Cold in July (26 page)

The room was a big office room and there was a metal desk
and chair and file cabinets against the wall and a big freestanding fireplace.
I saw part of a pants leg behind the fireplace, then part of a shoulder and a
face. Freddy.

I jerked up the Ithaca, but a hand came down on top of the
barrel and the gun fired into the floor. It was Jim Bob. “There he is, Ben, the
fireplace,” Jim Bob said.

Freddy stepped out from behind it and lifted a pistol and
shot Jim Bob, sent him sprawling backwards. He fired again and hit Jim Bob a
second time and knocked him through the open doorway.

“I’m your father,” Russel said, and the .357 came up, but
not fast enough. Freddy shot Russel in the right shoulder and the shot knocked
the gun out of his hand. Russel went to one knee with a grunt.

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.