There was a thin beam of light escaping from under a window to the right of the door. I went up and bent down and looked through the window. There were three guys on the couch passing a joint back and forth. The light of a television strobed across their faces. One of them was Smoke Stack. He was hard to miss. He took up about a third of the couch. He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up so folks could get a look at his biceps, which looked like bowling balls in tight rubber tubing. There were tattoos on his arms, some kind of Chinese writing. I figured Smoke Stack was doing well to read English, let alone Chinese. The tats looked like they had been made by a blowtorch and a fountain pen.
I didn’t see Donny.
I stepped back and Leonard took my place. After he took a look, he said, “Rock and roll.”
I went up on the porch and Leonard went around back. We didn’t say that we should do this. We just knew it. It wasn’t our first rodeo.
I carefully pulled back the screen, which had so many holes punched through it, it might as well have just been a frame. It squeaked a little, like a dog toy.
I waited. No one shot at me through the door. No one jerked the door open. I could hear the TV. It was some kind of music show. Music videos, I guess. The music playing was rap, the only kind of music I can’t stand, unless it’s bagpipe music, which, with the exception of “Amazing Grace,” always sounds to me like someone starting up a lawn mower.
I heard the back door breaking open, and when I did, I kicked the front door with all my might. It hurt my foot a little, but the door sagged back, which spoke not so much for my manliness as it did for the geriatric state of the house.
Rushing inside, I had my gun drawn. I was wearing my badass smile. I know it’s bad ass, because I practice it in front of a mirror.
As we came in, me from the front, Leonard from the back, I focused on the three on the couch. As I said, one of them was Smoke Stack. The thugs on either side of him were almost interchangeable. Lanky with pot bellies and greasy hair, arms branded with tattoos, their heads wreathed in cigarette smoke. They looked like the kind of guys that might share a brain, and today the brain had a day off.
Sitting in chairs to the side were Donny and another guy. Leonard was watching them. Donny looked like a dumb kid, thin-faced, big-eyed, his chin bristling with a few hairs and competing pimples. The guy next to him was dark and short and stout and sunburned. He had his hair cut in a military do, probably because the hair on top was as thin as dirty water. Overall, he gave the impression of someone who had lived on a planet with heavy gravity and too much sunlight.
They jumped up and went for guns they had in their pants. Except Donny. He just sat there with his mouth hanging open.
Leonard waved his gun, said, “Who do I shoot first?”
There were no volunteers. They stopped moving.
I had my gun pointed too. I said, “Okay, boys, let’s keep standing, and take them out one at a time, starting with you, Smoke Stack. Put them on the floor. And I’m not talking about your dicks.”
“Do I know you?” Smoke Stack said.
“No,” I said. “But you’re about to know a little about me, and my guess is you aren’t going to like it.”
When they had the guns on the floor, I told them to kick them lightly away. Leonard held his gun on them, collected theirs, and took them outside. I watched through the open door as he threw them under the porch and came back inside.
“Nice night,” I said to no one in particular.
Leonard turned off the TV.
“What you guys want?” Smoke Stack said. “We ain’t got nothing for you to rob.”
“I think maybe you got some money from a bank robbery somewhere,” Leonard said.
Smoke Stack looked at Leonard, then me, then they all looked at Donny. They just kept staring, like they were waiting for him to break out into a little dance.
“No, man,” Donny said. “I didn’t tell them anything. I don’t even know these guys.”
“He ain’t lying,” I said. “He doesn’t know us. But, we are here for Donny’s benefit. We want that you should quit this group, Donny. Come home and quit acting like a gangster wanta-be. Or what we refer to in the privacies of our home as a dumb dick.”
“My brother,” Donny said. “He sent you. That’s it, isn’t it? Well, he and you both can keep your nose out of my business.”
“Just come home and forget these guys,” I said. “You do that, life will be a lot better for you, and so will the air. Man, you guys could use a bath. Or is it because you’re shitting behind the couch?”
“Ha!” Smoke Stack said. He looked at us and our guns like he was looking at kids with suckers. “You ain’t so much.”
