Cold in July

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Now we were following those self-same murderers, as well as a number of other most likely unpleasant individuals who probably made them up their steady film crew, down a dark highway with the houses and lights going away and the pines and the moon and the shadows becoming the status quo, and it was my guess that this merry little van-encased group had this night set aside for a very special little film they wished to make, and it was most certainly not a nature flick about the nocturnal mating habits of the brown moth.

  We kept on going, and when we were about halfway to LaBorde, the car lights became less frequent and the night had fallen over the countryside like a hood.

  We went through some little burg that consisted of a used car lot, a chicken shack, a railroad track, one red light and a fistful of abandoned buildings, and on the other side of that the van took a left and went down a narrow blacktop that seemed almost consumed by pines.

  Jim Bob pulled over to the side of the road to give them a chance to get a little farther ahead so we wouldn’t look so obvious. Russel got out a cigarette and lit it and I cracked my window and watched the smoke suck out it like a wraith.

  “Long enough,” Jim Bob said, and he checked the highway for cars and pulled across onto the blacktop. Russel leaned over me and tossed the almost whole cigarette through the crack in the window and I rolled it up. Jim Bob said, “Break out the guns.”

  42

  The blacktop dipped down a deep hill and wound sharply around a corner that was walled with pines, and there in the moonlight, the spears of trees on either side of it, it looked like an enormous ribbon of molasses slick enough to slide on.

  We went down the hill and around the corner and down the road a piece, and no van. We went by a gravel drive and a cattle guard and finally another drive that was made of concrete, and on around another curve.

  No sign of the van.

  “We didn’t wait that long,” Jim Bob said. “They turned off.”

  Turning around, we went back more slowly, and as we cruised by the concrete drive, I squinted through the trees and saw lights. “There’s a house down there or something,” I said.

  Jim Bob drove on until we came to the cattle guard, and he drove over that and parked the truck in a pasture and killed the lights.

  “We can walk back and check,” he said.

  “And if that isn’t them?” Russel asked.

  “We come back to the truck and start over,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t think this pasture leads anywhere but more pasture, maybe some trees. I think they want a house for what they’re doing. The gravel drive up from this might lead to something, but let’s check out the other one first.”

  We got out of the truck with our weapons, but didn’t bother with the wigs or the blacking. Other than those we intended to eliminate, witnesses out here were few and far between. And we didn’t need the blacking to protect us from being exposed in the moonlight. The moon was just a sliver and the shadows were thick and would conceal us as well as anything might.

  The air had cooled off with nightfall, but I was having trouble breathing it; it felt too heavy and thick to go through my nose and mouth.

  Jim Bob led and Russel and I followed. Just before we came to the drive, Jim Bob said, “If it’s them, take it easy. We’ll see what we got and put together some kind of game plan. When it comes down to assholes and elbows, remember this: We’re outnumbered, but we can surprise them. That element doesn’t go as far in real life as it does in the movies, but it’s something. When this shindig gets started, don’t shoot to wing anybody. This is the once and for all real thing, and when the smoke clears, we want to be standing, or at least breathing.”

  “Remember,” Russel said, “you’re going to try and leave Freddy for me.”

  “Me and Dane ain’t gonna get killed so you can get your shot in, but if it’s within our power he’s yours.”

  Car lights curved around the road and we darted into the high grass and peeked out. It was the gray Vette.

  “The guy from the video store,” I said.

  We watched the taillights go brighter as it slowed, turned onto the concrete drive.

  “I think we found our boys,” Jim Bob said.

  When we reached the driveway, we stopped short of that and took to the right of it and moved through some brush and scrub trees. The closer we came to the house, the clearer the terrain became, and we finally came to a spot where the brush ended and there was a row of briars like concentration camp barbed wire, and beyond that a scattering of tall pines. Off to the far right, the land and brush tumbled into a ravine. On the other side of the drive it was the same way with the brush ending and the cleared land and the scattered trees taking over, only there was no ravine on that side. Artfully arranged at the end of the drive between the pines was a tall house of glass and redwood and there were lights on in the house and we could see a stairs with a man on them, and walking behind him was Freddy. I recognized him by his bulk and the way he moved—like his old man. The stairs turned at the top and went behind a wall and they were soon out of sight.

  Outside the house there were several men standing around, five to be exact, and the thin man in the white suit got out of the Vette and a girl got out on the other side and they went over to join them. I couldn’t tell much about the girl, but she didn’t seem to be forced. But that didn’t mean anything. She wouldn’t have been told the entire plan—the shooting part would have been left out. She was short and had long, black hair to her waist and she walked with plenty of hip roll and had nice hips for the rolling.

  One of the men in the group said loudly, “You pull train, baby?” The guy in the white suit said, “Speak Mex,” and the man spoke again in that language, the same question I presume, because the girl laughed musically and her Si drifted back to us and was followed by male laughter sharp and desperate as the barking of caged dogs.

  Everyone, except a man who looked like a boulder in a suit, went in the house. The boulder took up a position by the door and folded his hands in front of him and cupped his crotch like he was weighing his testicles.

