by Jim Nisbet
Scott was rapidly sliding shells into the underside of the shotgun. When he’d gotten in four he pulled back a little bolt on the side and a shell snapped into the breech, and he slid one more into the magazine. Then he clicked the safety, a little button transverse to the back of the trigger guard, rapidly back and forth, studying it. Mattie knew what a safety on a shotgun was, and the gesture made her particularly nervous. It was getting dark in the room, and, so far as she was concerned, people who messed with guns after dark were up to no good, period. Scott laid the loaded shotgun over the top of the dresser and began to finger fat, ugly slugs into the revolver’s chambers.
“But here’s what’s going to happen,” Eddie continued. “Jed’s going to get out there and find one of two things. It’s possible that Harris will be sitting there quietly, in his bare feet, disarmed, spinning Nam yarns with the guard, rolling cigarettes and waiting for Jed to come turn him loose after the Rendezvous is over.”
Mattie frowned. “Bare feet?”
“To discourage his getting away. This is bad country on the bare feet. No?”
“Yes…”
“Jed will sit down and make the proposal to Harris that Jed and I discussed, which is a good one, but there’s a small problem. Harris doesn’t know a goddamn thing about sponsorship, nobody in the business would give him that much responsibility. The guy’s a loony and liable to do anything. He wasn’t supposed to be here at all, and Jed suspects this. Although Jed didn’t say so, my guess is that Harris barged in here with about the same amount of half-assed verification as we did. That is, he found out about the Verlaine book and the password, and said to hell with sponsorship, I’ll go on up there anyway and let my money do the talking.”
Scott flicked his wrist and the cylinder of the revolver snapped into place in the frame.
“The guy can move a lot of dope, but he needs big supply. He really wants this connection.…”
“Come on, come on,” Scott said. He took up the shotgun and the pistol and moved into the living room. Mattie looked out the window behind the bureau. Twilight was upon them.
Eddie followed Scott and continued to talk. Mattie realized he wasn’t so much as explaining things to her as thinking out loud for all of them.
“. . . So he’s just going to bully his way in here. He knows that hardly anybody at this level is as ruthless as he is, and nobody wants to rock the boat. For sure he’s not a cop; so to keep him calm they deal with him and get rid of him, and next year they’ll be more careful.”
Scott was searching the kitchen again, one-handed, the sixgun stuck under the waistband of his jeans and the shotgun in the other hand.
“They’ll figure all this out in no time. Then, another fork. A: Jed will leave Harris where he is, take as many men as he thinks he can spare from watching Harris, and come get us. In which case,” he looked up at Mattie, “we’ll have a fighting chance. Or, B: he’ll cut a deal with Harris to get him to throw in with him, and they all come after us. In which case,” he sighed, “in which case we’re in bad shape. After they get here, unless we get lucky, there’ll be no way out. There’ll be too many of them, and they’ll have Harris, and we… well, we have… you.” He shook his head.
“Well, hey,” Mattie said, “why don’t I just kill myself now?”
“Be calm. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Scott was working on the living room now, and Eddie was helping him. They started with the stereo cabinet, then went to the book cases. The shelves were ceiling high, covered one wall, and were packed almost entirely by paperback western novels. Mattie sighed and looked at them. Max Brand. Louis L’Amour. Zane Grey. Owen Wister. Jack Schaefer’s Shane in a critical edition three times as thick as the novel itself; essays in sheer blather. Dozens, hundreds of others. Boy books. She’d never been able to get Jed to read a novel that didn’t have to do with some rinky-dink mind’s idea of the “Old West.” Of course, he’d read The Big Sky, but then, one always has to begrudgingly allow for exceptions.
“Ammo, ammo,” Scott said impatiently, feeling behind the rows of books, “he’s got to have some.”
“Maybe it’s a souvenir,” Eddie suggested forlornly.
“Hey,” Mattie said, “haven’t we got enough firepower? There’s two of you and only one guy out there watching us.”
Scott ignored her, an impatiently abstract expression on his face as he ran his hand beneath the sofa cushions.
