I brought the shotgun around again, and fired. The shot knocked the hell out of the freestanding fireplace and a section of it came off and hit the floor and the fireplace wasn’t freestanding anymore. But I didn’t hit Freddy.
Freddy shot at me as I pumped another load into the Ithaca, and the shot punched a hole in my side and my right arm went numb and the shotgun swung wide right as if on a gate and went to the floor. I tried to reach for the .44 in the holster by cross drawing with my left hand, but knew damn well I’d never make it. I was looking down the barrel of Freddy’s gun, the mouth of death about to spit in my eye.
Russel’s ankle gun barked, and Freddy let out his air as if punched. He sat down on the floor and his gun fell between his legs. “Shit, I’m shot,” he said.
He looked at the gun on the floor in front of him and reached out to get it, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate and take hold. >
Russel walked over to him. He had the little ankle gun in his left hand and his right arm was folded in front of him out of my sight
“I didn’t want it to hurt,” Russel said. “I wanted it done clean because I love you.”
Freddy smiled and looked up. “Love me? Man, you just put a hole in me. Shit, you really my daddy?”
“Uh huh,” Russel said.
“If that isn’t some kind of trip,” Freddy said, and Russel shot him through the forehead.
44
The numbness had mostly gone out of my side, though my arm, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, felt like a wet Kleenex. I reached across with my left hand and felt where the bullet had gone in and out through my shirt and flesh, but neither wound seemed particularly dreadful. I didn’t seem to be bleeding much. I let that give me some comfort.
I left Russel standing over his dead son, went in and knelt down by Jim Bob. The trip from one room to the other assured me all my parts were working, and more feeling was coming back into my arm; it felt like it had gone to sleep and was struggling to wake up.
Russel came in and got down on his knees by me and reached out and touched Jim Bob’s arm. Jim Bob opened his eyes and looked at us.
“I thought you weren’t going to do that,” Russel said.
“It seemed like the right thing at the time,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t think I’d do it again, though.”
“Bad?” Russel said.
“Bad enough that Rodriguez is going to make some money. You look a mite piqued yourself.”
“A mite,” Russel said.
“Dane?”
“I’m hit,” I said. “I feel okay though. I think it went through the fat meat on the side. I’m not even bleeding much.”
“You got a cut on your neck,” Jim Bob said.
I reached up and touched where a bullet had sliced me, came away with blood on my hand. “They seem to be shooting all around the edges,” I said.
Russel touched Jim Bob’s forehead. “No fever,” he said.
“I haven’t got the flu,” Jim Bob said. “God, did we get them all?”
“Uh huh,” Russel said.
“Damn, we’re better than I thought,” Jim Bob said.
“Can you get the truck?” Russel asked me. “I must be getting old. I feel winded.” His eyes were full of tears.
“Yeah,” I said.
“The girl seemed all right didn’t she?” Jim Bob said.
I glanced over at the bed. She hadn’t gone anywhere. Her face was turned toward us, those pecan-colored eyes taking us in.
“She’s okay,” I said. “Just scared shitless.”
I got the keys out of Jim Bob’s pocket and walked to the truck and drove it back. Upstairs, Russel had used the skinny man’s knife to cut off the side of the sheet the girl was lying on (I bet she enjoyed seeing him coming toward her with that wicked knife), and had used it to make bandages for Jim Bob. When I got there, Russel took off his shirt and I used some of the sheet to bandage him, then he did the same for me. We put our shirts on, and I went looking for our guns, including Jim Bob’s lost .38 which he said the Mexican had swatted from him and knocked across the room. I found it twisted in the thin man’s white suit, which lay on the floor beside the bed.
I put all the guns in the truck, then Russel and I used our good arms to carry Jim Bob downstairs and over the dead bodies. We dropped him only once. He cussed until the air sizzled. We put him in the camper and gave him his hat to lay on his chest, then Russel and I went upstairs and cut the girl loose, found her clothes under the bed, and turned our backs while she put them on. When she was dressed, we led her downstairs. She didn’t say so much as one word and her eyes told me she still hadn’t figured us out. After what she’d been through, she was entitled to doubt and silence.
We put her in the back of the truck with Jim Bob and Russel climbed in there too and rested his back against the cab and found one of his cigarettes and lit it and coughed some smoke out.
“You sure you can drive?” he asked me.
“I’m not seeing spots or anything,” I said. “My side hurts, but my left hand is good. My right hand has more feeling than it had just a few minutes ago.”
“Get weak, we'll swap on the driving,” Russel said.
“I’ll go as fast as I can without bringing the law down on us,” I said. “I’ll try not to make it too rough a ride, Jim Bob.”
“Don’t pamper me,” Jim Bob said. “I ain’t gonna die or nothing. Long as they didn’t shoot my dick off, I’m gonna be okay.”
I closed the back of the camper and went around and got behind the wheel and drove us away from that big house full of death.
45
It was a hot Sunday afternoon in August and I was sitting at the picnic table out back of the house drinking a cold Lone Star, alternating between watching the condensation beads on the beer bottle and my son playing on his new swing set.
