Bootleg Freight

Samson did a fine job repairing the bullet hole in Jud Kowoski’s casket with some wood filler and sandpaper. Only the closest of inspections would have revealed the original oak plank had ever been tampered with, much less sustained gunfire.

He did a fine job with Jud also. In fact, fixing his old friend proved easier than repairing the box he would be buried in. The fully jacketed .38 caliber round passed through Jud’s right shoe and into his heeland where she stops nobody knows, for there was no exit point to be found.

Samson simply replaced Jud’s shoes with a pair of Isaac’s old dress shoes on the off chance anybody was inquisitive enough to inspect the man’s feet, should anyone even bother to open the coffin, which was an equally unlikely event. The chance of either happening was nearly zero but Isaac seldom, if ever, left anything to chance.

Unlike Jud’s shot to the foot, Isaac’s leg was a different, for he could still bleed and feel pain. After a safe and rapid descent down the north side of Jelico mountain he and Billy stopped at an old truckstop in Williamsburg, Kentucky just as the sun dropped from view behind a ridgeline to the west.

Isaac’s sock had absorbed a considerable amount of blood. The bullet had passed through the inside of his left calf, missing the bone and passing through muscle. There was no damage to any arteries so the bleeding, as bad as it looked, could have been much worse.

Billy bought a half pint of vodka in the truckstop to rinse the wound and a white tee shirt from the suitcase in the trunk served as a tourniquet. Isaac was starting to feel the effects of the blood loss but insisted on making it home without another stop. Billy went back inside to get him a large paper cup of black coffee with extra sugar, for energy if nothing else.

Ten miles north of Williamsburg Billy slowed the Diamond Reo down to ten miles per hour as he crossed the south fork of the Cumberland river, flowing some fifty feet below the bridge. He first tossed the Colt .44 Magnum through the open passenger window, out into the black night and down to the rapid currents below. With a second or two of hesitation he did the same with the double barreled Remington. Leave nothing to chance. Isaac kept his shoulder holstered .32, for it was a registered purchase and it played no part in the mayhem they left behind in Tennessee.

*

 

Isaac was sitting in a rocking chair on his wrap around porch sipping on some hot tea when Billy eased up to the house in his Chevy Bel Air at eleven the next morning, just as Isaac had requested.

“Mornin’ Boss,” Billy said as he approached the porch steps.

“Good morning, Billy. Would you care for some tea? I’ll have Samson bring you some,” Isaac said as he motioned Billy to sit in another rocking chair.

“No, sir, but I appreciate it. I had some breakfast in town already. How’s your leg feeling?”

“It only hurts when I walk but I’ll survive. I deserve more than that for my error.”

“What are you talking about, error? You were a regular Stonewall Jackson down there. Them boys never knew what hit ‘em.”

“Ah, but the devil is in the details, as they say.”

“How’s that Boss?”

“I underestimated my opponent. Instead of laying down my weapon to use both hands on the door, we should have used one hand each, leaving us each a hand to hold our weapons.

“I made the assumption they would be as clumsy with their guns as they were with their tailing technique. But that fellow was a fast draw. Had his aim been true I would have found myself lying beside Jud in that trailer and after they shot you, we both would have tossed over the cliff.”

Billy had no suitable response but respected his Boss even more for admitting what he perceived as a failure.

“Anyway, that’s not why I asked you to be here this morning. First of all, I know you loved your friend, as did I, but we cannot attend any funeral. I made arrangements this morning for his body to be shipped to the veterans cemetery in Lexington tomorrow. I saw to it to have an American flag on his casket.”

Seeing Billy was about to object, Isaac held up a finger, stopping him. “Hear me out, please.”

“The Buick has probably been found by now, possibly yesterday if somebody saw it before dark. The Tennessee State Police will be the investigating agency. It is possible they may figure out who owned the car by the numbers on the engine block, which if original will match the title records.

“They will never identify the bodies though. They may even think it was a drunk driver who was thrown clear and walked away, leaving his passengers to burn to death. With the front seat empty, they could imagine a number of scenarios.

“But Tobler will know. He won’t tell the State boys because he can’t account for his men being so far out of their jurisdiction off the book. But by God he will know what happened and he will call Tinsley with some concocted charges to arrest us on.

“Tinsley will believe Tobler over us because he’s a law man. That’s just the way it works. It doesn’t matter if we can prove our innocence or not because once we leave here in cuffs we will never make it to Knoxville and we will never be seen again. I give him two days to put it together and we have to be long gone by then.”

Billy took a moment to absorb what he had just heard before responding.

“I ain’t got nothing of value besides that old Chevy right there and what money I got in my back pocket. Aside from this job you provided me I don’t have a single responsibility in the world. Hell, I could be in El Paso by the end of the week and over in Juarez whenever I wanted drinking tequila and courtin’ senoritas and nobody would miss me or give a #### where I was.

“But you have this fine home, your trucking business, the horses, your brother to take care of. You cain’t just up and disappear like that.”

Isaac nodded thoughtfully. He was grateful to hear Billy’s concern, for it reinforced the decision he had made.

 

Thank-you so much. I have done the same thing when getting involved in one of my favorites like John Sandford or Stephen Hunter. Sandford releases two books a year lately. I don't see how he does it but it's not enough for me.

I plan on returning to work tomorrow so the writing pace will slow down to its usual snail's pace.

Bear in mind you are basically reading first draft stuff here. There are changes on Word program I use that I can't do anything about on here after a brief time period.

I can only hope some folks that have been reading on here don't mind spending .99 to read the final version on Amazon. We're only about 26,000 words in right now and I hope I have enough in me for at least four times that.

Again, thank-you

 

Yep, who could have known back then that they were doing a day to day job in a future classic. I don't know if any cars built in the last thirty years or so will ever achieve that status.

Interesting story about your friend. It almost has a Stephen King quality. I watched Christine again recently and it never gets old.