Eddie, on his knees now and feeling behind the row of LPs on the floor beneath the stereo, said, “We should find the ammo for that AR if we can, just in case we have to deal with the second contingency.” He stood up, dusting off his hands as he looked around the room. “That, in case you are wondering, is the possibility, no, wrong word. I think it’s a likelihood, an eventuality, a probable scenario.”
“I’m hip,” Scott said grimly, as he pushed the sofa several feet toward the kitchen. The light had almost failed them completely by now.
All this theorizing and frenetic searching for “ammo” was making Mattie increasingly anxious. “I’m not hip,” she said. “Please explain. Can I help?”
Eddie moved to the front door, which was still open, and stood looking out through the screen. All the cars were gone now, except for Jed’s various rigs, the Winnebago, and the Chevy. The Winnebago was dark. As Eddie watched, a match flared by his Chevy. It was Curly, lighting a cigarette. He was sitting on the Chevy’s hood with his boot heels hooked on the front bumper and his rifle across his lap.
“The likely scenario,” Eddie said quietly, watching as Curly blew out his match, “is that Jed’s going to find a bunch of dead guys when he gets out to that line shack, and no Tucker Harris in sight.”
Mattie sucked in a short breath.
“That’s if he’s lucky,” Eddie continued darkly. “And us, too, maybe.”
“How…”
“I wonder if he still collects ears,” Scott said in an ugly voice, moving the Navaho rug.
Mattie was aghast. The room was almost completely dark, now.
“Best thing,” Eddie said then, as if to himself, “would be to have Dowd and Harris both wandering around out there, hunting for each other. That might give us an edge. Other than that, without some meaningful firepower…” His voice trailed off. Then he said, “We gotta take the Chevy.”
Mattie stood very close to Eddie, watching the yard over his shoulder. The coal of Curly’s cigarette glowed, disembodied, over the dark mass of the Chevrolet. It was so quiet she heard him spit, fifty yards away. The wind helped her hear it, Curly was upwind of the house. The breeze had freshened a little bit after dark. It was cooler than it had been during the day, and puffed softly now through the screen in the door. It was very quiet.
“There’s weapons and a radio in the trunk,” Eddie whispered. “If we can get to it we can make the call and hold them off til the troops arrive. Otherwise…”
Silence.
“What…?” she said again, as if it were the only word she knew.
Eddie half turned his head, pointed his fore- and index fingers straight at his open mouth, and brought his thumb down on them, like the hammer on a gun. “I don’t want to be Tucker Harris’ prisoner,” Eddie whispered. The lenses of his glasses gleamed in the darkness. “Neither do you.”
Mattie’s thinking was beginning to get a little skittish, like a tourist lost in Chinatown whose way is but uncertainly lit by the explosions of New Year firecrackers all around her, so many that their individual cracks blur into one loud, smoky stampeding chaos. But I might have an ace in the hole, she was thinking, and even though it could be the most disgusting devilish ace out of a deck of blood-soaked ciphers, in a bottomless black hole whose walls are writhing with dripping tentacles, I might, I just might have that ace in it.… Tucker likes me.… Doesn’t he? He said he’d be back next year.… Didn’t he…? So, we do it early. Maybe we could… Maybe I could… bargain us out of here? Trade?
And she had a sudden vision, of herself on her knee
s. She was pounding silently on a locked door to a dark building. The ground was a sandy gravel, she struck the door repeatedly but she couldn’t hear her blows as they fell, and the door did not yield to them. She was screaming too, but she couldn’t hear that, either. And then she realized she was beating on the locked door of the darkened Dip Cafe, and suddenly her voice broke through to her inner ear: Let me in! it said, it begged. Let me in let me in let me in… God, she said to herself, God, if you get me out of this, I swear, I’ll wait on tables like a good little girl for the rest of my natural life—just like you always intended for me to do—forgive my pride in thinking I could sin and intellectualize my way into something better than Your Plan—no retirement, I won’t even take retirement, you don’t even have to give me a raise, either, God, although I—
“Eddie,” Scott said.
“Scotty.”
“Found it.”