I had been sitting there thinking about my family.
About the things I had done. The hands that had hugged my son earlier were the same hands that had held guns that had been used to kill people. It didn’t seem right somehow. Even though the day was bright, when I thought about these things, I had the sensation of shadows moving behind my eyes. Perhaps they were the sort of shadows Russel had waltzed with, and now I had dancing partners of my own. And Russel had enough for hell’s own minuet.
It had been almost a month since the shoot-out, and not a day, a waking moment, had gone by without me thinking about it. It had replaced my thoughts about the burglar I had shot, and even the soft, little face of the daughter I had never known. The memory of that night was so strong I could sometimes smell the gunsmoke, blood, and fear. The experience had been exhilarating, like driving a car too fast, walking a high wire without a net. Better than either of those things could be. After those intense few moments of blood and thunder, I found myself wanting to do it again. Life now seemed remarkably tame and fearfully constant.
And when the desire to recall or repeat those moments of fiber and steel passed, I would fill up with a cold self-hatred and a longing for my soul. Not in a religious sense. I couldn’t believe there was anything on the other side of the void, not after what I had seen. But in the personal sense. I feared my humanity was threatening to ooze out of me, perhaps through a hole in the bottom like Russel had described.
My side and neck had healed nicely with only minor scarring, thanks to Rodriguez, and James and Valerie had been handling things at work quite well, during what I called my sabbatical.
I had gotten a card from Jim Bob saying he and Russel were “right as rain,” and I had read several newspaper accounts of the shoot-out. The Dixie Mafia was getting most of the blame. But Freddy Russel turning up again, dead for real this time, had proved most-embarrassing to the FBI. Especially since the local cop who identified the body through mug shots and the like, had turned this information over to the newspapers who grabbed it like a football and ran with it as far as they thought it would go, and that proved to be pretty far.
The papers also
identified the silver-haired man. He was a rich industrialist and his house was found to be full of snuff films. Some in which he starred and personally delivered the coup de grace. There was lots of speculation about the whole thing, but none of it seemed to be leading to us, so I quit worrying.
Anyway, I was out back drinking my beer, thinking about all this, and Ann came out and said, “That man is here to see you,” and from the way she looked and spoke, I knew who it was immediately.
“I want him away from here,” she said. “Once is enough. I won’t have you going off with him again, for anything. Not even a Coke. Don’t offer him anything.”
“All right,” I said. Ann hadn’t forgiven Russel for Jordan, and even though I had never been able to explain to her the whole of the night at the house, she had a good enough idea what went on there without me giving it to her in painterly detail, and she blamed him for that too.
She called Jordan in with a promise of milk and cookies, and he bailed out of the swing and ran by me and grabbed my leg. I picked him up and held him in front of me. “Love you, Daddy,” he said.
“I love you too,” I said, and holding him was like touching some source of power. The emptiness I feared went away and I was filled again. For a time. I kissed him and put him down and patted him on the butt. He ran in after his mama, and I went on through the living room and outside.
Russel was in the drive leaning on Rodriguez’s Rambler. I walked over and shook his hand, but was easy about it. From the way he held it out I could tell his arm still hurt.
“I was trying to decide if I should come by or not,” he said. “I didn’t want to upset Ann. I saw her looking at me through the window, and I figured she’d go get you. I shouldn’t have come, I guess.”
“I wanted to see you,” I said.
“I see the bars on your windows are gone.”
“I felt like a canary. I got rid of them.”
“Good. Jim Bob said to tell you the burglar’s name was William Randolph. Mean anything?”
I shook my head. “I had forgotten about that, to tell you the truth. How’d he find out?”
“You’ll like this. He called Price, said he read in the papers about Freddy Russel, and since that was Freddy Russel, the guy you shot couldn’t have been him, and he figured Price owed you something after sicking those thugs with the bats on us.”
I laughed. “That sounds like Jim Bob.”
“Price didn’t even argue. He gave Jim Bob the name. He probably figures we were in on the action at that house, one way or another, but I don’t think he cares. I think he’s glad it’s over, and he’s probably glad the scum bit the dust. It’s not his job to help the FBI protect anyone anymore.”
“How is Jim Bob?” I asked.
“Good. Nothing bothers him long. He might even be the superman he thinks he is. The Mexican girl we got out of the house is taking care of him. He’s already getting around pretty good. He’s going to send the girl home to Mexico next week, give her a little nest egg to take with her.”
“That sounds like him,” I said. “What are you going to do now?”
“Nothing left to do. A man that can kill his own son, no matter what he’s done, is bankrupt of something. Soul. What have you. I put his photographs with that foul tape and burned them up, tried to burn up anything I might have felt about him. But I couldn’t. You know, I still love him after all he’s done, and I never really knew him. This won’t mean much, Richard. But if I could have had the kind of son I wanted, I would have wanted him to be exactly like you.”
“It means a lot.”
“I only wish I hadn’t gotten you involved in this mess.”
“You couldn’t have stopped me.”
