The Hour of Lead

by Bruce Holbert

  “A car,” she whispered.

  •

  THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, MATT DROVE Wendy to a farm that stood on a sagebrush knob of the scab country west of the river. Rock and no rain made it useless for even the sturdiest crop. Instead the family owning it collected scrap iron. The patriarch was a bald fellow whose shuffling walk led them to a ’48 Ford. Wendy wrapped her jacket close to fend off the gusting wind.

  “She’s due a little cleaning,” the man told Matt.

  The car was boxy shaped and an unsettling green. The grill had rusted. The junk man opened the door and the ignition chattered until the motor turned over, though it sounded like a washing machine full of shoes. Rat turds pebbled the floor.

  “What’d you say again?” Matt asked.

  “Twenty-five dollars.”

  Matt glanced at Wendy. “It runs,” he said.

  “I can hear it.”

  “Tires got air.”

  Wendy pulled her coat tighter. “Seems a bit neglected.”

  The junk man pressed the accelerator. The motor whined. “It’s a goer,” he told them.

  “But is it a stopper?” Wendy asked.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “It ain’t moved in a good while.” He looked at the dash and fingered a crack there. “I thought I was doing business with your husband,” he said.

  “The children driving this belong to both of us.”

  “Well I’d hope for their father’s manners instead of yours,” the man said.

  Wendy stepped back from the car to let Matt take up the bargaining. Matt spat on the ground and shook his head.

  “You seemed ready enough a minute ago,” the man told him.

  “Minute ago you hadn’t talked coarse to my wife. I believe it will cost you twenty-five dollars.”

  The man opened his mouth, but Matt raised his hand. “You ought to stop while it’s just money.”

  “You threatening me on my own place?”

  Matt said, “I’m done talking. That just leaves doing.”

  Matt steered her for their car. She took his hand. They returned to town with the heater going. Wendy warmed her hands over its vents.

  “It’s not often a woman gets her husband to take up for her like that,” Wendy said.

  “I didn’t think much of the car was all.” Matt waited a moment then winked at her. She laughed.

  “Don’t seem we can spend much more,” he said.

  “Yes we can,” she told him.

  “I thought you’d fight this the whole way,” Matt said. “Now you’re wanting to put up more than I’m willing.”

  She smiled. “Maybe I’m turning unpredictable.”

  “You’ve always been that.”

  “I have, haven’t I,” she said.

  “You going to take in ironing to pay for this car?” he asked.

  “Look at you arguing for thrift.”

  “I guess it’s my turn isn’t it?”

  She laughed again. “There’s a rainy day account I’ve been keeping.”

  “What if it rains, though?” he asked.

  “Rain is just weather,” she said.

  Matt turned them onto the highway dividing Grand Coulee. B Street still had its dark reputation but clean businesses lined the highway thoroughfare. Wendy wanted real car lots. There were two. They stopped at the first. The sun was warmer and the wind had relented. Wendy pointed to a fifty-six Chevy, blue as evening sky. It appeared to have never seen the road. The seats were clean as restaurant plates and the untarnished ashtray metal shone.

  “It’s twice what we drive,” Matt said.

  “I know.”

  “See the price?”

  Wendy nodded. The sun reflected off the paint and it looked to Matt to glow, like those pictures of Christ assuming the throne.

  “It’s as pretty as a good horse,” she said.

  He smiled at that.

  “Well, they’ll be tickled. I can tell you that.”

  Wendy paid with a bank draft and the dealer threw in the first fill-up free. Matt offered her the keys. He followed in what would be now known as the old car. The power steering wheeled Wendy out of the graveled lot with a quarter turn of her hand. She felt graceful as a doe. When she eased into the accelerator, the motor lifted her like air itself was all that was underneath. She closed her eyes and thought of the children driving off from sadness instead of slogging through it.

  Matt parked on the street. Wendy opened the door and Angel and Luke tumbled from the trailerhouse. They stood for a long while in the driveway without moving. Luke was open-mouthed. Angel finally turned to Matt.

