Cold in July

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “I’m glad he wasn’t in no O.K. Corral mood,” Jim Bob said.

  “Let’s go,” Russel said, “neighbors might have seen us.”

  Jim Bob went back and looked at his car. “Damn.” Then he glanced at the Nova. The trunk hood was bent up and knocked open. Jim Bob looked inside. “A movie lover,” he said.

  I went over and looked. There was a small box of videotapes. They had little stickers on their spines and the names of movies written on them. Some of the movies were Mexican, some were English and American. One of them read Star Wars. Jim Bob reached that one out of the box, held it up.

  “I’ll just call the beating I gave that sumbitch and this here my insurance settlement. Ain’t enough, but it’ll do.”

  We got in the car and Jim Bob drove us out of there.

  30

  We had some hamburgers and fries at a McDonald’s and sat in a back booth and considered things. There was a lot to consider.

  “Well, as the little ole lady asked,” Jim Bob said, “what the fuck does it all mean? Who was that big Meskin and what was he doing backing out of Freddy’s garage late afternoon with a trunkload of videotapes, and is he evidence that you can still buy driver’s licenses at Sears?”

  “Maybe your detecting is off, and that isn’t Fred Miller’s house,” Russel said.

  “That’s his house, and you know it,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t fuck up that bad.”

  “It doesn’t seem that mysterious to me,” I said. “Freddy has a friend who’s Mexican, and the guy has run of the house and he was over there for whatever reason and he just happened to have his movie collection in the trunk of his car. Maybe he shares the place with Freddy. Could be a way to meet the bills or something.”

  “When you get right down to it,” Jim Bob said, “it don’t matter. What matters is that our friend, Ben, here, ought to just call Freddy up and get it over with.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Russel said.

  “You’re not going to feel any more comfortable about it tomorrow,” Jim Bob said.

  “Maybe not,” Russel said, “but I’ll know when I’m ready.”

  “He’ll know,” Jim Bob said. “You get that, Dane? He'll know. Shit.”

  We went on back to Jim Bob’s place, and Russel didn’t talk much. For that matter, neither did Jim Bob, and I wasn’t chatty myself. Jim Bob tuned in a country and Western station and sang along with the songs a little, and damned if he wasn’t pretty good.

  At Jim Bob’s house, Russel went to take a bath and Jim Bob got us both a beer and I sat on the couch and Jim Bob took a chair next to the television.

  “I don’t know about you, pardner,” Jim Bob said, “but I’m so bored I could sing to my dick.”

  I was trying to visualize that, and having some trouble, when Jim Bob said, “Hey, let’s watch that damn movie. Star Wars.”

  “It’s good,” I said. “But it looks better on the big screen.”

  “Get me a big screen and we’ll play it on that,” Jim Bob said. “But in the meantime, I’m gonna play it on that nineteen-inch RCA there. You don’t mind me watching it do you?”

  “No. I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.”

  “Good, cause I was gonna watch it anyway.”

  Jim Bob had left the video out in the Bitch and he went through the garage and got it. When, he came back he had a dark scowl on his face. “Man, that Nova screwed the Bitch good. I’m gonna call a man I know about getting it fixed tomorrow.”

  Jim Bob went over and slipped the cassette into the VCR and turned it and the television on. “I got some popcorn,” he said. “I could fix us some.”

  “I could always eat popcorn,” I said.

  The video crackled and popped and there were ripples. Jim Bob started to get up to make the popcorn, but he hesitated. “Looks like a bad copy.”

  “You'll want to turn it off to make the corn anyway,” I said. “This stuff with the big spaceship at the first is pretty fine.”

  But there were no credits and no Stars Wars. There was bad video camera work with a young Mexican girl sitting on a bed with her hands and feet tied.

  “What the hell’s this? This ain’t Star Wars is it?”

  “No,” I said. “It looks like some sort of cheap porno tape.”

  Then the big Mexican Jim Bob had fought stepped into the camera’s eye. He was naked and sexually ready and looked even bigger without his clothes.

  “Shit,” Jim Bob said, ” b said, home movies of the Mex and his old lady.”

  The Mexican went over to the girl and pushed her back on the bed and undid the binding at her feet and spread her legs and got on top of her. The girl didn’t fight.

  She was very complacent. Only her eyes suggested she didn’t like what was happening.

  The Mexican didn’t waste any time, and when he finished he stood up by the bed and another man stepped into view. He was naked too. He was a head shorter than the Mexican and not nearly so wide and sporting a little paunch, but he still looked powerful. The camera angle switched then and we got a closer look at his face. He had thinning, blond hair and blue eyes and nice teeth and he was showing all of them. The camera went back to its original side-view angle and the blond man got on the girl and did what the Mexican had done. When he was finished he grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled her to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and she let out a little squeak like a mouse with a brick on its tail. The blond man put out his hand and a hand off camera put a little revolver in it. The girl understood suddenly what was going to happen and she tried to lift her bound hands to her face but the man with the gun was too quick and he shot her in the forehead. Blood leaped out the back of her head and went all over the bed and she fell back in it with her arms out, kicked briefly with one leg like she was jump starting a motorcycle and wet herself. The urine pooled under her and blended with the blood and her left eye rolled up in her head and her right stayed fixed as if it had discovered something unique on the ceiling. The camera went close on her face and the hole in her head was tiny as the width of a dime with a bead of blood pushing out of it. The blond man’s face came into view and he licked the bead away and rolled it around in his mouth as if tasting wine.