Scott was on his hands and knees in front of the woodstove, where one end of the sofa had been. The Navaho rug lay piled against the foot of the sofa and the shotgun on top of it. There was a hatch there, in the floor, with two flush ringbolts in it. Scott found them by feel and raised the hatch.
Another surprise, she thought.
“Mattie.” Everybody was speaking in a low voice. “Flashlight?”
She hesitated. Get a grip on yourself. This is ridiculous. Everybody on the planet smokes marijuana. Why in hell—
“Mattie!”
“In the kitchen,” she whispered reflexively. She crossed the living room and ran directly into the other end of the sofa, which Scott had pushed in front of the kitchen door. The sofa arm caught her right above her knee and brought tears to her eyes. But she felt her way around it and into the kitchen. There, in the cabinet below the sink, she found the big single-cell lantern, and returned with it.
“Here,” she said.
“Put the rug over it,” Scott said. “Here, I’ll do it.”
Mattie picked the shotgun up off the rug and laid it on the sofa. In the dark her fingers brushed its trigger and it scared her, but the safety was on, or, at least, it didn’t shoot. Scott draped the rug over the hole exposed by the hatch and placed the lamp under it.
Mattie had had no idea of this hatch’s existence, although such discreet storage compartments were not uncommon in the older ranch houses in this country. Lize had one next to her refrigerator. There was no secret about it though, there was never anything in it but a large stone crock full of homemade sauerkraut.
“Can’t get this goddamn switch to…,” Scott cursed, working his hands under the blanket. “Some kind of nipple thing…”
Mattie leaned back against the arm of the sofa. She noticed the dank smell of wood ashes, and was remembering that a framed reproduction of a Charles Russell painting hung above the wainscot behind the woodstove, “Laugh Kills Lonesome,” when she heard the shot.
They all heard it. It was far away, but not that far away, close enough to be heard. Scott stopped working. Eddie froze, half-crouching. They listened. The reverberations bounced away and died, perhaps miles from the gun that caused them, or the ears that heard them. Silence enveloped the listeners like a huge comforter, without warmth. After nearly a minute they heard one of Curly’s boots scrape the bumper of the Chevy.
Mattie heard a click and the light came on beneath the rug. Scott raised a corner of the rug and they all strained to see. The hatch was full of all kinds of stuff Mattie didn’t recognize. Camouflaged canisters, yellow and brown, green and black, a pistol with a huge diameter barrel, dark green boxes, another pistol she recognized as a service .45, various green and yellow cardboard ammunition boxes such as you’d see in any store, a belt with bulging clip pouches.
Scott sighed a ragged, long sigh. “O.K., gang,” he said, “we’re fully automatic. I feel better. Hold the rug, Mattie.”
Eddie stood and felt his way to the front door. After a minute he said, in a conversational tone, “Hey! Curly!”
No answer. Eddie raised his voice.
“Curly! You hear that?”
A moment passed. “I heard it,” Curly said.
“You recognize the gun?”
Curly said nothing.
“Well?” Eddie said, after a moment. Mattie could hear the tension in his voice.
Still Curly said nothing.
“Curly!” Eddie said, louder, allowing the urgency to enter into his voice.
“What.”
“You know this guy Harris?”
“No. I know Jedediah.”
“Harris is good, Curly.”
“So’s Jedediah.”
“Shit,” Eddie said under his breath. “Curly!”
“What, goddammit?”
“I want to come out.” No answer.
“Curly!”
“Stay put, brother,” Curly said calmly. “Jedediah’ll be back shortly.”
“What if it isn’t him that comes back?”
“No way,” Curly said. “There’s two other boys out there with him.” He chuckled and scrubbed the end of his cigarette against the bottom of a boot. Sparks trailed to the ground. Eddie could see that he was still perched on the hood of the Chevy. “Is your boy that good?”
“Yes!”
Curly thought about that for a minute. “I only heard one shot,” he said, though a note of uncertainty had come into his voice.
“You fucking won’t hear the next one,” Eddie muttered under his breath. He came over to the hatch, where Scott was still fumbling under the rug. For the first time, Eddie was keeping low to the floor, crouching. “Mattie,” he whispered when he got there, “you know this guy?”