  “Oh Dad,” she said. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Matt undid Angel’s hug and put her hands in front of her, between them. “It’d do you some good to appreciate your mother,” he told her. “This was her work all.” He walked inside, leaving them alone.

  Wendy watched Luke and Angel, who approached the car like it was an animal they were trying not to spook. Luke touched the fender with his hand, then bent his face to the warm metal.

  “I never saw anything so pretty,” Angel said.

  “I’m pleased you like it,” Wendy told her.

  She handed Angel the keys. Luke hurried through the passenger door and waved from behind the glass. He uncranked the window. “Hey Mom,” he asked. “You want to go riding?”

  She surprised herself and did, leaving the front seat for them. The radio worked fine and they found some modern music that couldn’t even succeed in annoying her. When her children glanced back, Wendy’s eyes were closed and the wind was spanking her hair and jacket and she was smiling at the pleasure of their travel together.

  39

  MORNING, LUCKY LAY PROSTRATE ON the grass and studied the sunlight through its dew. Each breath clanged his lungs against his ribs and he decided at least one was broken. His clouded right eye leaked blood and yellow fluid. Through it, the horizon seemed upended. Blood pasted his tongue to his mouth. Sleep and the beating bent his thoughts and, for a moment, he couldn’t recall what put him on the grass this early morning. A car hushed by, and Wendy’s voice turned audible through an open kitchen window. He comprehended the words separately, but in a sentence they confounded him. She spoke of sandwiches and a fresh peach and being short of bread and coffee and Lawson answered, the voices gonging inside Lucky’s skull.

  The door opened and Lawson lifted him with an ease that he was unprepared for. He stared up into the jaw, clean-shaved but still peppered with what would be beard and the nostrils and thick shock of hair. He had never seen a man’s face as close. Matt’s calm eyes gazed ahead. Lucky watched the face pull away until he could see its whole shape.

  “What happened to you, hombre?” Lawson asked him.

  Lucky moaned.

  “Okay,” Lawson told him. “What is hardly the point.”

  Matt stared into the sky. “What am I going to do with you?”

  Lucky wrestled his badge from his shirt pocket.

  “Law?” Matt asked.

  Lucky nodded. “Got jumped hunting a fugitive. Slunk off while they were drinking. Caught a lift and got dumped here. Couldn’t manage any more.”

  “Your man close?”

  “Coulee Dam. He’ll want to close the deal. A load of warrants got his name on them.”

  “You want me to find a cop?”

  “He is a cop for the county,” Lucky said.

  “I can give you a lift toward the dam.”

  “I’d say that’s the wrong direction for me.”

  “I imagine so.”

  “If you could let me lay up in your place an hour or so, I could get some help and turn the tables.”

  “There’s a thousand ways that’s a bad idea.”

  “I know,” Lucky said.

  “I’m asking.”

  Lucky lifted the man and lugged him into the trailerhouse and dropped him onto the sofa. Wendy joined him. She wore a housecoat, but most of her leg showed before it buttoned. The dar
kness above made Lucky giddy.

  Lawson said, “He was on the grass.”

  Lucky propped himself on one elbow and peered past Lawson. Wendy stared from a face softened and fleshy with the years. Her cheekbones no longer carved her face into a clear shape. She’d lived too long comfortably. Her eyes were the same brown; there remained a little desperation left in them and when he struck upon it, she squinted and recalled.

  “Put him out,” she said.

  “He’s in no shape for that.”

  “He can’t stay.”

  Lawson bent and his face became large again. “You want to go the hospital, buddy?” Lucky could smell the coffee on his breath. He shook his head. Lawson shrugged. Wendy’s eyes darted from the couch to some spot in the kitchen. She didn’t look at her husband. She was already hiding him, Lucky knew.

  “He’s a cop,” Matt whispered. “Some criminal bunged him up and wants to do more. He just needs an hour to get squared away,” Lawson told her.

  “Can’t you see this bothers me?” Wendy asked.

  Lawson collected his lunchbox. “Probably puts him out, too.”

  “What if I say no?”