  “Think she’s a pigeon?” Russel said.

  “Probably,” Jim Bob said. “I think we’re going to have to play it that way. But watch for her. She could be with them and have a gun and she just might shoot your dick off. You two go toward the house by the ravine, and I’m gonna cross the drive when I get the chance and come up on the other side. I’m good at this sneaking stuff.”

  “Hear you tell it,” Russel said, “there isn’t anything you aren’t good at.”

  “I don’t whistle too well,” Jim Bob said. “Now remember, we’ve seen six guys outside, two going up the stairs. That makes eight. But there might be more inside. And don’t forget the girl. Like I said, she may not be friendly.

  “We’ll do this simple, come up on both sides of the fella at the door, and whoever gets there first takes him out. I won’t wait on you, and you don’t wait on me. And the thing then is to get started, to go on in the house and start shooting any one of those sonofabitches that you see. When you get inside, move like you mean it. Seek and shoot, upstairs and downstairs. Keep count of how many you drop, and get the killing in your blood. Get goddamn good and self-righteous about it because that’s the only way you’ll see it through.”

  “Merciful Jesus,” I said.

  “It’s a pisser, ain’t it?” Jim Bob said. “Now, y’all get started.”

  Russel and I eased down into the ravine by sliding on the slick grass and dry clay that made up the sides. Our feet landed in a thin trickle of brackish-smelling water and sent up a cloud of mosquitoes that lit on our faces, hands, backs, and shoulders and sucked blood even through our shirts. Roots and brush tumbled and twisted across the floor of the ravine, grabbed at our feet and tried to trip us. Above us, jutting out from the lips of the ravine, arthritic trees and scrubby brush hid a lot of the thin moonlight and made our path down there damn dark. Still, we stepped quickly, and quietly. At least, I hoped we were moving q
uietly. I couldn’t hear all that well on account of my blood pounding in my temples.

  The scrub brush and trees diminished above us and the light from the house was stronger than the bad moonlight and it fell down into the ravine like tainted butter. The ravine went narrow and the left side of it dropped down and we had to bend low and ease over to the edge of it and poke our heads up to see exactly where we were.

  We were almost even with the front edge of the house, and I could see the boulder in the suit standing under a yellow bug light on the front porch. I wondered about him; couldn’t help but think he might be thinking about what was going on inside the house and wishing he was in on it, but was stuck instead with guard duty. And maybe he wasn’t thinking about it at all, didn’t care. Perhaps he was thinking about fast cars and women and the Dallas Cowboys, the price of special made suits that would fit his boulder-shaped body.

  I looked at Russel.

  “Let’s take him,” he whispered.

  43

  “I’ve got the shotgun,” I said. “I guess I should do it.” Russel didn’t try to talk me out of it. I waited a second or two hoping he would, then went over the lip of the ravine with a shell pumped into the chamber and before I was halfway there the guy torqued and saw me and reached inside his coat. I was about to fire at him, when Jim Bob, like some kind of cowboy-hatted ghost, swooped out of the night and hit the man in the side of the head with the barrel of the sawed-off. The man spun almost around and Jim Bob kicked his feet out from under him. The man’s head hit the concrete porch with a soft smack and Jim Bob bent over him, made a quick move with his hand and stood up.

  All in all, the entire undertaking had been relatively quiet.

  I came up alongside Jim Bob, then Russel moved up behind me, breathing sharply. I looked down at the man on the ground. Jim Bob’s sawed-off was lying across his chest and underneath the man’s chin was a swathe of darkness; as I watched it grew broader. Jim Bob had a pocketknife in his hand and the blade was dripping blood. He closed it on his pants leg, pushed it into his pants pocket and picked up the sawed-off. “It’s Howdy Doody time,” he said and jerked the door open and went inside, Russel and I behind him. No one was there for us to shoot at.

  Jim Bob nodded up the stairs, and went that way. Russel went right and I went left, the shotgun in front of me. I came to a door and opened it and found a closet. None of the coats tried to get me. I closed the door and went around the corner and down the hall, and then the world started rocking and rolling with the sound of gunfire. It was coming from upstairs. I started to turn, then heard running feet. I whirled and crouched, and one of the men from the van came beating toward me. When he saw me, he tried to slow down, and it was like one of those comic takes, where the comedian does a kind of choppy half-step, half-skid backwards. But this guy wasn’t a comedian. His hand went inside his coat and it came out with a revolver and I cut down on him with the Ithaca and took him full in the chest. He spun and went down, but rolled on his back and got to a near-sitting position and took a shot at me; the bullet burned along my neck. I pumped another load into the Ithaca and fired again and caught the guy in the chin and the shot made his head cock way too far back and he flopped on the floor and the hall filled with the odor of shit and gunpowder.

