felt giddy disbelief over his impossible good fortune at the hands of the justice system. What a grand idea democracy is, where every fool who can’t get out of jury duty gets to have his opinion counted. Especially the two fools who held out and voted not guilty. And the judge didn’t even ask for a bond while the prosecution decided when and if to retry. He just said, Don’t leave the state, son. Also the splendid matter of the little retard bastards keeping their jaws shut. Though, of course, the lawyer had to piss on Bud’s parade by reminding him that even if they don’t retry soon, there’s no limitation on murder charges. Ninety years old, they can drag you out of your sickbed and have another go at you.
    And then, a more forward-looking early thought. Where was his goddamn money? Where else but with the mute witness kids?
    Bud walked down the street to the bank and checked Lily’s account balance. It was exactly what he’d guessed it would be. He zeroed it out, which only bought him a beat-up Remington revolver and one box of shells at a pawnshop. Only enough left over for a club sandwich and a Coke at the Woolworth’s counter.
    Homeless and penniless, but armed and pondering deeply, he wandered the streets of the capital city. The lawyer already had papers forthe house, so about all Bud could claim were the furnishings. Flea-market shit. Selling scratched chifforobes and stained mattresses was not how he cared to spend time. He knew Lily had family up in a hillbilly mountain town. Minus a mother who’d had the sense to fly away many years earlier to places unknown. So, nothing left here worth fooling with. But he had a damn hoard somewhere. Dusky dark, Bud hot-wired a new Chevy coupe and took off west.
    THAT FIRST NIGHT , in a thunderstorm, Bud hit two filling stations, one right after the other, for the day’s receipts. Pretty simple transactions, when it’s just you and one guy at the register, and you’re the one waving the gun. Afterward, Bud kept driving west on slick black roads for a couple of hours, and checked into a linoleum-floor motel in time to flop on the plaid bedspread and watch
The Twilight Zone
. Next morning, he did two more filling stations and a country store. Fifty miles onward, he drove the Chevy down a red dirt road and pushed it over a steep clay bank into a brown river. He knew enough about sinking cars from teenage joyriding to roll the windows down and open the trunk and hood. The car bobbed briefly, and then went all the way under, nothing but fat bubbles breaking the surface of the water. A rainbow sheen of gas trailing with the current. Reluctantly, Bud pitched the Remington and the unused ammo to midstream. Then, figuring you can’t be too careful, he pulled out the red bandanna he had worn over his face for the stickups, cowboy-movie-bandit style. He knotted it around a rock and threw it into the river and walked on to the nearest town.
    At the first used-car lot, he bought a happy-faced green Ford pickup from deep in the previous decade for two hundred and sixty dollars cash. He put the title in the glove box for future reference by any interested party, such as the highway patrol. They were welcome to have a look. Title and tag were clean, and he had been turned loose and was unarmed. The law was his friend, and he was off to start anew life in his farmer pickup with the wood sideboards grey as old fence palings. Such was the attitude he would strike if he got pulled. But he didn’t plan to get pulled. He drove carefully and no more than five over at all times.
    NIGHT AND RAINING AGAIN . Bud had driven across two mountain passes and through a dark twisting gorge. All the way, the narrow road hung either at the brink of a long drop or else ran right alongside a rush of white water. Few signs of life