  “Do you want them to kill him? I doubt he can take a second whipping. Where’s my coffee?”

  Wendy held to the thermos. “Matt!” she pleaded.

  “Should I set him at the end of the driveway for the trashman?” Lawson asked. He took her hand and raised it in his. Wendy pressed her lip under her front teeth, a fresh gesture to Lucky. She’d kept learning after him, and he’d stopped with her. He was inclined to lay a good slap on her.

  The children rose ten minutes after Lawson’s departure. Lucky smelled pancakes and listened as Wendy piled them onto plates. The children were an inconvenience to the chore ahead. He supposed he could rise and shoo them himself, but he didn’t desire a battle. Lucky dozed and Wendy fed her brood and collected the breakfast dishes.

  “You’ve eaten double what you’re allowed already,” she said to the boy. “You and Angel get along,” she said. “It’s too nice a day to waste indoors.” Luke went to his room for a basketball. Through the window, Wendy watched him amble toward the concrete hoop and backboard at the park.

  “I don’t have a basketball,” the daughter told her.

  Wendy opened the cabinet above the refrigerator. She offered Angel a leather-bound book. “Tell me what they mean,” Wendy said.

  The door shut behind her. Wendy remained at the window, watching her. When her attention returned to the room, Lucky sat up, rubbing one shoulder.

  “I’d have a cup.” He nodded at the coffeepot.

  Wendy brought him one.

  “They’re fine children,” he said.

  She nodded.

  Lucky winced raising the coffee.

  “Does your visit have a purpose?” Wendy asked him.

  “Right to the point, same as I recall.” Lucky smiled. “I’m sheriff,” he said. “For Lincoln County. I’d say that’s some improvement from the last we saw each other.”

  Wendy studied her fingers through the holed afghan.

  “I’m going to take Lawson for a long walk off a short pier. I’ve been paid good money.”

  “What do you have against him?”

  “You,” Lucky said. He blinked, speaking in monotone, as if he might be translating some language difficult to decipher. “Things just got into a line and stopped here.” Lucky stood and lifted her at the elbow until she was upright, then steered her toward the bedroom. She halted in the hall. He backhanded her, but she held her ground.

  “All that’s over,” she said.

  “It hasn’t ever been done on my end.”

  “What you feel is no longer my concern,” she told him. “I’m sorry to put it that way. It’s cruel, I know. Maybe all of it was cruel. I’m cruel, maybe. Me letting you think it was more. I’m sorry.”

  He undid her housecoat but she closed it and tied the wrap. He was a child, as she’d left him. He put his gun to her head.

  “Take off the clothes.” She did and stood in front of him, a naked woman, yet she looked as composed as if she’d dressed for winter.

  “Nothing will be different if you do it.”

  “Everything will change.”

  “No,” she said. “You’ll have raped me. That’s all.”

  “You love me.”

  Wendy shook her head. “We were confused,” she said.

  Lucky stood. His head ached and so did his chest. Each breath tried him. He was still confused, he realized.

  “Go on into the front room,” he told her. He followed her there and rested on a chair. He directed her to the sofa. Wendy sat with her legs and arms covering herself. They stayed quiet a long time.

  “When’s Lawson get back?” Lucky said.

  “I thought you were here for me.”

  He shook his head. “I just happened onto you.”

  She looked at him. “You’re here for me.”

  “You’re just begging for him now,” he told her. He chuckled a little. “I listen to them old country songs. Nobody knows, but I hear when they come on. Them boys can sing. I figure I been wounded like them maybe. By you and by Lawson, too. But I can’t carry a tune.” He shook his head. “It’s a shame,” he said. “I could sit here and serenade you until he gets home. Maybe if I was sung out I wouldn’t need to kill him.”

  “What good will killing him do you?” she asked him.

  He smiled. “What good does it do them cowboys to sing?”

  “He’ll turn the tables on you,” Wendy told him.

