“Uncle Hank, you know I’m going to pay that money back.”
“No, I don’t. You got a job? You’re twenty-four years old. It’s time you started footing your own bills.”
“Really, Uncle Hank. I’m not trying to borrow money. I need your help.”
I was going to tell him to find someone else, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. All I could think of was Bill at seven years old, right after my brother was killed.
“Listen,” I said. “Here’s the score. I got plans this morning, and I don’t want to get in dutch with Beverly.”
“I hear that.”
“I’m gonna take a shower and take the family to lunch, then I’ll meet you at your place.”
“I’m not at my place, and I’m not going back there. And if I did go back, you wouldn’t know where to go, because I don’t live where I used to.”
“What?”
“The place I moved to is the place I’m not going back to… Forget all that, okay. I have to see you now.”
“After lunch, Bill, or get someone else. Call Arnold, see what he says.”
Silence again. Arnold was my older half-brother from my Dad’s earlier marriage. Arnold’s mom had died in childbirth. My father was young then and hadn’t done so well with Arnold. Arnold didn’t so much grow up as he got jerked up.
“All right,” Bill said. “Let’s do this. I’m at a motel. Calls itself a tourist court, actually. I got it on a match book here… Christ, how could I have forgotten a name like this. Sleepy Time Tourist Courts. I’m in room forty. This place is a hole.”
“I know where it is. Another year or two without paint and repairs, they’ll be holding that place up with a stick. Couldn’t you have found something better?”
“Money.”
“Yeah, well, you did okay then. Listen up. We finish lunch, I’ll drive over. Might be as late as two or two-thirty. We go by one of my stores and pick up a movie for the night on Saturdays. Sometimes we goof around a little. Run a few errands. I’ll move things quickly as possible.”
“What I’m talking here is more important than fucking lunch and a movie. I’m talking some desperate shit.”
“It’ll hold,” I said. “See you after lunch.”
I didn’t give him time to complain. I hung up. I didn’t really think what he had to say would amount to much, figured no matter what he said, in the end it would all come down to borrowing more money.
I was mistaken.
About the Author
With more than thirty books to his credit, Joe R. Lansdale is the Champion Mojo Storyteller. He’s been called “an immense talent” by Booklist; “a born storyteller” by Robert Bloch; and The New York Times Book Review declares he has “a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.”
He’s won umpty-ump awards, including sixteen Bram Stoker Awards, the Grand Master Award from the World Horror Convention, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, the “Shot in the Dark” International Crime Writer’s Award, the Golden Lion Award, the Booklist Editor’s Award, the Critic’s Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book Award. He’s got the most decorated mantle in all of Nacogdoches!
Lansdale lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife, Karen, writer and editor.
www.JoeRLansdale.com.
Also by Joe R. Lansdale
“Hap Collins and Leonard Pine”
Savage Season (1990)
Mucho Mojo (1994)
Two-Bear Mambo (1995)
Bad Chili (1997)
Rumble Tumble (1998)
Veil’s Visit (1999)
Captains Outrageous (2001)
Vanilla Ride (2009)
Hyenas (a novella) (2011)
Devil Red (2011)
Blue to the Bone (TBD)
The “Drive-In” series
The Drive-In: A “B” Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas (1988)
The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels (1989)
The Drive-In: A Double-Feature (1997)
The Drive-In: The Bus Tour (2005)
The “Ned the Seal” trilogy
Zeppelins West (2001)
Flaming London (2006)
Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal (2010)
The Sky Done Ripped (TBD)
Other novels
Act of Love (1980)
Texas Night Riders (1983)
Dead in the West (1986)
Magic Wagon (1986)
The Nightrunners (1987)
Cold in July (1989)
Tarzan: the Lost Adventure (1995)
The Boar (1998)
Freezer Burn (1999)
Waltz of Shadows (1999)
Something Lumber This Way Comes (1999)
The Big Blow (2000)
Blood Dance (2000)
The Bottoms (2000)
A Fine Dark Line (2002)
Sunset and Sawdust (2004)
Lost Echoes (2007)
Leather Maiden (2008)
Under the Warrior Sun (2010)
…And that’s not counting the pseudonymous novels, the short stories, the chapbooks, anthologies, graphic novels, comic books and all the rest.
Copyright Information
“Cold in July” was first published by Bantam in 1989.
This eBook edition (v2) was created in September 2011 by Flyboy707.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No copyright 2011 by Flyboy707.
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