  Static replaced the picture. Jim Bob reached out and cut the video off. He turned to me and his voice was hoarse. “That was for real. An honest to God snuff film.”

  “He’s older, heavier, and losing some hair,” I said “but he still looks like his photograph, and when he took the gun—”

  “The moles on the back of his hand were shaped like a four-leaf clover.”

  31

  “Don’t say anything to Ben,” Jim Bob said. “Not yet.”

  He got the cassette out of the machine and turned off the television. He went over to the bar in the kitchen and got a pen and paper and wrote a note.

  “I’m telling Ben we’ve gone to town for some beer,” Jim Bob said. “You and me got to talk.”

  He put the note on the table and took the cassette with him out to the garage. We got in his black Dodge pickup instead of the Bitch. We backed out and drove along through the night with the cassette lying between us like a bomb. We didn’t talk for a time.

  “Maybe it wasn’t real,” I said. “It could have just looked real. They can do anything now.”

  “It’s okay to be hopeful, Dane,” Jim Bob said, “but there’s no use in being stupid. It was real.”

  We drove on in silence until I said what{ we were both wondering. “What about Russel?”

  “Poor bastard can’t get a break, can he?” Jim Bob said. “It isn’t like he hasn’t gone through hell. And now this. Ain’t nothing could be worse than having your kid get killed, unless it was finding out he wasn’t a human being.”

  “What’s it all about, though? Why would he do that?”

  “You’re having a stupid attack again. Freddy enjoys it. Did you see his face? You don’t lick blood out of a gunshot wound unless you enjoy it. And I bet he’s gone i
nto the movie business kind of regular. Stars himself and the Mex and some little gal that won’t be missed much. My guess is he brought her from across the border somehow. Smuggled her over. Some whore he paid, told her he was going to take her to a big party, and all she had to do to make an extra couple thousand was fuck a few of his friends. Only it was rougher than that. Christ, how old was that gal, Dane?”

  “I don’t know. Fifteen?”

  “Yeah. That’s about what I figure. I bet that ain’t the first gal he’s aced or the last. Tapes like that he can sell to the sicko trade for big bucks and be reasonably safe about it. Them ain’t the kind of films the owners invite the neighbors over to see. That crap is for sick shits to sit in the dark and jack off to.”

  “Jesus, people would pay to see that shit?”

  “Live in the real world, buddy. There’s people who’ll pay to see anything. Buy tapes of girls shitting in each other’s faces, dogs fucking them in the ass, or just what you saw. We ain’t talking stuff for an Elks smoker here. I heard of a rich man once on the other side of Houston that bought tapes of operations, animal experiments and war atrocities, and he could do that legal. I wouldn’t doubt he’s got some stuff like we saw on this here,” he touched the tape with a finger as if poking a monster to see if it were dead, “in a vault somewhere. Maybe that’s how he gets it up so he can fuck the old lady. He can pretend he’s gonna shoot her after he gets off—”

  “I get the picture,” I said.

  Jim Bob pulled off to the side of the road suddenly, as if his hands wouldn’t hold the wheel anymore. He held them out to me and said, “Shit. You look at that? I’m shaking like a virgin bride.”

  We sat there for a time with the motor running and the lights on, and Jim Bob said, “We could ditch this tape, tell Russel I fucked up on the Fred Miller stuff, that my FBI contact was full of bull doo-doo, and that it wasn’t a cover for Freddy after all. I could pretend to look some more, and after a while, give up. Say I couldn’t find any leads. He needn’t never know.”

  “I wouldn’t believe that story if you told it to me,” I said. “Not after knowing you just as long as I’ve known you. You wouldn’t give up. You’re too egotistical.”

  “True.”

  “But even if we could get away with doing that, that wouldn’t change what we saw or what Freddy’s doing, would it?”

  “No. He’d keep right on keeping on.”

  “Does that matter to you?”

  “Damn sure does. I think the scumbag ought to be tied to the highway and have a semi-truck driven over his head.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Damned if I know,” Jim Bob said.

  We drove on to town and got the beer and when we got back Russel had the couch folded out and was sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette and watching the tail end of the news.

  “Got some beer,” Jim Bob said, holding it up.

  “That’s nice,” Russel said. He looked at me. “And you went with him.”

  “Yeah, I went with him.”

  “For beer?”

  “Yeah,” Jim Bob said, “beer.”

  “What are you two homos really up to?”

  “Beer,” I said. “Can’t a man go out and get a goddamn beer without being hassled?”

  I walked past the couch and went to my room and closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed. I thought about the tape and the young girl and the Mexican and Freddy. I thought about the gun and the blood and the urine. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about anything. I wasn’t good at that.

  I thought about Ann and Jordan, but that made me more ill than comforted.

