Just as they approached another curve, Bill looked back and was amazed to see the cop car back away from the tree and onto the road. It wasn’t exactly motoring like it had a rocket in its ass, but it was coming. The hood flapped up and down like a gossip’s tongue.

“He ain’t got a prayer and a sandwich now,” Fat Boy said, laughed, and they made the curve. Then there was a clunk and a grind and a bumpty-bumpty, bumpty-bump.

Fat Boy said, “Goddamn muffler’s hangin’. But we ain’t gonna let that stop us.”

Around another curve they went, and the muffler swung to the left and came loose. But not before the rear tire met it and the muffler snapped and the end of it drove into the rubber and the tire blew. The Chevy, going about eighty, spun around in the road and left it, knocked through a barbed wire fence, rampaged over a few small trees, slapped the hell out of a couple of unsuspecting frogs, then sailed out into the water.

It was odd the way that car went in. All white and shiny, spinning around and around, almost levitating across the top of the water, then suddenly it nosed down fast. Then, as if it were a cork, it bobbed in the swamp a moment next to a blackened cypress stump.

Creatures in the water and the woods moved. The car gave off steam. The water rippled way out from the impact and frogs croaked and hopped away. The moon’s image lay full and huge on the swampy water, as if God had dropped a greasy dinner plate. Inside, Chaplin had been tossed over the seat to join Bill and Fat Boy. Bill pushed Chaplin aside, put his foot on the corpse’s head, climbed over the seat, and rolled down a back window as the Chevy began to slide into the gloom.

Bill climbed out. Fat Boy, wearing a steering wheel tattoo on his forehead next to the mountainous knot he had acquired earlier, fought the floating body of Chaplin off, and followed.

Moments after they abandoned the Chevy, the car went down, along with the firecrackers, the money, and Chaplin.