Mad River

first of the sirens, another block in another thirty seconds, across White Street, running hard, single file, into the parking lot, into the Firebird. Jimmy jammed the key in the ignition and turned it, and nothing happened.
    Nothing at all. “Motherfucker,” he groaned. The car started about half the time. Given a few minutes, he might have gotten it started. Now, half-panicked, he said, “Come on, come on . . .”
    At that moment, Emmett Williams walked out of the side door of the apartment complex and, absently whistling an unrecognizable tune, strolled down the side of the building to the street, where he’d parked his brother-in-law’s Dodge Charger.
    Tom said, “Somebody’s coming.”
    Jimmy tried the ignition again. Nothing. He’d put the gun back in his pocket, but now he pulled it out again, said, “Come on.”
    Williams was walking away from them. He pointed the ignition key at the Charger, pushed a button, and the car’s light flashed back at him; the last light he’d see. Jimmy was leading the line of runners, and he ran straight at Williams and when Williams looked up, the pistol flashed again, from six feet, and Williams went down, and Jimmy dragged him around the front of the car and dumped his body on the grass next to the sidewalk, turned toward the car, turned back, took Williams’s wallet out of his back pocket. Becky piled into the passenger seat and Tom in the back. Jimmy took the wheel, and five minutes later they were headed out of town.
    “Where’re we going?” Becky asked.
    “Get the fuck far away from here,” Jimmy said. “Rest up, figure out what to do. Maybe head for LA, if we can get a car.”
    “That girl back there, is she hurt bad?” Tom asked.
    “She’s dead,” Jimmy said. “She should be dead, anyway. If she ain’t dead, I’ll go back and shoot the bitch again.”
    Tom looked out the back window and said, “I think the black guy is dead too.”
    Jimmy said, “Yeah?” He reached out and turned on the radio, and the satellite came up, Outlaw Country, Travis Tritt singing “Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde.”
    “Ain’t this some fuckin’ car?” Jimmy asked. “Ain’t this a ride?”

2
    VIRGIL FLOWERS WAS STANDING under a streetlight outside the Rooster Coop in Mankato, Minnesota, at the mouth of a long cobblestone alley that led down toward a curl in the Minnesota River. He was talking to Cornelius Cooper, the proprietor of the place, about who, exactly, was the best country singer in America, at that very moment.
    They agreed that while Ray Wylie Hubbard was a leading candidate, there was no question that it was not Ray Wylie but, in fact, Waylon Jennings, who wrote and sang the best song ever written, which was “Good Hearted Woman.” How could you be the best country singer if you weren’t responsible for the best country song?
    Waylon was at a disadvantage, though, being dead.
    And then there was always Willie, who was the best country singer in a lot of years when Waylon wasn’t,
but at that very moment?
    Ray Wylie had been around a long time, too, long enough to write the National Anthem—known to downtown cowboys as “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother
.
”
That was good, but not nearly enough to make him the best country singer, but he’d followed that up, many years later, with stuff like “Wanna Rock and Roll,” and “The Messenger,” and “Resurrection,” and “Snake Farm,” some genuine poetry, with a taste of blues and the salt of humor.
    “But in fact, it is not Ray Wylie who sings ‘Wanna Rock and Roll’ the best,” Cooper said, “but Cross Canadian Ragweed.”
    “That’s true,” Virgil said. “But what song,
right at this moment
, is as good as ‘Resurrection’?”
    “But he didn’t write ‘Resurrection.’”
    Virgil said, “No, but he sings it, and he did write . . .” He broke out in a gravelly baritone imitation of Ray Wylie’s “The Mission.”
    Cooper said, “Jesus Christ, keep it down. People will think you’re drunk. And what about Guy Clark?”
    Guy Clark. What could you say about “Rita Ballou”
or “Homegrown Tomatoes” or “Texas 1947”
or
“Cold Dog Soup”
or
“L.A. Freeway”?
    But then, what about “Sunday Morning Coming Down”? And if “Sunday Morning”
was that good, right up there at the top, and the
same guy
wrote “Me and Bobby McGee,” which actually was pretty good, despite being some sort of hippie shit, shouldn’t Kris Kristofferson be considered? They