  Shooting had been going on all the while, and I decided to go on down the hall and see what was there, then go back to the stairs and hope for the best. I jumped over the dead man and went around the corner expecting gunfire, but finding only a big empty kitchen with the makings of a sandwich on the counter. The guy must have been fixing himself a snack when the shooting started. I ran back up the hall and took a left toward the stairway, saw a blur of movement, dropped to one knee, and pumped a load into the Ithaca as I did. A man with one arm dangling limp and awkward at his side, an automatic hanging from one finger like a knickknack on a hook, stumbled backwards and fell against one of the big windowpanes that made up the front of the house, and began to slide down it, leaving a road of blood on the glass. Russel came into view, walked over to the man, put the .357 to the top of his head and shot him.

  “Russel,” I said.

  He wheeled on me and the revolver cocked, then lifted up. His eyes were stoned looking and his face was as white as a Ku Kluxer’s sheet.

  “Stairs,” he said.

  There was gunfire up there, and when we got to the turn in the stairway, we found a Mexican. Not the one we were familiar with, but another. The top of his head was gone.

  We went over him, on up fast, then a door came open at the top of the stairs and there was a scream like a dinosaur in pain, and Jim Bob came flying out, smashed against the wall and melted onto the landing. He had lost his hat and like Russel his eyes were wild looking and his face was dead white. He still had the sawed-off in his hand. The .38 was gone from its holster.

  It wasn’t Jim Bob screaming. It was the one Jim Bob called the Mex. He stumbled out of the doorway and onto the landing. The front of his shirt was dark and wet and the material sucked into his chest when he breathed. He looked as if he were wired up on something.

  Jim Bob rolled his head toward us. “Shoot the motherfucker,” he yelled. “I gave him both barrels.”

  Russel’s .357 rode up and bucked and the Mex’s head snapped hard right and back around as if on a spring. Half his face was gone. The Mex reached down and grabbed Jim Bob by the leg and slung him at us. Jim Bob hit me and I went back, fell over the dead Mexican on the stairs. Russel was still where he was.

  The Mex was coming down the steps after Russel like the Frankenstein monster. Russel lifted his gun hand and used his other hand to brace his wrist and he shot the Mex in the nose and the Mex doubled forward and tumbled down over Jim Bob and me and the other Mexican.

  Russel continued up the stairs. Jim Bob got to his feet, broke open the sawed-off, and got two shells out of his snap shirt pocket and loaded the gun and flicked it shut.

  I got hold of the Ithaca, which I had momentarily lost, and I went up after Jim Bob. Russel went through the door just ahead of us, and we rushed in after him.

  The room was the room where they had made the video we had seen. A video camera was on a tripod at the far right, and another lay overturned on the floor. A third without a tripod lay on the corner of the bed. A man lay on the bed too. It was the man I had seen going up the stairs ahead of Freddy; I recognized his suit. He was lying on top of the girl. I couldn’t tell anything about her. I could only see the bottom of her naked feet, her arms thrown out as if in crucifixion, and her black hair spread against the white sheets like an oil spill on snow.

  “Freddy and that skinny fuck are around here somewhere,” Jim Bob said. “Them and this guy and the Mex were in here when I came in. The skinny guy was putting the meat to her.”

  I went over to the man on the bed and grabbed him by the collar of his suit and pulled him off the girl. He rolled face up. He looked like a man that had never had to work. He had very fine silver hair and a matching mustache. He. must have been fifty at least. Old enough to have been the girl’s father. Jim Bob had shot him several times in the chest and crotch. With the .38 most likely. The wounds were small.

  I looked at the girl. She didn’t move anything but her eyes. They rolled toward me. They were the color of old pecans. The nipples of her small breasts were uncommonly large and wide and matched the color of her eyes. Her pubic hair was so neatly trimmed it looked like little fur panties. Her short legs were shiny, as if oiled. I figured her for about eighteen. Under the circumstances, she was about as sexy as an avocado. I could see now that there were thin, white cords tied to her wrists and in turn, to the bedpost. I didn’t try to untie them. No time for that. I gave her what I thought was a reassuring smile. If she caught the meaning, her face and eyes gave no sign of it. She just lay there quietly, watching, perhaps resigned.

  There was just the one door on the far left, where Russel was, and a closet door between the bed and that exit. Jim Bob cocked the triggers on the sawed-off, jerk
ed the closet door open, and the skinny guy, buck naked, came out of there with a scream and a flash of knife and the blade went down and over Jim Bob’s shoulder and poked him deep in the back. Jim Bob hit the man in the stomach with both barrels of the shotgun and pulled the triggers. Red jumped out of the skinny guy, front and back, and he flopped to the floor. Jim Bob went to his knees and bent his head. The knife stuck out of his back like a quill.

  Russel, without hardly looking, reached over and took it by the handle and pulled it out with a jerk.

  “Goddamn!” Jim Bob said.

  Russel stuck the knife through his belt and opened the door in front of him and stepped quickly to the side, but nobody fired at him.

  “Freddy,” Russel yelled into the room. “I’m Ben Russel. I’m your father. I’ve come to kill you.”

  I went around behind Russel and peeked through the doorway and Russel moved inside and I followed. Jim Bob got up, leaned against the door jamb and said, “That hurt, Ben.”

  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.