Mattie was close to being in shock. She tried to whisper “No,” but her voice died in her throat. She shook her head in the dark.
Eddie sighed. “We’re gonna have to take him,” he muttered.
Scott was studying something by the light under the rug. “Jed always had good men around him,” he muttered.
Eddie sighed again. “Yeah. Where’s that shotgun?”
“Here,” Mattie whispered, passing it over.
“Give Mattie the pistol,” Eddie said, leaning the shotgun against the woodstove.
“Take it,” Scott said, turning his hip toward her as he worked.
Mattie looked at the ugly butt of the revolver sticking out of Scott’s waistband.
“Take it, Mattie. There’s no other way.”
She took the pistol. It was a lot lighter than she expected it to be.
“There’s the safety,” Scott said, touching it.
“How we doin’, Scotty?”
“We’ve got clips for the AR, a flare gun, and a service .45 with two clips and lots of bullets.”
“Great,” said Eddie. “Do we have a plan to go with all this shit?”
“I dunno. What’s our goal?”
“We got to get the fuck out of here,” Eddie said, almost feverishly. “That radio isn’t going to help.” Scott smiled a little and nodded, not looking up from the flare gun, which he was trying to figure out how to load and shoot. Mattie thought that he had no idea that Eddie was scared. Either that, or Scott wasn’t going to pay attention to it.
“Mattie comes with us.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie said, his eyes darting toward the front door and back to Scott, without touching on Mattie. “But like, we’re running out of time, man.”
“Ah,” Scott said. He’d found a catch, and the flare gun broke open in his hand. He studied a round that went in it. “You watching this, Mattie?”
“Sure,” she said quietly, watching Scott’s hands. For the first time she noticed that they were small, finely boned hands. She thought it was strange that he knew all about a weapon like the AR-15, but was having trouble with a flare gun.
As if reading her thoughts he muttered, “Can’t concentrate…”
Then, finally, she realized that both of these men were truly afraid of Tucker Harris.
Chapter Fourteen
WITH HIS USUAL ASTUT
ENESS EDDIE SAW IT TOO, THAT SCOTT was having a little trouble with his nerves. Eddie’s mind took over for them.
“You’re the vet,” Eddie said soothingly. “Take the AR and go out the back, through the kitchen. Will the flare gun work?”
Scott made progress as Eddie spoke. He loaded the stubby flare into the pistol and closed the breech. After that, it was much like any other gun. Knock off the safety, pull the trigger, after making sure it’s not aimed at anybody.
Scott handed it to Eddie but Eddie gestured toward Mattie. “Leave the flare gun with her.” She took it.
“We’ll give you about five minutes to get somewhere you can do some good with that thing. I’ll start a conversation with Curly about Merle Haggard or cows or something. At five minutes, Scott announces to him that he’s surrounded and he’s got a choice. At the same time, I guess Mattie can fire the flare gun, so the whole yard will be lit up. Either Curly will see that he’s a target and he’ll give up, or…”
“Or he’ll get himself lit up,” Scott said grimly, pulling a harness out of the hatch. Off this harness hung multiple clips for the AR-15, in green canvas pouches, and two hand grenades. Mattie stared at them, incredulous. Hand grenades? They looked just like they were supposed to look, just like in the movies. What did they call that? Continuity?
“What’s that mean?” Mattie whispered. “To get lit up?”
“It means to die in Vietnam,” Scott said softly, “but to die anywhere is to die, I hear tell.”
“You’re going to kill Curly.…”
Scott slipped his head through the harness. “It’s up to him, but, yeah,” he said angrily, if quietly, as he buckled it, “I’m going to light up Curly, if he doesn’t show some sense. All you have to do is close your eyes and fire that flare.”
“Come on,” Eddie said, urgency in his voice, “now’s the time.”
Scott stood up with the AR-15 and shrugged his shoulders a few times, to settle the ammo harness.
“Try not to perforate the Chevy,” Eddie cautioned him.
“Shit,” Scott said, looking concerned, “are the keys in it?”