  I got up and went out again and passed by Russel’s couch.

  “You got jock itch, Dane?” Russel said. “Settle down, you’re making me nervous.”

  “I want to walk, all right,” I said. “Okay if I do that? Am I gonna get penalized or something?”

  “Don’t get on the rag,” Russel said. “It’s just you’re making me nervous. You and Jim Bob are acting like kids that got caught jacking off or something.”

  “I’m just homesick,” I said. “Jim Bob, can I use your phone upstairs to call? I’ll pay the charges.”

  “No problem,” Jim Bob said, “just don’t leave it talking.”

  “Thanks.” I turned to Russel. “I’m just on a tear. I miss my family.”

  “Understand,” Russel said.

  I went upstairs. The phone was on a little end table on the landing and there was a chair there. I sat down and called home. On the third ring Ann answered. I realized from her voice, which sounded as if it were coming from underwater, that she had already gone to sleep. I looked at my watch. It was later than I thought, and she always had been the early to bed, early to rise type.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “Richard?”

  “No, your other husband.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. How you doing baby?”

  “Good… what time is it?”

  “About ten-thirty. I forgot you’d be in bed. I wasn’t thinking about the time.”

  “Everything okay?” “Yeah.”

  “I’m real tired, honey. I got to go to work in the morning.”

  That Ann, what a romantic.

  “Yeah, well… I’m sorry. I just wanted to call and say I love you.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m just tired is all. I love you too.”

  “How’s Jordan.”

  “In bed.”

  “He okay?”

  “Uh huh. You sound funny, Richard.”

  “Connection. I’m tired myself. Ann?”

  “Uh huh?”

  “Do you think Jordan loves me?”

  “Of course. You know he does.”

  “I mean, do you think I’m a good father?”

  “Yeah. You’re impatient and loud sometimes, but you’re a good father. You’re a good husband too. Especially when you let me sleep.”

  I almost laughed, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “Will you tell him I love him?”

  “Uhhuh.”

  “First thing in the morning, will you tell him that?”

  “I will.”

  “You won’t forget.”

  “No, I won’t forget… Are you sure you’re okay, Richard?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Call me tomorrow. Things are kind of fuzzy. I don’t wake up too fast.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have called.”

  “No, hey, it’s okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Don’t forget to tell Jordan.”

  “I won’t. When are you coming home? We miss you.”

  “Real soon.”

  “Make it sooner than that.”

  “I'll try. Good night, honey.”

  “Good night, Richard.”

  32

  I awoke to Jim Bob shaking me.

  “Get up,” he said. “I can’t sleep.”

  “What if I could have?”

  “You’d have been shit out of luck. Were you sleeping?’

  “I was doing a pretty good imitation of it.”

  “I keep thinking… you know.”

  “The video,” I said.

  “Yeah, that and Russel.”

  I shifted and sat up on the side of the bed. Jim Bob sat down in a chair by the window and pulled back the curtain and looked out. Moonlight fell on his face like a silver blade. He looked different without his hat, sitting there in a chair in his underwear.

  He dropped the curtain and turned to look at me, his face mostly in shadow now. “That bastard out there has been a friend of mine a long time.”

  “You haven’t seen him in nearly twenty years.”

  “That doesn’t matter. We practically grew up together. I thought about him there in the pen, thought about him a lot. I tried to stay in touch with him, but he cut me off. He cut his wife and Freddy off… Shit, you think him not being aro
und Freddy could have made the kid that way?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to believe anything could make somebody like that. You got to think they were born that way. Something missing. Even Russel says he’s missing something himself. Has a hole in him and his soul is seeping out of it.”

  “That sounds like him,” Jim Bob said. “He’s not as bad as he puts it.”

  “He’s not like Freddy, that’s for sure. If he’s missing something, he knows it and he’s trying to get it back.”

  “You called your wife?”

  “Yeah. I’ll give you some money for the call.”

  “That’s all right. How was she?”

  “Fine.”

  “The boy?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re a lucky man, Dane. Got a family. Someone to care about you. I got what I do and the Red Bitch—and it’s got a dent in it.”

  “You got pigs.”

  “Yeah, but every now and then I eat them, so it’s hard to form any kind of relationship. I don’t think they trust me.”

  “Jim Bob, what are we going to do?”

  “Got any hot ideas?”

  “The cops. We give them a tip, send them the tape with an address. Something like that.”

  “Uh I thought of that. I thought beyond that. While you were sleeping I decided to take some air, and I drove into town to that 7-Eleven where we bought the beer, used their phone booth. Somehow it just seemed right using the phone booth. I called that old ex-sheriff that owes me favors and he called his son for me and his son called me back at the phone booth. I told the son a what-if story about an FBI informant being given a new identity, then getting involved in crime again. It sounded a lot like what we know about Freddy.”

  He paused to pull back the curtain again and looked out. The moonlight didn’t look any better on his face this time.

  “And?”

  “And, the FBI won’t do dick.”

  “What?”

  “They gave him immunity see, and a new identity.”

  “What’s that got to do with it? That was for another deal altogether. This is separate.”