“We got guns,” I said. “That puts us way ahead of you. We took yours away from you. And you know what? We might not give it back.”
Smoke Stack looked at Donny. “Who are these guys, kid?”
“I tell you, I ain’t had nothin’ to do with them. I tell you, I don’t know these guys.”
“They know you,” he said.
“Actually, we know who he is,” I said. “He doesn’t know us, and we don’t know him. But we have a nice photograph. And we know this. You are planning to pull a heist, and the kid here, you want to get him in on it, and then when it’s over, you’ll pop him, and we’re not talking about with a wet towel.”
Smoke Stack let that revelation roam around in his head for awhile. It went on for so long you could see it cross behind his eyes, like someone moving past a window. I glanced at Donny. There was something roaming around in his head as well. Suspicion, I hoped.
“What the hell you talking about?” Smoke Stack said.
“That doesn’t sound all that convincing,” I said. “The part where you try to act like you don’t know what’s going on, and you’ve don’t remember how you clowns shot your last wheel man and left him in the woods for the ants.”
“What’s he talking about?” Donny said, looking at Smoke Stack.
“They don’t know nothing,” Smoke Stack said. “They’re just talking air. Don’t pay them no mind. You really don’t know them, then just keep your mouth shut.”
“What they like to do,” Leonard said, looking right at Donny, “is they hire some dumbass to drive their car, and then they kill him and split it between themselves.”
“What, for one less split we kill a guy?” Smoke Stack said.
“Yep,” I said. “And, hey, you fellas, what makes you think one of you isn’t next? Were you all in on the previous job? Are there some bodies in the woods somewhere?”
I could tell from the way a couple guys looked at Smoke Stack that I had hit a chord.
“You guys don’t listen to this shit,” Smoke Stack said. “And you, Donny. Ain’t I treated you right? I been more of brother to you than your own brother.”
“You mean you’ve kind of let him do what he wants,” I said, “because at the bottom of it all, you don’t care about him. He’s just a pawn. It’s tough being a father or mother or big brother, ’cause they got to tell you stuff you don’t want to hear, make you do stuff you don’t want to do. But you, you can just tell him everything’s all right, even when it isn’t.”
“I ain’t got to do nothing,” Donny said. “My brother, he ain’t much of a man.”
“And Smoke Stack is?” I said. “Your brother works his ass off for you. Butt-wipe here steals what he wants and hangs out. Not a whole lot of manly in that.”
“I could snap you like a stick,” Smoke Stack said.
“No,” I said. “No, you couldn’t.”
“You talk tough with a gun,” Donny said. “I’ve seen what he can do. You ain’t so tough.”
“What?” Leonard said, grinning at Donny. “Smoke Stack? Tough? With some drunk, maybe? Some poor guy half in the bag. You think he’s bad because he has muscles and tattoos and cigarette breath. Hap here, on his worst day, could turn him inside out and make him say how much he likes it.”
“Ha!”
Smoke Stack said.
I went over and gave Leonard my gun. Now he had one in either hand. I took off my jacket, hung it over the doorknob of the door I’d kicked open.
“Why don’t I show you that he’s not so tough?” I said.
“That’ll be the goddamn day,” Smoke Stack said.
“This is, in fact, that day,” Leonard said.
Smoke Stack grinned at Leonard. “I get through mopping the floor with him, you’re next, nigger.”
“Oh, don’t make me wet,” Leonard said, then he waved the guns at the others. “All you assholes, except Smoke Stack, and you, Donny, all of you over here and on your bellies. Make like fucking run-over snakes.”
They did what they were told. They lay on the floor on their bellies by the wall, lifted their heads up to see what was going on.
Leonard looked at them, said, “All you dick cheeses, all you move is your heads, savvy? Donny, you sit on the couch. You get a bird’s-eye view.”
“Why we doing this?” Smoke Stack said.
“Because we can,” I said. “And because you think you’re tough as an old saddle.”
“You’re too old for me,” Smoke Stack said to me.
