Page 189 of Two Marlboros

Jimmy’s lips parted in a smile. “Not to school, but Naty and I have to go to the woods to pick berries!”

He walked over to me and clasped his small hand in mine. I remembered the story I had told him to put him to sleep and was surprised to notice how seriously he took it. Or maybe he justsaw it as an opportunity to get away from that crazy cage for a while, but I wasn’t sure a five-year-old could already think such a thing.

“Right, the berries. And we got to see the ants, too!”

His eyes lit up and, still with his hand in mine, he began jumping and shouting full of excitement, with that backpack a little too big for him and also quite full - what I would soon find out about.

Having received our mother’s blessing for the plan we had in mind, we both greeted her with kisses and hugs. She opened the front door for us, and I took the opportunity to give her one last goodbye. However, the corner of my eye fell on my father standing in front of the kitchen entrance, arms folded. It was a scene that was nothing special and that I might have ignored, had it not been for a small, fleeting detail.

For the first time, in fact, he had not shunned my gaze.

36

The last time

(?Basement Jaxx - Get me off)

“He’s about to turn onto I-95,” croaked the radio. “Repeat: He’s about to turn onto I-95, over.”

“Roger that.”

Ashton turned the steering wheel in the direction of the highway entrance. The clock read 6:37 a.m. Our car was whizzing along at a speed of seventy miles per hour that kept rising, as did the adrenaline in my body. The siren I could hear echoing past the glass indicated to me that this was not a drill, but the actual pursuit of Harvey Walker, a couple of cars ahead of ours.

Ashton hazarded a couple of swerves, and the pearl gray Ford pickup we were chasing quickly returned to our field of vision. It had positioned itself in the left lane and was maintaining a steady speed, although it barely skidded from time to time. Between us and that car there was now no one - we could have rammed him if we had wanted to.

The radio came on again.

“Let’s try to surround him from the right, over.”

We noticed that one of the squad cars on our right made its way through the other cars to try to surround the pickup; it was followed closely by another pair of police cars.

The vehicle was surrounded on almost every side. It had no possible escape routes other than leaping forward enough to lose us, yet my heart was in my throat. We were one step so close to catching him, it would only have taken one gesture for his car to swerve onto the guardrail and thus end his escape.

The speedometer was still climbing and came close to ninety-five; I wondered how much more we could squeeze that jalopy.

“When are they going to cut him off?” I asked, out of breath.

Ashton barely smacked his lips. “It’s too dangerous here, we’d risk a pileup.”

Ashton’s tone was firm and seemingly calm. And the obviousness he had just told me made me realize how much my brain was mush.

The first steering wheel swayed occasionally toward the pickup. Maybe he was trying to get him to swerve, maybe just to get him to lose control of the vehicle, but I didn’t like either scenario, since Ashton and I were right behind Harvey.

I knew that my chosen profession carried risks, yet never before had they seemed so real and tangible. One wrong turn, one header, one ray of sunshine in my eyes, and it would all be over.

As we traveled, the cars of the civilians who had entered the highway before our closure scampered by as if we had been Moses with the waters of the sea. I always feared someone’s distraction or that one of those unsuspecting motorists, perhaps in the din of the passenger compartment, would not hear the siren and end up crushed in his metal carcass. Instead, up to that point everything had gone smoothly, except that the highway seemed to never end. We could hope perhaps that the pickup would run out of gas or that it would decide to take one of the exits, and the latter scenario seemed by far the most likely and most desirable.

Suddenly the overhead steering wheel swung toward the pickup and crossed the lane marking line. The pickup barely accelerated and veered as far to the left as it could. It screeched against the guardrail and with a dry maneuver got back on track, just enough to collide with the squad car that had attempted themaneuver. The steering wheel’s headlights shattered, and the car took on a life of its own, swinging now to the right now to the left.

The pickup took advantage of that chink to veer to the right just enough. The squad cars in the center lane braked to avoid the pileup, so our ride was the only one to continue without slowing down.

Ashton did not allow himself to be disturbed for a moment by what had happened and continued straight ahead, swerving between cars until he caught up with Harvey again. Not even the dull thud of another pileup could distract him from driving. We were behind him, alone, with no chance to harness him as we would have liked.

“You’ll see that at the toll booth he’ll have to stop,” Ashton asserted, perhaps more to himself than to me. We stayed behind him for what seemed like an eternity, but in the end was no more than a quarter of an hour. The pickup held steady speed and so did we; Ashton probably didn’t feel like making any bold moves.

The next moment I took notice of two details: that the road had become clear and that another cruiser had passed us and was holding Harvey’s own. That last thought elicited a tingling in my stomach, as if I had a knife at my throat and someone had taken it out - relief, I might have said. We were in the back, ready to intervene, but if that squad car was sticking so close to him, it meant that...

Ashton tried to brake.

---