  “I doubt it,” Lucky said. He thought he needed killing, though. It would be some rest finally. He imagined it as peaceful as sleeping late. He set his gun on his lap and waited. When the children returned, he stripped them and put them next to their mother. The girl was heavy-breasted and thin at the hip, but his loins were done. The boy was thick bone and muscle and skin and a confused pair of eyes.

  He felt drowsy and ordered Wendy to perk coffee, then drank the entire pot, but it did not wake him. He stood and circled the room; the colors went to mud and he dreamed waking dreams that smelled like fresh meat and fire and tasted of iron and smoke and he heard his name whispered, a silly name, yes, but the voice spoke it like it was from a book and equal to other words and if he repeated it long enough, he would mean what books meant and end as books ended.

  The boy on all fours crawled into the kitchen, a good boy; he had attempted to resist, and might have accepted a bullet for his mother and sister, if Wendy had not scolded him into submission. Lucky watched him climb the counter. The boy dropped to the floor, a gun in his fist. Wendy and the girl stared at him. Lucky realized he had been speaking, but had no idea for how long. He raised the pistol and shot at the boy. It was a small caliber gun, but the report rang for long enough to break the cadence of thoughts in his ears.

  Wendy had gone to the boy despite Lucky’s weapon.

  “He’s all right,” she told Angel. The gun lay on the floor.

  “Leave it,” Lucky said. “Please.”

  Wendy returned to the sofa with Luke. Lucky thanked her, thanked all of them as if they’d done him a service. He listened to the stove clock tick; as it wound off minutes, his breaths joined the rhythm, then his thoughts, until it was just a clock in a room, and he was once more able to discern what was outside his head from what was within. He could hear their breathing, too, and he nearly shot them just to gain himself silence.

  At half past four, Lawson parked in their driveway. Inside, he saw the gun on the floor. He bent to examine it.

  “Don’t.”

  Lawson blinked adjusting to the curtained room. He recognized his family on the couch, unclothed.

  “You and me have business?” Lawson asked.

  Lucky nodded.

  “This business require them undressed?”

  “No. I just wanted you to see them this way.”

  “Well, I have.”

  Wendy held the children’s hands. A
ll their eyes stared at Lawson.

  “It’ll be all right,” he told them. The boy nodded and Angel, too. Wendy, though, began to weep.

  “There somewhere else may be more fitting we can settle up?” Lawson asked.

  Lucky shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He stood and followed Lawson to Lucky’s car. Lucky sat in the passenger seat and held his gun on Lawson as he drove. West of the towns and into the rocky country that surrounded Banks Lake, Lucky ordered him onto a secluded, two-rut road that led to Northrup Canyon, where a creek ran year-round. He drove as far as the road allowed, then braked the car.

  “We getting out?” Lawson asked.

  Lucky nodded.

  Lawson stepped out of the car. It was still light. He looked up the steep rock of the coulee.

  “I don’t suppose I could argue you from this?”

  “I might enjoy hearing it.”

  “I’m not a convincing speaker, anyhow.” He took a few steps toward the rocks. “Will you leave my family be?”

  “I’m done with them,” Lucky said.

  “Okay, then.” Lawson turned to face Lucky.

  “You don’t want to know what for?”

  Lawson shrugged.

  “Garrett,” Lucky said. “You know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wants you dead. Or in jail.”

  “You prefer dead.”

  “Less work,” Lucky said. He unzipped his pants and showed Lawson his workings. “I knew your wife.” Lucky leaned on the fender to relieve his labored breaths. “I don’t anymore.” He shook his penis with his free hand. “Now I unknow her.”

  “Let’s get this done with,” Matt said.

  “You’re sure in a hurry for your demise.”

  “I don’t care for waiting.”

  “Well, then I’ll see to it you do a little longer.”

  Lawson reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He offered one to Lucky who lit it with a matchbook from his pocket and drew until the cigarette end caught. He exhaled a lungful of smoke. Lucky paced a circle around him.

  “Linda Jefferson. You knew her?”

  “She rescued me once a long time back.” Lawson said. “There was a storm. Is she not well?”

  “She’s my mother and she hasn’t ever been well, goddamnit.”