“Yeah, well, I’ll try not to hurt you too bad.”
“I think tough guy is starting to waffle, Hap,” Leonard said. “I think he’s looking for a hole to run into.”
Smoke Stack said to me, “We get started, it goes bad for you, your man will step in with the guns?”
“He’s got the guns to keep your friends in line. It goes bad for me, I’ll take my beating, and then we’ll leave.”
“Shit,” Donny said. “Think you can beat Smoke Stack, you’re crazy. I seen him whip two guys once, and one of them with a board.”
I felt a little nervous right then, because that old adage about how bullies are always cowards isn’t true. Sometimes they’re bullies simply because they can do what they say they can do, and they enjoy doing it.
Leonard said, “Yeah, but it ain’t how many guys he whipped, it’s the guys. Hap, he wasn’t one of those guys.”
“He whips Smoke Stack, hell, I’ll go with you,” Donny said. “That’s how much faith I got in him.”
Smoke Stack looked at the kid and nodded.
“All right,” I said. “I don’t whip him. You stay, and we’ll go, and we’re out of your life. You rob banks, you fuck goats, you do what you like. We’re done.”
“You’ll be saying stuff to folks you shouldn’t, like we’re going to rob a bank,” Smoke Stack said. “We wouldn’t want people believing something like that. You ain’t got no proof of nothing that way.”
“We’ll make it simple for you,” Leonard said. “You whip Hap, we’ll leave, and then, so you don’t cry at night, you can always come and try to kill us before we let the cat out of the bag. We’ll give you a whole two days. You got our word, and that’s better than yours, I’m sure.”
“I whip him,” Smoke Stack said, nodding at me, “then I’m coming for you. That’s gonna be a treat.”
“You don’t even know me,” Leonard said, then smiled at him. “And you don’t want to. But if Hap slips on a banana peel, then I’ll put the gun away, and me and you can dance all over this place.”
“Hey, Smoke Stack,” I said. “You gonna talk us to death, or you gonna show me what you got?”
There was a clearing between the people on the floor and the couch where Donny sat. Leonard was by the open door, pointing the guns. Smoke Stack moved forward, and as he did he crouched a little and put his fists up. He smiled at me, came closer.
He hooked a big right. I could have seen it coming with a bag over my head. I stepped into him at an angle and the punch went around me. I popped a jab in Smoke Stack’s eye, hooked him to the throat. He had his chin down, so the hook was a so-so shot. Still, he didn’t like it. He stepped back with a sputter, coughed a little, and came at me windmilling. I leaned way right when he was right on me, put out my foot, and caught his ankle as he rushed. It catapulted him forward and into the wall and caused him to knock a hole in the Sheetrock with his head, then to roll on top of his gang members.
When he got himself straight and turned, I kicked Smoke Stack in the balls so hard people in China had heart pains. I stepped in quick and gave him a left-hand Three-Stooges poke in the eyes, hit him with a right cross that came from hell without a bus ticket and that smacked against the ridge of his jaw. He twisted and went down and started to get up, but didn’t.
“You waitin’ on reinforcements, Smoke Stack?” I said.
“What he needs to get up,” Leonard said, “is a fucking winch truck.”
Smoke Stack finally got upright, rushed me with his head down, bellowing like a bull. I hooked my arm under his neck as he came and went back on my hips and kicked him in the nuts again and lifted him over me so that he hit hard on his back on the floor. I could hear the breath go out of him, loud as an elephant fart.
I flipped back so that I landed straddling him, slammed my forearm into his nose and chin. Once. Twice. Three times.
He quit struggling. I got up and looked down at him. His face was bloody. He rolled over on his stomach and started crawling away, like a roach that had had its rear end stepped on. Then he collapsed, quit crawling. He was unconscious.
Donny was looking at me with his mouth open so wide you could have turned a semitruck around in there.
Donny said, “Did you kill him?”
“Just his pride,” I said. “And maybe one of the two brain cells he had. That leaves him one so he knows how not to shit himself. Now, come on.”
Donny looked at Smoke Stack, then at me. “I don’t know.”