He took me then and hugged me, and I hugged him back. It made me think of the last time I saw my father, before he went away and put the gun in his mouth.
When we pulled apart, Russel said, “That’s all I got in me.”
I was trembling slightly. It was hard to speak.
He walked around and got in the car and rolled down the window. “I got this for Jordan.” He reached a red toy fire truck off the seat and gave it to me. “You don’t have to tell him it isn’t from you. Maybe when he gets older, if he remembers that night… well, you can tell him… just tell him, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep the shadows away, Richard.”
“I’ll do my best, Ben.”
He backed the Rambler around and rolled down the drive and I waved at the retreating car, not knowing if he could see me in the rearview mirror or not. I turned and started back to the house. There was a loud report. It made my blood surge and I felt the exhilaration I had felt that night of the shooting. I whirled, realized immediately that the old Rambler had backfired. The rush went away. I felt scared then, because for a moment, the sound, so like a gunshot, had flooded me with a tide of clear, clean joy. And now that the tide was gone, I was disappointed. That’s what frightened me. The disappointment.
“No shadows,” I said aloud, and as I walked through the front door, I repeated it like a charm against evil. “No shadows.”
Excerpt
If you enjoyed Cold in July, you may also like Waltz of Shadows, another fine Lansdale novel. It's now available as an e-book from Gere Donovan Press.
Here’s how it begins:
Waltz of Shadows
All the blood and disaster began on a Saturday morning when I thought everything was going just right. It was late October in East Texas, and from my recliner I could see out the tall glass that makes up two of our living room walls, and it was beautiful outside. A little cool looking, leaves gone gold and red and brown and starting to fall. Clouds white as angel’s panties could be glimpsed through the tops of the tall pines and oaks that made up most of our two acres. A cat squirrel jumped from one oak limb to another, then leaped out of sight. I felt like I was in a Disney movie.
Then I got the call.
I heard the phone ring, and was about to answer, assuming it would be some minor problems at one of the videos stores I own, when Beverly started downstairs.
I could see her through the stair railing. She was wearing her shorty white bathrobe and flip-flops and had a white towel wrapped around her head from having just washed her hair. Her legs were fairly pale since she didn’t go in much for the sun, and they were lightly freckled, the way redheads sometimes are, but they were long and smooth and muscled and I never tired of looking at them.
She was carrying the upstairs cordless phone, talking and looking at me over the railing and motioning me over, which meant she wanted me to rescue her and talk to whoever it was.
I put the paper down and got out of the chair and met her at the bottom of the stairs.
Our black German shepherd, Wylie, got up like it was part of his job, came over and sniffed my crotch, then went after Beverly, who popped him on the head with her hand. He went back to his spot and laid down with a groan. Crotch sniffing was hard work for a dog, but it was his duty, even if no one liked it.
“Well,” she said into the phone, “let me let you talk to him.”
She handed me the phone and shook her head.
Upstairs I heard the kids yell again about something on a cartoon show they were watching, and I put the phone to my ear and stood at the foot of the stairs and watched Beverly climb back up, enjoying the way her bottom moved beneath her bathrobe. Twenty years of marriage hadn’t changed that for me.
“Hello,” I said.
“This is Bill,” said the voice. I knew then why Beverly had wanted off the phone and why she had the sour face when she gave it to me.
“Hey, how you been?” I tried to sound as happy as possible.
“Not so good.”
He always said that. He’d go six months and I wouldn’t hear from him, then something went rancid, first person he called was Uncle Hank.
But he’s my brother’s boy, so what you gonna do? It’s not like he’s got anyone else. My brother, Rick, got killed
in an auto accident when Bill was seven, and when Bill was a teenager his mother remarried and Bill didn’t get along at all with her new husband, then his mother got some kind of weird disease you read about in the back of medical books, and died.
Bill was in many ways like his father. Always certain he was merely a day short of the big success, though you couldn’t seem to put your finger on what it was he was doing to acquire it. And, like my brother, he had a passion for women that sent his judgment and sense of decency packing.
On top of all that, he was a bullshitter and had no more true ambition than a frog.
I hated to get it started, but I said: “Tell me about it.”
Silence hung in the air for a time.
I sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and waited. Wylie got up again and ambled over, nodded his head in the direction of my crotch, but it was just a feint, to keep me honest. He laid down at my feet.
Bill said, “I got to talk to you in private. I don’t want to do it over the phone. I need to see you. Can I come over? I’ll have to take a taxi, but I think I can swing it. We can have a couple of drinks in the study.”
I thought about that one. I wasn’t in the mood to get Beverly stirred up. Telling her Bill was coming over was like telling her I was going to stack and store a wheelbarrow load of fresh pig manure in the house.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Beverly doesn’t like me, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Don’t have to. She talks to me like I’m a bill collector.”
“You two just don’t click.”
“We don’t click all right.”
“Look, what she’s got against you is ten thousand dollars you haven’t paid back. Ten thousand you don’t plan to pay back. Some of us work, Bill. Come over with the ten thousand in your hand, Beverly’ll meet you at the door in her panties playing a bass drum.”
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