Bloody River Blues

appeared from under Ralph Bales’s coat, and he looked around him slowly. A mile away, a semi downshifted with a silent belch of smoke. A flock of gray birds dotted past. In the middle of the muddy river a scarred and patchy tug fought its way upstream.
    The two men were talking, standing together over the cycle. The mustached man pointed to what looked like a dent in the mudguard, then he jiggled the chrome rack. The beer man shrugged, then wheeled the motorcycle toward the road.
    Ralph Bales was waiting for the friend to get in the Taurus and leave but then decided he should kill both of them. He lifted his Colt and rested the square notch of the sight on the beer man’s chest. The silver truck approached. He lowered the gun. It roared past, engulfing the men in a swirl of papers and dust.
    Ralph Bales lifted the gun once more. The road was empty now. No trucks or cars. Nothing between him and his targets thirty feet away from the phone booth and its floor of shattered glass.

Chapter 3
    HE CLIMBED ONTO the battered, muddy yellow motorcycle and fired it up, then gunned the engine several times. Pulling on a black helmet, he popped the clutch suddenly and did a wheelie, scooting a precarious ten feet before the front tire descended again to the street. He skidded to a braking stop and returned to his mustached friend.
    Ralph Bales steadied the gun with his left palm and began to apply the nine pounds of pressure required to release the hammer.
    The beer man pulled on dark-framed sunglasses and zipped up his jacket—for one slow moment he sat up completely straight, perpendicular to Ralph Bales, offering a target that was impossible to miss.
    At this moment Ralph Bales lowered the gun.
    He squinted, watching the man sit forward and tap the bike into first gear with his toe. It skidded away on River Road with a ragged chain-saw roar of the punchy engine. His friend shouted at him and shook his fist, then leapt into the Taurus and, with a huge spume of dust and gravel, roared over the curb and chased the cycle down River Road, laying down thick tire marks.
    Ralph Bales eased the hammer down onto an empty cylinder and slipped the gun into his pocket. He looked up and down the road, then turned, jogging back into the murky shadows of the riverfront streets. He walked up to the Cadillac. He rapped on the driver’s window.
    “Jesus, I didn’t hear it!” Stevie shouted, tossing the paper in the backseat, the sheets separating and filling the car. He flipped the car into gear. “I didn’t hear the shot, man!” He glanced through the rear window. “I didn’t hear it!”
    Ralph Bales casually flicked his fingers toward Stevie.
    “Let’s go!” the young man shouted again. “What do you mean? What are you doing?”
    “Move over,” Ralph Bales mouthed.
    “What?” Stevie shouted.
    “I’ll drive.”
    Stevie looked back again, as if a dozen Missouri Highway Patrol cars were racing after him.
    Ralph Bales said, “Put it in park.”
    “What?”
    “Put the car in park and move over,” he responded with exasperation. “I’ll drive.” He climbed in and signaled and made a careful, slow U-turn.
    “What happened?”
    “Have to wait.”
    “You didn’t do it?”
    “Excuse me?” Ralph Bales asked with mock astonishment. “You just said you didn’t hear any shots.”
    “Man! Scared the living crap out of me. I mean, bang, bang, bang, on the window. I thought you were a cop. What the hell happened?”
    Ralph Bales didn’t answer for a moment. “There were a bunch of people around.”
    “There were?” They now drove past the deserted campground. Stevie protested, “I don’t see anybody.”
    “You wanted me to do it right in front of a dozen witnesses?”
    Stevie swiveled around. “What was it, like a bus drove past or something?”
    “Yeah. It was like a bus.”
    SAMUEL CLEMENS ONCE stayed in the town of Maddox, Missouri, and supposedly wrote part of Tom Sawyer here. The Maddox Historical Society implied that the caverns outside of town were the true inspiration for Injun Joe’s cave, despite evidence—and the assertion of a more credible tourist board (Hannibal, Missouri)—to the contrary. Other claims to fame were pretty sparse. In 1908 William Jennings Bryan gave a speech here (standing on a real soapbox to do so), and Maddox was cited by FDR in a Fireside Chat as an example of towns decimated by the Depression. One of the now defunct metalwork mills in town had the distinction of fabricating