“We had a deal. You can come, or Leonard here will pistol-whip the goddamn shit out of you and we’ll take you anyway. You can go without knots and bruises, or we can fix you up. You get to choose. And you get to choose right now.”
Donny nodded.
“We’ll be taking all your guns,” Leonard said. “We’re gonna make Donny crawl under the porch and bring them out. He’s going to do that without pulling one, so that way we don’t have to shoot him. You can check for your pistols at the bottom of assorted lakes, creeks, and rivers. And if you follow us, I will personally shoot holes in your head, and when they find you, your guns will be shoved up your asses.”
When we were in the car, with Donny seated in back, he said, “But he was so much bigger.”
“David and Goliath,” I said. “Ever read that passage in the Bible?”
“No. What’s it mean?”
“It means David got lucky,” I said.
“Only Hap wasn’t lucky,” Leonard said. “He was skilled. Smoke Stack, he’s got big arms and a big mouth, but he was gonna get you killed, kid. We done you a favor, and you don’t even know it.”
“I don’t believe that,” Donny said, but his voice didn’t hold a lot of conviction.
“Yeah, well, you can be stupid, or you can be lucky, and right now, you’re goddamn lucky,” Leonard said.
“I didn’t think anyone could do that to Smoke Stack,” Donny said.
“Your problem, kid,” Leonard said, “is you haven’t been doing a whole lot thinkin’, just reactin’, and you haven’t been around long enough to know life ain’t like the movies. I get the whole lost your parents thing. Been there. But that don’t have to turn you stupid. That’s a choice, like wearing green stretch pants. You don’t have to do it.”
“My brother shouldn’t have done this,” he said. “He shouldn’t have asked you guys to do this.”
“Woulda, shoulda, coulda,” I said. “We’re trying to save you from yourself. But, we got a time limit, boy. You fuck it up later, then we done what we could. You can go back to being stupid and probably shot to death in a car out in the woods. But, for right now, we got other plans.”
“What plans?” Donny said.
“Pancakes,” Leonard said.
We went to my place and made pancakes. It was late by the time we did, and Brett
came in. She was carrying a newspaper. She saw Donny sitting at the kitchen table with a large glass of milk and a plate of pancakes covered in syrup. He was eating heartily. Leonard sat across from him with a Dr. Pepper. Leonard thought Dr. Pepper went with most anything. Brett nodded at Leonard and Donny, said to me, “So, you found a child in the yard and took him in to raise.”
“Found him under a rock,” I said. “Can we keep him? We’ll build him a pen out back.”
She smiled at me. “We’ll think it over. You got any more pancake batter?”
“Coming right up, banana pancakes,” I said. “I should work at IHOP, I’m so good at this.”
I went about making her pancakes. While I did, she sat at the table and looked at Leonard for an explanation. Leonard told her all about it.
Brett looked at Donny, said, “Honey, you could have been in some real trouble.”
“I just wanted to make some money,” he said, and the way he looked at her it was hard to determine if he was seeing a sister figure, a mother, or someone he wished he was old enough to date. Brett had that effect on people.
“So taking someone else’s money is okay so you can have some?” she said.
“Smoke Stack said it’s not someone’s money if they can’t keep it,” Donny said. “And besides, that bank money, it’s insured.”
“Someone pays out the insurance, baby boy,” she said, “and that might be me if I bank there.” She picked up the newspaper and hit him a pretty good whack in the back of the head. “Bad dog. Bad, bad dog.”
Donny lowered his eyes, said, “I didn’t think about it like that.”
“You haven’t been thinking,” she said. “You been hearing some bullshit, is what you been hearing, and I got to say, for you to take it as fact, you must want to believe it. There’s people born stupid, but you’re one of those Hap calls the Happily Stupid. They believe what they hear, not what they investigate or think about. They’re the ones that don’t listen to news, they listen to opinions and editorials and think it’s news. Rumors and lies and sometimes the truth. It’s all the same to them.”
The Big Book of Hap and Leonard Page 6
